The Comb Goes at the Front
Janet has pushed the same trolley round Ward 9 for eleven years, Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Everything on it is donated: a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap, a comb, and, when the charity has had a good month, shampoo. The bags go to people who came in through the doors of the Royal Preston with nothing at all — a fall on the stairs, an ambulance at two in the morning, a night nobody had written in the diary.
In her first year she would hand the bag over and point at the toothbrush, because the toothbrush was what she would have wanted. People thanked her very politely. Then they put the whole bag in the cupboard by the bed and left it there.
The man in bed four was sitting up when she came round on Tuesday. He hadn’t shaved since Friday and his son was driving down from Carlisle that afternoon.
“Anything in there for a shave?” he asked.
There were razors on the bottom shelf. She gave him one, and he turned it over in his hand and asked for the comb as well.
The woman by the window wanted the shampoo. Janet had to explain that she couldn’t wash her hair today, not with the dressing on her arm, and probably not tomorrow either. The woman thought about that for a while, and then put her hand out anyway. Not for the shampoo. For the comb.
The third was a young man who had been brought in on Sunday in his work clothes. He didn’t look inside the bag at all.
“Just a comb, if you’ve got a spare one.”
Janet has heard the reason often enough now to know it before anybody says it. It came at half past eleven, from the woman by the window, who had been watching the door for an hour.
“My daughter’s coming at two,” she said. “I don’t want her walking in on a stranger.”
Teeth can wait until the evening. Nobody visits your teeth. Janet keeps the combs at the front of the trolley now, where a person can reach one without having to ask.