A hand placed gently on a shoulder...and left there. A slight movement to and fro as a mother might make to comfort a child.
Few words are said. A quiet, murmured 'Je sais, je sais' (I know, I know)'
Tears roll silently down the face of the woman receiving the gentle words. The pain is all-consuming today. The hopelessness and loneliness too.
She sits in a metal chair by her bed, attached to a drip. Her feet are bare and her toes are blue. The table at her bedside has no cards or flowers or fruit, no photographs, no books or magazines; just a jug of water.
She has no visitors. The staff told us this, and we know it too, because last week, in a moment of clarity, she told of a dead daughter, a dead husband, dead friends.
'All gone' she said. And the hugeness of her loneliness and her emptiness and her sadness made it difficult to know what to say. But we held her hand, and talked of her garden and of springtime and of birds and sunshine and told her we would see her next week.
The staff here in this busy Brussels hospital are attentive and kind but swift of foot and quick to move on. They care..but don't have the time to spend too much time doing it.
So others are stepping in to fill the void. A group of volunteers - the man with her, Arnaud, is one of them - gather at the hospital three times a week, organising themselves into a rota.
They push a trolley round the geriatric wards, offering tea, coffee, the occasional little cake when supplies and funds allow. Above all they offer the single most glorious gift they have within their power to bestow. Human kindness.
The woman Arnaud tends to has not opened her eyes today, she makes no effort to wipe away the tears that have settled into the wrinkles of her thin, gaunt, shadowed face. But at his presence there is a change in her demeanour, a relaxing. Her head tilts slightly towards his hand and it's clear she knows he is there.
Around them is the bustle of a hospital ward at visiting time: nurses, orderlies, daughters, sons, grandchildren, illicit mobile phone chatter.
Yet there seems a bubble separating this man and this old woman from the rest of the world. A peacefulness. We leave them there, together.
'We do what we can, we can only do what we can...if we can make just a little difference....' he says later.
In the next room we find a patient roundly berating a cleaner doing the rounds with one of those big circular sweeping floor polishers. She's cross because she can't hear the TV. The cleaner rolls her eyes at us and carries on regardless.
The woman's mood changes as does the subject of her ranting, when she finds out I'm British.
'Why you have Camilla?' she says. 'Why? You are fools to let her into your royal family. Camilla is bonkers...I Do. Not. Like. Her! Nobody like her! Why you British like her?'
She speaks in carefully enunciated but staccatoed English. 'Bonkers! Bonkers! She bonkers, you English bonkers to let her in!' and then she twirls each index finger at her temple. 'Bonkers!' She snorts and sniggers and gives such a stonking belly laugh that we have to readjust her oxygen mask.
She pauses a moment, reflects.
She sits bolt upright, demurely accepting a cup of cafe noir, pressing her lips to the hot liquid.
A Parisian unwillingly in Belgium. She came 53 years ago to be with her now-dead husband but hates the place. Any attempt to put the city in a positive light results in a dismissive wave of the hand and a sound that could only come from a Parisian...a kind of scornful 'pffffh'.
So we turn the conversation to the city she describes as 'the greatest and most beautiful in the world' and her eyes shine as she speaks of Montmartre, the Champs Elysees, her memories of the Eiffel tower, of a childhood heady with sunshine and joy.
Then she adjusts her flannelette nightie and fingers the ruffled neckline.
The ward is oppressively, fuggily hot. The world outside seems a long way away.
'I know where Diana died, I go to the bridge and I remember her,' she says, lowering her voice, gesturing that I move closer to her. 'I think they kill her,' she hisses conspiratorially.
She takes another gasp of oxygen and her chest rises high and falls.
In the bed next to her, a woman lies hollow cheeked, open-mouthed, eyes wide but seemingly unaware. She groans, coughs sharply, spittle flying from her mouth.
Her arms are heavily bruised, her bare, skinny legs protrude from the sheets. One of the volunteers, Adilah, is with her. She gently adjusts the blankets and wipes the moisture from her cheeks. She takes her hand, more bone than skin and gently rubs it between her palms.
The rest of us move on and find Marlene sitting in a chair next to her bed. It's her birthday, her 92nd. She's here because she had a fall at home and has a pot on her arm and leg. She's fretting about who will do the gardening and how she will manage when she gets home.
She points at the ceiling when she talks about her long-dead husband and we celebrate her birthday with a cup of tea and a petite Madeleine in a plastic wrapper.
'I lived through two world wars,' she says, in a voice that suggests 'so think on!' And we do.
And the hours pass and the team moves from room to room, ward to ward, chatting, consoling, supporting, and it is an honour and a privilege to be with them.
At the far end of the last ward is a woman so tiny and dainty she is almost doll-like. The small hospital bed seems huge against her.
She is reclined, just so, on top of the blankets, in a floral-patterned, quilted dressing gown fastened up to the neck. She has purple fluffy slippers on her neatly placed feet and her hands are carefully folded across her middle.
She might appear serene and calm - but her eyes give her away. They are filled with anxiety and something else...hope. She looks constantly to the window, as if thinking she might see something, or someone, important there.
Then, as we approach the bed, she sees me and everything changes. She smiles with what seems to be relief - a huge, delightful gummy smile.
'My daughter, my daughter, I was so scared you would not come. I was so scared...' And she repeats this. 'so scared so scared so scared..you have comeyouhavecome...at last...'
And I don't contradict her and I sit on the bed with her and hold her hand. And she talks and talks and rambles and chatters and I cannot understand all she says...but she grips my hand with such strength and her eyes shine.
With Arnaud's guidance I lift her to a sitting position, gently feed her juice through a cup with a spout, and hold her paper-thin hand as she speaks to the daughter who is not here, through me.
It is hard to leave her and to release the iron-like grasp on my hand, but I do, gently, and tell her I will be back to see her again.
As we leave I look back at her, perhaps to wave. But it's clear I am forgotten. Her gaze has shifted, hopefully, longingly, to the window once more.
xxx
* For more information on the hospital volunteering programme and other ways to volunteer visit www.servethecity.be.
"A movement of volunteers serving cities in practical ways & inspiring people to be givers in this world. We believe that many people doing small things together can make a big difference in our world"
No comments:
Post a Comment