“Shame,” one of the nurses said; I didn’t know her. She was a nurse from this floor. “I’ll make sure someone is with him.”
“We spoke to his father. He’s on his way. But will probably only be here in ten minutes.”
“Sure, we’ll keep an eye on him,” the sister said, and then the paramedic rushed off, saying goodbye and good luck to the boy. I went back up to the door and stuck my head around again, just a little so I could see. The nurse had walked over to him now and sat down.
“What’s your name?” she asked. But the boy said nothing. He just stared at the wall.
“Well, I’m Sister Esther, and I’ll be waiting with you until your dad comes. Is that alright?”
This time the boy did move. He gave the tiniest nod of his head.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked. And then she leaned in more and whispered a little. “You know, I think we have some extra chocolate pudding cups left over from dinner.”
Chocolate pudding cups . . .
The only tasty thing in the hospital. One night, Monty and I raided one of the food carts that had been left in the corridor unattended and stole six. We sat up all night stuffing our faces with them. The boy should have a pudding cup. They were super-tasty.
He looked up at her for the first time and gave her another small nod. She smiled at him.
“Will you be okay here alone for a minute while I go and fetch you one?”
The boy nodded again and the nurse rushed off down the corridor. The boy moved his head and it looked like he was going to go back to looking at the wall, only he didn’t . . .
“Oh no!” I gasped when he turned and looked straight at me, as if he’d known I was there the entire time. I jumped up and raced for my bed, quickly climbed in and threw the bedcovers over my head and waited there, hoping he wouldn’t come into my room and be angry because I was listening.
I only climbed back out of bed when I heard a loud noise a few minutes later. It sounded like someone getting really sick. I crept out of bed again and saw the boy throwing up in the dustbin. The nurse was holding the pudding cup in her hand and rubbing his back . . .
I guess he shouldn’t have eaten the chocolate pudding cup after all. It did kind of look like the blood on his clothes a bit. The blood had kind of turned brown and I wondered if maybe the chocolate color reminded him of the dried blood. Or maybe he was just so upset that he couldn’t eat at all. I couldn’t eat for a super-long time once and they had to put a tube into my stomach and pump in this gross-looking stuff that looked like a cross between soup and porridge. And then, for the first time since seeing him, I wondered who the blood belonged to. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that yet.
Perhaps he had also been in an accident, like me, although I couldn’t tell you how much blood was at my accident, because I was knocked unconscious, so I never saw if there was a lot of blood or anything. But I guessed there must have been. Or maybe someone else had had an accident and he’d tried to help them. Maybe that’s what the paramedic had meant when he said that he called the police! That was brave. I don’t know if I could have called the police if there was an accident. Even when I had my accident my parents said that they were in so much shock that for a moment they didn’t know what to do. And they are adults. So you can imagine how much shock he was in. Maybe that’s why he was staring at the wall like that.
“Oh my God, son. Son!” I turned my head when I heard this huge noise coming down the passage. It was a man, and he was running so fast. He had this look on his face that made his eyes so big that they looked like they might fall out of his head. Like he was a cartoon character or something.
“Are you okay?” He rushed up to the boy and fell onto his knees and then pulled him into a huge hug. And that’s when the boy started crying. He started saying over and over again that he’d tried to help his mommy, but there was so much blood.There was so much blood!His dad held him tightly as he cried and cried and cried and then his dad started crying too, and then I couldn’t help it, I started crying too. Even though I didn’t know the family, I started crying too. And when the doctor came through and told them that their wife and mother had to be rushed into emergency surgery and it didn’t look good, I cried even more. When the doctor said that she’d lost a lot of blood, I cried even more. But that’s when Sister Esther caught me eavesdropping and shuffled me back into the room with a scolding to mind my own business and closed the door behind me. I didn’t hear the last part that the doctor said that caused the man to grab onto the wall and let out the loud cry, like he was wounded.
Only, I couldn’t mind my own business. Because for some reason I felt that thiswasmy business. For some reason, I felt like I needed to know what was going to happen, and it wasn’t because I was just being nosey, but because I was really worried about that boy. I kept creeping to the door the whole night and peeping through the keyhole, trying to see if I could see anything. But nothing had really changed much. The dad was pacing up and down the small passage, and the boy was now curled up and sleeping on the chairs. If I never found out what happened, I wanted to let the boy know that someone cared and was thinking about him. Because I know that when people care and think about you, it makes such a difference to your life. It makes you feel less alone, and I bet the boy was feeling about as alone as I was right now. The night before Christmas.
And that’s when I got the idea to make him a card. I had a million pens and colored pencils and paper. My mom had bought me lots so I could draw and color in. I climbed onto my bed and pulled the table across it and started drawing. I drew things that I thought were nice. Things that didn’t remind you of a hospital. Like butterflies and sunshine and colored fishes that you find in coral reefs and all the things that I wanted to see when I left the hospital and maybe that the boy would want to see too. But because he was a boy, and I didn’t really know that much about boys, other than I was guessing they weren’t really into butterflies, I drew a lion on the card too. Because I think boys must like lions. I opened the card and stared at it for so long because I didn’t know what to write in it. I must have stared for a really long time, because I hadn’t noticed that it had started storming outside my window. The rain was hitting the glass and making such a loud sound that I could no longer hear the beeping machines, which I was happy about. I finally knew what I was going to say to him. The thing that I wished I felt more often. The thing that sometimes I didn’t feel, even though I wanted to feel it more than anything else in the world. The thing I wanted to believe more than anything else in the world. Maybe if I said it to him, and really meant it, then maybe it would come true for me too. Maybe if I wrote it down on a piece of paper, the words would be real and then it would all become real.
You are strong, stronger than you know, and one day everything is going to be okay.
When I was finished writing, I looked at the words on the card. I’d written in a beautiful, scribbled font. I was really impressed that I’d done this, actually. I’d always loved creating letters and drawing and, for the first time ever, I was putting them all together. I wondered if I should sign my name at the bottom. After all, all great artists signed their names, didn’t they? Only, I had no idea what my signature would look like. I didn’t have one. I’d seen Mom and Dad sign a lot of papers over the last few years. Every time I was in and out of hospital, they signed a lot. Their signatures looked like scribbles, though. I suppose that’s so no one can copy them, but I didn’t want something that just looked like a scribble, I wanted something that looked like something. Something strong and bold and . . .
“Aah!” I jumped as lightning cut through the sky for a moment, illuminating everything outside as if it was no longer night time. It made all the darkness bright for just as second, and that’s when I knew what my signature should be like. I brought my pen back down to my paper and in the corner at the bottom left, I drew a lightning bolt in the shape of a “Z.” “Z” for Zen.
I held onto the card and crept back towards the door. I pushed it open just a bit. If Sister Esther caught me again I was probably going to be in a lot of trouble. Like, a lot. But there was no way I was going to be able to get the card to him, because his dad was still pacing up and down. So I sat there and waited by the door, peeping through and waiting for the perfect time. I waited for so long that my bum was getting cold on the floor. Hospitals always have such cold floors. You would think they would warm them up. So, I grabbed a pillow from my bed and sat on it to keep my bum warm. And then, after waiting for ages, I got my chance. The doctor came around the corner. He looked tired, like he’d been in surgery for a long time. I think he had. I don’t know how these doctors stand on their feet for so long. I once had a surgery that lasted ten hours. I once tried to stand on my feet for that long too, to see if I could do it, but I only lasted three hours.
“How is she, Doctor?” the dad said, racing towards the doctor.
The doctor took his scrub cap off. They always do at times like these. It’s like a sign of respect or something, I don’t know.
“She made it through the surgery.”
“She’s okay?” The man asked, in tears now.
“Can we talk for a while?” the doctor said. Oh no, that did not sound good.
And the man could sense it too, I think, because he suddenly started asking what was wrong.
