Free The Day Of Second Chances by Julie Cohen Page A

to take care of myself. You needn’t worry. I’ll be up and on my feet in no time.’
    â€˜But all those stairs—’
    â€˜I,’ she said firmly, ‘will be fine.’
    â€˜You must have put me down as your next of kin for
some
reason, Honor.’
    Honor was gratified to hear the exasperation in Jo’s voice. It was better than this cheeriness and this patience that must be false, that she must be putting on for the doctor’s benefit, for her benefit.
    â€˜I didn’t have anyone else,’ she said. ‘And I don’t need anyone else, either. I am absolutely fine on my own.’
    The mattress underneath the sheet was lined with plastic. It rustled every time Honor moved; it kept moisture on the surface so that at night her body felt steamed, like a slice of fish.
    Until now, she had never spent a single night in hospital. Even when she’d had Stephen, she’d insisted on going home the same day, before dark. The woman across from her had dementia and spent every morning from two o’clock to four o’clock calling for someone called Twisty. The woman next to her snored. When Honor did get to sleep, nurses woke her up to take observations, and she would lie awake afterwards, staring into the half-light, waiting for the pain to begin again.
    The medication they gave her helped, but it wore off. First there was a dull throbbing, then a slow knife through her hip. By the time the nurse came with her pills, she was on fire. This evening she had caught herself nearly snatching at the pills, wanting to cram them into her mouth and down her throat, under the steady gaze of the nurse.
    She had carefully returned them to the paper cups. ‘I don’t think I need them today,’ she had said.
    And now it was three in the morning, not that you would know it, with the lights on and the nurses wandering back and forth on their crepe soles, talking in low murmurs. The balloon bobbed at the end of her bed and made crinkling sounds every time someone passed.
    She had not read her bank statements for some time, but her memory was good. She knew her expenditure, her income. Her only asset was her house, the house her father had bought, which she would not sell. The Occupational Therapist who had come to see her this afternoon after Jo left had told her what a private nurse would cost. It was more than she could afford. And what would the council be likely to provide?
    â€˜We would move you to a rehabilitation centre,’ said the OT, who was brisk and smelled of mint gum and cigarettes. ‘You would stay there until you were able to cope on your own, perhaps with someone to pop in once a day to help you. The benefit of this would be that you would be in the system, if you need more help in the future.’
    In the system. The system that led to trading your home for an institution, losing your life to dependency. The system that crunched up old people who were past their use, and shoved them into strange bare rooms and the condescending voices of strangers.
    Honor lay back on her pillow, took a deep breath of air that smelled of hospital laundry and disinfectant, and closed her eyes. She thought about Stephen, as she always did. First thing upon waking, last thing upon falling asleep. Stephen’s hair slicked to his head when he was born, and the way his squashed-up face turned to hers. Stephen running in the sunshine in Clissold Park, his knees covered in scabs and grass stains. Stephen after a nightmare, climbing into bed with her, pushing his sweat-dampened head under her chin, against her neck, sighing into that heavy childish sleep. Her one precious boy. She thought about Stephen until the pain swam away somewhere else, and she was able to sleep.
    She is in the synagogue, her father’s synagogue, in a little room to the side, waiting to be called to her son’s funeral. She wears a black dress; a torn ribbon is pinned to her breast. She is alone, the