Writing from the Body week 2

Fingertips

They arrive on the bay with due status, as if a fanfare has blown. It’s the ward round. The Consultant, his Registrars, and in the rear,  the student doctors, one anxiously carrying a sheaf of papers whilst attempting to make notes of the words the Great God Consultant will  pronounce. All the faces gather around her bed – they don’t make any eye contact with her, look only at the torso as the nurses pull back the dressings. He pulls his disposable gloves on, and then uses his fingertips to poke around in her revealed insides, where the skin has gone, and open interior gapes.

‘See’ he says, pointing, ‘this thickening here means the wound is beginning to close from below, from the inside out. We have to hope that no infections is sealed in underneath.’

‘Hope’, she thinks. ‘We have to hope.’ Is that the best she can be offered?

‘Trust me’, his body language insists, ‘I am the God Consultant and I know what I’m doing’. And underneath she detects a small hint of fear, of not being in control anymore. That he knows, as she senses, that this could go either way – the body has its own agenda to heal or decay, and now he’s finishes cutting it about, he will no longer have any power over it.

He’s lost interest in her now he’s saved her life. His job is done. These messy consequences of his surgery are for the nursing staff, the wound team, who do treat her as a person, gently, and with care and sympathy. She has more faith in their reassurances that things will get better, will improve over time, than faith in the God consultant who has already left for a more interesting case…..

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the morning of 17th July 2007 I was particularly happy. Summer Term had just ended so I had 6 weeks of holiday from my Teaching Assistant job ahead, my husband was coming back from a 3 week research visit to Australia on Friday and my first grandchild was due in August. Life seemed very good – I was listening to Women's Hour, and my 16 year old son was asleep as usual upstairs. I felt a need to rush to the downstairs toilet and whilst sitting there fell forward with agonising and unexpected pain. I recall trying to shout my son's name but being able to do so only weakly. After what seemed like hours, he arrived sleepily at the toilet door and asked what was wrong. I replied 'this is the worst pain since childbirth' (already acknowledged in my family as the gold standard for pain after two 3 day labours!) and he said' better ring an ambulance then'……I recall a paramedic trying to open the toilet door to get to me, and then... I awoke 8 days later in Intensi
Read more

Short story course 2014

The Right Place Thom wasn’t one for moving unnecessarily, so sitting on the porch in the sun came easily to him. Which is how he came to be in just the right place at the right time. The stranger came up the street slowly, staring at each house intently as if trying to trigger some long-lost memory. It took him a good ten minutes to reach Thom’s porch which gave Thom long enough to get his story straight. The man was only about thirty, well-dressed, educated-looking, with an air of enthusiasm that Thom has left long behind. As he approached the porch, the stranger smiled and held out his hand.             “James Roberts” Thom chewed his tobacco slowly, nodded and reached forward to clasp the proffered hand.             ‘I’m looking for my family- they moved here in ’27, to Main Street, Hammond. I’m hoping to find someone who remembers them”             “Roberts” said Thom slowly, as if in deep thought and remembrance.             “Mary and John”, adde
Read more

Starting to write

I want to write but I don't know yet how to self-start so I'm using the blog as an imaginary teacher telling me that I have to produce some writing each day. I don't need it to be read but it would be a bonus. My first attempt is from a writing class where the participants were given a tomato - I've ended it too quickly I think with a rather woman's magazine story last line but I'm not sure where to go with it now - expand it to a normal short story length or not? Tomatoes She crossed tomatoes off her shopping list with an aching heart. He’d always loved them. As a baby, she’d pushed him down to the shops, her bag was too full and she’s rested the tomatoes in their plastic container on his lap as he seemed to be asleep. It was a long weary walk back up the hill to the house, and she was thinking of other things, so it wasn’t until she looked down at him as she opened the gate, that she realised they’d all gone – he had steadily and quietly eaten his way thro
Read more