Once Upon a Wardrobe(39)

I cannot stop the thoughts. George not breathing. George crying out for help.

I remember the time Mr. Lewis asked me, “Can you explain how ideas come into your head?” I hadn’t fully understood his question, but now I do—for how am I to explain all the ideas now flooding my thoughts? I don’t want these thoughts. I don’t want these ideas, but here they are: thinking themselves, as it were, like a dream making itself in the night.

I finally reach Charles Hasting Way and burst through the scrolled iron gate of the brick Worcester Royal Hospital. I take the marble stairs two at a time and bolt through the doors of hospital where warm air surrounds me. The door slams shut behind me.

In front of me is a faded yellow linoleum stretch of counter covered in papers and pens and clipboards. Behind this barrier stand nurses in white and doctors with the snakes of stethoscopes.

“George Devonshire,” I say, catching my breath. “Where is he?”

A nurse with tangled auburn hair wears a white cap with a single streak of something dark at its edge. Red lipstick has smeared on her front tooth. My senses are hyperaware, waiting for something to calm me. “Dear girl, who are you? Are you family?”

“I’m his sister, Megs. Where is my brother?”

“He’s in a room on the second floor.”

I start to take off when her voice stops me. “Wait!” Her white shoes squeak as she moves toward me in a rush.

I halt abruptly, almost tripping over my own feet; I don’t even know how to get to the second floor. Where did I think I was going?

“Wait here,” she says and walks from around the counter.

“Is he . . . ?” I don’t even know what my question is. Or I’m afraid to know.

The nurse—now I can see her name badge: Eleanor—is at my side. “He’s okay. He’s getting some oxygen. You just wait here. I will retrieve your mother.”

A thousand years or more pass, then Mum walks out of an elevator and comes to me, throws her arms around me. She’s wearing a pair of brown tweed pants and a white buttoned shirt that might be Dad’s, not an outfit she would ever be caught wearing outside. Always a tight cinched dress and pearls for Mum.

“He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.” Three times, as if that’s truth’s magic number.

I pull back to stare at her, tears rising as surely as the Cherwell after a storm. “What happened?”

“He couldn’t breathe. He just would suck in air and nothing would happen. His lips were blue, and I threw him in the car. They gave him oxygen. He’s fine now. Sleeping with pink lips . . . He’s okay.” She trembles with the memory. “He’s okay.”

“Did he try to do something? Go somewhere?”

“He was in that wardrobe again, Megs. He can think or talk of nothing else.”

“Going from his bed to his wardrobe would not tire him that way. That’s not it. He’s getting worse, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Mum obviously has no energy for anything but the truth. She would not and could not put two squares of sugar on this for me or for anyone else. George is getting sicker. Mum turns to me. “How is my darling girl? Are you studying hard for exams?”

“I’m finished with them, Mum. I thought you knew.”

“You look tired.”

“Take me to George.”

“Don’t be frightened by all the equipment around him. It’s all okay . . .”

I nod.

For all the times my brother has been to hospital, I have never been with him here. Now the odors come to me—slowly, like all my other senses are returning now that I know George is breathing. Alcohol, bleach, vomit, and something tangy I don’t recognize. I’m frightened it might be blood. Shoes squeak on tile floors, and there’s the soft hum of voices and high buzz of bells and disorienting overhead beeping. I feel dizzy and place my hands on either side of my head as we enter the elevator.

With a ding, it lets us out. I follow Mum down a narrow hallway with closed doors on either side, names in chalk on the doors. The halls are decorated with children’s drawings, paintings of a circus and balloons and bright colors splashed everywhere. This is the children’s ward. Christmas lights are strung along the nurse’s desk, and a picture of baby Jesus in a manger hangs on the wall.

Mum reaches room 236 and pushes open the door with her hip. I rush past Dad, who stands at the end of the bed, his hands clenched around its metal rail. I mean to go straight to George, but there are poles and tubes in the way. Some tubes go into his nose and others into his arm. I stop fast and look down at him. His eyes are closed.

“George.”

He opens his eyes. “Megs.”

Just that is enough to bring my heart to its knees.

“Did you bring me another story?” he asks with a smile. The tubes in his nose push up, pop out. He fixes them himself as I lean down to whisper.

“Yes, I did.”

George’s cloudy eyes grow brighter, and he moves over in his bed like he expects me to crawl in. His curls splay over his forehead, and his arm with the needle and the tube is placed carefully on his chest.

Mum notices his movement and steps forward. “You cannot crawl into that bed, Margaret Louise.”

“I wasn’t planning on it, Mum.” I grab a plastic chair and draw it forward and next to his bed. It screeches, and we all jump. “I’ll sit here with him. You and Dad go take a break. Get a cuppa.”