Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. " The Invisible Woman " "Right, what have they got you in for?" A nurse I hadn't seen before breezed over to my bed. She smiled at me briefly and reached for the folder off the end of my bed. I read her name-badge: "Dawn". Dawn Something-or-other. "I should have thought that was bloody obvious," I replied, with all the lack of grace I could muster without sounding grumpy. I probably shot wide of the mark, and simply sounded bitter. I don't know. I couldn't see myself as others saw me, and somehow I had always found that to be an advantage, given the circumstances. Given the circumstances, were I cheerful or bitter it never made a half-pennyworth of difference to people I met. They all simply avoided looking at me, or if they did, the look was tinged with pity; I think I preferred the avoidance. Nurse Dawn sat down on my bed. I was disinclined to move my legs, so she had to make do with perching awkwardly on the edge. She didn't seem to mind. "Ah - must be grump replacement!" she said. I felt like whacking her across the head. I would certainly give her a mouthful of abuse! But when I looked at her, she was grinning, and her grin was friendly and disarming. I didn't really want to be disarmed, but I was certainly silent. I looked straight back at her. There was nothing in her eyes to indicate anything other than she was pulling my leg. She did not look away. I saw no pity in her look. Eventually it was I who looked away, a little ashamed. "Cosmetic surgery - disfigurement," I mumbled. My ears felt hot, as if blushing could make me look worse than I did. "Oh, really?" said Dawn. She opened the folder, as if she could not quite believe me! "Yes, that's right. I never take anything for granted until I've seen it in black and white - not since I spent a whole week thinking one woman was in for a gender re-assignment just because she said she was. It turned out to be her foot. Anyway, here it is in the folder." She gave a quick, appraising look to both sides of my face, and said, "This should be interesting. I'd like to see it when it's done. I suppose the main thing to remember is that it'll still be you on that side of it." Was she trying to be crass or insulting? I searched her face, while she looked in my file. I saw a young woman very easy on the eye, hair too short for the severe pony-tail into which it was scraped and pulled, long eyelashes, and a wide, full mouth which she was now forming silently into my name as she read it in my file. Denise Millar. What's in a name? That which we call-dipped-in-the-ugly-pond by any other name would be as ugly. She looked up at me, and the mouth swept upward into a smile. I looked at her eyes, and again saw no give-away that this smile was forced or false. They were brown and friendly, but had a slight cast to them. It gradually occurred to me that she was simply being pleasant, because, I suppose, it came naturally to her. It was as if she didn't see my disfigurement, and my next reaction was one of honest anger. This was me here. This was what I was all about. My disfigurement was an important part of what I was. It defined me. It gave meaning to my life, and governed how people were supposed to relate to me. Who was she to ignore me in that way? "When are they going to operate?" she asked, and began to busy herself with my pulse and blood pressure. If she really wanted to know, why did she instantly start this displacement activity? I was used to displacement activity - it was one of the ways that people covered up the fact that the sight of me made them uncomfortable. But she stopped pumping the sphignomometer and looked at me again, raising her eyebrows. I looked back, dumbly. Why answer? Why play pat-a-cake platitudes? "When are they going to operate?" she repeated. "Give me my arm back and I'll tell you," I said. "It's going numb!" "Oh, sorry!" she said, quickly taking the reading and slackening off the rubber sleeve. I noticed that she was blushing a little. "I'm really sorry about that - I hope I didn't hurt you!" she said, sitting back on the bed. She took my hand, and this time I shifted my legs a little to give her more room. Her light grip on my hand shifted, as she placed her fingers on my wrist, to note my pulse. I think it was a little fast, because she frowned slightly. For once, amidst the endless, institutional routine of examinations, and the taking of blood pressure and pulse, I had found someone's touch to be unusually intimate. No one else's had. It disturbed me, if I was honest. I am hardly ever honest, so I told myself it didn't. She let go, and sat there with her steady gaze on my face, and the smile still there in both mouth and eyes. I thought - welcome to the freak show, roll up, roll up, who are you looking at, you cow? Instantly I regretted thinking an insult at her. Was I getting soft? But anyhow, why was she still looking at me? Then it dawned on me that she really wanted an answer. "It was going to be tomorrow," I said. "But they've put it back to the day after. Gives me more time to worry about it - an extra sleepless night!" "I'd sleep if I were you," she said. "Between you and me, they're good here. That's why you're here, and not somewhere else, I suppose. Anyhow, don't worry - I know people always say that, and it doesn't do much good if someone is going to worry anyway. But try not to." She got up and turned to go, but didn't get much further than two paces, before she turned and came back. "I'm not supposed to do this," she said, lowering her voice. "But if you really can't sleep tonight, slip out of bed and come and see me at the nurses' station. Just outside the door and turn left. I'll make us a cup of tea. But do try to sleep first, though." She smiled again, and I said "Thanks". Then she went about her business, and I suddenly felt...... what?.......lonely, back again in the institutional round. I had only been here a day and a half, and already I was timing myself by the routine of the ward. Order of the day - Women's Surgical H: wake up, breakfast, doctor's rounds, cup of tea, library trolley and newspapers, lunch, drugs trolley, doze, blood pressure and pulse, toilet, afternoon sandwich, visitors (none for me!), evening drink, toilet, lights-out....... if I'd wanted to, I could have got up and sat in the day-room, read a book, or watched TV. I could have visited the hospital chapel. But I seemed to prefer immersing myself in the routine. It suited my mood. It was geared to people who were sick and immobile, and I guess that meant in their own mind too. Like me. The woman with the face that needed fixed. That night - right enough - I couldn't sleep. Dozing during the day had wrecked any chance of that, for a start. There was a dim light outside in the corridor, which was enough to render the shapes in the room irritatingly sharp, and how ever tightly I shut my eyes, they remained in my mind as clearly as squares and triangles cut out from black card. There was muted coming and going somewhere for a while. Diagonally across from me a woman was snoring, and the one in the corner couldn't lie still. I lay for the first hour flitting in and out of half-dreams, and for the second hour I lay stubbornly in one position, careless of how much it hurt just as long as I didn't fidget or snore! When I couldn't stand this any more, and rolled onto my right-hand side, I was wide awake, and found myself staring at the imperfect rectangle of the doorway, softly lit by the dim corridor lights. It seemed like a different world, where things happened differently, populated by people in a different time line. I didn't want to give in to the temptation to go out and look for Dawn - I rebelled at the idea of such human contact, such companionship. But equally, I longed for it, and the longing began to outweigh the boredom, the aching in my limbs, and the rebellious refusal to recognise the warmth of the invitation. I found myself, suddenly, sitting on the edge of my bed, slipping my feet into my slippers and reaching for my dressing gown. I put it on, I fastened it, I took a deep breath. I took a step - I could still turn round and go back to the bed. I took another step, feeling a little cold - come on, girl, it's warmer in bed. I took another step, and another - level with the snorer's bed, and her noise now seemed gentle, inviting me to the land where the mind sorts out all its tensions and troubles into a nonsensical pantomime, intelligible only to the one who is dreaming it. I took another step, and another, and another - I was still in the dark, opposite the fidget, who had stopped fidgeting, and the doorway was only a couple of steps away. I could still turn back. I took another step - if I reached out my hand it would emerge into that alien universe outside. I stopped. I was shivering. My legs felt heavy, unwilling to be propelled by my mind. I thought, "This is damn silly!", and took another step, and another. I was in the corridor, and I realised I had been holding my breath. I let it out with a sigh, and looked to my left. Dawn was leaning against the counter at the nurses' station. She turned her head and saw me, and her face broke into a smile - yet another smile, had she an endless supply of them? What was it like, to be like that? She beckoned me to come, and disappeared. By the time I reached the nurses' station she was not there, and I looked from left to right to see her. I was on the point of giving up and returning to my bed, and in fact I was half-convinced I was asleep and dreaming, when I heard the soft squeak of shoes, and Dawn appeared from one of the other corridors with an electric kettle. There were two stools in the nurses' station, and we each took one as the kettle boiled. For a minute or so, Dawn busied herself finding mugs, teabags, a spoon. From somewhere she produced a quarter-full milk carton and sniffed it, her eyes registering surprise when it proved to be fresh. Almost with a "Hey Presto", she conjured our drinks from this kit, and handed one to me. Cradling her mug in both hands, Dawn leant one elbow on the counter, and turned those brown eyes on me. I was going to have to get used to this, I supposed, having someone who simply looks straight into my eyes. It was novel. It was a connection I had never felt before. No one had ever been this comfortable with me as far back as I could remember in my adult life. We chatted. I found out that she had taken her nursing career much further than Women's Surgical H. She had been a nurse with the RAF, and was now considering applying for a medical post at a centre for asylum-seekers. The only thing stopping her was that she had a boy at a local school, and didn't want to disrupt things for him. We talked for a long time, about a lot of things I don't now remember - I think we even talked about me. I do remember that once, in the middle of it all, she said, "I'm not supposed to have favourites amongst the patients. It's against policy. But sometimes - what the heck!" There was so much that I wanted to tell her - things I had never told anyone else. How, for example, I could just about remember being a little girl, unaware that I was disfigured. I was someone's little princess, just as all girls are. Other little children would play with me without any concern. How, for example, it hurt the first time anyone teased me about my looks. No, it hadn't been hurt right away, just total incomprehension. How, for further example, this became the reality of my life, day in, day out, despite the well-meaning lectures delivered to other children by teachers, parsons, guide leaders, and so on. Kids are very good at dissembling in front of their elders, however. How, again, my adult life had been one of endless loneliness - how could it have been anything else - and wallowing in self-pity, which I hated? I couldn't even fantasise about, say, a handsome lover, because reality just kept getting in the way. How, when my GP had suggested surgery I had run a mile in my mind, because of some fear of going under the knife and coming out looking worse than I did. Or dying under anaesthetic. It had taken all my courage finally to agree to surgery; during the months and months of waiting I thought of a dozen excuses I could use to break my appointment, but when it finally came through, I meekly turned up at the hospital, and here I was, still scared witless. I wanted so desperately to tell her how scared I was, and to have her reassure me. But I said nothing. "Not now," I thought. "Some other time, maybe." Dawn made another cup of tea for us, and eventually I began to squirm on my seat as my bladder began to protest. I didn't want to break off from this time at the nurses' station, because it belonged to us, and that seemed to be the closest I had come, for a long time, to something that belonged to me. "I really must go for a wee!" "Yes," said Dawn, looking at her watch. "And I must go on my rounds." And that was that. I went to the toilet. Dawn's shoes squeaked quietly around the corridor and the adjoining rooms, and by the time she came into the room where my bed was, I was back in it. She checked around to see that we were all alive. She must have noticed that my eyes were open, because her silhouette against the doorway raised a hand. I must have slept, and slept well, for the rest of the night, because that silhouette was the last thing I remembered until being woken by one of the day nurses opening the curtains and letting grey daylight in. That day I lifted myself from my morose attachment to the routine, and actually walked down to the day room. I even attempted a couple of crossword puzzles, and sat enthralled by the awfulness of daytime TV for a while. Eventually evening came. And with evening came Dawn - I held that silly paradox in my head, and even considered sharing it with Dawn, but I didn't. She must have heard it a thousand times, along with all the others. Rosy-fingered Dawn; no money in her purse - Dawn broke! Anyhow, she never seemed to need anything to cheer her up, and wouldn't need a silly quip from me. She worked hard amongst the querulous, demanding inmates of Women's Surgical H, and seemed to enjoy it. At lights-out, I forgot that the next day would be the day of my operation, and fell deeply asleep. Out of that depth, dreams eventually began to come. At first vague shapes and colours, then I found myself looking down at a ball-gown that spread out from my waist like a great tent. I was gliding across a dark hall, but it seemed more like flying, miles above a landscape of fields and woods. I was singing. The gown wrapped itself round my legs, feeling warm and comforting, and I found myself sitting at a table on which was something which could have been a mirror, or an oil painting, or a computer screen. Faces appeared, disappeared, re-appeared sometimes totally different. I seemed to have some control over them, and to be aware that each one was myself and someone else at the same time. I half-awoke and found that it was the middle of the night. I was on the point of drifting off again, in order to try to catch another sight of the faces in my dream, when I suddenly thought that if I did, I would not have another chance, this side of my op, to have time with Dawn. I struggled to be wide awake. I struggled to be sleepless. I forced myself to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I felt heavy, and the urge to lie down again was so strong. I put my slippers and dressing gown on, and sat down again. Eventually I did stand up, and marched resolutely into the corridor, and along to the nurses' station. Dawn was there, and smiled to see me, but there was another nurse too, and as there seemed to be more for them to do that night - a patient's light went on, and another started to moan with pain - our chat was disrupted. But we did manage a few minutes, and a cup of tea; and it was nice to be chatted to and smiled at. The funny thing is that when I went back to my bed that time, I couldn't sleep a wink, and by the time they took me down in the morning, to prepare me for my operation, I was exhausted. The next couple of days passed in a side-room, in a calm morphine doze, punctuated by short periods of lucidity and pain. My face was wrapped in bandages, and I lay sore and immobile in my bed. During one lucid spell, Dawn came in. She sat on the edge of my bed, and took my hand. Hers was cool. "How are you feeling?" she asked. Irritably, I snatched my hand away and balled it into a fist. My face ached, I could hardly see out of these bandages, and she asked me how I felt! Resentment surged through me. "Get close enough to this," I said, waving my fist, "and I'll show you exactly how I'm feeling!" "You must be feeling a bit better," she said, smiling as usual. "The bad temper's a sign of that." Once again, with a phrase little better than a banality, she disarmed me. Always the smile, always warm. I regretted my irritability, and reached out to take her hand again; she squeezed it briefly, and then let it go. "Honestly, it hurts like hell," I told her. "I'm not surprised. They'll be weaning you off the serious pain-killers, I expect. Anyhow, I'm around and about, so I'll see you later, eh? You look like the Invisible Man in those bandages! But don't forget - it's still you inside!" With that, she bustled about her nursing business. I saw her often in the next few days, when I was back in the main ward, and I followed her with my eyes as she worked. I became used to the way she made beds, took blood pressure, propped people up. I knew her tread before she appeared through the doorway. I became used to her mannerisms, like the way she re-tightened her pony-tail or smoothed her uniform dress down at the sides. I strained to hear her voice as she talked to other patients and to her colleagues. When it came to taking my blood pressure or pulse, I could have recognised her touch with my eyes shut, and could have identified it out of a selection of her colleagues'. She would linger at my bed a little more than at the other patients', and would spare me a moment or two of inconsequential chat. Or that's how it felt to me. Then one evening she wasn't there. I didn't ask the other nurses where she was, I just kept watching the doorway, hoping she would turn up. She wasn't there the next evening either. I got up in the middle of the night and poked my head out of the doorway - two strange nurses were at the station. The next day, I resigned myself to the institutional regime again. Order of the day - Women's Surgical H: wake up, breakfast, doctor's rounds, cup of tea, library trolley and newspapers, lunch, drugs trolley, doze, blood pressure and pulse, toilet, afternoon sandwich, visitors (none for me!), evening drink, toilet, lights-out, toss and turn. So much did I resign myself to this routine, that when the day came for my discharge, I felt strange packing my belongings in my borrowed rucksack and walking down the corridor in outdoor shoes. I said goodbye to the other patients, even though their names had hardly registered with me. Goodbye snorer, goodbye night-time fidget. Goodbye unremarkable nurses, and I guess thank you for all the care, even though I had hardly felt it! Goodbye Women's Surgical H. Goodbye more corridors, goodbye reception desk, goodbye automatic doors........... I ignored the ranks of taxis outside the hospital, and walked to a bus stop a few streets away. Every few yards, I turned and looked at the hospital, seeing each time less and less of it, until I turned a corner and it was completely out of sight. It was at that moment, finally bereft of the institutional crutch on which I had deliberately allowed myself to rely, that I broke down in tears. I was still crying when I reached the bus stop. * One year and one further operation later I was at the same bus stop. I had been to see the surgeon, who had pronounced me quite well. The scars were noticeable, but were only scars. Apart from them, my face as I knew it now in the mirror, was not so much disfigured as plain. Walking into the hospital, and walking out again an hour or so later, I had felt nothing. The memories of the institutional routine had faded by then, as had just about all memories of ever being an in-patient there. I had felt nothing - a state which is fairly normal in my experience. I felt nothing then, at the bus stop, as I waited with my eyes fixed on a spot on the ground, a few feet away. I was dimly aware that there was a café by the bus stop, and only less dimly aware that someone was now coming out of it and was heading my way. The first thing my downcast eyes noticed was a glimpse of a nurse's uniform, under the hastily-buttoned coat. I looked up, to see a severe pony-tail being shaken loose. Once the hair had been allowed to hang either side of it, the face it framed was suddenly pretty, but nonetheless familiar. I felt a jolt, a sudden mixture of clashing emotions, and could not stifle an exclamation. "Dawn?" The nurse looked at me, studying my face hard for a couple of seconds, and then she gaped with delight. "Denise Millar? It is! It's you!" she cried. "This is amazing. It's great to see you! Look, I'm really sorry I missed you at the hospital - the last time I saw you, you were still covered in bandages! They moved me to another ward at short notice and changed my shift. And then - you'll never guess what - remember that job at the asylum-seekers' centre that I was swithering about - well they offered that to me, but on a six-months' secondment. I had about a week to sort out how to look after Michael, so I took leave to get it all done. Anyhow, I did come back to see you, the day before I was due to go, but by then they'd sent you home. The job - oh the job was terrific - the place was grim but the work was really exciting, and those folks, oh, they really needed help. Nobody up here realises, I can tell you. But I'm back at the hospital now, and what's more I'm on Women's Surgical H too! But let me look at you - you look fantastic! How are you feeling?" How was I feeling. She always asked me how I was feeling. She stood there now, those brown eyes never wavering for an instant, looking into my own and making me look down at my shoes! How was I feeling? Was it still me on the inside? At the hospital the woman who had needed her face fixed had had it fixed, and had been sent home only half the woman she was before. They had destroyed something that had made me special, and turned me into something ordinary. I even had a decent mirror in my bedroom now, and could look at the plain stranger staring back at me - the one Dawn had just said looked "fantastic" - I wonder what fantasy that stranger had stepped out of, or what fantasies Dawn had in which her like appeared. Before my transformation, people had reacted to me, even if it was by looking away, or by the twinge of pity that flitted across their faces. When people had bumped into me, they had always apologised profusely. Now I get no looks at all. People look past me in the street, no one looks at me with pity or with anything. I have to get out of people's way. If someone bumps into me now, there's hardly time for an angry glance, hardly time for pavement rage, hardly time for them to snap, "Watch where you're effing going!" Dawn had told me that I looked like the Invisible Man. Well, I have been turned into the Invisible Woman. Just another face to forget. That's how I was feeling. No, it wasn't the same me on the inside, and it hadn't been for at least a year, since I stood crying at this very bus stop. "Great. I'm feeling great," I lied. I don't know if I convinced her. Dawn paused for a moment, taking in my answer. "Look, we must meet again for a chat. I really enjoyed our late-night talks, and I missed them." She nodded towards the café. "I come here quite a lot, depending upon when my shift finishes - it saves my having to cook at home. I know it's a bit extravagant, but they do a lemon meringue pie to kill for!" I said nothing. Dusk was beginning to insinuate itself into the afternoon sky. I looked at the lit interior of the café - gingham plastic and a small vase on each table, seats of dark wood, a place which did not quite have the pretentiousness of a Tea Shop, but which promised that it was clean, and that the food was tasty. A set of headlights appeared a few hundred yards down the road. "That'll be my bus," she said. Then she leaned towards me, put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me. She held the kiss. And held it. I was only aware of two things - the buzzing in my head, and the unmistakeable sweetness of lemon meringue pie on my mouth. There was the sound of brakes as the bus pulled up. She frisked away from me, calling over her shoulder, "See you again, soon, I hope!" I watched as she boarded the bus and paid her fare to the driver. I watched as she found a seat, and waved cheerfully to me through the window. And I watched the bus until it was out of sight. Then I turned back to look at the café. The sign on the door now said closed. Lights were being switched off inside, all except for the little one over the menu in the window. I took a few steps towards it, and read it. Then I read it again. And again. Each time I read it, I spent the longest time over the desserts. I missed two buses.