Waiting Room
‘Are you family?’
‘No.’
That was it, that was all they needed to know to relegate me to the waiting room and its cold plastic comforts for the next few hours. Never mind her family was too busy, too addicted, too abusive to turn up. Never mind that I loved her.
I wrung my hands, again. I clicked my knuckles and stretched my fingers and checked my phone – not that there’s much to do on it at gone 3 o’clock in the morning. What a time to drag me to hospital, huh.
The coffee shop was shut, unsurprisingly, so I got myself a glass of water instead. I savoured it, trying to help the time pass, stopping and swallowing between every sip. I picked the polish off my nails. I paced until the tiredness kicked in. I asked if I could see her every chance I could, but she was in no state to be seen. My heart ached every time I pictured her hooked up to an IV, semi-conscious and alone, so I tried not to think about it.
I wrung my hands again, and I got some more water.
I used the sterile, impersonal hospital bathroom. I checked my phone, more out of habit than anything else. Even the other people that might have cared had gone to sleep.
4.07 a.m.
It takes a certain dedication to know how much over-the-counter cold medication will stop your heart. Trust me, I’ve done the research, and it’s not easy. But for a 49kg girl with 4 pharmacies in walking distance, it was doable. Too doable.
I closed my eyes and could hear my blood moving. It sounded like the ocean, like waves crashing into cliffs with lethal force. It sounded like one step wrong and your life is over. It sounded like a reminder that mine wasn’t; not yet, and I didn’t want to know whose life it would remind me of next, so I opened my eyes. The harsh fluorescent lights cast stiff, sharp shadows on the linoleum, and I wondered if I would see pictures in them if I was less tired.
‘Shit time to be waiting in a hospital, huh.’
I hadn’t noticed the man in the corner. From a glance he looked like the type you don’t want to start a conversation with, tall and dark with fingerless gloves and mildly slurred words, slumped into a chair. His hands were jittery, his jacket worn and stained, his slight beard an unkempt mess. But it was gone 4 a.m., so who gives a fuck?
‘Yeah, it is.’
He chuckled, and I looked at him properly. His eyes were so dark I couldn’t see his irises – or maybe he was so high his pupils had engulfed them.
‘You should go home.’
I shook my head. ‘Can’t, need to know whether my friend is okay.’
‘And you don’t think that answer will be there after a few hours’ sleep?’
He made such a good point I didn’t know how to respond.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Don’t have anywhere else to be.’ He shrugged. I didn’t want to pry, so I didn’t. ‘You know how many people die per day?’
I was a little taken aback, but I decided to answer anyway. ‘Um…a lot?’
He smirked slightly and fiddled with the fingers of his gloves, and I got the feeling he was far better acquainted with death than I would ever be.
‘One hundred and fifty thousand a day, on average.’ He took his time tasting each word, enunciating so clearly I suddenly got the impression that he was stone cold sober. ‘One’s probably gone since I started this sentence.’
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I believe in a God, I think, I believe in Life and Death and their eternal balancing act. I know that things are meaningless if they do not end, and life shouldn’t be meaningless. I know that life comes and goes, babies are born and old people die, and this is immutable. I know that no one and nothing is immortal. I know all this, and I know it doesn’t mean a damn thing when someone you love dies, because it still always feels like you are drowning and there is no lifeline.
‘Their poor family.’
‘Maybe their family is happy. Maybe they were a cunt. Or maybe it ended a good person’s suffering, maybe it was a relief, who knows?’
I didn’t respond, but I thought about how there are people that this world would be better off without, and I thought about how my grandmother was treated like an animal at the end, fed through tubes and wearing a nappy, and I thought he might have a point.
‘Sorry I’m not more talkative, but it is gone 4 a.m. and I’ve got my own shit going on. Nothing personal.’ I didn’t know if I was sorry, really, but it seemed the polite thing to say. The silence stretched for a few moments, long enough that I thought I he might have passed out, and I almost found myself disappointed by that idea. Then his head jerked up and his eyes met mine.
‘Do you think she’ll survive?’
I thought about it. I thought about her tiny, frail body and the number of pills she swallowed and how the first time she tried to kill herself she was 9. I think about her crazy fast metabolism and how quickly they got an ambulance and her resilience and how I cannot lose her, not tonight, not like this. I think about everything I know about her and overdosing and life and death, and I say what I have been scared to realise all evening.
‘Yeah, I think so.’ It seemed too good to be true, so I tried to justify it. ‘They would have told me if she’d gone, right? And she’s been here for hours and no one’s come to tell me anything, so she must be heading towards stable, right? Yeah, I think she’ll survive.’ I said ‘think’ but I meant ‘hope and pray’.
‘She will.’
I stared at him, because he didn’t know that. If he had been a sleep-deprived nurse, or a well-intentioned mother, I would have scoffed. But I wanted to believe him, and maybe want was all I needed that night, because I did. I mumbled something vaguely affirmative, but he seemed to hear me. I wanted to believe I wouldn’t lose her because I didn’t know if I believed I would survive if I did. I didn’t know if I could surface after another set of breaking waves, not after my grandparents, and my brother’s best friend, and my godmum’s parents, my grandad’s best friend, my second cousin in America, and that girl from my school with the brain tumour and-
‘She will,’ he repeated.
I had no reason to believe him. He was some stranger who struck up conversation in public; that alone is enough to have made me wary of him and anything he told me. His eyes were flicking around so quickly, his movements so unnatural and jerky, his entire demeanour so unsettling, I really thought he was probably high. But I was tired. I was sleep-deprived, sure, but I didn’t mean that kind of tired; I was tired of my friends hurting and I was tired of this shitty world and I think I might just have been tired enough to trust a stranger for no reason at all.
‘I hope so.’
‘It’s not her time. You both have a lot of life left to live.’
It was a strange reassurance coming from a stranger, but I accepted it. I was glad he thought I looked young. I was, I was barely in my twenties, but I felt world-weary and I had found another grey hair that morning.
I didn’t mean to let myself hope, but before I knew it I was imagining me and her in 10 years or so, I was imagining coming back here to visit her in the maternity ward instead of Accident and Emergency, and I wondered what this man would say to me if he met me then. I liked the idea that we had life left to live. I wanted us to go on to something amazing, something good at least, to keep going and get better and just fucking live. But she always seemed like she was just biding her time before she tried to kill herself again, and I hated the idea that she was waiting for death, and I knew that I couldn’t keep waiting with her.
Suddenly, as if he’d heard his name called, the stranger stood up, his head slightly cocked. I realised then that he must have been over 6 foot. He seemed skinny; his face was gaunt and his knuckles prominent, but he was in baggy trousers and oversized coat so it was hard to tell.
‘You take care now.’ He tipped his head towards me, as if acknowledging some connection between us, and he sauntered off into the bowels of the hospital, walking just wonky enough to seem high again.
I felt relieved; and I wasn’t sure if it was because I had met him, or because he had left. I brushed it off, and I drank some more water, and I checked my phone. I curled my legs beneath me on the hard plastic. At some point, in the bright white room, on that uncomfortable chair, my eyelids drooped. I remembered the stranger’s words, telling me to go home, to get some sleep, and then I don’t remember anything.
~
When I woke up, I was at home, and the sky was a few shades paler than dawn. I guess I must have gotten a taxi, or a bus, must have opened my door in a half-awake daze, and fallen into bed. I’d managed to strip off and tie up my hair, so that was good. I checked my phone.
She was okay.
She was okay, she was incredibly bored and quite tired, and I had 4 other people asking me about her, but she was okay, and that was enough to make me smile. It was strange, I didn’t feel that relieved. Is it relief if you know it’s coming?
I rolled over, pulled the blankets around me and committed myself to a few more hours in bed. I wasn’t quite awake, I was in that middle ground, that state between dreaming and consciousness where nothing is real and everything is possible. I slept, then, fitfully and in bursts. I dreamt of a hooded dark figure stalking the corridors of a hospital, scythe in hand, I dreamt of waking up next to a heart monitor when you weren’t sure you would wake up at all, I dreamt of Life and Death chasing each other through my old school playground, running in circles. I dreamt of the stranger, standing over me in sixty years, speaking oh so clearly as he took my hand and lead my soul from my body, and the overwhelming calm I felt as I left it behind.
I dreamt, and then I fell into oblivion, and I slept so peacefully I could have been mistaken for a corpse. I would wake, a few hours later, to a bright day full of sunshine and opportunity. To a world where no one I loved was in danger, where meetings with strangers were just anecdotes, where 4.07 a.m. a time I was never meant to see. I would wake to a world where things were slightly better than they had been the night before.
But for now, I slept, and I dreamt, and I was at peace.
