LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      The following morning Lizzie didn’t feel a bit like an ox. In fact, she woke feeling very strange indeed. She was dripping wet with sweat, her head was thumping and she felt as if she had a tight band around her chest. She was due to serve breakfasts with Marjorie and she struggled to get out of bed, though the room tilted in a most alarming way.

      She slumped back on the bed again, and Marjorie, coming back from the bathroom and beginning to dress, said, ‘God, are you all right? Your face is as red as a beetroot.’

      Lizzie wasn’t surprised. She could feel the sweat standing out on her forehead, trickling down her back, and seeping between her breasts. She opened her mouth to say she felt a little strange, but she was taken unawares by a fit of coughing.

      ‘God, Lizzie, I don’t think you’d better go downstairs like that.’

      ‘No, I’m all right, I’m fine,’ Lizzie said in a husky voice.

      ‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ Marjorie said, putting her feet into her shoes. ‘Stay here, I’ll have a word with someone.’

      Lizzie tried to tell the doctor that the manager had summoned that she was all right too, between bouts of coughing and gasping for breath. The doctor was Scottish and one to stand no nonsense and he said, ‘Please let me be the judge of that, young lady. I wouldna dream of telling you how to serve breakfast now, would I? Open up the front of your nightie and let’s have a wee listen to that chest of yours.’

      Acutely embarrassed, Lizzie undid the buttons at her neck and the doctor sounded her chest with the stethoscope. ‘Hm, hm,’ was all the comment he made, and then he straightened up and said, ‘Pull it right off.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I need to listen to your back.’

      ‘I can’t.’

      ‘I’m a doctor, lassie,’ the man barked. ‘Here to see how ill you are, not to look at your body. Now pull off your nightie.’

      Lizzie did as the doctor bid, glad they were alone, and the doctor listened and he also gave her back little taps. Eventually he said, ‘All right, put your nightie back on.’

      ‘What is it, Doctor?’

      ‘Bronchitis,’ the doctor replied, ‘and a bad dose I might add. Need to take care of it.’

      To the manager he said more. ‘Have to see it doesn’t turn to pneumonia. Needs careful nursing, for that girl might have little resistance and she’s as thin as a rake.’

      ‘She’s never had a day off sick before.’

      ‘Well, she’ll have more than a day now.’

      ‘I have a hotel to run.’

      ‘I am aware of that.’

      ‘What I mean is, I can’t have her here,’ the manager said. ‘With one down anyway, I won’t have the staff to nurse her and I presume she won’t be able to stay in a dormitory with the others?’

      ‘It’s not something I would recommend.’

      ‘Well then…’

      ‘The only place for her, if you’re adamant, is the hospital.’

      ‘See to it, can you?’

      The doctor, grim-faced, saw to it, and when he told Lizzie that she was to go to the General Hospital, she shed bitter tears. She’d never been in hospital in her life and didn’t want to go now. Surely to God she wasn’t that sick. People died in hospital.

      Lizzie sent a note to Steve to tell him what had happened and he turned up at the hospital a couple of days later. Lizzie had deteriorated during that time and it tore at his heart to see her fighting for breath, the beads of glistening sweat on her forehead lending a sheen to her face, despite the ministrations of the nurses.

      Knowing she had little breath to talk, he did the talking, and for hours. Much of what he said went over her head, but she liked the sound of his voice and it was nice to have someone near, holding her hand.

      Betty and Pat came, and even Marjorie popped in one day. Tressa came too, but obviously without Phillip, so she couldn’t stay long, but Lizzie was pleased she had made the effort, for it was quite a trek.

      Two days after Tressa’s visit, Lizzie was in the throes of delirium when Steve called at the hospital. ‘What is it?’ he cried, seeing the hospital staff scurrying about and Lizzie hardly aware of anything as she was being transferred to a separate single room.

      ‘Are you a relative?’ the doctor asked.

      ‘Sort of,’ Steve said. ‘All her people are in Ireland. I’m her boyfriend,’ and then, thinking it might have more clout, he added, ‘her fiancé really. I just haven’t got around to buying the ring yet.’

      ‘Well,’ the doctor said, ‘in view of that, and her family not being here, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Miss Clooney has developed pneumonia.’

      Ah Jesus Christ, Steve’s mind screamed, thinking of that killer disease of his youth, and his mouth dropped open with shock. ‘Will she…Will she…?’

      The doctor shrugged. ‘We’ll do what we can and it will depend on her resistance to fight. I’m sorry I can offer you no further hope.’

      ‘Shall I inform her people?’

      ‘It can do no harm,’ the doctor said, and those words more than any other conveyed to Steve the seriousness of Lizzie’s condition.

      Lizzie felt as if she were surrounded by sticky treacle and across her chest was a hot, tight band, so that she found it hard to breathe. She was semi-aware sometimes of someone sitting by her side, holding her hand, talking to her, but it was as if she were outside of it. Strange images disturbed her dreams, mixed up with her home back in Ireland, the hotel, and, most of all, Steve.

      He’d arrived every evening since he’d been told Lizzie had pneumonia. ‘We have got a visiting policy,’ the matron had said to the nurses, ‘but I haven’t the heart to turn him away. And after all, it’s a private room she has, so he’s disturbing no one else.’

      ‘He wouldn’t disturb anyone else anyroad,’ one of the nurses replied. ‘He just sits there. God, to have someone love you like that.’

      Lizzie’s mother, who’d come over to see her daughter, while desperately worried about her was also impressed by Steve’s diligence. When she was informed he was Lizzie’s fiancé, she believed it, though thought it odd. Lizzie had not asked their permission and she said as much to Steve.

      Steve had no wish to alienate Catherine and yet was unable to tell her the truth in case he might not be allowed to see Lizzie any more, but he was anxious to assure her their relationship was above board. ‘Neither of us had the time to ask your approval,’ he told Catherine. ‘We were just toying with the idea of becoming engaged, with your blessing of course, when Lizzie became ill.’

      Catherine accepted Steve’s version of events and the hospital gave a very good account of Steve Gillespie; and while his cronies at The Bell and the women of the street could have painted a different picture, even they would have had to admit that since this business had started he’d been a changed man.

      Catherine was staying at Longbridge with Arthur and Doreen, whom she’d met and got

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