Narrow Minds (34 page)

Jack and Scarlet were sitting with her, the little group looked forlorn and fairly grubby. They had packed up their campsite and were sitting amongst a pile of tents and sleeping bags.

‘You all OK?' I shouted as I got out of the car.

‘I think I've broken my finger.' Charlie held up the offending swollen digit. 'It really hurts.'

An hour later, after dropping off her friends and their equipment I was back at work again but this time on the receiving end.

‘How did this happen?' asked a young doctor who turned Charlie's hand over and studied it carefully, ‘We've had the X-ray back and it's not broken, but there's obviously something wrong.'

Charlie looked a little embarrassed. ‘Well I was running and I tripped over and fell into a bush.'

The doctor looked up. ‘What sort of bush?'

Charlie shrugged. ‘A spiky one, I think it was a blackthorn,' she said and looked down at her hand. ‘I got a thorn in it as well, I had to pull it out, it was in quite deep.' She pointed to the middle joint on her swollen finger. ‘It went right in there.'

‘Hmmm.' He nodded then turned to me. ‘I think I need one of the plastics team down to look at this. Has she had anything to eat today?'

Alarm bells started ringing, I know full well that eating is only a problem if the hospital intend to put you on the operating table. Charlie put her hand behind her and began telling us how much better it was feeling and if it wasn't broken then surely it would be better to just go home now, wouldn't it?'

Doctor Steve just grinned at her. ‘If you'd broken it, it would be fairly simple to fix, but I think you've pierced the tendon sheath and now it's all filled with pus and bacteria, we have to clean it out.'

Charlie gulped and went pale.

Two hours later I helped her into bed on ward L4. She looked very young amongst the older women there. I set the television up for her and made sure she had a lot of time on it. ‘You're lucky.' I checked the phone on the unit. ‘I only fixed this one yesterday, good job really otherwise I'd have had to fix it now.'

Charlie stared at me in silence, then looked down in utter disgust at the backless short cotton robe the hospital had put on her.

‘Do you want me to stay with you?' I asked.

‘No way!' She looked horrified. ‘I've got friends coming in to see me later, but if you could leave me some money I could go down to the concourse and get a burger.'

‘You can't eat.' I ferreted around in my handbag looking for my purse.

‘I can until six, while you were getting a coffee the nurse said I wouldn't be having my operation until early tomorrow.'

I checked with the nurse and gave Charlie some money and a book I'd bought for her then, with a slight frisson of anxiety and a lot of requests for her to call me, I went home.

‘I'll be back tomorrow morning,' I assured her.

Charlie caught sight of a tall girl wandering down the corridor then turning me around she gave me a push toward the door. ‘Yes, yes, I'll see you then. Stop fussing, Mother. I'll be fine.'

I took the hint and left.

It was quite useful working at the hospital and the next morning I swapped my area with Betty so that I could work in the ATC and be near to Charlie. No one minded.

‘Hey you.' I wandered into the ward and waved at Charlie.

‘Where have you been,' she hissed, she looked panicked and upset.

‘Why, what's up?' I sat down on the chair next to her bed.

‘I'm going now!' She started taking out all her earrings and struggled with her tongue piercing. ‘I have to take all these out. Will you keep them safe for me?'

I nodded then looked up as a nurse bustled into the room. ‘You ready?' she asked Charlie.

‘One more earring to go,' I said.

The nurse looked at me, confused. ‘Can you fix her telly after we've gone?' She used the imperious tone they always use to move non-essential staff on. ‘I need to get her changed.'

‘I think I'll stay.' I couldn't resist winding her up just a little.

‘No I don't think so.' She took a deep breath in and was just about to give me the full force of her ire when I cut across her.

‘I'm her mother.'

‘Oh!' she deflated like a balloon and smiled. ‘Sorry, didn't know and we see you so often,' she pointed to my ridiculously coloured uniform.

On the way to theatre Charlie gave up the tough teenager persona and became young and worried again. ‘What if I don't wake up?' She tried to sit up on the trolley but the porter glared at her and she sank back into her pillows. ‘What if I die?'

Another nurse who was walking with me patted her on the hand. ‘You'll be fine, you'll wake up a bit groggy but you'll be fine.'

‘Mum?' Charlie obviously needed a lot more confirmation. ‘Can some people not wake up?'

‘Yes, but there is always another reason why they don't, bad hearts, body too frail and a load of other reasons, but you're young and healthy and really you will wake up.'

‘How would you know?' Charlie snapped, worry making her rude and badly behaved.

‘Your mother's right.' The nurse patted her hand again. ‘People don't just die, there's always a reason.'

Charlie pulled her hand away and turned her face to the wall; she was obviously very worried.

‘Look, if you see a light just don't go toward it, OK?' I waved my fingers at her and whispered in her ear in the spookiest voice I could manage, ‘Stay away from the light. Stay away from the light.'

Charlie giggled and waved as her gurney was pushed through into theatre.

‘Strange sense of humour,' the nurse commented.

I had to agree with her.

Three days later I took Charlie home, she was very subdued. ‘Are you OK?' I asked.

She nodded but didn't say anything.

‘Does your hand hurt?' I glanced over at the padded brace she had that covered the stitches in her finger and palm, supported by a shoulder strap.

‘A little.' She stared down at her feet. ‘Mum, you know that nice lady in the bed opposite?'

‘Mmmhmm,' I acknowledged, ‘the one that kept giving you chocolate.'

Charlie smiled. ‘Yeah. She didn't have any hair and wore a headscarf, does that mean she's got cancer?'

‘Probably, that is one of the side-effects of some of the treatments.' I wondered where this was going.

‘The doctors came to see her last night and they pulled the curtains round.' Charlie stared out of the window. ‘When they left, she started crying …' Charlie broke off with a sniff, ‘she cried all night, but really quietly so the nurses wouldn't hear her, but I did.' Charlie glanced up at me then back out of the window again. ‘I feel bad because this morning the curtains were still around her bed and I couldn't go and say goodbye but I was relieved because I didn't know what to say and now I feel guilty because she was so nice.'

We drove in silence while I desperately tried to think of something to say to her, some major pearls of wisdom that would make the whole death and dying thing easier for her to deal with. After a couple of minutes I gave up.

‘There aren't any answers to that one, new treatments are being developed all the time and it's natural to not want to make things worse for someone by saying something stupid.' I paused and wondered how much she really wanted to hear. ‘I think we're all nervous around terminally ill people because we know they're heading toward something we know nothing about and that lack of ‘knowing' scares us silly.'

Charlie nodded emphatically.

‘And you're so young that the idea scares you more than others.'

‘I don't want to die,' she shuddered.

‘Well you've seen what such a little thing as a thorn can do to you.' I pointed at her bandaged hand and arm. ‘Maybe a little foresight in the future about what you're doing and you may just live to become a burden on your children.'

Charlie looked up at me with a small smile.

‘I certainly intend to become a burden to you,' I said.

Charlie grinned ‘Mother …' she hesitated for effect, ‘believe me, you already are.'

Our only real problem was that as the family grew, the limited space on the boat became quite an issue.

One morning in early July I found Charlie face down on the sofa. ‘Mum, I've got loads of homework,' she moaned.

‘So what's the problem?' I have to admit I wasn't really listening, this conversation had been going on and off for about a month. ‘Just set the computer up on the dining room table and do it there.'

Charlie heaved an aggrieved sigh. ‘I can't, you know I can't. Sam keeps coming and bothering me and Geoff keeps wandering past with tools and banging things, I just can't concentrate.'

‘Then take the laptop into your bedroom and do it there.' I picked up the bowl of salad and turned to head outside with it, we'd recently become the proud owners of a wooden trestle table and benches and a big sun umbrella. It was lovely to eat outside so we took advantage of it as often as we could. ‘Look, can we talk about this later, Bill and Drew are coming round and I need to poke your father into starting the barbecue so he can burn stuff.'

Charlie huffed. ‘There's no room in my bedroom,' she shouted, ‘and it's really hot and dark.'

‘So work outside.' I probably wasn't being as sympathetic as I could have been but quite frankly there was very little I could do.

Charlie huffed again and stamped off down the boat, pausing only to grab the laptop as she went by. Slamming through the doors she pushed past a bewildered Geoff and stamped off down the mooring.

‘What's the matter with her?' Geoff got his hand slapped for pinching bits of tomato out of the salad.

‘Same thing as usual.' I covered the bowl with cling film then handed him a box of matches. ‘Barbecue?'

‘She's got a point.' Geoff followed me out into the sunshine. ‘There really isn't any room for her in that ridiculous back cabin.'

‘Oh don't you start.' I took the matches from him and handed him a bag of charcoal. ‘What are we supposed to do about it? Surely one small teenager can fit in a space that was originally designed to be inhabited by a family of four?'

Geoff placed the bag of charcoal into the barbecue and set fire to it, from his expression I could tell he actually did have an idea what we could do about it but was worried I wouldn't like the solution. ‘I've just been chatting to the new security guard up in the marina; he's bought a new boat,' he said.

‘Oh yes?' The management of the marina had changed fairly recently and we now had things like security and a shower block, it was all becoming most civilised. The new security guy was lovely, he was happy and smiley and altogether a nice guy, his dog was far more frightening than he was and I had to assume that he had well-hidden threatening depths.

Geoff nodded. ‘He asked me if I'd do the electrics on his new boat.'

‘Hmm mmm.' I wasn't really paying much attention, Geoff spent most of his time in other people's boats sorting out their sparks.

‘But he asked me if I'd like his old boat in exchange for the work.' Geoff shrugged. ‘Evidently Charlie was talking to him and saying how much she'd like to buy a little boat like that one.'

‘What?' I put the bowl down and turned to concentrate on what he was saying. ‘The little tiny one. That one that looks like a floating metal shed?'

Geoff nodded. ‘What do you think? It's only twenty-seven foot long, if we asked Dion and Charlie if they would consider shuffling up toward Bill and Drew a bit, and if Steve doesn't mind our backside hanging over his garden a little we could probably get it in front of ours.'

‘Hold on a minute.' I held up a hand. ‘That means we'd have two boats to fix up, that thing's got no running water, no toilet, no heating, it's just a box.'

Geoff nodded. ‘Well she hasn't got any of that now and she has to walk down the length of the boat to get to the front doors, but if we moved her out into a boat of her own we could use the back cabin for storage while we're doing them both up. She'd still have to use the facilities on the big boat but she'd have somewhere to go that was hers.'

I ran a hand through my hair, it really was a wonderful opportunity and, with money tight and time even tighter, what did it matter if we had two boats to do up instead of just one? The way we were going neither was going to get finished any time soon.

‘Can I tell her?' I grinned at him. ‘Actually no, that's not fair, you sorted out the deal, you can tell her.'

Geoff laughed and shook his head. ‘What and deprive you of winding her up? I wouldn't dare.'

Laughing I shot off and banged on the back of the boat. ‘Charlie!'

‘What?' came the short, snappy and slightly muffled shout.

‘Can you come out for a moment please?'

‘I'm busy.'

‘Yes I know, that's what I wanted to talk to you about, come out.'

‘Later.' There was a short thump from inside the boat. ‘I'm busy.'

‘Charlotte Alyse!' I very rarely used her full name. ‘Get out here right now.'

There was a certain amount of muttering and grumbling but eventually she stuck her head out of the back doors. ‘What!' she snapped.

‘Come with me.' I turned and wandered over toward Geoff.

Obviously realising that this was important, she only heaved a tortured sigh before climbing out of her cabin and trotting after me.

‘Geoff's got you a boat of your own.' I stared at her. ‘Will that sort out your space problems?'

There was a long silence, I could actually see the words going round and round in her head, obviously they weren't making any sense. She frowned, then she shook her head, then she looked confused, it was wonderful. Eventually she said, ‘What?'