Diary fragment · 2 min read ·
Ward Nine Pocket Book
A night nurse on a long-stay ward keeps a pocket book of her patients' small requests, and each request is granted by a patient who has been asleep for years.
- dated: The last week of the summer rota
- narrator: Agnes Rowe, staff nurse
- reliability: unreliable
Monday, 2 a.m. Bed 4, Mrs Blackwood, asked for a glass of water. I gave her one. She has not spoken since 1994. She drank it very slowly and then said, "Thank you, love, that's the one." Her chart says she is nil by mouth.
Monday, 4 a.m. Bed 11, Mr Tully, asked me to open the window. The window is painted shut. I went to try it and found it already open a crack, with a cool breeze coming in smelling of cut grass. Mr Tully said he could see the cricket from there. He has been in a coma for eleven years.
Tuesday, 1 a.m. Bed 7, Miss Ellery, asked whether her sister had come. I said I would check. In the corridor I found a visitor's chair pulled up to the foot of the bed, with a cardigan folded on the seat. Nobody has been allowed to visit Miss Ellery since the trial.
Tuesday, 3 a.m. Rang the bell for the night sister. No answer. The corridor lights flickered and a voice from the nurses' station said, quite pleasantly, "She's just popped out, love. I'll take the request." It was my own voice. I have never heard myself so calm.
Wednesday, 2 a.m. Bed 4 again. Mrs Blackwood asked for her hairbrush. I found it in the locker, where I had put it myself at the start of the shift and forgotten. She brushed her hair slowly for a long time and then smiled at the ceiling and said, "He's coming up the stairs, you know. Let him in."
Thursday. Took the pocket book to the day sister and asked if she had seen the entries. She said they were the best examples of patient-centred care she had read this year, and that she had marked them for the trust newsletter. Then she asked me, in a quiet voice, whether I had been granting requests on my own time, and whether I had noticed that every single one of them was for something the patient could no longer ask for.
I have not answered her. Tonight I am going up the back stairs to bed 4, with a glass of water and a hairbrush, and I am not going to knock.