sounds
It is a small world I’m padding around in. Sounds seems important, shape the day.
I can tell the toast trolley from the tea trolley from the medication trolley from the blood pressure machine as they are pushed up and down the ward. It is 11am now, the soup trolley will be along soon.
I can tell the puffs of early labour from the grunts and wheezes of it later on – they’ll be packed off to the labour ward soon. The whirr and hiss of the gas and air.
Early evening wafts of Adele and Damien Rice from the pub over the road. Later evening yells as the drink takes hold. A 3am rendition of the British national anthem.
The Repeal the 8th march as it passes under the window. For all the women on very different journeys to mine.
Mobile phone rings, ward phone rings, doctors beepers, bedside alarms, BP machines and CTG machines that have lost connection.
Indian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish. German English, Louth English, Dublin English, Polish English.
And always always throughout the day the wind-tunnel search followed by the victorious gallop of heart beats, sometimes 4 or 5 at a time, on CTG machines up and down the ward.