The Room

Hendre cottage hospital stood at the top of a very steep hill, high
above the harbour and town. From its position you can see the whole
range of mountains and the estuary of fenhendre, with the mainline
railway and the small town itself. Standing just before the entrance
you could see the windows at the front of the building watching the
world go by in their reflections. I had walked up to that hospital many
times but for a period of six to seven weeks I spent nearly every day
visiting my sister.


The door to her room was opposite the stairway, past the lift
entrances. I made my way by two short, wide flights of stairs. The
room, with its high ceiling, was on the first floor. Sometimes the door
would be fully open but mostly it was slightly ajar. When the door was
closed, you worried, not knowing what you would find beyond.



The first thing that would hit you about the room, was the
warmth of the place and then the smell. I could never work out truly
which hit you first, but liked to think that it was the warmth. The
other held in it a torment which you didn't really want to face but
knew was there. It was the smell of warm rotting meat, a smell that I
have only ever smelt during long hot summer months, when pork was being
cooked on a slow heat, or if it had been left out in a warm room for
too long. Even to this day I hate the aroma of that smell because of
its memories. In the room, it was human flesh, and there was nothing
that could be done to prevent its slow rotting, except for the imminent
death of the person lying in the bed beyond the door. This was the
reason why I and my family were there. Life had been fought for, life
lingered, but time would soon quell even that flame. Terrible as it
was, I hoped it would not be long. My sister was only seventeen.



The room was not small even though it did have all the
necessary equipment used in the hospital including the typical bed with
its coated mental framework. It would have been sparse except for the
vast collection of " Get well soon" cards, fresh flowers, soft toys,
the bedside cabinet, and the three chairs, one of which a person could,
at a push, sleep upon. Not the most comfortable of beds, as its sole
purpose was for the patient to recline in but could also be used by a
family member, during any of the long drawn out nights when one stayed
there, if there was a crisis.


The window wasn't quite in the centre of the room, and to see
through it from the bed you'd have to lean slightly to one side, but my
sister was not in the position to do that, as she lay in a comatose
state. I'd stood at that window many times, going there and telling my
sister what the day was like outside, sometimes warming my hands on the
old-fashioned radiator before I went across to sit beside her to talk
or read aloud. This was often hard for two reasons: firstly, I never
got a reply, making my own response slow. Also, I was aware that my
words would drift down the corridor to the other wards and I didn't
want to intrude upon others.


However by the fourth week of our vigil, Matron told me that
my voice was so beautiful that patients in the ward next door were
enjoying listening to me. The request had come that they would like me
to either read for them as well or could I raise my voice slightly
more, so that they could hear me above the background noises. From that
point on I became more aware of the quietness of the place and the
serenity that the room had taken from what was happening to its sole
occupant.


Now when I read stories, I would sit as near to the open door
as I could, knowing that in the ward next door, patients where
listening. I became aware that the radio or TV would go off and that a
calming silence would fall as my voice carried to them.



Once I arrived to find my sister's door closed and one of the
nurses coming towards me suggested that I sit in the ward with one of
the long term patients who was enjoying my reading, Mrs James. Bless
her. She knew what I and my family were going through and would talk
very straight with me. I remember that time because of the instant
silence on the ward as I began to read aloud. I was reading Alice in
Wonderland, not exactly a grown up kind of book. One of the male
patients offered me a copy of George Orwell's, "Nineteen Eight - four"
but my younger brother came into the ward and disturbed the whole
atmosphere, asking me impossible questions about our sister's
well-being and in turn, making me feel uncomfortable and somehow
responsible in every way for her illness.


Back in the room hospital staff were administering more
morphine and cleaning out my sister's feeding tube, empting her
colostomy bag and the other things they did to make her comfortable. It
was getting pretty close to the end of her life now.


The room had a calming essence and a kind of peace that I
will never ever truly be able to fathom. The green peeling paint did
little to take anything from the sense of what was occurring there.
Outside, winter was slowly turning to spring, although the mountains
where still dressed in a coat of glistening snow. Sitting on the chair
by the side of the bed, I could see from the peaks of the mountain to
the tops of trees and the clear blue sky. Inside, the light played
along the pale green top sheet on the bed creating little shadows in
the folds.


My sister lay in that room. The only time the silence was
broken was when she was moved or if some sound stirred her from the
moorings of her death bed. Sometimes when I read, she would open her
eyes, brown hazel eyes would stare at me, as if she were trying to hold
onto the image I gave her. I hoped she could hear me but it was so hard
to say.


Two nights before she died, she shed a tear, one single tear
before she sank further into the nether world.


The night before she died I went to relieve my mother who
would travel home on the last bus, that very last bus. She was now very
weary from sitting most of the day beside my sisters' bed. I took my
mother's seat until my sister slept an hour or so later. It may have
been more, you somehow begin to lose sense of time. Once I got home I
would phone my mother to reassure her. I was the last person to sit
with my sister. I stood just outside the hospital entrance before
walking home. It was a frosty night and the tarmac road down towards my
home was covered with a mask of white silk icing that reflected the
moonlight and the brightness of the stars above. I pulled my woolly hat
down further and pulled my scarf up higher around my mouth so that only
my eyes were open to the elements. Looking up one last time, I could
see the window and the yellowing light of my sister's room. I knew she
was gently sleeping in that green room with its chipped paint, the door
slightly ajar. But this night she would never wake again.






? Lesley Roberts