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  The Room With No Windows

Mrs Potter was making tea. The sun was streaming in through the conservatory windows and filling everything up with a glorious light. Mrs Potter was sitting at a small round table laid with a little crocheted table cloth and those real china tea cups that make a comforting "chink" sound when you put them on their saucers. There were three other women sitting around the table, Mrs Potter's dearest friends. There was Abigail with her big smile and her foghorn voice and her long dark hair that refused to turn grey. Vanessa, who everyone referred to as Nessie, which had become a bit of a joke since she was Scottish, sat beside her squinting through her very thick glasses that made her look like an owl. The last was Mary who was a quiet sort of woman who always listened and took her knitting absolutely everywhere. She was knitting now, a white jumper, sipping at her tea in between rows.
"Isn't it wonderful weather we're having this summer, Grace?" said Abigail to Mrs Potter.
Mrs Potter looked up from her teapot, starting out of a daze. The sun often made her sleepy. "Yes," she agreed, blinking rather rapidly. "Hard to believe this is still our little England. Feels almost like the tropics, this weather."
"Aye, but in the tropics we'd be having floods and hurricanes every other day too," Nessie pointed out, dunking her tenth chocolate digestive into her tea. She had been trying to cut back on her biscuits recently since she wasn't exactly skinny, but these little tea parties were a special occasion, especially these days.
"Did you see those floods on the news last week?" asked Mary, in her small mouse like squeak. "Terrible casualties and many people homeless, the poor things."
The others nodded sadly and muttered "Dreadful, Dreadful,"
"I am always so surprised at how cheerful they all seem when interviewed," continued Mary, knitting absentmindedly.
"Probably so pleased to be alive," suggested Nessie. "I mean, you'd appreciate life a lot more if you nearly lost it."
"It is interesting how so many people after these near death experiences turn so religious," noted Abigail in her own booming voice that positively drowned little Mary's. "You hear it all the time, survivors in interviews saying how God protected them. It always seems to end in the same way. God, fate, fortune."
"If there is such a thing," added Nessie, spraying crumbs over the table cloth. She licked her finger and picked up the crumbs determined not to waste any.
"Another biscuit, Nessie?" offered Mrs Potter.
Nessie helped herself without hesitation, deciding on the spot who needs a waist when you're eighty four anyway?
"Indeed," agreed Abigail. "If such a thing does exist."
"I think religion is a lovely idea," said Mary earnestly. "I mean, prayers. What a lovely invention. Even when you're all alone you still have some one to talk to."
The others all nodded in agreement. "Quite, quite," they agreed.
"Yes, whether it's true or not it is always nice to have someone to talk to," said Abigail. "Even if he does often ignore you,"
"Like we have each other," said Mary sweetly, finishing her row of knitting an taking a gentle sip of tea.
Mrs Potter smiled. Bless little Mary. You just had to love her.
"Aye, Lassie But there isn't any denying whether any of us are real or not. Why, I can see you all crystal clear, through my left eye anyway."
The ladies chuckled.
Mrs Potter closed one eye to see how things must look to Nessie.
Odd.
Through her left eye she could see her friends smiling, chatting, sipping tea. But through her left eye she could see something else entirely. A little white room with no windows. She snapped her eye open.
"Is everything all right, Grace?" asked Mary.
"Yes, you're awfully quiet today," added Abigail in a voice anything but.
"yes, of course," Mrs Potter assured them and she took a biscuit from the packet, smiling.
The others continued, apparently happy with this assurance, though Mary kept shooting concerned looks at her over her knitting.
"Yes it's a very confusing subject," boomed Abigail. "I mean, exactly how do you define reality?"
"Well, for a start, you can't fly,"said Nessie, then explained. "Well, in dreams you can always fly but if it's real you can't."
The ladies nodded. "True, true," they chorused.
"I say if you can touch it, smell it, taste it, whatever then it must be real. End of story," said Nessie and reached for another biscuit from the rapidly emptying packet deciding that she didn't really need cheek bones either.
Mrs Potter was having a bit of trouble with her own biscuit. When she lifted it to her mouth it crumbled in her shaky arthritic fingers and she didn't even get to taste the crumbs. She brushed the crumbs to the floor in annoyance. Stupid biscuit. She stamped on it with her slipper.
"Grace, what are you doing?" asked Abigail, giving her a look. "Surely you're a little too old to play footsies under the table!" She chuckled merrily at her joke.
"Twitch,"explained Mrs Potter and reached for another biscuit, but the packet seemed further away than it had been and she couldn't reach it. She stretched a little further and ended up knocking the teapot to the floor, splashing it's contents all over Mary's lovely white knitting.
"Oh, Mary! I am sorry!" she apologised hastily, trying to get up from her chair and help her but her hip was playing her up again.
"Don't worry, Grace dear," Mary assured her. "I don't really like white wool anyway, heaven knows why I bought it. Horribly impractical"
"yes, I've always hated white too," agreed Abigail. "Always reminds me of dentists and hospitals."
"I hate the places," said Nessie. "They always stink of disinfectant. It always says lemon scented on the bottle, but no lemon on earth smells like that."
As soon as she had said it, Mrs Potter could smell it. The tang of disinfectant stung at her nostrils, making her head spin. The scene was spinning in front of her. Her friends faces were swimming in and out of focus.
"Grace? Grace?"
Mrs Potter fought to hold onto the image of their faces, but they were blurring before her eyes. And then their voices changed.
"Grace?" came a man's voice. "Mrs Potter? Have you taken your pills today?"
"I - I hadn't got around to it yet," said Mrs Potter feebly.
"What?" came Nessie's voice. "Hadn't got around to taking what yet? Are you all right, Grace?"
"My - my pills," said Mrs Potter miserably, though her friends had known the answer. "I'm supposed to - to take my pills."
She caught a glimpse of their identical gloomy expressions as they swam into view for a moment, but when they reappeared they wore friendly smiles once again, a determined understanding in their eyes."
"Well, it was lovely to see you, Grace," said Mary softly.
"Yes, yes. Wonderful!" shouted Abigail happily.
"Spectacular," agreed Nessie. "And the tea was marvelous, Lass."
"Thank you," said Mrs Potter tearfully. "It has been simply wonderful to see you all again. I'm - I'm terribly sorry I have to go so soon."
"Don't fret over it, dear," Mary said reassuringly and Mrs Potter felt her little hand pat hers comfortingly.
"Drink up now, Mrs Potter," came the man's voice again, and she felt a plastic cup being pushed into her hands, though through her blurred vision she could see a china one. Obediently, she pressed the cup to her lips and allowed the water and the dissolved tablets to trickle down her throat. She watched sadly as the teacup turned to plastic in her hands and the smiling faces of her friends disappeared. All that she was left with was a blank white room with no windows and a man in a white coat. There was no little table, no tea, no crumbly digestives, no sunlight warming her face. There was no Mary or Nessie or Abigail. There were just plain white walls and the deathly stench of lemon scented disinfectant.
The man in the white coat smiled at her. "All better now, Mrs Potter?" he said cheerily.
"Yes," mumbled Grace to the floor. "All better now. Thank you, Mr Peterson."
"I'll be back at around two to wheel you down the corridor for a change of scenery, and maybe a magazine. Would you like that?"
Grace felt that more blank, white walls and disinfectant was hardly a change of scenery. And looking at pretty pictures of places that she could not go and reading about movies she had never seen in a magazine from a shop she wasn't allowed to visit was just about as close to torture as was legally allowed these days. She did not say this, however. Instead she replied "I would like that very much."
"I'll see you in about half an hour, then."
There was no clock in the little white room.
"I'm just going to have a short tea break and a chat with Mr Donaldson next door, and then I'll be right back." He smiled his minty toothpaste advert smile at her as he left.
Tea break, he had said. She was not allowed tea. She was not allowed to talk to her friends either.
So Grace Potter sat alone in her wheelchair in the room with no windows and had nobody to talk to.
Not even God.
She had tried that once before. Abigail had been right.
God ignored her.



© 2008 Becy Brooks

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