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Shorts
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| After the Fall | |
| By BrianRobertNeal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 02 August 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Life can punish small errors severely. AFTER THE FALL Exhilarated by his annunciation, relieved following his birth and now distraught at his deathbed: surely it is a parent’s right to be outlived by their children? His wife has kept a constant vigil with me. She has become gaunt and wraith like. She’s cried out, says nothing and can hardly bear to look at me or the caricature of her husband that lies in the bed. When he had gone into Intensive Care there had been a good chance that he would survive. We had even let his children come in to see him. That had been a mistake. His eldest had been upset; she’d asked me, “Why won’t Daddy talk to me?” I had said that “Daddy was very tired and he needed lots of sleep to get better”. They are now asking why they can’t see him again. When he had been moved from Intensive Care to a Private Room I had known that his death warrant had been issued. Though I’d never had any doubt that he was mine, there had been a sort of comfort when I and his two brothers had found that our blood was compatible and transfused without complication. I’d told the medics to bleed me white. Oh if only life essence could have passed with the blood. I’d even offered God an exchange if he’d wanted another sunbeam he should take me. My wife is inconsolable, for her blood was not suitable. She keeps repeating that though she’d given him life, nurtured and suckled him, she can do nothing. We are not young and the strain is too much for her. She’s collapsed physically and mentally and has gone home heavily sedated. My other two sons and their wives have been absolutely wonderful. Though neither daughter in law likes the other they have settled their differences and have worked as a team, looking after his two children, and now my wife. On the bedside table are a host of cards and presents. The most poignant of which is his youngest child’s favourite teddy. It’s his comfort bear. You could never normally have parted the boy from it. His Football Team sent a touching card, it said we won the cup for you; his cup winner’s medal lies in front of the card. His children send him letters, which I read to him. I also read him the Football results. They’d had a collection at work and his boss had visited. He’d torn up a cheque and written a new one, which he’d folded up and stuck in my pocket. He’d told me that he was being prosecuted by the HSE, and that he was pleading guilty. He added that the bastard who had removed the scaffold boards had been given a sound beating. Big Soft Jessie had done it. The lads had had to drag him off the bloke or he would have killed him. Thee lads had to call an Ambulance and then the Police turned up. When questioned it would appear that nobody saw anything and nobody knew anything. When Big Jessie had said he’d done it the Police told him to sling his hook and stop wasting their time. They’d added when the bloke regains consciousness they’d soon find out what had happened. Big Jessie has visited, he said the lads had asked him to come in and see how my son was. He’d kissed my daughter in law and had said that she was to pass it on to my son, but she was not to let him know who it had come from. When Jessie had joined the firm the blokes had bullied and humiliated him. My Boy had put an end to that. He had said “I can’t stand jessies but I hate bullying, so bloody stop it.” They’d stopped it though they’d kept their distance. But now Jessie’s one of the gang, and when he breaks into tears the lads comfort him because he is doing their crying for them. The bloke that was working with him at the time of the accident is off work through stress and trauma. He believes it was his fault. He feels that he could have saved him; because he should have made my son use a harness and attach it to the safety wire. Some of the lads went round to see the Bloke and tried to put him right but he won’t listen. What could he have done, for the man’s a labourer and my son was the foreman! The scaffolder who’d got to him following the fall had kept him alive, but for that man, he would have died before the Ambulance arrived. He’s been in, he said to me that he should have done better, but he was no doctor just a 1st Aider. I’m holding my sons hand; his wife is holding the other: all of a sudden she becomes agitated and shouts, “No, no, no!” I look away from my son and towards her. I look back at him to find he is dead. She explains that “I could feel him going and I couldn’t stop him”. I reply, “He’s been dead from the moment that he had hit the ground. We have been sat with a corpse that breathed.” I press the panic button and a Nurse comes in. She checks for signs of life, finds none so she closes his eyes. She removes his wedding ring and gives it to my daughter in law saying “They often go missing in the morgue.” Finally she pulls the sheet over his head then bursts into tears musing “some of the Nurses get hardened to this, but she never will.” She leaves us. I collect his things up. The Medal is on a ribbon. I put it on the bear, so it does not get lost. I put the bear, the cards, the tins of sweets and so on into a bag. Two orderlies come in and wheel the bed out of the room and off to the morgue. The Nurse returns and asks us if we have got our things together. If so could we leave the room as it was needed for another patient? She adds that one of us will have to sign a form. I look round and can see nothing of ours so we walk out and follow the nurse. As we leave, a bed is moved into the room, an unconscious man about fifty is laid in it. His wife looks at me and says “He’s had a stroke, but he’s getting better, they’ve moved him out of intensive care. So he’ll be all right.” I smile and agree and wish them the best but I know that he has no more chance of coming out of that room alive than my son had had. The Nurse takes us into her office. She gives me the form which I sign without reading. As I hand it back to her she says “the grief you feel at losing him merely balances out the joy felt when he came into your lives. What you are left with is everything that came in between. Grief must not be allowed to overstate its case.”
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