Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [9]
‘Can I see her?’
‘Of course you can. She’s resting at the moment – a mild sedative. But she should be fine for a short visit.’
He stood up and caught the attention of Bernard who was handing out cups of tea in the residents’ lounge, where everyone was engrossed in a news report about the Falklands war.
‘Bernard, would you show Doctor Brunner to Norma’s room?’ ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Joyce said.’You’ve no idea what a relief it is to know that my mother’s going to get bet-responding well,’ she checked herself, the scientist in her coming to the fore, reminding herself not to count her chickens too soon.
‘Not at all, Doctor Brunner. That’s what we’re here for.’
Together she and Bernard ascended the stairs in silence and walked down the corridor. Bernard opened the door for her and stood awkwardly aside for her to enter. A wave of sadness washed over her as she entered the room. It smelled of roses and talc, just like her mother’s rooms always had. On the bed, sheets and blankets drawn up under her arms, her mother lay with eyes closed. Joyce silently thanked Bernard, who withdrew from the room, and pulled up a chair at the side of the bed. She noted the photograph – daughter, son-in-law and grandson – on the bedside cabinet, the same picture that stood guard beside her own bed at the B&B.
She took her mum’s hand, gently, and squeezed it, noting the flickering of her eyes under their fragile lids. She had never looked so pale, so thin, so frail. The trip up here – and the difficulties involved in actually persuading her to come here in the first place – had taken its toll on her, and Joyce had feared that it would do her more harm than good. Her mother’s other hand lay delicately on her lap, her skin and lips almost as blue as the bedjacket she wore. Her breathing was light, as if her body were testing out how it might feel to not breathe at all. Joyce swallowed, wondering if this was it.
Her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a couple of months earlier, and from a gentle, loving woman she began to turn into a frightening, bewildered stranger. Most days she was lucid and Joyce could believe that she was on the mend; and then, out of nowhere, Norma would be found wandering in the street, calling each man she met ‘Alf’, even though Joyce’s father had been dead for over ten years.
And then she’d been rushed into hospital with a heart attack.
Her mum had recovered from the heart attack, but Joyce never really had. Each time she had looked into her confused, frightened eyes after that, she felt that her mother had died in that hospital bed, and that a stranger now walked around dressed in her body. A stranger that, more and more frequently, had reminded Joyce of what she’d wished for that day.
Tears pooled in Joyce’s eyes as she watched her mum’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall; watched the flickering of her eyes beneath her thin, veined eyelids. Was this the point at which the hijacker of her body finally got bored with the game and let her go completely? Had she put her through all the stress of coming here only for this place to be where she ended her days?
No. She’d done the right thing. Joyce knew that if she hadn’t brought Mum here she might never have forgiven herself.
There was a gentle tap at the door. She turned to see Doctor Menzies standing in the doorway.
‘Can we have a word?’
She nodded and dabbed at her eyes and realised, with some embarrassment, that the tissue was soaking wet. She followed him out onto the landing, gently closed the door behind her. He looked down at a sheaf of papers in his hand, and smiled at her.
‘I’ve just got the results of the tests we ran yesterday,’ he said. ‘It seems that not only has Norma shown no contraindications, but that, in the last 24 hours, there’s actually been a three per cent reduction in the plaque density and a commensurate decrease in protein entanglement.