TRANSCRIPT OF STATICS, SINGLE-CHANNEL VIDEO, 2021

You work in pairs. The shift pattern rotates, and there’s as much chance of being on with her as with anyone else. I’m 19. She’s in her late forties. She’s from the south, and she’s somehow different anyway. I don’t really know what she’s doing here. I think maybe she doesn’t know what I’m doing here either. We don’t ever talk about that, and it makes a kind of feedback loop of unspoken-ness between us. 

Nothing has happened with a girl yet. I’m in limbo. Being in a nursing home is like being in tepid water. The temperature is kept the same all year. There’s no distinction between the air and your skin. The differences between us are framed by the sameness of our sky blue polyester uniforms. Me wearing Chanel Égoïste and a Seiko divers watch, her wearing a thin gold chain. Neither of us saying much. Both of us chewing gum. I never see her outside that uniform. I never see her anywhere else, so I don’t know how she dresses. She lives in another town and she drives to work. Most of us get picked up by a minibus. 

At the door of the lift, I touch the rubber toe of my Dunlop Green Flash against the metal, before pressing the button. It discharges the static built up by the carpet and the various wheels. I do this every time. The carpet on this floor is maroon. Each level has a different colour, and a different smell according to who lives on it. The carpet makes walking quiet. It dampens and it amplifies. Walking behind, I see the shadows change on her each time we pass a lit doorway. 

It’s 7am and dark outside. It’s October. I’m already high and reeking of it were it not for the Égoïste. We move along the corridor, bedroom to bedroom. Back and forth to the sluice room. Some people are already awake, others we wake up. Some people tell you which clothes they want to wear. Most don’t. Everything is static. The clothing crackles. Shifts are done in pairs for the lifting. We know the individual needs and the corresponding movements from doing it over and over, muscle memory. Two bodies facing forward, another body between us facing backward, arms locked between ours. Her hair falls over her face during the lifting. Electric jolt of looking down and seeing a prominent vein in her wrist and across the top of her hand while her arm sustains the weight. Later, when everyone is down at lunch, I go back to that room and pocket coins from the dresser. 

The handover between afternoon and evening shifts is every day at 5. It’s called Report. It happens on the top floor, in the care wing. Some windows are open. It’s spring and it’s bright. There was a heather burn across the valley this morning, a straight orange line moving across the moorland. The new growth will attract grouse. They’ll shoot them in September. The nurses lead Report, and we sit in chairs in a circle. Lillian is the only resident in the care wing today. She’s sitting slightly apart from us. There’s banter during the handover conversation, and something makes everyone laugh. Lillian looks over then and bangs on the arm of her chair, shouting “Quiet, children”. She used to be a schoolteacher, and we know it, and we smile at her. As the laughter dissipates, and people’s attentions are momentarily scattered, and Lillian recedes, I feel Madeline looking at me from across the room. A vague smile from the communal laughter gives way to a sustained look that I can’t determine but which is directed solely at me. She continues looking, and I meet her gaze from my stoned raft, molten, and unsure of her look. The faraway smoke scent is drifting through the care wing. Report ends. We all get up out of our chairs. The nurses return to their station. The care workers re-enter the various surrounding corridors. The smell of the heather burn lingers into the night shift. By the early shift, it’s gone.