Thursday

A trip to hospital in Oxford for Lesley’s dad today for his rescheduled MRI scan.

“I’ve had no sleep again.” Lesley said, “Will you take us?”

She didn’t need to ask. One look at her told me she wasn’t fit to drive.

I waited outside The Home for Lesley to emerge with her dad. Reggie and Al greeted me warmly as they passed. It was nice to be back.

Dad was wheeled out. Quiet and unshaven. He apparently only has a shave if either Reggie or Sean are available to do it for him. He won’t let anyone else do it.

The journey to The Hospital was completed in near silence. Dad was the only one to say anything.

“Where are we going?”

As the appointment was scheduled to be only half an hour The Dog and I waited outside in the carpark. The Dog almost handled if perfectly. The Dog is quite ableist and the problem with waiting in a disabled parking bay is that every other car around us is either loading or unloading someone in a wheelchair. And they’re slow. And close. But she kept her composure for the first four or five. After that, she lost it whenever anything moved.

Lesley returned. Alone.

“Will you go and get him? I can’t get his wheelchair over the lip of the door.”

The trip back to The Home was silent again except for the occasional whistle from Dad’s hearing aids when he put his hands over them to check whether they were still working. From the phone alerts going off in the back of the car, Lesley was already dealing with a barrage of WhatsApp messages as her sister dished out her instructions and dispensed her wisdom from several time-zones away.

Dad gave a hint at how his attitude to The Home had changed when we arrived there. He didn’t say “Here we are. Back at the prison.”

Once he was safely reinstalled in his room and we were on our way home I asked how long we’d have to wait for the results of the scan.

“Four…”

“Four days!? That’s not bad!”

“No. Four weeks.”

“Eh!?”

I wasn’t 100% sure he’d last that long.

“How was he in The Hospital?”

“OK I think. The nurses were lovely of course. But when we were booking in at reception they asked some questions to confirm who he was. When they asked for his home address he had no clue. No idea at all.”

He’s only been in The Home a couple of weeks.

Bloody hell.

Image Credit

Original image by Nick Gilmore. February 2025