Cloth Diapers & Panties

Chapter 28 – One Sandwich Too Many The following evening, Emma came to the hospital in jeans and a dark green sweater. For several seconds Aino couldn't work out what was wrong with her. Emma stood in the doorway with her hair loose around her shoulders and a canvas bag hanging from one hand, looking familiar enough that Aino knew every small movement of her face and yet strangely out of place in the room. There were no blue scrubs, no name badge and no pens clipped to her pocket. Without them she seemed younger somehow, less like someone who belonged to the hospital and more like someone Aino might have passed in a café or sat beside on a train. Aino stared at her long enough for Emma to notice. Emma looked down at herself. “What?” “You're wearing clothes.” Emma glanced at her sweater. “I usually do.” “I've never seen them.” “No. I suppose you haven't.” A small smile appeared between them, but it lasted only a moment. Emma's eyes drifted towards the other side of the room, and Aino followed them without meaning to. Oskari's family had come that morning. His father had carried the backpack. His mother had unplugged the charger from the wall and wound the cable carefully around her hand before putting it away, performing the small practical task with such concentration that Aino had wondered whether she was doing it simply because there was nothing else left that she could do for her son. His little sister had found the gummy bears. Aino had looked towards the window then. She hadn't wanted to see what the girl did with them, and afterwards she hadn't asked. Now there were clean sheets on Oskari's bed. The bedside table had been wiped, the chair pushed back into place and the hook beside the bed left empty. Every trace of him had disappeared so efficiently that the space looked as though it had never belonged to him at all. It was ready for someone else. Aino hated it. Emma seemed to understand without asking. She crossed the room and sat in the chair beside Aino's bed, leaving her canvas bag by her feet. “You're not working,” Aino said. “No.” “It's your day off.” “Yes.” Aino studied her for another moment, as if the ordinary clothes might still turn out to have some reasonable medical explanation. “You came here on your day off.” “I did.” Why?” Emma seemed to consider several answers before choosing the simplest one. “I wanted to see you.” Something shifted quietly inside Aino. It wasn't unpleasant, but she didn't know what to call it, and lately too many things had required names before she was ready to give them one. She looked down at Bunny instead, sitting against her stomach between the white casts. “Oh.” Emma smiled a little. “Is that allowed?” “I don't know.” “Should I leave?” “No.” The answer came embarrassingly quickly, but Emma didn't tease her about it. She simply settled a little more comfortably into the chair, as though Aino had answered a perfectly ordinary question. For a moment Emma said nothing. Without the scrubs and the little rituals of work around her, she seemed uncertain what she was supposed to do next. Eventually she leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. “How are you doing?” “Fine.” “That's not what I meant.” Aino knew that. There were several possible answers to the question, most of them complicated, and she wasn't particularly interested in any of them. Instead she shifted slightly beneath the blanket and remembered something much easier to complain about. “Someone else changed me this morning.” Emma's mouth twitched. “And?” “She was competent.” “High praise.” Aino hesitated. “She didn't tuck the blanket around me afterwards.” “Oh.” “It was inefficient.” “Of course.” “I got cold.” “Naturally.” Aino looked at her. “You do it better.” The amusement in Emma's face softened into something else. It was only a small change, but Aino noticed it. “Apparently I've spoiled you.” Aino considered this seriously. “A little.” “I'll try not to let it go to your head.” “Too late.” Emma laughed quietly, and Aino found herself smiling too. There was something reassuring in discovering that this part of them was still there: Emma teasing her, Aino pretending not to be teased, both of them understanding considerably more than either one said aloud. The smile lingered for a little while after the laughter had gone. Then, without anything in particular causing it, Aino's eyes wandered towards the other side of the room. The silence returned gradually rather than all at once. Aino became aware first of the sounds beyond the room—the wheels of a trolley passing in the corridor, a distant telephone, someone laughing somewhere near the nurses' station—and then of everything she could no longer hear from the bed opposite hers. Oskari had rarely allowed the room to stay quiet for very long. He had commented on nurses, food, television programmes, weather, Aino's facial expressions and almost anything else that happened to enter his field of vision. Sometimes Aino had wished he would stop. She would have given almost anything for him to say something irritating now. “I keep expecting him to say something.” Emma's gaze followed hers. “Me too.” “Something annoying.” “Definitely.” Aino looked across at the empty bed and tried to imagine him there. It was surprisingly easy. She could almost put him back into the room simply by remembering where everything had been: Oskari half sitting against his pillows, his phone somewhere it shouldn't be, the blanket pushed down because he was always too warm. “He would have commented on your clothes.” Emma looked down at herself. “What is wrong with my clothes?” “Nothing.” “You said that suspiciously.” “I think he would have found something.” “He probably would.” That brought him closer. Aino could almost hear the response he would have made, probably delivered from behind the curtain at precisely the worst possible moment. He would have waited until Emma said something that could be interpreted as flirting and then made certain that neither of them was ever allowed to forget it. The thought made something ache behind Aino's ribs, but at the same time the corner of her mouth moved. Emma noticed. “He would have been unbearable about me coming here on my day off.” “Yes.” “He'd probably have asked whether this was a date.” “Yes.” “And then you'd have threatened him.” “I would not have threatened him.” Emma raised an eyebrow. “I would have asked him to stop talking.” “Very forcefully.” “Yes.” For a moment it almost worked. Oskari was there in the shape of the conversation, occupying the space between them in the way he always had, and Aino could imagine turning towards the other bed and finding him grinning because he had successfully annoyed her again. Then she looked. There was nobody there. The smile left her. “I miss him.” Emma didn't say I know. Yesterday she might have, when she had still been trying to find the right things to say, but tonight she only looked at the empty bed with Aino. “I miss him too.” Aino found that she preferred that answer. I know belonged to someone standing outside the feeling and recognising it. I miss him too meant Emma was inside it with her. Without thinking, Aino shifted slightly beneath the blanket and searched beside her hip for something that wasn't there. Her pacifier. She hadn't even realised what she was looking for until her fingers met nothing but the sheet. For a moment she simply stared at her hand. Then, almost automatically, she began to bring her thumb towards her mouth. She stopped halfway. Oh. Aino lowered her hand again. Emma had noticed. Of course she had. But she didn't say anything. After a while Aino moved Bunny from her stomach onto the pillow beside her. “Can we go to the island?” Emma's expression softened. “The animal island?” “Yes.” “Okay.” Aino settled deeper into the pillow, making herself as comfortable as the casts allowed. Her diaper crinkled softly beneath the blanket as she moved, and Bunny tipped sideways against her pillow. She nudged him upright with the edge of her cast. There. Better. With Bunny properly positioned and Emma beside her, Aino closed her eyes and waited for the story to begin. Nothing happened. After a moment she opened one eye. Emma was waiting too. So this time Aino found the island herself. Evening had reached it before them. The mist that often gathered over the water had withdrawn towards the horizon, leaving the rocks along the shore dark and shining beneath a fading sky. The river moved quietly through the forest, carrying fallen leaves around the stones, and somewhere farther inland the rabbits were making their way home along paths they had travelled so often that they no longer needed to think about where they were going. The old turtle had already disappeared among the reeds. A light burned at the top of the lighthouse, although nobody on the island could remember seeing anyone climb the stairs to light it. The little otter sat beside the river. Usually she liked watching the current. She would throw sticks into the water and hurry along the bank to see which one reached the bend first, even though the rabbit had repeatedly pointed out that choosing sticks of different sizes made the experiment scientifically useless. Tonight there were several good sticks beside her. She hadn't thrown any of them. There was someone missing from the island, and somehow his absence seemed to occupy more space than he ever had. Aino opened her eyes. Emma was watching her. “The animals would notice,” Aino said. “Yes.” “They wouldn't just go back to normal.” “No.” “The rabbit would probably still have the sandwiches.” Emma's face changed. The smallest rabbit had packed them during the last story, preparing without being asked to follow the otter wherever she eventually went. In Aino's mind she could see the little cloth bundle beside her now, opened on the riverbank. “Yes,” Emma said quietly. “I think she would.” Aino closed her eyes again. The rabbit had made too many sandwiches because she had counted carefully before leaving home. One for herself, one for the otter, and one for every other animal who might need something to eat before they returned. Except the number of animals had changed. There was a sandwich left over. The rabbit didn't know what to do with it. Throwing it away seemed wrong, because it had been made for someone. Eating it seemed worse. So it remained in the little cloth bundle while evening settled over the island. Aino swallowed. She could feel the pressure building behind her eyes and resisted it, not because she was ashamed of crying but because she wanted to stay on the island a little longer. “What happens when someone dies on the island?” It took Emma a while to answer. “I don't know.” “There should be something.” “Something?” “An animal.” Emma was quiet, and in that quiet Aino began trying to imagine it. It couldn't be a monster. Death wasn't a monster, because monsters belonged to stories in which someone could eventually defeat them. You could trick a monster, trap it, chase it into the forest or discover the one thing it feared. Oskari had not lost a fight with a monster. He had been getting better. He had packed his backpack. He had been going home. Whatever had come for him had done so while everyone was still making plans for tomorrow. “It needs a name,” Aino said. Emma shifted in the chair. “What about Sorrow?” Aino opened her eyes. “No.” Emma blinked. “No?” “John Irving already did that.” “Who?” Aino stared at her. “You don't know John Irving?” “I recognise the name.” “That isn't the same thing.” “I know.” Emma seemed appropriately ashamed. Aino considered the problem for a moment, searching for the most efficient description of the book. “There's a book where the main character fucks his sister.” Silence. Emma's mouth fell open. Aino waited. A tiny sound escaped her. Then another. Emma pressed a hand over her mouth, but it was already too late. The laugh broke through anyway, startling in the quiet room and so completely inappropriate that Aino stared at her. “That wasn't the important part of the book.” That made it worse. Emma bent forward, her shoulders shaking as she tried desperately to keep her voice down. “You chose that,” she managed, “as your summary?” “It identifies the book quite efficiently.” Emma made a strangled noise, and Aino felt her own laugh arrive before she had decided whether she was allowed to make it. It hurt at first. The muscles in her chest tightened around it until laughter and crying seemed to occupy almost exactly the same place, and for a moment Aino couldn't tell which one was going to win. Then Emma looked at her with wet eyes and a hand still pressed uselessly over her mouth, and Aino laughed again. So they laughed together beside Oskari's empty bed. Not for very long. Grief didn't disappear simply because something was funny, and neither of them mistook those few seconds for happiness. But something loosened between them, some pressure that had been building since yesterday, and when their laughter finally faded the silence that returned no longer felt quite so cold. Emma wiped beneath one eye. “I can't believe that's how you introduced me to John Irving.” “You asked.” “I suggested a name.” “It was already taken.” “By the incest book.” “Yes.” Emma breathed out through her nose. “Fine. Not Sorrow.” Aino closed her eyes again, and gradually the hospital room receded. The island was still there. The little otter hadn't moved far from the river. The smallest rabbit remained beside her, the bundle of sandwiches between them, while the last of the daylight disappeared beyond the trees. Perhaps Death didn't need a name. Aino tried to imagine what shape it should have instead. Not teeth or claws. Nothing black and monstrous waiting in the forest, because that would make death something evil, and evil implied intention. Oskari hadn't died because something had wanted to hurt him. A bird, perhaps. A large grey one. It could appear sometimes at the edge of the forest without anyone seeing it arrive. It wouldn't hunt the animals or chase them. It would simply come when someone was gone and remain nearby while everyone else tried to understand the new shape of the island. “You're doing the face again,” Emma said softly. Aino opened her eyes. “What face?” “The one where you're somewhere else.” “I'm on the island.” “Oh.” Aino looked at her. “You're there too.” Emma's eyebrows rose slightly. “Am I?” “Yes.” “What am I?” “I don't know yet.” “That seems unfair.” “You can choose later.” Emma nodded as though this were a serious concession. Aino looked back towards the empty bed. “The animals shouldn't replace him.” “No.” “If another animal comes to the island, it shouldn't sleep in his place.” Emma was quiet for a moment. Then she understood. “No,” she said. “It shouldn't.” Aino's throat tightened again. Tomorrow or the day after, another patient would probably be brought into the room. Someone else would put a phone on that bedside table and leave clothes hanging from the hook. Someone else would sleep beneath those blankets, complain about the food and perhaps wonder why the woman in the other bed kept looking at him as though he were somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. The hospital would not remember that the space had belonged to Oskari. Hospitals couldn't work that way. Beds had to become empty so that someone else could fill them; sheets had to be changed, tables wiped and belongings removed. The machinery of the place depended upon one person's ending becoming room for someone else's beginning. Aino understood that. She hated it anyway. Her right hand rested beside her on top of the blanket, almost entirely useless inside the cast. Only her fingers emerged from the white edge. Something warm touched them. Aino looked down. Emma had moved her hand onto the bed sometime while Aino was staring across the room. She hadn't taken Aino's hand exactly. She had placed her own beside it, close enough that the side of her little finger rested against Aino's. The distinction felt important. Emma wasn't asking for anything, and she wasn't deciding anything for her. She was simply there. Aino moved first. It was barely a movement, only her fingers turning towards Emma's as far as the cast allowed, but Emma understood immediately. She slipped her hand carefully beneath them, adjusting the angle until Aino could curl her fingers around hers without pulling painfully at her wrist. It was an awkward way to hold hands. Aino didn't care. Emma's hand was warm beneath hers, and for a while that was all either of them did. Then Emma's thumb began to move, slowly tracing the side of Aino's index finger before returning along the same path. Once. Then again. The touch was so gentle that Aino could have pretended not to notice it. She could have classified it as another piece of comfort that nurses sometimes offered frightened patients and left it there. Except Emma wasn't working. There were no scrubs, no badge and no reason for her to be sitting beside this bed at all. She had come because she wanted to see Aino. Emma's thumb passed over her finger again, lingering briefly over the knuckle before moving back towards the edge of the cast. There was nothing clinical in the gesture. She wasn't checking whether Aino could feel her fingers or whether the cast was affecting her circulation. She was simply stroking her. Aino watched their joined hands and felt that same strange movement somewhere inside her that she had noticed when Emma first walked through the door. She still didn't give it a name. There would be time for names later. Yesterday Emma had cried in Aino's arms. Tonight she had come back on her day off, carrying her own grief, and somehow they had ended up here, holding on to each other beside the place where Oskari had been. Aino tightened her fingers around Emma's. Emma answered by doing the same. For a while neither of them spoke, and Aino allowed the warmth of Emma's hand to become part of the island too. The little otter remained beside the river while darkness gathered beneath the trees. Eventually the grey bird appeared. It came without sound, emerging from between the trunks so quietly that the otter couldn't have said exactly when she first noticed it. One moment there had been only the forest; the next there was a tall grey shape standing at its edge. The rabbit moved closer to the otter. Neither of them ran. The bird walked down towards the river and stopped several body lengths away. It didn't spread its wings or call to them. It didn't demand anything from the animals who were left. It simply folded its wings and stayed. Aino thought perhaps that was what Death should be on the island. Not something cruel and not something kind. Certainly not something wise. The bird would never tell the animals that everything happened for a reason, because that would be a stupid thing to say and the otter would probably become angry with it. It couldn't explain where their friend had gone. It couldn't bring him back. All it could do was make his absence real. After a while, the otter understood that the bird hadn't come to take anyone else. It had come because someone was already gone, and perhaps it would remain at the river until the animals no longer needed to look towards the forest and wonder whether it was coming back. Emma's thumb continued its slow path across Aino's fingers. “What did Oskari become?” she asked. Aino thought about it for a long time. She thought about gummy bears and bad hospital food, stupid jokes and a backpack packed far too early because Oskari had been so certain he was going home. She remembered him pointing the packet of sweets at her while announcing that he had been studying her, and how irritated she had been that he had noticed something true. “I don't think he becomes anything.” Emma waited. “He was already an animal on the island.” “What animal?” Aino considered the question seriously. She tried a fox and rejected it. Something about a monkey seemed insulting, although Oskari probably would have enjoyed that. A bird was wrong too. In the end the species seemed less important than the one characteristic Aino knew for certain. “I don't know.” She felt the beginning of a smile. “Something annoying.” Emma's fingers tightened around hers. “Yes.” “Very annoying.” “The worst.” Aino nodded. They didn't decide what kind of animal he had been. It turned out they didn't need to. Somewhere on the island there had been an annoying animal who talked too much, stole the best food, interrupted private conversations and somehow noticed things about the otter that she hadn't intended anyone else to notice. The other animals had sometimes wished he would be quiet. Now he was. They missed him terribly. Aino turned her hand as much as the cast allowed and pressed her fingers more firmly into Emma's palm. Emma continued stroking them, her thumb moving back and forth with no apparent need to stop. Outside the window, Helsinki had disappeared into darkness. The glass reflected the hospital room back at them: two women beside one bed, another bed standing empty across from them, Bunny barely visible against the pillow. Aino knew the empty bed would not remain empty forever. Neither would the island remain unchanged forever. The rabbits would eventually eat again. The turtle would come out of the reeds. The otter would throw another stick into the river and probably argue with someone about whether the experiment had been conducted properly. None of that would mean they had forgotten. Tonight they didn't have to move that far. Tonight the little otter and the rabbit could sit beside the river with one sandwich too many, while the grey bird waited at the edge of the water and asked nothing of them. And in the hospital room, Aino and Emma could sit beside Oskari's empty bed and do the same. Emma stroked Aino's fingers. Aino held on.

It is the final part, so it's just tying up loose ends and things like that.  With a little luck, it should be done sometime in early November.  

I put on an undergarment with straps on one time and my wife gave me an odd look.  That was 20+ years ago, early in the marriage.  Since then I have not tried, but I the  collection has grown to about 40 of them now (she has bought some of them).  

Hi, i live in ottawa/gatineau area. Is there a chance to be in town sometime?

My wife and mother in law (who we live with) see me daily. A few medical professionals.   That's really it.