Heart dreamcatchers and butterflies with script

The ward was quiet at three this morning, the kind of quiet where the drip stands tick like clocks and someone down the corridor keeps humming the same three bars. I sat with Mr Okafor in bay four because his wife had gone home at midnight and he would not settle. He is ninety-one and has bought a kite for every grandchild, so he asked me to fetch the biscuit tin from his locker. Inside were pencil drawings of hearts strung with feathers, dreamcatchers he'd sketched on the backs of pharmacy leaflets when he couldn't sleep.

He told me his mother used to sell dreamcatchers at the Wigan market. She said the web catches the bad dreams and lets the good ones slide down the feathers. Then he tapped his chest and said the doctors kept asking where it hurt, and he kept saying the left side, and nobody believed him because the scan said otherwise. 'Listen to the heart,' he said. 'It's on the left, but it's always right.' I wrote that on the back of my hand so I wouldn't lose it.

At half four I rang the registrar, and by six they had moved him to a side room with a window that faces the car park. He asked me to give you the drawing with the two butterflies, the one with the script running through the middle. I've tucked it in this envelope with the tin's rusty lid, so you'll have to forgive the crease.

When the sun came up over the multistorey, he was asleep with his hand flat against his chest, and the butterflies on the page looked like they were finally flying the right way up. Come home for the weekend. I'll make the tea strong, the way you like it.

Love, Mum