EVERY day, exactly half an hour before lunch is served, a tall, rather handsome man knocks out his pipe at the rehab entrance and wishes us all good morning with a smile. I put his age around 65 and if a face tells of the life one has led, then his has been one of kindness and concern.
That has been confirmed for me as day after day I’ve seen him walk around and around the quad, the arm of a shuffling woman tucked in his. Her head is always bowed as if to see that her feet are moving in the right direction; her clothes hang off her slight figure and her short, schoolgirl hair falls neatly brushed to just below her ears, wispily grey at the sides.
There is no talk as they walk but every so often he pats her hand and tucks her arm more firmly in his. They stop at the bench that faces the wall of windows of the physio hall so I see them clearly as I exercise.
Gently he puts his hand under her chin and lifts her face towards his, smiling as he does so and inclining his own. Sometimes she smiles back but the contact is minimal and soon down goes her head and she stares back at the ground.
She comes, I discover, from the Alzheimer’s corridor linked to our unit by a locked door. Most of the patients are too far gone to leave their beds and will be there until they die. But this man’s wife is only here for three weeks of respite care. Normally she is at home as she has been since she developed early onset dementia more than 10 years ago.
They have no children to share the silent anguish and one would think that in those weeks he would rest and travel; enjoy the sheer freedom to think of nobody but himself. But no, he misses not one day of seeing her, although to a surreptitious watcher like me, she has long ceased to "see" him. What do I know though – thank God – of what passes between them and whether he senses moments of memory in her, which is perhaps why he tips her face upwards at his.
Another corridor, again behind a locked door, leads into an area of palliative care. Nobody comes out of here alive either.
The nurses do not talk of either unit unless someone like me pushes them. For, barring something totally unforeseen, we rehab patients are gradually moving to a happy exit; back on our own two feet, ready to return to life. We will graduate and be waved off with great heart and cheer and our beds will be swiftly remade, our rooms cleaned, ready for the next broken and wounded specimens.
Because of that sense of hope, it was a relief to be moved here from the Moissac surgical ward. There, in the room next to mine, after a morning crying for help, a very old woman had called out "Maman" and then was silent for ever more. At least here, I thought, in this modern, bright unit, such moments would be avoided and the memory of that last call would fade.
Then one day as I again sat at the entrance, face turned to the sun, a van drew up and two uniformed men pulled a stretcher and blanket from it. Idly I wondered why there were no windows but soon returned to my book.
I heard the wheels of the stretcher some 20 minutes later and turned. The blanket was strapped over what I slowly registered was a body, but it didn’t cover the whole form and peeping over the end were shockingly strong-looking grey curls – the still thick hair of an elderly woman who no longer had any need for windows on her journey.
Suddenly my little world of rehab was shattered. Even here, it seemed, there was no escape from the inevitable. I felt rather angry and peeved that I hadn’t been warned and could have wheeled myself away before seeing that sad little cap of curls.
But now, days from going home and walking upright again, albeit on crutches, I am aware of the crass selfishness of such thoughts. How far we run from facing both living death and the act itself; fleeing the end by believing if we hide it away it may just ignore us and pass on by. We happily discuss the most intimate moments of our lives, expose ourselves in vulgar reality shows, mutilate our faces and bodies to imitate youth, and yet cannot face that one last truth.
After three months and 11 days in hospital and rehab it will take time before these and other memories fade, but fade they will because our brains have been wired that way. Soon I will drive past this complex and give just a cursory thought to the closed doors and the men and women waiting behind them. And pray that I will not see inside again and look for a kind man who walks the quad with a sweet-faced soul who regards him with bewilderment.
Or wonder why nobody held the hand of a woman who called for her mother in dying. Time to go home.
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