The To Do List

Twelve

I know I'm in a hospital as soon as I open my eyes. They all smell the

same, and the line hooked into my arm is achingly familiar. I try to sit up in

bed, but my head crashes and bile rises in my throat.

A nurse rushes over with a cardboard bowl, but she's too late. Most of

it goes over me and the sheets.

"Never mind," she says. "We'll soon have that cleaned up."

She wipes my mouth, then helps me roll onto my side so that she can

untie my nightgown.

"Doctor'll be here soon," she says.

Nurses never tell you what they know. They're hired for their

cheeriness and the thickness of their hair. They need to look alive and

healthy, to give the patients something to aim for.

She chats as she helps me on with a fresh gown, tells me she used to

live near the ocean in South Africa, says, "The sun is closer to the earth

there, and it's always hot."

She whisks the bed sheets from under me and conjures up fresh ones.

"I get such cold feet in England," she says. "Now, let's roll you back again.

Ready? That's it, all done. Ah, and what good timing – the doctor's here."

He's bald and white and middle-aged. He greets me politely and drags

a chair over from under the window to sit by the bed. I keep hoping that in

some hospital somewhere in this country I'll bump into the perfect doctor,

but none of them are ever right. I want a magician with a cloak and wand,

or a knight with a sword, someone fearless. This one is as bland and polite

as a salesman.

"Tessa," he says, "do you know what hypercalcaemia is?"

"If I say no, can I have something else?"

He looks bemused, and that's the trouble – they never quite get the

joke. I wish he had an assistant. A clown would be good, someone to tickle

him with feathers while he delivers his medical opinion.

He flips through the chart on his lap. "Hypercalcaemia is a condition

where your calcium levels become very high. We're giving you

bisphosphonates, which will bring those levels down. You should be feeling

much less confused and nauseous already."

"I'm always confused," I tell him.

"Do you have any questions?"

He looks expectantly at me and I hate to disappoint him, but what

could I possibly ask this ordinary little man?

He tells me the nurse will give me something to help me sleep. He

stands up and gives a nod goodbye. This is the point where the clown

would lay a trail of banana skins to the door, then come and sit with me on

the bed. Together we'd laugh at the doctor's backside as he scurries away.