Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 7, Issue 2 by Carmel Bird

Author:Carmel Bird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Review of Australian Fiction
Published: 2013-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

She’s in hospital for seven days. For the first three, she sleeps, and on the fourth, when she wakes, she starts to cry and doesn’t stop.

On the sixth day she asks for water. She is so pale that he wonders if he should call a nurse, but she says she’s ok, and for the first time she sits upright in the bed.

It must be late, the corridors are quiet except for a woman collecting trays of untouched food, and the lights outside the door are dimmed. There’s no window in the room, and without any natural light it is only the rhythms of the staff which mark out the passage of time. Miles knows how the routine goes now: the visiting hours full of whispered conversations and rustling bags of fruit, meals with the smell of over-cooked meat and the irregular roll of the trolley. Through it all there are the visits of nurses in white and doctors with clipboards, who don’t notice he’s there, and the cleaners, who do, who swing their bleach-soaked mops more violently around him on the floor.

‘I kind of like it here. That’s weird, right?’

Beth almost smiles, but doesn’t meet his eye.

‘You are a little weird.’

‘There was someone from the shelterhere, while you were sleeping.’

Beth looks alarmed.

‘What did they say?’

‘The usual. Foster homes and shit.’

‘But not together?’

‘No.’ Before he can say more Beth slides back down into the bed. She rolls onto her side, so she’s facing the wall, and pulls the blanket up under her chin.

‘Have they said when they think I’ll be ok to go?’

‘No. Sorry. I don’t really know. Soon, I guess.’

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