The Girl I Never Helped.
I was in the main ward ...there were a few of us
She was in a cubical..in glassy isolation
Opposite my bed..
I lay bleeding with a minor thing..they fixed me
I was twenty eight.
She lay dying with her cancerous lungs.
She was twenty four.
Still as flattened twig
Between her sheets..
She stared up at the ceiling..
No Landscape... only white
Which yellowed just a little in the evening light...
... pale.... silent ,
A breeze without a wind
Her thin blond hair in wisps around her head
She lay and lay and lay and lay...
Until upon the hour..
Her disease rose up in her
And shook her violently
Within her brittle frame
And I would freeze in fear
A sort of dying in myself
To see her in contortion
Cough and gasp for breath.
And I was 28 and she was 24.
The young nurse said to me
Go over ...talk to her..
She is from Sweden ...she has no body here..
No visitors..
She is alone.....alone
In that glass cage...her final home,
I said I was too scared.
Too scared of death..
I could not visit her.
And I regret this now..
And
I regret it every year.
I cannot bear to think
That in her final days..
I left her lonely
Without a word to comfort her.
And I was twenty eight ..and she was twenty four.
Kristine Byrne 5th Aug.2012