A Mother Like You by Ruby Speechley

Author:Ruby Speechley [Speechley, Ruby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hera
Published: 2020-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

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There were no nurses at the desk when Kate arrived on the ward, so she carried on along the corridor until she came to ‘G’ bay. It wasn’t until she’d reached halfway into the room that Kate realised her mother’s bed was empty. It had been stripped back to the plastic covering the mattress. Her ‘get well’ cards had been collected and left in a pile on the bedside cupboard. Kate clutched the brown envelope a little tighter to her body. Could they be letting her come home already? That would explain it. She gave an uneasy smile at the woman sitting in the bed opposite, but she frowned back.

‘Waiting for my mum,’ Kate said to her.

The woman continued to concentrate on her elaborate set of knitting needles with three shades of blue wool.

‘Did they say if she’d be long?’

But the woman didn’t look up again from the rhythm of her tapping needles.

Kate sat in the chair next to the empty bed and gazed out of the window at the miniature rooftops below. Soon she’d be having her twelve-week scan. At last she’d be able to share the special moment of seeing the baby with James.

A pigeon flew straight at the glass with an almighty thud, making her jump up. The bird fell away, and she pressed her face to the window, imagining it hurtling to the ground. Shaken, she hugged the envelope to her body.

‘Do you know if they are letting her come home today?’ Kate’s shadow fell across the woman knitting. She glanced up, but Kate couldn’t be sure if there was a slight nod or if she imagined it. The clicking needles seemed to speed up.

‘Mrs Marshall…’ A nurse in full stride was heading towards her, hand in the air as if hailing a cab. ‘Mrs Marshall…’ came the nurse’s insistent tone as she stopped in front of Kate, ‘could you come this way, please?’

She followed the nurse along the corridor into a room the size of a cupboard. The nurse bowed her head and arranged her fingers so they linked in front of her.

‘We tried to call you this morning, but there was no answer.’ Her delivery was chillingly formal. A hundred needles pressed into Kate’s chest.

‘It was very sudden and unexpected.’ The downy hair on the nurse’s top lip moved in slow motion as she spoke.

Kate blinked. She wanted the nurse to repeat herself. Sudden? Unexpected? She clutched the envelope tighter but her hot fingers were melting into the paper.

‘Your mother had another heart attack early this morning.’ The nurse closed her eyes for longer than a blink. ‘Like I said, we tried to call you, several times.’

Kate dropped into a chair, hand to her forehead, black dots blotting her vision. This couldn’t happen. Not now. When they were finally starting to understand each other. Her mother still had so many things to tell her about her family and her real dad. How would she find out about any of it now? She didn’t want her mother to die.

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