The End of the World

‘This is “greetings” in Tai Chi.’ Uncle Bill wraps his fist in his hand, elbows bent out to the sides, then steps back, raising his arms in front of him. ‘And ready to fight!’

He leaps out of the way of a nurse pushing a commode. ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Watching Nana’s life slowly drain away through her rectum, he’s falling apart. I might fall apart too, I suppose. Eventually. Probably at some inconvenient point, like when my phone dies or when they’ve sold out of the only sandwich under three hundred calories at the airport.

I almost did already in the ward toilet. A forgotten bedpan, brimming with thick, straw-coloured liquid, a single clot of blood suspended in it like a fossil in amber, made me retch. I fought the nausea down and forced myself to stare at the speck of blood while I emptied my bladder. Everyone is leaking fluids all the time. Some are a sign of health and vitality, and some, like the ones seeping slowly from Nana’s bowels, mean the opposite.

You’d never know she’s leaking away to talk to her, though. In conversation she’s even jollier than ever. She’s enjoying telling us the details of her procedures and investigations, her observations on her fellow inmates. The woman in the bed opposite is common as muck, just lies around all day with her legs akimbo, everything on display, keeps getting out of bed and wandering off, catheter bag in hand, probably looking for drugs. The grey-haired Scottish lady opposite appears to be running a business from her bed. Amazon packages arrive every few hours; her visitors pick them up and take them away. Might be drugs. Then there’s the Black evangelical minister who led a service in the corridor outside the ward at three in the morning before hopping around on all fours and then scrabbling around under her bed and blessing them all with holy water.

A nurse comes to change Nana’s bloodied incontinence pads, ushers us all out and draws the curtain round the bed. Uncle Bill disappears into the corridor, scrolling on his phone; Dad and I linger in the doorway until the stench becomes too much. I feel for the slovenly exhibitionist and the entrepreneurial Glaswegian, who have no choice but to lie there and inhale. Maybe the closer you get to it yourself, the less the smell of it bothers you. Maybe it becomes indistinguishable from your own scent. I step out into the corridor, pull out my phone too and lean against the wall. Uncle Bill ignores me. Instagram won’t load, nor TikTok. Not even the Guardian. He’s not really reading, he’s just pretending to scroll so I won’t talk to him.

Dad comes out a few minutes later, the smell leaking out through the door as he opens it. He’s shaking his head, running his tongue over his teeth. Now Dad will ask Bill what the doctors said, even though Nana has just told him what the doctors said and there’s no reason to think she doesn’t know what’s going on, other than perhaps the story about the minister. Then Bill will repeat everything Nana just said, minus the minister, and Dad will shake his head and run his tongue over his teeth some more, and then contemplate how much longer they’ll keep her in, whether social services will stick their oar in, and at some point he’ll make the mistake of asking what Jim thinks. Then Bill will get fidgety and say it doesn’t matter what Jim thinks, Jim isn’t here, Jim is in Majorca drinking sangria on a beach and just because he’s the eldest doesn’t mean he knows what’s best for Nana, and then he’ll disappear down the corridor pretending to be doing something important on his phone again. Then Dad will comment that Bill is odd, and I’ll say probably neurodivergent, maybe mentally unwell, and Dad will roll his eyes and I’ll wonder if Dad thinks I’m odd too, then remember that Dad has forgotten my entire adolescence. Then I’ll go back to playing on my phone as well, ignoring Dad’s teeth-licking and head-shaking until he cracks and goes back in to see Nana to escape.

It’s the last time I’ll see Nana, but there doesn’t seem much point in staying. It’s nothing personal, it isn’t that I don’t care about Nana’s demise in particular, I just have overall death fatigue. There have just been too many to keep track of. And Nana’s not really herself anymore, let’s be honest. It will only be a matter of time before she starts tutting about what the world is coming to, commenting on the colour of the doctor’s skin and the women in hijab on their way to visit a relative, making a box for her eyes with her thumbs and forefingers. Or maybe this is who she was all along and I never noticed until now. I pop my head through the door, holding my breath and waving. She’s covered in wires like a defunct puppet. She waves back, but behind the smile she’s thinking what a shame it is, how I’ve turned out, immoral and lacking backbone. Probably a good thing my mother’s not around to see it.

It’s sunny outside; pyjamaed smokers sit on a bench by the ambulance bays, their faces turned up to the light. I sit down in an empty space next to a woman my age in a pink satin dressing gown, her arm hooked up to a drip. The woman offers me a cigarette, but I decline. Dad might be out soon and I don’t want him knowing I smoke occasionally. He would get disproportionately angry about it because he’s upset about Nana and refuse to speak to me, like he did when Mum was dying and he found out about me sneaking off to Lizz’s house. He pretends he’s forgotten that too.

I inhale the woman’s fumes, close my eyes and let the warmth of the sun seep into my skin. I’m really cold. How can I be cold? It’s at least twenty degrees out here, probably even warmer on the ward. It isn’t the rational kind of cold that you feel in winter, though. I could just walk home without Dad, curl up in my bed with a hot water bottle and close my eyes, breathe until my blood is flowing again and my jaw relaxes. I have my keys. But that would upset him too. Safer to wait. I won’t be here much longer anyway. Tomorrow we’ll take a trip to the coast, walk along the promenade, he’ll talk about the research he’s been doing on Ancestry.com, then insist on paying far too much for bad coffee in one of the new restaurants that have colonised the small town that used to be a string of retirement homes and charity shops, now transformed into a magnet for retirees who lucked out on the property market down south and moved back home to spend their windfalls, decline and death still a decade or three away. We’ll tell each other how nice this is, and I’ll make promises about coming back again before too long. Then on Wednesday morning I’ll have a brief battle with my conscience about whether I should visit her again or just let the story about the evangelical minister be my parting memory of her. Dad will drive me to the airport, I’ll hug him goodbye and he’ll make a swift departure to avoid paying for the car park.

My companion stubs out her cigarette and gives me a nod, then stands up to leave, pulling her IV pole along beside her. She’s left the packet on the bench, I notice, when she’s already out of earshot. Normally I’d chase her, but maybe letting her go is the morally responsible choice. There are two left. I take one out and roll it between my fingers, then rest it between my lips. The paper sticks; it tastes like the earth. I slip it into my pocket.