image by author.

grout.

Throughout the morning she had been telling the nurses about voices she was hearing and people she was seeing on the wall beside her bed. Faces on those disinfected-white hospital tiles. Her doctor called me at work, said that I should come before it’s too late. I took a cab to the clinic. In the dimly-lit ward I sat on her bed and pleaded with her not to talk nonsense to the staff. I’m not sure she recognised me. Then I went for lunch. When I returned she was on about the voices and the faces again. This time I said, “Tell me more about them, mom.” And she talked till the end.