Vee stepped forward and put an arm around me, unknotting my hand from the front of Manny’s shirt. Her voice was so gentle it took a moment for her words to strike home, a direct hit to the heart.
‘She has been in an accident, Henry. She is in the hospital–’
The world tilted and its bottom fell out. I grabbed the edge of the bench to steady myself against a dizzying rush of vertigo. Another voice cut in.
‘Manny has spoken to her and she is going to be all right–’
‘–But she has to go into surgery, Henry–’
Faces spun and blurred, their voices washing over me. Telling me stuff I didn’t want to know, that I needed to know, that I was afraid to know. I lost track of who was talking, their words merging and whirling around in my head.
A freak accident ... A red light ... An old bloke and a heart attack ... Mum’s little Hyundai smashed and spinning ... hitting a pole.
Hands gripped my arms. Manny’s face swam into focus, his usually booming voice rumbling soft and low. ‘Henry, she’s going to be all right. I spoke to her, and to the Emergency doctor in at Royal Brisbane and–’
‘Why are they operating on her?’ I interrupted, my voice cracking. ‘You said she had to go into surgery–’
He took a deep breath. ‘Her leg is broken. They have to pin it. And maybe her arm too, they’re not sure–’
Something shrivelled and died in my chest at the thought of my tiny mum, broken and alone in the hospital. And of my last text to her, missing the x’s.
‘I have to see her.’ The uncertainty that flitted across their faces made me feel like shouting. ‘You have to take me to her. I can’t leave her in there on her own.’
Caleb put a hand on my shoulder, his voice gentle, but firm. ‘They said to leave it till tomorrow, Henry. They’re not sure what time they’ll be able to operate, and it’ll be a while after that before she wakes up–’
I shook his hand off. ‘I don’t care. I’ll wait. I have to see her.’
Manny shook his head helplessly. ‘Henry, they’ve given her something for the pain. She was woozy from the drugs when I spoke to her, and wasn’t making much sense. Maybe it’s better if you wait–’
‘I’ll take you,’ said Anders. He stepped forward and stood next to me, facing up to the other three adults in the room. ‘She’s his mum. If he wants to see her tonight, then I’ll take him tonight.’
It was the longest speech I had ever heard from his lips.
Manny’s furrowed brow showed his indecision. But after a brief pause, Vee rubbed my arm and nodded. ‘It is right that you should go. Anders knows his way around the Royal; he will take you to your mum.’
Caleb said nothing. His eyes had been tracking a path between Anders and me. They flared with a sudden recognition, then narrowed. His gaze stayed fixed on Anders as though he needed an answer to a question that hadn’t yet been asked.
I didn’t know or care what any of them thought. ‘I just want to see my mum. And I want to go now.’
Caleb finally nodded, his voice curt. ‘All right. Anders, you take Henry. Let him see Lydia, then bring him back here to sleep. We’ll make a bed up for him in the studio. I’ll talk to you then.’
Even I heard the warning note in his voice, but Anders’ only response was to pull a jangle of keys out of the pocket of his jeans and raise an eyebrow in my direction.
I nodded. I didn’t care where I spent the night or who was going to take me to the hospital. The only thing that I cared about was seeing my mum. Nothing else mattered.
The three of them parted to let us through and together we walked out into the black night.
Anders pulled open the front passenger door of a late-model Mazda station wagon and leaned in, shifting a wooden drawing box and a pile of sketchbooks off the seat and onto the floor.
The back seats were folded down and stacked with canvasses, an easel and more boxes of paints. The only clear space in the entire car was the driver’s seat. It looked like Anders hadn’t shared his personal space with anyone in a long, long time.
I got in, careful to keep my feet away from his drawing books. I buckled up, the solid lump of my old mobile phone bulging from the side pocket of my shorts. I fished it out as Anders slid into the driver’s seat.
I should have thought of it before. With shaking hands, I called Mum’s number. Anders barely spared me a glance as he pulled away from the kerb, his hands sure and steady on the wheel.
The flat brrt, brrrtseemed to go on forever.
Pick up. Please, just pick up.
Mum hated missing calls and had set her phone to maximum ring time before it diverted to message bank. I had almost given up, when a voice cut in.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum? Are you OK? I’m on my way–’
‘Sorry, I’m one of the night nurses in Emergency. I heard the phone ringing. Who are you after?’
‘My mum. Lydia Hoey Hobson. She had a car accident–’ My voice broke and finished in a choked whisper. ‘Can I talk to her, please?’
There was a brief hesitation and her voice softened. ‘Hang on a sec, love. I’ll see what I can find out.’
She must have put the mobile down. I could hear phones ringing in the background, muffled voices, the whoompof something heavy landing on something soft.
I stared blindly out the car window.
Royal Brisbane was only a few minutes up the road and the evening peak hour had fizzled to a light stream of traffic; we were almost there.
The hospital loomed like a fortress against the night sky. Lights shining on all floors, across huge interlinked buildings, thousands of patients, doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, and somewhere in there, one tiny bird-like mum with a broken leg and a broken wing, waiting and hurting–
My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t know where to go, how to find her. The place was a maze, I wasn’t even sure where to start looking–
‘Hello? Are you still there? Hello?’
‘Yes–’ My voice was thick, hardly able to squeeze past the lump in my throat. ‘I’m still here.’
‘Your mum’s getting another X-ray; she’s listed for surgery tonight.’ The voice sounded sympathetic, but busy. ‘Listen, love, she could go into Pre-Op any time, so if you’d like to call back in the morning–’
‘No, we’re already here–’ Anders had pulled into the high-rise parking station and was winding his way up the ramp. ‘We’re at the hospital, and we’re on our way in now. Where is she? Where should we go?’
There was a long pause on the line, then a sigh. ‘All right, love. Go into the main reception area on the Ground Floor. They’ll direct you where to go from there.’
For once I was glad for Anders’ silence. I didn’t trust myself to speak and didn’t want to start blubbering like a baby in front of him.
He led the way in from the car park as though he’d been there a million times. No wrong turns, no asking for directions, straight to the reception area where we lined up at the enquiry counter, behind a lady with a screaming baby on her hip.
It seemed to take forever for the frazzled mother to explain what she needed to know, and an age more for the wooden-faced receptionist to retrieve the answers from the hospital system. Around me, people waited in a stupor of boredom and resignation, while I fidgeted, drumming my fingers against the sides of my shorts, shifting from one foot to the other, jiggling one leg, then the other, and still it wasn’t our turn.
I couldn’t stand it any longer and turned to Anders, impassive at my side. I was desperate to fill the endless wait with something, anything, even a conversation. ‘How come you know your way around in here?’
His eyes rested on me for a moment and then flitted back to the receptionist.
‘Manny,’ was all he said.
A whole unspoken story ballooned out from that single spoken word. His broken face rose up before me. The huge scars twisting down his neck and disappearing under his shirt. The winces when he straightened that he covered with a booming laugh and a wink–
‘Can I help you?’
Anders answered for both of us. ‘Lydia Hoey Hobson. Road accident. Admitted tonight.’
He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but he knew how to get the essentials across. After the last inquiry, the receptionist was probably grateful. She tapped rapidly onto a keyboard, eyes searching the screen in front of her.
‘She’s still in Emergency. There’re no beds available, so she’ll stay there till she goes into surgery. She’s on the list for tonight.’
‘Thank you.’ Anders put an arm round my shoulders and walked me away from the desk.
‘What are you doing?’ I pushed at him, but his arm had no give; if anything it clamped tighter. ‘You didn’t even ask if we could see her–’
‘I know where she is.’ He stopped and forced me to face him. ‘I can take you down there, but be prepared–’
His mouth worked as though he was trying to find his way through the unfamiliar landscape of words. ‘Your mother will be drugged and–’ He hesitated. ‘Pain strips everything away. Seeing her like that will be hard for you–’
‘I don’t care. She needs me to be there. She doesn’t have anybody else.’
As soon as the words left my lips, I knew they were true. She had no-one else. No other family. No real friends she could rely on. We’d never stayed anywhere long enough – she’d never been free of work, and of me, long enough – to make any.
There was just me.
An almost-teenage boy who was more afraid than he had ever been in his life.
‘She needs me,’ I repeated, forcing a stubborn note into my voice to cover the fear. To cover the truth that I couldn’t bear to say out loud.
That I was the one who needed to see her.
Because she was all that I had too.