Authors: Michael J. Malone
The muscles of my face are pulling my lips into an upside down u-shape and my eyes are stinging with emotion. It’s like I’m post-natal or something, I keep wanting to cry.
Maggie’s on her way back to the table with a well-laden tray, better get my act together or it’ll start her off. I straighten my back, cough twice, blink harshly and allow a smile to replace the emotion.
‘What?’ Maggie asks as she sits down. ‘You look like you’ve got something stuck up your arse.’
I laugh too loudly. Isn’t it amazing how close laughter and tears are? If they were colours they’d share a spectrum.
While I move the food and drinks from the tray to the table Maggie asks, ‘So, what now?’
‘Food,’ I answer through a mouthful of moist, cinnamon flavoured sponge. Swallow. ‘Lots of food.’
Michael J Malone's next book from Five Leaves
The nurse smoothed the sheet over the form on the bed. The quilt cover was bleached of colour and crisply laundered in that way only hospitals manage. The patient’s face and hands were also slight of colour having had no sun for some time. As the nurse worked she moved her hands more firmly whenever they touched the patient, testing for a response. But none came. None had for the last six weeks.
She ran the back of her fingers down the patient’s cheek. So soft. And not a bruise in sight. What an amazing thing the human body was. This woman had suffered so much damage. Then a long sleep while the body set about healing itself. A host of tiny cells obeying the instructions from a brain at sleep.
The nurse had plenty of other patients; lots of other people demanded her time, but this woman asked nothing of her, only that the various bags, tucked out of sight, were emptied or filled. So she made it her special duty to do what she could to make this young woman comfortable.
‘There, there,’ said the nurse. ‘Aren’t you beautiful?’ Okay, the blonde hair was a tad lifeless and could do with a wash, but the rest of her was so darling, as her favourite actresses used to say. She glided her index finger down the ridge of the woman’s nose. It was just the right size for her face; the shell of the nostrils, the line straight and smooth up to the point between finely arched eyebrows. Long, dark lashes rested on her cheek, almost reaching the swell and curve of cheekbones a model would die for.
Lightly, carefully, the nurse caught one eyelid between thumb and forefinger and pulled the eye open. The pupil was a spot of darkness surrounded by an iris that radiated from it in a dazzling blue. Might have known, she sighed. All this and blue eyes too. Lucky bitch. She relaxed her fingers and allowed the slender layer of skin to fall back into place.
It was all so romantic and tragic, like something from a black and white movie. The beauty asleep on the bed for months. Her only visitor a mysterious, handsome man.
Well not so mysterious really, he was her husband. And not so handsome either. Too skinny. Needed a good feed. There was an element of mystery, however as on one visit the nurse noticed a certain finger on a certain hand was missing a certain ring. Then when she looked again a couple of minutes later it was back in place, a band of gold snug in its groove of flesh like it had never been missing.
Every day the man turned up to sit on the edge of his chair holding his wife’s hand. He stared at her face for the whole hour, silent, as if the energy used in speech would detract from the force he was pouring into the slumbering woman with his eyes.
The nurse sighed and smoothed the corner of the quilt. If only she could attract such devotion. When she first thought of the couple she was reminded of her parents and how they had been lost in each other. Then the incident with the wedding ring had frozen this illusion. In any case no-one could love their partner the way her parents had loved each other. Even a small daughter could not impinge on the attention they paid each other.
Her earliest memories were of the floor in the living room being cleared each night after dinner, the scratch and crackle of the stylus before music filled the vacant space and her parents swirled around the room, bodies tight against each other.
She tried to join in, pushing a small hand between their waists. At first her father would gently chide her, throw her in the air and laughing place her on the settee. Then he became more insistent until his laughter changed to shouts. She left the room then in a loud huff to see if they would notice she was gone. They never did.
So she put on her pyjamas, brushed her teeth and put herself to bed like a good little girl. In the dark of her bedroom she listened to the music drifting upstairs and imagined the dance and the spinning shapes her parents made as they moved with grace and art around the room below.
The nurse gently pulled a strand of hair away from the patient’s face. In another life, they might have been friends. Gone for a coffee and cake, with bags of shopping decorating the space around their feet. They would have talked for hours, about everything and nothing. They would have shared the same love of old Hollywood movies. They would have known what the other meant with a simple look, ending each other’s sentences and smiling at the same instant at the same joke.
The husband clearly didn’t deserve her. Regret for mistakes made was loud in the shape of his hunched back as he sat by her side day on day. And what was he doing placing the ring on his finger after he arrived at her bedside? Who would benefit from that little display? That pale band of skin where the ring should have nestled was a sign of one thing only.
That was one thing her father would never have done: been uncaring of his wife’s feelings. Behaving in this manner to his daughter was another thing entirely. A picture of her father bloomed in her mind. His cropped, grey hair and slim dancer’s build. Another picture replaced this, both her parents running down the path of their house towards the car. They turned and waved to her before opening the gate. She kept waving until they were driving down the street. A small act of devotion that her parents missed every time they went off for a weekend’s dancing competition.
Mrs Peele, her babysitter, would pull her back from the window, throw her in front of the TV and switch it on.
‘Not a sound out of you, you little bitch. I’ve got Mr Peele’s dinner to make and I don’t want to be disturbed.’
And there the little girl would sit between meals and bedtimes, terrified to make a sound but eager for the distraction the world of Hollywood could provide. She wasn’t good with the names of the movies, but she would always remember a face, a hairstyle or a dress. She studied the way a manicured hand would hold a cigarette, the way a thought could be implied by the simple act of lifting an eyebrow and the way those strong women held power over the people in their lives.
What power those women held, she thought as she again brought her fingers down the ridge of her patient’s nose. She placed her thumb on one nostril and pressing against it closed off one air-line. With her index finger she touched the other side of the nose. Power was a simple thing. Either you take it or you don’t. Either you grab the power or they run over you. She squeezed and brought both fingers tight together.
How long would it take, she wondered.
The patient’s eyelids fluttered. Her chest rose.
For then the tragedy would be complete. The errant husband would be hunched over a grave instead of a hospital bed. The world would sympathise with him. His pain would cause others to shed more than a few tears. The music would build to a crescendo and then the camera would pan out, letting the audience see the vastness of the sky behind him.
The skill with power, the nurse thought, was knowing when to use it. She relaxed her fingers, turned with a squeak of her rubber soled shoes and left the room.
As the sound of her passage faded, it was replaced with loud and panicked breathing. And the rustle of linen as the patient sat up in her bed.
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As a blogger and reviewer, Michael J. Malone has long demonstrated a passion for crime fiction. Blood Tears was awarded The Pitlochry Prize from the Scottish Association of Writers and his poems have been broadcast on radio and published to high acclaim in magazines and anthologies. Based in Ayr in the south of Scotland, he is currently employed in the publishing industry.