DAY 1
Make a new friend
“Excuse me?”
No answer. The receptionist carried on clacking the computer keys. Annie tried again. “Excuse me.” That was a level-two “excuse me”—above the one she’d give to tourists blocking the escalator and below the one reserved for someone with their bag on a train seat. Nothing. “Sorry,” she said, taking it to level three (stealing your parking spot, bashing you with an umbrella, etc.). “Could you help me, please? I’ve been standing here for five minutes.”
The woman kept typing. “What?”
“I need to change the address on a patient file. I’ve already been sent to four different departments.”
The receptionist extended one hand, without looking up. Annie gave her the form. “This you?”
“Well, no.” Obviously.
“The patient has to change it for themselves.”
“Um, well, they can’t actually.” Which would be clear if anyone in the hospital ever bothered to read the files.
The form dropped onto the counter. “Can’t let another person change it. Data protection, see.”
“But...” Annie felt, suddenly and horribly, like she might cry. “I need to change it so letters come to my address! She can’t read them herself anymore! That’s why I’m here. Please! I—I just need it changed. I don’t understand how this can possibly be so difficult.”
“Sorry.” The receptionist sniffed, picked something off one of her nails.
Annie snatched the paper up. “Look, I’ve been in this hospital for ten hours now. I’ve been sent around from office to office. Patient Records. Neurology. Outpatients. Reception. Back to Neurology. And no one seems to have the slightest idea how to do this very simple task! I haven’t eaten. I haven’t showered. And I can’t go home unless you just open up your computer and type in a few lines. That’s all you have to do.”
The receptionist still wasn’t even looking at her. Clack, clack, clack. Annie felt it swell up in her—the anger, the pain, the frustration. “Will you listen to me?” She reached over and wrenched the computer around.
The woman’s eyebrows disappeared into her bouffant hair. “Madam, I’m going to have to call security if you don’t—”
“I just want you to look at me when I’m speaking. I just need you to help me. Please.” And then it was too late and she was definitely crying, her mouth suddenly filling with bitter salt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just—I really need to change the address.”
“Listen, madam...” The receptionist was swelling, her mouth opening, no doubt to tell Annie where to go. Then something odd happened. Instead, her face creased into a smile. “Hiya, P.”
“He-ey, everything okay here?”
Annie turned to see who was interrupting. In the doorway of the dingy hospital office was a tall woman in all shades of the rainbow. Red shoes. Purple tights. A yellow dress, the color of Sicilian lemons. A green beanie hat. Her amber jewelry glowed orange, and her eyes were a vivid blue. That array of color shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did. She leaned toward Annie, touching her arm; Annie flinched. “So sorry, I don’t mean to jump in front of you. Just need to very, very quickly make an appointment.”
The receptionist was back clacking, this time with a jaunty beat. “Next week do ya?”
“Thanks, you’re a star. Sorry, I’ve totally queue-jumped!” The rainbow beamed at Annie again. “Is this lovely lady all sorted, Denise?”
No one had called Annie a lovely lady for a long time. She blinked the tears from her eyes, trying to sound firm. “Well, no, because apparently it’s too hard to just change a patient record. I’ve been to four different offices now.”
“Oh, Denise can do that for you. She has all the secrets of this hospital at her fabulous fingertips.” The woman mimed typing. There was a large bruise on the back of one hand, partly covered by taped-on cotton wool.
Denise was actually nodding, grudgingly. “All right, then. Give it here.”
Annie passed the form over. “Can you send care of me, please? Annie Hebden.” Denise typed, and within ten seconds, the thing Annie had waited for all day was done. “Um, thanks.”
“You’re welcome, madam,” said Denise, and Annie could feel her judgment. She’d been rude. She knew she’d been rude. It was just so frustrating, so difficult.
“Brill. Bye, missus.” The rainbow woman waved at Denise, then grabbed Annie’s arm again. “Listen. I’m sorry you’re having a bad day.”
“I—what?”
“You seem like you’re having a really bad day.”
Annie was temporarily speechless. “I’m in the bloody hospital. Do you think anyone here’s having a good day?”
The woman looked around at the waiting room behind them—half the people on crutches, some with shaved heads and pale faces, a shrunken woman hunched in a wheelchair in a hospital gown, bored kids upending the contents of their mums’ bags while the mums mindlessly stabbed at phones. “No reason why not.”
Annie stepped back, angry. “Listen, thank you for your help—though I shouldn’t have needed it, this hospital is a disgrace—but you’ve no idea why I’m in here.”
“True.”
“So, I’m going now.”
The woman said, “Do you like cake?”
“What? Of course I—what?”
“Wait a sec.” She dashed away. Annie looked at Denise, who’d gone back to her blank-eyed keyboard stare. She counted to ten—annoyed at herself for even doing that—then shook her head and went out down the corridor, with its palette of despair blue and bile green. Sounds of wheeling beds, flapping doors, distant crying. An old man lay on a trolley, tiny and gray. Thank God she was finally done. She needed to go home, lose herself in the TV, hide under the duvet—
“Wait! Annie Hebden!”
Annie turned. The annoying woman was running down the corridor—well, more sort of shuffling, out of breath. She held a cupcake aloft, iced with wavy chocolate frosting. “For you,” she panted, thrusting it into Annie’s hand. Each of her nails was painted a different color.
Annie was speechless for the second time in five minutes. “Why?”
“Because. Cupcakes make everything a little better. Except for type 2 diabetes, I guess.”
“Uh...” Annie looked at the cake in her hand. Slightly squished. “Thank you?”
“That’s okay.” The woman licked some rogue frosting off her hand. “Ick, I hope I don’t get MRSA. Not that it would make much difference. I’m Polly, by the way. And you’re Annie.”
“Er. Yeah.”
“Have a good day, Annie Hebden. Or at least a slightly better one. Remember—if you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.” And she waved, and skipped—was it the first time anyone had ever skipped down the Corridor of Doom?—out of sight.
* * *
Annie waited for the bus in the rain, that gray soupy rain that Lewisham seemed to specialize in. She thought what a stupid thing it was the woman had said. Rain didn’t always lead to rainbows. Usually it just led to soaked socks and your hair in rattails. But at least she had somewhere to go. A homeless man sat beneath the bus shelter, water dripping off his head and forming a puddle around his dirty trousers. Annie felt wretched for him, but what could she do? She couldn’t help him. She couldn’t even help herself.
When the bus came it was rammed, and she stood squeezed up between a buggy and a mound of shopping bags, buffeted by every turn. An elderly lady got on, wobbling up the steps with her shopping trolley. As she shuffled down the bus, nobody looked up from their phones to offer her a seat. Annie finally snapped. What was wrong with people? Was there not a shred of decency left in this city? “For God’s sake!” she barked. “Could someone let this lady sit down, please?” A young man with huge headphones slouched out of his seat, embarrassed.
“No need to take the Lord’s name in vain,” said the old lady, tutting disapprovingly at Annie as she sat down.
Annie stared at her feet, which had left grimy marks on the wet floor of the bus, until she got to her stop.
How had her life come to this? she wondered. Losing it in public over a change of address? Weeping in front of strangers? Once it would have been her raising her eyebrows as someone else had a meltdown. Offering tissues, and a soothing pat on the arm. She didn’t understand what had happened to that person. The one she used to be.
Sometimes it felt to Annie like her life had changed in the blink of an eye. Eyes shut—she was back in the bedroom of her lovely house on that last sunny morning, and everything was good. She was filled with excitement, and hope, and slightly exhausted joy. Perfect. Eyes open—she was here, trudging back to her horrible flat, catching the bus in the rain, lying awake full of dread and misery. One blink, perfect. Two blinks, ruined. But no matter how many times she closed her eyes, it never went back to how it used to be.