A Different Day
By Seán McNicholl
‘Joe.’
Today is a good day, he thinks. She knows my name.
‘In a minute,’ he calls over his shoulder.
He reaches for the last dregs of his now-cold tea, empties the cup, and returns it to the centre of the spill his tremor had caused when the tea was still hot. A small groan escapes him as he rises, and shuffling steps bring him across the kitchen, passing through the low December sun that shivers its way through the single-paned glass. He pulls his overcoat tight, pressing the soft fuzz of his dressing gown into his neck. He slows himself as he pops open her blister pack, fighting each jolt and jerk, counting each tablet into his open palm.
None on the floor today.
‘Joe.’ Her voice is louder now, pitched, frightened, and is followed by a harsh, heavy cough.
‘Coming, coming.’
His feet drag him from the kitchen to the living room where the warmth of the low fire keeps the chill at bay.
Her gnarled hands clutch at the rails of her hospital bed, and she leans herself forward off the pillows, a ghost of herself beneath the sheets. He doesn’t know when he stopped recognising her as his wife; the change was so slow — the greys, the wrinkles, the bones jutting through her cheeks, the empty eyes.
‘Joe!’
‘I’m here.’
‘Who are you?’ She hunches herself away from him, like a rat backed into a corner.
‘It’s me. Joe.’
‘You’re not Joe. My Joe is handsome. You’re an ugly old bollocks. Where’s Joe?’
He rolls his eyes and clucks his tongue, resuming his tottered steps to her bedside.
Not a good day then.
‘Here.’ He keeps his hand close to his body, fearful of scattering the tablets should he reach too far.
‘What’s that?’
‘Your tablets.’
‘Hmm.’ She takes them with clawed fingers, the uncut nails scoring his palm.
‘Here’s your water.’
He watches the trickles run from the corners of her mouth and drip onto her nightie, wetting it through the day-old stains.
‘It’s Wednesday today. Wednesday the thirteenth of December.’ The carer told him it was good to do this, to explain everything like she was a child, that it would help her. But he saw no difference.
‘Is it?’
‘So the Alexa tells me.’ He points to the glowing screen on the bedside locker, hidden behind a few used cups, soiled tissues, and a sepia photograph of a man in a suit, a woman seated beside him. ‘So, do you know what day it is?’
She eyes him, suspicion creasing the corners. ‘I do.’
He waits, leaning on the bed frame.
‘Go on. What day is it?’
She scans the room before returning her gaze to him. ‘It’s Sunday.’
‘No. I just told you. It’s Wednesday. It’s the thirteenth of December. Do you know what’s important about that?’
‘I do.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Where’s Joe?’
‘For God’s sake! It’s our—’
He grabs the photo frame, holds it before her, but her vacant stare halts him, and opens the release valve of his anger. No, not now. He deflates into quiet resignation.
‘Never mind. I’ll get Joe now.’ He pauses at the door, the photo frame dangling by his side, the carer's advice sounding in his ears. Explain it like she was a child, be honest with her. She’s still in there. Joe doubts that.
‘I’m going to make you a cup of tea.’
Her cough follows him out the door, and the coldness of the house greets him, wrapping itself around him, its frigid fingers pawing beneath his dressing gown. He sets the photograph on the kitchen tablet beside the sprawl of tea, wondering if talking to her was more for his benefit than hers, reminding him of who she is, or used to be.
He fumbles with the touchscreen of the mobile phone his son sent him from England, the one he’d promised would change his life. Joe types out the doctor’s number from memory and presses call. It rings once before a rehearsed, methodical voice tells him to hang up and call for an ambulance if he is phoning about chest pain. Then the voice tells him to please wait. And he does, like he did yesterday morning, and the morning before that. The line went dead the other times, sudden and without warning, just cut him off as if they had pulled the plug.
The speakerphone fills the kitchen with the repetitive drear of the waiting music, and he lays it on the table, then moves to fill the kettle. The water spits and hisses at him as it ejects from the tap, and his shake skites droplets across the counter. He rests the kettle on the hob and presses buttons until the rings start to glow red.
‘An induction hob, Daddy. It’ll change your life,’ his son told him down the phone when the men arrived last January to install the unwelcome Christmas present.
He groans as he slumps into the kitchen chair and waits like the plastically-pleasant woman told him to.
The sun has struggled a little higher in the sky, but is too weak, too pallid and sickly to reach over the hedge and chase off the frost that still holds claim to the garden. Water drips from the skeletal branches of the trees, and their shadows crawl their way into the kitchen. The clock on the wall tells him it’s twenty to nine, and ticks out of time with the tuneless song from the phone. The carer will be arriving soon, regurgitating, rehashing, and repeating the same time-worn complaints; the government, the health service, the weather, the roads. Always a problem without a solution, every day, every visit. It passes the time, but passes it into nothingness, into sameness, where one day becomes another, and all their yesterdays look the same, and they would be the same if it weren’t for the overly-expensive calendar illuminating the bedside locker.
‘And Joe, I’m doing the work of two here,’ the carer will say. ‘This woman needs a full care package. Two carers, four times a day. Not just me morning and night. It’s not good enough. You need to phone your GP and get it sorted.’
And Joe will smile and say that he will. But he won’t. Because he already has and was told that they were lucky there’s any carers at all, that they live in a bad area, that there’s not enough carers, and that nothing can be done. The doctor told him so the last time he was out, the same day the doctor decided that resuscitation wasn’t in her best interests, and that she wouldn’t be for hospital again.
‘We’ll keep her comfortable at home.’
We.
The kettle begins to moan on the stove, its low whine playing the chorus of the morning against the backdrop of the waiting song. The noise rises to a whistle then to a squeal, and he bathes himself in its piercing pitch, watching the spout, daring it to boil over, wanting it to, longing it to; something, anything to show that this day is different from the others.
‘Joe.’
Her voice brings him back to the kitchen, to the here and now with its waiting and its ticking and its sameness. He ambles to the banshee kettle and lifts it free from the hob, the squeal dying in the frigid air of the room.
‘Joe.’
‘I’m making you a cup of tea now. Hold on.’
Another hefty bout of coughing answers him as he lifts down two mugs, wiping the residual tea stains from the rim with his finger. The water hisses as it hits the teabag in the bottom of the cup, and he lets it rest for a moment. Then he squeezes the bag with a teaspoon before scooping it over into his own cup, the water no longer hissing or spitting, but falls into the mug with a slap.
Joe opens the fridge and takes the half pint of milk from the empty shelf, today’s date printed on the side. He sniffs at it, his nose telling him it’s on the turn. He trickles a little into her cup first, the water exploding into a dark beige, maggots of white curdling on the surface. He stabs at them with the teaspoon, the tremor slopping tea across the counter top. Then he does the same to his own cup, careful not to take too much milk; he will need some for her cereal.
Slow and shuffling, he crosses the kitchen, her cup in his hand. He stops by the table for a rest, staring at the photograph of their wedding day. He remembers how he loved her then, the feeling so strong it hurt his chest, as though it couldn’t be contained and would burst out of him, and how, with time, it changed to a pulsating heartbeat over the years, through the birth of their son, through the Christmases, and birthdays, and anniversaries.
He picks up the cup and moves onward, and this must be love too, passionless and frustrating, devoted and caring. She’ll be the death of him, but he doesn’t mind. Maybe this is true love.
It has been a long-lived wake, watching as her coffined mind slowly decays, decomposing more and more with every passing day.
‘Here’s your tea.’
He steps into the fusty heat and stops. She’s laying back on the pillows, arms limp by her sides, eyes open and fixed, unblinking. His hand shakes, violent splashes soaking the threadbare carpet.
‘Mary?’
He moves to her, placing the cup on the locker, sending two other mugs to the floor that bounce but do not break.
Her hand is warm, the knotted bones pushing blue veins to the surface beneath her papered skin. He squeezes but she does not squeeze back. Her chest is still, and the chill of the house evades the fire’s glow, wrapping its tendrils around him. With a shaking hand he closes the eyes that haven’t seen him for years. He takes her hand again as he mutters an Act of Contrition, waiting for the assault of grief, or sorrow, or relief. But nothing comes, and he finishes with a hollow Amen.
The music from the kitchen stops abruptly, and the line goes dead.
Seán McNicholl is an Irish GP who enjoys writing short stories in a variety of genres. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net (BOTN) award 2024. He has been published in Beyond Words, Raw Lit, 34th Parallel, Belfast Review and Intrepidus Ink, among others. For more, visit www.seanmcnicholl.com