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Ways of Not Seeing

Isabelle B.L

    I study his hand. Fingers hug the push handle. Veins bulge and a tiny diamond embedded in a slab of gold gives me a wink. A bold company logo—orange on black— gifts me time away from the woman slumped in the chair. I examine the nurse’s long, white coat. Red pen, green pen, blue. Tall soldiers in pockets ready to attack notebooks.
    Woman staring. Awkward. Patient unresponsive.
    How do you wash removable name tags, Geoff? Maybe Geoff could tell me to pop them into laundry mesh bags. To buy me some time away from the sick woman, Geoff and I could talk about hospital bed shortages.
    Geoff’s uniform is the buffer against discovery—the discovery of what is. Grieving what was. Staying in the present is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
    “Is Anna your mum,” Geoff loosens his grip from the handlebars and wipes his hands on the sides of the once crisp coat. I nod. I search for buffers at the back of the ambulance. I can’t find anything so I return to the coat while Geoff scans my mother’s end-of-life notes.
    Dirty laundry. Did the hospital or a private business wash, dried, pressed hospital wear?
    Unseeing is a way of seeing too like deafening silence.
    Geoff glances at his watch. It’s time to look, but my mum isn’t there. A woman coloured in jaundice yellow, eyes begging to join their cheek bones again, reaches out and grabs my sleeve. She latches on at her third attempt like her French country oven mitt with tiny loop, struggling to hang over the mounted hook.
    Her head lowers, eyes fixed on an oil stain she had been meaning to remove. X marks the spot where I found my mother sprawled across the blotchy concrete. Bucket, baking soda and broom by her side.
    “Thanks, Geoff.” I sign and release Geoff. I take over the damp push handles.
    “Take care, luv.” Geoff half smiles, and I wonder whether he’ll ever see my mum again.
    If I look down, I’d see what’s missing. My mum’s thick, chestnut waves. I stare at the Jacaranda in the distance. Its purple-blue blooms lure me back home to face the inevitable. The woman slumped into the chair is my mum. I’m her daughter. Not a nurse. Not the parts of a wheelchair. Not detachable name tags. About time I face it.
    My body has moved like an accordion holding tears within its bellows. I begin to contract and expand. I peer at her scalp evoking memories of my terrible first attempts at mowing our lawn.
    Expand and contract. Expand and contract. Expand and contract.
    I make sound. I begin to cry and see the woman in the chair.
    “How’s it going, mum?”

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