£25. Brian’s given her a table with squint legs that he made at woodwork. Peter’s sent her a huge basket of Body Shop goodies. She has lots of cards with a dual message: Congratulations on the key of the door! Get well soon!
She thanks everyone politely. Her arms and legs are injected with poison. She doesn’t have the strength to peel an orange.
Rita has made beef stroganoff (the cows haven’t gone mad yet) and fresh cream meringues. Helen has her birthday meal on a tray in bed. She has a sip of champagne. Jana sits with her and makes her put on her new lipstick. Helen feels like a clown, a grotesque invalid wearing bright red lipstick and titanium earrings. She’s had her hair cut short and layered (Marion came round last week).
Jana chats away about her dissertation on Zola and who her flatmates are sleeping with. Helen interrupts her quietly, I wish I was dead, Jana.
When Nab comes up with the meringues, Jana and Helen aren’t saying much.
After the party, Ivan gives Jana a lift back up to Glasgow. They feel so sad and helpless about Helen. They just want her back.
Later, they comfort each other in Jana’s bed.
I can’t take this for another five years. How can you feel so ill and not be dying?
I wish we lived in a house without stairs. Sean gallops up and down them all day, his friends too. I don’t know how they do it.
Christmas passes and she barely notices. She is dipped in nausea. She counts the number of cards they get with penguins – eight.
Ivan stays for a few nights, but he goes back to Dundee for New Year.
Richard’s parents have invited everyone next door for Hogmanay. Helen sags into a red cord bean-bag. She’s wearing her new dress from Miss Selfridge. It has sweeps of purple and beige paisley pattern and a huge forties collar. It goes down to her feet. She has fawn suede boots to match. People keep coming up to her and asking how she is. Clare looks at her with pity.
She feels swallowed up in paisley swirls.
Heather and Archie are there, their neighbours on the other side. Heather is pregnant after two miscarriages. She is thirty-six. She doesn’t care if it’s a girl or a boy. Helen tells her she’d like to knit something for the baby when her arms are less weak.
After the bells, Helen goes straight home. Rita wants to go with her but Helen says she’ll be fine.
At home she lies down on the sofa in the dark and cries her eyes out. Afterwards, she puts the Christmas tree lights on and makes hot chocolate. After the hot chocolate, she lies on the floor and listens to Nana Mouskouri on Nab’s headphones.
Helen’s having one of her conversations. Her face is swollen from crying. She probably won’t mind if we eavesdrop.
| helen | What are you doing today? |
| stranger | I’m going to see Dance With a Stranger after work. What about you? |
| helen | Oh, I’m getting new plasma. I’m bored with the stuff I’ve got, so I thought I’d get some new stuff. It’s all the rage. |
| stranger | Where do you get it? |
| helen | You get it on the NHS. I’m taking part in a clinical trial. I have a mystery illness called blah-de-blah-de-blah. |
| stranger | Why’s it called blah-de-blah-de-blah? |
| helen | Well, it’s controversial, nobody really understands it, except for the people who’ve got it. Bob, my doctor, thinks the new plasma might flush it away. My own antibodies might be making me ill. The new plasma will be free of antibodies and might make me better for a while. My muscles should feel less weak. |
| stranger | I see. Well, good luck. |
| helen | Thanks. Enjoy the film. |
| stranger | You too, enjoy the clinical trial. |
Everyone’s hopes are pinned on the plasma exchange. Out with the old, in with the new! Light at the end of the tunnel! Keep your chin up!
February 1985
It was like being hooked up to a dialysis machine. Your plasma was separated from the blood coming out of your right arm, new plasma was spun in, and the blood went back into your left arm. The new plasma was from a Polish donor. The technician told me I had great veins and that I might feel faint during the proceedings.
It took three hours. He told me what Highers his son was doing and what colour of carpets him and his wife were getting for their new house. When it was over he said, That’s you, you’re half Polish now. He handed me a see-through bag of my old plasma. It was the colour of dirty goldfish water. A porter wheeled me back to the ward and delivered me to Bob. I had the bag of old plasma on my lap.
How are you feeling? the game show host asked.
Like a rag doll with a brain tumour, I replied, handing him my old antibodies.
Dinner was a choice of scrambled egg or mince. I forced down some scrambled egg and threw up later in the shower, crouched down on the hospital tiles, crying onto the Pears soap. The sick swirled around the gleaming drain before clogging it up like sawdust. I had to press it down into the holes with my fingers. I didn’t want the other patients to see any traces.
The girl in the next bed was called Fizza. She was a medical student. She also had the mystery illness and was getting new plasma. She’d missed most of her second year. We’d had similar symptoms but she’d been diagnosed more quickly because her dad was a doctor and believed her. I asked her if her dreams were more vivid and violent since she got ill. She said it was like being at the cinema. I told her I was always dreaming I was being chopped up or that I was chopping other people up until there was nothing left of their bones.
We shared a room with another two women. Karen had lupus and Fiona had myasthenia gravis. They were getting new plasma too. Karen’s face looked like it had been finely sand-papered, and Fiona’s right eye drooped. She’d been diagnosed after having her baby. We wondered if we’d all be related after getting our new plasma.
In the evenings, the television room was commandeered by old women wearing slippers with circles of pink fur at the ankles. They had no visitors and watched High Road with watery eyes.
Fizza’s visitors were sad and serene. Her mum wore Asian clothes and sat by the bed knitting her sadness into a bright pink cardigan. The cardigan was to cheer Fizza up. Her wee brother Kashif was well behaved and polite. Her dad was wearing a tweed suit and had sad eyes. He smiled at me and asked how long I’d been ill. I hope the plasmapheresis will help both you young girls, he said. You will be back to your studies in no time!
My visitors seemed rowdy next to Fizza’s.
The first night, Rita chatted with Fizza’s dad about the prevalence of Coxsackie B4 in the west of Scotland while Nab padded around the corridors looking for a nurse to put the Asian lilies in a vase. Ivan had nicknamed me Looby Loo when I said I felt like a rag doll. Sean sat on my bed, moping because the girl he fancied had got off with someone else at the Owners-Occupiers Association disco. Brian