Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [46]
Grandpa sighed. ‘I’m sure it will be fine if you finish it later.’
‘I can’t finish it later! That’s not how baking works.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Cathy, just leave it.’
But I refused. In my head, Mum would need something to eat when she came home and it was my job to make sure she got it. And if she was as ill as Grandpa reckoned, that just made it twice as important to get it right. So we stayed. Grandpa couldn’t relax and conversation was stilted. Eventually I announced that the sponge had risen and it was time to take it out.
‘At last!’ Grandpa exclaimed theatrically. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Of course not. I’ve got to ice it first.’
I can’t believe now that I put him through this torment. It was my mother in hospital, but she was also his daughter. He was desperate to get back there – that’s obvious now – but the last thing he wanted to do was alert me to the severity of Mum’s condition. He was only thinking of me, but it was tearing him apart.
Before you can ice a cake, you must let it cool, so that used up another twenty minutes or so. Finally, with icing sugar everywhere and cocoa powder all over my clothes, I was ready to leave.
‘Better bring your school things,’ Grandpa warned. ‘I think you’ll be staying with us tonight.’
That’s nice, I thought. It never occurred to Grandpa that I was used to spending nights alone. Nor did it occur to me that Mum wouldn’t be joining us. I insisted that we go to Salt-dean to drop off the cake before, eventually, setting off for the hospital.
On the drive there Grandpa didn’t say much, although he did mention something about Mum catching a bug while she was out late at night. He sounded confused. ‘Why would she be out so late?’ he asked, talking to himself more than me.
That, in turn, confused me. Mum always went out late. She stayed out overnight and I had no idea where. But it wasn’t a problem. She’d done that all my life or for at least as long as I could remember. It was normal. But obviously Grandpa had no idea.
I don’t know if I was in denial about the gravity of the situation, but I remember feeling surprised by everyone rushing around, worried about Mum. I genuinely couldn’t escape the sense that they were overreacting. Of course I craved for Mum to be cured of whatever it was that ailed her, and if the hospital could do that then, great, let them. But really, even as we parked the car, walked through reception and caught the lift up to Mum’s ward, I just wanted to shout out, ‘This is normal! She’ll be fine! Let me look after her!’
Seeing your mother hunched over a toilet bowl or, occasionally, failing to wake up before she vomited was one thing. Witnessing her strapped to a high hospital bed with tubes and pipes coming out of her nose and arms and myriad machines lining the wall was an experience I just wasn’t prepared for. I don’t know what I’d expected to see, but it wasn’t Mum lying there unconscious. Even then I tried to justify it.
‘She’s tired,’ I told Granny who was sitting at Mum’s side, holding her hand. ‘She’ll wake up soon.’
Granny smiled. She didn’t seem convinced.
We sat there for ages, it seemed, and then a doctor came in and asked Mum something. Out of nowhere, she managed this slurred, quiet ‘Yes’.
‘See?’ I told Granny. ‘She’s waking up!’
But that was about as much as we heard. She squeezed out a few more yes/no answers and in between gurgled and burbled like a baby talking in its sleep. Still, though, I wasn’t concerned. My biggest priority, in fact, was the cake.
If we don’t get home soon it will be too dry to eat.
Grandpa drove the three of us back to theirs, where I spent the night in the spare room as usual. The next morning he took me to school and then picked me up at the end of the day, announcing, ‘Let’s see if there’s been any change in your mother.’
Hand on heart, I wasn’t very happy at being dragged back to the hospital. I just thought, Here we go again, another evening wasted waiting for Mum to wake up. Because I absolutely believed with all