JUDITH
Judith Baxter lay drowsing against her pillows as the sun emerged in a shaft of piercing light from behind a drift of clouds. It shone in through the hospital windows, bathing her in unwelcome brightness. Its intensity woke her, and she sighed deeply.
She was tired and sore, the effect of the painkillers having worn off earlier, and she wasn’t due any more medication for another hour. Judith struggled out of the rumpled iron-framed bed and padded over to the window to pull down the blind. She stared out the window, glad that she had a room with a view. She was several floors up, and the panorama across the suburbs to Howth and the sea was remarkable.
She paused for a moment to study the SeaCat gliding across the glassy sea, many miles away. And it seemed, as it glided along the horizon, to sail into the sky. Usually, this optical illusion fascinated her, but today she had a headache and was restless and agitated. She was itchy all over, and she knew, because the nurses had told her, that she was having morphine withdrawal.
She was hot, bothered and irritable. She did not need a scorching sun mocking her. It was bad enough that her body was crocked, her car was a write-off, and she’d had to endure a week of sharing a ward with other patients, half of them elderly, who snored, groaned and rang their bells for nurses throughout the night so that she’d hardly had a wink of sleep.
‘Stop giving out,’ she muttered as she pulled down the blind with her uninjured hand and grimaced as a pain shot through her neck and shoulders. Her right arm was encased in a plaster cast, her neck in a brace, and her skin itched inside them. But at least she’d finally got a private room, and it was a huge relief to close the door on the madness and noise and controlled chaos of the busy teaching hospital she was in.
It was bliss to be alone and silent. Her previous ward had rarely had moments of silence. Patients came and went. Technicians came to collect blood; there was always some doctor or other trailing a bunch of students, doing rounds. Visitors seemed to come all hours; visiting times were not strictly enforced. Did hospital managements not realize how wearing it was on patients to have people in and out, even during meal times? There were patients who’d been woken at 6 a.m. You could never rest or sleep without some disturbance or other.
Her mother, Lily, had been meticulous about leaving at the designated times, and Judith was very grateful for it. Lily had shown a kindness and thoughtfulness that Judith had never thought her capable of. Her mother’s behaviour was a revelation.
She settled back into bed, trying to regain her previous state of lethargy. Sleep was so precious and gave her such relief from her pain and all her worries. She took the sleeping tablets they offered her each night and would fall asleep relatively quickly, only to wake a couple of hours later twisting and turning, trying to find a comfortable position and longing for her next dose of painkillers.
At least when she was in the coma she hadn’t been in pain, and she’d had no worries. All she could remember of her days then was a fleeting memory of peacefulness.
Sometimes she wished she hadn’t come out of it.
Judith sighed. That was an ungrateful thing to say. Her life had been spared. She could have been killed in the accident that had mangled her car beyond recognition.
Her gaze alighted on the mass bouquet Lily had brought her, and she rummaged under her pillow for the small, round, glass-encased angel that fitted in her palm. Lily had bought it for her and pressed it into her hand, saying earnestly that the angels were minding her. Judith wasn’t sure she believed in God or religion any more and, these days, she certainly didn’t believe in the mercy of God, but the little angel her mother had given her gave her some small comfort.
It was strange, she reflected: the old saying that every cloud has a silver lining was certainly true for her mother. Who would believe that Lily, the nervy, dependent, fearful woman of yore, was now staying in the house on her own, doing her own shopping, hopping on buses to visit Judith in hospital and rediscovering what it was like to live a normal life again? Until the accident, Lily would go nowhere without Judith. She wouldn’t go to mass, she wouldn’t go to the shops, she wouldn’t visit her sister unless Judith drove her. She wouldn’t dream of spending a night alone in the house, petrified she’d be burgled. It had been so binding for Judith. She’d felt like a carer, despite the fact that her mother was perfectly healthy, apart from her ‘nerves’.
If only Lily had found her courage years ago, life would have been so different for her and Judith. Judith tried to swallow the bitterness that engulfed her. It was too late for her now to have a family of her own. And what man would be interested in a fifty-year-old crock? She was stuck on the shelf, still living at home with her elderly mother, with not much to look forward to except trying to take an early retirement from work in ten years’ time.
What had she done in her life that was so awful that she was now being so horribly punished? Judith pondered, taking a sip of lukewarm 7UP. She’d looked after her sick father and, then, when he died, gone back to live with her mother. Surely she deserved some sort of reward from on high and not another massive kick in the solar plexus.
‘Thank God you survived,’ her mother had said fervently several times since she’d come out of the coma.
‘Thank God nothing,’ she’d wanted to retort. ‘Why did He let me crash in the first place?’
She rolled the little angel in her palm. Lily had told her she’d discovered an angel shop in Finglas, just across from her optician’s, when she’d gone to get a new pair of glasses after accidentally standing on her other pair. ‘Oh Judith, it’s a lovely little shop. I’d love you to see it some time,’ she’d enthused as she’d sat beside Judith’s bed, knitting blankets for children in Africa.
Just even listening to her mother it was hard to believe that Lily was the same woman. Imagine her mother getting two buses from Drumcondra, where they lived, to Finglas. Unheard of. Judith studied her mother intently. Her eyes were bright and animated. Her fingers flew over her needles. She was chatting away about her trip to the library, her walk in the park and the queues for the bus going home in the evening. Sometimes Judith wondered if she was in a different universe. And the tenderness of the little kiss on her forehead that Lily now greeted her with was far from anything she’d ever previously experienced in her relationship with her mother. All the years of hostility and sharp exchanges which had been the fabric of their lives seemed to have gently dissolved and wafted into the ether.
Lily never came to visit without some little treat for her. And always the anxious inquiry: ‘Are you feeling any better, Judith? Is the pain still bad? Will I ask the nurses to give you something?’
It was as if she was rediscovering lost mothering skills that had been buried deep for years and years. And, in spite of her pain and her torment, Judith was content to let her mother’s newfound affection and kindness act as a balm to her own deep unhappiness.
She would never have believed that she would look forward to spending time with her own, once-despised mother. Lily was so joyful that she had come out of her coma that Judith had to try hard to pretend that she was glad to be alive.
She made no such effort with her brother, Tom, and sister, Cecily. Had she not recovered, she would have gone to her maker on bad terms with both of them. She’d rowed with Cecily for being late to collect her mother on the day of the crash and rowed with Tom over their mother’s will. He probably wouldn’t have minded if she’d died, she thought sourly. More for him, when Lily passed on.
Cecily, to give her her due, had been weepily apologetic for her tardiness on the day of the crash and was constantly phoning, asking Judith if she needed anything. Judith just wished she’d leave her alone. She didn’t have the energy to deal with her sister’s guilt. They weren’t close and, after all her years of bitterness about being left to look after their mother, Judith didn’t think they ever would be. Still, it had been a comfort of sorts to know that her younger sister was upset at her near demise. She couldn’t say the same about her brother.
Tom had been all brash and hearty, telling her not to be malingering and that some people would do anything to get out of going to work. Lily had flashed him a filthy, needle-sharp look which had amused Judith in spite of her discomfort. ‘Judith was critically ill, Tom. I don’t think you realize how close to death she was,’ she had snapped. ‘Don’t be talking like that.’
‘Ah, just joking, Ma,’ he said gruffly. ‘Get off my back.’
It had been nice, though, having her mother come to her defence. She’d closed her eyes, too tired to pretend to be glad he was there, and it had been a relief when he’d gone. Whatever about having some sort of rapprochement with Cecily, not even a near miss with death would repair her relationship with her only brother, she reflected, with a strange sense of detachment.
She wondered who was running her section at work. She was in charge of a busy wages and salaries department in a big insurance company. It was a demanding job, with no leeway for error. Odd, she felt completely detached about work too. She wondered if Debbie Adams was back from her honeymoon. No doubt she was using her new married name, whatever it was. At least Judith had missed having to view the wedding and honeymoon photos. Photos of the happy couple were the last things she needed to see. What was it about Debbie Adams and her charmed life that made Judith feel an utter failure when she compared it to her own? It was irrational and unreasonable, she knew, but still, she was glad she hadn’t been around for all the wedding talk. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to go back to work. Perhaps she’d end up on disability, she thought idly, as a fly buzzed her. But what would she do with herself? Oh, she’d think about it some other time. She hadn’t the energy for it now. Judith yawned.
The phone by her bed rang. It was Lily.
‘Is there anything you’d like when I come in this afternoon, Judith?’ her mother inquired.
‘No, Ma, not a thing, thanks.’
‘And how are you today? Is the pain any easier?’
‘Yes, Ma, a little,’ she fibbed.
‘That’s good, Judith, that’s very good. I’m praying night and day for you.’ Lily sounded so earnest. And Judith could see her, mother-of-pearl rosary in her hands, sitting in her favourite high-backed chair in her sitting room, praying as the beads slipped through her thin, bony fingers, or with her hairnet on, kneeling beside her bed in her floral winceyette nightdress, face furrowed in deep concentration as she prayed earnestly to the Almighty and the plethora of saints whom Lily had great faith in.
‘Thanks, Ma, I’ll see you later then,’ Judith managed before hanging up.
‘I’m praying night and day for you,’ her mother had said. For some reason, it touched her in some deep, hard, closed-off place in the depths of her.
Two big tears rolled down her cheeks. And then it was a waterfall, as Judith cried her eyes out, wondering what was to become of her.