Virginia Macgregor - Wishbones

‘Dad – you have to come home. It’s Mum.’

As I hang up, I realise I’m on my own. And if I don’t save Mum, it’ll be my fault.

I put one hand on top of the other, splay my fingers and place them on her sternum. I don’t even know whether this is what I should be doing and Mum’s so big I can’t tell whether I’ve found the right place, but I have to do something.

I push my hands up and down: one two three… I breathe into her mouth … one two three…

This is hopeless.

I grab my phone again to dial 999.

And then I pause.

Mum would hate it: the ambulance pulling up outside our house, everyone from the village staring at her being carried out on a stretcher. That is, if the stretcher will even hold her.

I don’t want to be gawped at , Mum says whenever I suggest we go out to the cinema or to the shops or for a walk in Willingdon Park. She won’t even come to watch me in my swimming galas. I tell her it doesn’t matter what people think, that she’s way prettier and cleverer and funnier than any of the stupid people who make comments. But I get why she finds it hard – when you’re as large as Mum, people can be mean. Really mean.

And then there’s her whole hospital-phobia thing.

But she’s dying. She’s actually dying. Why am I even considering not calling an ambulance?

I dial.

‘I have to do this Mum,’ I whisper. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘We’re going to have to call the Fire and Rescue Service,’ says one of the paramedics.

I was right about the stretcher. There was no chance Mum was going to fit on it.

I look over the paramedic’s shoulder. Everyone on The Green has forgotten all about New Year’s Eve and the fireworks: they’re huddled in clumps staring at the ambulance with its flashing lights.

‘They’ll have better equipment to get her out,’ he adds.

I wish Dad would come home.

And I wish they’d hurry up and get Mum to hospital. The paramedic said she’s stable but he won’t explain why she’s not waking up.

Plus, I’m angry that the 999 woman didn’t listen when I told her that they’d need extra manpower, that Mum wasn’t like a normal emergency patient. And because she didn’t listen, only two paramedics turned up. So they had to get help from Mr Ding, the owner of the Lucky Lantern Takeaway Van, and this other guy I don’t know who’s recently moved into the cottage next door. And even then they couldn’t lift Mum.

Dad’s plumbing van hurtles along The Green. He jumps out.

‘Feather!’

‘It’s Mum—’ I start but he’s already running inside.

By the time the fire engine turns up, Dad’s standing next to me on the pavement with a zoned-out look. He couldn’t cope with anything happening to Mum any more than I could. His hair’s sticking up and I notice that his faded blue overalls are hanging off him. He’s been losing weight just about as fast as Mum’s been putting it on.

And the number of people standing on The Green now, staring at us, has doubled.

I know Mum’s unconscious, so it’s not like she’s going to remember this, but I still feel bad. Really bad. Because I can see it. All of it. And I know she’d hate it:

The neighbours staring at her and cupping their hands over their mouths and whispering;

The police car plonked in the middle of the road, its blue lights flashing;

The fire engine parked right up to the front of the house with a mobile crane-like attachment sticking out the top.

After they take the lounge window out, I stand there watching, like everyone else, as a crane lifts Mum out of the cottage. Only it doesn’t look like Mum. It looks like a massive unconscious woman I’ve never seen before, a woman trapped in a huge net that’s being hauled out of our cottage like an enormous bloated, human fish.

And it’s true. Dangling unconscious in that net, Mum looks more like a wounded animal, a beached whale or a bear that’s been shot down, than a person. And you know what the worst bit is? As the crane lowers Mum onto the front lawn and as the firemen open the net, it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time – in 3D, HD, Technicolor:

The grease stains on the front of her sweatshirt.

The smears of chocolate on her sleeves.

The sticky splodges of pineapple syrup on her tracksuit bottoms.

Her stomach hanging over the waistband where her T-shirt has rucked up.

And her messed-up hair, matted and knotty. If there’s one thing Mum’s proud of, it’s her hair. That’s why, every night, I wash it for her in a bowl of hot water I bring in from the kitchen, and, every morning, before I go to school, I make sure it’s brushed. It doesn’t matter that no one will ever see it – it matters to her. And anything that matters to Mum matters to me.

I feel guilty for feeling embarrassed, and for letting the firemen haul Mum out here for everyone to gawp at.

As I watch the firemen and the paramedics lever Mum into the ambulance on this inflatable stretcher thing they call an Ice Path because it’s used for rescuing groups of people who get trapped in ice, or water or in mud, I realise that I’ve betrayed the most important person in my life.

I should have found another way to get her help.

Dad turns to me. ‘What happened, Feather?’

He doesn’t mean to, but the way it comes out, it sounds like it’s my fault.

‘I found Mum lying on the floor,’ I say. ‘I came back from Jake’s just before midnight…’

I look at the ambulance and think of Mum in there, all alone.

‘She wouldn’t breathe,’ I say, my voice shaky. ‘They think she’s had some kind of fit.’

Dad’s got bags under his eyes and he’s got that pale, shell-shocked look the soldiers have in the pictures Miss Pierce showed us at school.

‘I should have been with her. I shouldn’t have gone out.’

‘Feather… come on…’

Dad puts his arm around me but I push him away.

‘It’s true Dad. If she hadn’t tried to get up on her own…’

My hands are shaking. I wish I could turn back time, just by a few minutes, then I could have prevented this from happening.

Dad steps forward again and folds me into his arms and this time I don’t fight back.

He kisses my forehead and says: ‘It’ll be okay, Feather.’

I nod, because I want to believe him. Only right now my world feels a zillion miles from okay .

Dad tells the paramedics that we’ll follow in the car, which is his way of saving them from having to point out the obvious: that there’s no room for us in the back of the ambulance.

As we watch the ambulance turn out of The Green, followed by the fire engine and the police car, I realise that it’s already 1am. I’ve missed the New Year coming in.

And then I see Jake running across The Green, and I realise that I haven’t kept our 12:01 promise and that makes me feel worse.

‘I was worried…’ Jake says. ‘When you didn’t call. And then you didn’t answer your phone.’ He looks over at the people gathered on The Green, at our open front door and at the lounge window sitting on the drive. ‘What happened?’

I shake my head and then lean into his chest. He holds me and for a while, we just stay there, not saying anything.

Then Jake takes my hand and we go back into the house. When we get to the kitchen, we find Houdini standing with his front hooves up on the windowsill, his big bell clanging against his chest. He’s got the same zoned-out look as Dad did earlier, which makes me think that he must have known that something was up with Mum before anyone else did. Maybe Dad’s right. Maybe Houdini is a magic goat.

As the three of us stand watching the last of the fireworks petering out in the dark sky, I make the most important resolution of my life: