The Penn Friends Series Books 5-8: Penn Friends Boxset Page 8

  If only they knew what they had, Penny always thought, they might be able to appreciate it. It felt wrong. They didn’t deserve it. But as soon as Penny thought along those lines, she wondered if she justified it, either.

  She needed a new job.

  That evening, Penny had walked a mile to a pub-cum-restaurant that she’d found online which was advertising the fact it was open all of Christmas Day, and having glanced at the menu, Penny was glad they were not charging a fortune for the privilege. She’d never been to that pub.

  Two things were to happen that evening, and that was not counting her sense of Christmas spirit, which she got from sitting there, watching the happy customers come and go, a few families with young children running around. One family were each wearing identical Christmas jumpers, all in different sizes. It looked both stupid and amusing. They seemed happy. Penny wondered if she would ever have that? Would she ever have a family of her own, people to buy ugly looking jumpers for, people to go to the pub with on Christmas Day?

  The first thing to happen was Penny saw an advert pinned to the wall behind the bar asking for kitchen staff which Penny had read with interest when she placed her order. She’d asked about the role––as she was under eighteen, bar work itself was out of the question––and she was encouraged to hear the hours worked for her and the rate was much better than the supermarket. Penny took an application form, though the publican seemed impressed with her already. He’d said there were not many folks interested, and if she wanted it, the job was probably hers. She would work through the application as quickly as possible.

  The second thing that she did while waiting for her turkey and roast potatoes to arrive was to search the Internet on her phone for local hospitals and hospices. She’d been figuring it all out during the day and had settled on the following. She needed someone in long-term care, not someone in an emergency room setting. No one in intensive care, for example, as she wouldn’t be allowed in. Nor would she get the privacy she needed even if she found a way. If she were going to talk to someone, she would most certainly need to be alone with them. That, therefore, implied it wasn’t a hospital she required, but a long-term facility where visitors were less rushed. Somewhere that would enable her to sit beside a patient for hours and be left in peace.

  Somewhere offering patients a private room would also be ideal. If the patient were on a general ward, there would be other patients, and even if they were all equally unconscious, there might be other visitors who most certainly wouldn’t. There would be more nurses coming in and out as well, she assumed.

  So a private facility with small personal rooms looking after long-term patients was what Penny had settled on. She needed people who were alive but maybe being kept in a coma––be it natural or induced. All Penny needed was an active brain, someone who was alive on the inside even if their body was just a shell. And as Penny sat in that pub, application resting beside her with her phone in hand as she munched her meat and potatoes, she was sure she’d found the place. Again, like the pub, Penny had never known it had existed but planned to visit it the following day. She would be able to drop in her application on the way and then walk another mile to the care home in question.

  She finished her meal––there was the option of Christmas pudding with cream or mince pies and custard for dessert––and seeing as she’d missed out earlier in the day, she had ordered both, eating half of each. Pushing the bowl to one side twenty minutes later, she felt stuffed.

  She was happy and promised to return the following morning with her completed application form, Penny left the pub and walked home. It was already dark, her home cold, gloomy and very uninviting as she approached it once back on her street. All around her cul-de-sac it seemed people had put up lights, some around the roof, some hanging on trees that stood in their front garden. Penny’s house had nothing––she didn’t have the time or motivation to have done anything about it––though arriving back, she wondered if she should have made more of an effort. She decided next year she would.

  She walked up the drive, and reaching for her keys, she felt for the newest one on her keyring, the one for her new Jeep. She paused, opening the driver’s door. She often liked to sit behind the wheel, to smell the car, to run her hands over the shiny dashboard––her Blackpool adventures still ahead of her––imagining what it would be like to be driving herself around town.

  She got into the seat.

  “Happy Christmas, mum,” she said, remaining silent for a moment, before getting back out, locking her car and then going into the empty house.

  2

  You might look at me and judge me, assuming that what I was about to do could only have been selfish. And maybe it had started that way. Perhaps it might have been. Little did I know, however, how remarkable this was all going to be because of one impressive lady. It would change the way I think about those in comas forever. I probably should have published a paper on my findings, though of course, I couldn’t. Joy told me that herself.

  What I was about to find as I listened in on those patients in that one care home I had selected was a woman who was very much alive, very much present––except it was only her brain that was still active. She had no movement, no speech, no signs of life. My words could enter into her ears, she heard that much, but there was no physical way of her being able to communicate. She had just been laying there––she didn’t know where she was, as she had no feeling telling her she was on a bed, no awareness of light or dark that informed her she was in a room. She was just a conscience in a black void. Until I spoke up, that is; until I turned up and heard her voice for that first time.

  Penny woke early on Boxing Day, her body just wired that way. It usually took her a couple of weeks to break the morning cycle of rising before seven, and she’d only been off school for just over seven days. She was also too excited to stay in bed much past half six, anyway.

  She took her time getting dressed that morning––she was not about to rush out at the announcement of any church bells––and ate a simple breakfast. She glanced over at her completed application, which she’d finished the previous night before going to bed so that it was all ready for her. The pub didn’t open until ten that morning. She would have to wait.

  She took down the fake Christmas tree. It just seemed pointless to her, and a sad reminder that she’d made no real effort with things this year. She vowed to do better in twelve months.

  A year ago she would have been still doing her paper round, the deliveries large on Boxing Day as ads for the sales and such packed out those bumper editions. There were also always gifts awaiting her from the houses she delivered to, each owner’s thanks for her hard work the previous year in getting them their papers so early. She wondered who was getting the money now instead, pondered if they’d delivered them as diligently and regular as she had? It didn’t matter. It was someone else’s responsibility now.

  Penny had dressed smartly, wearing a red dress that went below her knees and covering it with a white cardigan, though wore a coat on top of it all to shield her from the weather as she slowly walked to the pub. She would be early; she knew that already but wanted to get out.

  There was no rain, no snow either, and apart from the odd frost at the beginning of the month, temperatures were a few degrees above zero even at that time in the morning. It gave everything a gloomy, overcast look. Penny was determined to remain positive, however. Today was going to be a good day.

  At ten, the publican, the same man she’d spoken to the night before, opened the door from the inside and Penny walked in. He seemed surprised that a customer was waiting so early, but smiled when he saw it was Penny. She told him that she had been sitting on a bench outside freezing her backside off and was thankful she was now inside, though even then it was only slightly warmer, which she kept to herself.

  “You’re keen,” he grinned at her, as he swung the chairs back off the tables, presumably having rested them upside down the previous night as he wash
ed the floor. She helped him move the last few into place.

  “Here,” she said, now they had finished and Penny had picked her application back up from the bar top she’d left it on a moment ago. “I’ve completed the application you gave me.”

  He glanced at the form, scanning it quickly but not long enough to have read it all.

  “Penny, is it?” he said, taking in her name at least.

  “Yes,” and he offered her his hand.

  “I’m Tony. My wife and I have been running this pub for ten years. She does most of the cooking, so you’ll be working with her. You’re too young to work this side of the bar,” he said, glancing back at her date of birth, though that much had already been discussed a little the night before. “Somedays we might get you serving tables, especially when it’s busy,” he said, adding, “I think you’ll be good for business.” But it was more a compliment than anything else, and she took it that way. “When you are eighteen, and if you want to, I can show you how things work this side of the kitchens. Have you serving drinks.”

  Penny smiled at the prospect; already it would beat cleaning dirty dishes.

  “So I’ve got the job?” she said.

  “It’s yours if you want it. Like I said last night, we need the help, and we’ve not had much interest until you showed up. You can start tonight if you want?”

  “Tonight?” She hadn’t thought it would be that immediate, though hadn’t dwelt too much on the what next. She’d just focused on getting the application done.

  “If you’re free,” he said, glancing back at the form she’d handed him. “You’ll need to give me a number to contact you on,” he added, spotting that she had left the phone number section empty, though all her other details were there; national insurance number, bank account information.

  She wrote her number on the back of the application.

  “What time do you need me to come?” she said, smiling at him once she’d finished.

  “It’ll be busy. Could do with you from four onwards, really. Until an hour after the kitchen closes, if that’s okay? That will be six hours, and you’ll get a short break halfway through. Plus we divide tips amongst everyone. Boxing Day is usually good for that.”

  She did the maths. Without tips, she was already on more than she would get working two evenings and a Saturday at the supermarket. Her face lit up. She needed the money.

  “Sure, I’ll see you just before four, then,” she said, turning to leave, knowing she needed enough time to pop into the care home, then get home before preparing for her first night in the new job.

  “We’ll discuss regular hours after you finish tonight,” he called after her. They’d only mentioned things briefly the night before. Penny was aware that they had no one and that there was plenty of work. She would take as much as she could get.

  Joy Omolaya was in the third room Penny passed as she walked down the main corridor holding a large bunch of flowers. Walking in with a smart dress and bearing flowers, staff had smiled at the girl obviously coming to visit a friend or a family member. She had walked straight through the double doors without anyone saying anything.

  Make the person in this room able to communicate their thoughts with me she said as she passed the first and second doors. Nothing happened. Penny was starting to wonder if her plan had been ill-conceived when she heard a response as she stood outside room number three. Penny looked in through the glass. An African woman was laying peacefully in the bed, a few cords attached to her telling Penny she was on life support, but besides that, she might just have been sleeping. There were no flowers or cards in the room. Penny turned the handle of the door which opened with barely a sound.

  “What is your name?” Penny spoke, having shut the door quietly behind her and started to approach the woman.

  Joy Omolaya came the instant response. “Joy, that’s a beautiful name,” Penny said. Can you hear me? You know what I am saying? “Yes, Joy, I can. My name is Penny, and I’m your friend.”

  Penny was to spend the next few minutes introducing herself, as she put the flowers she had into a vase that was standing on Joy’s bedside table. One or two nurses walked past and smiled at what they saw, leaving the two of them alone. Penny learnt that Joy was Nigerian and had lived in the UK for twenty years since moving at the age of twenty-three when she had done a Masters at London University. She had had a serious stroke three years ago and been existing in only darkness ever since, the part of her mind where consciousness lived very much alive and active, though no other senses present. Joy had been despairing of life. She could often hear voices come and go, though that was too few and far between. Most nurses never spoke to her as they came in to do whatever they did each day. Joy would call out in her mind, desperate to let them know she was still there, that she was always present, though had no physical way of getting their attention.

  Who are you? Joy had asked, Penny then explaining a little about herself, sharing how she was now living and the reasons behind that, without overexposing what she had done. That could come, later.

  My dear child that sounds horrible she’d said. There was a tear in Penny’s eye, though she blinked it away. She wasn’t going to let emotion get in the way now, not when she could see, hear, walk and work. Not when she had a home to go to, a life to live. Joy should be the woman pitied, not her.

  Penny had stayed with Joy for over two hours that first visit. A nurse had come in midway through to change one of the drips, Penny stopping speaking as she’d entered the room.

  “No, you can carry on,” she said, taking in the new flowers, happy that the patient had someone with her. “Some people think it helps. Some are sure people in a coma like Miss Omolaya can hear you, so please, carry on.”

  I can hear you, you bloody moron Joy had screamed. Penny had to work hard at keeping a straight face. She remained silent until the nurse left again, the nurse having sensed the visitor felt awkward with her being there, no doubt rushing to do whatever she needed to do so that she could leave the two women in peace. It was once again just Penny and Joy.

  Joy told her how she had been a lecturer at the university and lived alone––she’d never married, had no kids. That had explained why no one had brought her flowers. Joy said she did have some family back in Nigeria, but wasn’t sure if they even knew about her. They would not have the means to visit, anyway. It had been her employer who had taken care of her, Joy having had medical insurance and private care as part of her contract.

  Penny glanced at her watch. It was nearly lunchtime, and she needed to walk home and change before going to work. She promised to return the next day if Joy was happy with that.

  Sweetheart, I’ve had no one to talk to for what feels like an eternity, so I don’t care if you move into my room she’d said, Penny laughing out loud as she got to her feet. Hearing you laugh, girl, I had almost forgotten how that sounded. No one laughs around me now had been her last words to Penny as she got to the door.

  “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Joy. I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise.” Penny opened the door, closing it behind her, and just stood there for a moment, watching the woman who must have been going through hell for three years. Penny couldn’t begin to imagine how it must feel to be mentally there and yet so physically limited.

  Give Joy the gift of wisdom Penny added as she started to move away. In Joy, Penny had not only found someone she could talk to who wouldn’t report her to the authorities; she had someone who might be able to give her advice.

  As Penny got back to the front desk the same nurse, who she had seen earlier when she’d come in to change the fluids hanging on a drip by the side of Joy’s bed, was standing at the reception talking with someone. She came over to Penny.

  “I’ve not seen you visit her before,” she said, her tone open, not threatening. “How did you know Miss Omolaya?”

  “I’m Penny. I am one of her students,” Penny said, having worked that angle out during the last two hours. She was sure she would
get asked about her connection to Joy, and if Penny was to come back regularly, she needed a sound reason. She obviously couldn’t say she was family; no one would believe that.

  “It’s good that you’ve come, Penny. If you want to, you should come back.”

  “Oh, I will, thank you. Joy is a wonderful woman. I know she’s in there somewhere. It helps me to talk to her.”

  “She doesn’t have anyone else visit her, now. Initially, she had a few other students, but after a few months, they stopped coming,” the nurse said. She had placed Penny at no older than twenty, though that was apparently wrong. If Joy had taught her before the stroke, then that would make Penny nearer to her mid-twenties.

  “I’ll be back again tomorrow,” Penny said, turning and leaving things there. She could see the nurse had been looking at her a little strangely, Penny aware as she was speaking that the numbers didn’t add up. Penny was only seventeen and would have been just fourteen when Joy had suffered her stroke. Penny reflected how much had changed in both their lives in those three years as she left the building, heading back home.

  3