Ward 17

The sun was high and bright in the sky, a stoic sentinel, dispassionately witnessing the lives beneath him.  There were only a few crucial hours each day that the sun reached an angle with the ability to cast his warming rays into my room. Thus, with both the fragility and determination of a migrating swallow, I made the tremendous effort to journey from my bed to the window seat. Encircled in an aureate glow, I stared pensively out the grimy glass window confining me within the sterile hospital room.

Mum came into view, my plastic lunch tray in hand. My noise crinkled, lips puckered and eyes narrowed as I inspected the day’s offerings. A brown, unidentifiable concoction greeted me.  I was now making a conscious effort to eat after renewed threats of nasogastric feeding. Even so, a disgusted glottal noise emanated from the back of my throat as Mum left the monochrome tray on the small overbed table. The bench was slowly rolled to my left-hand side, stiff wheels whining in protest. 

A middle-aged woman with an affable smile appeared from behind the partition separating me and Zoey, my nine year old roommate. Zoey was typical of everyone on Ward 17, me included. She spent most of her days in a drug induced state of semi-consciousness, pumped full of chemicals like lorazepam, metoclopramide, or some other obscure medication with an equally ostentatious name. Zoey was from some small, obscure country town in western Queensland which her older sister, Emily, deemed full of inbreds.

Therese was Zoey’s ever-optimistic mother; her subdued yet sanguine voice followed her appearance. “Hi roomies! I was just about to make a pot of tea while Zoe’s asleep, would you like any?” 

Therese’s floral tea set had become a comforting fixture on the ward. Several times each day you could find a small contingent of mothers and nurses partaking in the civilized act of tea drinking in the parent’s room. A display, in an ascetic, alien world, of the muted rhythm of the trivial that remained; a vital cord connecting the hospital to normality.

“That sounds perfect,” my mother reticently replied. “Are you okay staying here? Or do you want to come?” Mum said, turning towards me, eyebrows furrowed, and a maze of wrinkles materializing on her brow.

“I’ll come. It’s not like there’s much to do here,” I pointed out, emphasising my point with an exasperated sigh. In hospital they say that boredom is good, it was a sign that you are alert and had enough energy to become bored. Although this may have been true, when you are stuck in a cramped room with nothing, except season two of Gossip Girl, which you have already seen three times over, boredom does not seem good at all.

Mum handed me my pink, sparkly Peter Alexander slippers, a cancer present from my neighbours. Periodically, Mum glanced over her shoulder as I slowly shuffled down the hallway following the two women whose lives had both become intertwined through the most devastating of diagnoses.

I loved lying on the couch in the parent’s lounge. The room was reminiscent of any typical family room. Two large, slightly outdated red settees dominated the space with fully laden bookshelves covering the navy walls. A coffee table was scattered with magazines and upon entering the room I immediately resumed reading last month’s Woman’s Weekly whilst the mothers shared the latest gossip.

I was in the middle of reading an article about the latest Hollywood wonder-diet, when my finely-tuned skills of eavesdropping alerted me to the topic of the tea drinkers’ conversation.

My mind was reeling as I blurted out, “A pig? What on earth?”

Startled by my sudden interjection, Therese responded, “I know it’s strange, but we do live on a farm and Zoey absolutely adores animals.”

Having been a city girl my whole life with a tiny, white lap dog, I was baffled as to why the delicate young girl would wish for a grimy and olid pig. Everyone I had met during my time in hospital had a small, yet exceptionally important, dream. Something that when treatment was over would make months of enduring the gruelling chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries seem worthwhile. For me, I was planning an exchange trip to Paris. Yet Zoey it seemed had simpler, if not slightly eccentric, taste.

“The problem is,” Therese continued. “My father has already gone and bought a pig, but Zoey doesn’t finish treatment for another six months.”

“Can’t your older daughter look after the pig until then?” My mum countered, she was always helping me problem-solve my own problems, so it was natural for her to try and do the same for others.

“I don’t want the pig to bond with Emily while Zoey and I are in hospital. Otherwise the piglet will not care for Zoey when she does finish treatment.” Therese’s logic was sound.

“Does Zoey know about the pig? Couldn’t you just take the pig back to the seller without her knowing?” I reasoned, attempting to resolve the situation without entwining Zoey’s fragile emotions.

“Unfortunately we cannot, Emily has already spilled the beans I am afraid. Zoey has been crying and begging all morning to keep it.” Therese stated with an exasperated sigh. Mum and I exchanged a fleeting glance each conveying our pity. I could not help but feel for the young girl whose pig was frustrating close, yet devastatingly not within her grasp.

Snivelling alerted our small group to Zoey’s presence at the entrance into the parent’s room. One of the nurses had kindly offered to push her wheelchair down the hall to our gathering. Therese arose and assisted as Zoey took a seat on the threadbare couch, wrapping herself in an elaborately woven purple blanket.

“Has Grandpa taken Henry back?” Zoey’s quavering voice was like an undercooked soufflé seconds away from collapsing. I took the fact that she had already named the animal as a sign that this would be a hard and bloody battle.

“Zoey, I’m sorry but you can’t get a pig yet, our deal was when you finish treatment we will buy one. Don’t you want to get your pig when you’re not in hospital? So you can watch it grow?” Therese talked in a slow honeyed voice, hopelessly endeavouring to reason with the emotional child.

My heart yearned to comfort Zoey who was now sobbing. Her distress showed not in furrowed eyebrows, chemotherapy had stolen them long ago, but in her -----blue eyes. I remembered back to the previous fortnight, when Zoey was in the middle of the night rushed to surgery due to a potentially lethal infection in her portachath. Surely this young, yet indomitable, warrior deserved her beloved pig. However, as much as it pained me to admit it, Therese was right. Now was not the time for a pet.

“But-but-but,” Zoey stuttered uncontrollably as her rebuttal crumbled like the mess of Lego which was dispersed over the patterned carpet.

Feeling as though we were intruding on a private conversation, Mum and I rose from our seats, noiselessly retreating from the room. As we departed I could vaguely hear the rapid staccato of Zoey’s post-crying hiccups. Therese’s soothing dulcet tones assuaged her grief. With a final glimpse I saw the pair locked in a steely embrace, the stoic mother mopping up her darling daughter’s defeated tears.

Later that night, I lay in bed once again eavesdropping on Zoey and Therese as they discussed what colour Zoey’s new pig might be. In the fields of this resilient trooper’s imagination, Zoey had already decided to call it Jenny and given it a purple collar. Jenny, merely a figment of her imagination, had paradoxically given Zoey a cord anchoring her to home.

I drowsily gazed through my open widow shutters. A pool of grey light was suspended in the inky sky, watching me, unconcerned with the day’s trifles, conveying the same impartiality of the sun before him.  The vital mediocrity of life continued, the minor addition of nurses periodically checking charts and administering medications was inconsequential.

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Thankyou for reading!

I was a cancer patient and this story is based on my time in hospital.