Eight

‘I hate dogs,’ Fiona the Moaner started saying at lunch-time today.

‘You hate dogs?’ replied Mum. ‘Oh well, I suppose every girl should have a hobby.’

‘Well, I hate our dog,’ Fiona moaned on. ‘When I take him for walks he’s always pulling too hard on the leash and doing wees on trees.’ (The girl may make a poet yet.)

‘There’s no need to be catty about our dog,’ I said.

‘Perhaps he’s hounding Fiona to despair?’ Mum suggested.

‘I think she’s just barking up the wrong tree,’ I added.

Fiona stamped off to her room and slammed the door. The dog, who always follows her round the house (I think they both have the same IQ), went and lay down in the hallway outside.

Fiona’s been in a foul mood for the last few days, ever since a letter arrived from Dad, asking if I’d like to stay with him in the holidays. She went there the holidays before this, so she knows it’s my turn. But that doesn’t stop her from whingeing.

Funny thing is, I’m not all that sure I want to go and stay with Dad, anyway. Oh, I’m fond of him and that. I was more upset than Fiona when he and Mum split up; she was too little to understand much, then. But it’s sort of embarrassing, seeing him for just a few days at a time. Things are always awkward at first; he’s so polite, and lets me do anything I want. It’s better later on, when he starts telling me off the way a normal parent does. And he’s always asking all these questions about Mum. Hell, how do I know whether she’s feeling all right in herself? I have enough trouble trying to work out how I feel in myself.

Since it was Sunday, I went round to Simon’s after lunch. This is the afternoon he’s going into hospital, and I wanted to give him some advice on checking out the nurses. We didn’t have role-playing at his place yesterday. Jason walked into a tree branch while he was mowing the lawns in the morning, and he had to spend the afternoon lying down with a bleeding nose.

Kirsti opened the door to me and gave me a big smile. ‘Hi, Nathan. How are you?’

‘Mffnwhrr,’ I said. There’s something about Kirsti and Brady West that drags all my vocab down to the same level.

‘I’ve just washed my hair,’ she said. ‘That’s why it’s looking all rat-tails and horrible like this.’

Now it so happens she said exactly the same thing to me one other Sunday afternoon when I’d been round at the Shaws’, and I decided that if she ever said anything like that again, I’d have a really suave reply ready. I’d tell her that she reminded me of a girl who’d just stepped from a mountain pool on some tropical island. Here was my chance.

‘Aw no,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t look too bad.’

Kirsti laughed. ‘Thanks, Nathan,’ she said. ‘Simon’s in his room.’

I kicked myself down the hall to Simon’s bedroom. He was tidying up his floor. ‘Mum and Dad said I wasn’t going off to hospital and leaving this place looking like a pigsty,’ he grumbled. ‘I said they could turn a couple of pigs loose in it while I was gone and charge them rent. But parents never listen.’

Since Simon can’t bend down from his chair to pick things up, he tidies his floor with a long pair of tongs that Mr Shaw made for him. The hospital gave him a little fishing-net on a pole to use, but after Mrs Shaw had caught her foot in it twice when Simon left it lying on the floor, she said he was to get rid of that something-or-other net, or else she’d serve him up in batter for dinner.

So now Simon uses the tongs instead. He moves things with them like I move things when I’m tidying my room. He picks them up, looks at them vaguely for a while, then puts them down again somewhere else.

He has to vacuum his room, too. His parents or Kirsti plug the cleaner in for him and turn it on, since the switch is too low down on the wall for Simon to reach. Then he whirrs around in his chair, dragging the cleaner after him.

The Shaws have done a lot of things to make it easier for Simon to get around inside and outside the house. They’ve put in concrete ramps up to the back door and the front door. They used to have one at the back door only, but then they thought, what if there’s a fire or earthquake or something, and Simon has to try and get out the front door? He won’t be able to get down the steps. So they had a second ramp built.

At the bottom of the back door ramp, there’s a wooden post with a stiff-bristle brush hanging from it. It’s for Simon to brush off any dirt or leaves or traces of our dog that he might have got on his wheels, before he goes inside. Simon says they should put a notice on the post. Other houses sometimes have a sign saying PLEASE WIPE YOUR FEET. He wants one that says PLEASE WIPE YOUR WHEELS.

Looking after Simon has cost Mr and Mrs Shaw a lot of money. Simon says they never talk about it, but he knows. ‘I’m a dear little boy in more ways than one.’

The hospital pays for the wheelchair and crutches and the doctor and his physio treatment, and they paid to have the electric hoist put in the Shaws’ van for Simon to be lifted in and out.

Before the hoist, they had a long aluminium ramp that they stored inside the van. Trouble was, once they had the ramp in position, Simon didn’t always wait for someone to get up into the van and help him down. He’d just roll over the edge and tear down the ramp, yelling Banzai! Banzai!

After a couple of near-misses with pedestrians in the shopping centre, and after Mr Shaw decided he was going to end up bent over like a staple from pushing Simon back up the ramp, they got the hoist instead.

But the Shaws had to pay the extra cost when they sold their car and bought the big van to carry Simon’s wheelchair. And they’ve paid for the ramps and other things they’ve done around the house.

One time Mr Shaw had the chance of being promoted to another branch of his stock-agent firm in a different town, but he said no, the house they were in was the right place for them and Simon. So he gave up the extra money he’d have got from being promoted. I bet Dad would have done the same if it had been me or Fiona.

Remember Mrs Mason – the Shaws’ babysitter-neighbour, stage two in the information chain?

Mrs Mason asked Mrs Shaw once if she didn’t miss being able to travel and maybe go overseas, and do the sorts of things that people sometimes can when their kids have grown up a bit, and when they’re in a good job like Mr Shaw is.

Mrs Shaw said no, she felt that living with Simon had taught her to appreciate how special ordinary things were. She’d learned to look at leaves on the trees and the shapes flames made in the fire. Being with Simon had even taught her to enjoy watching the grass grow.

Just as well she doesn’t live up our street. Our dog’s killed most of the grass there, and now he’s working on the trees where the leaves grow. And if there was a fire burning when he was passing by …

When Simon had finished moving all the stuff on his floor from the left side of the room to the right side, and then back to the left side again, it was time for the Shaws to take him to the hospital. He had a couple of bags already packed – a small one with pyjamas and dressing gown, and a big one with role-playing games.

‘I’m going to work out some plays for Clash of the Battle-Apes that’ll leave you guys for dead,’ he said.

I’m not a great fan of the Battle-Apes game, actually. Whenever we’re playing it, I can’t get this picture of Alex Wilson out of my mind.

The Shaws asked me if I’d like to ride along in the van while they took Simon to hospital. Then they’d drop me off on their way home. ‘You and Kirsti can keep an eye on Simon in the back,’ said Mrs Shaw. ‘Tie him down if you need to.’

Oh well, I thought, if Kirsti’s going to be coming along, she’ll probably appreciate some witty conversation. ‘I’ll just ring Mum up first,’ I said.

‘Fine,’ said Mrs Shaw. ‘You know where the phone is.’

‘Of course he does,’ Simon told her. ‘It’s on the end of the cord.’

Mum was perfectly happy for me to go. ‘Give Simon my love,’ she ordered. ‘And you’d better warn him to build his strength up – Fiona’s doing another drawing for when we come to visit him.’ Then she paused for a moment, said, ‘You’re a neat kid, Nathan,’ and hung up.

Of course I’m a neat kid! Could anyone doubt it for a micro-second? Maybe a few people should pass the news on to Brady West.

Simon steered his wheelchair on to the platform of the van hoist, announced, ‘We have ignition sequence,’ and as the hoist began rising up, called, ‘We have a lift-off! We have a lift-off!’

I helped Kirsti climb into the back – woweee! – and we were away laughing. Smirking a bit, in my case, anyway.

On the way to the hospital, Simon talked about the other times he’d been there – especially the eighteen months when he was in Standard Two and Three, and they were diagnosing and trying to contol his MD. I think he was quite excited about going back to see some of the people he knew. I felt a bit jealous for a minute, till I remembered the resolution I’d made after that poetry business at school last week.

I think Kirsti must have been feeling a bit down about Simon having to go in again. She just sat and didn’t say much.

‘We used to have these wheelchair races,’ Simon was saying. ‘Especially this guy Kevin and me. I told you about him – he was the one who had cerebral palsy, and had to wear a crash helmet all the time.’

‘Yeah, I remember,’ I said. ‘So he was a wheelchair racer in a crash helmet? He must have looked the real thing. Did the winner spray a bottle of champagne over the crowd like they do on TV?’

‘I tried it with a can of Coke after I won one race,’ Simon said. ‘The nurses made me spend the afternoon wiping down the walls with a wet tea towel.’

‘Where did you race?’ I asked him. ‘Up and down the wards? You’d have to be careful, surely? People could have an accident and end up in hospital.’

‘Get real!’ Simon replied. ‘No, we used to go out in the carpark. The other muscular dystrophy guy – Sione – he was on crutches, and he’d stand up one end and watch out for anything coming. I just had my old chair then, the one I had to push. So I used to be able to get in front for the first half, down to where Sione was standing. But then my arms would start getting tired on the way back, and Kevin always passed me. He used to look hilarious – his head and arms twitching, and his chair whirring, and him laughing.’

‘So his motor beat your muscles,’ I said.

‘Yeah, most of the time,’ said Simon. ‘But there was once when his throttle jammed, eh? He couldn’t slow down or turn or anything. He goes straight past Sione and out the end of the carpark, and he’s heading for the main gates. Sione is yelling “Stop! Stop!” and hobbling along after him on his crutches, and I’m coming after Sione, pushing as hard as I can on my wheels, and yelling “Stop! Stop!” too. Man, it must have looked weird!’

‘What happened to the escaped chair?’ I wanted to know.

‘Oh, a couple of nurses coming on duty met Kevin as he was starting to go through the gates, and grabbed him. Just as well; he might’ve been halfway across the Sahara by now.’ Simon was silent for a bit, remembering. ‘Kevin was a neat guy. So was Sione, but he died when he was about 12.’

The van swung down the hospital drive and stopped at the main entrance. Mrs Shaw opened the back doors. Kirsti didn’t need me to give her a hand out – damn! – and Simon came down to earth on the hoist. He looked a bit nervous.

The hospital smelt like hospitals always do – polish and some sort of antiseptic. It sounded the way hospitals always do, too – shoes squeaking on lino and uniforms swishing.

Since they were expecting Simon, we went straight to his ground floor ward. We must have looked like a Mafia bodyguard, as we all marched along behind him in his chair. A pretty Indian woman in a white coat came out of a door near the ward entrance. ‘Hi, Simon,’ she said.

‘Hi, Dr Mehta,’ said Simon. ‘What’s for dinner?’

Dr Mehta laughed. ‘I knew you’d be asking that, so I found out. Fish and chips, followed by fresh fruit salad.’

‘Choice!’ exclaimed Simon. ‘Hey, I should come here more often.’

Dr Mehta laughed again. Then she and Mr and Mrs Shaw and Simon went off together to organise his bed and things. ‘I must talk to you about the Paritai Home for Disabled Children,’ she was saying to Simon’s parents. ‘I think they might be able to offer Simon a place there for a week of the school holidays.’

Kirsti and I sat in the ward waiting-room. What did we do? We waited.

We talked, too. Kirsti’s easy to talk to. She’s a bit like Ms Kidman. She makes you feel that the things you say are worth listening to. I told her about going to see Dad in the holidays, and the horrors of life with Fiona the Moaner, and what it was like down in the swamps of the fourth form. She talked about how different the teachers were when you were a seventh former, and how friendly everyone was to one another. ‘There’s a great lot in the seventh form this year, especially the girls.’

Then she grinned at me. ‘Mind you, there’s some pretty nice girls in the fourth form too, I believe. There’s Lana Patu, and Nelita Travers, and someone called … Brady East, is that right?’

A polished, elegant, grown-up reply leaped to my lips. ‘Uurrnghh,’ I said.

Simon was in his chair beside his bed when Mr Shaw finally fetched us along to see him. It was a two-bed room, but the other bed was empty. A nurse who didn’t look any older than Kirsti was turning over some of Simon’s role-playing stuff with him. ‘Have a good four days in the maximum-security wing,’ he told me. ‘Think of me during Maths.’

‘I’ll save all the assignments for you,’ I promised him. ‘See ya Friday. No, I’ll come in on Tuesday. Mum and Fiona want to come and visit you, too. And I almost forgot, Fiona’s doing another drawing.’ A hunted sort of look crossed Simon’s face.

I felt a bit envious of Simon on the way home in the van. Pretty nurses, four days off school, everyone fussing over him. Then I noticed how quiet all the Shaws were.