Katy Read online

  ‘So this is to try to teach me to walk again?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘No, lovey, it’s to keep those limbs of yours healthy and supple. When you’re a little fitter we’ll want you to take your whole weight yourself. We’ll have to build up those arm muscles. We’ll have you with forearms like Popeye in no time! Though you’re such a Skinny Minnie you look more like Olive Oyl at the moment,’ said Nurse Jeannie.

  I didn’t like her, or Nurse Gloria. I hated them teasing me. They’d be furious if I made remarks about their size. I could be especially waspish about Nurse Jeannie and her great big bum.

  Someone else had done just that. I heard Jeannie telling Gloria, absolutely outraged.

  ‘Do you know what that terrible Dexter said to me when I tried to give him his meds this morning? “You can stuff it right up your great big –” … well, that horrible word beginning with an a!’ said Jeannie with a shudder.

  ‘It’s ridiculous him being in a children’s unit. He might only be sixteen but he’s a right mouthy little yobbo,’ said Gloria. ‘Poor you, Jeannie.’ She sounded sympathetic, but you could tell she was smug that Dexter had never called her bottom a rude name.

  I liked the sound of this Dexter. I wished I could swap him for saintly Rosemary. Someone had given her a teddy bear almost as big as she was and she spent all day chatting and singing to him. I found it very irritating. Perhaps the teddy found it irritating too, but he was as helpless as she was, unable to put his paws over his ears to shut out the sound of her incessant sweet talk.

  When the nurses got me into a wheelchair I soon became tired of wheeling myself round and round the ward.

  ‘Can’t I go for a little walk somewhere?’ I begged. Then I thought about the word walk. I was going to have to use substitute vocabulary for the simplest things now. Go for a walk. Run and fetch it. Jump up. Leap into action. ‘Can I go on a little trip down the corridor and back?’ I amended.

  They weren’t supposed to let me out of their sight yet in case I slumped sideways or fell forward, because I was still learning the knack of sitting up straight. It was hard work keeping my own skinny a-word in place on a chair now. I struggled to do what a six-month-old baby can manage all by itself.

  Jeannie and Gloria wouldn’t let me, but dear Jasmine agreed when she was on day duty.

  ‘I’ll come with you though. Can’t have you escaping!’ she said.

  ‘Can I wheel myself and go wherever I want?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, of course you can wheel yourself. It’s good practice. You want to be as independent as possible. And you can toddle about wherever you want on this floor, within reason. You can’t barge into the boys’ bathroom!’

  ‘As if,’ I said scornfully.

  But I did want to go and have a peek in the boys’ ward. Jasmine didn’t object. They didn’t have the mountains and the farm on their ceiling. They had a racing track with different cars speeding round and round. I stared up at it, imagining myself in the car in front, a red car, a sleek racing-demon version of my long-ago little kiddy car.

  Then I peered round at the boys. One boy was flat on his back, peering up at his television set. Two boys about eight or nine were hunched in wheelchairs, totally absorbed in their games consoles. And the fourth boy was propped up in bed, drawing something in a sketchbook. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a skull on it. He was tall and skinny, rather like me, with a very pale face. He had longish, untidy hair that kept flopping in his eyes so that he kept flicking it back impatiently.

  ‘Why don’t you let me trim your hair for you, Dexter?’ said Jasmine. ‘You can’t see what you’re doing with it hanging in your face like that. Say hi to Katy here. She’s paying you guys a little visit.’

  ‘Hi to Katy,’ Dexter murmured, not even looking up.

  ‘What are you drawing, Dexter?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Just stuff,’ he said.

  ‘He’s ever so artistic, Dexter is. He does all these comic strips,’ said Jasmine. ‘They’re very good, though they’re very … adult.’

  I wheeled myself closer so I could take a peep. I thought he might be drawing rude pictures but I saw a sketch of an old man wearing a hooded cloak, a strange kind of farming implement in one of his gnarled hands.

  ‘Who’s he?’ I asked.

  ‘Just an old man. Run away, kid,’ said Dexter.

  ‘Run away?’ I said.

  ‘OK. Go and do wheelies somewhere else,’ he said, but he looked up at me briefly.

  He had surprising eyes. I thought they’d be dark because his hair was black, but they were blue, the sort of eyes that look as if they could see right into your head.

  I edged even closer, so I accidentally nudged his bed. His smooth black line wavered a little.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ he said impatiently.

  ‘Sorry! I’m hopeless. I’m always bumping into things. I can’t get the hang of this stupid, stupid wheelchair.’ I thumped my hand against the wheel in frustration.

  ‘Don’t do that. You’ll just hurt your hand,’ said Dexter, making the old man’s cloak wider, past the wobble, and then cross-hatching densely so that it wouldn’t show at all.

  ‘I wish I could do shading like that. I don’t seem to get how to do it. Show me,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing to show. You just draw,’ said Dexter.

  He carried on drawing. I carried on watching. Jasmine got bored and wandered off to chat to the two boys.

  Dexter started on the old man’s face. It was difficult to make out under the large hood. The eyes were very large and dark, the nose barely there, the mouth a disconcerting wide grin …

  ‘It’s a skull, like the one on your T-shirt!’ I said. Then I thought harder. ‘Hey, I know who it is! What do you call him – the Grim Reaper!’

  ‘Yep, old man Death himself,’ said Dexter.

  ‘So who is he going to reap?’

  ‘Well, not quite sure just yet. He’s done his best striding through this little patch of the planet, but perhaps his scythe needs sharpening. He’s slashed my legs off, and yours, and all these little kids’ around us, but he hasn’t stabbed us in the heart just yet. He could be having another go after he’s had a bit of a rest. He might go at it stealthily, clogging our lungs with pneumonia. Or he could send a little blood clot to our hearts?’

  ‘Hey, Dexter, quit that scary rubbish!’ Jasmine called, frowning. ‘You’ll give Katy the willies.’

  ‘No, he won’t. He’s funny,’ I said. ‘Dexter, did you really tell Jeannie to stick your meds up her you-know-what?’

  ‘My fame spreads far and wide,’ said Dexter.

  ‘You’re awesome,’ I said, half teasing, half serious.

  ‘Don’t you dare encourage him, Katy. He’s a bad boy. He’s going to get into serious trouble if he carries on like this,’ said Jasmine, coming over to us.

  ‘Yeah, well, would you mind telling me what could be worse trouble than losing the use of your whole body?’ said Dexter.

  ‘You could lose the use of your hands too, smart boy. Then where would you be? No crazy drawing for a start. You two moan away about your lot, yet little Rosemary –’

  ‘Oh, blessed little St Rosemary,’ said Dexter.

  ‘Oh goodness, do the nurses tell you lot about Rosemary too?’ I asked. ‘Imagine what it’s like for us girls though. We’re stuck with Rosemary all the time.’

  ‘You two! How can you mock such a good, sweet little girl?’ said Jasmine, pretending to cuff both of us, but she wasn’t really cross.

  She knew that we didn’t really dislike poor, valiant little Rosemary. We just resented her grace and good humour coping with the unbearable, when we were having such a struggle ourselves.

  It was wonderful to have found someone darker and moodier than myself. I wanted to stay talking to Dexter all morning, but Natasha, another nurse, called Jasmine back to the girls’ ward because Marnie had been sick all over herself and the bedclothes.

  ‘Which means I have to whip you