Blue-Eyed Nurses

Dad stirred when the bustle started and I arose, stretched out the kinks in my back and we shook hands formally, sword arm to sword arm like old adversaries, which we were. We had barely exchanged a few terse words before I was bustled out of the door while the nursing staff did whatever private functions they were charged to perform.

I asked to speak to Sister Curran at the nurses' station, but apparently she had come in during the night to help with the emergency in A&E and wouldn't be back in until much later as a consequence. The nurses who were around were therefore short-handed and pre-occupied. I had hoped to thank the Sister for sorting out my pass, but it could wait.

I visited a bathroom to freshen up and grabbed some breakfast in the hospital coffee bar situated next to the reception area. I didn't really have much of an appetite, I was really washed out and tired. I was weary of the life I was leading and wanting a change but not sure what I wanted to do or even could do starting out on a new career at my age. I had been drilling for oil and gas too long and wasn't fit for much else. I was alone and lonely, too. I didn't really have what you could call a life, I existed at best. Coffee, I definitely needed that coffee.

I popped into the nurses' station again on my way back. Both nurses smiled at me, but they were sad smiles. Just then a porter wheeled by a bed with an occupant covered by a sheet. For just a moment I thought the worst, then realised the bed came from the opposite end of the corridor from Dad's side ward. As the bed passed, the younger of the two young nurses suddenly burst into tears and ran off towards presumably the nurses' toilets. I still wanted to thank the day sister for arranging my pass so efficiently, but neither of them were called Maureen, which I remembered from our conversation yesterday. Was it only yesterday? It seemed longer ago than that. I asked the remaining nurse and she gravely told me that Maureen Curran wouldn't be in today or possibly even the rest of the week. It must've been quite a busy night last night. Oh well.

When I returned to his ward, Dad was sitting up and looking comfortable and alert. We danced around one another, neither of us remotely touching the subject of our stunted relationship. He soon wearied of the game and lapsed into a fitful doze. I relegated myself to the chair again and sat there listening to him breathing with difficulty and the relentless noises and flashing of the instruments. Sleep wouldn't come for me, my body clock was all over the place.

Eventually I rose and got myself a pretty basic lunch in the hospital café. I sent a text to my mother via my mobile phone, knowing she was asleep and wouldn't read it until tomorrow, or tonight, I couldn't really think what time it was right now in Western Australia. At least she would know that I was with Dad and left it at that. I didn't like to tell her the end was so near but I knew it was.

Then I sent off another text, this time to my son Bobby, without expecting an answer; our exchanges of emails were few and far between. We didn't get on, never had, Bobby was too much like his mother and I didn't have a clue what I ever saw in her in the first place. Well, OK, I did initially I guess, she was an attractive woman. Whatever the initial attraction was, her personality was ugly, so any romance wore off pretty damn quick but, by that time, baby Bobby was in the pipeline and I was trapped like petroleum under an anticline. I was still in the Royal Navy at the time and the long separations did little to maintain my marriage to Jeanie.

Dad was still asleep by the time I got back to his bedside. I sat with him for a few hours until the middle of the afternoon, then got up again and went outside for a walk in the fresh air. It was more than just fresh, it was bitterly cold out, trying hard to snow once more. I wasn't really dressed to be outside in England in late winter, but I couldn't stay cooped up in that depressing hospital one minute longer. Still, the cold made me walk briskly and I did warm up, eventually.

Dad was awake and they were serving up his evening meal when I got back. It actually smelt good. It was a long time since I'd had a traditional British meat-and-two-veg dinner with treacle sponge pudding and custard for afters. I was used to one-pot meals on my current job, usually heavily over-spiced and with ingredients best described as anonymous.

He needed help with eating the meal, the last stroke had paralyzed him down his left side and he needed his meat and veg cut up, just like he used to do for me when I was a toddler. Well, he may have done it once or twice, Mum did it most of the time while he was at work, as usual, but then she was gone for good and I pretty well looked after myself.

He actually smiled, rather lopsidedly due to his stroke, while I cut his food up. Maybe he was thinking the same thoughts as I was but we hardly exchanged a word during his meal. We had nothing we had ready prepared to say to one another, even to make a start to cross those bridges which had kept us apart for so long. To express in words what had been repressed for so many decades would have contained too much invective, inflicting too much agony. So we each lapsed into uneasy silence.

He didn't eat much, just played with his food. I remembered but didn't say anything about how he used to chide me for playing with my food when I was a kid. Funny, the odd things that these moments brig back to mind after so long.

After his dinner plate was removed Dad slept again. Shifts changed and the big black nurse, who could hardly speak a word of English, popped her huge head in and looked at the charts. I tried to engage her in conversation to find out what she thought and ask if Mary was on tonight but I couldn't get through to her and she couldn't reciprocate either, so we both gave up the effort.

Communicating with women clearly wasn't my forte, I discovered long ago, a spectacularly failed marriage does that to you.

I went off site with my suitcase during the evening and found a pretty basic hotel room within easy walking distance and booked it for a week. I left my light travelling case there and had a shower, changed into clean clothes and enjoyed a half decent meal in their restaurant before heading back to the hospital. It was really bitterly cold and I desperately needed to buy a winter coat, I would do that in the morning when the stores were open again. They knew me in the hospital Reception by now without me waving my temporary pass and welcomed me in with smiles.

Dad was comfortably sleeping. I dozed too in the stifling warmth as the heating hadn't gone off yet. I had bought a hardback book to read from a help-yourself charity bookshelf in the lobby, but it failed to hold my interest for long.

I was awoken from my fitful dozing when I heard the rustle of skirts and there she was again, Mary the beautiful night nurse, quietly ministering to Dad, checking him over while he slept. I didn't think she knew I was even there because when she had finished all her checks she stood by the bed looking down on him, a loving smile on her face in profile as she gently stroked his cheek with the tips of her delicate fingers.

I closed my eyes and twitched, then stretched with a groan and opened my eyes, pretending to see Mary for the first time this evening. She had turned her head and was looking at me with a stern look on her face. Bloody hell, I thought as I tossed the blanket to one side and got up, it must be gone midnight and the damn heating's gone off again!

"Hello, Mary," I said, "How is he?"

"As well as could be expected in the circumstances," she said frostily, the temperature in the room had certainly gone down more than a touch and I was certain it wasn't all down to the timing switch. She continued, "You haven't spoken to Frank yet, have you, Roger?"

"No, not yet," I admitted lamely, chastened by her justified criticism, "I was waiting for the right time."

"There is no time to wait for your convenience, Roger, you must talk to him now or it'll be too late for either of you to get the peace of mind that you both need. You owe this to each other. I don't know, you're both so stubborn!"

"I know, I know," I protested. I have never reacted well to criticism, even more so when I knew I was completely in the wrong and she was so correct. Whenever I stayed with Mum and her husband Cliff, she used to tell me off the very same way. I could live with it when I was thousands of miles away from Dad and felt Mum could take her share of the blame for the state of the relationship between my father and I. Here and now, though, with Dad right there and on his last legs and this dedicated angel telling me what I already knew, I was being backed into a corner with nowhere else to go.

"Well, it's time you turned that knowledge into action," Mary said firmly.

"As soon as he wakes," I promised. And I really meant it.

She actually smiled, beautifully. "I've just given him something to help him sleep, so you might as well go home and get some proper rest yourself. Come back in the morning, Roger, and speak to him, please speak and make a peace between you and your father."

Well, long story short, I did and Dad did. It was after I got back to his ward in the morning after a restful night in the hotel. At least they had the options of air conditioning or heating at the hotel, which I kept on as high a temperature as possible all night. I slept surprisingly soundly.

We spoke all morning, Dad and me. I apologised to him for being such an argumentative teenager, for blaming him solely for Mum leaving me behind. And again I was sorry for not being interested in his business as well as my leaving things unsaid for so long because I was so stubborn.

Dad replied that he was sorry he had been so tied up in his work. He admitted that my face had reminded him, every time he looked at me, of my mother Glynis and felt he had unconsciously pushed me away from him during much of my childhood. I guess I had never taken that point of view into account. So, while I blamed him for my crappy childhood, he was blaming me for ruining his middle years.

Families! All we needed to say to each other was sorry, and we could have both benefited from being without those last fifty years of heartache.

Dad asked about my son Bobby. My ex-wife Jeanie, he told me, had come to see him about a month earlier and wanted to ask him for more money to help "poor Bobby", whose restaurant needed a fresh injection of cash. I told Dad that his place out in that provincial prairie city needed more than just an injection, it needed life support. I had gone through there two or three years earlier, on a stop-over on my way to troubleshoot an Alaskan rig, and the place was empty of a lunchtime, surrounded as it was by packed burger and sandwich cafés. There was really no market in that city for a seafood restaurant that only stocked and served frozen fish.

The partner in the business, Jonathan, was the chef, while Bobby was the front of house manager. I would be surprised, I said, if the partner was still there. According to Jeanie, Dad said, he was. I didn't know he still kept in touch with my ex-, but Dad shrugged it off with a mumble about "family is still family", and I didn't want to say anything that would set us back from where we had reached. Dad had been getting regular financial reports from Bobby and Dad sure knows how to read a balance sheet.

Bobby's just like us, son, Dad told me, too stubborn to give in even when the odds are heavily stacked against him. I said no, we were not all alike, Bobby and I were both failures, Dad's business, the garage, had been the only one that had succeeded. Me?, I was sliding down the oilmen merit table, I had become a sleeves-rolled-up, blue-shirted dinosaur in a world of sharp-suited lounge lizards.

He grinned that lop-sided smile that he had developed and told me that he had gone bankrupt twice before the garage finally took off, and that it was the least likely of the three businesses he started to actually make it. That's why he had to work so hard, he almost lost everything, and certainly lost Glynis and me, for long periods, in the process. Well, I said, I'm back and giving up the oil game for good, although I wasn't sure what I was going to do in the future.

"The garage is Bird & Son Motors Limited", Dad said, "it is virtually all yours if you want it. It could be yours and Bobby's too."

I had to admit that I thought he'd got rid of the place years before, when he retired. No, he said he'd had a succession of managers in charge but the place had been ticking over for years. It was still a sound business on a prime site that could do with some fresh blood at the top. Perhaps Bobby will come around to it sometime Dad thought, in the meantime it would keep me as busy as I wanted to be for at least a decade or so. We laughed about that.

His Will was up to date, he said, just a few little surprises for me to deal with, that he didn't feel he had time to elaborate on, but nothing major that he thought I would have any problem dealing with. Bobby would get a share of some investments Dad had made, while I would get a majority share of the business. I would also get his house, so there was "no point in me piddling about in a bloody hotel, for crying out loud", he added. We laughed about that too. His papers were in his office at home, filed under "Will" in his cabinet. Dad was always well organised.

Dad ate quite a bit of his lunch and actually appeared to both enjoy the meal and my active participation in helping him. His burst of energy was short-lived however and he dozed through the afternoon. I sat there and mulled over what we had spoken about. We had both been pretty silly over the years and all we had needed to say to each other was sorry. Of course, that was the hardest thing for both of us, until now, when we were almost at the very end of his life.

I went out that afternoon while Dad was asleep and bought myself a heavier winter coat. It was overcast and very cold out but at least it wasn't raining, sleeting or snowing, just a fierce cold wind. If they would only keep the heating on in the hospital tonight after midnight, I might have been completely happy.

I showered and changed in the hotel. Dad may have said I could stay in his house, but it wasn't quite as easy as that. I had thrown away my front door key 38 years ago. When I last called on him eighteen years later I remembered having to ring his doorbell. I did doze on the hotel bed for a couple of hours but hardly woke up as refreshed as I had earlier that morning. I got back to the hospital in time to help Dad with his evening meal. He was barely conscious the whole time though and hardly touch his food. He had gone downhill rapidly in those last few hours and I regretted selfishly taking the time off to rest when I could have spent that precious time with him.

The remnants of the meal were taken away, largely uneaten, although I had cut it all up for him. I hadn't had anything to eat all day either, I just didn't have any kind of appetite at all. I did want a coffee, though, but the hospital restaurant was closed by then and the machine-dispensed instant coffee was not very good. I didn't want to leave the hospital merely to satisfy my thirst though, as I had a sinking feeling that Dad wasn't going to be with us for very much longer. I poured a glass of room temperature water from the jug left for him and made do with that.

The nursing shifts changed, Nurse Petra popped her head in and glanced at the chart but didn't actually do anything. The big black nurse, Maria, I saw walk past the door a couple of times on her way to other tasks, leaving Dad basically in my sole charge. Dad just dozed fitfully through it all, the instruments beeping with a boring consistency, hardly even hinting that he was drifting away. I didn't need the instruments, it was becoming obvious.

At some point in the evening I noticed that the saline drip looked to be running low. Petra had checked his chart earlier but hadn't looked at Dad at all during her brief visit. It seemed to me like a new bag was required and I needed to press the red button to call the nurse. I had my new coat draped over me as a blanket and, as I got up, it fell to the floor, the air felt very cool without its protective layer. Before I could reach that red button, though, I heard a rustle behind me and there was Mary, as pristine as ever in her crisp uniform, only her long fair hair still seemed to have a life all of its own, trying to break free of the knotted bun behind her head. In her hand was a fresh bag of saline solution.

I smiled warmly at her and she responded with her own sweet smile.

"Have you spoken to Frank yet, Roger?" she asked, still maintaining her pretty smile. What made me think she already knew the answer to that question?

"I have," I grinned, "But what makes me think you already know that?"

"A little birdie told me," was her only reply.

I no longer felt guilty as I had been at our two previous meetings so I was able to fully enjoy her sweet smile this time. She was young enough, just about, to be my granddaughter. If she were I would have been very proud of her, she was nothing short of absolutely perfect. My Dad was fortunate indeed to have such an angel looking over him at this time.

Mary fitted up the new drip and sat down on the opposite side of the bed to me, holding Dad's hand in both her tiny ones. She looked as though she was settling in for the duration.

"No other patients to look after at the moment?" I asked.

"No, not tonight." Mary looked at me so intensely with her blue eyes, it was like she was looking through me. "Have you resolved all of your issues with your father?"

"I believe so. We have been both pretty set in our ways all our lives. It has made things difficult between us. But now we have, peace, I suppose."

"Frank told me that he had followed you all your career, Roger. Did you know he invested in the companies you worked for so he could keep track of where you were working and somehow he managed to get copies of all your reports? I am not sure how legal some of the methods he used were, Frank tapped his nose when he said he had ways and means," Mary smiled serenely. "I think you now need to talk to your own son. You've also been estranged for too long, haven't you?"

"I can't argue with that, Mary, it sounds as though you have had some long conversations with my father while I was waiting for connecting flights on my long journey home."

She nodded, "Frank's a lovely person, Roger, you should be proud of him. He was very proud of you."

"I think I get that now."

"Now you need to prepare yourself, Roger, I think that Frank is leaving us tonight, very soon in fact. Will you allow me to call a priest to administer the last rites?"

"I don't think that Dad's very religious, Mary."

"I don't believe he is either, nor am I particularly, but I have a ... a friend who is a priest and he has asked me especially if he can do this one last thing for Frank, well, for the three of us. I don't see what harm it can possibly do."

"No," I said, "I can't either. Go ahead if you want to. I don't know if you will have time to fetch him, though."

Mary smiled as she got to her feet, giving Dad's hand a squeeze before putting it down carefully on the bed.

"Thank you, Roger, he's been waiting outside for a while now," Mary said as she walked to the door. "Father Patrick", she called softly into the darkness. Then she turned back to the bed and an elderly priest complete with dog collar and purple shirt worn under a dark suit, entered the side ward behind her. We nodded to each other without exchanging a word, nor did he make any move to involve me in the process.