A nurse walked past her, her uniform efficient and trustworthy. It wasn’t that bad here, after all. She had wanted a private clinic, of course, but she hadn’t had the money and she couldn’t have asked Ralph. It would have spoiled her plan of telephoning him afterwards to tell him what she had done. She thought of telling him she had gone to a private clinic and making him pay her back. It was the least he could do. She needed money. Anxiety closed around her as she thought of the rent, counting weeks with a beating heart. She hardly had enough to last her until the weekend. She had to get another job. Lynne wouldn’t give her a reference, she’d said as much. Personnel had lodged a complaint. Francine was too unreliable these days, and she had her own reputation to consider. There was something else, Janice’s offer, waiting darkly like a stranger at the door. It made her uncomfortable and she shied from it dimly. She would think about it later. As she shrank from it, it caught her in its ropes and reeled her back, insinuating itself, not discouraged by her firm rejection. Her thoughts were relenting to its persuasions. What else did she have? It might take her weeks to find a job, and then another week’s delay until she was paid. It would only be for a while, a temporary thing, just until she sorted herself out. It was easy, Janice said it was. It wasn’t how you would think. You didn’t have to do anything if you didn’t want to. She knew people, she said, people who would really appreciate Francine. She had laughed at how shocked she was.
‘How else do you think I could afford this?’ she had said, raising her glass to Francine and gesturing at the room.
The door to the waiting-room opened and a man in a bomber jacket came in. He stopped, looking around.
‘Over ’ere, Ian,’ said the fat girl.
He grinned, and Francine watched him hesitantly cross the room, his hands stuffed in his pockets. The other girls shifted up the row to make room for him and he sat down, putting his arm around the fat girl’s shoulders.
‘All right?’ he said, his face close to hers.
‘Yeah,’ she said, patting his knee.
The girls were watching them with silent interest.
‘Couldn’t get off earlier. Barry didn’t turn up for his shift till ten past. Bugger was out on the piss last night.’
‘Was he?’ The girl laughed, her mouth forcing up mountains of flesh on her cheeks. ‘That’s typical, that is.’
‘Miss Snaith?’ The nurse arrived again with her clipboard. ‘Is Miss Snaith here?’
Francine froze for a minute and then stood up.
‘Right, dear, come along with me.’
She led Francine through a swinging door at the other end of the room. Beyond it was a long white ward with military rows of beds along its walls. In one of them, the young girl lay immobile, her red hair streaming like blood across the pillows. Her mother sat beside her, reading a book.
‘I didn’t know I’d have to go to bed,’ said Francine, panic beginning to struggle in her again at the sight of the ward.
‘Oh, it’s not for long,’ said the nurse. ‘We’ve just got to give you a tiny injection, and afterwards you’ll want time to wake up. Just slip your clothes off for me now behind this curtain. There’s a robe hanging beside the bed.’
She manoeuvred Francine into a cubicle and then drew a flowered curtain briskly around her. Francine took off her jacket. She had only been in hospital once before, for her appendix, when she was a child. She remembered her mother stroking her forehead, her father nervous at the foot of the bed, jumping out of the doctor’s way. A sharp consciousness of her loneliness pricked her, and then she felt something else, something heavier. She wished Janice had come, saw her huddled beneath the bedclothes, her voice angry. The thought of not liking Janice made her panic. She needed her. She had said they would do it together. Quickly she took off the rest of her clothes and was surprised by the sight of her body in the white light. It looked mottled and bumpy with gooseflesh, and the purple tunnels of her veins seemed alarmingly close to the skin. She saw the spread of her hips, the pouch of her stomach, and realized that she had put on weight.
‘Knock, knock!’ said the nurse brightly, fiddling with the curtain. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes,’ said Francine, putting on the white cotton robe. It came down to her knees and fastened at the back. It looked like something a prisoner might wear, or a patient in a mental hospital.
‘All right? Just pop yourself on the bed.’
The nurse waited until Francine had clumsily mounted the bed and then sat down beside her. She was middle-aged, her face a creased history of smiles.
‘Am I right in thinking you haven’t anyone coming to collect you?’ she said, leaning forward confidentially.
‘Yes.’
‘The father couldn’t come?’
For a moment Francine couldn’t think of who she was talking about, and then realized it was Ralph.
‘He doesn’t know I’m here.’
The words crystallized something in her, a sudden crust forming around her tenderness and then covering it completely. She felt herself harden and glimpsed a person she could be.
‘I see.’ The nurse was impassive, looking at her clipboard. ‘And what arrangements have you made for getting home?’
‘I’ll take the bus.’
‘We usually recommend a taxi for afterwards, dear, just in case you’re not feeling too well. I can arrange one for you if you like.’
‘I don’t have enough money.’
The nurse turned a face full of sympathy towards her and Francine met her eyes, repelling the humiliation she offered. She looked surprised and drew her eyebrows together in an irritated, despairing point.
‘Right, well it’s up to you, of course. We did send you these details, and it’s up to you if you ignore our advice. It’s your decision.’ She stood up. ‘The doctor will be with you in a minute.’
*
The ceiling was rushing over her, its long, luminous tubes speeding and then flashing past as if she were flying. A pair of doors appeared ahead and she narrowed her eyes as the trolley shot towards their grim, closed lips with uncontainable velocity. They flew open just in time, like a fairground ride, and her limp body, warm beneath its blanket, swept through.
‘There in a minute, love,’ said a man’s voice above her.
She wanted it never to end, their fantastical journey, the trundling excitement of motion, the trolley to which she was strapped and secured, tiny now, her thoughts a bowl of bliss. She might stay here for ever, injected and looked after, rushed from place to place in her snug bed by green-clad men with kind faces. She closed her eyes, her body melting with the vibration of wheels, and when the vibration stopped she opened them again. She was in a room where everything was still. A crowd of people stood above her, their faces a ring of masked moons.
‘All right, Francine,’ said a woman’s voice. She couldn’t tell which face it was that spoke. ‘We’re just going to put you to sleep now.’
Someone clasped her fingers. One of the faces leaned towards her, a man’s face, his eyes large and frightening as an owl’s above his mask.
‘Ralph?’
‘Don’t struggle now, Francine. We’re just putting something in your hand.’