**How I Ended Up Here**
The ward smelled of cheap antiseptic, boiled vegetables, and age—so thick and heavy you could almost scoop it with a spoon. Lydia Whitaker sat on the edge of her bed, fiddling with the frayed hem of her faded dressing gown—the very one she used to wear in her own kitchen, sipping tea by the window. At home. When she still had a home…
On the neighbouring bed was a woman twenty years her senior, sitting motionless like a statue, staring at nothing. Her vacant eyes fixed on the wall as if it were a window to another world.
Suddenly, she rose, gripped a chair, and dragged it closer to Lydia.
“Lydia, love… tell me… how did you end up here?” the old woman rasped, lowering herself carefully. The helplessness in her faded eyes was that of a child—as if she weren’t an old woman at all, but a girl the world had long since forgotten.
Lydia wanted to brush her off. To tell her she wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t remember. But instead, she spoke. Because for the first time in years, someone was listening.
“It started with silence…” Her voice wavered. “First, James rang less and less. A meeting, his grandson’s football practice, always some excuse. His wife, Emma, never cared much for me. And Tommy, my grandson… he’s growing up. No time for his old nan. I understand.”
The woman nodded, leaning in. She’d been in the care home three years—every story she heard was her own.
“Then they stopped remembering. My birthday passed—just another day. Then Mother’s Day. Then Christmas. And I… I still waited. Baked an apple crumble, the way James loved as a boy. Set the table. Put out our old photo—him in shorts by the shore in Cornwall. Me, young… laughing. I’d stare at that picture, thinking: They’ll come. They have to. They promised.”
Lydia sighed deeply. A glimmer of tears caught the light. The old woman gently touched her shoulder.
“They came. Late. Stood in the hallway, James staring at the floor. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘we’ve decided—’ The rest was a blur. Just one sentence, sharp as a verdict: ‘Tommy needs his own room. And you… you’ll be better off here. Proper care, medicine, routine…'”
“What did you say?” the old woman whispered.
“What could I say?” Lydia gave a bitter laugh. “I just stammered, ‘But I… I’ve—’ They’d already made up their minds. Movers. Boxes. My carved oak dresser—hauled away. I reached for it, but Tommy was glued to his phone. No look. No goodbye. No thanks. As if I’d never existed.”
“Do they call now?”
“James rang yesterday,” Lydia muttered. “Asked, ‘How are you settling in?’ And I said, ‘Remember how you’d crawl into my bed during thunderstorms? Shaking like a leaf…’ And he said, ‘No, I don’t.’ There it is. Doesn’t remember. Or pretends not to.”
The old woman took her hand—warm, gnarled, paper-thin. Silent.
“You know the cruelest part?” Lydia went on. “They’re renting out my flat. The money’s for Tommy’s tutors. Said it shouldn’t sit empty, so now it’s a yoga studio. ‘Vinyasa,’ or some such. Can you picture it? Where my old china cabinet stood, women in leggings twist themselves into pretzels…”
Down the hall, a trolley rattled with dinner trays. Outside, the setting sun bled orange across the room. The silence was heavy. Unbearable.
“But I remember everything,” Lydia whispered. “Everything. His first tooth, rocking him to sleep, the day he cried over a B in maths. How I dreamed he’d be happy. I gave everything. My whole life. And now… now I’m just in the way.”
The old woman wrapped an arm around her shoulders, resting her cheek against Lydia’s silver hair. Her touch was rough, familiar—like a mother’s hand, comforting yet powerless against loneliness.
They sat in the dim ward, between the past’s warmth and the present’s hollow shadows.
And one thought wouldn’t leave Lydia:
What if they *do* remember?
*—An old man’s lesson: Love isn’t currency. Spend it wisely—some debts are never repaid.*
