Huts38

The lull of the week, couch sitting, was just a simple gradient, a stepping-stone, to the weekend crash. There was no special planning; just arrive early at the Horse and Barge and play last man standing, at the end of time, when the pub refuses to take legal tender, even when everybody knows the clock's fast and another pint never hurt anyone.

I’d taken a strange dislike to Barry Ferguson, but never managed to tell him. Even when he bought me the first pint and himself a half of whisky, he never guessed. There was no point in saying anything.

Sometimes things are so much the same; another day falls on another and sticks like a game of Snap. Terry Davenport, fresh from nights, had two denim shirt pockets, two back pockets on his denims and two pockets at the side of his denims. As always, he seemed to be struck down by daylight and used a process of elimination. Ailsa ward keys. Not in that pocket. Not in that pocket. Not in that pocket. Finally, he would find them in the pocket we both knew they were in. But he’d squinted at me, through the meshed glass of the ward, as if he had achieved something. My head was down before he had even opened the door. Maybe it would have been better if the whole of Glendevon Hospital and Ailsa ward were so easily displaced.

Jenny, the other night-shift worker was in the office with Wullie the Pole. Jenny sly smile, like petals, opened bit by bit, until her gummy teeth showed. Maybe it was because she was visibly pregnant, like a hairbrush with a hard orange size 14 Mitre ball poking up like a pelt through her flowery maternal blouse. But there’d be no smiles when Terry’s wife found it. It would be Jenny that got burst.

Wullie the Pole wasn’t so garrulous.

‘Meds,’ Wullie the Pole said, sitting in his office chair looking up at me and away, as if the job was already done. And then as if it was an afterthought, ‘your student supervisor is going to be here later.’ And as a warning, in a lower tone, like a growl, with all the consonants pushed harshly together, as if I could do anything about it. ‘Make sure he doesn’t stay too long.’

There was nothing else to be done. Maybe some kind of girly fainting fit, with more sick time off, was a possibility, as Terry let me into the Med room. But he’d already set the trolley up. It was just a matter of wheeling it into the day room and standing like a Lollipop man giving out sweets and drinks.

Michael, Wullie the Pole’s, batman, and unpaid skivvy, shook my hand and slapped me on the back warmly, as if I’d been away for a Second World War pilot returned from a successful mission.

Pea Head gave me a big cuddle and I felt guilty of some unnamed sin. I hadn’t even thought about her. Not once.

CAIRNEY. A. The med charts for Archie Cairney’s chart had been annotated, that morning, by Wullie the Pole’s initials. And it was simply for a mild tranquilliser. He’d left for work earlier than a sane man should, but there was nothing I could do about that. But I was glad, and not glad, at the same time. I didn’t want to see him. But it didn’t seem right that he was back out prowling around.

Norean Kilean’s cardboard record of her meds was still in pristine condition, but the paper would fade and the colours bruise, one into the other, before it was ripped, discarded, with so many others.

Terry held up his hand and smiled at me on the way out of the ward. Jenny waved too, but it was more a reaction to Terry doing something that she just had to mimic, so that they’d be the same. Michel let them out. But James Munn slithered in the outgoing door, like a weasel in a sack with a hole in it.

James Munn marched across to the Med trolley, where I was stationed like an officer in the Coldstream guard.

‘You shouldn’t be giving out any medication. And you certainly should not be doing it unsupervised,’ said James Munn, immediately, assessing the situation.

‘I’m not,’ I said breathlessly, as if I was swallowing lumps of coal, ‘Terry Davenport was, but he’s just left. I’m keeping an eye on the trolley just now’.

James Munn looked at me unconvinced. Pauline Moriarity, who had the features, if not the disability of a Down’s patient, came up to the trolley with her thick tongue poking out, which added little veracity to my words, or judgement.

Wullie the Pole ambled out of his office and over to the Meds trolley to finally relieve me.

‘Finished,’ he said, ignoring the presence of James Munn? ‘Take the trolley back to the Meds cupboard, lock the door and come into the office.’ Wullie the Pole handed me the keys. ‘We’ve got your future to discuss,’ he added wearily.

Michel pushed past me at the office door. He had already set out a packet of biscuits scattered on the plate, like different face cards, to choose from and a cup of tea for Wullie the Pole, and coffee, for James Munn. There was no cup or saucer for me, and little more space than would fit a rake into, on the hard plastic chair beside the office radiator, which emitted the illusion of heat.

Wullie the Pole munched on a Digestive biscuit and looked on as James Munn played the ascetic with his fingers folded in front of him as if in prayer.

‘How are you now?’ said James Munn, picking up a Jaffa Cake and carefully breaking it in two, as if he was going to share it with some else, other than himself.

That question could have taken a lifetime to answer. But there was really only one format that fitted. ‘Fine,’ I said, as brightly as I could.

I snatched at the answer, perhaps too quickly, for his next question was already framed and bounced back at me.

‘And how did you get your black eye? Or should I say, eyes?’ said James Munn trying to get the balance right between precision and my melted down face.

Wullie the Pole guffawed at that. He already knew, of course, as he knew all things to do with the hospital and village. Barry Ferguson had punched me for calling his a pervert. And Bundy Macintosh had bundled into Barry, in my defence, like a pit bull, finally, let off the leash. The Wurlitzer jukebox took a bashing and half’s had been lifted off tables and been flung back quicker than Jackie Stewart, the grand Prix champion, in case they got knocked over with the tables and chairs. I’d bruised knuckles and been bundled and barred from the only pub I knew, and told not to come back, even before I was old enough to drink in it. Such goings on travelled like an express train all the way to Glasgow.

But I looked desperately around the room for an answer that would fit James Munn’s world, and finally, croaked out, ‘I fell…against…a bannister.’

Wullie the Pole nodded, his face creased into something like a grin, as if such things happen all the time.

James Munn ignored my answer and quickly moved on. ‘I understand that you have requested a transfer to another ward, to continue your training. Is that right?’ He had a bit of paper, which found its way into his hand, from his leather brief case, that seemed to confirm this.

‘No,’ I simply said, taking a short cut through the truth. Norean Kilean has gone. And I no longer wanted to move.

James Munn looked over at Wullie the Pole for verification, but he looked straight back, in an unflinching glare, which showed all the niceties of tea and biscuits as mere camouflage.

‘No matter,’ said James Munn looking from me to Wullie the Pole and back, and carefully returning the signed sheet to his briefcase, ‘all future training of student nursing staff will take place in the community’.

‘What community is that,’ Wullie the Pole, finally said, after a long pause?

‘Our Community, where we live and work and play,’ said James Munn, as if he was reading from some kind of sheet.

Wullie the Pole, seemed to stretch out in his chair. Whilst considering this he looked out the office window at some of the patients he cared for. The weight of his answer seemed to come from some part of this vision, but it was only one word.

‘Shite,’ said Wullie the Pole, in an accent any Scot would have been proud of.

‘Shite, or not,’ said James Munn, carefully picking away at such crudity, ‘as well as being student supervisor my job mandate is also to halve the number of patients at this hospital and move them on to their own homes.’

Wullie the Pole momentarily looked shocked, but like a shadow moving over his face, he recovered quickly enough. ‘Where are you going to get the money for such a thing,’ he asked?

‘Some of the money will come from the Government, some from the local authority and some from Glendevon Hospital,’ said James Munn the pseudo economist confidently.

‘And how will you choose to kill some patients and not others?’ said Wullie the Pole, settling into his chair, as if he had considered such matters before.

‘Kill, oh, you mean cull,’ said James Munn delighting in his own cleverness. ‘We won’t cull anyone. We will simply move them on to a place where they should already be, as part of the community.’

‘Ok,’ said Wullie the Pole, ‘you halve the numbers in this hospital. You take 500 patients. You need to build 500 homes. Where-in the community- are you going to put them?’

‘That’s still to be resolved,’ said James Munn expertly, slipping the question.

‘Ok,’ said Wullie the Pole, backtracking, ‘when I started here, one staff member took care of about 50 or 60 patients. 500 houses, two staff for every patient, which will need covered for 24 hours a day. That’s 1500 staff not counting, those involved in the paperwork. Add another 500 to that. That’s 2000 staff. Who’ll pay for all that?’

‘Oh, no!’ said James Munn shocked that anyone could think such a thing. ‘The patients that leave hospital will be able to take care of themselves. They’ll be able to get jobs and pay their way.’

‘Jesus,’ said Wullie the Pole, shaking his head, but not giving in. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘who would you employ? That half wit there?’ Wullie the Pole pointed at me. ‘Or that fine specimen over there?’ Wullie the Pole pointed through the window to Pauline Moriarity who was grinning through the glass at us as if we were prized exhibits in her personal zoo.

‘I don’t think YOU’LL need to worry about that,’ said James Munn rising to leave.

Wullie the Pole nodded at me to go and let him out.

I caught James Munn up at the ward door. His smile was once more glued to his face. ‘What did you think of all that?' he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, jangling my keys in a way that encouraged him to move aside, so that I could let him out, ‘it just doesn’t seem to make any sense’.

‘Which part,’ said James Munn?

‘Any of it,’ I blurted out.

‘Em,’ said James Munn, finally moving aside, so that I could let him out, ‘I think you’ve been here too long’.