Flyaway (22 page)

CHAPTER 49

I
t's after lunchtime when we get the call. Mum takes a while before she comes back into the living room and she looks so much more tired when she does.

‘Dad's operation has been extended,' she says. ‘The surgeons are having some problems replacing the valve. They'll let us know when they have more information.'

‘Let's go and wait at Granddad's,' I say. ‘We'll be closer if anything—'

Mum stops my words with a nod. ‘We'll get Jack on the way. It's almost home time anyway.'

Mum tells me to bring homework, so I take the flying model. I sit in the back and hug it to me like a kind of teddy bear. Jack's waiting outside the school gates, his mobile in his hand.

My stomach churns as we make our way across town and
onto the ring road. I wind down my window, just a little bit, and cold air hisses onto my face. Mum pulls into Granddad's lane, the car skidding as it goes through a puddle. Jack grabs his schoolbag and I take the flying model, and we go into the house.

Granddad makes coffee. This time all of us sit on the couch and watch crappy telly. Jack pulls out his phone and starts texting. I grab mine, too, and text Harry, but only get as far as:

Dad's still in the operating theatre.

I don't know what to say after that. I save it while I think. Mum keeps her phone on the edge of the couch. It rings about an hour later. Granddad turns the telly down immediately and we all listen to her conversation. She sighs as she hangs up.

‘They've got the valve in,' she tells us. ‘But they're going to monitor it pretty closely over the next few hours. They want me to come in.'

I wrap my arms around her waist. ‘I want to come with you,' I say. ‘I want to see Dad.'

Mum touches my hair. ‘No one else is allowed in yet, just me. I'll call when there's more news.'

So Mum goes to the hospital.

Jack goes up to the spare room so he can talk on his phone without me and Granddad eavesdropping. I sit on the stairs and listen anyway, but he doesn't say anything interesting . . . just lots of ‘yeahs' and ‘sures' and ‘I'll call you tomorrow'. I bet he's talking to Jess.

I go back and sit with Granddad as he watches the news. Unemployment has risen and there's bird flu in Russia. Granddad stares at the screen, but it doesn't look like he's taking it in. I wonder if he feels bad now about not staying in the hospital to see Dad. I take out my sketchbook and draw my swan. Above her, I draw more swans arriving. Her flock. Dad has a theory about how the flock arrives every year. He thinks they feel a kind of pull towards their destination, as if they have a magnet inside leading them on. Each whooper has a huge heart, too, Dad says, they need it to keep them flying for such a huge migration.

I put my pencil down. I don't want to think about hearts. I go to the barn instead and pick through all of Granddad's old things. I find the bikes that I saw last time. I wheel one out. It's old and creaky and there are cobwebs between the spokes, but it works. Even the tyres aren't that flat. I try to cycle round the barn, which is hard because there are boxes and tables and bits and bobs all over the place. I swerve past the operating table and see that the body of the stuffed swan isn't there any more. Granddad must have moved it.

Mum calls later, but she still hasn't been able to see Dad.

‘There's been another problem,' she says. Her voice is quiet and distant, as if she is speaking from another country. ‘Dad's had to go back on the heart machine. They have to try the whole support process again.'

‘Can we come in and wait with you?' I ask.

‘There's no point. Even when Dad's operation is finished, they'll keep him asleep for hours. They won't let you in, and
you'll only get bored.'

I think of Harry waiting in his hospital room. I think of the swan on the lake. ‘No I won't.'

Mum doesn't let me anyway. ‘Go to sleep and I'll call in the morning. It'll be fine, don't worry.'

But I can't sleep. There's no way I can sleep now. I just want to run all the way to the hospital and breathe air into Dad's lungs.

‘This time the spare bed's mine,' Jack says.

Granddad stares after him, unsure whether to get angry. ‘Want my bed?' he asks.

I shake my head. I'm just going to lie there and think about Dad anyway. Granddad switches off the downstairs lights. I lie on my back and stare into the darkness. The couch arm smells a bit like tomato soup and there's a spring digging into my shoulder blade.

I turn over so I can see the wings on the kitchen table. Moonlight is coming through the window and falling on the feathers. It makes them look luminous, like the wings in the Hans Christian Andersen pictures.

Eventually Jack and Granddad stop creaking about upstairs. I listen to the muffled gushing of the toilet being flushed, the clunk of the heating. I wait until everything is silent, then I take out my phone again. I go back to the saved message to Harry and add to it.

Dad's still in the operating theatre and I can't sleep. I just want to be in the hospital. Are you awake?

I press send. My phone starts ringing a few seconds later.
I answer it to stop the noise. I get tingly butterfly feelings as I hear his voice.

‘Come in, then,' Harry says.

For a second I'm not sure that I've heard him right. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Come to the hospital. Come in and see me.'

I move from the couch into the kitchen and shut the door. ‘You're nuts.'

‘No one will know, I'll give you the door code so you can get in. Come and see me, then wait here for your dad. You'll be able to see him quicker this way, as soon as he wakes up.'

His voice is whispery and soft and I wonder for a moment whether he's sleep talking.

‘I can't get to the hospital now, it's dark.'

‘I thought you said your granddad's was only a couple of miles down the road?'

‘It is. But it's still a couple of miles, and it's freezing. And, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not old enough to drive.'

An image of the bikes in the barn flashes into my mind but immediately I push it out. It's crazy to even think about using one of them. I pick up a pen from the table and click the end in and out. ‘Mum would kill me if I left Granddad's now.'

There's a pause as Harry takes a sip of something. ‘But I'm so
bored
.' He sighs his frustration. ‘At least talk to me, then. Tell me about your dad. What happened?'

I look out of the window at the blackness beyond. I keep playing with the pen as I tell Harry about waiting with Mum and getting the phone calls and about Mum rushing off.

‘I hate waiting here,' I say. ‘I just want to do something.'

‘What's it like?' he says. ‘At your granddad's?'

‘Messy. His couch smells like tomato soup.'

I tell him about the hundreds of stars I can see from Granddad's kitchen window, ones that I can't usually see from my bedroom at home.

‘I can see stars through my window, too,' he says quietly. I shut my eyes for a moment and it feels like he's in the room with me.

‘What else can you see?' I ask.

‘There's a big moon, and a silver lake.' He pauses. ‘I can see the swan, too, the moonlight's right on her.'

I think about what it might be like to be in Harry's room at night, sitting with him and looking at the swan.

‘Is she OK?'

There's a pause as Harry shifts in his bed to look. ‘Shall I go down there and find out?'

‘To the lake?'

‘Where else?'

I can hear the smile in Harry's voice. Again, there's that tingly feeling in my stomach.

‘You're not going to go down there alone,' I whisper.

‘I might. I might if you don't come round to the hospital really soon and come with me.'

He laughs a little. Waits for me to speak. I swallow slowly, but I'm all out of answers.

‘It'll be cold down there,' I say. ‘It's too crazy.'

‘I don't care.'

‘I thought you were scared of outside places.'

‘I'm not scared,' he says, indignant now.

I think of the swan floating by herself. I imagine walking with Harry, through the trees, to get to her. I think of finding Dad afterwards, at first light. Then I think of the alternative: sitting in this cold kitchen, waiting for the morning, and worrying. I listen to Harry breathing.

‘Promise you won't die on me?' I say.

‘Promise.'

And, like that, I agree.

CHAPTER 50

I
mmediately I regret what I've said and I try to call him back. But Harry doesn't answer. He sends me one text message.

See you soon! :-) The number for the door is 12023.

Harry is too sick for a midnight trip to the lake, I know this, and I'd get in so much trouble if anyone found us. Besides, what would Granddad do if he woke up and found I'd gone? I lean my head onto my flying model. The feathers smell dusty and old, nothing like the damp, fishy smell of the swan on the lake's feathers. I wonder about her, floating alone, with no other flock members to huddle up to. Do swans get lonely? Cold? Dad's said before that, without their flock, a bird's chance of survival isn't very good. And Harry said maybe she'd fly if she found her flock. But the problem is she needs to fly to find them. I look back out at the star-filled sky.
Dad's alone too, in his hospital room, needing support from a machine. But he's not the only one alone in his room.

I text Harry one more time.

We are going to get in so much trouble. I'll be there in 20 mins.

I leave a note for Granddad on the kitchen table. Then I carry the wings through the hall. I take my coat from the hooks beside the front door. There's a faded green beanie hanging underneath it, one of Granddad's, so I take that, too. I go out the back way, pushing the door handle really, really slowly. I shut it behind me with a small clunk. I look up, check the light in Granddad's room hasn't gone on. This is stupid, what I'm doing, but my feet lead me to the barn anyway.

The wind sends leaves spinning past my face. When a big gust makes the metal sides of the barn creak, I draw back the rusty bolt. I find the bike I was riding earlier and wheel it out. The handlebars feel like solid bars of ice. I try tying the wings to the bike. They're too big to balance across the handlebars, and I can't find anywhere else to put them. I have to wear them.

I thread my legs into the harness and do up the buckles across my chest and stomach. I leave my arms free to hold the bike, and leave the wings folded in on my back. My teeth are already chattering as I wheel the bike round the side of the house, and I'm glad of the extra weight and warmth of the wings.

I set off, the bike wobbling a bit on the uneven ground of
Granddad's lane. I pedal into blackness. The bike skids on ice as I take a left onto the main road, and I almost end up in the gutter, but somehow I manage to keep upright. I move towards the centre of the road where the tarmac looks dryer. I pedal faster. There are no cars, no people. It's too cold. I pass the strip of shops where the Indian takeaway is, and then it's just a long, straight road to the hospital. There's one hill to go up, and then it's downhill all the way.

I stand on the pedals as I get to the hill, using my body weight to push down. I watch the tarmac move beneath me. Fast at first, then slower and slower as I near the top. The muscles in my legs start to quiver, but at least I'm not cold any more. I grip the handlebars tightly and force myself to keep going. I feel my heart thudding in my chest. I hope Dad's heart is beating just as strongly.

Then, finally, I'm there. At the brow of the hill. I stop pedalling and put my feet on the road. The city lights spread out behind me. Granddad's house is somewhere in the darkness between me and them. I look ahead at the large block of lights that make up the hospital. There's a space behind the hospital that looks darker than anywhere. The lake. Somewhere, in the middle of all that blackness, floats the swan. Does she know I'm coming?

I feel the wind behind me, making my coat flap. I angle the bike to face down the hill. Before I push off, I have a crazy idea. I unfold the wings, stretch them out across my back. They bounce with the wind, their feathers fluttering around my ears. The bike is inching forwards already.

I let the brakes go. The wind shoves me hard and pushes me down the hill. I grip the handlebars, trying to keep them steady. The wings work like a sail and I go faster and faster towards the hospital. I go so fast that the bike starts to shake. I'm too scared to touch the brakes now. A slip left and I'll be veering into the trees at the edge of the road. A slip right and I'll be in the other lane. My wings begin to make a low throbbing sound. I must be going faster than a car. I feel faster than anything. It's like I'm flying. If I had the guts to angle my wings properly, to make them shift and catch the wind, I'm sure I could take off.