Janet has been awake now for a week. So Sergi says although with all that white kit on she can’t really see him never mind make out what he’s saying. He reminds her of astronauts. She could have been an astronaut. Imagine that, being fired into space with a rocket under your seat. Little earth all green and blue and spinning, spinning. Imagine being weightless, throwing your lunch to your colleague, playing a guitar upside down. How does sound work in space?
‘You’ve had a tough time, Miss Waters,’ he says as he rubs Vaseline across her lips with a small sponge on the end of a stick. ‘We’re all so proud of you.’
Janet lies back on the hard mattress and the hard pillows and lets him get on with it. Everything is too white and too stiff. Someone has pulled blue curtains around her bed and she doesn’t understand whether she is alone or whether there are others. There are too many tubes in too many orifices and her bladder feels strange. Full and empty at the same time. She’d love to sit on a toilet. Sergi smells of bleach and antiseptic. Sergi tells her his name every time he approaches her. It’s Sergi, Miss Waters. Here to give you a wash. It’s Sergi, Miss Waters, just checking your catheter. It’s Sergi Miss Waters, the doctors want a word.
Nearly a year, she hears him whisper to someone. No one thought she’d make it. Strong as an ox, someone else says and he whispers shush, shush, she can hear you know, don’t go round calling my patients oxen it’s not kind. A year of what? She can’t work it out. Who are these people in their cosmonaut suits and their visors and gloves and their tired eyes and their flitting from one thing to another and all that beeping and clicking and all those tubes?
A head pokes through the blue curtains. Hi, Miss Waters, it says behind its visor and mask. I’ve got the menu for tomorrow here. Doctors say you can have something soft. I’ll leave it with Sergi and he can fill it out for you.
Something soft? Janet isn’t hungry. She shuts her eyes. She hears Sergi pull the curtains back. Light lands on her face. It’s warm the sun. Warm and bright. She turns her hands over and lets the sun alight on her palms. She curls her fingers, catching the light, holding onto it.
‘I’m afraid you aren’t allowed visitors, Miss Waters,’ Sergi says, ‘but we could set up a phone call. Is there someone you’d like to speak to? A friend?’
Janet struggles with the thought. A friend? Does she even have any friends? There was a friend. But he left. Or he disappeared. Or someone took him. She’d been searching for him. That’s right. He’d been important. More important than anything. She’d been looking everywhere. Even in the sky. With the cosmonauts. With Laika. Laika sniffing through the stars looking for her friend. Barking and running and barking again at the endless iridescent trails.
She opens her eyes. Sergi, she says. The ferret. Who is looking after the ferret?
to be continued
SANDERLINGS 