Little Drifters: Kathleen’s Story

‘Oh my God!’ I screamed. ‘I’m dying! I’m dying!’

Before that moment I had no idea I was seriously hurt, but now I went into shock. Tara did what she could – dragging me through the yard, out the gates and putting me onto the side of the road.

Then she went and got my mother. Mammy came and she started screaming too and that alerted the farmer. Just then Daddy pulled up in a van with two other people I’d not seen before.

‘Look at the child’s leg!’ she shrieked at him. ‘Look at it! It’s destroyed. Look at them bones sticking out. Get out of the van and pick her up!’ Mammy’s screams were more terrifying than anything else – I couldn’t even cry because she was going so mad. But Daddy didn’t say a word. There she was, ripping her hair out, and he just drove off. So the famer put me in his car and drove me to the hospital, Mammy still ranting and raving.

Everything seemed to happen in a blur. We got to the hospital but they told us they couldn’t fix up my leg because they didn’t deal with broken bones. Instead, they put Mammy and me in an ambulance and drove us to another hospital. Here, they cut off my sock and shoe and said to Mammy that they were sorry but they would have to amputate my leg because I’d been too long without blood circulating.

Mammy turned on them fiercely: ‘There’s no way you’re taking that child’s leg! No way!’

So the doctors went away and when they came back they told us we were very lucky because it just so happened that a surgeon from America was visiting and he was a bone specialist. And he was going to try and save my leg.

‘Mammy, am I going to die?’ I asked her as they prepared me for surgery. I really didn’t know what was happening but judging by my mother’s hysterical reactions I reckoned it must be pretty terrible.

‘No, baby,’ she said, though her eyes didn’t look so sure. ‘They just have to put you to sleep for a bit so they can fix your leg back on again.’

‘You will stay, Mammy?’ I begged her. ‘You will stay until I wake up?’

‘Of course, baby. I’ll stay with you.’

I felt reassured at least that Mammy would be there when I woke up and she held my hands as they led me on a trolley into the theatre.

The last thing I saw were the bright fluorescent lights overhead, racing past. Mammy’s worried eyes. And then I was gone.

I came round in a dark ward, lit only by a few dim bedside lights. There were other beds all around me but everyone seemed asleep, except a couple of nurses going about their business in hushed tones.

I looked down to see my whole leg was encased in a hard white material, all the way from my toes to my hip. And Mammy was nowhere to be seen.

I had to stay in hospital for two whole months and I cried the whole time I was there, thinking nobody was ever going to come back and get me. There were other children in the ward too but they all had visitors – nobody ever came to visit me. For the first few weeks I was confined to bed, unable to walk, but as my leg healed I was given crutches to get me back on my feet. I couldn’t use them so I ended up sliding across the floor on my bottom to get around. I knew that if nobody was coming for me I’d have to make my own way home, so once I was out of bed I tried everything I could to escape. Each time the nurses’ backs were turned I was down on the floor and out the door. It drove them mental. Eventually they put me in a room on my own, and tied my hands and legs down to stop me escaping. I cried my heart out then.

Though, really, I didn’t have any reason to complain. In fact it was quite nice in the hospital. We had regular meals, new clothes and the doctor who fixed my leg even bought me a doll, a bribe to try and stop me escaping. I enjoyed playing with the other children on the wards. We’d all be putting bandages on ourselves and each other and there was even a school where we did lessons. They tried to teach me things but I couldn’t learn. I’d never been to school or been made to sit and listen to anything before in my life. I didn’t have the patience for it. All I wanted was to go home. I was missing everyone so much.

Every day I asked the ward nurses: ‘Are they going to come back and get me today? When is my Mammy and Daddy coming for me?’

But no one could answer my questions. I really thought they were never coming back.

One of the nurses had the idea of letting me sit and chat to the older folk in the next ward and that seemed to calm me down. So every day they sent me to the old people where I’d pass a pleasant couple of hours telling them all about Tara, Colin and Brian and all the things we liked to do. Eventually, one day the nice doctor who had fixed my leg came to me and said: ‘You’re going home today, Kathleen.’

I was so excited! My leg was still in plaster but now I’d learned how to use the crutches and I could get about quite well. I said goodbye to all the friends I’d made in my ward and also the old people’s ward, who seemed a little sad I was leaving, but happy for me when I told them over and over: ‘I’m going home. I’m going home!’

The hospital took me back in an ambulance and I asked the nurse in the front to let me know when she spotted our wagons.

Suddenly, she announced: ‘I can’t see any wagons, Kathleen, but I do see a pretty cottage.’

I was confused. We came to a halt and the nurse opened the back door of the ambulance in front of a long drive leading up to a large house in the middle of a skinny lane. The nurse helped me out the back and that’s when I saw my Mammy, Daddy and all my siblings emerging from the front door. A house! We had a new house!

Tara ran the quickest and she was upon me in a flash, cuddling me and kissing me all over.

‘Oh, Kathleen! We thought you were dead! We kept asking Mammy when you were coming home and she always said “soon” but then you never came so we honestly thought you were dead!’

‘I missed you!’ I said. ‘I missed all of you’s!’

Tara seemed fascinated with my leg, now encased in plaster, and she watched, intrigued, as I used the crutches to help me hobble up the drive.

‘We’ve got a house!’ she said proudly. ‘Look, a proper house! Come inside, I want to show you around!’

As I came to the doorway, Daddy knelt down to wrap me in a loving embrace, tears welling up from the sight of me. The others cuddled me too. Mammy was now holding a new little baby who screamed away in her arms.

‘Now just you be careful with that thing,’ she called, pointing to my plaster cast, as Tara led me inside the new house. ‘You mind them stairs!’

There were no hugs or kisses from her. Nothing. I didn’t even stop to ask why nobody had come to visit me in the hospital.

I was just happy and grateful to be reunited with my family. And in a house again. That was just grand!

Chapter 6

A New Home (#u609982a6-788d-5dd7-b273-1f9e8879f02c)

‘Come on! Come on!’ Tara was breathless with excitement. She couldn’t wait to show me around our new home. I shuffled in through the big old-fashioned door with the latch and immediately I could see we had a large open parlour with a fire in the middle.

‘This here is our room,’ Tara beamed proudly, swinging open the door of a room on the ground floor to reveal two beds and a pile of clothes on the floor. I was pleased to see my dresses among them.

‘Let’s go upstairs!’ she shouted. But I was still on crutches and I looked at the steep stairs up to the second floor.

‘I can’t climb that,’ I told her, nodding towards my leg, still in plaster from my hip to my toes.

‘That’s okay – Aidan and Liam will carry you,’ she said, undeterred, yelling for the older brothers to pick me up so I could see upstairs. There was a second room for Mammy and Daddy and the little ones. And next to the bed I saw a brand new cot in the corner.

‘That’s for the new baby,’ Tara said authoritatively. ‘He’s called Riley. Oh, Kathleen, you’re going to love him! He’s just the most beautiful thing in the world!’

Afterwards, Tara showed me the outdoors – we had two acres to the front of the house with sheds all around the walls.

‘That’s for the dogs,’ explained Tara. Now Daddy had been busy while I was away, breeding pups, and the sheds were full of yapping dogs as well as Nellie our greyhound, an Alsatian and a little white terrier.

It didn’t take long for me to settle into our new life and I was so pleased we were back in a house. Of a night me and Brian, Tara and Colin would all curl up together on one bed, as we were all used to doing, even though there were two beds in our room. And during the day we’d go out exploring the fields and woodlands, though at first I couldn’t go very far because of my plaster cast. I was bursting to get it off so I could climb trees again with the rest of them.

It should have been a wonderful new start for us but Daddy was still troubled. And still drinking. One day the Legion of Mary came round with a present – a brand new television set.

‘Ohh!’ we gasped in wonder as we ran our hands over the smooth wooden box.

I’d seen a television before in the hospital but I never imagined we could have one ourselves at home so it was a real surprise.

‘Let’s get this thing working now,’ said Liam, and he set to fiddling about with all the wires at the back. Tara and I jumped around him excitedly while he shooed us away.

‘Get back.’ He swatted at us good-naturedly. ‘Can’t you let a man get on with his work?’

He was still only 15 himself but in our eyes Liam was already fully grown, tall and strong, just like our Daddy.