by SARAH O’CONNOR
When I was a child of ten in Ireland, I loved visiting my dying grandfather in the Bon Secours hospital.
Each week brought a small thrill. We would park our red Toyota Corolla under the shade of a sycamore tree, and I would skip along the gravel up the grey stone steps until we arrived at the two large wooden doors. The main entrance was polished marble and dark wood: imposing columns and winding staircases, a gift shop tucked in the corner with candy and stuffed animals and a stately grandfather clock with a brass face enclosed in a long, tall wooden case across from the stairs. During the holidays, a glittering, fragrant Christmas tree greeted the dying, the injured and their families.
At the top of the split staircase, the wide corridor that led to his room had yellow speckled floors and flat wooden bannisters on either side of the wall, with the occasional frail body hanging on with hope and persistence. The air was thick with the smell of boiled cabbage, disinfectant and the faint whiff of decay. The nurses wore white with matching white caps; some were nuns in full habit, thick brown rosary beads hanging from their waists. Walking staidly in pairs. Delivering souls to St Peter. Or so I was told.
My grandfather had his own private room. The single bed sat against the far wall, the window looking out over the two-level car park and the small gardens with a statue in the corner. I could just make out the top of the Virgin Mary’s head in the distance. On my grandfather’s bed the crisp white sheets and thin yellow blankets gave him an eerie yellowish hue, echoing the floors. The bed rail seemed to hold his sickness in place, as if it could keep its slow creep contained.
Treats for us were in his compact bedside locker, mints, chocolates, winegums, still in their colourful packaging. I would climb on the bed and his large pale hand would dole them out one by one. We lounged there for hours, nurses bustling in and out with tea and cookies, adjusting blankets and pressing buttons on machines. A sterile vacation.
He had been a large man with black hair, a black beard, and wire rimmed glasses. He built us a swing in the back garden and hung it from the branches of the old oak tree. One day he was gardening and keeled right over in the middle of the onion patch he was planting. Cancer. Of the kidney, they thought. They removed it, but it had spread to his liver and beyond. I wondered what it was, this cancer. Nobody gave me a good explanation. I decided it was something that ate you from the inside out until you disappeared completely and then what? I wasn’t sure about that either.
I could see how he was changing, being eaten alive, bit by bit. I didn’t say anything; nobody else seemed to notice, and I didn’t want to be rude. He shrank so much his clothes no longer fit, and we had to buy him new pajamas. That, oddly, was a fun excursion. Drifting through the racks of clothes, inhaling the newness, feeling the fabric slide through my fingers, and ending with a frothy hot chocolate. Magic.
Then he came home, accompanied by one of the nuns who attended to his every need. I was curious what those needs were; nobody told me. She propped him up in his favourite chair, a tartan wool blanket across his knees, beside the roaring fireplace. He looked like he might snap in two, like the dry twigs that crumbled under our feet in the garden, but what did I know? We weren’t allowed to climb on him anymore so I curled up on the soft rug by the hearth, which always burned now.
Once, I snuck into his room and hid inside the closet. I watched her bathe him, tenderly, like a new born baby, section by section. He whimpered sometimes and she whispered to him, soothing. She patted him dry and slowly guided his thin wasted limbs into the new striped pajamas, combed his hair, and sang softly, a lullaby, maybe. Then she lit a candle on his bedside locker, knelt, head bowed, one hand resting on his.
Days later he died. I never saw the nun again. I wondered if she ever found love like that.
I don’t remember many tears. From anyone, really. Just the quiet packing away of the medical equipment beside his bed. Everything else stayed the same for years. Those striped pajamas remained folded on his pillow, waiting for the ghost of him to return. The murmur of the nuns, sweet nothings in my ear now.
I became a doctor. In hospital corridors, I see the ghosts of grandfathers, still holding on.
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Sarah is a writer from Cork, now living in Vancouver, Canada with her husband, four children, and her dog. Her work has appeared in The Closed Eye Open (Mayas Micros, Issue 36) and 50-Word Stories, with forthcoming work in Bending Genres, Beyond Words, The Martello Journal, Ivo Review and The Piker press.
© 2026, Sarah O’Connor
Halfway Down the Stairs 