story

“Excuse me, Kate, do you know how my dad is today?”

The day sister looked up from her paperwork and smiled warmly. 

“Hi, Laura. Er… I’m afraid he’s not so good. He didn’t get much sleep last night apparently and he’s a bit more confused than last week.”

Laura plastered on a smile for the benefit of Sebastian who, not yet tall enough to see over the desk, stood gripping her hand and glancing wide-eyed in every direction at once.

“We’ll just have to see if we can’t cheer him up a bit then, hey Seb?”

Her son gave a small nod, then jumped as a large metal cage full of bedding rattled past.

Laura crouched down to Seb’s level and gave his fingers a squeeze. “Don’t worry if Granddad seems different, he’s just a bit poorly at the moment, okay?” 

Seb nodded more firmly this time. 

“Okay, mum.”

When they reached Eric’s room, Laura leaned around the doorframe to get a look at her dad. Eric was sitting staring out of the window with a blanket over his knees.

“Hi Dad,” Laura called as she led Seb inside. There was no reply, no movement even, from the frail figure in the chair.

“Hi Granddad!” Seb offered bravely.

Eric turned then and gave a strange, bright smile. Laura swallowed. That was not her dad’s smile, full of twinkling mischief. It was the one he gave when he had awareness enough to know he was supposed to, but no idea why.

Laura tried to talk to him, but Eric’s answers were non sequiturs, saying he liked the food, and the view from his window. Except he could not quite remember ‘window’, and just waved a skeletal arm at the glass-filled frame to his right.

“Window, Granddad,” Seb said matter-of-factly, not a trace of surprise at his granddad struggling for such a simple word.

Then he held up his satchel and shook it, making Eric’s eyes brighten at the jangling sound it produced. “I thought you might like a go on this, Granddad. I got it from school.” 

Seb pulled a tambourine from his bag, its wood worn smooth by years of childrens’ hands. He tapped a rhythm against his palm then shook the tambourine’s shimmering zills with a flourish, his arms outstretched like a cabaret performer.

Eric actually laughed then, and took the offered instrument. He began patting out a beat, hesitantly at first, and then with more confidence as he started to sing. 

The lyrics, though a fantastical poetry, flowed from somewhere deeper than Eric’s illness could reach, and when he got to the final verse, he winked at Laura.

“Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time…”