Life is: A Bas##rd then you Die

LIFE IS

A BAST***D THEN YOU DIE OR DO YOU?

A collection of short stories

by

T L Royce

Copyright © 2023 by Mr R. Price

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, contact: [email protected]

FIRST EDITION

ISBNs:

978-1-80541-128-4 (Paperback)

978-1-80541-129-1 (eBook)

Contents

COPD’S FINALE

CRUSHED

LIFE’S LESSON

Emily Stark

Blessed Release

Black and White

No Return

No Body

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague.

Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"

E. A. Poe

In memory of Janet,

a much loved and missed mother and wife.

COPD’S FINALE

What are your stats?

The question that begins and ends every day.

Seventy-eight the answer. Good, they were sixty-eight yesterday.

Not good, as eighty-five is the minimum.

Lungs work hard as the oxygen pumps in, the rhythm of the oxygen almost soothing.

Chest rising painfully, ribs collapse inwards crushing the lungs fighting to squeeze out every particle of trapped CO2.

COPD eats away at the surface of the lungs, making each breath harder to take.

It’s evening again. Within minutes she falls into a deep sleep.

Sitting on the settee I glance to my right: with mouth agape the pipes in her nose force in oxygen-giving life for one more day.

Her glasses have slipped down into her open mouth, one lens inside precariously balanced, distorting the CO2 that her lungs struggle to expel.

Lung capacity eighteen per cent.

Only seen one lower at seventeen per cent, the lung nurse exclaimed, and he was an old man who started smoking at eight years old. You’re so young at 61, she paused, but the good news is the nodule in your lung hasn’t grown.

Cancer is now a side issue, operations of any kind out of the question, lungs too far gone to survive even a biopsy. Emphysema is now introduced into our vocabulary.

Fish is on the bottom of the pond this morning, belly up. Net out, scoop up the pitiful thing. It wriggles, still alive. In vain it tries to escape the net that has become its prison, swimming so lethargically it hardly moves forward. Oxygen, it needs oxygen (parallel thoughts, please breathe). Place it under the fountain inside the net to try to force oxygen into its gills/lungs (intense parallel thoughts).

Stats 95. Two pairs of eyes widen, smiles curl up on faces.

In a flash smiles droop 75 / 74 / 71 enough!

Take it off! The scream is silent inside my head, a smile forced on my lips.

Check the fish. The anticipation of full recovery overwhelming.

Lift the net. It swims a little more vigorously, then slows, finally resting on its back, expectancy and hope crushed.

Unfamiliar words learnt today: hypoxia, oxygenation, molecules, cardiac arrest. Oxygen level below 80% is classed as severe hypoxia leading to organ failure, and cardiac arrest leading to ‘stop reading now’. Wish we could get over 80.

She is dizzy and stumbling today, confused and breathless. Draw parallels with fish, need a side issue to take dark thoughts away, fish helps. (AS LONG AS IT STAYS ALIVE.)

Got home today. Disability car has been taken away. She can no longer drive. Very strange feeling. She seems to be removing all her links to this life.

Fish has escaped from its prison net, probably on the bottom. Swim bladder I am told. Will check nightly.

Lucky to get stats to the low 70’s now. Mostly high 60’s.

Her memory is failing. Same questions asked of me two to three times a day. Lack of oxygen? Hard not to get angry on third time of asking. She is slowly fading not unlike the fish.

She rings me at work, Oh god, here we go again. Can you come home? They want to take me in.

I hear the panic in her voice. Home duty of care is quoted to us many times by the district nurse along with, Stats are too low.

Yes, we know, her situation explained once again.

Couldn’t get them up last time in hospital. The consultant allowed us home after organising oxygen. She was discharged on palliative care, commenting that with oxygen we could have one to three years.

Her stats will ‘never go up’ we explain, she has yet another chest infection. She just needs antibiotics and steroids which usually clear it up.

The nurse phones for a paramedic responder, the link between ambulance and doctor. The responder arrives in minutes, she is of the same opinion—Hospital.

Once again the explanation of the situation. She shows understanding. I agree, home is probably the best place, I will ring your surgery.

We listen as she talks but the doctor will have none of it. They will treat her in hospital, he ends. Passing the buck, thinks I.

The responder looks crestfallen, her job to advise the doctor totally ignored. She must feel redundant in her role. Last week we had a five hour wait at the hospital, with very poorly patients in the ambulance. It’s not the place for you. Maybe if you rang the doctor and explained, she says to me. I take up the phone.

On loud speaker the tale was told once again ending in Steroids and stronger antibiotics.

The derisory tone he used shocked even the paramedic. There’s no such thing as stronger antibiotics, only targeted ones. She doesn’t have to go into hospital, it’s her choice. There he ended it. Thoughts of the doctors of my youth who would attend your home, pyjamas sticking out of the bottom of their trousers, smiling as they explained fully their thoughts and the remedy to whatever the problem was. What has gone wrong with the service?

Thoughts enter my head in the confusion of what to do next. Hiding my anger, I play out a scenario. What if I had asked him about my field, What causes porosity in a weld, doctor, and how do you prevent it happening? I am sure he would have no clue, and I’m sure his feelings like mine would be dashed by my sarcastic answer.

We resolved this reoccurring problem by attending hospital, where the consultant wrote in her Respect form that it was her wish to remain at home whatever happens and however bad things get, only if she requested it would she return to hospital. He also added, with her agreement, DO NOT RESUSITATE to the Respect form, her heart being too weak to stand any attempt to do so. A flash of this form ended the continual attempts to hospitalise her.

Stats now mainly in the 50’s.

Fish has not been seen. Not going to look for it. Do not want to find it dead.

She never really had a chance of avoiding COPD, born to parents who both smoked heavily, and with six siblings of which five also smoked, all at a time when smoking was accepted and glamourised. Homes and pubs always had a tint of a blue haze in those days, so from being born to the present day her lungs have been assaulted on a daily/hourly basis. She never really had a chance, addicted to the poison that nicotine is.

Grey heron is visiting the pond, his long sleek body topped by a slimline head which is armed with a long piercingly sharp beak, poised to spear any fish foolish enough to reveal themselves from beneath the cover of the pond vegetation. The thought comes to me, is this the way the missing fish met his end?

Brutal coughing fits greet each sunrise now. Large globs of phlegm land in the bottom of the small bucket at her side, so thick they refuse to wash down the sink. Must remember to use the toilet in future.

We do not bother taking stats any more, too upsetting.

Woken up in the early hours. She is still asleep but her gasps for breath were so loud it woke me. In my half-asleep state I feel sure I glimpsed the dark shadow of a black cloaked heron perched on the end of the bed, patiently waiting for the last gasp, its long black beak poised to strike.

Today the nurse is teaching her how to use a walker. Her legs are giving way now and I need to help her getting up and sitting down. It is so sad to feel her bones through the sagging flesh that hangs under her arms as I help.

Coughing fits are getting more frequent now and her feet are filling with fluid. The district nurse says she will ask the GP to review her water retention and pain issues. I cannot help but feel there is no hope.

The extra water tablets were refused as they would put too much strain on her heart. For the pain, Give her as much morphine as she needs, the nurse told me. I am now learning new life/death lessons. In this I need to excel.

Confusion reigns now. When she is awake, which is rare, she constantly repeats questions she has asked previously and forgets the answers I have given.

All but, that is, when I say, I love you, she always answers MORE, something we had heard in a film at some point, Ghost, I think. I worry now I didn’t say it enough.

She cannot get to the toilet now without my help to lift her up, my arms under her arms. Once up, I then walk in front of her holding both her hands. Then moving slowly backwards we shuffle towards the bathroom. Once there, we shimmy around each other, turning her, careful to position her directly over the seat before lowering her down. This has become an art, fearful that if she fell we would not easily get her back up once wrapped around the toilet bowl.

Her final night was spent with me once again on the settee, TV switched on playing in the background. No idea what was on, glazed eyes staring at the screen but taking nothing in, listening as each breath passed the frothy film that coated her throat. I thought the sound must be how a drowning person sounds when taking their last breath, but who knows? That night we had to perform the toilet ritual three times perfectly.