by Phyllida Law
Big Sister and no less than three gorgeous doctors discussing your case across your bed. Could you hear what they were saying?
I longed to join in. They’ve all walked off looking important.
I’ve brought your post.
Your specs are on your nose.
I’ll read the Visitors’ Book.
You are to get an extra special X-ray tomorrow. They are concerned about your arthritis in the spine and it would be good to get that sorted while you’re here. They aren’t interested in your ears.
Sister says you are lovely. She’d like to keep you. Sounds as if you’ll be coming home soon.
Yip. Yip.
Great excitement at home. Your room looks gorgeous already.
Sister says they’ll send you home by ambulance and the hospital will loan us a bed-board and a monkey wrench.
That can’t be right. No. Not a wrench. That’s a tool of some sort, isn’t it? No, this is something you can hang onto to lift yourself to a sitting position. The girls are particularly entranced by the scaffolding round the loo. It’s spectacular. The loo is now a throne room.
Handles everywhere and a new battery in your wireless.
We won’t all be at home when you get back, but I think that’s quite good. It’s always exhausting to travel and you need a few nights’ good sleep. You will get a visit from Dr Thingummy and a nurse is to call to put on a new dressing.
Tunnocks Caramel Wafers are from Em and the Snowballs are from Soph. You’ll be sick.
They gave her a year. She had a week. Almost her last words to me were ‘I won’t have any fish and chips tonight, darling.’
It was a Friday.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London W6 8JB
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Visit our authors’ blog: www.fifthestate.co.uk
Text and illustrations copyright © Phyllida Law 2009
FISRT EDITION
The right of Phyllida Law to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-35165-7
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