"Outside Of Heaven"

The wind had been rising all afternoon, worrying at the hospital windows, rattling the loose panes in the stairwells. By the time Ron came off shift, it was driving sheets of cold drizzle along Oldchurch Road.

He paused under the awning over the exit doors to fasten the belt on his gabardine coat. From behind him, he could still hear the wireless playing in the porter’s lodge: Eddie Fisher again, the same song that had been following him all week:

“I’m standing outside of heaven…”

It had pursued him from the staff canteen to the ward dayroom. Someone had even whistled it while wheeling a trolley down to X‑ray. It clung to him like the damp.

He hunched his shoulders against the wind and hurried towards the hospital gates. His coat soon became saturated, the turn-ups of his uniform trousers waterlogged. For a moment’s respite, he ducked inside the public telephone box just outside the entrance.

The streetlights shone weakly, their blurred halos catching the rain in sharp lines. Rush hour traffic hissed past on the slick tarmac. The air was washed clean of coal smoke and smelled sharp and metallic.

Within the telephone box, he caught the fug of damp wool from his coat, plus the faint aroma of disinfectant rising from his hands, which never seemed to scrub off.

A figure approached through the rain, their steps quick and purposeful: Mary from the laundry, headscarf pulled tight, coat buttoned to the chin, leather Oxford shoes shiny and wet. She nearly walked past him until she glanced up and recognised his face.

 “Oh... Ron. Didn’t see you lurking there.”

“No one can see anything in this,” he said. “You off now?”

“Yeah. They let us go ten minutes early. Said the buses’ll be all over the place.” She squinted past him at the road. “Feels like it’s coming down sideways.”

“Weather’s playing havoc,” he agreed.

 “You walking up to the stop?” she asked, already moving away.

“Suppose so.”

They fell into step together, heads bent, rain at their backs. The pavement shone, reflecting the streetlights. Water ran in thin rivulets toward the drains. Passing cars threw up spray that drenched their shins.

“You hear about Holland?” Mary said, raising her voice over the wind.

“Yeah. Saw the papers in the lodge.” He kept his eyes on the path ahead. “Terrible business.”

“Dad says if it can happen there…” She let the thought trail off. “Says the river’s too high. He doesn’t like the look of it.”

Ron didn’t answer. The weather was the weather. It was easier to think about that than the thing he’d been turning over in his head all day.

They reached the bus stop just as the rain seemed to find new angles from which to hit them.

Mary sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her glove. “You went round there last night, didn’t you?” she blurted.

He hesitated. “Who told you that?”

“She did.” Mary’s mouth twitched. “Ruth. Said you’d been.”

He swallowed. “Yeah. I went.”

“Oh, Ron.”

He shrugged, but it wasn’t convincing. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does.”

“Anyway, she wasn’t in,” he said. “Her flatmate said she’d gone to the pictures with someone.”

“With who?” But Mary didn’t really need to ask who. Everyone at the hospital knew the saga of Ron and Ruth... of Ron waiting for Ruth and Ruth not quite waiting for him.

“Didn’t say.” He tried to make his voice flat. “Didn’t ask.”

Mary considered her next words. A bus roared past them going the other way; standing room only, windows fogged. The spray of its passing hit their faces, tiny droplets cold and sharp as needles.

“Ron,” she said at last, “you can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Waiting round for her. Turning up. Asking after her. She knows what she’s doing.”

The rain slapped the side of Ron’s face, stinging his hot cheeks. “I’m not… I just went to see how she was.”

Mary turned to face him, raindrops running off the knot of her headscarf. “You’ve been ‘just going to see how she is’ for months.”

He looked away, toward the blurred lights of the main road. “She said she’d let me know about the pictures. About Saturday.”

“And then she went with someone else.”

He shrugged again, but it was a small, defeated movement. “Maybe she forgot.”

“She didn’t forget.” Mary’s voice was soft and not unkind. “She just didn’t tell you.”

A nagging line from the chorus of Eddie Fisher’s song played in Ron’s head:

 “…waiting for you to let me in…”

He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “Feels like...” he said quietly. “Like I’m stood outside something. Can hear her, but…” He shook his head. “Door never opens.”

Mary watched him. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his coat frayed at the cuffs, his face tired in a way that had nothing to do with lifting patients and wheeling them around all day.

“You don’t have to stand there,” she said. “There’s other doors.”

He gave a short, humourless laugh. “Not for me.”

“That’s rubbish.”

A bus appeared from round the corner, its headlights hazy through the rain. Mary glanced at it, then back at him.

“That’s mine,” she said. “You getting on?”

He looked at the bus, then at the road stretching away, slick and dark. “Think I’ll walk a bit. Clear my head.”

“In this?” She shook her head. “You’ll be soaked through.”

“Already am.”

She hesitated, then reached out and touched his arm, quick and awkward through the wet wool. “You deserve better than waiting.”

He managed a small, humourless smile. “Maybe.”

Mary stepped back. “All right. See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah. See you.”

She ran the few steps to the back of the bus, coat flapping, and climbed aboard with a last glance back that he pretended not to see. The bus pulled away, its red tail lights soon blurred by the rain.

Ron stood at the bus stop, the wireless in his head replaying the last line of the song:

“…waiting for you to let me in.”

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and started walking. Not toward Ruth’s street and not towards home, just striding along Oldchurch Road, past the dark hospital building and the bare winter trees.

He didn’t know what he was heading towards. Only that returning home to his empty sitting room and the wireless in the kitchenette felt impossible while that song was still in the air and Ruth was somewhere dry, laughing with someone who wasn’t him.

So he paced, head down, letting the rain take the shape of his thoughts, the road stretching ahead like a river into which he couldn’t quite bring himself to jump.