Flyaway (8 page)

CHAPTER 15

G
randdad drives us to the hospital. I watch the fields all the way, hoping for a glimpse . . . something to tell Dad. There are no swans. The sky is grey and empty of all birds except seagulls. Granddad keeps his eyes fixed on the road in front.

He doesn't park the car, just hovers near the entrance.

‘Aren't you coming in?' I ask.

Granddad shakes his head. ‘Next time. I don't like hospitals, remember?'

Jack slams the back door. Granddad and I watch him stomp to the entrance. I unclick my seat belt slowly, then pause with my hand on the door handle.

‘Do you want me to give Dad a message from you?'

‘Yes, if you want.' But he doesn't say what.

Granddad squints as the sunlight comes in through the
windscreen. I'm angry with him for a moment, like Jack is. He can't hate hospitals for ever just because Nan died in one. Besides, being a vet, at least he's had practice with operations and blood and all those yucky things.

‘I'll see you next time then,' I murmur.

I run to catch up with Jack. We don't go through A and E, and I'm glad about that. Instead we go through to the huge entrance hall that I found last time. It feels different today, not as busy. There's a sign I didn't notice before saying ‘Hospital Concourse'. I look at the line of blue plastic seats near the fake palm trees, checking for Harry. There are two elderly ladies sitting there and a man with a walking frame. No boys with drip stands and bright chestnut eyes. I scan the rest of the chairs. Perhaps I just imagined him. I mean it does seem pretty odd that he just came up to me like that.

Jack's waiting in a corridor under a sign that says ‘To All Departments'. He's got his arms crossed. ‘If you're any slower, Dad will have died by the time you get there,' he says. Then he looks away immediately, guilty at what he's just said.

He turns, takes a flight of stairs two at a time, then dashes into a lift. He holds the doors for me. I glance at the list of hospital departments on a board outside: Urology, Oncology, Phlebotomy.

‘How do you know where to go?' I ask.

‘Mum told me.'

We get out at Floor Three, and Jack leads me down more wide, shiny corridors. There are signs leading off each side, pointing to departments with more long words. I have no
idea what they all mean.

Jack hesitates at a closed door. The wall beside it has a sign saying ‘Coronary Care Unit'.

Mum comes bursting through the doors. She hugs us to her then leads us through. She pauses by a big desk in the circular entrance space. There are three rooms with beds in them leading directly away from the desk, and nurses everywhere.

‘I'm only allowed to take one of you at a time,' she says, looking from me to Jack. ‘Dad's still quite sick.'

‘I'm first,' I say. ‘I have to be.' I was the one who was with Dad when it happened, after all.

Jack folds down one of the plastic seats attached to the wall and stares straight ahead at the desk.

‘Don't be long,' he mutters.

Mum takes my hand. ‘You ready?'

We walk into a long thin room. There are blue curtains on each side, hanging from the ceiling and wrapped around some of the beds. There are machines everywhere, things beeping and whirring. But it's still quieter in here than the rest of the hospital. Mum stops at the last bed on the right-hand side. She pulls back the curtains slowly and quietly.

‘Graham? I've brought Isla,' she says.

I crane around her to see. And there's Dad, with his eyes shut and his head on the pillow and with tubes coming out of his nose. Wires lead out from under his sheets too and plug into some sort of monitor.

‘Is he OK?' I ask. ‘He still looks sick.' I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. I was hoping he'd look a
little more normal by now at least.

Mum nods. ‘He's OK. He's gone off to sleep, he was awake just now.'

She puts an arm around my shoulders and hugs me to her. She smells of coffee and stale clothes. She must be tired, after being here all night.

‘Where did you sleep?' I ask.

Mum nods at the stiff-looking chair beside the bed. ‘Believe me, you had the better deal at Granddad's.'

She tries to smile. Her eyes are like slits. I lean down and touch Dad's hand. His skin is warm and dry, not damp and cool like it was yesterday.

‘What happens now?' I ask Mum. ‘Is he coming home?'

Mum shakes her head. ‘The doctors want to monitor him. What happened yesterday . . . it was pretty serious. His heart stopped beating regularly, went into a different rhythm entirely. They need to fix that before they can let him out.'

‘He'll be OK though?' I ask, my eyes fixed on his chest, which is rising slightly then falling. ‘I mean, he's not going to . . .'

My words crack and fade. Mum grasps my shoulders tighter.

‘We'll know more in a few days,' she whispers. ‘Don't worry, he's not going anywhere.'

I want to believe her, but Dad looks so sick. His eyelids flutter as he starts to wake up. I lean towards him.

‘Don't smother him,' Mum warns.

Dad smiles slightly as he focuses. He looks from me to
Mum and back to me again.

‘Sorry I gave you a scare, Bird,' he whispers. His voice is soft as a dandelion head.

I lean closer. ‘You OK now?'

‘Getting there.' Again, there's a wisp of a smile on his lips before he speaks again. ‘Did you find the swans?'

I let out a burst of noise that sounds a bit like a laugh. ‘If you remember, I was more worried about you.'

Dad holds my gaze. ‘I'm glad. You did well.'

He tries to say more then, tries to talk about what happened. But his words float away before he's finished proper sentences. It's not long before Mum squeezes my shoulders again.

‘Let's bring Jack in before Dad's too tired,' she says softly. ‘I'll meet you in the cafe in twenty minutes or so?'

I nod. Touch Dad's hand again. I don't want to leave him. I'm scared that the moment I do, something will happen. I hesitate with my hand on the curtain, not wanting to take my eyes off him.

‘I'll be OK,' he murmurs. ‘Promise you won't worry?'

But how can I promise that when it feels like it's all my fault? If I hadn't agreed to go looking for the swans, this might never have happened.

Mum gently presses my back. ‘Go and get Jack,' she says again. ‘Dad's in the best place.'

Each step I take away from Dad feels wrong. It's as if my feet are made of magnets and they're pulling me back to him.

CHAPTER 16

J
ack stands when he sees me. His chair flips back with a thud.

‘How is he?' he asks.

I stare at him blankly, my hands still feeling like they're grasping the curtain. ‘He's kind of quiet.'

‘But better?'

‘I suppose so.'

I walk away in a daze. Push open the doors to the rest of the hospital and just stand in the corridor. I can feel the wave in my throat again, trying to gush out. I want to curl up in a ball right there in the middle of the corridor and cry. But there are people everywhere and there's nowhere to hide. I concentrate on placing one foot in front of the other. I don't know where I'm going, and I don't want to walk away from Dad, but I know Mum's right. Dad's in the best place. All
those machines and tubes have to be helping somehow.

I walk until I can feel the wave sinking down a little. I brush my hand against the pale peach walls and look into the rooms I'm passing. Most of them are just waiting rooms, or more corridors leading off to somewhere else. But there are a few wards that I can see right into.

I pause beside one of them and look. The people in these beds are sitting up and watching telly . . . a few of them reading. They don't have tubes in their noses, or curtains around the beds. No other patient looks even half as sick as Dad does. None of them come close. I wonder then whether Dad is the sickest person in the hospital.

I turn the corner. The floors are just as shiny here, but the walls are light blue this time. I don't know how I'll find my way to the cafe, but a part of me likes the walking around.

Then I see him. Though I don't recognise him at first because he doesn't have the drip stand. But I can tell by the scruffy reddish hair that it's him. It's Harry. It's weird but I am almost relieved. I take a step down the corridor, towards him. He doesn't turn around.

He's leaning up against a doorway, looking in. His expression somehow reminds me of what I was just doing in the other doorways: watching the patients to see who's the sickest. As I get closer, I see that he's looking into some sort of general waiting room. I hover just behind him, but he hasn't got a clue that I'm here.

‘Hey,' I say softly, then worry he hasn't heard me because it takes him a while to turn around.

But he does. He looks almost embarrassed when he sees it's me.

‘You keep turning up,' he says.

‘It's because my dad's in . . . '

‘Coronary Care. Of course. Just down the corridor.'

I bite my lip, silent, then look back at the waiting room. ‘What are you doing?'

Harry looks too. ‘Dunno really. Guess I just like watching other people.'

I frown, but he doesn't offer me any more. His cheeks are pinker today, and he doesn't look so pale. He's got a jumper on over his pyjamas.

‘Are you still sick?'

Harry smiles then. ‘I'm always sick.' He pushes himself away from the doorway ‘I can show you around if you like?'

He's walking away from me before I have the chance to reply. I hesitate before following him. Does he even want me to? But he glances back at me.

‘My ward's next door,' he says. He stops beside a closed door a few metres along. ‘Want to see?'

I do, sort of, at least I don't want to go down to the cafe yet to hear how sick Dad really is. But this feels weird. I don't even know him. No one's ever this friendly unless they want something.

‘I should go back,' I start to say.

Harry shrugs, then turns to press numbers into a keypad beside the door. He waits for it to click, and holds it open.

‘It's a bit mad in here,' he says, nodding his head towards
the corridor inside. ‘Very different to Coronary Care.' He keeps holding the door for me.

So I go through.

The first thing I notice is that everything's pink. Bright pink. The walls and the floor, even the desk at the entrance and the chairs next to it. The only thing that's not is the ceiling, which is a sky-blue colour with cloud shapes painted on it here and there. There's noise too. I can hear music and talking and a television talkshow, and a young child is crying. Harry leads me through the centre of it all. He waves at a nurse who's walking towards us.

‘This is Isla,' he says to her.

The nurse raises her eyebrows at me as we pass and I wonder if she thinks I'm Harry's girlfriend. I look away quickly, glance at a clock on the wall: 9.45 am. Mum will be at the cafe soon.

I peer in the rooms leading off the corridor, trying to understand it all. There are children everywhere: in the beds, playing games with parents, sitting on couches in a bright purple room. A small boy with no hair at all walks past us.

‘What is this place?' I murmur.

‘Children's cancer ward.'

I stop dead then, right in the middle of the corridor. ‘You have cancer? Really?'

Harry turns back to me, his forehead wrinkling a bit. ‘Well, I'm not in here for fun.' He watches me carefully. ‘Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. Mad, hey?'

He pulls a face. But I don't laugh like I think he wants me
to. I'm too confused. I try to keep from staring at his hair. It looks so thick. He doesn't look like he has cancer.

‘Are you sure?'

He squawks out a laugh. ‘I think three years of treatment's pretty sure. But right now I'm in remission, which means the cancer's gone away for a while, so they're only topping me up with chemo when I need it . . . to keep it that way.' He catches my gaze. ‘And my hair's hanging in there, just. In a few days time, though, it might be a different story.'

‘But you don't even look sick,' I say. ‘Not today anyway.'

‘That's cos I've got someone else's blood in me.' His eyes twinkle as they register my confusion. He leans towards me to whisper, ‘Blood transfusion, not vampire. In case you were wondering.'

I smile a little then. He's so confident. He's acting like it's the most natural thing in the world that he has cancer. But he must be pretty sick. Maybe even as sick as Dad. It almost doesn't seem fair that he looks so much healthier. I don't meet his gaze, glance round the corridor instead. In a room opposite us, there's a girl looking at me from a bed. She looks exhausted, barely awake. Suddenly I feel as if I'm intruding.

‘Am I even allowed here?' I ask. ‘It feels kind of weird.'

‘You're with me, it's fine.'

‘I don't even know you, not really.'

‘Does it matter? I don't know any of the other kids in here either.' He starts walking again. ‘Besides it's a paeds ward so there's no visiting hours.'