something that people rarely appreciate until it happens: the sense of safety, of not needing to blockade. She thinks about how easily people now put up walls here, after they’ve been through it. The shops she passes have small steps to enter them and trenches dug along the roadside gutters. Everything seems to have been elevated a few feet. This part of the city, when it was constructed, floated on the water, and there are still the remnants of the parts that were lost when the flood came: the offices that were wrenched away from their moorings, somehow, and collapsed into the sea, toppling onto boats, the masts tearing through the windows and spilling out the guts of the desks and computers and people inside. Even now, that part of the city is bypassed and cordoned off, despite it being years since it happened. Still, in the water, you can see the computers and ruined chairs from the offices under the water, sitting far below the docks.
From here Beth enters the station, where her train is waiting, and she finds a seat and stares out of the window. She’s become accustomed to not doing anything on these journeys, because she finds herself too distracted. On the occasions she tried to read a book, she had forgotten about whole characters by the time she boarded her return train. It wasn’t worth it in the end.
After the train she fights through Victoria station, and to the underground. The tube is filled with stale air, recycled a seemingly infinite amount of times, pumped out in what is claimed to be cold air, but only
tastes
cold, somehow, and is still warm at its core. She can tell as she walks through the stations: how out of breath she gets just fighting her way to the escalators. Everybody around Beth sweats. By the time she reaches Richmond it’s a relief, even just to step out onto the high street. It’s busy already, but she turns away from the shops and towards where it looks more residential. Three turnings away and over the bridge and past the little shops and she’s there.
The sign in the front garden proclaims it to be a CENTRE, though Beth knows different. It’s a hospice, really. She would argue that the patients are all terminal, because they’re like this until they die. Any chance of them being treated by this new technique is slim to none; if they’re the right patient, and if the company decides that the technology is up to it, then maybe. Probably not, though. Saturdays are visiting days, and she has to sign in. She has to show ID and be scanned, so she places her bag on the table and stands where she’s meant to and lets them check she’s not dangerous. She has no idea why anybody would want to bring a weapon into this place. The school, that’s a risk. Once a year the news rings out with another story about somebody murdering their classmates. Nobody ever murders the handicapped and dying.
In the hospice itself, Beth knows the way to Vic’s room. There are coloured lines on the floor to lead visitors. Green to the gardens; black to the storeroom in the eaves, where they keep old Machines, in case they should ever need them; sandy yellow to the private rooms. Beth follows this last line up the stairs and to the left. She pays for a room of his own, where so many of them are in larger wards, four or six to a room, divided only by thin cotton curtains. There’s an argument among the families of those in here that private rooms are unfair, because not everybody can afford the subsidies. They’re all in the same boat, goes the argument; and besides, they don’t know any different. She pays the subsidy, despite the rising prices, because it gives them privacy.
When he’s back to being himself, Beth thinks, he’ll appreciate that I did it. What it gave him. That space to be alone, and to be himself.
Vic’s room is the same colour as the rest of the hospice. A thin grey paint, a white dado rail, a white skirting. The furniture is hospital standard, with a white wire-frame bed locked
From here Beth enters the station, where her train is waiting, and she finds a seat and stares out of the window. She’s become accustomed to not doing anything on these journeys, because she finds herself too distracted. On the occasions she tried to read a book, she had forgotten about whole characters by the time she boarded her return train. It wasn’t worth it in the end.
After the train she fights through Victoria station, and to the underground. The tube is filled with stale air, recycled a seemingly infinite amount of times, pumped out in what is claimed to be cold air, but only
tastes
cold, somehow, and is still warm at its core. She can tell as she walks through the stations: how out of breath she gets just fighting her way to the escalators. Everybody around Beth sweats. By the time she reaches Richmond it’s a relief, even just to step out onto the high street. It’s busy already, but she turns away from the shops and towards where it looks more residential. Three turnings away and over the bridge and past the little shops and she’s there.
The sign in the front garden proclaims it to be a CENTRE, though Beth knows different. It’s a hospice, really. She would argue that the patients are all terminal, because they’re like this until they die. Any chance of them being treated by this new technique is slim to none; if they’re the right patient, and if the company decides that the technology is up to it, then maybe. Probably not, though. Saturdays are visiting days, and she has to sign in. She has to show ID and be scanned, so she places her bag on the table and stands where she’s meant to and lets them check she’s not dangerous. She has no idea why anybody would want to bring a weapon into this place. The school, that’s a risk. Once a year the news rings out with another story about somebody murdering their classmates. Nobody ever murders the handicapped and dying.
In the hospice itself, Beth knows the way to Vic’s room. There are coloured lines on the floor to lead visitors. Green to the gardens; black to the storeroom in the eaves, where they keep old Machines, in case they should ever need them; sandy yellow to the private rooms. Beth follows this last line up the stairs and to the left. She pays for a room of his own, where so many of them are in larger wards, four or six to a room, divided only by thin cotton curtains. There’s an argument among the families of those in here that private rooms are unfair, because not everybody can afford the subsidies. They’re all in the same boat, goes the argument; and besides, they don’t know any different. She pays the subsidy, despite the rising prices, because it gives them privacy.
When he’s back to being himself, Beth thinks, he’ll appreciate that I did it. What it gave him. That space to be alone, and to be himself.
Vic’s room is the same colour as the rest of the hospice. A thin grey paint, a white dado rail, a white skirting. The furniture is hospital standard, with a white wire-frame bed locked
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