Wishbones

by Virginia MacGregor

  Dad said the Willingdon Waltz used to be so big that, one year, the BBC came to film it for a documentary. You were too young to remember, Dad said. It’s not really fair how all the good things seem to have happened when I was too young to remember.

  ‘Maybe your mum will come out and watch this year…’ Jake says. ‘If she’s feeling better.’

  ‘Maybe…’

  Mum loves watching Strictly so much, you’d think she’d be really keen to see the Willingdon Waltz, especially as she’s got the best view of the Green from the lounge window. But it’s like she’s got a thing against Willingdon Day as a whole. Every year, when it comes round, she gets antsy and tells me to draw the curtains and to turn up the TV and, once we’ve had some birthday cake and I’ve opened my presents, she goes to bed early.

  I take the flier and put it into the back pocket of my jeans.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say.

  3

  They put Mum in a single room and pressed two beds together so she’d fit. Dad’s asleep in the seat next to her, wrapped up in one of those white, holey hospital blankets. While I’ve been staying at Jake’s, Dad hasn’t left Mum’s side, which is a good thing. If Mum’s going to get better she needs to see how much Dad loves her. And how we couldn’t live without her.

  ‘She looks so peaceful,’ Jake whispers.

  Steph dropped us off. She’s waiting in the car park. I told her to come in, that after everything that’s happened Mum will have forgotten all about the row they had at Christmas, but Steph said it was best not to crowd Mum.

  I’m glad I’ve got Jake with me at least.

  As I look at Mum’s sleeping face, I imagine what it must be like to lie there, my heart beating, my blood pumping, my brain sending its Morse code messages from synapse to unconscious synapse, and yet to be unconscious – being there and not there. Being both at once.

  Jake’s right. She does look peaceful. Though, with her hospital-phobia thing, she’s going to be anything but peaceful when she wakes up.

  ‘I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,’ I say.

  I asked the doctor to explain and he said I should ask Dad and Dad said that it was complicated, which basically means he thinks I’m too young to handle it. If Mum weren’t in a coma, she would have stood up for me. She says I’m more mature than most of the grown-ups she’s met.

  So, I grab the clipboard at the end of Mum’s bed and flip through the notes.

  ‘Feather…’ Jake starts. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘If I’m going to help Mum, I’ve got to have the facts.’

  I scan down the page. It’s mostly random scribbles from the doctors and nurses who’ve been doing her obs, notes on medication and blood pressure and temperature and stuff. And then I see it.

  Weight: 37st 2lb.

  ‘What is it?’ Jake leans in.

  I drop the clipboard. It clatters to the floor.

  Dad stirs in his sleep.

  Jake picks up the chart and puts it back in its holder.

  ‘Feather?’

  ‘We’ve never weighed Mum,’ I say to him. ‘I mean, I knew she was big, but thirty-seven stone? Can anyone even get that heavy?’

  No wonder she got sick.

  I look at Mum. It’s like she’s floated away in that big body of hers and I worry that maybe she won’t ever find her way back to me.

  I go over and kiss her cheek and feel relieved: it’s warm and soft and alive.

  ‘We’re going to get you better, Mum, I promise,’ I whisper by her ear.

  And then I put my arms around Mum’s body and give her a hug, because that’s what she always does to me when I’m feeling tired or sad or ill. Mum’s hugs are the best: her arms are so big they fold you up and make you feel like you’re in the safest place in the world. I’ve often thought how rubbish it would be to have to hug one of those bony, skinny mums I see sitting in their cars outside Newton Academy.

  ‘Here,’ says Jake, handing me the photo frame we picked up from home.

  It’s basically the only photograph in the whole house. Mum hates photos just about as much as she hates water and hospitals and running out of food. She says that we should remember the past in our heads and in our hearts, rather than being frozen into bits of shiny paper or screens. She doesn’t seem to mind this one though. It’s of me sitting in the middle of The Green, hugging Houdini. I’m about ten and I’m wearing a pair of faded dungarees and I’ve got loads of freckles and Pippi Longstocking plaits and I’m grinning from ear to ear.

  It was Jake’s idea to bring it. He said that even though Mum was unconscious and even though her eyes are screwed shut and her brain’s far away, it’s important to surround her with things she loves.

  As I place the photograph on the bedside table, I hope that maybe in middle of the night, when none of us are here to notice, her eyelids will flicker open and, if they do, she’ll see my grinning, freckled face looking back at her and it might help her remember I’m here and that I want her to come back to me.

  Before Jake and I leave the room, I take Mum’s brush and run it through her hair. I’m relieved to see that the nurses washed it. Like Mum’s eyes, Mum’s hair is beautiful. It’s a goldy-blonde and smooth and shiny and, when she lets it down, it goes all the way down her back. In all the time I’ve known her, Mum hasn’t had a single haircut. When I was little, it made me think of Rapunzel and I got this picture of Mum hanging her hair out of the lounge window and Dad dressed up as a prince scaling the side of the house to save her.

  My hair’s like Dad’s: brown and straggly.

  For a few minutes I get lost in brushing Mum’s hair. I think of all the times I’ve brushed it back home, mostly late at night, before I go to sleep, while I tell her about my day. One of the good things about having a mum who doesn’t ever leave the house and doesn’t have a job or anything to do except watch re-runs of Strictly is that she always has time to listen.

  ‘I love you, Mum,’ I whisper, and put the brush down.

  ‘We’d better go,’ says Jake, ‘Mum’s waiting.’

  I nod. Though, if I could choose I would curl up next to Mum on the bed and stay with her until she wakes up. I want to be the first person she sees when she opens her eyes.

  As Jake holds open the door for me, I hear a couple of nurses chatting in the corridor. We saw them on our way in, an old one with a square jaw and a young one with a sharp black bob. They were sitting at the nurses’ station drinking their tea and filling in their charts and listening to slushy stuff on the radio. I should lend them Jake’s Macklemore albums.

  ‘Done her meds?’ the old one says.

  A rustle of paper.

  ‘Yeah. Crazy doses,’ the young one says.

  Ever since Mum got to be the size she is now, she’s had to take triple-strength medicines: her body’s so big and it’s got so much blood in it that she has to overdose on paracetamols just to make a dent in her headaches.

  ‘Ever seen one this big?’ the young nurse says.

  I hear Jake gasp beside me.

  Blood rushes to my cheeks. Nurses shouldn’t be allowed to talk about patients like that. No one should be allowed to talk about anyone like that.

  ‘Come on, Feather, let’s go.’ Jake takes my arm.

  I shake him off and yank open the door. I’m standing in the middle of the corridor now. The nurses don’t notice that I’m staring right at them and that I can hear every word they’re saying.

  ‘How long do you reckon she has?’ the younger nurse adds. ‘I mean, when she wakes up?’

  My body freezes.

  ‘Feather…’ Jake says.

  ‘Shhh!’

  ‘Six months – if she’s lucky,’ the older nurse says. ‘I mean, at that size, any number of things could get her.’

  ‘Don’t listen to them, Feather. They don’t know what they’re talking about.’

  ‘They’re nurses, Jake,’ I hiss. ‘They know exactly what they’re talking abou
t.’

  I charge to the nurses’ station and stand in front of them, my hands on my hips. Jake hangs back.

  ‘What did you say?’ I look from one nurse to the other.

  ‘Oh!’ The younger nurse steps back like I’ve trodden on her toes.

  The older nurse shoots her a glance. Then she turns to me. ‘Nothing, my dear.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like nothing.’

  ‘Sorry we disturbed you,’ the older nurse says.

  ‘You didn’t disturb me. You were saying, about Mum—’

  ‘Feather, let’s go,’ I hear Jake say from behind me.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I say. ‘I want you to explain why you said those things about Mum.’

  ‘It’s okay, dear,’ the older nurse says, smiling one of those fake, there, there, dear smiles. I’m beginning to realise why Mum hates hospitals so much.

  ‘No. It’s not okay. You said…’

  The older nurse looks down at me. ‘You look tired, dear.’

  ‘I’m not tired. I want to know about Mum not making it.’

  The young nurse goes red.

  The older nurse puts her hand on my arm.

  Jake’s standing beside me now.

  ‘Maybe you should talk to your dad.’

  And then a call bell buzzes from one of the other rooms and the older nurse says, ‘Excuse me’, and then the younger one says, ‘Sorry’ and walks back to the nurses’ station and I’m left standing there.

  I feel Jake taking my hand. ‘Come on, Feather, let’s get out of here. Like they said, you can talk to your dad. We’ll come back tomorrow morning.’

  But I don’t need to talk to Dad. I know what they meant: that it’s lose–lose. That even if Mum wakes up from her coma, she’s going to die anyway. And that, if we don’t do anything about it, and fast, she’ll be gone in six months.

  4

  After swim practice, I go to the Willingdon Mobile Library to use the internet. The day after Mum went into hospital, I ripped the Wi-Fi router out of the wall in the lounge and hid her laptop in the garage. Stopping her from being able to do online food deliveries is the first stage of my get-Mum-well plan.

  I scan through the NHS website looking for articles on gastric bands. I’m worried Mum’s got too big for them to even be an option. Apparently the NHS pays for dangerously overweight patients to have bands fitted around their stomachs so they feel full and stop eating as much. Only Mum’s never wanted to see a doctor about her weight so we didn’t even get that choice and now I’m worried it’s too late.

  My phone buzzes. It’s one of those cheap ones that only calls and texts.

  ‘Mum’s woken up.’ Dad’s voice is all choked up.

  Steph’s at work and Jake’s with Amy, so I get the first bus to Newton Hospital. I run into Mum’s room and throw my arms around her and hold her so tight she gasps.

  ‘Steady on, Feather, or you’ll send me into another coma…’ She gives me a tired laugh. I can tell she’s trying to hold it in, how freaked out she is by being in hospital.

  Dad sits on the other side of the bed, grinning.

  ‘We missed you, Josie,’ he says.

  Mum’s eyes dart around the room. The drips. The white walls. The heater hissing under the window. I can feel her nerves fizzing.

  ‘It’s okay, Mum,’ I say and lean over and kiss her cheek.

  Mum’s eyes focus on me and she seems to calm down a bit. ‘It’s good to see you, My Little Feather.’

  Dad and I spend ages sitting on Mum’s bed holding her hands and stroking her hair and giving her hugs. I know Dad’s thinking the same as me: that this time we’re going to be more careful; that we’re going to grasp onto her so tight that she never slips away again.

  ‘What was it like?’ I ask. ‘Being in a coma?’

  Mum smiles. ‘I don’t really remember much, Feather. But it felt quite nice actually – floating around in this nowhere, no-time place.’

  I guess that for someone as big as Mum, feeling floaty must be quite cool.

  ‘I heard you calling me, Feather,’ she adds. ‘And when I woke up, I saw your photo.’ She shifts her head to the picture of me on her bedside table.

  ‘So you’re glad you’re back?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ll be glad when I’m home.’ Mum yawns. ‘I’m really tired.’

  I want to make a comment about the fact that she’s been sleeping for days but maybe sleeping isn’t the same as being in a coma.

  ‘Come on, let’s leave Mum to have a rest,’ Dad says.

  I give Mum a kiss, jump off the bed and then Dad and I head to the hospital canteen for a hot chocolate and a sandwich.

  ‘We’ve got to make some changes,’ I say to Dad.

  He rubs his eyes. ‘Let’s take a day at a time, Feather.’

  I shake my head. ‘We can’t afford to take a day at a time. Mum’s really sick.’

  Dad pokes at a bit of gherkin in his sandwich and then puts it down. He hasn’t eaten properly in months.

  ‘I know that,’ he says.

  I take a breath.

  ‘It was our fault, Dad.’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘Dad?’

  He pushes his sandwich back into its packet and scrunches it up.

  ‘Let’s not talk about this now, Feather.’

  ‘You can’t bury your head in the sand about this, Dad.’

  It’s the first time I’ve been this blunt with him but I have to keep going, otherwise I’ll lose my nerve.

  ‘It’s our fault that Mum got sick.’

  He goes quiet again.

  ‘Did you think we were helping her, Dad? Making her fry-ups, letting her guzzle tins of pineapple syrup, bulk-buying Galaxy bars and crisps…?’

  ‘It’s not just about food, Feather.’

  ‘Of course it’s about food, Dad. Haven’t you noticed how much she eats? That’s why she’s got so big. That’s why she’s sick.’

  Dad stands up. ‘Come on, Feather, let’s go home and get things ready for Mum.’

  I grab his arm and yank him back down into his chair. ‘No, Dad, you have to listen—’

  He sits down slowly.

  ‘Everything we do for your mum is because we love her.’

  ‘Love her?’ I clench my jaw. ‘Feeding Mum rubbish wasn’t kind or generous – or loving: it made her sick.’

  From the way people are looking over at us, I realise I’ve been shouting. But I don’t care. All that matters is Mum. We’ve got six months and I’m not going to waste a minute of it.

  Dad hangs his head and looks into his calloused palms. After a long silence he says:

  ‘I understand what you’re saying, Feather. And I know you mean well…’

  ‘It’s not about meaning well, Dad—’

  Dad looks up, leans forward and puts his hands over mine. He’s done this since I was little: wrapped my little fists in his big palms. Usually, it’s the best feeling in the world – like nothing can ever be wrong with the world when Dad’s holding me. But it doesn’t feel like that today.

  ‘This is something even you can’t fix, Feather.’

  I take a breath and say:

  ‘We made her ill, Dad. And now it’s our job to make her better.’

  Dad pulls his hands away from mine.

  I grab his hands again, pull them towards me and squeeze them tight. ‘I can’t do this on my own, Dad. You have to help me.’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘Dad?’

  Dad stares blankly at my hands, gripping his. Very slowly, he nods. But I’m not sure it’s gone in. Not properly.

  5

  I settle Mum into her armchair. And that’s when she notices.

  ‘Where’s the TV?’

  If the lounge is Mum’s world, the TV is her sun. A fifty-inch, flat-screen, HD, surround-sound sun which Dad got Mum for her fortieth birthday two years ago.

  Steph and Jake helped me carry the TV to the garage. Jake said he’d put it on eBay, which will he
lp my get-Mum-healthy fund.

  I kiss the top of Mum’s head. ‘We thought you could have a break from it.’

  Mum stares into the space where the TV used to be.

  I feel kind of bad. Mum’s been looking forward to coming home and I know part of what she’s looked forward to is going back to the things that have filled her days up to now, which are basically food and TV. And me.

  ‘We’ll find other things to do, Mum.’

  Mum closes her eyes. She looks knackered. The trip back from the hospital took ages and the nurse with the square jaw made Mum walk from her hospital bed to the ambulance – because she wouldn’t fit on the front bench of Dad’s van. Anyway, it’s the furthest Mum’s walked in years. Plus, she hadn’t been eating much in hospital because the doctor’s put her on a diet, so she’s feeling a bit wobbly. But it’s a good thing because it means she’s lost weight. I saw on the notes in her medical chart that she’d lost one stone. Now I need to make sure the weight keeps going down.

  Mum coughs. And then she stares up at the wall.

  ‘And what happened to our router? And where’s my laptop?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to worry about doing the shopping. Dad and I are going to do it from now on.’

  She looks at me and blinks and then goes back to scanning the room for all the changes.

  ‘And why’s Dad’s bed in my room?’

  I thought that if it was just a matter of not having space for both of them in Mum’s bed, then we could bring Dad’s bed down too. They could be together again, like old times.

  Mum keeps scanning the room – frowning. She looks at the two beds pressed up against each other and her wheelchair and her armchair and her medical equipment.

  ‘There’s no room to swing a cat in here,’ Mum says.

  Steph warned me that the beds might be taking it a bit far but I told her it would be fine, that Mum would get used to it.

  As we pushed Mum’s wheelchair out of Newton Hospital, the young nurse (the one who said Mum was going to die) ran after us and gave Mum a pile of leaflets on how to get healthy. Mum dumped them in the car park bin muttering:

  ‘Waste of trees.’