An Interlude

I walked differently then.

The process would begin at the airport. Strides started to lengthen. Often to the great surprise of snoozing thigh muscles. Shoulder blades gingerly reached across to meet. Ribs complained at the prospect of exiting the protective slouch. My ears happily remembered their old intolerances. The evil little conduits. Face muscles held out the longest, wearing overwrought bands of skin and muscle with perverse pride.

The frown lines between my eyebrows were different lengths. Maybe if I frowned more they would even out?

I’d gone from thinking of that part of life as life itself, then a pleasant and melancholic interlude from ‘regular’ life, and then finally as a fleeting memory borrowed from someone I’d once loved deeply and very foolishly.

That person had been very fond of chocolate covered biscuits.

I suddenly wanted nothing more in the entire world.

Why now this rogue desire?

I tucked myself further into the narrow seat. I would become one with the chair. My toes were exploring the gap between the chair’s side and cushion. I had already found three folded candy wrappers, a fragment from a styrofoam cup, and peanut shells in various stages of fragmentation.

Despite my best efforts at pushing myself into the mean little enclosure of the seat, my left foot was poking out insolently from under my shawl. It was slowly going numb with the cold. I scraped the edges of the silicone earplugs in my ears. They felt pliant and strangely organic. The little sections I pulled away from my ears settled back gently. The seal did not give.

I was safe.

But I did not need to listen to know the sounds strutting out there.

There were five other people in the waiting room. Two were the sons of the Lady with Renal Failure. The woman was with the Man With a Stroke. The elderly man had been there with the Man from the Accident. The young man had been there before all of us. He was the only other one still awake. He was standing guard over his charging phone. It was carefully balanced on the banister, plugged into an awkwardly placed socket.

He did not need to guard it. Nobody would try to steal it. Not now.

The rest of them had somehow oriented their sleeping bodies to face the corridor.

My ears projected the very sounds of the sloshing water through my imagination. It turns out that earplugs do not protect you from the sounds coming from inside your head.

I shifted again, trying to shift the landscape of numbness to other parts of my body. I twisted a lock of hair between my fingers.

It was very odd. A three-inch section of one strand of hair was bright red instead of the usual dull black.

This was captivating.

And finally it was time for food. I sat up to introduce my bare feet to the freezing floors. The cold was refreshingly brutal. The tiles were still damp from the ministrations of the cleaning staff earlier.

Water was sloshing gently somewhere beyond the staircase. These earplugs were pointless.

I fished around in the bag for the box of french toast. The crackle of the plastic must have been obscenely loud.

But the others slept on.

The Man with the Phone continued to stare at its blank screen.

I pulled out a slice. It sagged over my fingers.

The slice was diagonally cut. The crust was still on. Lustrous gold with spots of dark caramelisation. There were little drops of condensation studding the surface.

And suddenly I was at the breakfast table, hurrying before the school bus arrived. My younger version demolished the serving of (hot) french toast. My cheeks had bulged out. My parents had been unimpressed.

I used my other hand to pull out the earplugs. They stretched and deformed as they came away. I placed them on the lid of the box housing my food. My ears rang. And then accustomed themselves to the low hum of the ventilation system, and the businesslike set of beeping coming from the mysterious length of the corridor. The water was rising up somewhere in the stairwell. Man with the Phone did not seem to notice.

Channeling my younger self with more care, I folded the entire thing into my mouth. Cold, chewy, and damp. The nostalgia faded with each agonizing bite. I think I’d cracked my lips. It was a punishing meal. To be reminded of a self you recognized and loathed instead of one you admired from afar? Life had many moments of small cruelties.

A nurse came into the waiting room.

“Bed 14a. Attendant needed.” One of the sleeping men jerked awake and followed the nurse. They were swallowed by the corridor.

Everyone else settled back down into a bewildered and hurt waiting. The rising water helpfully provided a somber soundtrack with the ventilation system and the unseen medical equipment.

The Man with the Phone seemed to jerk himself out of his examination of his phone. He clattered his way down the stairwell. I followed his progress until the stairs bent out of the way. He returned momentarily.

“Water’s on the mezzanine now. No tea, I guess.”

The others listened attentively. The woman adjusted her shawl and tucked it under her chin.

This was not news. The elderly man had told us this a few flights of stairs ago.

This was the Time Without Tea.

I put on my shoes. The leather was thin. The cold was seeping up. My oily fingers left smudges on them. I ate some more.

Time went by.

The perverse greasiness of the toast had settled in companionably in my mouth.

The water was closer now. The two men were pacing. The woman had gone back to sleep. The elderly man was praying.

“Attendants please. Time to move the patients.” The nurse had snuck up on them.

It was now almost practiced. One nurse and one attendant to lift the narrow beds down the corridor and up the staircase. I trailed behind with the elderly man and the Man with the Phone. We no longer had patients to attend to.

The stairs were brilliantly clean. I looked down at my distorted reflection. The colours of the shawl and the coat melted together. There was a cup of tea in one hand. Very odd. This absorbed me for a while. My legs dutifully carried me up. The plastic bag bounced again my leg.

Where had the tea come from. I attended to the small styrofoam cup. The tea was delicious. It can’t have been from the hospital cafe.

I looked at the elderly man. He was staring at his feet. He climbed slowly. Nobody seemed to care about my tea. The group in the front was busy with carrying the patients. The group at the back had nothing to attend to any more.

The tea helped dislodge the memory of the toast.

We came upon a member of the cleaning staff. He was washing the stairs. The group squeezed by him on the landing. I paused to watch the soapy water slide off the steps. The rising water must be getting soapy. I tried to step in the relatively dry swatches left by his rubber floor wiper.

My shoes left watery, muddy prints.

Somewhere back where we’d come from, the water rose up and gladly established dominion over the floor.

The staff member pointed to my cup and his little garbage bag clipped to the mop water. Dutifully I tossed it in.

That had been an excellent cup of tea.

Styrofoam will Destroy the World.

The young men were straining ahead. They were carrying the Lady with Renal Failure. She could see the top of her head. The hair was in disarray. Nobody minded.

They approached the landing. Another waiting room.

The patients were hustled into care units and arranged neatly into rows again. Equipment was plugged in. The nurses jotted down notes and caught up with the other staff. The attendants settled into the waiting room chairs.

I pulled my feet and felt around the seat cushion. This one had crumpled knobs of tissue paper. Best not to dwell.

I looked through my bag again. Maybe there would be the chocolate biscuits I had forgotten five years ago. A box of cold egg sandwiches.

I wrinkled my face at them. I don’t think my mismatched frown lines got the message.

The Man with the Phone did not plug in his. His head was thrown back with the phone tilting out of his breast pocket. He had been trying to make a call on the way up. It had not worked. He had not Learned.

I rummaged through the bag again and came upon a card. The hospital had a strict policy on bouquets. In that none were allowed past the gate. This was a homemade card. It was shedding glitter and glue flakes. It smelt of a late afternoon primary school art class.

“Dear Sarim, Get well early. You have to teach me badminton in the holidays. Many love, Shireen.”

The words had started out flamboyant on the top and ended up cramped as the writer encountered the limitations of the pink card.

The card shed more clumps of glitter on its way back into the bag.

Again, silence. This silence tasted different. It was not the delicious experience to be felt out carefully and savoured in complete fullness. It was not the fidgeting silence of anticipation and waiting. This was the silence of huddled resignation. A silence buttressed by a determined ventilation system, medical equipment that knew nothing except for its tasks, and the relentless water settling into its new home.

My body was trying to tell me about its various complaints. My feet were almost painfully swollen now. My teeth had a thin gravelly coating of unclean. Back pain was a dull roar in the front of my mind.

Something was stirring and readying itself for a big reveal.

How very celebrity of it.

My foot was numb again. I stretched out my legs and stared at the pattern from my shoe’s lining stamped into my feet.

“Attendant Bed 11. Assist in moving.” This time the nurse waited until the two men joined him.

Assist in moving.

The Lady with Renal Failure was dead. The others waited.

The two attendants returned with a body wrapped in a sheet between them. It seemed they’d weighed her down with something. Maybe hospital equipment. They were trailing cables.

They went down the stairs. And stopped as the water started sloshing over their feet. The one who’d entered the water first, started to gingerly feel his way down. The other one followed his lead. The sheet-wrapped unperson was already getting soaked by the enthusiastically rising water. The men disappeared from view as they turned the corner.

The elderly man shuddered and cradled his head in his heads. The Man with the Phone was pleating the edges of his shirt into a neat fan. The woman had folded her shawl away and was adjusting her jewelry.

The men came back. The water tried to chase them up.

They sat back in their seats. Water started pooling at their feet. I tried to read their faces. It was a familiar look. Everyone here had it. Except the woman. And except for myself. But for entirely different reasons.

We waited. It was a companionable silence I like to think.

I handed out the egg sandwiches. I tried to think of it as a grand gesture. The thought was fragile. Best not to challenge it.

I sat back down with my wine glass. I blinked at it. This was interesting. It was out of the memory of That Other One. A cherished but chipped glass owned by a dear friend. It had been a celebration I think. A new relationship? An achievement? I could not remember. These memories were protecting themselves from me.

I sniffed it carefully. A dry acidity. My eyes caught a chip. Light from the waiting room’s bulbs arced off it. The glass caught against my ring. The resulting clink seemed to come from far away. Maybe it was muffled by the water. I raised the glass to my mouth.

“Attendants please. Time to move the patients.”

I looked up to watch the woman follow the nurse into the corridor. We all rose. We all followed the procession.

I was careful not to spill the wine. The stairs were brilliantly clean.

Our procession was quiet except for the straining sounds of the woman and the nurse. We were slow. Weighed down. Not with grief. Not anymore. Even the sons of recently departed Lady seemed focused on something else. Did they also sense Big Reveal?

I tried to drink the wine. But it had been replaced.

A small glass travel mug with a cork holder. The logo had been worn off in countless washes. It smelled vaguely of coffee and tea spices.

But there was nothing in it.

The lights on this next level were flickering. The patient was carefully put away. We sat down.

The water was industriously following us up. It finally had us. This had been the Final Climb.

Something clinked in my rediscovered travel mug.

The foil covered chocolate coins and dried date pits were a reminder of an old workspace and its hidden secret treasures. What was under the coins?

I think I may have cried out. The water was roaring in my ears. My sensory barriers were collapsing.

There it was. A single chocolate covered biscuit in cling wrap. ‘ONLY FOR WEDNESDAY WORK SLUMPS’.

The water was rushing now. The woman moaned. My feet were wet and cold now.

The mug fell off my lap and disappeared before it crashed into the foamy water.

It had shattered ten years ago in a rather reckless road crossing. Nervous laughter echoed in my mind.

I struggled with the cling wrap. The sound was everywhere!

Please, please, please.

The water was an excitable whirlpool. The woman had bent over her knees. Her clothes were billowing over the water. The Man with the Phone was standing on his chair raising his phone to the vents, searching for a signal that was no longer there. The two sons were embracing. The water was nearly up to their heads. I couldn’t see the elderly man anymore.

My hands were raised above the water. The biscuit eclipsed a blinking lightbulb. 

The Big Reveal was just the end of the stairwell. An architectural necessity. A full-stop to a design journey. Closing the book. Tilting the soup bowl. A minor celebrity. But the last one.

The water covered my face.

In the end, let us imagine.

Maybe there was the promise of silky lusciousness surrendering to the heat of my fingers.