It was quiet in the cardiac ward of the big Sydney hospital, only the whisper of the ceiling fans breaking the silence. Wrapped in our own private miseries, my two fellow patients and I had nothing to say to one another, and a gloomy wordless pessimism prevailed.
Towards a midnight on the last day of the week, nurses wheeled in the fourth patient to join us. Eyes peered sleepily out of our cots to see the newcomer, but in the dimly lit ward we could see nothing and realized we would have to wait until morning. Even then, with the screens placed round the bed, we were none the wiser, although we could hear the patient’s voice, curious deep tones, more like a man’s than a woman’s.
By midday, though, our curiosity was satisfied; at last we got to know Alice.
At first, I thought she must be an aboriginal Australian, so nut-brown was she, but the deep tones of her skin proved to be years of cooking under the bright Australian sun, living and striving in the outback. Alice called herself “ one of the original bushwhackers,” and if clearing a patch and building your own home out of gum trees with your own hands where there were no roads, no shops, no telephones, and no neighbours, then Alice was certainly qualified to be so named.
But I am anticipating. The first we heard from Alice was when her deep voice boomed over the ward.
“You think you’re sick? Well, I’ve got more complaints and you’ve ever heard of!” (She hadn't – it was just her way of getting the talk going.)
Indignation made our voices shrill. What did this impudent newcomer know about us, the pain we were suffering, the black misery of sleepless nights, the trials and tribulations of the bed-pan routine, our pills and injections?
We all began to talk vociferously but Alice’s masculine boom quieted us.
“Been in here a week already? When you going to start getting well?” yelled Alice, a little brown eyes fierce, her hair sticking up all over the place.
Alice goaded us into conversation and we soon found out about one another. I, newly arrived from England, numbed by bereavement, but happy to be with my son and his family, had suffered a heart attack, resulting in my ending up as a patient in this huge hospital.
Olga, on my left, was an entirely different case. Poor girl, she had almost English at all, and was silent because she had to be, as none of us in the ward knew any Polish. We learned that she had been injured crossing a busy road, and so badly hurt that she was unable to turn over in her bed, a movement which would have interfered with the correct knitting of her bones.
During the Second World War, Olga had fled from her native Poland into Russia, taking with her twin babies of two years. In Russia she had been safe, but the very severe and unaccustomed cold had given her permanent pain in all the joints of her body. This chronic arthritis was rendered twice as painful by not being able to move hand or foot. Painkilling drugs helped her, but lack of sleep was a constant torture.
Liz, opposite me, on the other hand, as she informed me “just wore out.” Losing her mother when she was but fourteen was only the start of her troubles. With seven younger brothers and sisters to look after, Liz had no time for self-education, except for a little scrappy you reading and writing and, with a drunken father, had past her teen years in fear and frustration.
Later, her father had married again, and Liz, then nineteen, also married, only to find herself this time, burdened with a drunken husband. She had had seven children by that unfortunate marriage and, her alcoholic husband having been killed in a brawl, she was left with all seven to bring up alone. It was easy to see why she was “wore out.” At present she was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and had had a massive heart attack.
Alice was particularly kind to Liz. Both Olga and I were comfortably off and would eventually get better, reckoned Alice, but no amount of medication would give Liz her health back, or the youth and enjoyment she had never had. Poor Liz! Even to get out and sit in a chair, she had to be lifted by her two nurses, her various diseases having left her limbs so frail and shaky.
But Olga and me she joshed unmercifully. “Time you lazy pair got up and helped with the meals.”
Before long, Alice had asked for a rented to television to be brought into the ward. “To watch the cricket,” she explained. What she was really watching was the tall, handsome young batsman – her grandson, Gary.
Alice had a vast number of good-looking grandsons. Gary was a favourite, He had been disabled by polio when he was twelve, but, now recovered, was the captain of the team.
All the other boys had names like Scott, Brent, Dirk, or Cliff, and there will always at least two of them at the bedside. They brought presents of chocolate, scent, and silk underwear for the adored Granny – I don’t know how old they thought she was – somewhere in their own age group, I imagine, for the scent had names like “Je t’aime” and “Tender Touch”. In fact, there was so much competition with the scent bottles that, after the boys left, she handed us one each begging us to keep them out of sight.
Alice was the world’s best tonic. One day I remarked how especially good the food was getting. Alice laughed. “You’re getting your appetite back,” she said and, suddenly, after weeks of despair I realized that I really was getting better.
Olga, too, had at last been able to move and had achieved a good night’s sleep. She slept around the clock and awoke bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, a new woman.
And what of Alice herself? She had always appeared so confident, so ebullient, that we had almost forgotten she was an invalid too. Quietly, she had been recovering from a serious coronary, her condition concealed by her sunny temper and unconquerable optimism. Dear Alice
The day came when I was to be discharged. Saying goodbye to Liz, I was thankful to hear that she was not to be sent home straightaway, but was to go into a convalescent home for a while. With only an unmarried son at home to look after her, home care was not practicable. Perhaps she was going to get some rest at last. The line
Olga, too, was mending rapidly. She kissed me and said goodbye in Polish – at least, I think it was, and I said goodbye in English, wondering if I would ever see her again.
Alice, who was feeling particularly happy that morning because one of her grandsons had passed his examinations in bottle-opening or something similar, pressed a spare box of chocolates into my hand. “The young rascals think I have a cast iron gullet,” she said with tender pride.
I hugged her warmly as I said goodbye to such a lot of laughter and friendship and love.
Post new comment