Number Ten by Sue Townsend

Author:Sue Townsend
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2001-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

At three a.m. the Prime Minister was admitted to Bevan observation ward. Jack helped an exhausted junior doctor to fill in an admission form then settled back in an armchair to watch over the Prime Minister as he drifted in and out of sleep. It was not quite bedlam on the ward—tickets could not have been sold to gawp at the patients—but there was constant noise and disturbance. Ex-sergeant major Doughty was in the bed opposite and he cried out constantly, thinking himself back in a pontoon about to land on a Normandy beach.

A woman in the next bay said, “Nurse, nurse, nurse!” But none of the angels came.

The suction-pipe man in the next bed put his head under the blankets and cried because of the pain and humiliation and the awful certainty that his wife would surely leave him now. He told Jack it was the second time this year that he had ‘fallen’ on to a suction pipe with his trousers round his ankles after the dog had accidentally turned the vacuum cleaner on in the bedroom. It stretched incredulity; even he had to admit that.

Jack was glad when the ward lights were turned on at six o’clock sharp. The Prime Minister woke and said that he felt much better, but he looked a fright. Jack passed him a lipstick and went in search of a razor.

The Prime Minister lay back against his pillows and watched a dowdy woman in an ill-fitting nylon overall pushing a rancid mop along the middle of the ward floor.

Ex-sergeant major Doughty shouted, “You should clean under the bed, that’s where the germs are!”

Jack bought a bag of Bic razors from the poorly stocked hospital shop, and then went outside to phone Ali on his mobile. Their bags were still at the hotel, and he asked Ali to pick them up and deliver them to the hospital, Bevan ward. Ali said he would do it as soon as he could, but he had to go to the mosque first.

When Jack returned to the ward, he found the Prime Minister talking to the wretched-looking woman with the mop.

“Jack, this is Pat, she’s been telling me about her impossible workload. She has to clean two wards all by herself in only three hours. Before they privatised the cleaning service, there were two of them on each ward and they had pride in their work and could even help the nurses. I’ll have to talk to the Department of Health when we get back.”

After he had shaved the Prime Minister, Jack arranged some flowers in a vase for a skeletal old woman who had only a few wisps of white hair on her pink head. “Have you been in here long?” Jack asked politely.

“Five weeks,” she said in a voice that resembled a child’s.

“I’m a bed-blocker—that’s what the doctor said when he last came to see me. He stood at the end of the bed and said to his students, “Mrs Alcott is a bed-blocker.” What

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