The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1754 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“Was that the new cook?” he asked brushing past me as I held the door open.

“That’s David, yes.”

“Has he been cooking?”

“Yes, you’ve arrived just in time for a taster.”

“Oh good, let me get changed and washed and I’ll be straight down for it. What is it?”

“Baked chicken with mushrooms.”

“Sounds interesting–hmmm–smells good, too.” He dashed upstairs and I thought I'd see if we did have any zinc tablets or not, so I followed him up. I was out of breath when I got upstairs.

He heard me puffing and shook his head.

“I’ll be okay in a few days, I expect. I’m just out of condition.” I said in between breaths, the look he gave me showed he wasn’t convinced.

I went into the bathroom and found the little pot of zinc tablets and popped one.

“What’re you taking?”

“Zinc.”

“Isn’t that what they use for galvanising steel?”

“Yep, and if it galvanised me right now, I’d be most grateful.”

“D’you want me to cancel the ferry?”

I sat on the bed, “I don’t know what I want other than to feel like me. At the moment I feel like an old woman.”

“We don’t have to go away, we could stay here or even pop up to Dad’s place and have a real break for few days.”

“I always spoil it, don’t I?” I started to sniff.

He sat alongside me and put his arm round me, “No you don’t, besides you can’t help getting ill.”

“I feel so guilty, you’ve spent so much and this is how I repay you.” By now I was producing huge blobs of scalding water, or it felt like that as it dripped down my face and onto my lap.

“Cathy, it’s only money–and we do own a bank.” He joked but I dissolved into tears and sobbed all over him.

“I hate my body, it always lets me down.”

“Don’t be silly, you have a lovely body–I don’t get enough of it–perhaps I should rephrase that?”

I almost laughed at his mistake, instead I snorted and then had to wipe my nose–all very romantic. He must love me because he didn’t throw up nor run away. Then I got hiccups, so he held me patting my back like a baby.

“You, missus, are the most precious thing in my life, so what is a few quid by comparison to the woman I love?”

Instead of cheering me up that caused me to start sobbing again much to his bewilderment. When he says he can’t understand women, he means it. He held me for a bit longer and I suddenly remembered the dinner. Unlike the pills that did galvanise me into action, and I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and after telling him to hurry, dashed downstairs. Once again, I had to rest a moment before I could do anything.

The meal was delicious, though I couldn’t eat very much–perhaps just as well as Simon and Tom ate most of it. Essentially, it was a very simple dish, a boned chicken in a tin of mushroom soup with a pile of sliced mushrooms laid on top, baked for a couple of hours and served with new potatoes, carrots and whole green beans. In some ways I was pleased to see David used shortcuts such as the cream of mushroom soup for a quick sauce. I do it with pasta bakes all the time, so my cupboard usually has a three or four tins.

During the night, I felt worse and had to sit up in bed to breathe. I also felt very hot. Simon happened to wake up for a wee when he saw me wheezing sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Are you alright?” he asked when it was obvious I wasn’t. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

I couldn’t speak–I didn’t have the breath. He jumped out of bed ran to the loo and stripped off his pyjamas. He dressed very quickly and the next moment he wrapped me in a dressing gown and half led me and half carried me down the stairs.

About fifteen minutes later we were in the QA and a junior doctor was examining me. He pronounced a chest infection and they had me on oxygen while they wheeled me down for an X-ray. It was two o’clock in the morning and I was supposed to be going on holiday in a couple of day’s time, my children were going that day. However, I felt so awful, I couldn’t think of anything much at all.

An hour later, I was having a drip installed and they whacked in a massive dose of penicillin. I had pneumonia, no wonder I felt like warmed up shit. I wanted to go home but the doctor persuaded Simon that I should stay at least overnight so the chest consultant could see me.

They thought they were out of my hearing. “I’m worried, she has a patch on her lung.”

“Is that where she was stabbed?”

“Stabbed? When?”

“About a year or to now, we were out cycling and some nutter stabbed her as we went past.”

“I must have missed that.” He picked up my notes and started leafing through them. I don’t know what happened next but a couple of porters came and took me up to the ward. Simon walked with me. I felt exhausted but asked him to go home and rest because he needed to make sure the kids took all they needed.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine–you just get well, I’ll be in to see you in the morning.”

I got dumped in a four bed unit. I couldn’t lie down–well I could but I couldn’t breathe if I did. I was raised into a semi reclining position with the back rest and some pillows. I hate hospitals when I’m well, when I’m ill they’re awful places.

For the rest of the night–ha, rest–that’s a misnomer. Some old biddy was shouting the odds most of the night. I’d doze off and she’d wake me up. Then another one tried to get into bed with me. She was looking for her mother–she must have been seventy if she was a day. Thinking about it again, perhaps I did look old enough to be her mother, I certainly felt it.

The other intrusions were the nurses checking my temperature and blood pressure, oh and at one point changing the drip and injecting more antibiotics. They’d got some sputum from me and were adding a new one. I still felt like nothing on earth, I was wheezing and crackling when I breathed and my chest felt tight and sore. I honestly began to wonder if I was going to die.

It might have been a dream or just some delirium, I couldn’t tell you; I was lying in the bed when Billie came to see me. My heart leapt. “Hello, darling, how nice to see you.”

“No it isn’t, Mummy, you’re not supposed to be here yet.”

“Be where? What d’you mean?”

“You have work to do.”

“I know children to raise, students to educate, dormice to count–lots of things to do.”

“No, Mummy, you have work to do for the goddess.”

“Don’t be silly, there are no gods or goddesses, that’s just medieval superstition.”

“Go back and get well, you need to be well to do the work.”

“What work?”

She pushed me and I seemed to fall through the bed.

I awoke with a nurse standing by the side of me, “What’s the problem, Mrs Cameron?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were calling, Billie–who’s Billie?”

“My daughter, she died last year. She was here.”

“What she died here?”

“No she died in a field, she had an aneurysm in the brain, she died instantly.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But she was here, talking to me.”

“That might be the pneumonia or the antibiotics, they can make you feel strange at times. Just rest, have a little drink and lie back and rest.”

She settled me down again and I cried myself to sleep.