KattyZee...

Katy grew used to the smells, the sounds.  She learned to read the residents, know when they were cogent and when they were lost somewhere within themselves.  She learned how to soothe and how to feed and how to bathe and turn those who lay so still that their skin had gaping holes.  She felt special when Joe called her Linnet, when he was caught up with the ghosts, and only she could chase them away.  Little by little, lucidity loosened from his brain, working its way out of cracks and crevasses, easing undone.  Dementia clothed his world in deepening shades of disconnection.  Katy held him when the other nurses weren’t there.  Entered his shuttered world as the lights were going out, luminous in false familiarity. 

This is an extract from a short story I wrote, drawing on some of my experiences working with people with dementia. I found it a huge challenge to describe dementia and the workings of the mind of a sufferer. This is probably my favourite passage I have written so far.

Author: KattyZee

I always make crumble when I’m thinking of Trent. The thing is, I only realise halfway through. After I’ve melted, sifted, stirred. Made from memory. Suddenly I’m back in my shitty old kitchen, digesting pork and sitting on my bench with his hands in my back pockets. Tasting salt and gravy. Crumbles in the oven, turning golden. ‘I could really do this,’ he says.

I only realise when I’m halfway through. But I go on anyway. And then I’m looking at two empty ramekins and thinking I finished too fast.

Original passage. Author: KattyZee.

It separates the true smokers from the fakes: that stale, compressed smell. Clinging like an aura, untouched by soap or spray. Seeping from the pores, stretching the follicles. Staining the skin falsely Hispanic. Drawing lines, dragging towards premature death by the lips. Heaving up a wad and muttering “I smoke”.

Original passage. Copyright KattyZee.

Please don’t.

Don’t say hello.

Don’t smile at me.

Don’t smooth the hair from my forehead.

Don’t slip your palm into mine.

Don’t place your hand at the small of my back.

Don’t hold me at night.

Don’t kiss me in the morning.

Don’t do everything I’d gladly let you do.

Don’t do everything I long for you to do.

Don’t convince me to believe again, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Don’t ask me to open.

Don’t ask me to leave the ledge.

Don’t ask me to love,

Only to leave me again.

Because I don’t want to shut me away from you.

But I must.

So I do.

So please,

Don’t.

He had never smelt just her, he realised, as he pulled her out of the bath.

He had no knowledge beyond the perfumes, the make-up, the moisturisers, the shampoo, the scrub, the soap. He couldn’t name her scent beyond the bottles and labels. When he lay next to her to breathe her in, he couldn’t extract her from the false, cloying, stifling substance she lived in. A chemical smokescreen. An olfactory house of mirrors.

He wondered then, in his bewilderment, is that what it is to know someone? Until now, he had thought that it was enough to hold; to know the contours of their body, the simple small individualities that formed them, the particular temperature of skin. Or maybe enough to see them; to look deeply, openly, inquisitive and searching. To hear them; to experience the idiosyncratic inflections and expressions, the laugh and the scream and the cry, the morning voice distilled to the evening whisper. In these ways, he thought he knew.

The water was cold, and translucent, and red. No bubbles. No soap. The shampoo and toothpaste were capped. There were no freshly laundered clothes. He reached down and pulled out the plug, heard the suck and gurgle of the drainpipe, draining all the falseness and veiling away. He knelt, and breathed.

Later, her mother would, in pain and confusion, adopt an accusatory stance as she questioned why he didn’t call the ambulance for a full thirty minutes. Later the police would ask the same. Later, her friends would share, in hushed whispers, the suspicions they had always had of him, unpicking minute invented details to prove he was unhinged, because of this very moment. Later, it would all come tumbling, splintering down. But for now he knelt, breathing.

Knowing.

Original piece of creative writing. Author: Kat Zibell.