The only thing worse than a busy night shift is a quiet night shift. The minutes feel like hours. I’d hoped that I’d be kept busy enough to be able to avoid bumping into Rachel, or so I didn’t have time to think about Rachel, or my husband, or Rachel and my husband. But the night is dragging and every minute feels like an hour.
Our patients are settled. A few family members sit quietly in their rooms, or on chairs in the communal area, blankets over them, trying to catch a little sleep but afraid to sleep too deeply only to be woken with bad news. We have accommodation on site for them, a couple of bedrooms, but we often find people are reluctant to stray too far from loved ones.
The lights are dimmed. The hospice is illuminated by lamp-lit offices and bedside lights. Nurses with pen torches carrying out their observations, speaking only in whispers to patients and other staff. The silence is broken only by the occasional opening and closing of a door, a beep of an infusion pump, a ticking clock in the staff room; one that we only seem to hear at night.
I long for a buzzer to sound, a rap on the door to call for my attention, a phone to ring. I need a distraction from the mess my life is in – a distraction from the tiredness, emotionally and physically, I’m feeling – or I fear I might just sink under it and not surface for a long time.
I get up and stretch and walk the deserted corridors. The hospice is situated far back from the main road running into Derry from Donegal, looking out over the banks of the River Foyle. Staring out of the windows, I can see the lights of the houses across the river, moving cars, street lights, serving as a reminder that whatever goes on in this particular corner of the world, everything continues as it always does elsewhere.
But there’s also the blackness of the night and it’s hard to escape the darkness in the world, too. Standing at the window, I’m reminded that someone’s out there who’s determined to get under my skin, to scare me and threaten me. To destroy the life I have now. And I have no clue who that person is.
I shudder, wrap my cardigan a little tighter over my uniform, and set off back up the corridor. I’ll go and sit with Mrs Doherty. Keep her company. Check she has everything she needs. It’ll do me good to be there, distracted from my own worries.
A tired-looking junior nurse is only too happy to take a break when I arrive at Mrs Doherty’s bedside. I tell him to go and grab a quick nap, followed by a coffee. It takes a while to get used to night shifts.
‘How’s she been?’ I ask as he makes to leave.
‘A little more unsettled this last half-hour or so,’ he says. ‘Her breathing’s become more laboured, but it seems to have settled again. Do you think she’ll be able to hold on until her son arrives?’
I shrug. The truth is, I don’t know. Mrs Doherty could pass in a matter of hours or days. Death isn’t always as predictable as we all think. There are signs and stages we watch for, of course, but death doesn’t always shift through the gears as it should.
That Mrs Doherty had been talking earlier that day, that she was able to speak to her neighbour when she visited is a positive sign, but a change in breathing, the soft gargle I can hear at the back of her throat? Those are signs that her body’s giving up where her mind isn’t quite ready. She is a fighter, but even the toughest of fighters have to concede at least once in their lifetime.
‘Dotty,’ I say softly as I check her chart, ‘it’s Eli. I’m going to work in here for a wee bit tonight, if you don’t mind keeping me company.’
I gently brush her hair back from her face again, use a little lip salve to soothe her lips before I sit down and try to catch up on some of my paperwork by the soft light of her bedside lamp.
I try to stay focused on the journey Mrs Doherty’s on. To comfort and guide her. It’s true what they say that hearing is one of the last things to go. I can’t stand the thought of her listening to the ordinary world go about its business around her as if her life, and her contribution to it, doesn’t matter.
During her previous visits with us, Mrs Doherty and I had developed a great rapport. What I love most about her is that she’s a no-nonsense sort and one of the few people on this planet who I feel understands me and my mixed feelings towards my baby.
While others would tell me I’m blooming, she’d ask how I was coping finding something that made me feel less nauseous. She discussed what she used to use to help with the side effects of her chemo, I discussed what I did to try to lessen the hormonal surges.
‘I only did it the once,’ she told me. ‘Which was almost unheard of in my day. Every one of my friends was firing out babies like they were shelling peas. A baby in their belly, another on their hip and a tribe around their feet. I didn’t see the appeal in doing it more than once,’ she’d said with a smile. ‘Too much pressure on us women to love everything about motherhood. Don’t get me wrong, I love my son very much. I’d do anything for him, but motherhood never fulfilled me the way it did my friends.’
Her honesty had been refreshing. An antidote to my mother’s well-meaning but guilt-inducing take that there’s nothing in this world that could ever come close to the thrill of holding your own child and raising them. My mother would’ve had a houseful of children if she could have. ‘But things just didn’t work out that way. I’ll have to make up for it with a houseful of grandchildren instead, eh?’ she’d said with a wink.
So I chat to Mrs Doherty again. I tell her how the night sky is filled with stars. How a heavy frost is settling on the grass and tomorrow is bound to be another cold one. I tell her how I find the hospice so peaceful. And, sometime around 3 a.m., I find myself crying a little and telling her I wish she was here, properly here, to talk to me with some of her wit and wisdom. I tell her what a friend she’s been to me. How she could always make me laugh; because that was one of her greatest gifts, being able to make me laugh even when I was feeling sorry for myself.
I don’t realise the tiredness is getting the better of me as we talk. I know my eyes are growing a little heavier, and every now and again I get up to stretch, to ease the ache in my back and wake up a bit. But still, sitting at her bedside and holding her hand, I drift off at some stage.
I wake to her gasping, her body writhing in pain. I try to soothe her. Put an oxygen mask on her face to try to ease her breathing, but her face is contorting in agony. A horror mask of dying, which in the darkness of the room looks haunting. Her hands are fisting at the sheets, her eyes wide with fear.
Sleepily, my hands shaking, my heart thumping, I administer more meds. More sedative. More pain relief. I just want to help. That’s my job, to help. I just don’t want her to be scared. I don’t want the fear to overwhelm her.
I can do this. I’ve done it many times. But this time, something feels wrong.
She goes quiet. Is still. For the briefest of moments I feel relief, because the awful noise she’s been making has stopped, her body relaxed.
But then something changes. Her chest stills. Her eyes droop. Not quite closed but the light has gone out.
I know she’s gone. I know it instinctively. I start to shake. Have I done something wrong? I push down the panic as I start to work through my steps. The dose.
Jesus! The dose.
Hastily calculated.
Wrong.
Fatal.
I feel the room start to spin. I just about manage to hit the panic button before I have to sit down to stop myself from falling. I look to Mrs Doherty, her face like a bizarre mask, still not quite hers. Still wearing a gruesome expression of fear.
Was she scared of me? Did I kill her? Did she know I’d kill her? I’d been so distracted with my own life, so caught up in me and my imploding marriage and my pregnancy and my mother, had I not been concentrating? And I’d been asleep. Oh God …
Footsteps. I hear footsteps but they sound as if they’re getting further away rather than coming closer. The room spins more. The window. The darkness. Is there someone there? Laughing? I try to breathe as the darkness gets darker. I feel myself slipping away.