I sat watching people pass by: chattering nurses, a cleaner wheeling a mop bucket, families looking for the right door,patients in gowns shuffling along. It was like that sequence you see sometimes in films where the lead character is standing in a busy place like Times Square in New York, they’re standing completely still but the film is sped up so that everything around them is in blurry motion. I think it’s meant to represent a sense of loneliness or something, usually at a point in the film where the lead character is in a crisis.
‘They didn’t have caramel bars so I got a Toblerone, a Double Decker, a packet of Minstrels and a Yorkie.’
I took the Yorkie.
‘How long has the doctor been in there?’ I asked.
‘A good fifteen minutes before you arrived.’
‘Can’t be good?’
‘Let’s see.’
I opened the Yorkie, broke off a giant chunk, put it in my mouth and held it there. I offered Dad a bit and he did the same. Neither of us bit down. We sat there, side by side, chocolate melting on our tongues, staring at the blank wall opposite.
‘Was it Yorkie Easter eggs you always used to get every year?’ Dad asked. I could hear that he had shifted the chunk of chocolate over to one side of his mouth to speak.
‘What?’ I said, sliding my chunk over to the inside of my cheek.
‘I think it was Yorkie Easter eggs you always got, was it not?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, shifting the chocolate over to the other cheek. ‘Granny always bought me that one.’
‘Oh aye, that’s what it was.’
‘It came with a mug one year.’
‘The Yorkie mug that’s up in the cupboard?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I never end up drinking out of that one.’
‘No, it’s too big.’
‘You’d nearly need two teabags for a decent cup of tea out of that thing.’
‘Yeah.’
We sucked on our chocolate some more.
‘What was the egg you got this year, not Yorkie? Galaxy or something?’ Dad asked.
‘Not Yorkie, no, it was a …’
‘Aye, no, it was a Mini Eggs one …’
‘Aye, a Mini Eggs one, with all the little eggs inside the big egg.’ The chocolate on my tongue was just a tiny pearl now, ready to disappear. ‘Because Granny always got me a Yorkie one.’
I swallowed the last trace of chocolate. I think Dad did too and we sat there with the taste of it in our mouths for a silent few minutes before we flinched at the door opening and the doctor stepped out, a folder under his arm, briskly walking away from us.
‘Doctor.’ Dad half ran to catch up with him. ‘Is it OK for us to go in?’
I couldn’t quite hear what the doctor said from where I was sitting but he seemed to nod his approval.
‘Aye, we can go in now,’ said Dad, coming back to me.
Dad gently knocked on the door, opened it slowly and I followed behind.
