Sundays are now about Covid testing, and ridding my hands and wrists of the jewellery I almost always wear. This is to ensure that I can spend Mondays in the oncology/haematology day unit at West Middlesex University Hospital, where I have begun a Creative Writing Residency for CW+, the official charity of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. This type of residency will not be a pre-planned, neatly structured thing. I have materials. Everything is wipe clean. I have an idea of what I might do. But once there, there is an unpredictability to the day that is proving to be rewarding in unexpected ways. I sit with patients whilst they receive treatment, and my initial intention is to read a poem aloud. Maybe this will lead to patients’ writing poems. Maybe it will lead to them reading poems back to me. Maybe it leads to them reciting a poem pulled from their memory. Maybe they will talk to me of dancing or quinces, and maybe I will read them a poem about dancing or quinces. Maybe we don’t talk about poems at all. Maybe a patient doesn’t want me to sit down. Maybe my stool is in the way. Maybe a patient tells me they are too tired to talk on my first visit but beckons me on my second. Maybe it will lead to conversations none of us expected to have that day. Every hour contains multitudes: touch, sleep, waiting, tea, machines, calm, worry, uneaten sandwiches in brown paper bags, bleeps, stillness, tubes, staff with deftness of touch and vast scope of care, the ringing of the cancer bell. Three weeks, and I have seen all of these things. I divide my time between the day unit, and the waiting room, and spend it with patients, their families, carers, staff and volunteers. Maybe, momentarily, we can transport ourselves far from hospital chairs through the act of sharing words. Certainly, I feel fortunate to be hearing them.
Rebecca Goss 