Living in the Land of Limbo: Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving

25. Children’s Ward

Parents and Sick Children 167 25 Children’s Ward  Sarah Day In this room, a melancholy alliance of breathlessness exists, a children’s wind ensemble hooting through the weary nocturne. Here above the city, it’s another world. Like a pressurised aircraft at night the hum insinuates itself into rows of dreams. Despite the dimness, there is not enough light to unhook the eyelids’ high-tension wire and dissolve into mind’s darkness. She has been stroking his back since time began, working calm’s liniment between shoulder blades scarcely bigger than chicken wings. I am awake. Breathing for her child in the corner, trying not to think of landed fish, pop-eyed, drowning in air. His panic mounts until sweet as frangipani, his mother’s dulcet voice sings out an aria— the two syllables of his name. Sarah Day, “Children’s Ward,” from Quickening (1997). Copyright ©1997 by Sarah Day. Reprinted by permission of the author. 168 Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving Between vertical slits of venetian light nurses’ talk drifts on long-distance radio waves. Torchlight pads through the half sleep disclosing parents camped on cots like refugees. Eventually dawn will lighten into grey behind double glaze. Above the dull city, focus narrows to the hand’s circular motion. Sleeping, the ear conch listens, trained on the beat of a heart, the strength of an indrawn breath. As long as the hand strokes, and while the voice croons . . . ...