Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

  Chapter 9

  Mum and the Hospital

  To begin with I thought that what Lizzie had said – that I had ‘special powers’ – was a load of nonsense. But I was curious and I wondered what sort of ‘special powers’ she thought I had. Despite being tired again the next day, at school I tried concentrating on objects to see if I could shift them. Or make them burst into flames. Or blow up. I even concentrated on the back of Big Derrick’s head in Technology but it failed to explode

  Bethany was steering well clear of me. I caught glimpses of her in the murky distance talking with friends. Once I walked past the open door of Mr Collins’ room. Bethany was sat quietly at the desk by the door and our eyes locked.

  She became flustered. Embarrassed. She looked away quickly.

  I was sad that our friendship had come to this. But then there was someone else on my mind. Someone that during the bright light of day I still couldn’t believe existed.

  Elizabeth Raynor.

  I still didn’t believe that she was from the past, that she wanted my help in finding her lost brother. But my mind kept drifting back to those ‘special powers’. I just couldn’t help myself and I had to keep trying to see if I had them.

  Just in case.

  At dinnertime the headmaster was eating in the canteen with three men and one woman. They were all in suits. Inspectors or something probably. I concentrated hard on the head’s head in thin hope but nothing happened. He did sneeze though. I put that down to pure coincidence.

  Kyle was off sick again so after school I found myself walking home alone. My mind was preoccupied with the evening’s visit to St Mary’s General Hospital to see Mum. I really missed Mum. I mean really missed her. I wanted to see her more but I was always scared of going to visit her. Just in case there were any changes in her condition when I got there. Could she have suddenly taken a turn for the worse? Would she be so ill that she wouldn’t be able to talk? A coma even? Or, beyond horrible, would the bed be empty and Mum gone? Gone? Gone where? Even now I couldn’t consider the D Word. You know. When people ‘pass over’. Pass over? Pass to where? I really couldn’t get to grips with the idea of going somewhere else. Just where do people go when they pass-on or pass-over or whatever they do? When they D?

  When Mum was first taken ill I was given an appointment with the school councillor. Ms Murphy. Ms Murphy was middle aged and fat, had scruffy shoulder length hair and jangled with beaded jewellery. She also wore big specs that filled up the front of her face like a force-field. I asked her about the D Word and where people go when they pass-on or pass-over or whatever. She smiled and showed me her stained teeth and started going on about God. But I don’t believe in God. Neither does Dad. If there was a God, I told Ms Murphy, then how come Mum was in so much pain when she had always been good? Ms Murphy said that ‘was just the way of things’. But it didn’t answer my question. I couldn’t believe that people just stop being people. Or just stop being. Thinking about it didn’t help much either. It just made any answer seem further and further away. Like being in a canoe and seeing where you came from far off. Until it was gone.

  So I just stopped thinking about it.

  The evening’s visit to St Mary’s General didn’t get off to a good start. Dad drove his van in through an exit and had to stop as a black car was coming the other way. The man in the black car was obviously angry as he swung his car alongside Dad’s window. The beginning of what he said was muffled. Both Dad’s and the driver’s windows were humming down.

  “…the…oody ell do you think you’re doin?”

  “Sorry, mate,” Dad replied, “I didn’t realise…”

  “This is an exit only,” the man bellowed. The black car was an Audi and the middle-aged man dressed in a suit. His face was twisted and stressed. “Can’t you read?” The man gestured up in the air somewhere.

  “Hang on a minute,” Dad said, “who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

  “A bloody idiot!” said the angry man.

  “I beg your pardon?” Dad was becoming angry himself now. I’d seen Dad get angry quite a few times. Sometimes with me. He wasn’t a big man and he certainly wasn’t a fighter, but when he got cross he meant business. He didn’t like to be told he was a bloody idiot.

  There was a little bit of a break as the man in the Audi suddenly realised that Dad wasn’t going to back down.

  “Watch where you’re going next…” and ‘time’ disappeared. The man pulled away just as Dad reached for the handle on the inside of his door.

  Dad watched him disappear over his shoulder. Through the crack of the opening he’d made.

  “Did you hear that, Jay? Did you bloody well hear that?”

  I was a bit embarrassed. Uncomfortable. I just stared straight ahead.

  “Unbelievable,” said Dad shaking his head. We reversed out and took the correct entrance into St Mary’s General. “Unbelievable”.

  No. Not a good start.

  I’m not that keen on hospitals. I don’t like what has to go on in there. I don’t like their smell and the people in them. I don’t know why. Every time I’ve been to see Mum, and the one time I broke my toe, everybody was perfectly polite.

  Like now for instance.

  As soon as we get through the smokers and inside the wide and busy entrance a doctor (I think he was a doctor because he was wearing a white coat and had a one of those heartbeat listening devices around his neck) smiled and said ‘hello young man' as he walked by. That was fine. But it’s all the hurt people that makes me not like hospitals, the hurt on both inside and the outside. As I looked around the foyer a middle-aged woman with a plaster on her right leg hobbled crookedly towards us. A man dressed in a Chelsea football strip was being wheeled along in a wheelchair with a heavily bandaged foot stuck out in front of him. There a broken arm. Here a bandaged head.

  Then we walked by the flowers and knickknacks placed outside the hospital shop. I knew this well. Dad usually bought Mum things that she needed from here. He sometimes bought us bars of chocolate, crisps and coke on the way out. Then we passed the small hospital café where a few people sat talking and drinking tea. There was one old man sat on his own, staring blankly into space.

  That reminded me of another reason why I don’t like hospitals.

  On one of our earlier trips to see Mum, Dad treated us to a cake and a coke. We sat next to an older, grey-haired man. I guess it was his daughter that was holding his hand. She was very pretty with blonde hair tied into a pony-tail. She had big eyes, was wearing an expensive black coat. She reminded me of an older Beth. It was only after we sat down that we realised the man had been crying. His pretty daughter began to cry too. I found this uncomfortable. Me and Dad tried to make some conversation but we couldn’t help listening and wondering what was happening. The old man had his head bowed so no-one could see that he was upset. He took sips of his tea from shaking hands. Every now and then his daughter would lean near him and whisper, ‘Ssshhh. It’s all over now. All finished now’.

  We hurried our cake and drinks and left. Never mentioned it. But when I sometimes think about the D Word I remember this and try and understand what, exactly, was 'over'. What was all 'finished'? Not that I really wanted to know. Dad called the reason why people want to hear other people talking about the D Word, and even why they want to watch reality TV, is because of something called ‘morbid curiosity’.

  I think that’s why.

  We took the empty staircase to the level that Mum’s was on. We always went up the stairs as there was usually a queue for the lift. Dad said people these days were lazy. Besides, we both needed the exercise. Mum’s ward was Waltham Ward and the doctors and nurses on the ward had gotten used to us.

  “Hello trouble,” said the plump Karen as we turned a corner by a breakfast trolley and caught sight of the beds. “Here to see you Mum?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. Then Karen smiled at Dad.

  “Hello, Mr Webber. You’ll find she’s in good spirits t
oday.”

  Dad seemed reassured and smiled down at me. It wasn’t that far to Mum’s bed. She was expecting us. Had been looking out for us. She smiled when she saw us coming. It was a weak smile, but a smile non-the-less. She was laid on top of her bed in her thick white towelling dressing-gown. She was reading a book. I went straight to her and gave her a big hug. She smelt of coconuts. Mum had placed a hand behind my head and my mouth was by her ear.

  “You smell nice,” I said as we pulled away from each other.

  “Yes.” She turned to give Dad a hug and a kiss. “I’ve just had a bath.”

  Mum’s brown hair was tied into a bun to dry and she had put some make-up on so she seemed to have more colour. I knew that underneath her skin was thin and pale. In fact, Mum was very thin. Thinner than usual. We knew that she was often off her food because of the treatment. The drugs. The cancer itself. But her eyes were still beautiful. Still dark. Dad said the cancer wasn’t going to take that away. Yet she was looking ill. More so than the last time I had visited. And when she tried to place her book on the cabinet beside her bed Dad had to take over.

  Me and Dad sat opposite each other on either side of Mum. Mum held Dad’s hand in her thin fingers. Heaved a big sigh of pleasure.

  “C’mon then the pair of you. What have you been up to?”

  Dad told her about the angry man in the Audi and then went on to gossip about work. Dad was a partner in a small carpentry firm and had been for the last ten years. Times had been good but lately work had dropped off. For the first time in ages Dad planned to take a fortnight off. He didn’t say when and Mum didn’t ask. We all kind of knew when he might have to use that holiday. At the thought of the D Word my stomach felt heavy. Why does it do that? Sometimes it does it when I’m near Beth. How could it do it now? I don’t know and I didn’t ask. Dad had moved on to talk about the marriage of one of his workmates. I took the chance to look around.

  The next bed was empty although there were flowers in a vase on the bedside cabinet. A plastic glass of orange squash. Half empty. There were six beds to a room and the bed by the window on Mum’s side had the curtain drawn around it. On the opposite side of the room two of the three beds were occupied, both patients elderly. One a man and one a woman. A grey haired old lady was laid on top of her covers asleep, or at least resting her eyes and the man was sat in a chair beside his bed. He had a drip in his arm. A clear plastic bag half full of something like water was suspended from a sort of mobile contraption behind him. He was looking directly at me and didn’t look away when our eyes met. He just kept staring like he was hypnotised or something. It was creepy. I looked away but felt him looking at me all the time I was there.

  I hate hospitals.

  We stayed for about forty minutes. I shared some chocolate with Mum and Dad then set about stealing some of the grapes from the bowl beside Mum’s bed. Karen the nurse came in and talked briefly to us all, filled in a sheet on a clipboard hanging from the bed frame. When Karen left to do the same to the old man opposite, Mum started talking about how bored she was becoming with hospital life, moaned about one of the nurses who was rude. Then I saw a hidden signal pass between my parents and Dad asked me to give Mum a hug goodbye. To tell her that I’d see her next week. He gave me some money to get the cokes and cakes downstairs then I left them on their own, said goodbye to Karen the nurse on my way out of the ward.

  “Goodbye trouble,” and Karen smiled.

  I ordered and paid for two cans of coke and two jam doughnuts. There wasn’t much of a queue as lots of people had left and it wouldn’t be long before visiting time was over. I balanced the food and drink on a plastic tray and wobbled back to a nearby table. I had taken the first bite from my jam doughnut when Dad joined me.

  “Lovely.” He sat down. “Good lad.”

  Dad looked a little pale and drawn but I didn’t mention it or ask why. He’d tell me in his own time.

  We finished our doughnuts and coke. I had sugar all around my mouth, a bit of jam on my cheek. This made Dad smile. He got up and got some serviettes to clean me up.

  It wasn’t until we were driving home that he finally talked about what was on his mind.

  “How would you feel if Mum came home?”

  I thought about this then nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that would be great.”

  Dad smiled.

  It wasn’t until later that I thought about what Dad had said. Why was she coming home? Was she better? Was she ‘on the mend’ as Dad would say? Mum home? Great. But for good? Had the chemo and the injections and the drugs worked?

  For the first time in a long time I felt hopeful for the future. In my head it was suddenly spring.

  For a short while I had forgotten all about Elizabeth Raynor.