December 31 – Wednesday
‘It’s just a scrape, that’s all.’ Tess hated that her voice sounded so small here. It was the machines of course, buzzing, humming and occasionally beeping, eating up the static silence of her little cubicle. The A&E at St. Mel’s city hospital was hushed, ready for impending invasion by the Dublin City revellers, wounded in various, often-unaccountable ways for the sake of auld lang syne.
It was New Year’s Eve and this was not where she planned to spend it; not that she had any plan at all. It was a long time since Tess had anywhere she wanted to be for New Year’s, Christmas, or indeed her birthday. These days she told herself it suited her, but she was too wise not to remember what it was like to be part of something more.
Tess eyeballed the doctor. He was young, maybe a bit of a smart-arse, but she put him in his place when he mispronounced her name and again when he stumbled over her prescription. ‘I’m going home now. Either stitch me up, or give me a needle and I’ll do it myself.’ She swung her legs as smoothly as she could off the trolley that they had allocated to her almost three hours earlier. ‘For goodness sake, you’ll have all sorts in here soon.’
It was fuss over nothing. So, there was a bit of blood, but nothing broken on this occasion. Tess had tripped, that was all there was to it. A bloody cat wandering through her legs in the dark. It could happen to anyone. Of course, the fact that she had a broken wrist made her look as though she was always in the wars. The broken wrist had occurred just over a month before, but she had been sensible, had the X-ray, got the bandage and gone on her not so merry way. She blamed the damned heavy cast for throwing her off balance. It had made her feel a little light-headed. It had been dark and the last thing she’d expected was to have a cat in her little porch. That was how she’d ended up in here again. For the second time in the same emergency ward; same flipping cat, only this time when she fell she managed to land against the front door and shattered every last piece of glass in the long thin side panel. Nothing broken, this time, but there was plenty of blood and, Tess knew, you couldn’t be too careful with old glass. She’d called the bugger every name under the sun; if she got her hands on him there was no telling what she might have done to him. In the ambulance, she’d groaned at her own stupidity and the zealous EMT began to check for everything from aneurism to zinc deficiency. She cursed under her breath, she was just a stupid old woman and there was no cure in this hospital for that particular condition.
‘So, you live on your own, Mrs, ah, Miss… Tess?’
‘On my own, of course I…’ then it dawned on her. They were treating her as if she was in shock, a head injury. They would never let her home if they thought she was on her own. It was the New Year, even if she wasn’t inundated with social invitations, she was damned if she was spending it in this place. ‘Of course, I don’t, my… husband will be so worried about me, so will you let me go home now?’ There was never a husband, but there might have been, once, long ago – but then he’d married Nancy and that was that.
‘Ah, Tess.’ A vaguely familiar-looking older man arrived, clipboard in hand. ‘You won’t remember me, Dr Kilker, I treated you last time round.’ He smirked at the hard plaster on her wrist. She disliked him instantly, had a feeling he knew something she didn’t and that just got up her nose. ‘So, you’ve been in the wars again? What was it this time, kissing the ground instead of kicking it?’ He moved closer to her, inspected the wound. He smelled of garlic mixed with a hint of tobacco, and aftershave clinging to survive on a ten-hour hospital shift, it drifted from him being so close.
‘No, for your information, I was the victim of an intruder,’ Tess snapped.
‘Half a dozen stitches should see you straight.’ He raised a sceptical eyebrow.
‘Finally,’ Tess grunted towards the younger doctor.
‘Now, be a good girl and sit still while I put it right.’ Dr Kilker silenced her while he tacked up the wound.
It was infuriating to be spoken to as if she were a child.
‘How did you really manage it, Tess?’ He asked as he stood back to admire his neat stitches.
‘There was a flipping cat in a dark porch; it could happen to the Pope himself.’
‘I suppose it could, but then, he’s not wearing a cast, is he?’ he said lightly. ‘No dizziness or blackouts? Nothing odd or strange going on that we should hear about?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ Tess glared at him. She wasn’t stupid. She knew when to see a doctor. ‘Maybe just a little too much seasonal cheer for my own good.’ She had just had a small nip before she went to lock up the flat for the night.
‘Hmm.’ From the shuffling, it was obvious none of them could visualise a cheerful Tess, seasonal or otherwise. ‘Well, stay away from the brandy bottle until those painkillers wear off.’ He handed her a prescription. ‘I’ll get a few of these to bring home with you, tide you over for a few days, okay?’ He counted out a half dozen small white tablets, placed them in a blue container then squinted while he scribbled some illegible instructions on the label. When he finished, he looked at her oddly over reading glasses that perhaps might be fashionable on someone decades younger.
‘Oh, I won’t need any of those,’ Tess said and then felt the blood rush from her head as she sat forward. ‘On second thoughts.’ She took the pills and folded the prescription into her bag.
‘There’s definitely someone to take care of you?’ Dr Kilker kept his eyes on the notes he was making to her records. ‘You’ll need to rest well for a day or two, let those stitches knit.’
‘Of course I have people to look after me, I’ll be tucked up in bed as soon as I get home and then…’ She left the words hanging. The truth was that some nights, she settled down on the old sofa in her little flat. Somehow, making the effort of getting ready for bed seemed to be beyond her too often lately. It was as though she was giving in that another day was over, same as the last, same as the next, until one day there would be no more.
One of the nurses suggested diplomatically that older women could be even more exhausted while convalescing; Tess just nodded wordlessly at her. Convalescing was for other people, not for Tess.
‘And then, there’s the neighbours,’ she said as if there was a chance she’d let that snooty wagon from upstairs over her threshold even if Amanda did decide to come check that she was still alive.
‘Retired yet?’ He tapped the pen on her file; she presumed he was looking at her age.
‘Not yet, shouldn’t you be thinking about it too?’ she said acerbically. Just because he was a doctor did not mean he could take liberties.
‘Oh, believe me, I think about it all the time.’ He looked around the hectic emergency ward and she caught a weary sound to his words. ‘Can’t come soon enough.’
‘Well for some,’ she said. ‘They’re still putting the finishing touches on my villa in Spain, if you want to know the truth of it,’ she shook her head. ‘Oh, yes, you’d be surprised at how us old girls plan to live it up when we retire, Dr Kilker.’
‘Well, you have to call a halt sometime.’ He smiled wryly, before beckoning to an ambulance driver who was just folding up a wheelchair. ‘Ted, are you heading back across town now?’
‘Yep, no calls, just a nice cup of tea back at the base.’ He smiled sadly. Perhaps, without the action of the job, it would be a long and boring night with far too much tea.
‘Any chance you’d give Tess a lift,’ he looked at her notes again, ‘to Swift Square?’ He raised an eyebrow, as though he was familiar with the place, then smiled sadly when he caught her eye.
‘Sure.’ Ted put out a hand to steady her before she got to her feet.
‘I’m well able to walk, young man.’ Tess saw Dr Kilker smile as she shrugged off the help. The distraction caught her off balance and in what felt like a slow-motion exaggerated dance move she ended up falling clumsily on her bottom.
‘Ah, Tess, I’m afraid you’re staying here for the night.’ The words floated about over her head; she blamed the painkillers this time round.
*
The city bells woke her at midnight. New Year’s Eve. Well, this was a first. She’d never spent it in hospital before. Looking on the bright side, it turned out, she was not alone for the ringing in of the new, even if her company were all old biddies snoring loudly and unaware that they had made it into the next year, albeit, if from the sounds of some of them, it could be their last.
Tess yanked herself up higher in the bed. She looked out across the Dublin rooftops. It was surreal to see the city so quiet, and as if on cue, a loud bang heralded the start of a twenty minute fireworks’ display. She had never watched the festivities before. Usually, Tess made sure she was fast asleep before people could get too nostalgic. Anyway, she was a morning person – liked to get a start at the day.
Now, watching each exploding colour bomb hit the inky sky, she regretted missing them over the years. They really were quite beautiful. Intoxicating.
She heard the thrum of modern loud music and the roars and claps from the city dwellers when the last golden burst faded into the smoky black night. Then, the oddest thing, she started to cry. This was not a raging upset, but more of a slow-releasing sadness at how her life had turned out. She was truly alone – not a friend to call on her over the Christmas holidays. No one missed her for ten whole days. At the various offices around the city, she’d temped in on and off for the last few years, they hadn’t even sent a card or enquired how she was when she returned. Her wages just arrived in her bank account. Ten days she’d not turned up. The agency had just replaced her – and nobody had noticed anything different. She was an old woman now. She was only sixty-six, which was nothing these days. Women her age were winning marathons, running countries, and doing all sorts of marvellous things all over the world. She was younger than Meryl Streep for God’s sake. Tess knew, though, that those women were not like her. They had young hearts, souls that sang with love and joy. It was many years since Tess had known what it was to be moved by passion for something that filled her soul. These last few weeks, she realised that she was, to all extents, invisible – could it be that she had allowed herself to become sidelined in her own life? That seemed neither possible nor practical, and yet, it had become an overwhelming sense within her. No one noticed if she didn’t turn up, apart from the plants that she watered each day, because if she didn’t, she believed no one else would. She temped in offices throughout the heart of the business centre in Dublin. Tidied up the mess left behind by the bright young things that couldn’t quite manage to get their work completed. She found it mind-numbingly dull, of course, but she had shown up and for too many years to count, it was all she had to push her into each new day.
In this moment, Tess, all alone in the world, knew that it had been too long since she had loved. It was two score and more since she felt the kind of joy that she knew with certainty was still outside that window tonight.
What if it wasn’t too late to change things? She considered herself a brave and resilient woman; was she courageous enough to turn things around, if there was time? And how on earth would she go about it? It was time to take a good hard look at her life.
In the near silence of the hospital ward, the only punctuating sounds were easily drowned to quiet when Tess began to sit up and think. This unease, this gulf that had become her whole existence, wasn’t just about taking stock of herself, it was her health, her happiness. Could she honestly move forward if she didn’t first resolve the harm done in the past?
God, Tess shuddered. She couldn’t go back.
There was Nancy, the sister that she’d treasured. Her parents, long dead now, she never really said goodbye. And then, of course, there was Douglas, the man she had so prized, all those years ago. It was a love that cost too much in the end. Should she have let it steal her life away? That thought jolted her now, or was it the sound of some buzzer, muted and unending far off, letting nurses know that they were needed once again? Tess knew, with the certainty of time and sudden blinding clarity, that was what she’d done. She’d allowed life to slip through her fingers, just a little with each passing year, until the gossamers of time had pulled so finally away that it was almost too late to make anything of what was left.
How could someone who started with so much have ended up with so little in life? Tess had an uncomfortable feeling that learning the truth of this might be the only way to make a life that was worth something more than another decade of loneliness.
Tess knew with certainty, in this moment, surrounded by women who were much older than she was, they would give their false teeth to have another ten years before them. She should have that, and surely, if she had, then she just had to try to make things up?