Wishbones

‘We’ve never weighed Mum,’ I say to him. ‘I mean, I knew she was big, but thirty-seven stone? Can anyone even get that heavy?’

No wonder she got sick.

I look at Mum. It’s like she’s floated away in that big body of hers and I worry that maybe she won’t ever find her way back to me.

I go over and kiss her cheek and feel relieved: it’s warm and soft and alive.

‘We’re going to get you better, Mum, I promise,’ I whisper by her ear.

And then I put my arms around Mum’s body and give her a hug, because that’s what she always does to me when I’m feeling tired or sad or ill. Mum’s hugs are the best: her arms are so big they fold you up and make you feel like you’re in the safest place in the world. I’ve often thought how rubbish it would be to have to hug one of those bony, skinny mums I see sitting in their cars outside Newton Academy.

‘Here,’ says Jake, handing me the photo frame we picked up from home.

It’s basically the only photograph in the whole house. Mum hates photos just about as much as she hates water and hospitals and running out of food. She says that we should remember the past in our heads and in our hearts, rather than being frozen into bits of shiny paper or screens. She doesn’t seem to mind this one though. It’s of me sitting in the middle 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.’