Inside Grandad

by Peter Dickinson

  Robert was a tall, thin man with sunken cheeks and bushy black eyebrows. His big, bony fingers were yellow with tobacco, and his noisy little Datsun reeked of smoke, though he had the windows down, and Mum must have spoken to him about not smoking because he kept one a bit open all the way to Aberdeen. He drove almost as fast as Donald and didn't talk at all. He took Gavin up to the hospital entrance and waited for him to get out.

  "Thank you very much," said Gavin as he opened the door. "That's wonderful."

  "Glad to help," said Robert. "Same time tomorrow?"

  "Yes, please, if that's all right."

  Robert nodded, waited for Gavin to get out, and reached a long arm across to close the door. Standing at the entrance to let a wheelchair out, Gavin looked back and saw that he hadn't driven off but was finishing lighting a cigarette.

  Mum's arrangements worked. The woman in reception knew about him, and let him sign in and gave him a pass saying he was going up to the stroke unit. When he got to the ward there was a woman he hadn't seen before standing by Grandad's bed. He waited in the doorway, watching, not sure whether to go on in. She was gray haired but not all that old, with a soft, rather anxious-looking face. She was wearing the usual hospital overall, so she wasn't a nurse, but she didn't look quite like a doctor either. She seemed to be doing something with Grandad's right arm—the one that had kept fidgeting about—bending the forearm slowly up, saying a few words, waiting, and then laying the arm back down on the bed. Another few words, and wait, and she started to do it again, but this time she happened to glance up and saw Gavin in the doorway. She smiled again, finished the process, and came over.

  "You're Gavin," she said. "I'm Lena. I'm the physio. I was talking to your brother about you this morning. Hi."

  "Oh, hello," said Gavin. "Do you want me to go and wait outside till you've finished?"

  Lena almost laughed.

  "No, of course not," she said. "I want to talk to you. Your brother says he thinks you might help."

  "Oh, great! Anything, if you'll show me how. So far I've just been holding his hand and telling him stuff—the sort of things we'd talk about at home."

  "That's all useful," she said. "Come and see."

  She led the way over to the bed, back to where she'd been before, so Gavin went round to the other side. Nothing seemed to have changed. The blue eyes were open, gazing blankly at the ceiling.

  "Hi, Grandad," he said. "I got a lift over. That's why I'm early. This is Lena. She's the physio. She's trying to help you…. Is it all right if I put his specs on? He can't see anything without them. I mean, if he's confused already … And it makes him look like him, except for his mustache being so short."

  "Can't hurt now, I suppose," said Lena. "We took them off before, because otherwise he'd have had them off and probably dropped them on the floor and broken them, but now … I expect you noticed when you came before that his right arm— this one—wouldn't stop moving about, but he wasn't doing it on purpose. That's called ataxia—it's fairly normal, and as the patient improves it tends to quieten down. But in your grandfather's case it seems to have stopped overnight, and that is a bit unusual…."

  "It was quicker than that," said Gavin. "It happened when I was here."

  "Tell me."

  "Well, I was standing where you are, leaning a bit over the bed so he could see me, and telling him about… er, well, stuff that had been happening. I'd got hold of his hand to stop it fidgeting about, though it was still trying to, and I was stroking it on the back with my thumb because that seemed to help, but I wasn't noticing about it because I was thinking about what I was telling him, so I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but all of a sudden I realized it had stopped trying to fidget anymore. And it wasn't just that. He was actually holding my hand."

  "Holding it?"

  "Yes. I mean … Look."

  Gavin held his right hand out, palm up, laid his left hand around it, and curled his left fingers gently down beside his right thumb.

  "I was holding his hand like this—it was the other way round, actually, but I can't do that on my own hand—anyway, Grandad wasn't doing anything—hadn't been, I mean—but then …"

  He curled his right fingertips up against the far side of his other hand.

  "… I felt them first, actually, pressing against my hand—not hard, just a bit, and it was only for a moment. Then he let go. They weren't pressing any more."

  "You're sure? You don't think it might have been something you made happen. By gripping his hand tighter, for instance?"

  Gavin experimented with his own hands.

  "No, it doesn't work like that. Look. The fingers sort of squeeze together, but Grandad's were loose. I'm sure they were."

  He waited. Lena didn't say anything for a bit. Then …

  "That's very interesting. You say it was only for a moment?"

  "Well, I'm not sure when it started. You see, I was telling him this stuff and I was actually looking into his eyes, and … they changed. There was something—a sort of glint—I don't know—perhaps I only imagined it—it was just for a moment, and … and … well, I kind of knew he was there, listening, him, Grandad … I'm sorry…."

  To his shame, he was crying, in front of this stranger. Not sobbing or groaning or anything, but tears flooding silently down his cheeks, dripping off his nose and chin … He couldn't see anything…. Lena was saying something….

  "… didn't imagine it, Gavin. I've seen it too, sometimes, in other patients of mine. I'm not sure it isn't the main reason why I do this job, for that moment, that glimmer of a signal getting through. It makes me feel, however hopeless the case seems, that there's still a chance of getting the real person back in the end. And remember, this is still early days with your granddad. He's had a severe stroke, but it's far too soon to give up on him.

  "Now here's some tissues, and you can dry yourself up, and when you're ready we'll try something else together."

  She waited while Gavin, full of shame, scrubbed angrily at the drying tears.

  "Okay," he muttered. "Sorry about that. I'm all right now."

  "Nothing to be sorry about, Gavin. Crying's often the best thing you can do. Now, let me show you. I'm doing two things at the same time. Mainly, at this stage, it's just a matter of exercising his body as much as I can, maintaining the muscle tone, not letting it get into bad habits, but at the same time I'm trying to help him begin to remember how to move about for himself, on purpose. Let me show you….

  "Now, Robbie, we're just going to show Gavin how we do your arm exercises. Let's see if you can touch your nose with your right hand. First, I'll do it for you, to remind you, shall I?"

  She straightened Grandad's arm beside his body, took hold of his wrist with her right hand, and, holding his elbow in place with her other hand, lifted his forearm gently up and over until the tips of his fingers rested against his nose.

  "Good," she said. "Now I'll put it back, and you see if you can do it for yourself…. Ready?… Now! Come on, Robbie. You can do it. Touch your nose…."

  Nothing happened, but Lena didn't seem bothered. She looked up, smiling.

  "It's very early days. I wasn't really expecting a response yet. You'll promise not to be disappointed if nothing happens, won't you?"

  "All right. You want me to try now?"

  "Why not? It isn't difficult. What it really takes is patience, and more patience, and yet more patience, and I really never have time to give everyone all the help I'd like to. That's why people like you can be so useful."

  Gavin had moved round to Lena's side of the bed while she was talking, and she'd made room for him. Automatically he'd picked up Grandad's hand and laid it across his body, the way he usually did, so that he could still be holding it comfortably while he was leaning over the bed chatting to him. He hadn't even noticed himself doing it. Now, he looked down, surprised to see the two hands lying there, one across the other. A thought struck him.

  "Can I try something else first?" he said.

/>   Lena was amused.

  "If you like," she said.

  He leaned further over so that he could see into Grandad's eyes.

  "Lena's going to show me how to help you with your exercises, Grandad," he said. "But first, before we start, just see if you can take hold of my hand, like you did yesterday when I was telling you what I'd said to the selkie."

  It happened. There was no gleam in Grandad's eyes that Gavin could see, but for a moment, and another moment, he felt the faint pressure of fingertips against the side of his own palm. Then it was gone.

  He let out a long breath of relief and looked up at Lena.

  "Did you see?" he whispered. "It was a bit more than that yesterday."

  "Indeed I did," she said. "Though the movement was very slight, and I wouldn't like, at this stage, to swear that he was doing it on purpose. But let's take it for the moment as an encouraging sign. Why don't you see if you can get him to do it again?"

  "If you like. All right…. That was wonderful, Grandad. Now let's see if you can do it again. I'm going to squeeze your hand, and then you squeeze back. Ready?"

  But nothing happened, though he tried several times, and nothing happened either when he went over to the arm exercises Lena showed him how to do, telling Grandad to touch his nose or his ear, or to open and close his fingers, and so on, and then doing it for him when he didn't respond. After a while Lena told him to stop even telling him, and just move the arm and hand around in different ways for five minutes, and do the same thing all over again on the other side, though he really couldn't expect any response there for a long while yet. She watched him for a bit, and then crossed to the other side of the ward and started working on one of the patients there, though she still glanced across from time to time.

  When he thought he'd done enough he straightened up and looked round at her, and she nodded and made a gesture with her hands to tell him he could stop. He felt surprisingly tired, and it was a relief to sit down and read Grandad his e-mails.

  Apart from Dad coming home for one weekend, that was the last good thing that happened for almost a month.

  othing much bad happened in that month either. Except that nothing happened, and that was bad. It made it harder and harder to keep hoping, while everyone else was starting to give up. As the days went by Gavin began to imagine he could hear in everyone's voices—the nurses' and Mum's, even Gran's— that they were beginning to stop hoping.

  On the day after Gavin had talked to Lena, Robert picked him up after school again and drove him to Aberdeen. He went straight up to the stroke unit. Lena was already in the ward, working on one of the other patients. She looked up, nodded, and smiled, so he settled himself in beside Grandad's bed. Grandad's right hand still wasn't fidgeting around, which was a relief. Gavin didn't start off by holding it, the way he'd always done before, because he wanted Lena to be there to see if anything happened when he did.

  He'd got two new e-mails to read, one of them a three-pager from a model maker in Valparaiso whose English was only just good enough for the job. Usually Gavin would have found it fun making sense of it, but today it was difficult to concentrate enough. He felt desperately tense and nervous. All this was so important, and time never stopped leaking away, moment after moment after moment, and any of them might have been the one good moment when he could have got his message through to Grandad. He had to force himself to get up slowly and not leap eagerly to his feet when Lena stopped what she was doing and came over.

  "Ready to try again, then?"

  "I was just waiting for you. Do you want me to start straight in?"

  "Might as well. I've been working with him already. I just left his arms for you to do."

  Gavin put the e-mails away and positioned himself beside the bed, feeling tenser than ever. This wasn't a test, for heaven's sake, he told himself. Lena wasn't going to yell at him if he got something wrong, but still it really mattered in ways he didn't understand. Except that anything he did for Grandad might matter. He took a deep, steadying breath and positioned Grandad's arm so that he could hold his hand comfortably.

  "Lena's here now, Grandad," he said, "and she's going to watch me doing your exercises with you. First off I'm going to grab hold of your hand and give it a bit of a squeeze … there. Feel that? Squeeze back if you felt it…."

  Nothing. Grandad's eyes were open, but his hand stayed fast asleep. Gavin had told himself, several times, this might happen, and managed to keep his voice cheerful.

  "Never mind. I'll do it for you, to remind you."

  Gently, with his free hand, he bent the sleeping fingers up. They didn't help. Didn't resist. Those tough, workman's fingers—Grandad used to crack walnuts with them, he'd once told Gavin; and they'd tied the tiny, precise knots and splices in Selkie's sails and rigging. Don't think about that now. Leave it. Go on to the exercises. Somehow he kept his voice even, cheerful, as he moved Grandad's arm about, telling him what he was going to do and encouraging him to help. Every now and then Lena stopped him and took over, but made him put his fingertips on the separate muscles so that he could feel how they stretched or bunched as she flexed the joints and twisted the hand to and fro. He could tell the difference at once when she moved round to the other arm and did the same things there, though he couldn't think of a way of describing it.

  "The connections are still all there on his right side," Lena explained. "Only he can't remember how to use them. A lot of what we're trying to do is simply reminding him, and in a few days' time he should be starting to remember. It's different on his left side. A lot of the connections are broken there, and he's going to have to find new ones. That'll take a good bit longer, of course.

  "Want to take over? Time I was moving on, in any case. Carry on on this side for another ten minutes, and then go back and do a bit more on his right. Don't overdo it. He'll be getting tired soon, and so will you, I daresay. We don't want to wear you out."

  She was right. Doing the exercises wasn't that hard work, but it was boring, and surprisingly tiring. Boring because it was doing the same thing over and over, with no result, and tiring because it mattered so much. Time somehow stuck. That first ten minutes seemed to take forever. He sighed with relief when he could go round to the other side of the bed and finish doing the right arm.

  This was just as tiring, but less dreary, because now he could really feel the difference, feel Grandad there, inside his sleeping arm, and from that go on to think that the pressure inside himself might perhaps have a purpose, that if he could somehow gather and shape it and find exactly the right place and moment, something might at last force its way through, and reach Grandad, and wake him from his sleep.

  "That's enough, Grandad," he whispered at last. "Now let's have a bit of a rest."

  He switched Grandad's hand into his own left hand so that he could sit, still holding it, and close his eyes and empty his mind and think about nothing at all, utterly exhausted, body and mind. The certainty, the self-assurance, that he'd begun to feel while he was doing the exercises, dwindled away. He'd hardly done anything, for heaven's sake—talked to Grandad a bit, moved his arms and fingers about a bit. There was no reason why he should have felt as tired as if he'd played a full game of football on a muddy field and then done two hours' difficult homework.

  Right, so he was building up some kind of special magical power inside himself, which he was going to use to make Grandad well again? Like the selkies had given Grandad his stroke, because he'd been joking about them? Oh, yeah? Grandad had been going to have his stroke anyway. The GP's notes had come through, Mum said. Donald had been right— Grandad had had a couple of blackouts and been to Dr. Moray about them.

  I've got to stop thinking like this, he told himself, and picked up Model Boats and opened it and started reading Grandad the first bit he came to. When he was bored with that he started on his homework, feeling buzzy and stupid, making a lot of mistakes and finding it difficult to think of anything worth saying to Grandad about it. Gran showed up when
he was about halfway through so he moved himself out to a chair by the reception desk so that she could be alone with Grandad. He kept dozing off and had only just finished the homework when Lena looked in to say good-bye.

  "Same time tomorrow?" he said.

  "Not sure," she said slowly, frowning at him in a bothered kind of way. "Well, maybe. I'll call your mother. I'll get the number at the desk."

  "Suppose you aren't here, do I … ?"

  "No, leave it. Time I did a bit of work myself. See you soon."

  She left, and he tried to go back to his homework but fell asleep again, and didn't remember anything about what happened after that, until he woke up in the car and saw they were back in Stonehaven, just turning up out of Slug Road.

  Next morning, while he was stacking his dirties together to put in the dishwasher, Mum said, "Don't get up for a minute, darling. I need to talk to you."

  She'd never been any good at hiding her feelings. He could always tell. This time, even before he looked at her, he knew it was something serious and he wasn't going to like it. He waited.

  "Your friend Lena called last night," she said. "I'm sorry, darling, but she doesn't think you should go over to the hospital every day, and nor do I."

  "Oh, Mum! But—"

  "No, listen, darling. I was really thankful she called, because I was going to tell you the same off my own bat, but I knew you'd take it better from her. She's got a lot of experience, not just with stroke victims but with their families. She knows what a strain it is for them. She knows how helpless we all feel."

  "But I don't feel helpless, Mum. Not while I'm doing something. I only will if you stop me."

  "Yes, of course, darling. That's why Lena was so ready to let you do what you're doing. She thought it would also help you, just to feel that you were doing something for Grandad, but now she's beginning to wish she hadn't. You're putting too much strain on yourself. Already you're wearing yourself out. You won't last a week the way you're going, she says. And I agree."