Inside Grandad

by Peter Dickinson

  Then Gran showed up. Gavin heard her before he saw her, saying something over her shoulder to the clerk at the reception desk as she came through the swing doors. He could tell from the tone of Gran's voice that they knew each other— Gran seemed to know half the people in Stonehaven. They let her go in and see Grandad for a bit, and then they brought her into the office to help with the questions. She was very upset—crying some of the time—but that didn't stop her talking. Grandad was almost never ill, but Gran seemed to remember every little sniffle he'd ever had and wanted to tell the nurse about all of them.

  That slowed things up, and before the nurse had finished her questions Mum arrived. She was probably upset too, though Grandad wasn't her father, but it was much harder to tell with Mum. Mum was quite different from Gran. Gran was round and smiley and a bit untidy, in a comfortable kind of way. She was really interested in people and everything about them. Strangers who came into the shop for a pack of hacksaw blades would finish up telling her stuff they mightn't have told their best friend.

  Mum always looked smart. She needed to, for her job, but she still did even on holiday. She was slim but not quite skinny and didn't really look like anyone's mum. (Gran looked like everyone's mum.) She liked sorting things out, keeping life tidy and clean and under control. She wasn't exactly bossy, telling Gavin what to do all the time. Provided he had his own life sorted—which he did, mostly, because he didn't like mess either—she left him to it. And if he had the right sort of problem—practical, with things to be done about it—she could be terrific.

  Mum didn't normally talk anything like as much as Gran, but a crisis like this made her sort of fizz, like a bottle of fizzy water when you open it carelessly. Plans and ideas were trying to squirt out of her. Now Gavin could see how frustrating it was for her, having to sit and wait while Gran answered the questions, when what Mum wanted to know was what was going to happen next and whether that was the best thing for Grandad and what she was going to do about it if she decided it wasn't.

  But it wasn't long before the woman who'd been looking at Grandad came in. She turned out to be Dr. Boone. She wasn't exactly a friend, but Mum had sold her her house and she'd bought stuff from Gran at Hankin's, so they both knew her. This was just as well. Mum had a thing about doctors. Usually she didn't trust them at all. She took a magazine called What Doctors Don't Tell You. It was all about doctors getting it wrong and she believed every word of it.

  "I'm afraid it looks as if your husband has had a severe stroke, affecting his left side, Mrs. Robinson," said Dr. Boone. "It's a waste of precious time my investigating further. We've only been waiting to hear whether we should send him to the stroke unit at Aberdeen or Perth. They've both been extremely busy. But now a call's come through to say we can send him up to the Royal Victoria, and they'll have a bed for him there by this evening. Even if there's a crisis before that, they'll be able to take better care of him than we could here. He'll be on his way in a couple of minutes. One of you can go with him in the ambulance, if you want, but you'll have to make your own arrangements about getting back."

  They all got to their feet. Both Gran and Mum started talking at the same time, Gran thanking Dr. Boone and from force of habit asking her how her collie was, and Mum making arrangements for driving over with Gavin to Aberdeen to bring Gran back and picking up a take-away on the way because it would be better than what they'd get in the hospital and where were they going to meet. They happened to draw breath at the same moment.

  "Is he going to die?" said Gavin.

  Dr. Boone shook her head.

  "I hope not," she said. "This is his first stroke, as far as we know, and he's a very healthy old man. He has a very good chance of making an almost full recovery on his right side, so that he can talk again and do a lot of things for himself. He may well get back most of the use of his left side too. I know he looks awful, Gavin, but he's still your grandfather. He's there, inside."

  "Does he know we're here?"

  Dr. Boone shook her head, but smiled. "Not really," she said. "Not yet. People who've come through strokes say that at first it's like having a really muddled dream, the sort you have when you're ill. You don't know where you are or what's happening, and everything feels wrong and no one's telling you anything and you've got to get somewhere but you can't remember where, and so on. But in a couple of days or so it'll start coming back to him. Now you'd better hurry, Mrs. Robinson. The ambulance isn't going to wait for you."

  Outside the office an orderly was already wheeling Grandad away. The three of them followed the stretcher out of the hospital and watched it being loaded into the ambulance. Grandad was still wearing the oxygen mask. Gran climbed in beside the driver, the doors were shut, and the ambulance went whooping into Arduthie Road.

  Mum talked all the way to Aberdeen—everything she could remember about strokes, and what they were going to do now Grandad wouldn't be there for Gavin to come home to after school, and getting over to visit Grandad at the Royal Vic.

  Stuff like that. It all made sense, but he barely listened. He was thinking about Grandad, locked inside his body. And having terrible dreams, not knowing where he was or what was going on. That wasn't Grandad. He always knew that sort of stuff. Always.

  hey had a dreadful time at the Royal Vic. It was the middle of the afternoon when they got there, and still raining, bucketing down, and the main car park was full because it was a Saturday and everybody was visiting at the same time, so they had to find somewhere else. The Vic was a huge warren of different buildings, and it was a long way back to the main reception. Mum had a big brolly for sheltering clients under, but they'd hardly started when a passing truck slurped through a puddle at speed and drenched them. It was so sudden that Gavin dropped the pizza and the box burst and spilled it out into the gutter. He scooped it up and carried it till they found a litter bin. By that time he had cheesy tomato all over his hands. He'd thought he was too worried to eat, but now that they'd lost the pizza he was starving.

  They stopped at the main hospital entrance and cleaned themselves up in the toilets, best they could. Mum came out looking almost as smart and together as usual, but Gavin still looked, and felt, a mess. He was only in his indoor clothes and his shoes and socks were wet through and he was chilled to the bone.

  He waited, shivering, while Mum cleaned him up a bit more with tissues and then they had to go out into the rain again and round to the casualty unit, where both clerks at the reception desk were busy with someone else and they had to wait and wait. When it was their turn, the clerk had to telephone to ask about Grandad, and whoever it was at the other end said they'd find out and call back, so all Gavin and Mum could do was wait and wait again.

  It must have been at least ten minutes before the message came through. Grandad was still in the casualty unit waiting to be assessed and Saturdays were always busy and it would be a while yet before that happened, because there was a staff shortage. And—the clerk didn't say this, but she obviously meant it—no one had any time for anything that wasn't vital, like letting worried relatives know what was going on. So even Mum could see that the only thing they could do for the moment was go and sit in the waiting room with several other people who were probably in just the same boat as they were. Gran wasn't one of them.

  And Mum was still fizzing with plans. Most of what she said was probably sensible, sort of—things like what would happen if they decided there wasn't room for Grandad at the Royal Vic after all and they had to send him on to Inverness, or back down to Perth, or Edinburgh even, because there'd been this case about an old man being shunted around half the hospitals in England, but that had been in the flu crisis last winter … and why didn't Gavin go down to the shop in the main lobby and find himself some biscuits or something … ?

  "I'm not hungry."

  "You must be. You haven't had anything since breakfast."

  "Well, I'm not."

  He was, though. He was starving. But somehow he felt it wasn't right to be
eating biscuits while Grandad was lying somewhere terribly ill. He should have been too upset. He was desperately upset already but it wasn't enough.

  "Let me see what I've got," said Mum, reaching for her bag. She carried all sorts of emergency stuff in her bag, aspirin, sticking plasters, throat lozenges, folding cutlery, screwdriver, tape measure—you name it, she'd have it.

  "No!" Gavin almost shouted, jumping up and striding away as he fought his tears—tears of hunger, of grief, of anger with himself and Mum and everything. They were in a sort of lobby, with a ward on one side and an office on the other. Opposite them was a corridor, but it turned a corner almost at once so Gavin had no idea what lay beyond. But it was the only place to go, so he walked on and peeped round the corner.

  It was just more bright-lit corridor with doors opening off it. Halfway along he saw Gran, sitting on a tall stool beside a trolley. He guessed Grandad must be on the trolley, but he couldn't see him from where he was.

  Gran looked awful, gray and exhausted and really old, but she saw Gavin and beckoned. He hurried forward, tiptoeing because he was sure he wasn't supposed to be there.

  "Stay with him for a bit, will you?" said Gran. "I've got to go to the toilet."

  "Is he going to be all right? What's happening?"

  "Nothing. They've got him on a monitor, so they'll know if he gets worse. They keep saying they'll be getting him into a bed soon, but they don't. I've been holding his hand. It's all I can do for him. I can't even tell if he knows I'm there."

  "I bet you he does," said Gavin. "Mum's out there. She knows where the nearest toilets are."

  (Of course she did. She'd asked the clerk on their way in.)

  He took Grandad's right hand as soon as Gran let go, and settled himself onto the stool. The hand twitched and fidgeted, the way it had been doing at Stonehaven. Gavin gave it a squeeze, but it didn't seem to notice.

  "Hi, Grandad," he said. "How's things?"

  There was no answer, of course. Grandad just lay there. He was still wearing an oxygen mask. Clipped to the end of the stretcher was a gray electronic-looking box with a small screen. Three wires ran from it to Grandad's chest. Monitor, it was called, he remembered, just like on a PC, and the pulsing line on the screen was Grandad's heartbeat. There was a drip stand beside the stretcher with a tube going into his left arm. His eyes were still open. Gavin started to worry about that because Grandad couldn't see properly without his specs. Anything that wasn't right in front of his nose would be all blur and mess. He'd think it was all part of the muddled dream Dr. Boone had talked about.

  Wait! The specs were in Gavin's shirt pocket, where he'd put them when he'd picked them up off the floor in Grandad's room, just after the stroke had happened. With a stupid, hopeful feeling that something had at last gone right he took them out and fitted them on. As he did so, Grandad blinked.

  Gavin's heart leapt. He swung round, looking for someone to tell. A nurse came hurrying out of a door further along the corridor.

  "He just blinked!" he told her.

  "Can't help it," she told him, not slowing down. She vanished round the corner.

  Then he just sat there. The hospital was decently warm but he still felt shivery and cold right through. At least the nurse hadn't told him he wasn't allowed there. He relaxed a bit, enough to start feeling hungry again.

  Stuff came back to him, things Mum had said in the car when he thought he hadn't been listening. About people with strokes, how you've got to keep stimulating them, showing them things, talking to them….

  "It's still raining," he said. "We got really wet, getting here from the car."

  He told Grandad about the truck and the pizza disaster, making it as funny as he could. It wasn't fair—none of it had been Mum's fault, but Grandad always secretly enjoyed it when one of her plans came unstuck. Before he'd finished, two nurses came out of another door. They looked surprised when they saw him.

  "Hello," said one of them. "Who are you?"

  "I'm Gavin. I'm his grandson. Gran asked me to stay with him while she went to the toilets. She's probably talking to Mum in the waiting place now."

  "Well, we're ready for him at last."

  One of them took hold of the trolley.

  "Can I come too?" said Gavin.

  "Best not. Why don't you go find your gran and tell her your granddad's gone for assessment and if she asks at the desk they'll tell her where to come."

  "All right. Those are his specs. I had them in my pocket. He can't see much without them."

  "We'll look after them. See you."

  Gavin got off the stool and started back down the corridor. Something very funny was happening. The corridor was moving around, swaying. It must be an earthquake, he thought. Why weren't there any noises? He couldn't keep his balance. He was falling, falling …

  Dark. He tried to open his eyes. Too bright. He couldn't remember where he was, or why.

  "Looks like he's coming round," said a woman's voice. "Just fainted, probably. When did he last eat?"

  "Not since breakfast, I think."

  That was Mum, and she flooded on. "He was with my father-in-law when it happened, and that was before lunch—they're very close, you see, and of course he was terribly upset and he kept saying he wasn't hungry—I'd bought something to eat on the way here, but …"

  And then all about the pizza and the truck and getting soaked and so on.

  Of course. Gavin remembered what had happened and opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor where he had fallen. Mum was kneeling beside him, and a nurse was crouching on the other side.

  "Is Grandad all right?" he whispered. "What happened? I don't remember."

  "Your grandfather's fine," said the nurse, "and so are you. You just fainted. Nothing to be ashamed of. Shock and cold and food shortage—enough to knock anyone out. Now we're going to wrap you up warm and fill you with hot sweet tea and sticky cakes—got to get some sugar into your blood, right? As soon as anyone knows anything we'll come and tell you about your granddad. Up you get, then. Take it easy…."

  "I'm all right," Gavin muttered as he stood swaying in the corridor, though he would have fallen without the nurse's arm round his shoulders. In spite of what she'd said, he felt deeply ashamed of himself. It seemed dead feeble, passing out like that and wasting everyone's time when they should have been looking after Grandad.

  At least Mum didn't say "Told you so." By the time they got back to the waiting area, she was too busy telling him about insulin deficiency.

  "Wake up, darling," said Mum's voice. "Here's the doctor at last."

  Oh, yes—Grandad, the hospital, fainting, sweet tea and chocolate digestive biscuits—he could still taste them in his mouth….

  Mum was standing, so Gavin pulled the blanket off and got up too. Gran and a doctor were just coming into the waiting area. Gran looked utterly exhausted.

  "I'm sorry to have kept you so long," said the doctor. He was exhausted too. Gavin could hear the tiredness in his voice. "It's been the hell of a day—always happens at weekends. And I'm afraid there isn't a lot I can tell you yet. We can't be dead certain till we've done the scans, but all the signs tell me your husband's had a fairly severe stroke, Mrs. Robinson, so we're sending him up to the stroke unit. It may not be as bad as it looks at the moment—I've seen patients make almost complete recoveries from where he is now, but it's a slow process. In the next few weeks I'd expect him to regain some control over the right side of his body, and perhaps some power of speech too, but that's a gradual process. He'll be able to understand what you say to him some time before he can answer at all clearly. The left side is more problematic, and it's impossible to say at this stage how much movement he will recover there. It could be anything from very little to almost complete control. The physios will be able to tell you more when they've been working with him for a bit."

  "We can help with that too, can't we?" said Mum.

  "Sure you can. That's often half the battle. The physios will talk to you about it."


  "When can we have him back at the Kincardine?" said Mum. "It'll be much easier for us to visit him there."

  "They usually keep patients in the stroke unit for about a month. That allows them to see some recovery and assess how much further they're likely to progress and what level of future care they're going to … Yes?"

  He had turned away because a nurse had appeared. She muttered briefly to him. Gavin saw his shoulders sag still further before he turned back to them.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I've got to go. I don't think there's any point in your waiting any longer. There's nothing more you can do, and there isn't going to be anything more I can tell you now."

  "They'll call us if anything happens?" said Mum.

  "Yes, of course. You gave all your details to the reception desk, including your telephone number? Great. Then it'll be going up with him to the stroke unit."

  And he hurried away.

  Gavin slept most of the way home and had to grope his way in through the door, and then got tangled up with Dodgem, who was capering round Gran, whingeing for his supper. He forced himself to stay awake and eat a bit of cold pie out of the fridge, and then dragged himself up past his bedroom into the attic. As he climbed the last flight he could hear Mum on the phone, trying to reach Dad on the ship satellite system. Last time Dad had called, his ship had just left Trinidad, heading for Panama. As he reached the top of the stairs Gavin heard her get through. Dad would be having his afternoon nap about now, maybe.

  He cleaned up the mess of painty turpentine on Grandad's workbench, put the brushes to soak in fresh turps, and made everything as neat as he could. As he groped his way down to bed he could hear Mum trying to find someone in Edinburgh who knew what Donald was doing that weekend.

  His last thought as he fell asleep was, I'll finish Selkie in time for my birthday.