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Jenn AshworthFROGSTOOLSI am sitting in the bright yellow strip light of a paediatric assessment ward, holding Skye tight in a vomit stained blanket. It is eight o’clock in the evening. The blanket is white with a waffle pattern, and it smells. We have been in the hospital since one in the afternoon, and Skye has been sleeping on the floor of the waiting room for four hours. She has been sleeping on the floor in the waiting room (from where we can see rows of starched empty cots) because it has taken seven hours for a doctor to come to see her. She is sleeping on the floor because, I think, (she can’t talk) she is in too much pain to be held. And they tell her she is not allowed to have water but the only thing she says when she wakes up is, "juice, juice."  There are too many of us in here behind this curtain; it catches on people’s backs and billows out. I try to take my mind away from what is happening by listening to the mother in the next cubicle tell the doctor about her three-year-old’s unexplained vaginal bleeding. No, I haven’t left her with anyone all day today. She’s been with me. Always with me except for five minutes when I was loading the car, and then she was inside with my mum. She’s never been on her own. The curtain has pictures of frogs wearing glasses sitting on toadstools. I am very tired, and I think the frogs should be toads or the toadstools should be frogstools. I think I am probably not the first person to have thought this. They are definitely frogs and the stools are definitely toads. If I worked here it would drive me slowly mad. ...he's been eating tea at the house of a girl he's been knocking off... I am holding Skye, clamping her head to my chest with one hand. A nurse is holding her arm out so tightly she will have bruises in the morning. The doctor is poking her hand with a needle, trying to find a vein so he can get a drip into her hand. She needs the drip because she is dehydrated. She is dehydrated because they have refused her water and left her vomiting in a waiting room for seven hours while they get a doctor to come to see her. There must only be one doctor in this hospital so large it takes us twenty minutes to get to the front door. Or half a doctor. One half of a doctor. I look at the doctor pushing the needle into Skye’s hand so hard that it hurts me. I could halve this doctor if it would help the waiting times.Oscar is to my left in his own chair, holding Skye’s leg so she can’t wriggle. She’s crying. My mum is standing near the curtain, frowning. Skye’s father is to the right of me, stroking Skye’s other leg and crying. He’s crying because he did not realise she was so ill. He had no idea, despite repeated phone calls, because he was eating tea at the house of a girl he’s been knocking off for the past fortnight. She lives twenty minutes drive from the hospital and it took him four hours to get here. I wanted to argue with him but you see separated parents arguing over the heads of their sick children in Casualty all the time, and it isn’t tasteful. Everyone knows what it looks like. The doctor has fucked it up and everyone changes position while he tries the other hand. The drip goes in and Skye must stay the night. Oscar and me drive home quickly so I can get some things for her and me. When I get back, she and dad are in the ward, and dad is reading her a story. After I have eaten, dad goes back to the girl he has been knocking off for a couple of weeks. He has been at the hospital two hours, and complains about how much it will cost to get a taxi home. At two in the morning Skye starts screaming, banging her head against the bars of the cot (they are metal, and remind me of the Blue Peter and Newsround footage I saw of orphanages in Romania) and slapping herself. She pulls out the drip and the gauze they’ve splinted (splunt?) her arm with sucks up the blood. It is bright red from the vein and it looks like a lot. The nurse comes and tells me I need to keep her quiet or she’ll wake up the other children. I try to breastfeed her. The nurse asks me why I didn’t tell her she was still being breastfed, and tuts as she writes it down on Skye’s chart. The nurse tells me the doctor has said Skye can have clear fluids only. I tell the nurse I don’t have milk any more. The nurse slaps the chart closed and clicks away over the hard floors. In the morning the nurses handover. Skye’s night nurse tells Skye’s morning nurse that Skye was screaming and hitting herself in the middle of the night, and took two hours to be calmed down. She says Skye was fantastic with dad, and only started screaming when mum arrived, and wonders if they should get dad back in and send mum home to get some sleep. Mum is sick, and is vomiting into a bowl, is calling Oscar to be taken home, is crying and feeling sorry for herself and is leaving Skye in the metal cot until fantastic dad arrives to take over. Fantastic dad could be ten minutes, or hours, mum does not know but mum is not allowed to stay in case she infects the other children in the room with the virus. There aren’t any other children in the room; the night nurse moved Skye to a bay on her own because she was making too much noise for the other children. She looks out of the bars of the cot and asks for juice as mum and Oscar pass by, and mum looks away from the glass she can see Skye through, banging and waiting for someone to come. This is the fifth of writer Jenn Ashworth's stories written for Un-Made-Up. The photo was loaned by Drayke Larson of Minneapolis who took the picture of the drip while in hospital during the birth of his own daughter, Inara Rae. I always look forward to clicking on the Word document when Jenn Ashworth sends in another; they all have a fantastic chalk-squeaking-on-blackboard edge... Send her comments. Send ME comments for that matter. 2:06 PM - 21/11/2006 - post comment
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