Orderly

By Claudia Collins

Highly Commended, ‘Growing Word’ Category

Larks wake at 5.
Untucking herself from the lounge, she greets the gentle dawn.
Quick shower, clean slacks and then straight out,
Trailing upon the damp pavements curving away from the flats.
Mask on, she hops on the 22.
Tired eyes clasped shut in a yawn, she aches for coffee.
Looking up to meet the glare of the hospital door.
Swapping her anorak for full PPE she begins to fill her first bucket. 
Her mop is soon painting whisps of water across the sheet vinyl. 

This lark wheels wheezing pensioners and squeezes hands.
Turning, tilting, transporting while the chaos grows around her.
Sweating under plastic, she sneaks a Snickers
to the girl with the broken leg
And whispers to the Nan, that she’s there even if her family can’t be.

Days of lunchtime laughs before the coffee machine,
Monitoring and administering.         
Taking pulses, temperatures, and blood pressures.
Delivering a hundred lunch trays, stripping beds, and smiling.
She blocks out the beeping and keeps her tears for the locker room. 

Shift over.
Her back tightens but she keeps her pain isolated.
The evening sun feathers her face
as she presses her hot forehead against the bus window.
She’s home.
Sneaking into the kid’s room and whispering goodnight into their sleeping ear. 
Turns on Corrie and collapses on the creaking sofa. 
Looking down at her phone,
she sees past the cracked screen to the WhatsApp.
It’s Alfie,
‘Mum,’ he says. ‘I’m clapping for you.'

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Growing Word poems