Stitched together by little blue pills, I see fraying edges come loose, working their way to exposure. Ugly, unseen wires twist free to a spiralling outpour. Others: doctors, nurses, carers, try to push them back in, hiding them within a skewered yet sewed surface, one of fabrication and medical folklore.
Perhaps they need to work loose? I consider.
Hallucinated handwriting paints your walls, a small prison cell of a downstairs bedroom, where they have put you to be safe. You tell me that someone has written on each wall, eyeing growing defacement, with twitching, anxious eyes. I follow an accusing finger, pointing to imaginary spider scrawl. “Don’t tell me that you cannot see it,” you say.
I smile, try to settle you in your blanketed chair. Change the subject.
Each hospital stay knocks your confidence, shrinking the walls like a microcosm on your return. Your veins have constricted from rivers to sun-drained turrets, hardened bumps. An old-age tapestry paints your skin, tattooing once blush and healthy flesh, claiming it as its own.
Today, you think naughty boys have written graffiti words on your bedspread. I watch your eyes travel imaginary markings. Your face is a portrait of disdain. How could they do such a thing? you consider as you clutch my hand, asking me to agree, to buy into your disparagement.
I tell you nothing is there. You need to sleep.
Holding tight, I soothe your plum-bruised skin, drained by blood-test needles, telling you to sit and rest. You find this calm medicine too jagged to drink, so continue, in a different realm to me, spotting words and sentences carved into your walls by imaginary schoolchildren.
Tears well in my eyes, a reminder of human empathy. I cannot bear to see you so low, befuddled, vulnerable. Instead, I pop to the toilet, letting emotion spill unseen. I stare at the doll comprising a toilet roll dress, sat upon your 1970’s eggshell blue cistern. Is she judging me with her black-beetle eyes? She has watched over this bathroom since my birth, knows me well. She, too, has seen many falls from grace.
I have a quick wee. Flush the loo. It never flushes properly. I dump the empty toilet roll cardboard into the bin, place a new one in its socket, buying time to build strength, for you.
Flashing a quick nod to the dark-haired toilet doll, I stitch a fake smile, bid her farewell. I must return to a dehydrated room, that shrinks each time I enter. A war zone of differently opposed minds, in some ways. A hot bed of confusion, blue-gloved carers’ hands, a small plastic bucket of pills, a fallen water glass in the corner. A wet stain marks its spillage, shakily handled.
Your carer dresses you for bed. I help. Your weight has dropped from you. Hospital trousers fall ungracefully to the ground. A crumpled memory of your recent stay. I fold the clinical fabric neatly, smaller, hiding away the evidence, so you don’t have to remember sleeping in an ambulance when there were no hospital beds to admit you. Thankfully, you have already half-forgotten your stay.
Tiny flickers of you still remain. I search for them, digging into confused eyes, burrowing deeper to find your soul. You are only pieces now, a discordant jigsaw lying muddled, highly fractious and incomplete. I want to fix you. Align some pieces to form a scenery, a bed for you to nestle into, at least, but the pieces won’t stay put. You move them with shaky hands, unable to rest, lost in an anxious broth of fuzzy medication.
You want me to stay longer. Loneliness is a monster you know too well. I wish I could keep him from your door, yet he swells in stature there, lingering on a threshold, knowing that I have to leave. I’m a mother. I cannot divide myself into two. Guilt drives into me as I leave you with the carer, doing her best to affix you into bed. A better bolthole than the wobbling frame.
Mumbling silent apologies, I make my way to the car, soaked in heavy stains – stains that I will not manage to work clean.
Emma Wells
Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She writes flash fiction, short stories and novels. She is currently writing her fifth novel.
Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 with ‘Carbonito de Sophie’ and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021.
Recently, she won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with her short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’.
Her poem ‘Rose-Tainted’ is the winner of the poetry category for Discourse Literary Journal, February 2024 Issue.
She was shortlisted for her flash fiction writing, ‘Agnes Richter’, by Anthology.
Her first poetry collection entitled ‘Reasons to…Evolve’ was published in April 2024.