The Night Following by Morag Joss

Author:Morag Joss [Morag Joss]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780715640326
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.

Dear Ruth

Re: legs.

Nurse whats-her-name and the other one came together today, ominous in itself and that was before I saw their faces. One came to the front door, the other was prying round the back. It doesn’t do anybody any good getting woken up like that, all in a fright. I’d nodded off in conservatory. They startled me, and that floor’s more slippery now. What are you using on it, they demanded to know. One of them was sliding her foot along it. You must be using something on it.

Told them to ask you, cleaning products being your department, and got the pursed lips. One wanted to go into the soft talk but I wasn’t having any. Treating me as if I was demented, I won’t have it. Mutterings about Community Psychiatric Services again, which I ignored as per.

The other one sits down and starts making notes. Home care review, she says. Goals, paperwork, drives them all mad. The first one gets me back in my chair and pinned down and does the legs. She launches into a lecture. Polishing the floor may be “unadvisable” as combo of wax and ceramic tiles can be extremely slippery. And there is such a thing as overdoing housework and would I please heed earlier advice about resting with legs up, and bear in mind risk of breaking skin on shins and infecting the ulcers if I’m charging around the place. Obviously a waste of breath on my part to try and explain again about you and the housework, they just don’t want to hear the facts.

Pigheaded young woman, actually—she didn’t take kindly to being corrected. The word is INadvisable not UNadvisable, I took some pleasure in pointing out, and she gave me one of those “who’s a naughty boy” looks and said there was no need to shout. I wasn’t shouting, which I also pointed out.

Actually the IN not UN business is more your kind of remark than mine, though you generally saved that kind of thing for later instead of coming out with it at the time. But it felt like it was you in my brain, and you talking. Don’t recall you ever tripping anyone up on this particular example, but it was you, all right.

I’m glad you’re speaking to them. I suppose you have to do it through me, at least for now. I wish you’d speak to them more. I wish you’d speak to them about my legs. Wouldn’t you think in this day and age they’d be able to do something? Other than squeezing them into elastic bandages, I mean, and that gunk they smear on.

You could get them to understand. You could get them to see I can’t be doing with the discomfort 24 hours a day and if I take the bandages off it’s only because I need a respite. They should try it for themselves, they’d soon see what I’m talking about. And if I forget to put the bandages back on I can’t see that affects anyone but me so why the bullying.

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