St. Jude's
He converses, when he can, in monosyllabic grunts. We are straining to catch each word as it breaks out of his mouth like the snap of a gingernut biscuit. The heat is unbearable, stifling, my lungs beginning to cave in on themselves. I can feel that underneath my clothes my armpits are damp, my toes sweaty. The room has been recently painted - well, re-done since the last one. Paint fumes add another layer to the headache crushing in on me. I can see the potted geraniums wilting before my eyes. The radiator is wafting their scent around the airless room. Stink of catpiss those flowers. Who brought them? Who brought them? He likes daffodils.

A dead moth is curled up on a month-old newspaper. Do they never clean in here? Through the dusty venetian blinds I can see a concrete carpark. I look at him then, and I want to run out of the room because there are odd yellow stains on his pyjama top and a thin trail of drool at the corners of his mouth; the last vestiges of a combover point up in a crusted fashion atop his paperthin skull. In the open doorway someone pukes up trifle. There is the rapid squeak of rubber shoes running on polished floor. From the next room comes the spectral hiss of a ventilator.

I raise my eyes to the ceiling but even there is no respite – just curly brown stains and a dead spider dangling from an ancient crusty web. I gnaw at my cuticles, bounce my legs up and down. The minute hand of a giant clock visible out in the corridor heaves itself around the clock face in exhaustion. I will it to move on. Somewhere a door slams and for a second the air moves in a wave, and riding on it like some perverted seahorse is the stench of Dettol-covered urine.

His eyes are rheumy, clouds overtaking his cornflower blues. Azure Eyes, my grandmother used to call him, even though I loved to point out that his eyes were not sky-blue but the colour of small field flowers. She didn't care, she liked the sound of it. He looks at me, and his gnarled hands claw at the bedsheet, imploring. I choke back a sob and move to fluff up his pillows. They're heavier than he is. Later my brother says that we looked like some twisted version of the Pietà.

I gently let go of him and then it seems as though he is nodding off. The fingers that once packed a pipe lie dangling uselessly out of his sleeves. The eyes that twinkled like fresh raindrops are covered by veiny lids, and the mouth that ribbed up with stories is now just a spittle-flecked mess. I sit back on the plastic chair which is making my butt ache, resisting the urge to gently tweak his toe in an effort to make him laugh.

The oppressive atmosphere finally gets too much for us all. My mother pats his hand and gathers up her handbag and my father jumps to his feet with his hands still jammed into his pockets where they've been all along and my brother who is older than me waves us all out marching stiffly like penguins. We will be back again next week. Unless, you know.