Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop by Amy Witting Page A

mumbling about?’
    ‘Says she isn’t a bloody xylophone, sir.’
    ‘Oh. Well, it’s still no laughing matter.’
    ‘No, sir. Sorry.’
    Then she woke up to morning light and found herself in a little tented room with walls of heavy white cloth. There was a nurse standing beside her bed.
    ‘So you’re with us, are you? About time, too.’
    ‘How long?’
    ‘How long have you been here? Just the neat forty hours. You came in on Wednesday night. If you call that coming in—not under your own steam, I assure you. What were you doing, wandering about town in a high fever?’
    It was too difficult to explain.
    ‘I just thought I had a bit of ’flu.’
    ‘Well, I can’t offer you anything to eat yet. Doctor wants a specimen of your sputum before you take anything by mouth. Want the pan?’
    ‘Yes, please.’
    One had to remember that one was only a parcel. Parcels can have no pride.
    ‘Right. And I’ll see about the jar for the sputum.’
    What was sputum? The nurse departed. Something one spat, of course.
    The nurse came back carrying a huge china shoe. She slipped it into the bed and sat Isobel on it and left again. Isobel considered her situation. She was clean and smelt of soap. She was wearing an extraordinary flowing garment of pink cotton which seemed to have no back to it. She investigated and found that it was fastened with tapes at the back from neck to waist. Below the waist it hung free. What an odd arrangement. Very convenient of course for sitting where she was sitting at the moment.
    The nurse came back and set down on the cabinet beside the bed a small screw-top jar still warm and shining from the steriliser.
    Bright and brisk, she said, ‘Finished?’ She removed the pan, peered at the contents and frowned. ‘Doctor says you’re to cough up from as deep as you can and close the jar straight away. Okay? After that I can get you something to eat.’
    If I wasn’t a parcel, thought Isobel, I’d be wondering what this was about. It was all too much trouble.
    Coughing proved difficult, extremely painful and quite exhausting. She spat the small trophy into the jar, closed it as hastily as if she were trapping an insect and lay back on her pillow.
    ‘You finished?’
    The nurse must have been waiting outside.
    ‘Yes.’
    The nurse came in, picked up the jar, saying, ‘Doctor’s waiting for this,’ put it in her pocket and departed.
    She must have pulled a cord as she left, for the curtain walls rolled away and Isobel appeared as it were on centre stage to the sound of a cheer and gentle hand-clapping.
    ‘She made it! She made it!’
    ‘Good on you, kid!’
    There were five other beds in the room, all of them occupied by women who were to Isobel voices rather than faces, though each face was turned towards her with a look of beaming goodwill.
    ‘You were all very quiet,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t know there was anyone there.’
    ‘We were afraid of disturbing you, love,’ said her neighbour. ‘Sister said this morning you were in a natural sleep and we didn’t want to wake you.’
    ‘That was very kind of you.’
    ‘Did you know what was happening? They had a specialist come in from North Shore last night. Doctor told Sister that you were reacting and it looked like you were coming round.’
    ‘I got bits and pieces,’ she said.
    ‘Well, you better keep quiet for a while. Don’t tire yourself.’
    There was a rumbling noise as a trolley approached, and appeared, pushed by a gangling, fair-haired young man in a white coat.
    ‘Breakfast!’
    He pushed the trolley into the centre of the room and began to distribute bowls of dry cereal.
    He approached then with a large jug of milk and poised it above the bowl on the table which spanned Isobel’s bed.
    She looked at the bowl and shook her head.
    ‘The sooner you eat, the sooner you’re on your feet,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t bully her, Eric. She can’t eat what she doesn’t fancy. What else have you got under those