Inside Grandad (6 page)

To his shame, he was crying, in front of this stranger. Not sobbing or groaning or anything, but tears flooding silently down his cheeks, dripping off his nose and chin … He couldn't see anything…. Lena was saying something….

"… didn't imagine it, Gavin. I've seen it too, sometimes, in other patients of mine. I'm not sure it isn't the main reason why I do this job, for that moment, that glimmer of a signal getting through. It makes me feel, however hopeless the case seems, that there's still a chance of getting the real person back in the end. And remember, this is still early days with your granddad. He's had a severe stroke, but it's far too soon to give up on him.

"Now here's some tissues, and you can dry yourself up, and when you're ready we'll try something else together."

She waited while Gavin, full of shame, scrubbed angrily at the drying tears.

"Okay," he muttered. "Sorry about that. I'm all right now."

"Nothing to be sorry about, Gavin. Crying's often the best thing you can do. Now, let me show you. I'm doing two things
at the same time. Mainly, at this stage, it's just a matter of exercising his body as much as I can, maintaining the muscle tone, not letting it get into bad habits, but at the same time I'm trying to help him begin to remember how to move about for himself, on purpose. Let me show you….

"Now, Robbie, we're just going to show Gavin how we do your arm exercises. Let's see if you can touch your nose with your right hand. First, I'll do it for you, to remind you, shall I?"

She straightened Grandad's arm beside his body, took hold of his wrist with her right hand, and, holding his elbow in place with her other hand, lifted his forearm gently up and over until the tips of his fingers rested against his nose.

"Good," she said. "Now I'll put it back, and you see if you can do it for yourself…. Ready?… Now! Come on, Robbie. You can do it. Touch your nose…."

Nothing happened, but Lena didn't seem bothered. She looked up, smiling.

"It's very early days. I wasn't really expecting a response yet. You'll promise not to be disappointed if nothing happens, won't you?"

"All right. You want me to try now?"

"Why not? It isn't difficult. What it really takes is patience, and more patience, and yet more patience, and I really never have time to give everyone all the help I'd like to. That's why people like you can be so useful."

Gavin had moved round to Lena's side of the bed while she was talking, and she'd made room for him. Automatically he'd picked up Grandad's hand and laid it across his body, the way he usually did, so that he could still be holding it comfortably
while he was leaning over the bed chatting to him. He hadn't even noticed himself doing it. Now, he looked down, surprised to see the two hands lying there, one across the other. A thought struck him.

"Can I try something else first?" he said.

Lena was amused.

"If you like," she said.

He leaned further over so that he could see into Grandad's eyes.

"Lena's going to show me how to help you with your exercises, Grandad," he said. "But first, before we start, just see if you can take hold of my hand, like you did yesterday when I was telling you what I'd said to the selkie."

It happened. There was no gleam in Grandad's eyes that Gavin could see, but for a moment, and another moment, he felt the faint pressure of fingertips against the side of his own palm. Then it was gone.

He let out a long breath of relief and looked up at Lena.

"Did you see?" he whispered. "It was a bit more than that yesterday."

"Indeed I did," she said. "Though the movement was very slight, and I wouldn't like, at this stage, to swear that he was doing it on purpose. But let's take it for the moment as an encouraging sign. Why don't you see if you can get him to do it again?"

"If you like. All right…. That was wonderful, Grandad. Now let's see if you can do it again. I'm going to squeeze your hand, and then you squeeze back. Ready?"

But nothing happened, though he tried several times, and
nothing happened either when he went over to the arm exercises Lena showed him how to do, telling Grandad to touch his nose or his ear, or to open and close his fingers, and so on, and then doing it for him when he didn't respond. After a while Lena told him to stop even telling him, and just move the arm and hand around in different ways for five minutes, and do the same thing all over again on the other side, though he really couldn't expect any response there for a long while yet. She watched him for a bit, and then crossed to the other side of the ward and started working on one of the patients there, though she still glanced across from time to time.

When he thought he'd done enough he straightened up and looked round at her, and she nodded and made a gesture with her hands to tell him he could stop. He felt surprisingly tired, and it was a relief to sit down and read Grandad his e-mails.

Apart from Dad coming home for one weekend, that was the last good thing that happened for almost a month.

othing much bad happened in that month either. Except that
nothing
happened, and that was bad. It made it harder and harder to keep hoping, while everyone else was starting to give up. As the days went by Gavin began to imagine he could hear in everyone's voices—the nurses' and Mum's, even Gran's— that they were beginning to stop hoping.

On the day after Gavin had talked to Lena, Robert picked him up after school again and drove him to Aberdeen. He went straight up to the stroke unit. Lena was already in the ward, working on one of the other patients. She looked up, nodded, and smiled, so he settled himself in beside Grandad's bed. Grandad's right hand still wasn't fidgeting around, which was a relief. Gavin didn't start off by holding it, the way he'd always done before, because he wanted Lena to be there to see if anything happened when he did.

He'd got two new e-mails to read, one of them a three-pager from a model maker in Valparaiso whose English was only just good enough for the job. Usually Gavin would have found it fun making sense of it, but today it was difficult to concentrate enough. He felt desperately tense and nervous. All this was so important, and time never stopped leaking away, moment after moment after moment, and any of them might have been the one good moment when he could have got his message through to Grandad. He had to force himself to get up slowly
and not leap eagerly to his feet when Lena stopped what she was doing and came over.

"Ready to try again, then?"

"I was just waiting for you. Do you want me to start straight in?"

"Might as well. I've been working with him already. I just left his arms for you to do."

Gavin put the e-mails away and positioned himself beside the bed, feeling tenser than ever. This wasn't a test, for heaven's sake, he told himself. Lena wasn't going to yell at him if he got something wrong, but still it really mattered in ways he didn't understand. Except that anything he did for Grandad
might
matter. He took a deep, steadying breath and positioned Grandad's arm so that he could hold his hand comfortably.

"Lena's here now, Grandad," he said, "and she's going to watch me doing your exercises with you. First off I'm going to grab hold of your hand and give it a bit of a squeeze … there. Feel that? Squeeze back if you felt it…."

Nothing. Grandad's eyes were open, but his hand stayed fast asleep. Gavin had told himself, several times, this might happen, and managed to keep his voice cheerful.

"Never mind. I'll do it for you, to remind you."

Gently, with his free hand, he bent the sleeping fingers up. They didn't help. Didn't resist. Those tough, workman's fingers—Grandad used to crack walnuts with them, he'd once told Gavin; and they'd tied the tiny, precise knots and splices in
Selkie's
sails and rigging. Don't think about that now. Leave it. Go on to the exercises. Somehow he kept his voice even, cheerful, as he moved Grandad's arm about, telling him what
he was going to do and encouraging him to help. Every now and then Lena stopped him and took over, but made him put his fingertips on the separate muscles so that he could feel how they stretched or bunched as she flexed the joints and twisted the hand to and fro. He could tell the difference at once when she moved round to the other arm and did the same things there, though he couldn't think of a way of describing it.

"The connections are still all there on his right side," Lena explained. "Only he can't remember how to use them. A lot of what we're trying to do is simply reminding him, and in a few days' time he should be starting to remember. It's different on his left side. A lot of the connections are broken there, and he's going to have to find new ones. That'll take a good bit longer, of course.

"Want to take over? Time I was moving on, in any case. Carry on on this side for another ten minutes, and then go back and do a bit more on his right. Don't overdo it. He'll be getting tired soon, and so will you, I daresay. We don't want to wear you out."

She was right. Doing the exercises wasn't that hard work, but it was boring, and surprisingly tiring. Boring because it was doing the same thing over and over, with no result, and tiring because it mattered so much. Time somehow stuck. That first ten minutes seemed to take forever. He sighed with relief when he could go round to the other side of the bed and finish doing the right arm.

This was just as tiring, but less dreary, because now he could really feel the difference, feel Grandad there, inside his
sleeping arm, and from that go on to think that the pressure inside himself might perhaps have a purpose, that if he could somehow gather and shape it and find exactly the right place and moment, something might at last force its way through, and reach Grandad, and wake him from his sleep.

"That's enough, Grandad," he whispered at last. "Now let's have a bit of a rest."

He switched Grandad's hand into his own left hand so that he could sit, still holding it, and close his eyes and empty his mind and think about nothing at all, utterly exhausted, body and mind. The certainty, the self-assurance, that he'd begun to feel while he was doing the exercises, dwindled away. He'd hardly done anything, for heaven's sake—talked to Grandad a bit, moved his arms and fingers about a bit. There was no reason why he should have felt as tired as if he'd played a full game of football on a muddy field and then done two hours' difficult homework.

Right, so he was building up some kind of special magical power inside himself, which he was going to use to make Grandad well again? Like the selkies had given Grandad his stroke, because he'd been joking about them? Oh, yeah? Grandad had been going to have his stroke anyway. The GP's notes had come through, Mum said. Donald had been right— Grandad had had a couple of blackouts and been to Dr. Moray about them.

I've got to stop thinking like this, he told himself, and picked up
Model Boats
and opened it and started reading Grandad the first bit he came to. When he was bored with that he started on his homework, feeling buzzy and stupid, making
a lot of mistakes and finding it difficult to think of anything worth saying to Grandad about it. Gran showed up when he was about halfway through so he moved himself out to a chair by the reception desk so that she could be alone with Grandad. He kept dozing off and had only just finished the homework when Lena looked in to say good-bye.

"Same time tomorrow?" he said.

"Not sure," she said slowly, frowning at him in a bothered kind of way. "Well, maybe. I'll call your mother. I'll get the number at the desk."

"Suppose you aren't here, do I … ?"

"No, leave it. Time I did a bit of work myself. See you soon."

She left, and he tried to go back to his homework but fell asleep again, and didn't remember anything about what happened after that, until he woke up in the car and saw they were back in Stonehaven, just turning up out of Slug Road.

Next morning, while he was stacking his dirties together to put in the dishwasher, Mum said, "Don't get up for a minute, darling. I need to talk to you."

She'd never been any good at hiding her feelings. He could always tell. This time, even before he looked at her, he knew it was something serious and he wasn't going to like it. He waited.

"Your friend Lena called last night," she said. "I'm sorry, darling, but she doesn't think you should go over to the hospital every day, and nor do I."

"Oh, Mum! But—"

"No, listen, darling. I was really thankful she called, because I was going to tell you the same off my own bat, but I knew you'd take it better from her. She's got a lot of experience, not just with stroke victims but with their families. She knows what a strain it is for them. She knows how helpless we all feel."

"But I don't feel helpless, Mum. Not while I'm
doing
something. I only will if you stop me."

"Yes, of course, darling. That's why Lena was so ready to let you do what you're doing. She thought it would also help you, just to feel that you were doing something for Grandad, but now she's beginning to wish she hadn't. You're putting too much strain on yourself. Already you're wearing yourself out. You won't last a week the way you're going, she says. And I agree."

"But, Mum … !"

"No, darling. You yourself know it's true. You were dead on your feet by the time I got to the ward last night. I had to steer you back to the car—you'd never have made it on your own. Grandad himself would tell you the same, and he'd tell you too that you've simply got to have a life of your own, doing the usual sort of things you do, hanging out with your friends, all that…."

"It won't be any good, Mum. I won't be able to think about anything else. I'd be a complete drag."

"Well, you're going to have to try, darling. That's the deal. You can go on going to the hospital every other day, but only provided you promise me that you'll do your utmost best on
your off days to lead an ordinary kind of life, like I said. If you can't promise me that, then I'll ask Robert to stop taking you over. You understand?"

She paused for an answer. Gavin could only stare at the table, shaking his head.

"It isn't all down to you, darling," she said quietly, laying her hand on his. "Really it isn't. That's very important. This is a team effort. We've all got to face the fact that Grandad may not get better, and if he doesn't it won't be anyone's fault. But if you keep thinking it's all down to you, then you're going to blame yourself for the rest of your life for letting it happen. That's why Lena and I have agreed to let you go over at all, so that you know in your heart you've done everything you possibly can.

"So next week you can go to the hospital every other day, and then we'll see how you're bearing up. All right? Now I'm going to call Robert and tell him he's let off taking you today. Poor man. Do you realize what he's given up for you out of Christian charity? He isn't allowed to smoke in the dispensary, of course, so the drive over to Aberdeen is his last chance of a decent drag on his disgusting cigarettes until whenever he has his coffee break. Who'd have imagined I'd ever feel any sympathy for a chain-smoker! You live and learn."

"All right," said Gavin slowly. "We'll give it a go. I'll do supper tonight. Is it okay if I don't go round to Mrs. McCracken's after school and go fishing instead? Leave me some money in case I don't catch anything."

"Well…"

Mum didn't really like him going about on his own, but she was better about it than some of the other mums.

"I'll take Dodgem to guard me," he suggested.

It was just a joke, to make it easier for her. You couldn't have imagined Dodgem guarding anything except his own dinner bowl.

"I'll go round to Brian's next time. He's got a new game."

"Oh, all right. Sugar snaps if they've got them. Give me a call when you're in."

It worked out okay. Thinking about it while he got himself ready for school, Gavin realized that he was actually relieved not to be going to the hospital every day. He didn't really
want
to—he'd just felt he
had
to, so he couldn't even have chosen not to. He'd needed Mum to stop him. Now, since he'd promised her, he'd do his best to keep his side of the bargain, and that meant, as far as possible, never being alone with time to start brooding, but really concentrating on his lessons, and mucking in with some of the others in whatever they were doing in break and so on.

He took a look at his homework on the way to school. He'd done the math first, and it was pretty awful, but the French was a disaster. Luckily it wasn't due till the afternoon, and he didn't want Miss Finch letting him off because of Grandad, so he did it again during dinner. He had a few bad patches during the day, but he shook them off. Literally. At one point he found himself deliberately giving his whole body a violent
shudder as he tried to get rid of a mental image of Grandad lying in his bed in the ward.

Like Dodgem after he's been in the sea, he thought. Okay, I
will
take Dodgem fishing. Then we can walk along the beach to Safeway. He'll like that.

That worked out too, though he'd been afraid fishing hadn't been such a bright idea because it would give him plenty of time to brood. But getting Dodgem past all his message posts on the way down to the harbor was a bit of a distraction. Once there he flopped down onto the cobbles and went to sleep, and didn't even wake up while Gavin was heaving him, one end at a time, out of everyone's way.