Far From The Madding Crowd

It had started well enough: the long day.

The sun came up just in time to bid it farewell as he pushed open the double doors, just avoiding a smiling woman lying on the floor. Guarding she was, she said, guarding.

“Ok”, “that’s good”.

The day had been plotted out by someone, something, though he didn’t have a clue. The days were all the same. Anything happened, and it did.

The rota, puzzled over at length by a puzzled bearded man, showed the resulting effort for today, Tuesday the 24th, 14 hours and no escape, 14hrs of being paid to care. The caring was not difficult, it was more the time passed so slowly when it was preferable to be someplace else.

And the pay wasn’t much anyway.

Kept him in semi- nutrition and drab Tesco clothing.

He didn’t complain.

PRIDE, a blockish poster was positioned on the window of the nursing office; because we care read the strapline.

He waggled a magnet by the door and opened it.

“Ah…I’m glad you’re here…” The death knell of the nightshift. The night nurse was rubbing their forehead and eyes in equal measure before rapping a pen on the desk, bouncing it off the keyboard.

“This is the 5th Datix I’ve done for last night…”, somewhat pained, somewhat relieved to be tapping out the whole experience into a melee of text fields and drip down menus. “i’ve still got one more after this, but i’ll do it tonight, i’ll tell you about it in handover.”

Not now, it wasn’t time yet. There was not enough of an audience.

He looked out the office window and saw a middle aged man fiddling with a jigsaw. Standing, half interested. Waiting for some distraction to come along.

“He sleep?” he asked. A little too hopeful perhaps.

“Ah, now that would be telling…you will have to wait…all shall be revealed…”

He walked out the office, it was too early for engaging in theatre, made a cup of tea and sat in the resource room awaiting the performance.

“Alright John?” It was Steph. Steph was prodding Jigsawman, seeing if she got a grunt or a howl; seeing what sort of morning we’d be having.

“Fuck off”, came the retort, “which, admittedly could mean anything. Could be a good sign, could be a bad one. With John, everything was told to fuck off.

“Alright John, fucking off…” Steph entered the room. The fact John hadn’t followed her to tell her more about leaving home I took as a good sign.

There would be scope to getting meds into him.

“Hey Johnny Boy, what’s up?” Brent. That was Brent. Brent was greeted with his name, before being to fuck off.

Brent came and sat next to me.

“He’s happy this morning”, he said.

“Who”, Steph said, eeking out the last few minutes before she had to care either way.

“The bloke from yesterday, he was a right pain he was”.

“The night nurse will tell us all about it”, I said. Brent was too new to all this. He didn’t know how to care by the clock; keep it all out until the night nurse assails us with tales of sublit events and barely seen incidents.

Before she regales us with her glee that her shift is over.