IRINA

Her mother looked smaller, sunken, surrounded by a sea of white sheets. The doctor had told her she’d collapsed, had been brought in for tests.

As she looked down at her she felt their roles were reversed and she was her mother visiting herself as a child in the hospital. Maybe it was the familiar line of other beds, the distant spluttering, the curtains pulled back to the sides, the smeared windows through which Irina could see waiting ambulances and a couple of off-duty nurses, coats over their uniforms, puffing furiously at cigarettes. The cloying smell of disinfectant and rubber seemed to fill her nostrils and she was transported back to her childhood, to lying in a hospital bed, woozy, lifted gently as someone checked her for other injuries.

Her face had hurt, burning as if she’d had acid thrown at her. She’d learnt about acid in school, the chemistry-lab floor was pockmarked from spillages. That was her face. She put a hand to it, wanting it to stop, but it was covered in a dressing; someone lightly held onto her arm, trying to put a soothing note in their voice to make up for the fact they couldn’t soothe her face. Irina realized with a start that it was her mother’s voice she’d heard, her mother drawing her arm back to her side as the doctors worked on her. The world had grown blurry and distant after that; she remembered having to count backwards – how silly, she’d thought, wanting to show them she was a big girl and could do that, that it was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. It was Joshua who couldn’t count, Joshua who always missed out ‘seven’.

Irina hadn’t realized she was frozen in the centre of the room as the memories washed over her. Her mother had her eyes closed, sheet pulled up to her chin and arms resting at her sides on top of it. She looked like a corpse. Irina took a step forward, scared that a new chapter in her life was being revealed. What would happen now?

She drew up a small plastic chair to the side of the bed and sat, feeling comically low down, reaching up awkwardly to hold her mother’s hand so that her arm was bent at a strange angle. She thought she saw her eyelids flicker, her chest barely rising and falling with each breath. Irina glanced at the monitor next to her, at the nonsensical numbers and lines that were charting her mother’s progress. Were they good numbers? The drip that was sticking into her hand made Irina feel nauseous, liquid flowing into her from a squashed bag by her side. She didn’t seem at all like her mother in this environment. She would have hated the stark light in the room, showing up the lines on her face, the creases around her eyes whisper-thin as she rested. Her brow smoother than Irina remembered – was her mother permanently frowning?

‘Excuse me, could you tell me what’s wrong?’

The nurse looked her in the face, eyes shifting slightly to her right when she noticed, momentarily distracted, despite the fact that she must see worse every day. Or perhaps not.

‘Doctor Georges will be along shortly, ten minutes or so. Your mother came in a few hours ago, collapsed, but we have her on a drip and we’re monitoring her now.’

‘Will she be alright?’ Irina blurted. A hopeless question, she knew that, the moment it fell out of her mouth, but she needed to know; ten minutes seemed an interminable wait.

The nurse picked up the chart at the foot of the bed. ‘Her condition seems stable now and the doctor will talk you through the results of her blood test.’

‘Test?’

‘She had one when she came into A & E.’

Irina thanked her twice, turning back to see her mother’s eyelids fluttering. She scooted round to hold her hand.

‘Mum, it’s Irina. I’m here, it’s OK.’

Her mother’s voice was croaky as she tried to focus on Irina’s face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her hand half-lifting from the bed.

And for a moment the words seemed weighted with something more.