Speak to Me

Same moment. Different understanding.

Annabel lies alone in her side room, cot sides up.

She can’t speak.

Who has a massive stroke at 48?

I’m not sure what to do.

I’m resigned to another bollocking.

The bow-tied neurology professor spelt out what he expected of me.

‘S-P-E-A-K to her.’

’She can’t speak, Sir’, I plead. ‘I feel like I’m annoying her.’

‘That makes two of us.’

I shuffle out of his carpeted office, back onto the wipe-clean 8th Floor, knock rhetorically, and re-enter the side-room.

The slow steady beeping of her heart monitor punctuates the sterile silence.

‘Do you mind if I call you Annabel?’

Perhaps she’s deaf and blind?

I take a gamble.

'NEVER SIT ON THE BED.' The nurses would say.

Her face flickers. Progress?

Her right arm unfolds from the lifeless left and straightens out towards me, ramrod straight, palm up, fist clenched.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Her long, middle-finger unfurls itself from the fist and straightens beneath my chin. She eyeballs me for twenty two heartbeats.

We connect.

F-U-C-K-O-F-F she mouths.

I hang the “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on her door as I leave.

We’re trained to measure communication in words.

She managed without them.

The professor was right.

I need to learn how to listen.