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 about.’
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.
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.
