She didn’t wipe the tears, worried she might end the call, this final connection with her mum

Surtsey looked at the poster on her wall, lightning delivering hundreds of amps, shooting life into the Inch. She thought about yesterday with her mum, touching the sand, breathing the air. “Is there someone there with you?” the nurse said. Surtsey had forgotten the nurse was still there and jumped at the sound of her voice.

She thought about the question, looked at her bedroom door. Halima down the hall, if she wasn’t up and out already. Iona too.

“Yes,” she said. It seemed easiest. Just go along with all this, follow protocol. Deliver her lines as best she could, hope that everyone was convinced she was still human, still breathing.

“I’m afraid I have to ask you a couple of questions, Ms Mackenzie.”

“Surtsey.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s my name.”

“Surtsey, yes. Is it OK if I ask you a few things?” “Sure.” Surtsey took the phone away from her ear for a second and stared at it. The little smudged area at the top of the screen where her ear had been pressed. The red button to end the call. She put it on speaker to feel less intimate, less connected.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I have some questions first. Is that OK?”

“Of course.”

Peacefully

Surtsey tried to remember the nurse’s name but it was already gone.

“How did it happen?” she said.

A pause while Surtsey stared at the screen.

“As I said, your mother passed away peacefully in the night.”

“From what?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What did she die of?”

“Surtsey, Louise had terminal cancer. You know that.”

“Yes, but what specifically killed her?”

“The cancer killed her.”

“I was with her yesterday. She was fine.” Surtsey pictured her mum on the boat, spray in her hair and wind whipping around them both.

“That’s often the case in my experience,” the nurse said. “Clients frequently perk up before the end.” “It wasn’t like that.”

“I understand it’s hard to accept,” the nurse said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I can accept it,” Surtsey said. “It’s just…” Silence.

Eventually Surtsey spoke, as much to herself as into the phone. “Couldn’t you have kept her alive a little longer?”

“It was her time,” the nurse said.

“How do you know it was peaceful?” Surtsey said. “Sorry?”

“You said she died peacefully in her sleep. How do you know? How do you know she wasn’t writhing in agony for hours while your staff were mucking around on Facebook or reading Hello magazine?”

“She was asleep,” the nurse said, “and she didn’t wake up. And anyway, she had a DNR order in her paperwork.”

“What?”

“Do Not Resuscitate. We discussed it when she first came. She didn’t mention it to you?”

She had done, Surtsey remembered, but it seemed so far away, a theoretical discussion with no relevance to her mum actually dying.

Worst news

The nurse spoke again. “So even if someone had been with her, we couldn’t have done anything. Legally, I mean.”

“Did you see her yesterday?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You personally, did you see my mum yesterday?” Surtsey heard a sigh down the phone. What must it be like to give people this information all day long? To be the one who steps into people’s lives and gives them the worst news imaginable? The harbinger of death, a real-life grim reaper.

“I spoke to Louise at teatime,” the nurse said. “And did she seem to you, as a professional, like someone about to die?”

“It’s not like that. You never know.”

“So what’s the point of all the nursing training, if you can’t tell when someone is going to die?”

Her eyes were wet with tears, dripping onto the phone screen. She didn’t wipe them away, worried she might end the call by accident, end this final connection with her mum.

If they could just keep talking, maybe Louise wasn’t really dead. A clerical error, someone typed the wrong name into the computer, it happened all the time.

“I’m sorry, but I do have to ask a couple of questions,” the nurse said. Diplomatic, unprovokable. What must that be like?

“OK.”

“Firstly, did your mother have an end-of-life plan?”

“What?”

“A plan for what to do when this happens. We have no note of one in our records. Normally if a client has one we would have a copy.”

Client. Louise Mackenzie, aged 46, just another client. But then how else would you deal with it if you had to do it every day?

All these dead and dying weren’t your relatives, or you would go insane with grief and stress.

Surtsey looked at her bedside table hoping to see Hal’s hash pipe. She saw a glass of water and lunged for it, gulping it down, cold in her throat. She gasped as she finished it.

“Ms Mackenzie?”

“I don’t know about a plan. I don’t have a plan.” “Then you’ll need to organise a funeral director to come and collect your mum.”

“You mean her body.”

“Yes. If you don’t have a funeral director in mind I can recommend a local one.”

“Who has a funeral director in mind?” Silence.

Registered

Surtsey sighed. “I’m sorry, a recommendation would be good. But don’t we need to get the coroner or whatever first?”

“When death isn’t suspicious there’s no need to contact the coroner or police. I’m registered to sign the death certificate and a funeral director takes care of the deceased’s body after that.”

“What about cause of death?”

“We know the cause of death,” the nurse said. “As we have already discussed.”

“So that’s it? Can I at least see her?”

“Of course,” the nurse said. “That was my next question. Would you like to see her here as she is, or later after the funeral director has prepared her?” “Prepared her how?”

“It’s rather delicate.”

“Try me.”

“Bodies decompose and that process starts immediately. Your mother is fine right now, but we’re required by law to have her taken care of as soon as possible. If you want to come in and see her, it’s best to do it sooner rather than later.”

Surtsey pictured Iona sprawled across her bed, in a thick, booze-sodden sleep, oblivious to this wrecking ball through their lives.

“OK,” she said eventually. “I’ll be round to see her as soon as possible.”

More on Monday.