Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [14]
“Have you set your eye on someone?” Katie asked. She wished that she could take a group of her more difficult clients into this ward so they could see the skin-and-bones woman who knew nothing ahead of her except the certainty that she would die shortly after they did the cesarean section to remove her baby. It made their problems so trivial in comparison.
Stella considered the question. “It’s a bit late for me to have my eye on anyone at this stage,” she said. “But I am asking someone to do me a favor, so I have to look normal, you know, not mad or anything. That’s why I thought a more settled type of hairstyle would be good.”
“Right, we’ll make you look settled,” Katie said, taking out the plastic tray that she would put over the hand basin to wash Stella’s thin, frail-looking head with its pre-Raphaelite mass of red curly hair. She had styled it already, but the curls kept coming back as if they had decided not to take any notice of the diagnosis that the rest of her body was having to cope with.
“What kind of a favor is it?” she asked, just to keep the conversation going.
“It’s the biggest thing you could ever ask anyone to do,” Stella said.
Katie looked at her sharply. The tone had changed and suddenly the fire and life had gone out of the girl who had entertained the ward and made people smuggle her in packets of cigarettes and do sentry duty so that she would not be discovered.
“Call for you, Noel,” Mr. Hall said. Nobody ever telephoned Noel at work. The few calls he got came in through his cell phone. He went to Mr. Hall’s office nervously. This was a time he would normally have had a drink; it was the low time of morning and he always liked a drink to help him cope with an unexpected event.
“Noel? Do you remember me, Stella Dixon? We met at the line dancing night last year.”
“I do, indeed,” he said, pleased. A lively redhead who could match him drink for drink. She had been good fun. Not someone he would want to meet now, though. Too interested in the gargle for him to meet up with her these days. “Yes, I remember you well,” he added.
“We sort of drifted away from each other back then,” she said.
It had been a while back. Nearly a year. Or was it six months? It was so hard to remember everything.
“That’s right,” Noel said evasively. Almost every friendship he had sort of drifted away, so there was nothing new about this.
“I need to see you, Noel,” she said.
“I’m afraid I don’t go out too much these days, Stella,” he began. “Not into the old line dancing, I’m afraid.”
“Me neither. I’m in the oncology ward of St. Brigid’s, so in fact I don’t go out at all.”
He focused on trying to remember her: feisty, jokey, always playing it for a laugh. This was shocking news indeed.
“So would you like me to come and see you sometime? Is that it?”
“Please, Noel, today. At seven.”
“Today …?”
“I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.”
He saw Mr. Hall hovering. He must not be seen to dither. “See you then, Stella,” he said, and wondered what on earth she wanted to see him about. But, even more urgently, he wondered how he could approach a cancer ward to visit a woman he barely remembered. And approach her without a drink.
It was more than any man could bear.
The corridors of St. Brigid’s were crowded with visitors at seven o’clock. Noel threaded his way among them. He saw Declan Carroll, who lived up the road from him, walking ahead of him and ran to catch him up.
“Do you know where the female oncology ward is, Declan?”
“This lift over here will take you to the wing. Second floor.” Declan didn’t ask who Noel was visiting or why.
“I didn’t know there were so many sick people,” Noel said, looking at the crowds.
“Still, there’s lots that can be done for them these times compared to when our parents were young.” Declan was always one for the positive view.
“I suppose that’s the way to