Cataindar

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

They were going to visit Mum in hospital.  Luisa and her uncle sat side by side in the car.  Max wasn’t allowed to come.  In Luisa’s hand was a picture he had drawn for their mum.  They chugged along.  Hugh seemed apprehensive and said little for the journey, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. 

In the hospital Dr. Ward came and met them.

Hugh pulled him aside, and they had a quiet conversation. The Doctor returned and sat down next to Luisa.

“Your Mum has been going through some treatments Luisa. We are trying to shrink this thing in her brain, by zapping it, but healthy cells get hurt too.  So she may… look a little different than when you last saw her.  So although she looks sick now, it is to try and help her get better.”

He took them through her mum’s room.  Luisa’s mum lay on the bed.  Her once thick hair was thin and wispy.  Her face was pale, with dark circles under her eyes.  She smiled at Luisa. 

“It is so good to see you darling.”

Luisa ran over and buried her face in her mum’s lap and her body shook, overcome with immediate tears. She could not help it.  It was awful seeing her mum like this, in this place.  Her Mum stroked her hair.

“Shh… don’t cry Luisa please.”

Her mum asked lots of questions about her and Max, about how they were doing, if they were eating enough and getting on with their grandmother.  Luisa gave her mum the drawing Max had made for her. After they had spoken for a while her mum turned a little more serious.

“Luisa darling I need to have a few words with Uncle Hugh. Would you mind waiting outside for a bit?”

“I love you Mum.”

“I love you too darling,”

She sat down on the blue plastic chairs outside, feeling shaken, seeing her mum like that had shocked her.  She felt like a hand had grabbed her insides and wasn’t letting go.  It had reminded her of Thorne too.

Nearby Dr. Ward was flicking through some medical papers.  Luisa decided to go up to him.

“Doctor, can you explain to me what, is actually and exactly wrong with my mum? You don’t have to treat me like a kid.”

The young doctor looked down at Luisa.

“I suppose I can… of course.”

He gestured to the open door of his office and brought up some images on his computer. 

“Luisa, it would be very rare for us to keep a patient in for this long.  But your mother is an exception, a very special case.  What I am showing you is called a CT scan.  It is a scan of your Mum’s brain.  Look.”

The image on the screen was an oblong shape that looked like a grapefruit.

Near the middle there was a small bright white circle.

The doctor put his finger on the circle.  He spoke softly.

“This is the tumour inside her brain.  It is unlike anything we have seen before. See a different scan, this one taken from the side.”

Luisa could clearly see her Mum’s profile.  The circle was again there in the back of her brain, a little smaller than a marble.

“It is almost a perfect sphere.” The doctor was looking at it in wonder.  “In my medical experience there has been nothing like this.  Its density is far greater than any normal tumour.  Amazing really… I don’t know if it some new form of disease or a rare cancer that is somehow binding into itself…  if it was not growing, I would have said it was a foreign object, there are cases of people wandering around with a bullet in their brains for years. But…” He looked at Luisa and his face softened. “…it is growing.  This is why we have been quite aggressive with our treatments.  So far they have not helped stall or shrink its growth.  Quite the opposite actually.  I think the only option we have now is to operate soon, but the danger...” He suddenly stood up checking himself.  “Goodness me, I’m sorry Luisa... I shouldn’t really be telling you this without your mother’s permission.” He put his hand on her shoulder.  “I would love to talk to you more, but really, I have many patients to see.”  They left the small office, and the Doctor made to walk away. But Luisa had one more question, this time for Thorne. She grabbed the doctor’s sleeve.

“Doctor, umm how long would it take for someone, someone small, like my size, to recover from a stab wound in the stomach?”

Dr. Ward looked at Luisa quizzically. 

“What a bizarre thing to say.  It would depend on a lot of factors Luisa. Depth, force, size of the wound…” Suddenly his face went very serious. “Is there something I should know?”

Luisa shook her head. “No, no.  I was just sort of wondering. It was just something I saw on TV.”

He gave her a strange look and hurried away.

Luisa’s uncle appeared from her mum’s room.  His face was blotchy and his eyes were red and swollen.

“Give me a hug ‘bach.”

Luisa hugged her uncle.  He smelt like an old paper bag.

“Let’s go darling.  Your ‘ma isn’t feeling too good. We will come back soon ‘kay?”

Back at her grandmother’s Hugh and her grandmother went into the dining room to talk with the door closed.  Luisa did not like it at all.  She sat with Max, and numbly answered the questions he had.  He had done another drawing and was desperate for her to see.

“Oh Max… that’s really good.” She said looking at the floor.

In the evening when Hugh had gone and Max was in bed, Luisa’s grandmother asked to speak to her. She sat down on the sofa next to her.

“Luisa.  There is no simple way of saying this so it is best that I just say it.”

Luisa looked down, rubbing the hem of her t-shirt between her fingers.

“There is a high probability that your mother may not make it out of hospital.  Treatment is not working and if they operate they say there is a high chance she might not make it through, or be how she was… before. It hurts me to say… well facts are facts and we must plan ahead, we must plan for the worst.”

Each word that came out of her grandmother’s mouth fell like meteors on Luisa’s small world. She focused intensely on the hem of her t-shirt.

“It is something I have been thinking for a while. Given your, manners, and well I might as well just say it; level of education. Luisa tomorrow we are going to Ruthin School. A proper school, not an awful, common state school like the one you go to in London.  It is the same school that our family have traditionally gone to, for generations, the school that I went to.  It is a boarding school and quite near by, so you will get to visit little Maximus occasionally, though he will join you once he is old enough.  You will start in two weeks time as they begin ahead of regular schools.”

Luisa put her face in her hands for a moment and breathed in slowly. It was all too much.  Suddenly she stood up. 

“Goodnight Grandmother.”

Her grandmother nodded.  Her face was hard and her mouth set in a tight line.

“Goodnight Luisa.”

    

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Goodness - I even have a pit in my stomach writing this! Ah!

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