Well, I did it – it’s over. It was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life so far, but at least it’s over now.
Here’s what happened. I set off after lunch – I mean after the half banana that was all I could eat. (I wonder how much weight I’ve lost over the past week?)
It took me just under an hour to walk to the hospital. I could have got a bus, but it was quite a nice day – and I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to arrive.
It was a quarter to three by the time I got there. I hadn’t even thought about visiting hours, but there was a big notice just inside the main door saying they were between one thirty and three o’clock, so that was OK.
I figured a quarter of an hour would be more than enough. Two minutes would have been more than enough.
The hospital smelt like bleach and rashers. I tried to make myself look as old as possible, in case they had a rule about not allowing children in, but the woman behind the desk didn’t seem too bothered about my age, just told me where to go when I said I’d come to see Ruth Wallace.
I wondered if Ruth had a room to herself, but I was too nervous to ask.
I had to go up two flights of stairs. I could have taken the lift, but lifts make me want to throw up, and since I already felt a bit like that I thought I’d better stick to the stairs. There were loads of people walking about, some just in dressing gowns and slippers.
I didn’t see anyone in a wheelchair.
Halfway up the second flight of stairs, I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten to bring the apples from the fruit bowl. I thought about going back down to the hospital shop and getting something there, but when I checked my pockets I only had sixty-seven cents, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get anything for that.
Anyway, maybe when you were visiting someone to apologise for assaulting them, you weren’t supposed to bring them a present. Maybe that was what Granny Daly would call ADDING INSULT TO INJURY.
When I got to the second floor I looked for room 23A. My tummy was flip-flopping like anything, and my legs felt pretty wobbly. I tried taking a few deep breaths, but that just made me feel like I was eating bleach-flavoured rashers.
The door of 23A was closed, so I gave a little knock and waited. I didn’t hear anything, even when I pressed my ear up to it, but there was a lot of noise in the corridor, trolleys wheeling and people talking and cups clinking. In the end, I just opened the door a bit and peeped in.
First I thought I must have got the wrong room, because there was a girl I didn’t recognise in the bed. She was facing the door and she looked very pale, and when she saw me she closed her eyes. I was just about to say ‘sorry’ and back out when I saw the end of a second bed poking out from behind a curtain, and my heart began to thump all over again.
I walked over to the curtain and peeped around.
Ruth Wallace looked at me and I looked at her, and for what seemed like ages none of us said anything. I was too busy trying to find the right words, and she was probably too gobsmacked.
At least she didn’t look like she was dying. She was a bit pale, but not ghostly white. She did look small though, smaller than when she sat in her wheelchair, and not half as tough. I think it was the first time I had seen her without a hat on. I could see the pink of her head under her hair.
There was something big under the bedclothes around where her legs were, like a frame or something – probably to keep people like me from whacking them again.
At last I opened my mouth and ‘I came to see you’ was what fell out. Which I know was pretty idiotic, but it was all I could think of.
Ruth Wallace blinked once, and that was all she did. Her face was blank – she didn’t look cross, or sad, or anything. Just small and thin, with that big boxy shape around her legs.
There was a tube of something going into the back of one of her hands, and a white plastic-looking strip around the same wrist, like a skinny bracelet, with something written on it that I couldn’t read.
Then I said, ‘I’m sorry I hit you with the milk.’ Quietly, so the girl in the next bed wouldn’t hear me.
And all the time, my heart was pumping away in my chest, and my tummy was doing somersaults. And then, because Ruth was still just looking blankly at me, I said the next thing that popped into my head, which was ‘I forgot to bring you anything’.
Still no answer. I was beginning to feel a bit desperate – was she just going to keep staring at me until I left? Maybe if I asked her a question she’d have to answer, so I said, ‘How are you feeling?’
First I thought she wasn’t going to say anything. She blinked two more times, and then she put up a hand – the one without the tube attached – and rubbed at her nose, and then she turned her head away from me so it was facing the wall.
I snuck a glance at her locker and saw a box of Maltesers and a bundle of Tracy Beaker magazines and a furry white toy cat all sitting on top.
And then, all of a sudden, she turned back to me and said, ‘It wasn’t because of that.’
I said, ‘What?’ because I wasn’t sure what she meant.
‘It wasn’t because you hit me. You hit like a girl. I was going to have the operation anyway.’
And then, before I had a chance to say anything, do you know what she said? She said, ‘I probably deserved it anyway.’ She kept her eyes on my face all the time and she didn’t blink, not once.
And all I could think of to say to that was, ‘Oh.’ It was a lot to take in:
It wasn’t my fault that she was in hospital.
I wasn’t even strong enough to hurt a helpless invalid.
She didn’t really blame me for hitting her.
And then I realised something else: she didn’t have to tell me that it wasn’t my fault. She could have said nothing, and let me go on thinking that I was to blame, but she didn’t.
Which was the first nice thing Ruth Wallace had ever done for me.
And saying that she deserved it – well, that was almost the same as telling me she was sorry, which was the last thing I had been expecting. I was the one who was supposed to be saying sorry here.
Just then, a bell rang in the corridor, and she said, ‘You have to go now.’ And then she closed her eyes, and I waited a minute to see if she’d open them again, but she didn’t, so I turned around and walked out. The girl in the other bed still had her eyes closed, but she probably heard every word.
And all the way downstairs, I was still trying to get my head around the fact that I had just had my first ever conversation with Ruth Wallace. And nobody had shouted, and nobody had said anything nasty.
And all the way home, I thought about how I’d been worrying myself sick for the past few days, how I’d tossed and turned in bed every night, waiting for someone to find out what a terrible thing I’d done, wondering if Ruth Wallace was dead, or seriously injured.
Imagine she reads Tracey Beaker, just like me. I wonder what music she listens to – wouldn’t it be funny if she liked Eminem?
Hit like a girl, indeed. I’d like to see her try and hurt someone with a litre of milk.
But thank goodness that’s all over, and I can concentrate on the next terrifying thing in my life – my first ever date, tomorrow night.
I think I’m going to throw up.
