Rebekah Kate

The Little Black Book of Elenor Bambridge

Our story begins six months ago. I was crying. Silent tears slid down my face like minuscule rivulets and dropped onto my collar. I felt like I had stepped into a bucket of wet cement and it had dried, encasing my feet and calves in weights I was not strong enough to lift. My chest bucked hard against my controlled efforts to breathe slowly and deeply and I pressed my fingers to my lips. Jeanette caught sight of my pink and glistening eyes and rolled her own dry beady ones skywards and stalked out of the room. I felt some gentle pressure around my arms and knew without looking that it was Milly. “I know you were attached to this one Chloe”. Then she hugged me and backed out of the room, her ballet flats gently brushing against the carpet. I remember thinking it sounded like a bird rubbing its’ feathers together. Then I looked at the poor, wasted body of Elenor Bambridge and I wondered if she had wings of her own now, somewhere. I knew that she would be covered in a white sheet soon and taken away to a cold place. I had worked at Inara Springs Aged Care Facility for four years now and death was no stranger to these halls. I had still not managed to muster the professionalism of the other nurses, who more or less had adopted a detached manner. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, it was self preservation really. I looked back at sweet Elenor and I suddenly wanted to hold her hand one last time. Without thinking, and apparently forgetting about the weights rooting me to the spot at the foot of her bed; I was suddenly at her side. I nudged the starchy bone coloured sheet and overly-bleached waffle blankets back to reveal her hand. I unfurled her fingers and I realised she was clutching something in her cool, soft hand. It was a little black book. I knew this book. Over the time we had spent together, one of our favourite things to do was crosswords. She had written down answers to questions that stumped her, so that she could remember them for the next time they popped up. The crossword magazine we used had a habit of re-using the same riddles. This book was always by her side. It was worn and made of leather. The years and use had made the cover supple and soft. This book was her only possession. Before I knew it, I had gently taken it from her hand. I knew that it would just be discarded otherwise. Without any family, there was no one to give it to. I looked down at it and couldn’t bear the thought of it being tossed away. It was a part of Elenor, it was how she found meaning in the cryptic clues of her crosswords. The idea of this felt important to me then because this meant that perhaps I could find a meaning in all of this. Maybe her book would give me answers. Elenor was what you would call a closed book herself; and now that she had left us I felt like I had been sucker punched with the fact that I would never delve past the superficial layers of that enigma.