Anchor and roses with script on ribs

It is gone four and the ward has settled into the quiet it only gets at this hour, the monitors ticking like a clock someone forgot to wind. I am writing this at the station with a cold cup of tea and the good pen you gave me, because Sister says I need something to do with my hands when the lights are low.

Tonight Mr Dunmore in bay three asked me for a rope. Not a real one, he said, just something to hold. His late wife's sister had brought him a sprig of pink roses from her garden in Hayle, tied with blue ribbon the colour of the harbour, and he kept turning them over like a man checking a map. His father was a bosun on the Penzance boats, he told me, and used to say a ship only sinks if the crew stops bailing. I said I would keep bailing if he kept his feet under the blanket, and he laughed so hard the nurse on the next bed woke up to tell us off.

When the day staff came on at seven, he was still there, and the roses had opened another petal overnight. I copied his father's saying onto the back of a drug chart so I would not lose it. I refuse to sink, I wrote, and then I sat looking at it for a while, because it is not really his saying at all, is it. It is the one you used to shout at Dad when the boat was late and the kettle was cold.

Send my love to the girls and tell Gran the crossword is still waiting for her.

Jen