Poppy, hand me that locket, dear!

Act One

Tim drummed on his desk with the fingertips of his left hand while he waited for the webpage to load. His other hand contained a silver heart-shaped locket, the protective coat had begun to wear and the metal underneath was tarnished. After gently scrubbing the surface using baking soda and an old toothbrush, Tim had switched on his desktop to investigate its origin.

It certainly had not been anything he had bought for himself – nor for his wife, back when she was alive. His parents’ belongings were all listed and accounted for in an arch file in his home office cabinet, and the belongings themselves were in one of the Bonnyhill Storage units at the edge of town. That was how Tim liked it – everything in its place. The locket was an enigma, however – a deviation from the usual chargers, old key fobs and other miscellaneous items in his top kitchen drawer. He had come upon it when rifling around for a pack of AAA batteries for his torch. Tim didn’t need the torch at the time, but it made him feel better to know that it was working in the event of an outage. He had attempted several times to unclasp it, as if the contents would relay some sort of clue of its origin, but it remained fastened shut on his palm.

Still, he did have blips in his memories from time to time – all the more often since his sixtieth birthday. He found himself humming ‘Happy Birthday’ to himself sardonically, and then a new melody suddenly wormed its way into his head. A simple tune, like the pieces that filled his first edition of ‘Easy Keyboard Songs for Kids’, which his mother had bought him when he was nine years old. Tim felt a rush of nostalgic warmth and the corners of his mouth turned up into a slight smile. Suddenly, the warmth turned to irritation as he realised there were words attached to his melody but he could not recall them. Attempting to try and sound out the lyrics was futile, and when he caught a glance of himself in the mirror, he realised he had been opening and closing his mouth like a fish gasping for air.

Passing an eye over his desktop monitor, he realised it was now five minutes to nine, which meant that it was time to log on for the Monday morning debrief. As he clicked into the meeting room, he was met with the familiar sight of his four other colleagues, and the habitual laughter of slightly stilted banter they found themselves needing to engage in. If this had been by the office expresso machine, it would have been drawn out for too long, but working from home meant that there was a hard stop to the joviality at the hour mark.

Kevin, the most vocal of his teammates, piped up first after the laughter had dissipated. “You’ve not missed much Tim, only a play-by-play of the Wolves’ awful defence this weekend.”

“They tried their best, Kev, but it does feel good to have our first away win, what with our new manager and all.” The team lead, Michael, spoke uncharacteristically loudly as he adjusted himself in his chair and drew his shoulders back.

“Mikey, we all know you couldn’t manage your way out of a paper bag!” Kevin retorted , and there was a round of laughter once again.

Tim paused in thought for a moment. “Chaps, this may be a bit strange, but I’ve had a tune on my mind this morning and I can’t for the life of me remember the words.” He cleared his throat and began to hum, but the second he started lyrics poured out of his mouth. “Poppy, hand me that locket, dear! Yes, that one in your pocket, dear…” His voice trailed off and face reddened as he realised he had been singing in front of his teammates.

After a brief silence, Kevin began “Was that an audition for- “

Gareth, the second oldest of the team interjected. “How odd, Tim – it’s somewhat familiar to me but has different words. It sounds like something my daughter must’ve learned when she was still at school. I gave her some old woollen glove puppets; they were a keepsake from my mother. Anyway, she loved to make them dance when she sang that song. How did it go? The puppets when they come to town, are dressed in red, gold, green and brown.” Gareth continued the melody when Tim left off. “And if they see you looking blue, something-something and all for you! Gosh, that really is odd. Sadly, when we had to get rid of them after they’d shrunk in the wash, she never put on that adorable little performance again, even when we tried replacing them.”

Kevin sighed. “Well, as much as I’d like to reminisce with you senior citizens, I have to pop off five minutes early, so if there’s anything more interesting than sock puppets can someone please let me know?”

Act Two

Sandra idly tapped her left foot as she grasped the grey, faux leather handles of the waiting room chair. She hoped her eyes didn’t look as tired as the receptionist’s, or those belonging to the many other nervous family members and friends of the clinic patients, hunched over their chairs, just like she was. She took a bottle of hand sanitiser out of her purse for the second time, squeezed the cool, soothing gel onto her palm and rubbed her hands together with vigour.

Another provocative headline poked out from the magazine stand: “Numbers of INMI victims on a sharp rise. Can hospitals cope?”

“Sandra Stewart?”

Sandra’s head turned around to the source of the noise instinctively, and her eyes met with a lady in a neatly ironed white button-up, carrying a clipboard.

“That’s me! You must be Dr Wilson?” Sandra rose up and tried to smile, but could not muster the energy, so she simply raised her head in acknowledgement.

Dr Wilson nodded. “Indeed, we spoke on the phone. We’ll be heading to the Bagley Ward now, right down this corridor and up just a single flight of stairs.”

The lack of small talk on the way to the ward comforted Sandra, this week had been especially overwhelming at work with the amount of her colleagues on compassionate leave. The tightness in her shoulders increased with every inane greeting, but the doctor did not seem like the type to mince words.

Staff in various coloured uniforms rushed around the pair. One particularly anxious man clad in purple scrubs stuttered into a phone attached to the wall. “I’m really sorry, but we just cannot take him. Here at Bonnyhill, we reached max capacity last week.” In the background, beyond the pandemonium, Sandra could faintly hear the sickeningly familiar noises of incoherent humming and singing.

At the top of the stairs, Dr Wilson led Sandra into a bed-lined room where the light was muted. The noises were louder here. Unsettlingly, the disparate melodies coming from each patient’s mouth seemed to harmonise at certain points, causing Sandra to clench her jaw. The doctor waited a few seconds for Sandra’s eyes to adjust and gestured at the occupant of the nearest bed.

“Since Timothy was admitted this afternoon, he has mainly been sleeping, which allowed us to dress his wounds efficiently. My support staff have not been able to get him into a gown just yet, his behaviour when they try to undress him is… unpredictable. I regret to inform you of this, but he did injure one of them when they attempted to take off his neck-chain.”

“Oh gosh, I- I’m sorry Doctor”. Sandra did not know where to look, and her hands found their way to her purse to reach for the hand sanitiser again.

“Really, it’s not an unusual occurrence for patients suffering with the effects of Involuntary Musical Imagery. Victims become more susceptible if they already have neurotic or obsessive-compulsive tendencies, or even just a general disillusionment towards their lives. Sufferers of INMI-related symptoms soon forget how to take care of themselves, but as the disease progresses, they may become aggressive and lash out at care givers when attempts are made to separate them from their trigger objects in question.”

Dr Wilson pointed at the IV drip beside Tim. “We are currently administering Diazepam, a mild sedative, and fluids to rehydrate him – he had shown signs of having not taken in water for at least 24 hours before admission. Oh, and I will warn you that his mental functions may have already started to regress.”

Sandra’s eyes turned toward the elderly man lying in the hospital bed. “Thank you, Doctor, I’ll be here for about an hour or so I think, but I’ll be gone before visiting hours end.”

After the doctor turned to exit the room, Sandra sat down closer to the patient. To her surprise, he was only half-asleep, his eyeballs appeared to be twitching under their lids and he was quietly muttering the same few words repeatedly. “Poppy … locket dear … Yes … in your pocket dear…”

As Sandra moved closer to try and make out the words more clearly, Tim’s eyes snapped open.

“Mother, I can’t bear it any longer,” he said, gasping.

Sandra shook her head. “Uncle Tim, it’s me – Sandra. Poppy was your sister, and my mum. Nanna Esther – I mean your mother – passed decades ago.” She bit her lip while trying to recall Tim’s condition the last time she had seen him. It had been around the Christmas, before the first lockdown, and he had seemed of very sound mind, fastidiously peeling the parsnips for roasting. She took a deep breath and felt a rush of bittersweet warmth as she remembered his evening performance on the piano of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas', with a surprising amount of poise for someone who had consumed several glasses of sherry not long before.

A shaky hand mottled with a splattering of liver spots reached towards her and grasped her own hand tightly. As it opened, Sandra felt the chill of metal against her palm.

“I feel sick. I can’t think. I feel so, so cold. I try to pull myself back towards the shore, but the tide keeps me away.” He rambled. “At first, mother, when I remembered your song again, I felt so happy. But soon my heart ached with grief and I just wanted to get rid of the pain, the earworm burrowing its way into my skull reminding me that you had passed .”

His childlike speech made her eyes widen. She glanced towards his ears and saw the blood seeping through the layers of bandages, and his lips were dried and chapped. She made a mental note to tell the nurses on duty to replace the dressing, whilst she reached her non-entrapped hand towards the alert button on the side of his bed.

Tim’s eyes were glazed over, and seemed to look right through her as if she was not there, yet also the only thing worth paying attention to in that dimly lit ward. “Mother, I accepted the locket, and for a while the ache turned to peace. As long as I recited your song, I could remember the old days. But when I stopped, your image would fade and only by singing could I picture you again. I cannot live like this anymore, I’m sure you understand.”

His hand withdrew, leaving Sandra holding the heart-shaped locket. 'Pocket,' she thought, 'is such a uninspired rhyme with locket. Locket. Pocket. Locket. Pocket…'

Tim started spluttering loudly then, and when the ward clerk rushed to alert the doctor on duty of the fluctuation in his vital signs, Sandra was already gliding out the door. She joyfully formed her mouth around the lyrics of the melody, eyes forward and unblinking as her lips kept time with her pace, fingers wrapped around the soothing silver piece of jewellery in her hand.