To Give Care by Lisa Dyson

Nadia stands upon a plain of hard packed earth, the gold-brown wastes stretching to the distant foothills. A small tent of deep blue stands behind her, the fabric shifting in the wind that blows against her face, the wind that smells of singed hair even though the sun is nearly touching the hills to the west. The worst of the day’s heat is disappearing as afternoon turns to evening. Aside from her little tent, she is alone, exiled and wandering. She has left behind her home, that city of thick walls and hidden gardens, with little more. Although a camel might be useful.

As Nadia considers the camel, a soft rap comes at the door. She turns away from the window and the gold-brown gravel on the roof below as her mother rises from her seat and opens the hospital room door. A nurse stands outside, and asks to have a word.

Nadia shifts in the chair beneath the window and turns to watch her grandmother. In her bed, the old woman lies asleep, drooling slightly. She wheezes as she breathes. Not much, but loudly in the quiet room. Occasionally, there is a slight catch in her breathing from her spit, or something in the back of her throat, and her breath ticks as it comes past. She has not woken this visit, so Nadia’s mother has not yet had to explain who she is for the ninth time.

Snatches of conversation float through the gap in the doorway, interrupting Nadia’s thoughts. Nadia tries not to pay attention. She would have brought her book, but her teacher confiscated it during homeroom for not listening and hasn’t given it back yet. So instead she sits cross-legged in the chair fidgeting with the buttons of the television remote. The “2” button has been worn blank and the other numbers are fading. The fluorescent lights shine above her, humming softly, and she thinks the walls press in around her. They are an institutional white, except for the far one which is, inexplicably, blue. It is a dull blue and Nadia wishes it were a purer, deeper shade.

Then it might be like the blue of an evening sky in the west after the sun has set – brilliant but darkening. To the east, the stars would be out, points of light in the pure air above a mountain. On top of such a mountain, on the leeward side of a large boulder, would be a good place to rest for the night, so that is where Nadia has made her little fire. For now though, she sits atop the boulder, tightly wrapped in her wool traveling cloak, staring at the stars. The last of the blue has faded from the sky and in the distance a wolf howls. Nadia thinks that she might look a bit like a wolf, a dark triangle atop a rock, watching the rising moon.

Soon she will have to get down from the rock and sleep for she has far to travel yet, across the mountains and through the forest beyond. But before she can do this, her mother opens the door a bit further and asks:

“I’m going to be a bit longer out here. Is that alright sweetie?”

Nadia gives her mother a blank look, then nods once.

Her mother gives a small smile, although her eyes do not, and she goes back into the hall to continue arguing with the nurse in restrained tones.

The mountaintop gone, Nadia stares at the painting on the blue wall. It is abstract, intersecting black lines and patches of color. She finds it disgusting in its inoffensiveness, its lack of sensibility. Something to fill a quota, nothing more.

She often wishes there were only more people who strove for, or at least dreamed of, something more, something bright and burning to shine through the mundanity of the everyday. Maybe then she would feel understood. As it stands, her friend from middle school went boy-crazy as soon as she got into high school this fall, and Nadia has been growing apart from her since. And she hasn’t found anyone new to be friends with, nor have they found her.

Because what she really wants, she thinks to herself again and again, is a true friend, some noble kindred spirit who would understand her truly and completely. Who, too, would dream of something more than the sloth and sludge and apathy of the everyday. But that is why she likes her books, because she is coming to suspect that such people are not easily found.

Nadia’s mother comes in from the hall, closing the door properly this time. She kneels to slip a few papers into her purse, then pulls the other chair close to the bed. She sits and sighs.

Nadia’s grandmother is still asleep, frowning and wheezing and ticking. Nadia’s mother wipes a drop of drool off the sleeping woman’s face with a corner of the bed sheet, careful not to wake her, then picks up one of her hands to hold in hers. The old woman’s skin is loose over the bones of her hand and her arm is bruised from where the IV needle enters. Nadia’s mother brushes her fingertips down the bruise, and sighs again.

“I wish they’d give her another blanket. Her hands are cold.”

Nadia looks at her mother for a moment, then stares off at the floor. As for herself, Nadia finds the hospital is too dull to be horrible. It does not smell of death or despair. It does not even smell overwhelmingly of antiseptic. The smell of antiseptic is there, slightly, no worse than the dentist’s office. Aside from that it smells, improbably, of her best friend from grade school. Mint and something earthy. The doctors do not wear suits and white coats, and the nurses do not wear stiff little hats. Granted, the hats might look rather foolish on the men. But instead of anything like that, they all wear things that look like pajamas in colors that belong in Florida.

Nadia imagines something a bit more gothic. The sounds of tuberculous coughs echoing up the dim corridor, grim nurses dispensing spoonfuls of bitter medicine that might cure, or might kill. Iron bed frames in a long infirmary ward; springs creaking and moaning as patients shift restlessly, a constant quiet chorus of despair.

She might be in that hospital, in a creaking bed on a wooden floor. Her hands and face would be pale, the flush of fever gone now. She is lucid again and is trying not to listen to the mumblings of the sick around her. The morning light comes through high arched windows. Though grimed with soot, the glass lets through a few persistent rays of light, which fall on her face, bringing out her fine high cheekbones and the gold in her hair. Footsteps approach, hard heels on wood, and she knows it a friend. The friend who watched over her as she lay in the grips of the fever, who now comes again to put a cup of water to her lips and help her drink, or to push an errant strand of hair behind her ear and smile sweetly or – Nadia frowns slightly. Perhaps she would be better on her own. She does not know which face to give this person.

“Are you okay, sweetie?”

Nadia looks up. The fluorescent lights make the circles under her mother’s eyes darker than usual. Her mother gives her a small encouraging smile.

“I’m fine.” Nadia returns to staring at the floor.

“How was your day?”

Nadia often gets frustrated that her mother does not seem to like silence the way that she does.

Nadia shrugs. “About normal.” At lunch the cafeteria food was largely unidentifiable and her friend from middle school kept talking about some boy in her gym class.

“Are you still liking school?”

“It’s about the same.” Nadia stares at the linoleum tiles. She wishes she had her book so her mother would let her be.

“But do you like your classmates?”

“They’re okay.” Nadia shrugs again. She hasn’t noticed most of them because she thinks they are boring.

“Only okay?” Nadia’s mother presses the question, perhaps because she wants to talk and not hear her own mother wheeze and tick as she sleeps, and not hear the hum of the fluorescent lights, making the silence deeper with their noise.

And perhaps, Nadia will think as soon as she begins, she didn’t want to hear that either. Otherwise, she might never have started talking. Or maybe it was the improbable smell of the place, the smell of a friend, once. But the words start coming out.

“It’s just that none of them really seem to care about anything, or to care unless someone tells them to. It’s frustrating that no one cares about anything properly anymore or cares more than they have to, and I just wish that someone would bother to try and understand and . . .”
Out in the great white room with one blue wall, her words sound lost and small.

“Don’t we all.” Nadia’s mother smiles with tired eyes.

Nadia is not quite sure what to make of her mother’s smile.

“oh”

Now her mother smiles with her eyes. “So. How was your day?”

Outside the window, cold white wisps of cloud float across the sky as the sun casts long shadows on the roof. Nadia wonders if this might be what midnight looks like, at the pole, in the summer. Even though it should be the middle of the night, the sun might glance off the pack ice, dazzling her, as she climbs to the top of a ridge. She can still hear her grandmother.

Nadia turns back.

“We started a new project in art class,” she offers.