Virginia Macgregor - Wishbones

Dad sits on the other side of the bed, grinning.

‘We missed you, Josie,’ he says.

Mum’s eyes dart around the room. The drips. The white walls. The heater hissing under the window. I can feel her nerves fizzing.

‘It’s okay, Mum,’ I say and lean over and kiss her cheek.

Mum’s eyes focus on me and she seems to calm down a bit. ‘It’s good to see you, My Little Feather.’

Dad and I spend ages sitting on Mum’s bed holding her hands and stroking her hair and giving her hugs. I know Dad’s thinking the same as me: that this time we’re going to be more careful; that we’re going to grasp onto her so tight that she never slips away again.

‘What was it like?’ I ask. ‘Being in a coma?’

Mum smiles. ‘I don’t really remember much, Feather. But it felt quite nice actually – floating around in this nowhere, no-time place.’

I guess that for someone as big as Mum, feeling floaty must be quite cool.

‘I heard you calling me, Feather,’ she adds. ‘And when I woke up, I saw your photo.’ She shifts her head to the picture of me on her bedside table.

‘So you’re glad you’re back?’ I ask.

‘I’ll be glad when I’m home.’ Mum yawns. ‘I’m really tired.’

I want to make a comment about the fact that she’s been sleeping for days but maybe sleeping isn’t the same as being in a coma.

‘Come on, let’s leave Mum to have a rest,’ Dad says.

I give Mum a kiss, jump off the bed and then Dad and I head to the hospital canteen for a hot chocolate and a sandwich.

‘We’ve got to make some changes,’ I say to Dad.

He rubs his eyes. ‘Let’s take a day at a time, Feather.’

I shake my head. ‘We can’t afford to take a day at a time. Mum’s really sick.’

Dad pokes at a bit of gherkin in his sandwich and then puts it down. He hasn’t eaten properly in months.

‘I know that,’ he says.

I take a breath.

‘It was our fault, Dad.’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Dad?’

He pushes his sandwich back into its packet and scrunches it up.

‘Let’s not talk about this now, Feather.’

‘You can’t bury your head in the sand about this, Dad.’

It’s the first time I’ve been this blunt with him but I have to keep going, otherwise I’ll lose my nerve.

‘It’s our fault that Mum got sick.’

He goes quiet again.

‘Did you think we were helping her, Dad? Making her fry-ups, letting her guzzle tins of pineapple syrup, bulk-buying Galaxy bars and crisps…?’

‘It’s not just about food, Feather.’

‘Of course it’s about food, Dad. Haven’t you noticed how much she eats? That’s why she’s got so big. That’s why she’s sick.’

Dad stands up. ‘Come on, Feather, let’s go home and get things ready for Mum.’

I grab his arm and yank him back down into his chair. ‘No, Dad, you have to listen—’

He sits down slowly.

‘Everything we do for your mum is because we love her.’

‘Love her?’ I clench my jaw. ‘Feeding Mum rubbish wasn’t kind or generous – or loving : it made her sick.’

From the way people are looking over at us, I realise I’ve been shouting. But I don’t care. All that matters is Mum. We’ve got six months and I’m not going to waste a minute of it.

Dad hangs his head and looks into his calloused palms. After a long silence he says:

‘I understand what you’re saying, Feather. And I know you mean well…’

‘It’s not about meaning well, Dad—’

Dad looks up, leans forward and puts his hands over mine. He’s done this since I was little: wrapped my little fists in his big palms. Usually, it’s the best feeling in the world – like nothing can ever be wrong with the world when Dad’s holding me. But it doesn’t feel like that today.

‘This is something even you can’t fix, Feather.’

I take a breath and say:

‘We made her ill, Dad. And now it’s our job to make her better.’

Dad pulls his hands away from mine.

I grab his hands again, pull them towards me and squeeze them tight. ‘I can’t do this on my own, Dad. You have to help me.’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Dad?’

Dad stares blankly at my hands, gripping his. Very slowly, he nods. But I’m not sure it’s gone in. Not properly.

5

I settle Mum into her armchair. And that’s when she notices.

‘Where’s the TV?’

If the lounge is Mum’s world, the TV is her sun. A fifty-inch, flat-screen, HD, surround-sound sun which Dad got Mum for her fortieth birthday two years ago.

Steph and Jake helped me carry the TV to the garage. Jake said he’d put it on eBay, which will help my get-Mum-healthy fund.

I kiss the top of Mum’s head. ‘We thought you could have a break from it.’

Mum stares into the space where the TV used to be.

I feel kind of bad. Mum’s been looking forward to coming home and I know part of what she’s looked forward to is going back to the things that have filled her days up to now, which are basically food and TV. And me.

‘We’ll find other things to do, Mum.’

Mum closes her eyes. She looks knackered. The trip back from the hospital took ages and the nurse with the square jaw made Mum walk from her hospital bed to the ambulance – because she wouldn’t fit on the front bench of Dad’s van. Anyway, it’s the furthest Mum’s walked in years. Plus, she hadn’t been eating much in hospital because the doctor’s put her on a diet, so she’s feeling a bit wobbly. But it’s a good thing because it means she’s lost weight. I saw on the notes in her medical chart that she’d lost one stone. Now I need to make sure the weight keeps going down.

Mum coughs. And then she stares up at the wall.

‘And what happened to our router? And where’s my laptop?’

‘You shouldn’t have to worry about doing the shopping. Dad and I are going to do it from now on.’

She looks at me and blinks and then goes back to scanning the room for all the changes.

‘And why’s Dad’s bed in my room?’

I thought that if it was just a matter of not having space for both of them in Mum’s bed, then we could bring Dad’s bed down too. They could be together again, like old times.

Mum keeps scanning the room – frowning. She looks at the two beds pressed up against each other and her wheelchair and her armchair and her medical equipment.

‘There’s no room to swing a cat in here,’ Mum says.

Steph warned me that the beds might be taking it a bit far but I told her it would be fine, that Mum would get used to it.

As we pushed Mum’s wheelchair out of Newton Hospital, the young nurse (the one who said Mum was going to die) ran after us and gave Mum a pile of leaflets on how to get healthy. Mum dumped them in the car park bin muttering:

‘Waste of trees.’

I wish she hadn’t done that. But I agree with her to this extent: it’s going to take more than a bunch of leaflets to stop her eating so much. It’s going to take someone who loves her and won’t give up on her, even when things get really hard. In other words, it’s going to take me. And getting rid of the TV and putting Dad’s bed in the lounge is the first step.

‘Where’s my bed?’ Dad calls down from the landing.

I go out to the hallway and look up at him. He’s got bags under his eyes that make him look one of those droopy-faced dogs.

‘I thought it would be nice for you guys to be together. After everything.’

It took Steph, Jake and me ages to get the bed down, but it’ll be worth it. When I drew up a timeline of when things started getting really bad with Mum, I worked out that Mum coming to live in the lounge downstairs four years ago made both of them go sad. I mean, Dad still does everything for Mum and you can tell that he totally adores her, but that’s not the same as being happy or loving each other romantically. I thought that maybe if I could bring them closer again, then Mum would get better faster.