— Is the hurt going away, Billy?
I say, — A bit, yes, but roll toward her as I say it, and when I move my leg the twisty flame gets me again, so I yelp, — No! as well.
— Clothes. Car keys, says Dad.
— Please, Jim. Give it a few moments. We have to be sure!
— I am sure. It was bloody hot water.
— Yes, but—
— He doesn’t cry like that unless he’s hurt.
— I know.
— Should I wrap him in that, then?
— I don’t know . . . look. He’s probably shocked. We cool him down. We all calm down. And then, then we decide what to do. If we take him to A&E . . . we can’t just take him in . . . not today . . . Christ, they’ll . . .
— They?
— You know what I mean.
— You’re worried about how this looks?
— Think about it.
— I’m not thinking about anybody other than him!
— Neither am I! I’m just looking beyond—
— I’m sorry, I say.
— Oh, Billy.
— Will I die?
— No, no, no, whispers Dad. — Don’t be daft.
— Will my leg skin fall off like a snake’s?
— No.
— It hurts.
— I know, Son. I know. Tessa, fetch me some clothes.
— You can’t drive. You’ve been drinking.
— You drive then, for fuck’s sake!
Once, I picked the submarine up and black water dribbled out of it, which was interesting; at school I had a nosebleed, too: drip, drip, drip. Miss Hart gave me a new worksheet. Dad is still rocking me a little bit, saying, — Shh, even though I’m not saying anything myself. Have you ever been for a walk in windy cold rain? Did your chin go tingly-numb? That’s what everything is like. I try to sit up and Dad says, — Shhh! to me again, and — Don’t just stand there, to Mum.
Mum’s eyes are full of light. She brushes some of it away with her thumb heels. But as she turns to go she’s stopped by Grandma Lynne, who says, very quietly, — I’ve called an ambulance.
Mum takes a deep breath and sinks back against the wall.
Dad stares over at Grandma Lynne. Slowly, he nods. — Thank you, Lynne. Thank you.
You can’t see the flashing lights when you’re inside the ambulance, or hear the siren even, particularly when they don’t turn it on. I’m disappointed. Still, the lady with the green coat is friendly, but her teeth overlap strangely. Dad sits with me stroking my head. A lot: careful you don’t stroke a hole in it, Dad! In ambulances they have lots of things clipped to other things. Sometimes there are straps. One of the strapped things is a mask for your face attached to a fire extinguisher with laughing medicine in it.
— Are we both allowed some? Dad asks the lady.
— For a fee, she says.
It tastes funny but feels funnier, like the moment just after the tickling stops, combined with when you realize everything’s actually a dream.
— What’s that you’ve got there? the woman asks.
I hold my dolphin up for her to see but the words that come out don’t make sense. — My smiling nosebleed.
The doctor in the hospital asks about it, too, when he’s tapping his syringe, which he tells me to look away from, so I immediately can’t, but at least I tell him the truth.
— It’s my submarine.
— Marvelous, he says, pricking the needle in.
My arm hurts so I say, — My arm hurts.
— Brave boy.
— I’m durable.
— What’s that?
— Tough.
— You are. He looks at Mum as he goes on. — Must have been a hot bath.
— Accident, says Dad.
The doctor nods and takes off his glasses. There are excellent red grooves above his ears. Some people keep pencils there. Jesus was a carpenter’s son. He did miracles including curing the sick by helping them pick up their beds, but sadly it was probably a trick. The bed I’m sitting on has wheels and brilliant suspension, like Mr. Sparks’s bicycle. The doctor looks very young because his skin, apart from the red grooves, is lovely and pink.
— Accidents do happen, he says. — He’s lucky you pulled him out so quickly. The upper leg, this small area here, may blister, but it’s a little early to say. Mostly he’s got away with it. The erythema — redness — should calm down pretty quickly. He’s a lucky unlucky boy, so to speak. We’ll keep him in overnight, see how he does, top him up with pain relief as necessary. His leg may need dressing: the nurses will show you how. You’re a tough a little chap, though, Billy, yes? No more diving off the hot tap. I’m sure you’ll be fine.
— Great. Thank you, Doctor, says Dad in a job-done-let’s-move-on voice.
Mum pinches the ridge of her nose.
— Not at all, the doctor replies. Now, I just need to sort out the paperwork. He takes a clipboard from the foothills of the bed — Butterfly would be proud — and continues, — What’s Billy’s full name?
Mum says it slowly.
— And his date of birth?
She gets that right, too.
— Home address?
Correct. Well done, Mum.
— GP’s name?
She answers. He nods, scribbles.
— And where does he go to school?
This doctor has very impressive fast writing: he puts his head on one side to admire what his pen is up to, only pausing when Mum replies to his and finally question, — Does the family have a health visitor or social worker?
— Yes, Mum says. — We do.
— I see. Okay.
Dad, under his breath: — Jesus Christ.
— You’re in good hands, then. The doctor smiles, flipping up pages in his pad. — I’ll be back in a moment. There’s a green form I need to fill out, too.
I’m allowed to spend the night sleeping in my bed with suspension in the hospital, but sadly Mum and Dad have to do it sitting up on chairs with wooden arms. Chairs are interesting. They have backs and legs and arms and feet and bottoms, too, but no heads or hands. You wouldn’t believe the dreams I have about chairs during my night in the hospital! Incredible dreams: just incredible! Don’t worry, I’m still not going to describe them. Just because something is incredible for me in a dream doesn’t mean that it won’t be totally boring for you.
Have you ever fallen over playing tag in the playground wearing shorts and a T-shirt? I have, quite often, and the worst thing that happens is when the skin grates off my knees or elbows, with bits of grit left in. But even if I cunningly avoid that by breaking my fall with my hands it normally means my hands smack down on the tarmacs very hard and sting horribly for a reasonably long time until they stop stinging and start throbbing instead. Well that’s exactly what happens to my boiling-leg-splashes when I wake up very early in the hospital after my dreams, only in reverse: gentle throb, throb, loud throb, almost sting, stinging, very stingy . . . actually hurt. I nearly cry so Mum fetches the nurse who gives me some more medication which is just a special way of saying medicine: normal pink stuff from a bottle you have in a white plastic spoon. It tastes nearly as nice as Calpol. I lie with Mum’s and Dad’s hands taking turns in my hair as the hurt gradually turns stingy and then to quiet throb again.
You can eat food in hospital without getting out of bed. They have a tray thing on wheels which rolls over the top of your legs at exactly the right height. Excellent! The vegetables have water under them but there’s custard.
Sadly you’re not allowed to lie there eating the food definitely. They send you away from hospital as soon as they can so that somebody else can have a go in the bed. The doctor looks at my side and legs again after breakfast in the morning. It’s Cheerios: excellent. The doctor is also pleased; I know because he says, — That’s good, I’m pleased. Everybody’s very pleased in fact. Well done, Billy’s body; still a bit blotchy, and that is a small blister on the side of the upper leg, but it’s
not as bad as expected. Overall: impressive powers of healing. Luke Skywalker has a brilliant fake hand but when the farmers shoot off Fantastic Mr. Fox’s tail that’s it, it’s gone for good. Unfortunately, as soon as we’ve all smiled at each other the doctor takes Mum and Dad out through the curtain flap and explains something disappointing to them about a follow-up visit from so shall services. So shall we? Why not. Curtain flaps are much less muffling than walls. When they come back through the slit they prefer not to look at one another again, and sadly that’s it, we’ve got to go home how. Cheerio. Don’t come back unless you forget to check the temperature of the boiling bath before leaping into it like an idiot again. No need to worry: I won’t.
We drive home without talking. The radio fills up the car with noise for us anyway. There’s a song about tying something to a tree with yellow ribbon. Rope would be stronger. Then there’s one about angels which don’t really exist. Afterward, a lady gets excited about the traffic jams. All normal. I’m sitting on the backseat behind Dad so I can’t see his face, but using observations I can tell he’s concentrating very hard on the road: he doesn’t turn his head at all. Sadly that means he doesn’t see when Mum shudders a bit and smears a line of tears into her cheek. I lean forward to pat her arm but I can’t quite reach because my leg hurts when I stretch out that way, so I have to sit back normally again.
Excellent! Grandma Lynne’s car is still parked in our street! I see it first and tell everybody but grown-ups are unpredictable creatures, like orcas, egg-shaped rugby balls, and the weather in Wales on holiday. Orca is just the right way of saying killer whale: one moment they’re fine but watch out because, whap, the next they’re likely to eat their trainer. Dad’s good hand thumps the steering wheel and he stops the car with a jerk; Mum looks out of her window at the scaggy bush as if its leaves are made of something unusual, like green icing, perhaps, or shavings of plasticine.
One of the best things about scalding your legs in the bath is that you don’t have to go straight back to school. Instead, you’re allowed to do vertically what you want at home, which is actually more difficult than it seems. Choice, Son; it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Does the same thing ever happen to you? What do I fancy doing? you ask. Well, what are the choices? Anything at all. That’s fantastic! But hold on; it’s so good it’s actually bad because . . . I can’t decide.
It definitely happens to rabbits crossing roads in the dark, and when it does it’s often fatal.
I start by reading a chapter of a book about an eagle, up to the bit where the eagle’s family arrive for a visit in the snow quite boringly, which makes me build most of another Lego stealth bomber with a loading bay, until I realize it’s just the same as the last one I made, so I watch half of David Attenborough’s Life in the Freezer instead. It makes me want to look at my arctic activity book, which I do, but I’ve only been looking at it for a few moments when I realize that I’d actually prefer to be doing another drawing of my own instead.
I go to fetch some more sheets from Dad’s dream of paper.
He’s in his study-bedroom staring at some tiny writing on his computer screen, so I take the Sellotape dispenser across into my room as well and stick some sheets of paper together to make a giant canvas. Sellotape can be a tricky customer, especially if two bits of the sticky side stick to each other; when that happens you’re buggered, Son, just start with another piece.
I do.
It’s okay, but by the time I’ve made the canvas I’ve forgotten what I wanted to draw on it. That is called having no inspiration, and the best tactic for dealing with it is to look at great things you’ve done before, which makes you remember you did them and think hey, I did that, so I can definitely do something else as good again!
I dig out my most recent pictures, including the one with the black cloud scribble coming out of Stick Woman’s mouth. The black cloud looks something like an explosion. Kakaboom. Since my piece of paper is massively Sellotaped together I decide to do a whole battlefield of war on it, with hundreds of similar explosions, plus fire dragons, a red river, and a flock of tiny blue birds. Chuffinches. There are twenty-six until some explosions go off in the middle of the flock. Kakaboom, kakaboom, kakaboom.
Feathers everywhere!
Our cat Richard catches birds sometimes. There are more feathers on a sparrow than you think. Once Richard caught a sparrow and only nearly killed it before Mum chased him off. We walked up slowly but the bird didn’t fly away; it flippered sideways into a bush instead. We pulled the leaves back to have a look and it was interesting to see a sparrow so closely at first, then sad, then confusing, because Mum didn’t know what to do. Its beak kept opening and shutting. Calpol is very effective medication, but sparrows don’t eat from spoons. When Dad came I suggested we could use a box full of holes instead of a cage, because all you need is a sharp pencil, but sadly he told Mum to take me inside so I didn’t see what happened in the end.
Curiosity is a wonderful thing, Son, but sometimes ignorance is bliss.
I have a wooden box with things in it.
Valuable things.
For example, there are four bottle tops I found with Ben’s dad’s metal defector when we went on a picnic with them. You have to sweep the silvery round bit very low to the ground. Slower than that. Very slow. It’s quite boring. But if you’re lucky the round bit sees some metal and goes beep. Ben’s dad knows a man so lucky he found a Roman thing in a ditch once. They put it into the museum and let him go on the news to tell everyone. It was brilliant. I wanted to find an arrowhead or another sharp thing, but the bottle tops were excellent anyway because they came from Spain, near Rome, with Spanish writing written on them. It hadn’t even faded much. Modern shops still sell San Miguel beer and I’ve seen empty bottles of it in the recycling.
Another valuable thing I have is an ammonite. Do you know what one is? Miss Hart didn’t, and neither did anyone else in my class, so I was allowed to bring it in for show-and-tell. I stood at the front. Everybody else looked at me and I looked at them. All their hairs were golden and wiry because of the sunny window behind: it’s how you get real halos. I decided to sit down again because I didn’t want to say anything anymore, but Miss Hart did encouragements on me, so I started by explaining that ammonites are extinct. Samira said they couldn’t be, because I had one just there in my hand, but I told her that I didn’t, and Jacob said that meant I was lying, so I told him it was only a fossil. He asked why I hadn’t said it was a fossil instead, then, so I told him what a fossil was and that I was showing him a fossil-eyed ammonite. After that some people stopped looking at me and talking was easier. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, Son. I explained that ammonites have a spiral shape and that in the olden days people thought they must be the fossil-eyed bodies of curled-up snakes. Luckily those people were wrong, or else there would have been no ammonites. Normally they lie for millions of years between layers of rock for archaeologists to discover, but I got mine at the beach in an ice-cream shop.
I have a snow leopard called Philip in my valuables box as well. He’s full of squashy beans, but unlike the beanbag downstairs he doesn’t have a zip, or even a hole for the bits to come out of. I’ve had him since we were both brand-new, which means he’s six, too. He looks older. His white spots turned gray a long time ago because I used to carry him around everywhere, dropping him out of my buggy like an idiot. Once Dad had to drive all the way back to Tesco. Nowadays I keep Philip in my valuables box because Samuel came round and saw him on my pillow. Have you ever watched Doctor Who? I did once, just before bed. There were whispering vampires with curved fangs and pale faces, so I got Philip out of the box again, just for one night. He still smells excellent.
When I didn’t see how Dad was helping the injured sparrow I knew I didn’t know everything that was going on and felt annoyed and reassuring at the same time. For a few days after the hospital it feels the same at home. Blissful has nothing to do with blisters. Grandma Lynne stays living i
n the spare room when Mum has to set off for her night-shifting, but sadly she doesn’t come out of her room as much as normal, and when she does, if Dad’s there, they do strange headlamp smiles at each other. See, I’m smiling: can you see? Dad mostly does his work on the computer in his bedroom-study with the door slightly open. It’s an invitation. If you’re quiet as a mouse you’re allowed in, so in I creep to do things on the floor, for example a drawing of a praying mantis. Mice are actually quite noisy, like colored pencils. Scratch, scratch, squeak, squeak. Owls are much stealthier. Unlike other birds, their feathers have no oil coating, and that’s what makes them vertically silent. I am not an owl. Out you go now, Son: I have an important call to make.
Have you ever run out of milk? Sadly that’s what happens next to us. Actually it’s not really that sad for me because I’ve already had some hot chocolate earlier in the morning. You never get two cups. But Dad is allowed as many mugs of coffee as he wants and Grandma Lynne is normally very thirsty about tea. I’m sitting under the kitchen table adding some more wildebeests to the migrating Serengeti picture I’m secretly drawing on the table’s underneath — it’s a lovely big flat surface, and the right color, too — when Dad walks in and starts doing coffee things. You always have to wash the pot out first. It’s quite clattery. But once the black graduals are in and the pot is on the cooker there’s nothing to hear except the tickling flames. I sit very still. Drawing on the furniture is illegal, even the underneath bits, probably. When you have to sit very still everything goes electric almost immediately. Luckily, just when I can feel that the fizzing is going to make me make a noise, Grandma Lynne also decides to be thirsty. She arrives in the kitchen reading some papers from her work. You’re not allowed to draw on the backs of them either, until she says so, or make airplanes. She isn’t expecting Dad to be here now: when she looks up from reading, it takes her just a little bit too long to light up her headlamp smile.
What I Did Page 20
