Time to Go
5.03AM: Our Health starts to go at late middle age. Doctors hazard a guess at what’s wrong in the grey haze under the skin, but at some point they stop bothering. Whatever is slowing us down is left alone; the broken cogs don’t need fixing. That’s when I came here with the others. We know where we are, apart from Betty. She doesn’t say much — she sounds like a scratched record, stuck on the edge of words she can’t get hold of. But she sleeps upright, handbag tucked under the sheets, ready to leave at any moment.
9:07AM: ‘I’ll take this for you, Betty. Now, that’s better — No, let go of the straps for me!’ says Sally, a loud-mouth. Betty sinks into her chair, cushioned in its arms, holding her property as if her nurse were a bag-snatcher. ‘Listen,’ says Sally, ‘you’re not going anywhere with this bag, are you, lovely?’ her voice lifting with the corners of her mouth. ‘I don’t know why her valuables aren’t locked up,’ she mutters, making air quotes when we all know the state of the handbag. She is new, doesn’t know the rules, and she is set straight by Zoe-at-the-desk, who puts down her phone: nurses are not allowed to touch personal belongings. Susan — who couldn’t abide clutter — left to pursue other interests, after Poor Arthur’s box of dominoes was found sellotaped in the back of a cupboard.
When Betty has a wash or disappears on her excursions down the Amalfi-scented corridors, her handbag goes too. By now it’s as unhygienic as the rest of us. It is like a child’s favourite plaything: a stinky stuffed animal, but rather less cuddly. Its tan eel-skin is faded, scuffed grey in the corners, and its creaky silver frame is tinged with rust. As she shuffles, its insides rattle.
12:36PM: After lunch’s slop is scraped into a bucket and my eyes start to close, a hum of high-pitched chatter alerts me to visitors. The local Cub Scouts have written homemade cards for us, earning Brownie points from the nurses, who pat their angelic heads. When Betty is given her card, she lets it fall flat, rather than putting it in her handbag like she should, and the confused child backs away. I sip my tea — cold, with glitter in it, which has shed all over the place like pine needles. Sally takes the cup away, wipes the handbag with disinfectant while Betty’s head droops, dashes a marker through the midday checklist and shuts the door.
5:58PM: I wake to find out that Betty has gone and her handbag lies open-mouthed on the bed. Wherever she is now, she doesn’t need it anymore. But she did leave a letter — she ‘tidied up’ the dominoes and was ‘gratefully borrowing’ our petty cash this entire time. They would find her on the circular bus route. She’d got her hands on the Freedom Pass we turned in, and would be spending the money on gin and oysters, beer and fast food, until they caught up with her.
…there is a dull ache in the crook of my back and a corner digs into me. I grasp for this thing I’ve been sleeping on. Its skin is clammy, with dry patches and rasping hinges that close with a nice click. Probably I put it here, like one of my cats who used to hide all sorts of trinkets. So I’ll keep it under the sheets until I remember. A feral scent catches in my breath and I doze again. I dream of the rush hour and my arteries flow like highways for the rest of the night.
Caroline Prosser writes from London where she works as a teacher and freelance editor.