The Laying on of Hands - Alan Bennett [47]
It was a different doctor. Not Indian. Fair, curlyhaired and aged not much more than fourteen.
‘His condition certainly hasn’t deteriorated,’ the child said. ‘On the other hand,’ he glanced boyishly at the chart, ‘it can’t be said to have improved.’
Midgley wondered if he had ever had his ears pierced.
‘I don’t know that there’s any special point in waiting. You’ve done your duty.’ He gave him a winning smile and had Midgley been standing closer would probably have put his hand on his arm as he had been taught to do.
‘After all,’ he was almost conspiratorial, ‘he doesn’t know you’re here.’
‘I don’t think he’s dying,’ said Midgley.
‘Living, dying,’ said the boy and shrugged. The words meant the same thing.
‘You do want your father to live?’ He turned towards the nurse and pulled a little face.
‘I was told he wasn’t going to last long. I live in Hull.’
‘Our task is to make them last as long as possible.’ The pretty boy looked at his watch. ‘We’ve no obligation to get them off on time.’
‘Some of them seem to think we’re British Rail,’ the doctor remarked to a nurse in the small hours when they were having a smoke after sexual intercourse.
‘I don’t like 15-year-old doctors, that’s all,’ said Midgley. ‘I’m old enough to be his father. Does nobody else wait? Does nobody else feel they have to be here?’
‘Why not go sleep in your van? I can give you a pillow and things.’ She was eating a toffee. ‘I’ll send somebody down to the car park if anything happens.’
‘What do you do all day?’ asked Midgley.
‘Sleep.’ She was picking a bit of toffee from her tooth. ‘I generally surface around three.’
‘Maybe we could have a coffee. If he’s unchanged.’
‘OK.’
She smiled. He had forgotten how easy it was.
‘I’ll just have another squint at my dad.’
He came back. ‘Come and look. I think he’s moved.’
She ran ahead of him into the room. The old man lay back on the pillows, a shaded light by the bed.
‘You had me worried for a moment,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No. His face has changed.’
She switched on the lamp over the bed, the light so sudden and bright that that alone might have made the old man flinch. But nothing moved.
‘It’s just that he seemed to be smiling.’
‘You’re tired,’ she said, put her hand against his face and switched out the light.
Midgley switched it on again.
‘If you look long enough at him you’ll see a smile.’
‘If you look long enough,’ she said, walking out of the room, ‘you’ll see anything you want.’
Midgley stood for a moment in the darkened room, wishing he had kissed her when he’d had the chance. He went out to look for her but there had been a pileup on the M62 and all hell was about to break loose.
‘WHAT DO YOU DO ALL DAY?’ said his wife on the phone. ‘Sit in the waiting room. Sit in his room. Walk round the hospital.’
‘Don’t they mind?’
‘Not if they’re going to die.’
‘Is he, though?’ said his wife, watching her mother who had taken up her station on the chair by the door, holding her bag on her knees, preparatory to going to bed. ‘It seems a long time.’ The old lady was falling asleep. Once she had slipped right off that chair and cracked her head on the sideboard. That had been a hospital do.
‘I can’t talk. Mum’s waiting to go up. She’s crying out for a bath. I’m just going to have to steel myself.’ The handbag slipped to the floor.
‘I need a bath,’ said Midgley.
‘Go over to your dad’s,’ said his wife. ‘Mum’s falling over. Bye.’
‘What am I doing sat on this seat?’ said her mother, as she got her up. ‘I never sit on this seat. I don’t think I’ve ever sat on this seat before.’
IN THE MORNING Midgley was woken by Nurse Lightfoot banging on the steamed-up window of the van. It was seven o’clock.
‘I’m just going off,’ she was mouthing through the glass.
He wound down the window.
‘I’m just coming off. Isn’t it a grand morning? I’m going to have a big fried breakfast then go to bed. I’ll see you at teatime. You look terrible.’
Midgley looked at himself in the driving mirror, then started up the van and drove after her, hooting.
‘You’re not