Katy Read online

  ‘But you said I was going to get better! You said!’ I shouted furiously.

  ‘I didn’t, Katy. Maybe that’s what you wanted to believe and – dear God! – I want to believe it too. But I don’t want to lie to you now. It would be cruel to fob you off with empty promises. We just have to face this awful thing together.’

  Dad tried to take my hand but I pushed it away.

  ‘It’s not fair! I’m not going to let it happen! I’m going to get better, just you wait and see!’ I screamed.

  15

  I was put in a big room with three other girls. There was a twin unit the other side of the nurses’ station with four boys. The girls’ unit was painted a wishy-washy lilac, but there was a big painting on the ceiling of purple mountains and flower-strewn meadows and in the foreground a farm with cows and sheep and pigs. There was a fat farmer with a pitchfork attacking a butter-yellow haystack and a jolly soul wearing an apron feeding chickens who was probably his wife. They had children too: a little boy sailing a toy boat on a bright blue pond and a girl making a daisy chain in the emerald grass. I stared at that painting hour after hour. Sometimes I pretended I was a farm child, working hard making hay and feeding chickens like a good elder sister. Mostly though I didn’t want any company at all, even from little painted figures. I looked up until my eyeballs ached, staring at the mountains, willing myself up on the peak of the highest one, as far away as possible.

  It was so terrible to be stuck here, flat on my back, helpless. Really truly helpless. I’d looked at one of Dad’s old children’s books at home, about a man called Gulliver. It was written in a quaint old-fashioned way and I couldn’t get into the story, but I loved the illustrations, especially one where Gulliver is pinioned on his back, tethered by many small ropes, while an army of miniature people swarm all over him triumphantly. I was Gulliver all right. But at least he had a chance of wriggling free, straining against the ropes and sitting up and squashing all the tiny people between his fingers as if they were flies.

  Oh how I wanted to squash everyone around me, even my favourite nurse, Jasmine. She was round and brown and she giggled a lot, but when I cried she’d come and cuddle up beside me, running her fingers through my hair and crooning softly to me. I loved Jasmine and always prayed that I’d get her when it was time for any terrible medical or personal intervention, but sometimes I couldn’t help hating her simply because she could walk away, swishing her big bottom, her calves taut and shiny, her white Crocs squeaking on the polished floor.

  The nurses alternated, day nurses and night nurses, but they all did the same things. Sometimes these were quite ordinary things like washing us and easing us in and out of gowns. I could actually wriggle in and out of mine because my hands and arms still worked and I could feel down to my waist. Little Marnie could move too, but she was only about three or four so she had to have help anyway.

  I wasn’t sure if Naveen could move much. She didn’t try at all. She lay and cried most of the time, and when her family came to visit her every afternoon they all cried too.

  Rosemary didn’t cry. Rosemary was a beautiful little girl with caramel-coloured skin and big dark eyes. She came from the Philippines and when she was with her family she chattered in Filipino, but she spoke English to the nurses and to us. She had fallen out of a window and very nearly died, with a fractured skull as well as a broken back. She’d been in a coma but now she was conscious and very lively, talking all the time. She even sang and laughed like any normal eight-year-old, but she was far more badly injured than me. She still had big bandages round her head where she’d had an operation and she couldn’t move from her neck down.

  When Naveen or I refused to cooperate or had a crying fit the nastiest nurse, Jeannie, would hiss, ‘Shame on you. Look at little Rosemary! She’s a shining example to us all.’

  I dare say she was a truly lovely, courageous little girl, but I wanted to squash her too. In fact I wanted to squash her most of all.

  Sometimes the nurses had to do terrible things to us. Terrible for them as well as us. None of us could go to the loo properly. I had to have a catheter for my wee, with an awful little bag, which was bad enough. The nurses had to cope with my bowels. I hated the first session so much that I resolved never to eat again and then I wouldn’t need to go. It wasn’t too difficult to go on hunger strike. I didn’t have any appetite at all and the hospital food was pretty awful anyway. Cereal and soggy toast for breakfast, greasy lasagne for lunch, sandwiches and jelly for tea.

  So I didn’t eat at all and after a day or so they all started to worry. They had a little conference with Dad. He brought me in a big tub of Loseley strawberry ice cream, my favourite treat. He opened it up and put it under my nose so I could smell its delicate creamy sweetness. I wanted it badly but I kept my mouth tightly shut.

  ‘Oh Katy, what are we going to do with you? Am I going to have to spoon it into you the way I feed little Phil?’ Dad said.

  My eyes filled with tears at the thought of Philly and the other littlies.

  ‘Oh Dad, I miss them so,’ I mumbled.

  ‘And they miss you, darling, terribly. Now that you’re more stable I’ll bring them all in to see you, just for a few minutes. We mustn’t tire you too much. So you need to start eating properly to get strong.’

  But I wouldn’t eat, and let my ice cream melt into milk. I wouldn’t eat the next day either, and just took little sips of water. I heard the staff discussing me. I think they were worried I’d started to become anorexic because of the shock of the accident.

  It was dear nurse Jasmine who helped me confide the problem. She was on night duty. She crept round, checking on each bed. When she got to mine and saw I was awake she held up the covers and made a pantomime of peering underneath.

  ‘Katy? Where are you, girl? Oh my Lord, you’ve faded away so much you’ve actually gone and disappeared!’ she whispered.

  ‘I wish I could,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you’re certainly going the right way about it, honey. Why aren’t you eating, for goodness’ sake? You’re scaring everyone.’

  ‘I’m just not hungry,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Jasmine. ‘Right. I’ll be back in a tick. Don’t go to sleep on me.’

  She came back a few minutes later with a plate of hot buttered toast cut into tiny squares.

  ‘There now. I’ve made us a little midnight feast,’ she said. ‘We’ll take it in turns. A square for me, a square for you.’

  ‘No! I said I don’t want any,’ I said wretchedly.

  ‘Why not, sweetheart? You surely can’t think you’re fat? Look at you – you’re thin as a pin. You need to eat well and build up those muscles. You need to be a strong girl now, especially if you’re going to become a wheelchair champion.’

  ‘I don’t want to use a stupid wheelchair,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I think that’s you being stupid, not the wheelchair,’ said Jasmine. ‘Don’t you want to get around under your own steam? Surely you don’t want to lie in bed all the time?’

  ‘I don’t want to do anything! I don’t want to be me any more!’ I said, starting to cry.

  ‘Oh darling.’ She put her head close to mine on the pillow. ‘You’re not trying to starve yourself to death, are you?’

  I hadn’t meant anything as dramatic, but I mumbled yes because I thought she might feel extra sorry for me.

  ‘What a dreadful idea!’ she said, suddenly cross. ‘How could you think of such a thing! You’re already putting your poor family through such torment. And here we are, doing our best to help you too.’

  ‘I know you are,’ I said, crying in earnest. ‘That’s why! I hate what you all have to do to make my bowels work. So I’m not eating so I don’t have to go!’

  ‘Oh Katy!’ She hugged me tight. ‘Sweetheart, you can’t carry on like that! We can’t have you starving to death!’

  ‘Well, maybe it would be a good thing,’ I sobbed. ‘I don’t think I want to live if I can’t walk and run and