lining to being in my position. To knowing what I am comfortable with, and being comfortable with who I am.
Only there are times, like now, when it is impossible to avoid going to new places and meeting new people.
When I reach the CCU nurses’ station, the staff are all busy. The wait gives me enough time to get anxious. I gently press in against the skin of my wrist, the folder I’m holding allowing me to do so unseen.
‘Can I help you at all?’ a receptionist asks me.
‘I have an appointment with Mr Ellington.’ I show them my ID.
‘This way, please.’
I’m guided into a unit with four beds, each with monitors set up. They are recording each individual’s heart rhythms. I’m familiar with their purpose and how they help, but I’ve never seen them in use with anyone other than a healthy subject. Here, in stereo, they are a cacophony and it feels as if my own heart rhythm is becoming irregular, knowing that the four rhythms I can hear aren’t in sync.
The gentleman lined up to become case study number five is wearing a pair of orange trousers and an unbuttoned patchwork jacket, his chest bare, making it easier for the leads to be attached to his body. He hasn’t noticed me yet at the end of his bed. He’s busy struggling to open a jar of something.
‘Blasted, effing thing,’ he grumbles, and looks ready to launch the item across the room before he sees me. ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Help, would you?’
‘I’m here for your appointment for the beetroot-juice trial.’ I say it quickly, to stop him from thinking I’m a member of staff. The jar looks like it contains some kind of specimen and it’s my kind of luck that he’s trying to open it despite it being full. I haven’t got the faintest clue what to do.
‘You have two hands, don’t you?’
I glance at my hands as if somehow my brain has neglected to remember that, indeed, I do have them. ‘Yes.’
‘So, if I’m doing this trial for you, it won’t hurt if you use those two hands to help me. See, I just can’t…’ Mr Ellington tries to get a purchase on the jar again, his bulbous joints sliding despite his attempts to grip. ‘It just won’t…’
There’s a golden liquid in the jar and for a long minute I stare as I struggle to catch up with what I’ve walked into.
‘Would you?’ he asks.
For the first time I see his eyes. They are blue. Marble-blue with tears forming, making them glisten like glass, as shiny as his bald head. I see them and I see beyond them, just for a fraction of a moment.
‘What’s in the jar?’ I croak, feeling as if he might have seen into me, the way I’ve just seen into him. ‘Because if it’s pee, I’m not helping you.’
‘Humph.’ Clive half-laughs, half-grunts and the sound gets stuck in his throat and it booms louder from there somehow. ‘What a ridiculous thing to say. I know this is the lowest ebb I’ve ever reached, but I’m not sat here cradling my own urine. My standards might be slipping, and I’ve no choice in these surroundings, but I’m not off my bloody rocker yet!’
‘It does look distinctly like it could be urine,’ I clarify, hoping that if I were to do a survey of the ward, I wouldn’t be the only person to jump to that conclusion. I refrain from actually carrying it out.
‘Come closer,’ Clive suggests.
I take three steps towards him so I’m closer, but not too close. I don’t take my eyes off him as I move, feeling fixed in his blue-marble gaze.
‘See,’ he says, as he shakes the jar for good measure.
There’s a sloshing sound and I wonder why the staff have thought it wise to leave this man in possession of his glass jar.
I glance at the contents. ‘What are they?’ There appear to be approximately (I don’t like dealing with approximates, but we’ll class this as an emergency) twenty-five eyeballs in the jar. I’m pretty certain three of them are winking.
‘Pickled onions. Best in England. Grew them myself and then my…’ Clive trails off, staring into the jar.
‘And you can’t open the jar? And you’d like me to?’ Relief floods over me now I know that I’m not dealing with a wee-in-a-jar situation.
I take the pot, lingering to examine the contents. There is a home-made label offering details of the onions’ vintage. I have a lot of