Dead Romantic by Ruth Saberton

nurses if they can get her to stop but they don’t seem worried, preferring to take my pulse or tend to the rest of the patients. They’ve completely ignored her, poor old soul. It’s just as well I’m here to chat to her. I guess Susie was right when she once told me that there’s no time to care in the caring profession.
    Where is Susie, anyway? She’s supposed to be coming over, hopefully to take me home if I can find someone to discharge me.
    “Are you all right, pet?” asks Knitting Lady, peering at me over a tangle of cat-sick-yellow wool. “You look at bit peaky.”
    “I’m fine, just a bit tired.”
    I can’t really tell her I’m exhausted from listening to her clicking needles all night and I certainly can’t mention how I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eyes. If the doctors get so much of a whiff that I’m having visions they’ll never let me out, and so far I’ve done a sterling job of pretending I feel fine. I’ve even laughed off thinking I saw a man at the foot of my bed when I woke up. “Ha! Ha! As if!”, “In my dreams!”, “I should be so lucky!” etc., etc., which I think has just about convinced them.
    But Alex was so real, just as real as Knitting Lady smiling at me over her needles or as the elderly doctor who walks up and down the ward all day and night, only pausing to pore over the charts that hang on the foot of each bed.
    “Excuse me!” I call. “Can you discharge me?”
    But the doctor ignores me, as he has done for every lap of the ward. Charming.
    “Don’t mind him, dear,” Knitting Lady sighs. “He doesn’t mean to be rude. He’s obsessed with making sure he doesn’t miss anything important. It worries him that he could make another mistake.”
    “It worries me I might be stuck here forever,” I mutter.
    “There are worse places,” she smiles.
    I’m sure she’s right but I’ve got so much work to do. I managed to get Susie to liberate my laptop, so that’s something. Simon’s phoned twice and updated me on the preparations for the exhibition and offered to come and visit too. I haven’t taken him up on this; I may have had a wallop on the head but the memory of him seeing me in my red and white spotty pants is mortifyingly fresh. Where’s a nice spot of amnesia when a girl needs it?
    “Cleo, babes! How are you feeling?”
    It’s Susie, stomping across the ward in platform boots.
    “I feel much better,” I tell her. “I’m hoping to go home today.”
    Susie’s brow crinkles. “Is that a good idea? You’ve had–”
    “I know, I know; a really nasty bump on the head. But I’m going crazy in here, Suse! I need to get home. There’s only so much daytime telly a girl can watch.”
    “There is?” Susie looks amazed, but then she would. Phil, Holly and Jeremy Kyle are practically her best friends.
    “Suse, do me a favour?” I say, leaning across to my bedside cupboard and delving for my clothes. “While I get dressed would you be an angel and grab that old doctor for me? I’ve been calling him for ages but he keeps ignoring me. I think he’s a bit deaf actually.”
    “What doctor?” Susie screws up her eyes and scans the room. I wish she’d stop being so vain and admit she needs glasses. Not only is her short-sightedness bloody annoying but it also makes driving with her a hair-raising experience on a par with anything offered at Alton Towers.
    “He’s over there at the end of the ward, by the nurses’ station?”
    Susie shakes her head. “Where?”
    “She can’t see him, dear,” pipes up Knitting Lady.
    “Susie needs glasses,” I sigh. “But that doctor does too because he’s ignored me all morning.”
    Susie whips round. “What did you say?”
    “I wasn’t talking to you; I was talking to her,” I say, nodding at my fellow patient.
    “Who?”
    Blimey, I hadn’t realised just how bad Susie’s eyes have got. Once I’m better I’m dragging her down to Specsavers because this is ridiculous.
    “The lady next