The last time I saw her before she died I was surprised by her desire to live. I had met her doctor at the lifts on the way into the ward. 'I doubt that she'll make it through the week,' she said. The deep red blood in the bag suspended over her bed would turn her parchment skin pink but we knew that the next crisis might be the last. She held my hand and pulled me down to her to kiss me on the cheek.
'I have a feeling that I'll be much better tomorrow,' she said. Tears welled in her eyes. 'I'm very tired though. The blood only lasts a few days and then I'm back to where I started.' A nurse entered the room and adjusted the flow rate of the transfusion. I made my apologies and caught a taxi to the airport.
Fifteen years earlier my mother had died in the same bed and it had been Theresa who met me at the lifts with the news. She was in tears then too. She cried whenever anybody on her haematology ward died but, I liked to believe, she cried especially for my mother.
Theresa was a short woman with an enormous bosom that, through the layers of her habit, had comforted countless crying babies. She had a bad back and held herself stiff and upright. She hosted the weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at the hospital but she drank a sherry each evening and she loved bright and cheerful company.
She was strict but she knew that the younger staff nurses needed latitude and she allowed some innovation and limited democracy. She was tolerant of young medical residents because, having worked with several generations of them, she knew that they usually grew into wiser doctors.
She was prayerful but not pious and the occasional profanity escaped her lips. Her faith was simple but its certainty kept many of us from making the final break with belief. We loved her because she acknowledged that caring for unlovable people was hard: she channelled our anger away from the patients without denying us the right to feel it.
Theresa taught me many things. One day I had told an elderly man that the cancer in his lungs had spread to his bones and I felt that in relating his prognosis I had managed to find the delicate balance between