Big Bones

by Laura Dockrill

  Least work’s off my back; one less thing to worry about. I think about calling Cam. And then Max. And then I decide not to. I know I can’t avoid them forever and I don’t want to worry them but right now I don’t want to speak to anyone.

  Mum and Dad go to talk to the doctor and I wait. Staring at Dove’s plastic tray of ‘in case she wakes up’ creamy cauliflower cheese go from steaming and silky to developing a strange cellophane-like skin. The cheese, curdled, and the cauliflower itself looks square, like it’s manufactured, connecting pieces to a toy that you might try slotting together. If you were to eat it, it would be congealed and salty and heavy.

  My phone rings straight after that. It’s Cam. I can see the texts from her and Max building in my phone. It’s not that I’m deliberately ignoring them – I just don’t have anything to say. And I just tried speaking on the phone and it turns out I didn’t really like it.

  I use this time to talk to Dove a bit, but I’m not even sure she can hear me, and then I write in here. Dove has sun freckles speckled over her nose. I knew she wouldn’t use sunscreen. Her forehead’s got a red line where she was obviously wearing her stupid GoPro camera strap thing. Idiot.

  Open your eyes. Idiot. Cough, cough. WAKE UP!

  Dove always laughs at how I can always stomach all food, and that goes for service food too. I actually really enjoy service food. Like aeroplane food and school dinners. And if I was in prison, I’d probably go ahead and enjoy that grub too. I love those little foil trays you get on an aeroplane, stuffed with something that’s always really squidgey and hot with teardrops of condensation and always-terrible salty cheese and soggy vegetables. I like the silver triangle of Dairylea soft cheese that when you unwrap reveals a block that resembles ice-cold moisturiser, perfect slathered onto a wheaty, salty cracker with the ridge of a plastic knife. It fills the mouth like paint. The claggy press is cloying against the teeth. And school dinners … yum. Especially chocolate cake and gloopy skin-on chocolate custard. Jerk chicken and rice’n’peas. I even like the savoury squareness of a dense spongy cheese flan. Where you can’t even taste the cheese and it’s just a bland plain egg square.

  Here, they stuff as many calories as they can into everything. I guess it’s because when people are sick they might only be able to manage a mouthful here and there so every bite has to be jammed with calories.

  I press my hands up to the glass like binoculars and see Mum chewing her lip outside, talking to a couple of Dove’s friends. They are using their hands to demonstrate Dove’s fall. One of them reaches up scarily high. I shudder. The boys look washed-out, like Quentin Blake illustrations: wiry, spotty boys with greasy fringes. I keep meaning to stand up and go say hi but my body is heavy and numb. My big bones feel extra big today, playing up. I always feel extra huge in front of Dove’s mates, like I’m the actual BIG sister they use as the butt of their jokes, accusing each other of fancying me. Not in front of Dove though; she’d never stand for that. I consider them some more. Maybe it’s because they are all so weedy. I could crush them. To them, I am a terror of a woman. A King Kong.

  Mum holds her face in her hands and then brings the boys in for a hug. I watch them in silence. And then steal my eyes away to look at Dove some more and this little quiet room. My phone rings in my bag. Cam. Again. I let it ring out.

  The room is light blue. The sheets are white. There are some children’s books in the corner and one of those games where you slide the wooden coloured beads over the twirly metal rods. There are also a few badly painted pictures of Disney characters on the walls. They all look like evil-twin versions of the real thing. Scary. It occurs to me that Dove is still a ‘child’. Dove’s body, still not finished. So fragile. And how I am growing so fast. Would I be on the other ward on the other side of this giant hospital? Next to grown-ups who have to do all of scary life on their own …

  I realise I’ve been sitting on my hand for ages. It’s gone numb and there are creases all over it. I don’t like seeing the creases today. I should have just watched Snow White like a normal, unselfish big sister.

  ‘Can I tell you a secret?’ I ask her. But she says nothing. Just lies there with those closed shiny veiny eyes. ‘When I was younger …’ I begin, ‘I used to steal the good bits out of people’s lunch boxes at school. I’m not even a thief. But I used to do it. They always had such good treats in their lunch boxes, stuff Mum would never buy, like Fruit Winders and Crunch Corner yoghurts and mini chocolate chip cookies and animal crackers. We never had all that, did we? I mean, I didn’t even really like cheese strings but they tasted like the best thing ever when they were stolen from some poor kid’s Winnie-the-Pooh lunch box. Why is that? Do stolen things always taste better?’

  Dove says nothing.

  ‘Course, I’m not a thief.’ Her silence makes me cry. ‘But you can call me one if you want to. I won’t mind. I really won’t.’ A tear plops onto Dove’s cheek.

  ‘Please call me a thief.’ I press against her. ‘Please say something horrible to me.’

  I clamber up next to her and try to shuffle onto the bed beside her. I feel too tall and too big. The bed squeaks and the wheels judder beneath me. I feel the bed tilt from the weight of me. We never could play on the see-saw together in the playground; it used to have to take Dove plus two of her friends to balance a see-saw with me. ‘It’s because I’m older,’ I would say. It wasn’t. It was because I was fat. And my bones were big. I clasp my arms around her so tight.

  ‘What did you do, little bird?’ I ask her. ‘Why did you have to go flying around the city like that?’

  She has little calluses on her palms. Rough. Like verrucas. Her head is bruised. Ouch. Blood still in her hair, cuts on her brow, her cheek grazed. It makes my knees turn to jelly.

  There is still some glitter and mascara on my hands from where I’d wiped my make-up tears away. I think about when she was a little girl and was still able to fit into the baby chairs in shopping trolleys. I would stumble alongside with undone shoelaces, desperate to clamber on up beside her while she was babied, and how Mum and Dad let her play that game. I think about all the grown-ups that never minded carrying her home from stuff, letting her creep up onto their shoulders to get better views at concerts and the fair, sitting on their laps on the train or bus. I’d cling to the pole, knowing nobody would ever want me on their lap. Knowing I’d squash them. Give them cramp. Nobody called me ‘cute’. Or let me balance on their toes while they danced me around the living room, or swung me up or tossed me in the air at the park or piggy-backed me or launched me across the swimming pool in a fit of giggles. I was big-boned. She was the little bird made for flying. It should have been me that was broken. I wrap my arms around Dove and sink my face into her neck and I don’t recognise her smell today. And I just love her so much. I just love her so much. And my heart is cracking. And I was wrong about what I said before … I can’t eat when I’m sad.

  I can’t even write.

  READY BREK

  Ready Brek is the first food Dove manages to swallow. She has a big dollop of jam in the middle AND chocolate chips. She eats every mouthful. I love watching her eat. I’m so grateful to see her chewing, moving.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she tells Mum. ‘I didn’t mean to – you know?’

  ‘We’re just happy to see you awake,’ Mum reassures her. Mum’s doing well not to be mad at her because I would be ONE MAD MUM!

  ‘I’m an idiot. I lost my balance; I got scared.’ She sighs.

  ‘We know, darling.’

  ‘I ruined your date, didn’t I?’ she asks me.

  ‘Just a bit!’ I joke. ‘I don’t care. I had a peppercorn in my tooth the whole time anyway so it’s a good thing probably.’

  Dove manages to laugh at my lie but then winces in pain. The sound is contagious. It’s like she’s been hit with a tuning fork and we all feel the vibration of her pain tingle through us.

  Ready Brek smells so nostalgic and familiar. Oaty and sweet and comfortable, like a blanket. L
ike being a baby again.

  I don’t hear the words the first time. When Mum says them.

  ‘Dove. You’re going to have to get used to living in a chair for a little while.’

  ‘A chair?’ Dove’s face nearly slides off. She wasn’t expecting it and her shock smacks Mum round the face. Mum wants to cry but holds the tears back. It’s like having a horrible coughing fit in the theatre when you’re squeezed in between rows of people and you’re sweating and panicking and wishing you just had the guts to let rip and cough and cough and cough until you threw up. She sucks the tears back again. ‘A wheelchair, sweetheart, just for a little bit …’ And then she says it again, this time without dressing it up; this time she says it hard and loud, so she can hear it said too, clears her throat: ‘A wheelchair.’

  Dove is motionless. Her face screws up in anger. She looks down, afraid of looking at us. She shakes her head. I reach for her hand but it’s limp in my palm like a dead mouse.

  ‘It’ll only be for a short time, Dove, but you’ve broken your legs. The bones are –’

  I butt in; I can’t help but interrupt. ‘Mum, hold on, you haven’t even let her have a chance to walk yet. Let her walk, why can’t you just see how she gets on first? Get her out of that bed and you’ll see.’

  ‘Bluebelle,’ Mum snaps. But I keep pushing.

  ‘No! Mum, you haven’t even let her have a try. Once she gets home she’ll be absolutely fine. If you just let her get up, she’ll be running around and –’

  ‘Bluebelle. ENOUGH!’ Mum yells and it shuts me down. I turn around and cry. I’m angry. I can’t believe what I am hearing. Of course Dove is all right. It’s DOVE! She doesn’t need a chair. Why would she need a chair?

  ‘It’s OK, BB,’ Dove says, and a small tear runs softly down her cheek. Dad holds Dove’s hand so tightly. ‘I wouldn’t even know how to walk today anyway.’

  My brain launches out of my skull like a camera on a wire, X-raying her body: a jigsaw of snapped bones, a train set with a missing track. A squashed bird, crushed in the hand of a giant.

  She’s broken both of her legs.

  Dove closes her eyes and blocks out the world.

  The doctor, a nice enough man with a broomstick ’tash and kind blue eyes, gently raps on the door and enters. He is already saying sorry with his little silent smile.

  ‘How are we doing in here?’ he asks in a chirpy whisper.

  We? No, not we. I ignore him.

  I turn to Mum and plead. ‘Can we please just try her legs again, before all this cast stuff goes on? Can we just see if she can walk a sec?’

  ‘I’m afraid …’ The doctor begins to answer for Mum but she interrupts and gets there first.

  ‘Bluebelle! STOP now, no. These people do this every day and they know what they’re doing.’

  My voice rises. ‘I don’t understand why they’re not putting her up on her feet and letting her just have a try at walking?’

  ‘Stop it, Bluebelle, you’re being ridiculous. She can’t even get up out of bed,’ Mum orders.

  ‘Of course she can!’ She can do everything, can’t she?

  ‘Stop shouting.’

  ‘I’m not shouting. THIS is shouting!’

  ‘Bluebelle!’

  ‘She’ll be fine and she’ll recover but for now she has to rest,’ the doctor answers calmly, too calmly for my liking. ‘Your sister has had a lucky escape. A fall like that could’ve been fatal.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it lucky,’ I mumble.

  ‘Bluebelle!’ Mum cries. And then, ‘Sorry, doctor.’

  ‘It’s all right, don’t apologise. Everybody’s tired, you’ve had quite a scare and it’s normal to be upset,’ the doctor says. ‘I understand this is a big change and a lot to take in but as I say it won’t be forever. Dove will recover.’ I stare at him blankly. ‘It’s OK. I’ll give you some space; it’s rather cramped in this room. The nurse will be round soon with something for the pain.’ Yeah, you just go home to eat lasagne with your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever and walk your dog and forget all about us.

  Mum smiles sweetly at him and mouths a thank you.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ the doctor says, already halfway out of the door.

  ‘Yeah, bye,’ I bark. I throw the diary at the wall behind him. It pounds off the smudged face of some hideous re-creation of a warped Smurf and flops open.

  ‘BLUEBELLE!’ Mum explodes, bear-like and gnarly. I’ve never seen her so mad. But it’s Dad who turns on me this time. He rips his glasses off his face and glares at me. His cheeks show colour. I know he’s only being like this to show off to Mum, prove that he has a backbone. A vein pulses in his forehead. He’s fuming. He points at me.

  ‘We’ve always let you be exactly how you need to be, Bluebelle, let you do exactly what you need to do, your mum and I and even Dove … and we let you get away with it. You manage to make every situation about yourself. But it’s not about you today. This is about your sister and this time you’ve crossed the line.’

  ‘How is it about me? It’s NEVER about me; it’s always only ever about you and mum, fighting like kids and –’

  ‘ENOUGH!’ Dad bellows and I slam into silence.

  Mum tries to perch on the edge of the bed and then apologises and mentions something about needing to call Granny back. ‘She’s worried,’ she mutters, making no eye contact, backing against the door and turning away from us.

  ‘Lucy, Lucy, don’t,’ Dad says.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just … sorry.’ Mum squeezes herself out of the door and I watch her flutter out of the room as quick as she can, almost in a jog now. To get away from me. Times like this remind me once more that Dove and Mum are small. And thin. And light. They have that in common. And I feel horrible. Like a stain.

  My phone vibrates. Max. I cancel it.

  He rings again and I cancel that too. I don’t read the texts either.

  ‘Dove? Dove?’ I nudge her. I stroke her hair. She is drowsy with her eyes half closed. She cranks one eye open like I’ve woken her from a dream. ‘’K, you sleep some more then.’ I kiss her head.

  We sit in the stillness.

  Dad looks at me as if to say, ‘Well, that was dramatic.’ There’s no space for being angry or stubborn. I can feel my face falling before it happens. Dad takes my hand and leads me out into the corridor.

  And the moment we are away from Dove I fold into his arms and cry like a T-rex having a breakdown. I wet all down his front. Dribble and snot and hot red-raw emotion seem to have teamed up and kidnapped my whole body.

  ‘OK, darling, my darling, let it all out. It’s OK.’

  ‘I don’t want to cry in front of Dove,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to –’

  ‘It’s OK.’ He strokes my hair. He’s been smoking. I like the smell. It reminds me of being young. I breathe it in. I’m aware of people walking past us. We rock stiffly in a tense, sharp shake. I haven’t felt hugged like this in ages.

  ‘It’s just everything. I know it’s only broken bones … I know it’s her legs and they’ll fix … I know it’s the bittersweet ending in comedy films and TV shows where it’s funny after a big fall to end up with all your limbs in casts. I get that. I do. I just … I just don’t like imagining her falling … hitting her head … being scared … lying there on the ground, on top of all that rubbish, the bin bags and spiky stuff and crap … by the railings … screaming for us.’ I can’t stop crying. ‘And us not being there.’

  ‘Well, it’s lucky the rubbish was there, Bluebelle, probably saved our girl’s life!’ Dad smiles, holding my face, wiping my wet eyes with his thumbs.

  ‘And it’s just hit me, the shock, to imagine losing her …’ Dad strokes my hair. I cry into his chest. I miss him living at home. I miss being small and him carrying me. I don’t even remember when that stopped. ‘I should stop crying. I have to be strong for her.’

  ‘You are strong.’ Dad has wet eyes too now. ‘My God, you girls are the strongest girls I’ve ever met in
my life. I’m lucky enough to even know you, honestly, that’s why I’m so desperate to come home. Because I’m so rubbish without the three of you.’ I laugh at him. ‘Look at me,’ he adds, drawing me out to face him. ‘I’m a right state.’ I laugh again, through wet drops of tears.

  ‘Come on, don’t be hard on yourself. We’re all in this terrible soap opera of life together. Honestly, I wouldn’t even act in it if I was paid all the money in the world … well, maybe I would … I am quite desperate and haven’t done TV for years. Talk to my agent.’ He winks. ‘Now, where’s your pump?’ He pats my pockets. I don’t look up. I squeeze my eyes. I am trembling. He hands my inhaler to me. I take long, deep, wet-faced puffs.

  ‘I thought she wasn’t going to wake up too,’ Dad says. ‘So I’ll take the broken legs, trust me.’ I laugh. ‘And besides, I’m looking forward to getting myself a fresh permanent black marker and practising the spelling of every single swear word I can think of on those casts. Two legs, now that’s a LOT of space to fill!’ He kisses my head and shoves open the door with his side.

  CHERRY DROPS

  Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this thing to become an actual diary. It was only meant to be about food. And here it is, getting all … you know … heavy.

  Really I shouldn’t be writing in you because it’s a food diary and, well, I haven’t really been eating.

  Not that that’s a good thing either. Under-eating is just as bad for you as over-eating. I know that.

  Mum calls Dad to say she’s having a cup of tea in the cafe and then she’ll be back up. She’ll be sorry because the nurse enters with a temporary wheelchair for Dove. It’s kind of clunky and squeaky and not very comfortable and has some chewing gum stuck to the bottom of the seat. Still, I try to pretend it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

  ‘Whoa, cool,’ I lie. ‘Check it, Dove.’

  Dove says she’ll ‘have a go’ when she feels more awake. Dad offers me a cherry drop and I go to open Dove’s one for her but Dad doesn’t let me. He places his unintimidating dog-paw-like hand on top of mine and softly shakes his head. We mustn’t mollycoddle her. And I leave the wrapped sweet for her, untouched, on the side.