Henry Hoey Hobson (14 page)

It was a quiet trip back home.

I didn't want to think about Anders being lonely. I had enough on my plate as it was.

I had to get changed. Make sure Caleb had told Mr Paulson that I wouldn't be coming to school today. Get some clothes for Mum and pick a bunch of flowers from the hydrangea bush out front of our house to take up to the hospital. She loved hydrangeas, especially the blue ones. Called them
Nanna flowers.
Said they were one of the reasons she had rented the house.

I told him I had to get some stuff from home and jumped out of the car as soon as he stopped. I figured I could hole up at home till it was time to go the hospital, but as soon as I set my foot inside the front door, I knew that I was wrong.

The place was like the inside of a drum. Vibrating with emptiness. Every muscle in my body wanted to spin me round and walk me straight back out again. But there were things I had to do. A quick clean-up. Hang out the washing that had been sitting in the machine since yesterday. Sort out what stuff I needed to take to Mum.

Half an hour later, I was back next door with an armful of clothes and a bunch of blue hydrangeas clutched in one hand.

Manny prised them out of my fingers in the kitchen. ‘Here, I'll wrap these up for your mum while you put those clothes away in your room.'

He'd been busy while I was out. My bed was made and a chest of drawers was squeezed in next to the desk. No-one ever made my bed – I was usually still in it when Mum went to work, and I'd never seen the point of making something I was going to mess up again that night.

I slid open the drawers. All empty and just waiting for me to fill them.

I shoved my clothes in and picked up the bag of things I'd grabbed for Mum. A couple of giant T-shirts she could use for nighties, a toothbrush and toothpaste. That was probably all that she'd need.

I wandered back out to the kitchen where Manny was making himself a cup of tea. His mug had a picture of a fat lady, swooning in a chair, and the words
Happily Dying from Chocolate.

‘Where is everyone?'

Manny looked around. ‘I thought Anders was with you. Caleb's working, and Vee's sleeping. Don't expect to see her anytime soon.'

I thought about Mum calling Vee
the reclusive Violet Winter
the first time they had met. She obviously didn't tell her fans what she had told me last night.

‘What time does she normally get up?'

The jug boiled and automatically clicked off. Manny held up a packet of green tea with mint and wiggled it at me. I shook my head.

‘We try to keep pretty quiet in the mornings for her,' he said, pouring boiling water into his mug and dunking the bag three times before pulling it out. ‘She usually gets up in the early afternoon, but tends to stick to her room till dark. It's blacked out better than the rest of the house.'

‘I'm going to head off to the hospital,' I said. ‘Tell Vee and Caleb I'll see them this arvo.' A thought struck me. ‘Did Caleb remember to tell Mr Paulson that I wasn't coming in today?'

‘He did,' said Manny. ‘Your principal said to pass on to your mum his best wishes for a speedy recovery. And to let him know if there's anything he or the school can do to help while she's laid up.'

He was a good bloke, Mr Paulson, but I'd made my decision. There wasn't anything he or Perpetual Suckers could do for me from now on. I wasn't ever going back to that school. But right now, I didn't feel like getting into all that with Manny.

‘Can you tell Anders that I decided to walk to the hospital–'

‘Tell him yourself,' said Manny, nodding in the direction of the lounge.

I turned to see Anders, bleary-eyed but upright, standing in the doorway with his keys in his hand.

‘You ready?' he asked.

I nodded and he turned on his heel and headed straight back out the door.

Manny raised his eyebrows as he passed me Mum's blue hydrangeas, now wrapped in bright yellow tissue paper and tied with a green bow.

‘Thanks.' I grabbed the flowers and the bag for Mum and waved a quick goodbye. If Anders wanted to save me a long hot walk to the hospital, I wasn't going to say no.

He was already in the driver's seat when I reefed open the door. He'd cleared a space for me in the front passenger seat. Everything that had been in the front was now neatly stacked alongside the canvasses, paints and boxes in the back.

I climbed in and buckled up, just as an important thought slapped me in the head. ‘Hang on a tick–' I twisted round in my seat, craning my head to see if I could spot the yellow envelope in the back. ‘Where's Mum's contract?'

‘At the real-estate office,' he said, pulling away from the kerb.

I propped myself sideways in the seat and stared at him. ‘You took it in? Why didn't you wait for me?'

‘You were busy.' His hands shifted on the wheel, gripping it tighter. ‘And I thought you'd want to be at the hospital when visiting hours start. To tell your mum the good news.'

He pulled up at the red light on the corner. ‘She'll be paid as soon as the property settles in thirty days time.'

I sagged back into the seat, thinking out loud. ‘OK, then we just have to get through the next thirty days. We can do that. I can deliver pamphlets or something. I've done it before.'

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. A beep behind let us know that the lights had changed to green. He took off, lips compressed into a tight line.

We were almost at the hospital before he spoke again.

‘Your rent's paid for the next month. Manny will feed you. You can give me any bills that come in till your mum is back on her feet.'

I didn't know what to say. I'd only known him for a couple of days. ‘Uh, thanks, but I don't think Mum would like that–'

‘Consider it a loan. Till her commission comes through.'

I thought about that for a minute and couldn't see any reason to object to the arrangement. It seemed fair enough. ‘OK. Thanks. I'll see what Mum says.'

His mouth worked, like he was chewing on something but it wasn't in his nature to just spit it out.

‘I thought you said people should say stuff out loud,' I said. ‘Instead of keeping it all inside their head.'

He glanced over at me and blew air out from between his lips.

‘OK,' he said finally. ‘I think you're right. Your mum's not going to like it.'

He swung into the car park.

‘But right now, she doesn't have much choice.'

Anders' internal satellite navigation system tracked us quickly and efficiently through Royal Brisbane's maze of walkways and corridors and into a part of the hospital that I hadn't seen before.

The surgical ward was a bit of an improvement on last night's jammed corridors in Emergency, but not much. There were still way too many sick and wounded people for my liking. Too many beds, drips and trolleys. And that antiseptic smell that didn't exist anywhere else in the world, that had gotten right up my nose. That, and my worries about Mum, made the nerves jump under my skin every time I spotted a blonde head on a pillow, in a ward or wheeling slowly up the corridor.

Anders stopped suddenly and I barrelled into the back of him. He backtracked, checked the ward and bed numbers again, and frowned.

‘What?' Anxiety made my voice squeak.

‘She's supposed to be in Bed 9. You stay here. I'll find–'

‘What are
you
doing here?' The harsh accusation in my mother's voice spun me around.

She was standing not three metres away in a corridor coming off to the left. Propped up on crutches with a nurse at her elbow, presumably to catch her if she fell – and right now she looked like she just might.

Her lower left leg was off the floor in a half-cast that was open at the front. Her right forearm wore a lightweight cast too, but it was her face, ashen with shock and pain, that hurt the most to see.

‘Mum–' I ran to her, throwing my arms around her, crushing my flowers against her crutches, burying my face in the flattened fluff on the crown of her head. Without her heels, she came up to my chin. Her body trembled, tense and stiff in my arms. ‘I couldn't go to school. I had to make sure you were all right.'

I pulled away, babbling out my news. ‘We found your contract – well, Anders did, in your car. They're going to pay you, everything's going to be OK–'

‘Andy–?' Her voice came out in a strangled whisper; her eyes wide and staring as they swung between the two of us.

‘And
ers,
' I reminded her. ‘He's a friend of Manny and Caleb's – the artist, remember? He took the contract into your work this morning. They said the money would come through in thirty days so you don't need to worry–'

‘Your mum's gone a bit pale, love,' interrupted the nurse at her side. ‘We might sit her down for a minute.'

She grabbed a wheelchair parked next to the wall and I helped her settle Mum into it. Her face was grey and sweaty from the effort. But there was something else going on. She was staring past me like there was a snake in the room; she didn't even react when I lay the flowers I'd brought with me into her lap.

I grabbed at the nurse's arm in alarm. ‘She's sick,' I said accusingly. ‘She shouldn't be out of bed. She just had her leg operated on–'

‘Your mum's doing remarkably well,' the nurse said. ‘All things considered.'

She took Mum's wrist in her hand, timing her pulse against the watch hanging from the front of her uniform. ‘The surgeon was able to plate and screw the broken bone. She'll probably be able to go home in a few days–'

‘Go home? She only just came in–'

‘She's managing the crutches, that's the main thing. She can't put any weight on that leg for the next few weeks, but she doesn't need to be in hospital while it heals. Trust me, love. She will be better off at home.'

She patted Mum's hand. ‘Your pulse is racing, so have a bit of a rest here with your family.' She picked up the bunch of crushed hydrangeas. ‘I'll pop these into a vase and be back to check on you in a few minutes.'

She walked briskly off down the corridor.

I turned back to Mum. Some colour had flared in her cheeks. Her eyes were hard, nailing Anders to the wall.

Every muscle in his body had tensed, as though steeling him against a blow he could see coming but was powerless to avoid. He looked cornered, but at the same time oddly determined, as though backing down was no longer an option; he'd take the hit, come what may.

It struck me then that he had looked that way the first morning I had met him.

‘Mum–' I placed a hand on her good knee. ‘What's going on?'

Her chest rose and fell, her breath coming in short, hard gasps, as though it hurt her to breathe.

‘That's a good question, honey-bun,' she said in a voice I barely recognised. ‘Maybe And
ers
here could answer it. Maybe he could tell us both what he thinks he's doing here with my son–'

‘Mum, don't–' I grabbed her good hand. ‘He's been helping me, helping us. You don't know him, he's–'

‘No,
you
don't know him,' she said fiercely. ‘You know nothing about this man. Nothing–'

‘And neither do you Lydia,' said Anders, stepping forward to stand beside me. The blood had run out of his cheeks, leaving his face pale against the black wings of his hair. His blue eyes blazed with a determination I hadn't seen before. ‘I was a
boy,
Lydia. Only five years older than Henry is now–'

‘Get out,' she hissed. ‘You have no right–'

‘Maybe not. But you have no right either, to keep uprooting this boy and running away every time I try to get in touch–'

‘Wait – You two
know
each other?' I looked from one to the other. My mother, hard-eyed and colder than I'd ever seen her; Anders, pale but determined in the face of her inexplicable anger.

‘Righty-ho, back again.' It was the nurse, returning with the battered hydrangeas in a stubby white vase. ‘If you grab the flowers, lovey, your dad can take your mum's wheelchair and–'

‘He's not my–'

The words caught in my throat. Anders and I had both turned when the nurse sang out. Behind her was a window that reflected back a clear image of us. Side by side. The two of us, black-haired, pale skinned and ... My eyes met Anders' in the mirrored glass.

Blue-eyed.

The world tilted and I grabbed for the only person who could make sense of what my eyes were seeing ... what my mind couldn't quite grasp.

But my mum wasn't looking at me. She was staring, her eyes brimming with bitter tears, at Anders.

I backed away from her. She looked like a stranger, pinched and ill, in her wheelchair. Her hands flew up, alarm making her voice sharp. ‘Honey-bun, wait–'

Anders moved towards me, reaching out, his voice cracking.

‘Henry–'

I kept backing, needing to put some distance between them and me. Needing to get away from the slip-sliding world that was rolling and bucking under my feet. I needed to find a space where I could curl up, away from them and the pain and confusion of all their untold stories.

A trolley banged into the back of my legs. I swerved round it, glad to have a physical barrier between me and them. The ding of the lift sounded behind me.

‘Honey–'

‘Don't!' I raised both palms to ward off their words. Anders froze and I backed away, holding both of them in place with short, jerky movements of my hands. ‘Just ... don't.'

Then I turned and I ran.

The lift doors slid closed as I threw myself through the gap. I jerked my head around to see Anders sprinting towards me, the doors slamming shut on his anguished shout.

‘Henry, wait!'