The hand on the bedspread was as dead as dough.
Even the crackly white sheet dented by the fingers seemed to burst with vitality in comparison.
Astonishingly though, it was the same hand. Clearly recognisable with all its scars and knots and swellings. The puffy knuckles where the arthritis had chewed at his old dexterity and the joy he’d take in its grip. The hand had gripped lines, hoisted sails, driven chisels, plunged tension from muscles, lifted food to mouths- not just his own. Held and stroked skin.
At the end his fingers had plucked feebly at the sleeves of his jumper, worn every day despite the hospital’s sweltering heat.
The age spots and deformed joints and even now, the lavender pallor and lumpish, irrefutable waxwork thud of it when she lifted and dropped it: None of this could obscure what this hand and the man who’d moved it had done for her.
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