11th February 2007 - Do I look that stupid?

Janey met me today with a "I bandaged your Dad's arm the minute you left yesterday, I looked round to tell you but you'd just that minute gone". That doesn't even make sense. Why would she need to tell me if I was still there - I was sitting beside him, I'd have seen her doing it. Does she really think I believe that? Does she really think that I don't know that he was sitting there with his arm oozing puss, fluid and blood until she got off her fat arse and did something about it? "The girls told me you were worried about him but we took care of it didn't we" she says as she ruffles his hair. "All sorted now, nothing to worry about". Not for you maybe, you're not the one with the hospital acquired infection flaring away at your arm, throbbing with pain and leaking bodily fluids all over your arm.
"I put him in a short sleeve shirt today. Easier on the laundry". No. It's winter, a long sleeve shirt and a proper bandage is easier on the laundry.

I looked at the chair where he'd been sitting the previous day and the wooden arm and all down the side showed a pattern of splatters and trickles of pink, collecting in a pool at the wooden base. The pink looked like spilled diluting juice that hadn't been cleaned, but it's the pink of the blood and fluid mix that was seeping out of Dad's shirt yesterday. So he'd sat in that chair while his arm throbbed and pulsated the poison out and it collected in a puddle. Then someone else will have sat there, maybe several people. And eaten their evening meal, their breakfast, their lunch, while fluid from Dad's MRSA filled wound sat in dried puddles on the arms of the chair. And I tell myself to shut up - who do I think I am Quincy? Sam Ryan? - maybe it's diluting juice, what do I know. And if I'm so appauled, so affronted, then why don't I do something instead of feeling disgusted and superior. Silly bitch that I am. Vacuous tart. My Mum once called me that, maybe she was right.