After You
Page 4
‘Ngung –’ I swallow the words. My tongue feels ridiculous. I sound drunk. ‘I ngever wanged –’
‘I know. But you made it so hard for me, Lou. I couldn’t –’
‘Not now, love, eh?’ Dad touches her shoulder.
She looks away into the middle distance, and takes my hand. ‘When we got the call. Oh. I thought – I didn’t know –’ She is sniffing again, her handkerchief pressed to her lips. ‘Thank God she’s okay, Bernard.’
‘Of course she is. Made of rubber, this one, eh?’
Dad looms over me. We had last spoken on the telephone two months previously, but I haven’t seen him in person for the eighteen months since I left my home town. He looks enormous and familiar, and desperately, desperately tired.
‘Shorry,’ I whisper. I can’t think what else to say.
‘Don’t be daft. We’re just glad you’re okay. Even if you do look like you’ve done six rounds with Mike Tyson. Have you seen yourself in a mirror since you got here?’
I shake my head.
‘Maybe … I might just hold off a bit longer. You know Terry Nicholls, that time he went right over his handlebars by the mini-mart? Well, take off the moustache, and that’s pretty much what you look like. Actually,’ he peers closer at my face, ‘now you mention it …’
‘Bernard.’
‘We’ll bring you some tweezers tomorrow. Anyway, the next time you decide you want flying lessons, let’s head down the ole airstrip, yes? Jumping and flapping your arms is plainly not working for you.’
I try to smile.
They both bend over me. Their faces are strained, anxious. My parents.
‘She’s got thin, Bernard. Don’t you think she’s got thin?’
Dad leans closer, and then I see his eyes are a little watery, his smile a bit wobblier than usual. ‘Ah … she looks beautiful, love. Believe me. You look bloody beautiful.’ He squeezes my hand, then lifts it to his mouth and kisses it. My dad has never done anything like that to me in my whole life.
It is then that I realize they thought I was going to die and a sob bursts unannounced from my chest. I shut my eyes against the hot tears and feel his large, wood-roughened palm around mine.
‘We’re here, sweetheart. It’s all right now. It’s all going to be okay.’
They make the fifty-mile journey every day for two weeks, catching the early train down, and then after that, every few days. Dad gets special dispensation from work, because Mum won’t travel by herself. There are, after all, all sorts in London. This is said more than once and always accompanied by a furtive glance behind her, as if a knife-wielding hood is even now sneaking into the ward. Treena is staying over to keep an eye on Granddad. There is an edge to the way Mum says it that makes me think this might not be my sister’s first choice of arrangements.
Mum brings homemade food, and has done so since the day we all stared at my lunch and, despite five minutes of intense speculation, couldn’t work out what it was. ‘And in plastic trays, Bernard. Like a prison.’ She prodded it sadly with a fork, then sniffed it. Since then she has arrived with enormous sandwiches, thick slices of ham or cheese in white bloomer bread, homemade soups in flasks. ‘Food you can recognize,’ and feeds me like a baby. My tongue slowly returns to its normal size. Apparently I’d almost bitten through it when I landed. It’s not unusual, they tell me.
I have two operations to pin my hip, and my left foot and left arm are in plaster up to the joints. Keith, one of the porters, asks if he can sign my casts – apparently it’s bad luck to have them virgin white – and promptly writes a comment so filthy that Eveline, the Filipina nurse, has to put a plaster on it before the consultant comes around. When he pushes me to X-ray, or to the pharmacy, he tells me the gossip from around the hospital. I could do without hearing about the patients who die slowly and horribly, of which there seem to be an endless number, but it keeps him happy. I sometimes wonder what he tells people about me. I am the girl who fell off a five-storey building and lived. In hospital status, this apparently puts me some way above the compacted bowel in C ward, or That Daft Bint Who Accidentally Took Her Thumb Off with Pruning Shears.
It’s amazing how quickly you become institutionalized. I wake, accept the ministrations of a handful of people I now recognize, try to say the right thing to the consultants, and wait for my parents to arrive. My parents keep busy with small tasks in my room, and become uncharacteristically deferential in the face of the doctors. Dad apologizes repeatedly for my inability to bounce, until Mum kicks him, quite hard, in the ankle.
After the rounds are finished, Mum usually has a walk around the concourse shops downstairs and returns exclaiming in hushed tones at the number of fast-food outlets. ‘That one-legged man from the cardio ward, Bernard. Sitting down there stuffing his face with cheeseburger and chips, like you wouldn’t believe.’
Dad sits and reads the local paper in the chair at the end of my bed. The first week he keeps checking it for reports of my accident. I try to tell him that in this part of the city even double murders barely merit a News In Brief, but in Stortfold the previous week the local paper’s front page ran with ‘Supermarket Trolleys Left in Wrong Area of Car Park’. The week before that it was ‘Schoolboys Sad at State of Duck Pond’ so he has yet to be convinced.
On the Friday after the final operation on my hip, my mother brings a dressing-gown that is one size too big for me, and a large brown-paper bag of egg sandwiches. I don’t have to ask what they are: the sulphurous smell floods the room as soon as she opens her bag. My father wafts his hand in front of his nose. ‘The nurses’ll be blaming me, Josie,’ he says, opening and closing my door.
‘Eggs will build her up. She’s too thin. And, besides, you can’t talk. You were blaming the dog for your awful smells two years after he’d actually died.’
‘Just keeping the romance alive, love.’
Mum lowers her voice: ‘Treena says her last fellow put the blankets over her head when he broke wind. Can you imagine!’
Dad turns to me. ‘When I do it, your mother won’t even stay in the same postcode.’
There is tension in the air, even as they laugh. I can feel it. When your whole world shrinks to four walls, you become acutely attuned to slight variations in atmosphere. It’s in the way consultants turn away slightly when they’re examining X-rays or the nurses cover their mouths when they’re talking about someone nearby who has just died.
‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it?’
They look awkwardly at each other.
‘So …’ Mum sits on the end of my bed. ‘The doctor said … the consultant said … it’s not clear how you fell.’
I bite into an egg sandwich. I can pick things up with my left hand now. ‘Oh, that. I got distracted.’
‘While walking around a roof.’
I chew for a minute.
‘Is there any chance you were sleepwalking, sweetheart?’
‘Dad – I’ve never sleepwalked in my life.’
‘Yes, you have. There was that time when you were thirteen and you sleepwalked downstairs and ate half of Treena’s birthday cake.’
‘I know. But you made it so hard for me, Lou. I couldn’t –’
‘Not now, love, eh?’ Dad touches her shoulder.
She looks away into the middle distance, and takes my hand. ‘When we got the call. Oh. I thought – I didn’t know –’ She is sniffing again, her handkerchief pressed to her lips. ‘Thank God she’s okay, Bernard.’
‘Of course she is. Made of rubber, this one, eh?’
Dad looms over me. We had last spoken on the telephone two months previously, but I haven’t seen him in person for the eighteen months since I left my home town. He looks enormous and familiar, and desperately, desperately tired.
‘Shorry,’ I whisper. I can’t think what else to say.
‘Don’t be daft. We’re just glad you’re okay. Even if you do look like you’ve done six rounds with Mike Tyson. Have you seen yourself in a mirror since you got here?’
I shake my head.
‘Maybe … I might just hold off a bit longer. You know Terry Nicholls, that time he went right over his handlebars by the mini-mart? Well, take off the moustache, and that’s pretty much what you look like. Actually,’ he peers closer at my face, ‘now you mention it …’
‘Bernard.’
‘We’ll bring you some tweezers tomorrow. Anyway, the next time you decide you want flying lessons, let’s head down the ole airstrip, yes? Jumping and flapping your arms is plainly not working for you.’
I try to smile.
They both bend over me. Their faces are strained, anxious. My parents.
‘She’s got thin, Bernard. Don’t you think she’s got thin?’
Dad leans closer, and then I see his eyes are a little watery, his smile a bit wobblier than usual. ‘Ah … she looks beautiful, love. Believe me. You look bloody beautiful.’ He squeezes my hand, then lifts it to his mouth and kisses it. My dad has never done anything like that to me in my whole life.
It is then that I realize they thought I was going to die and a sob bursts unannounced from my chest. I shut my eyes against the hot tears and feel his large, wood-roughened palm around mine.
‘We’re here, sweetheart. It’s all right now. It’s all going to be okay.’
They make the fifty-mile journey every day for two weeks, catching the early train down, and then after that, every few days. Dad gets special dispensation from work, because Mum won’t travel by herself. There are, after all, all sorts in London. This is said more than once and always accompanied by a furtive glance behind her, as if a knife-wielding hood is even now sneaking into the ward. Treena is staying over to keep an eye on Granddad. There is an edge to the way Mum says it that makes me think this might not be my sister’s first choice of arrangements.
Mum brings homemade food, and has done so since the day we all stared at my lunch and, despite five minutes of intense speculation, couldn’t work out what it was. ‘And in plastic trays, Bernard. Like a prison.’ She prodded it sadly with a fork, then sniffed it. Since then she has arrived with enormous sandwiches, thick slices of ham or cheese in white bloomer bread, homemade soups in flasks. ‘Food you can recognize,’ and feeds me like a baby. My tongue slowly returns to its normal size. Apparently I’d almost bitten through it when I landed. It’s not unusual, they tell me.
I have two operations to pin my hip, and my left foot and left arm are in plaster up to the joints. Keith, one of the porters, asks if he can sign my casts – apparently it’s bad luck to have them virgin white – and promptly writes a comment so filthy that Eveline, the Filipina nurse, has to put a plaster on it before the consultant comes around. When he pushes me to X-ray, or to the pharmacy, he tells me the gossip from around the hospital. I could do without hearing about the patients who die slowly and horribly, of which there seem to be an endless number, but it keeps him happy. I sometimes wonder what he tells people about me. I am the girl who fell off a five-storey building and lived. In hospital status, this apparently puts me some way above the compacted bowel in C ward, or That Daft Bint Who Accidentally Took Her Thumb Off with Pruning Shears.
It’s amazing how quickly you become institutionalized. I wake, accept the ministrations of a handful of people I now recognize, try to say the right thing to the consultants, and wait for my parents to arrive. My parents keep busy with small tasks in my room, and become uncharacteristically deferential in the face of the doctors. Dad apologizes repeatedly for my inability to bounce, until Mum kicks him, quite hard, in the ankle.
After the rounds are finished, Mum usually has a walk around the concourse shops downstairs and returns exclaiming in hushed tones at the number of fast-food outlets. ‘That one-legged man from the cardio ward, Bernard. Sitting down there stuffing his face with cheeseburger and chips, like you wouldn’t believe.’
Dad sits and reads the local paper in the chair at the end of my bed. The first week he keeps checking it for reports of my accident. I try to tell him that in this part of the city even double murders barely merit a News In Brief, but in Stortfold the previous week the local paper’s front page ran with ‘Supermarket Trolleys Left in Wrong Area of Car Park’. The week before that it was ‘Schoolboys Sad at State of Duck Pond’ so he has yet to be convinced.
On the Friday after the final operation on my hip, my mother brings a dressing-gown that is one size too big for me, and a large brown-paper bag of egg sandwiches. I don’t have to ask what they are: the sulphurous smell floods the room as soon as she opens her bag. My father wafts his hand in front of his nose. ‘The nurses’ll be blaming me, Josie,’ he says, opening and closing my door.
‘Eggs will build her up. She’s too thin. And, besides, you can’t talk. You were blaming the dog for your awful smells two years after he’d actually died.’
‘Just keeping the romance alive, love.’
Mum lowers her voice: ‘Treena says her last fellow put the blankets over her head when he broke wind. Can you imagine!’
Dad turns to me. ‘When I do it, your mother won’t even stay in the same postcode.’
There is tension in the air, even as they laugh. I can feel it. When your whole world shrinks to four walls, you become acutely attuned to slight variations in atmosphere. It’s in the way consultants turn away slightly when they’re examining X-rays or the nurses cover their mouths when they’re talking about someone nearby who has just died.
‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it?’
They look awkwardly at each other.
‘So …’ Mum sits on the end of my bed. ‘The doctor said … the consultant said … it’s not clear how you fell.’
I bite into an egg sandwich. I can pick things up with my left hand now. ‘Oh, that. I got distracted.’
‘While walking around a roof.’
I chew for a minute.
‘Is there any chance you were sleepwalking, sweetheart?’
‘Dad – I’ve never sleepwalked in my life.’
‘Yes, you have. There was that time when you were thirteen and you sleepwalked downstairs and ate half of Treena’s birthday cake.’
