The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Read online

  The two leave the room, noticing me like the doctor did earlier.

  “You’re Dr Park’s daughter, aren’t you?” the older nurse says.

  “Yep.”

  “You’re on the wrong floor I’m afraid – he’s one below us.”

  “I know,” I say. “The toilets down there weren’t working.”

  “This building,” the older nurse says, clicking her tongue. “Give your father my love, won’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “No problem.”

  I walk with them to the lift and then go down one floor. No one else has arrived yet. I take a seat next to my father’s bed again; I wonder whether he knows the doctor I saw upstairs, whether he’d approve of his briskness, if that’s what people mean when they say calm, professional care. I look down at him, at the blond hairs on the backs of his hands, and the dopey expression people get when they’re asleep. You’re easier to deal with when you’re unconscious, Dad, I tell him silently, then my inner Gillian says, don’t think like that in here. Even if I don’t want my father in my life, that doesn’t mean he deserves to die, or stay comatose permanently. I straighten the hem of my skirt.

  “I used to want to work in a hospital, you know?” I say out loud, feeling stupid. “That didn’t work out, obviously.”

  He takes a sudden, shuddering breath, and I’m sure I catch his eyelids flickering.

  I cross the room and yank the door open, my heart pounding. “Can someone come in here please?”

  Down the hall the nurse who was being chewed out earlier looks up, sulkily, from her clipboard.

  “I think he opened his eyes,” I say. Her expression isn’t very encouraging, but I keep talking. “I think he looked at me.”

  “I’ll come and check on him,” she says, and starts walking slowly in my direction.

  “Are you his nurse?”

  “For today.”

  “Are there loads of you?”

  “Loads of us?”

  “I’ve seen someone different each day.”

  “Well… we’re all very fond of your dad,” she says. She’s nearly reached the doorway and she smiles at me for the first time. “We all wanted to help out.”

  “Thanks,” I say, trying to smile back.

  She leans in close. “He’s the only doctor that all the staff like, actually.”

  “Really?” Really?

  “Dr Park’s never too busy, doesn’t push people if there’s a decision to be made.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nods at him. “I don’t need to tell you what he’s like though, do I?”

  I smile inwardly. Well yes, you do actually. He spent all day patiently letting other people make decisions, then came home and refused to let his own daughter do the same.

  She goes over to the bed and checks the monitor. “What did you say happened?”

  “He took a deep breath, then I thought he opened his eyes.” My voice kind of squeaks when I say the last bit.

  She hums as she checks his chart and peers at his monitor. I wonder if Gillian’s on her way.

  “His heart rate’s gone down,” the nurse says, straightening up. “I’ll get the doctor to come by and have a look.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I’m sure everything’s fine,” she says, but she looks worried.

  I go back to the toilet and lock myself in a cubicle. I sit on the loo, bending forwards so my face is almost touching the knees of my jeans, hands clapped onto either ear; I try to control my breathing. If there’s a problem, it’ll be my fault. I didn’t want him to wake up before Malkie brought Jack round, and now he’s getting worse.

  Eventually I sit up. I pee, wash my hands and face and pat myself dry with some flimsy blue paper towels. Strange that I was here less than an hour ago; it seems longer now.

  Malkie’s story about my grandfather made me feel weird for a while, but I mostly forgot about it after the bike incident.

  It was muffled voices that woke me and took me to the top of the stairs. I looked down and saw the bike in the hallway. The door to the living-room was closed and there was a slash of light underneath it. I couldn’t hear who was talking, or what they were saying and I wondered about the cyclist. Apart from the tutor and Malkie, no one came to see us at my grandmother’s. We were at least a fifteen-minute walk from the village and it was late. A sudden panic took hold of me, and I rushed to my grandmother’s room to check whether she was asleep and we were being burgled. Her bed was still made up. I looked at the clock on her bedside table – two in the morning.

  I went back to the top of the stairs and called out. The voices paused; a floorboard along the corridor from me creaked and night air rustled through cracks in the walls. I felt all the hairs on my arms stand up, then I heard quick footsteps and light flooded the hallway. Someone was standing framed in the living-room doorway.

  “What is it, Tallulah?” my grandmother asked.

  “I heard voices.”

  “So you decided to get out of bed at two in the morning on a school night?”

  “I heard voices,” I said, stubbornly.

  “Yes, well now you know – I sleep badly. I’m old. Go back to bed.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m talking to an old acquaintance. Now go back to bed.”

  My bed was cold when I got back into it. I wished I had Mr Tickles there to sleep on my feet. I curled up into a ball and tried to stay awake, listening out for the cyclist leaving, but I fell asleep straight away.

  Malkie came to teach me once a week. I was picking it up fast, he said. It must be in my blood. “Your mother was musical,” he said.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. There was a small squeezing feeling inside my chest at the thought that I didn’t know everything about her. “What did she play?”

  “She played the piano too. Didn’t she ever tell you?”

  “No.”

  Malkie shifted in the seat beside me. “She wanted to be a concert pianist when I knew her,” he said. “She was practising loads until she was ’bout twenty-five, then something happened to distract her, or so I hear.”

  “She was twenty-five when I was born.”

  Malkie grinned. “Yup.”

  I tried to imagine my life in twelve years time. “Do you think twenty-five is young to have a baby?”

  “Depends on the person,” he said. “Your grandma was twenty when your Aunt Gillian was born.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Young and beautiful, or so I hear.”

  “My grandma was beautiful?”

  “Oh yeah. Good-looking family, the Parks. Especially your Aunt Vivienne.” He jiggled his eyebrows.

  “She’s not as beautiful as she thinks she is,” I said, feeling jealous.

  “Oh, she is, and more,” Malkie said. “Don’t worry, doll. You’ll outshine her one of these days.” He clapped me on the back and checked the clock on the wall. “Speaking of family

  – I’ll be going back to Canada for a little while. See my mom while she’s still up and running.”

  I hadn’t thought that his mum might still be alive. “How long will you be gone for?”

  “Hopefully not too long. I’ll bring you something nice.”

  “You won’t come and see me.”

  He shook his head at me. “You have a lot of attitude for someone with fancy new hair and clothes.”

  “Well, it’s true,” I said. “You never came to see me before.”

  He ruffled my hair. “I’ll definitely write – I promise. Now, I better get, you have studying to do.”

  I pulled a face.

  He stood up and shrugged his jacket on; it was beige, with a white sheepskin lining. He was wearing cowboy boots too, and a woollen hat with ear flaps. He looked like an Eskimo brought up on Clint Eastwood films.

  “Malkie,” I said, pulling the black keys of the piano up until they stuck there. “Did you like my mum?”

  “Cour
se I did.”

  “Why?”

  “I dunno – why do you like anyone? ’Cos she was kind and funny.”

  “When her and Vivienne fell out,” I said. “It wasn’t… ”

  “Wasn’t what?”

  “My mum didn’t do anything wrong? Vivienne was just being Vivienne, right?”

  He started to say something but I cut him off.

  “I mean – I get why she’d be angry with Grandma, even if it’s not really her fault my grandad was horrible to her. But my mum couldn’t have done anything bad to her.”

  “No,” Malkie said. “Your mum would never have done something bad to Viv. She didn’t have a bad bone in her body. She was just a sweet kid.”

  “She wasn’t really a kid.”

  “Not a kid then,” Malkie said. “But there was something about Evie that made you want to look after her. I guess ’cos she’d had to bring herself up, after her parents died. You kind of wanted to give her a break.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ll grow up, princess,” Malkie said. “And you’ll see we all just want the same things, really.”

  When he’d gone I went to find my grandmother in the kitchen.

  “When did you grow up?” I asked her.

  “Is that a joke, young lady?” She was unscrewing a bottle of arthritis pills and counting them out carefully onto the kitchen table.

  “How do you know you’ve grown up, then?”

  She carried on counting the pills, heaping them into small neat piles. “Growing up is just about feeling comfortable in your own skin,” she said. “Some people never manage it.” She looked up. “Are you going to bother me, or are you going to do your homework?”

  “I’m bothering.”

  “Silly question, I suppose.” She put her bottle down and looked at me. “There’s nothing wrong with it. People are just scared of change.”

  I eyed her pills. “I’m not scared,” I said.

  “Good girl,” she said. “Be brave in everything, even things you don’t want to do.”

  She rested her hand on my forehead. I closed my eyes and concentrated on feeling her fingers as solid, things that wouldn’t fall away, but they were as dry and as light as paper.

  The whole three months I stayed there, the house and grounds felt like they were always on the verge of snow although it didn’t in fact arrive until early December. When I finally woke up to see the world covered in a frozen white blanket, I ran outside with boots and an overcoat on, breathing in air that was so crisp it burned my throat on its way down.

  Underneath the snow, the garden looked like it rolled on and on forever. I lay on my back and made a snow angel, like my mother had taught me when I was younger, enjoying the feel of my skin go numb then hot again. Eventually I sat up and went to explore the rest of the garden. The lake was solid, and a lonely bird was chirping mournfully in the middle of it, eyes fixed on the food swimming underneath the ice. When he was still there after dinner, I brought him some bread, and left it on the jetty.

  My grandmother stopped working in the garden when she slipped on a fine layer of frost and hurt her hip, so I had to do the planting, preparing the beds for onions and digging up the rosemary and winter radishes. My grandmother watched from the living-room and banged on the window if she thought I wasn’t treating her vegetables carefully enough.

  “What took you so long?” she’d say when I came inside, my fingers swollen and red from the cold and the work. “When I was younger I had to do this, the washing, the cooking and the scrubbing all in one afternoon. You would never make it.”

  “Yeah, but we have technology now,” I said.

  “Hruh,” came the reply.

  I was planting rhubarb when the first attack came.

  I heard the crash and ran indoors, not stopping to take off my muddy shoes.

  My grandmother was lying face-down on the rug. Her walking stick was stretched out in one hand; she’d knocked over the bottle of port on the table.

  “Grams… ” I put my arms around her waist and turned her to face me. Her eyes were wide and her mouth kept falling open.

  “I’m going to call an ambulance,” I said. “I’ll be back in one minute.” My tongue felt thick with fear.

  My grandmother’s eyes narrowed and colour started to come back into her face. “Don’t… ” she said. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.

  I put my face closer to her to hear better. She opened her eyes wide. “Don’t be ridiculous. Call Edward,” she said. “And don’t move someone who’s fallen over – my neck could have been broken.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said.

  “You won’t need to,” she grumbled. “Just call Edward.”

  I called my father, my hands shaking as I dialled the number. He came on the line after what seemed like ages. “Yes?”

  “Dad, it’s me. Grandma’s had an attack, or something.”

  “What happened?”

  “She fell over, and then her face looked funny. Oh, and her mouth was open.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” she called from the other room.

  “Tallulah, stay there,” my father said. “Don’t do anything. I’ll call an ambulance.”

  See, I told my grandmother silently.

  “I’ll get a train up and be with you in a few hours.”

  My grandmother complained about the noise of the siren the whole journey to the hospital.

  “Well,” one of the paramedics said, “the good news is you don’t seem to be slurring your words.”

  The doctor who looked her over was called Dr Philips and he wore a red polka-dot tie. I sat next to the bed, trying to slow my heartbeat down. Everything’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.

  “You seem to have had a mild stroke,” Dr Philips said when he finished. “But with the right medication, there should be no long-term effects. We’ll have to keep you in for a few nights.”

  “My son’s coming,” my grandmother said, drawing the blanket around her. “He can take care of me.”

  “I wish my mother had the same trust in me,” Dr Philips said, cheerfully. I wondered about his mother – he looked about ninety years old himself.

  “Do you want some water?” I asked my grandmother.

  “No,” she said. She pushed the blanket away and tried to stand up.

  “Now, now, Matilda,” Dr Philips said. “What’s all this? You can’t move, you know. You have to stay right here and get our little nurse to look after you.”

  “I can’t stay in bed all day,” she said. “Get out of my way.”

  Her hand groped for her walking stick; I picked it up and took it outside the ward.

  “Tallulah,” she said. “Bring me my stick at once.”

  “No,” I said. I came back in and replaced the blanket. “You can’t go anywhere. Not until Dad gets here at least.”

  “She’s quite right, you know,” Dr Philips said. “Just get some rest. Snug as a bug in a rug, that’s what you’ll be.”

  My grandmother looked at him as if he’d farted. “Are you retarded?” she asked.

  “I’ll go get you some water,” I said, trying not to laugh.

  Dr Philips followed me out.

  “Ignore Grandma,” I said. “She’s just mad she can’t do things for herself.”

  “Of course,” Dr Philips said; he didn’t seem especially offended. “Tell your father I’ll be around if he’d like to discuss the patient.”

  I found a water cooler and filled a plastic cup. My grandmother drank half of it, then passed it back. “I’m tired,” she said.

  “Do you want me to close the curtains?”

  “That would be nice.”

  I closed the curtains and brought her an extra blanket from one of the other beds. “Let me know if you need anything,” I said, perching back on my chair.

  “You’re a good girl, Tallulah,” she said, turning over. “And you’d make a good nurse.”

  It was already dark when my fa
ther arrived. After some wrangling with Dr Philips, my grandmother was told she’d be discharged the next morning.

  “Tell the staff to leave me in peace,” she said, and fell back asleep.

  I slept too, in the taxi on the way back to the house. My father woke me up at the front door. I climbed out, foggy and aching from being slumped against the window.

  “You don’t snore anymore,” my father said. “You used to when you were little, did you know that?”

  “No.”

  The taxi pulled away and left us in the pitch black. My father spent a few minutes trying to locate his key; I shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, aware that this was the first time we’d been alone together since I went to school.

  We went straight to bed.

  The next morning my grandmother’s mood was even worse. She hadn’t liked the food or the hospital bed and she didn’t like the broken heater in the taxi. My father and the taxi driver helped her upstairs and into her own bed, and I could hear her complaining that now she wouldn’t be able to watch her TV programme.

  My father paid the driver and came to join me in the kitchen, looking exhausted. “I’m going to get a district nurse to come in and check on her,” he said, yawning. “I think that’s the safest thing to do. She’s ready for some soup now.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said. I put a tray together, soup, bread, a jug of ice water and an orange. My father watched me expressionlessly.

  I stumbled going up the stairs.

  “Careful,” my grandmother called, “I only have good china.”

  I placed the tray on the bedside table and sat down at the foot of the bed. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “A little foolish,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Scared,” I said.

  “Yes,” my grandmother said. She patted my hand. “Well, you didn’t lose your head. That’s something to be proud of.”

  We smiled at each other.

  “Dad says he’s going to get a district nurse to come and look in on us.”

  My grandmother raised her eyebrows. “Us?”

  “I’m not going to leave now you really need me.”