In my former life, I wiled away my days teaching or writing, or thinking about things I would teach and things I would write. If I wasn’t doing anything creative, I was working out how to get more people to teach and write for - in other words, more people who would pay me to do so. It was a hard slog but I loved the freedom it gave me outside of chasing down people to pay their goddamned fees. Indeed, it was a fine thing to be able to sit back and absorb anything at all that might work its way into a play: the whys and wherefores of ordinary every day people doing ordinary every day things. I loved to get inside the head of a cranky old fart and see what all the hot air was really about, or work with a timid character on the extraordinary arc of a life-changing event perhaps. It didn’t have to be dramatic for me to find theatre in it. That is what writing is, I think; observing apparent normality and finding something extraordinary in it. 
These days I spend about thirty five hours a week in the company of nurses. In exchange I get a regular salary (imagine!), an inside view of a vastly different world, and sometimes, the opportunity to find out what makes my colleagues tick. What do nurses really want? I asked this question one quiet Saturday afternoon (although, in the same superstitious way an actor will say ‘break a leg’ instead of ‘good luck’, a nurse will curse you for saying ‘it’s so quiet today.’) Instead we mulled for a while over what nurses really want in terms of chocolate. If you’re gifting them after your stay in hospital, you should know that nobody actually likes Quality Street. That said, the following Monday a box of Quality Street was given and it didn’t last the hour. Heroes would be everyone’s top pick, according to the nursing coordinator. “Heroes for heroes” she chuckled to herself as she rummaged through a box of Celebrations. Ferrero Rocher also features highly - in fact, it’s my own contention that these champions of some dubious ambassador are in fact the number one sweet of choice, and that is based on over a year’s observation on my ward. There have been days when I cursed the sheer amount of chocolate within an easy arm’s reach, and then there have been cold-turkey moments when I questioned why there was none to be found. It goes in waves, as far as I can gather, but if you do want to gift a particular nurse, put his or her name on it or it will be rifled and pilfered by the rest of us. Wine would be nice (although many of the non-Irish nurses don’t drink); food vouchers will bring great excitement; give ice-cream on a very hot day (Magnums, preferably).
Chocolate aside, nurses want you to ring the bell! We recently had a lovely lady on our ward who couldn’t bear the idea of ringing for someone to come and help her, so she would come out to the desk dragging her drip behind her. This meant of course, that a nurse had to drop whatever it was they were already doing to get her back to the safety of her bed, rather than attending the bell when they were free to do so. There is always concern over the risk of falling, and it makes everyone nervous. If you’re told to ring the bell, please: ring that bell! That said, you may be well able to get up and walk about, and so you should. Staying in bed all day long is an old-fashioned nursing notion, and not one that’s valued today. Get up, get washed, get dressed and get walking - your recovery will come sooner if you do. 

You’re in good hands with nurses, but there is a limit to what they can answer. If you have questions, write them down - if your nurse can’t give you a satisfactory answer, remember to ask your consultant when you see them. You will only see your consultant once a day - or sometimes, only once during your stay, so save the flack that you might give your nurse and tell the doctor to their faces if something displeases you. That is not to say that no-one wants to hear it, but patients can go into star-struck mode when they finally meet their consultant; they are all smiles and coyness, while your nurse has spent hours of his or her busy day trying to sort the issue for you. 

Finally - for now - it’s not a finite subject - but gentlemen please do cover up. I have personally seen more nonchalant hairy bums (and the rest) in the past year than any one girl should have to. Yes, you’re in a hospital, but that doesn’t mean nurses have a lackadaisical attitude to having “seen it all before”. And I’m not a nurse. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I took this job. I was dazzled by the idea of a regular wage, but these days, I’m being dazzled by someone’s crown jewels. Lads: buy a dressing gown! Close the bathroom door! Wash your hands before you hand over the chocolates. ​

Still though, it’s all part of a normal, everyday extraordinary week on a hospital ward. And did I mention I get paid? 

Back in the day when my drama school was in full swing, I ran classes concurrently so that parents could drop siblings together at the same time, rather than dropping and picking up all afternoon. Often times, we’d combine two classes for warm up games, giving the children the opportunity to get to know both teachers, which was handy if either of us needed cover. My right-hand girl at the time – Angela, would occasionally take the opportunity to nip outside for a quick vape. She would convey this intention to me through a series of mimed actions (we were drama teachers after all), and over time the mime shortened simply to her ‘dropping’ a magical puff of smoke and stepping slowly away backwards. I would nod my comprehension: she was about to disappear in and for the purpose of said puff of smoke. As with all my teachers, we had a symbiotic relationship: they could read my mind (usually along the lines of: “How do I open this Facebook yoke?”); during live performances, we communicated clearly from backstage right to backstage left through a series of exaggerated facial expressions.
 
Working together gave my young teachers the chance to learn from me, and I gained the joy of just being with them, for teaching during the early years with only children for company, could be a lonely affair. I considered it a bonus to be working with young people, teenagers from youth theatre to young adults who just wanted to stay on in the school while they were in college. It meant I could keep my finger on the pulse of whatever was cool. They were young. I was older.  And being older was considered a good thing. I was respected. I mentored. I understood memes. I learned how to dab. Downtime was fun but so were the classes. My youth theatre group adored improvisational drama and they were positively heroic in passing their enthusiasm onto the younger students. I loved training by example – above all that the children should feel they’d found their tribe; let them know we actually like them, cheer them for their traits and quirks, their particular talents and abilities. They in turn would pass on this encouragement and kindness amongst each other. I could look around me, at my students and at my teachers, and bask in the energy emitting around the space, the buzz in the room. It felt good to have created all this from one single student in my mother’s dining room back in 1992. Being the oldest person in the room was an honour and nothing to be ashamed of.
 
And then I turned fifty.  It didn’t happen on the stroke of midnight exactly, but it crept up on me while I was minding my own business, going about my life exactly as I had before, excepting the gathered knowledge and wisdom that comes with the years. It was there, this skulking thing, when I updated my LinkedIn profile – ‘You might want me on your team’ I suggested, thinking what a fine thing it would be, offering insights only an older woman knows. It was there as my enthusiasm began to wane, applying for yet another job where I wouldn’t be granted an interview, where I might not even get a reply. It was more visible than me, this dreadful thing. One day, I learned its name: they call it Ageism and it makes me disappear. In two short years I went from founding a start-up business to being shunned by them. I’m a self-assured person, so it took a while for me to realise they weren’t interested in my resume: they had the measure of me by the time they read ‘born in 1967’.  I think back to those days teaching people to be confident, of how the gaps in our ages was an advantage, how there was everything to be gained by us all, young and old. Like Angela, magically disappearing into a puff of imagined smoke, I had begun to slowly back away from the idea that anyone might employ me.
 
Before I fully faded into oblivion though, I applied to a local private hospital, and lo and behold, they took me on. For the past year I’ve been working as a clerk on a ward, and while I often yearn for my former life as a creative and a business owner, it’s hard to beat a regular salary. (Imagine if I could have it all though!) Meanwhile, this employer has saved me from disappearing entirely. Recently, one of my colleagues, a member of the housekeeping team, told me she has begun to wear a brace to hold her shoulders back. I took her aside and showed her some exercises she could do, but it occurred to me that slouching her shoulders began in her head, and so I told her to keep her chin up; when she walks onto the ward, as those automatic doors open before her, she should walk, shoulders back, into her space full of confidence, faking it if she has to. It occurs to me I should do the same, walking forward, not backward, for the space around me is full of potential still; magical puffs of smoke in which anything might happen.

​(Next blog: What Nurses Really Want!)






 

We were coming towards the end of the programme, and I was well over my imposter syndrome. I thought back to day one, when fifteen of us – the chosen ones from over 250 applicants – sat together in the incubation hub on the new TU Dublin Grangegorman campus, and there was no one more surprised by my inclusion than me. We were entrepreneurs embarking on a six-month Enterprise Ireland grant, which not only paid us a salary but provided us with all the means to grow our startup businesses; one to one sessions and group workshops in finance, marketing and sales; guidance on business plans, matching with mentors, mock dragon’s den pitches, opportunities, support and encouragement. As a woman in my fifties, and with a non-tech business, I appreciated it, and I made sure to thoroughly embrace every helping hand that came my way. I turned up, I ticked every box, I met the deadlines. Before that, I’d run a drama school for almost thirty years, specializing in building confidence in people, so it was ironic that entering this new world of business did so much to knock mine. At one point, my drama school had centres all over Dublin. I trained and employed my students to teach. I wrote, directed and produced hundreds of my own plays, as well as taking on any outside directing or adjudication work that came my way. I managed budgets and people with ease but now, when it came to talking about finance, the dragons in the den tore me to shreds; terminology was an issue for me and I really didn’t know my assets from my ebitda. Translating the ideals of my new business – a natural skincare partnership – into targets and bottom lines just sucked all the fun out of it. Still, I ploughed on, a little stressed perhaps, but I like to think that I was managing; the dream of bringing the business to an international market was worth all the challenges. 
“Can you see yourself in five years’ time?” My mentor asked. Yes, yes I could, in the same way that I could always see a show’s end production in my mind’s eye, knowing what I wanted and simply having to put in place the pieces that would make it come to be. I knew what I was about, in other words. I wasn’t shrinking into the wallpaper or picking nervously at it. And yet, on that day, towards the end of our six months, when I had long since gotten over the surprise of being included, why did I have a sudden and debilitating panic attack? One minute I was cracking a joke and the next I was overwhelmed by the desire to burst into tears. I struggled to control myself, desperate to understand what was happening; the sense of foreboding doom, the difficulty breathing, the seemingly unachievable task of comprehending the concept of marketing my business. It was only when the palpitations started that I remembered the panic attacks I used to get as a teenager, those terrifying alien possessors that tormented me at night when everyone was asleep and I was alone. No rhyme, no reason, no warning, no encouragement: I was in a full-on panic attack before I knew what hit me. 

It passed. Or at least, the panic would come and go, but the palpitations didn’t leave me. I had the measure of them because I knew how to breathe my way through them, but it was exhausting, day and night. I found I was blaming the business, cursing the direction I was trying to take it in. I began crumbling spectacularly in the various dragons’ dens, crying in one case and vowing, eventually, that I would never put myself through the trauma again. Where was she, that girl who directed her first musical show aged twenty two? Who set up her school at twenty three and ran it successfully for almost thirty years? Where was she, that woman who became a mentor to others, who understood the importance of her work, who built her reputation on building confidence in others? What happened to the woman who wasn’t afraid to change direction in her middle years? I didn’t know until the hot flushes came, along with the night sweats. Although I tried to lean into it all, sometimes it got the better of me; going out for dinner and defiantly bringing my little electric fan along, only to end up in tears while the waitress recommended supplements that had worked for her. I didn’t know the menopause was to blame, robbing me of myself, even when I walked away from the business and my dreams for its future. When my doctor started me on HRT and the searing heat went away, I found her again; when my energy and a decent night’s sleep returned, and I stood in the clearing, there I was: still ready, willing and able. 

The pandemic followed on the heels of my menopausal kickoff, and I used my time wisely, up-skilling, assessing my strengths and wondering who I could offer my services to. I’d be quite the catch, I often thought; the things I know, the journeys I’ve navigated, the ideas that spring from me. I’m still alive and fresh with enthusiasm. God, the team that works with me, what fun we’ll have, how productive we’ll be! But alas, lurking around the corner, like a boot-boy squeezing on the dying embers of a cigarette butt, was another challenge for a woman who’s only half way done with her life: ageism. No one wanted a woman in her fifties. Now that, I was not expecting. 


(Next blog: Ageism!)


 

“You’re quivering.”
“I’m not quivering, I’m bio-scanning.”
These are the words that wake me up but they’re not directed at me, I’m sure. In any case, I’m blind, although I always thought blindness would be dark. This is bright; painfully white and sort of clinical.
“You’re definitely quivering. Is it because she’s still alive?”
“I’m not quivering and whether she’s alive or not – oh, look, she’s awake.”
“Is she? It’s hard to tell with all that squinting. Turn the lights down will you Gazdor?”
It takes me some time to get the sense of where I am. The harsh brightness has been replaced by dull black dots, and I’m resigning myself to a life without sight, my initial concern whether I can still live life as a vegan; I mean, who would feed me? Would they care about my principals? 
“Hello dear.” 
The dull black dots gradually become two odd looking heads, each with tiny button eyes, a ridiculous little nose and, by contrast, a wide grinning mouth. One of them purses their lips now and considers me.
“Odd looking, aren’t they?”
“Monstrous to be sure,” says the other thing.
“Tell you what though, I’ve never seen one of them wake up on the operating table before. Should we send for Big Pandara?”
“Good Gog no, Gazdor! This is your first boddle. Pandara will only accuse you of doing it wrong. Which you are, by the way, with all that quivering.”
“For the last time – “
I decide to sit up, hoping against hope that I’m not naked. Close; I’m wearing a lycra bodysuit and I’m in a very stereotypical futuristic laboratory. That’s suspicious. Maybe this is someone’s idea of a joke. The two – okay, let’s call them ‘aliens’ – jump backwards and grab onto each other. It’s almost as if they’re afraid of me. Weird. I notice that one of them is wielding a type of scalpel while the other one cowers behind him. Her. Who knows? I swing my legs off the operating table, feeling a little empowered. They whimper. 
“Okay, first off,” I say, “is this a joke?” 
They look at each other. “You think this is funny?”
“Certainly not,” I say, “It’s not funny at all and it’s clearly gone too far. Who undressed me by the way? Was this Brian’s idea?”
The one with the scalpel tries to get fancy with it, flipping it between fingers that appear to have eyeballs on the tips of them. He drops it and I jump off the table and grab it. Now I’m the one doing the wielding. 
“Gazdor, run and get Pandara, quick!”
“But you said not to – “ 
“Not so fast!” I say, fighting the temptation to flip the scalpel between my fingers. I have always wanted to say “Not so fast!” to anyone other than my kids.
“Obo, I’m frightened!”
“Shush Gazdor, I’m thinking.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, pointing the pointy thing at them both, “you’re frightened? Who was just lying on an operating table about to have my insides pulled out?”
“It’s not like that, it – “
“Enough!” That’s something else I’ve always wanted to say, by the way. If I wasn’t being abducted by aliens, this would almost be fun. 
“How about you two shimmy over to the operating table instead?” I wonder how long I can get away with this play at indignant confidence. 
“Okay, so…okay…” I begin, trying to formulate a clear thought. The former scalpel wielding one sits up straighter and gives a little cough. He’s the boss of the other one, I reason.
“I am Obo.” 
We nod politely to each other.
This is my apprentice, Gazdor.” 
“Charmed, I’m sure.” Says Gazdor.
“What are those eyeball things at the ends of your fingertips?” I ask.
They each look at their fingertips, hold them up to each other, hold them up to me, and burst out laughing. What I assume is laughing in any case, they could be singing an aria for all I really know.  Then they unnerve me by silently holding their hands up, all eyes on me, like spiders.
“All the better to see you, dear.” Says Obo. It’s clear I don’t know what he means so he continues.
“We once had eyes where you have your…” – a snigger “…two.” 
The one called Gazdor snorts and covers his mouth, shoulders shaking. 
“Forgive the boy, my dear, you are his first boddle and he can’t get his head around how unevolved you are. No offence.”
“Taken, I assure you.” I say, reminding him I hold the weapon.
“You misunderstand me, I’m sorry.” Says Obo, “We are an evolved version of the human you are, and greatly advanced in many aspects of science, medicine and ethics, amongst other methodologies. We were enhancing you just now.”
“Big Pandara favors those who follow a plant-based diet for upgrading. We can tell by scanning your boddle, see?” 
“So, you’re not going to experiment on me? Cut me up into little pieces?” 
“Good Gog no!” Obo gently prises the scalpel from my fingers. “I do need this however; it’s a lazer wand. When we finish upgrading you, you’ll be immortal, like us. Won’t that be nice?”
“I’m not sure.” I say.
Gazdor looks at me intently, which makes me somewhat uneasy; I don’t know which of his eyes to look back at, but I get his intention, which is kind. 
“All we want to do is save the vegans. We’re the future.”
“Are you from my future?” I ask, and they both nod. 
“That’s why you speak English so well.” 
Obo holds up one finger.
“Americish.” The finger winks.
“So,” says Gazdor, “are you up for it?”
I hop back up onto the operating table. “I’m up for it boys!”
“Wonderful,” says Obo, checking a screen that appears just above my head. “We’ll enhance you, wipe your memory and return for you when all your loved ones have popped their clugs. Ah, and I see your name is…why, it’s…Pandora. That’s…”
“…why I was quivering.” Says Gazdor.
“This is going to open a box of worms.” Says Obo. 
The last thing I remember is the sound of his long, tired sigh. 
 
THE END
​
I hope you enjoyed this short piece of distracted fiction, written when I was actually supposed to be working on the book...Did you get the wibbley-wobbley-timey-wimey suggestion that I'm the future Big Pandara? Or is it too silly? Should I even be letting you peek inside my head? Who knows?