reception desk, manned by two dancing penguins, a bear dressed as Santa and an elf, I had to wait a while to get anyone’s attention, anxiously scanning the packed waiting room for Mum. The soft toys on the desk weren’t the only homage to the festive season. Even though it was a few minutes into the fourth of December, it seemed as if the local Christmas elves had been determined to cheer everyone up, no matter how poorly they were feeling, with a wealth of Christmas bling. Silver foil decorations and paper chains obscured the grey ceiling tiles and there were not one but two Christmas trees, one of which was a fibre optic tree which eased its way through a rainbow of colours in a surprisingly soothing way. It was so over the top that you couldn’t help but smile.
I couldn’t see Mum anywhere, which hopefully meant that she was being seen. When I’d spoken to her, forty minutes ago, she’d already been here for an hour.
At last a harried-looking nurse at the desk gave me a tired smile.
‘I’m looking for my mother, Dr … Mrs Smith – she came in an ambulance.’
‘Ah, yes, Dr Smith.’ She gave me a quick measuring glance, the sort that made me wonder if she’d already had some sort of run-in with Mum and she was trying to decide whether she needed to take cover. I responded with a reassuring friendly smile. I am nothing like my mother.
There were a few muttered conversations before another nurse appeared at my side. ‘Your mother’s in triage. Would you like to follow me?’
She led me back through a set of double doors at the very end of the waiting room, through which many of the waiting patients looked hopefully. This was obviously the medical equivalent of Nirvana in A&E.
‘Here you go.’ The nurse opened the curtain around the cubicle and then beat a hasty retreat.
‘Mum …’ I darted forward through the curtain and then stopped, not sure what to do. She’s not big on physical displays of affection.
‘Well, you took your time – I’ve been here for hours.’
I studied her for a moment; no doubt she’d been giving the nurses hell already. Judging from the nurse at the reception, she’d already made an impression. Mum’s a striking-looking woman, tall and broad, who likes to make her thoughts known. No one would accuse her of being a delicate wallflower and she doesn’t know the meaning of the word humility. I do, and I seem to have spent an awful lot of time being embarrassed on her behalf over the years. She has a head of curly hair that as a child I desperately envied, which was once a rich auburn colour but is now in the throes of turning grey.
She was sitting in a wheelchair with her leg propped out in front of her, dressed in her work clothes, a cream shirt, one of her usual tweedy skirts and the perennial American tan tights, the left leg of which was laddered below the knee. She had no shoes on. I stared at her feet. It made her look uncharacteristically unfinished. Where were her sensible brown courts, the Russell & Bromley pair she’d had for at least six years? The sight of her unshod feet unsettled me.
‘Have you been seen yet? What’s happening?’
‘I’ve been triaged,’ said Mum with disdain, ‘which translates as being seen by a nurse and offered some painkillers. And that’s all. The place is a shambles. No one seems to know what’s going on. The place is full of drunken idiots. I’d throw them all out on their ear.’
I crossed the room and took one of her hands. My mother is normally indefatigable. Dad and I call her Boudicca, which she pretends to be irritated by but secretly she’s rather pleased about it. She’s a professor of history, so I guess that makes sense. Boudicca is one of her heroines.
‘Are you all right?’ I squeezed her hand, my heart aching a little when I saw the brief sheen of tears in her eyes.
‘I wish your dad was here,’ she whispered, squeezing my hand back as I crouched down next to her. She leaned back into the wheelchair and closed her eyes as if her get up and go had got up and gone. Up close I could see the lines in her cheeks. She was seventy-one, not much younger than some of my friends’ grandparents. As a child I’d always been conscious of having older parents but that was because they were slightly stuffy and set in their ways rather than lacking in energy or drive. They’d have been the same if they’d become parents in their twenties rather than their forties. Today, for the first time, I realised that my mum was getting old. There was a vulnerability about her I’d not seen before.
‘Do you want me to call him?’ I asked gently, pulling over a chair so that I could sit next to her and hold her hand.
‘No, he’ll only worry and there’s nothing he can do.’ She opened her eyes and gave me a determined smile, which suggested logic had just bested emotion.
‘He could book a flight back.’
‘That would be ridiculous.’ She lifted her head and with her haughty tone I saw some of her usual indomitable force reassert itself. ‘I’ve probably just twisted my ankle or something. Let’s see what the doctor says. To be honest, I wouldn’t have called an ambulance; it was just Ursula fussing.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘I don’t think I’m allowed anything until I’ve been seen by a doctor. All a load of nonsense. You could pass me my bag. I’ve got a couple of essays I could be marking. This lot of undergrads are actually quite intelligent for a change.’
‘Blimey, Mum. That’s high praise.’ I stood up to collect her leather laptop bag from the end of the bed.
‘I said quite.’ She raised an imperious eyebrow as I handed it to her. ‘Although a couple of them do seem to have genuinely enquiring minds.’
I laughed at her. ‘By the middle of next term you’ll have knocked them into shape.’
‘Well, of course.’ Although Mum put the fear of God into her students in their first term, by the end of the year they all respected and admired her and she always got the top marks when students graded the faculty teachers.
She fiddled with the zip of the case for a minute and then pushed it away. ‘Actually, I think I might just rest my eyes for a little while. My leg … it’s starting to ache a bit.’ Then, with a quiet sigh, she added, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
Outside, beyond the curtain, as Mum dozed, I became aware of the groans of another patient a few cubicles down, a crying baby and a slurring drunk refusing to take off his trousers. I’d exhausted the entertainment offered by my phone; I didn’t think the current scenery would make a particularly fetching Instagram story.
At last, as I was starting to doze off, a doctor appeared, a young tired-looking woman with a clipboard and a stethoscope around her neck. She introduced herself and asked lots of questions before even looking at Mum’s leg.
‘We’ll have to send you to X-ray. There’s a bit of a backlog, I’m afraid. It could be a while.’
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