I’d just missed visiting hours, but that hadn’t stopped me from turning up unannounced to check if there’d been any improvement in Olly’s condition.
We’d been in this building many times over the years, for various conditions common to the homeless. Hepatitis B, bronchitis, infected foot calluses, gum abscesses and, more often than not, his early-stage cirrhosis of the liver stemming from frequent alcohol abuse. Now tuberculosis had poleaxed him, a direct result of the damage to his immune system caused by his HIV. Each disease was speeding up the progress of the other, leaving his body in constant turmoil.
His NHS records listed me as his emergency contact. Tony didn’t understand my need to stand by Olly no matter what the predicament or self-inflicted ailment that was knocking nine bells out of him. My husband had urged me many times to ‘do myself a favour’ and wash my hands of him. But I could never do that.
The doors to his ward were locked to prevent the spread of infection, so I peered through the windows that stretched across three sections of the room, but still I couldn’t locate him. Last time, he’d struggled to breathe, so – while he was heavily sedated – a noisy machine did the hard work for him. A plastic mask had been taped to his mouth and a pipe inserted into his throat, making his chest rise and fall. It had been heartbreaking to watch.
Living rough, he’d wear layer after layer of clothing. He’d told me it was easier to carry them on his back than risk leaving them somewhere and having them stolen. I remembered how emaciated and angular he’d looked in just a blue, paper-thin hospital gown, barely making a dent in the bedsheets. I’d remained by the side of his bed for the best part of a week, like I had when Henry battled pneumonia, and I wondered how much of my life I’d spent willing someone I loved to fight for their life.
I scanned the room again; perhaps I hadn’t recognised Olly because the nurses had cleaned him up. He’d likely have been scrubbed and bathed, his beard trimmed and his hair cut short. He’d hate that. He hated any resemblance to the boy I’d shared a foster home with.
Our foster mother, Sylvia Hughes, was the greatest manipulator I’d ever met. The only positive experience from my time spent living under her roof was learning how to convince the world you are one thing when, inside, you are someone altogether different.
She’d convinced everyone of importance that she was providing a safe haven for the dozens of foster children she’d welcomed over the years. But to those of us in her care, we were there to serve a purpose.
Even now I can remember the taste of fear that lodged in my throat and how my pace slowed when I turned the corner on the approach to her apartment block. When the weekend loomed, I’d dread returning to the tired, ten-storey, grey concrete building. Being at another new school with no friends was still more appealing than being in Sylvia’s company for a whole weekend.
I can remember every minute of that last weekend with Olly, right from the moment I walked up the staircase on a Friday afternoon, holding my breath as I turned the door handle. I crossed my fingers and hoped Olly would already be home, but the flat was silent.
Social services had us listed as living in the apartment next door. It was a pleasantly decorated place with two spare bedrooms packed with toys, and a kitchen with a fridge full of food. However, we were only rarely allowed inside, when social workers made appointments to check on our well-being. ‘Hell-being’, Olly had renamed it. The flat where we actually lived was very different.
I kicked a clear path through the old newspapers and bags of rubbish clogging up the corridor, and with a rumbling belly I opened the fridge door. But, as was often the case, all it contained was a broken light and an avalanche of freezer frost. Inside was a solitary frozen cheese and tomato pizza that I placed under the grill.
I cut it into symmetrical slices as the front door opened and Sylvia and Olly entered. My heart sank. By the dazed look on his face, I knew where she had taken him. Through half-closed eyes, he tried to pretend everything was okay by offering me an absent-minded smile that we both knew was disguising something else. At fourteen, Olly was on the cusp of manhood, but his height and slender frame gave him the appearance of a boy much younger. At thirteen, I too was small for my age. He stumbled into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.
‘How was school?’ asked Sylvia, and grabbed a slice from my hand, vacuuming it up like a snake swallowing a mouse. As her T-shirt rose up and exposed her belly, I noted it had fresh puncture wounds. She must have given up trying to locate a vein in her arms or legs that hadn’t already collapsed. She relied on long-sleeved tops to mask the fact that she was a functioning heroin addict.
‘It was okay, thanks,’ I replied.
‘Good girl,’ Sylvia replied, then sparked up a joint and made her way to the living room. ‘I’m going next door to chill.’
I waited to hear the sound of the television before tiptoeing to Olly’s bedroom and quietly pushing the closed door ajar. I hated closed doors. He awoke with a start, throwing himself back against the wall like a cornered animal.
‘It’s okay, it’s me,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve brought you pizza.’
‘Thank you,’ he croaked, his throat sore, and he calmed down.
We remained in silence, sharing the food from the plate as I tried hard not to acknowledge the bruises on his wrists and neck, or the dried crusts of blood inside his nostrils. I noticed the red spotting in the underwear he’d left lying on a heap on the floor, still inside his trousers. But I knew better than to ask what’d happened or who’d been responsible.
He slowly drifted into the safety of sleep to the sounds of the radio being played loudly next door, permeating the walls. I squirmed my way in front of him, protecting his skinny frame with my back. I moulded my body into his and pulled his arm over my chest.
‘I love you, Olly,’ I whispered, knowing that we were safer together than when we were apart.
‘Hello, Mrs Morris, isn’t it?’
The past evaporated at Dr Kotnis’s voice. I hadn’t heard him approach, and I recoiled when he tapped me on the shoulder. ‘What brings you to High Dependency?’
‘My friend Olly,’ I said.
‘Oh, right,’ he replied, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘I wasn’t aware he’d been admitted.’
‘You said last time he was here that he needs to make some serious changes to his circumstances or you were worried about his future. Well, I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve begged him to start getting his CD4 cell count monitored, to stop drinking, and I’ve even offered him a room in my house to get clean. But he refuses.’
My lips began to tremble and I curled my toes and fingers to stop myself from crying. Dr Kotnis nodded sympathetically, as if he understood my predicament and had seen it many times before.
‘Unfortunately, that’s about all you can do,’ he replied with a kind smile. ‘I can try to talk to him again if you’d like?’