Three days before the summer holiday when I was nearly 9 years old I fell through a greenhouse and sliced my leg in two. A half moon red-faced chunk of a smile stared back at me when I looked down and some of my leg seemed to be missing. Quite a large bit of it, as it happens. I knew I was in trouble. Not just with Mr Cundill for messing up his greenhouse, and not just my mother – who would be furious with the state of my shorts – but really, really in trouble. Not being able to walk trouble. And if I couldn’t walk that meant I couldn’t run. Not running was trouble.
Tracey Cundill was mouthing words at me but I wasn’t catching them. I turned my head to the side and really stared. Was Tracey actually even speaking to me? Tracey pointed to me then the greenhouse and then my leg and then she screamed.
“I’m sorry about the greenhouse,” I said.
There was glass everywhere. Really, a whole window of glass. It was a mess and when I looked I noticed that there were spots of my blood all over Mr Cundill’s tomatoes.
They probably wouldn’t be able to eat them.
“I’m sorry about the tomatoes,” I said.
Tracey went through the same pointing and screaming routine at least twice more and then she left. It wasn’t like her to be so incoherent: she was one of the cleverest girls in my class. It was, however, typical of Tracey to run away and just as typical that she was going to tell my mother that it wasn’t her fault that I’d come a cropper in her yard. Neither Michaela nor Dawn, my other friends, would have done that to me. They’d have stuck with me through thick and thin, they’d have let me tell my mother my own story. They’d have at least tried to help me get home. Tracey always had an eye for the main chance. She was a survivor.
I shifted my weight on to my good leg and then started to work out how I could drag the gaping one across Tracey’s yard, over the road and into my own yard. Once I got going it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Slow, but also not as sore as I thought a gaping hole should be. It didn’t hurt that much at all. Not that I could look at it any more – because the last time I did I saw yellowy cream bits in there and that scared me.
When I was halfway across the road I could hear Tracey shouting; “Mrs B, Mary has broken her leg!”
“Where is she love?” I heard my mam say.
“She’s walking across the road!”
And then I heard my mam laugh, a big belly laugh that echoed all round the street. At least she was in a good mood I thought. At least she wouldn’t actually kill me.
My mother stopped laughing as soon as she saw it. Her face crumpled like a dishcloth. She swore quite a bit too. I knew it was best to wait until she was through with all that before I spoke… Then the questions came thick and fast. There were lots of questions about what I’d done to myself and what I was playing at that I couldn’t answer. The blood had started to pool around my ankle and my sock which had been pristine white, was now red. My mother disappeared and I heard a call to the emergency services. She didn’t scream, which was a bonus.
“Why are you standing out there for?” my mam said.
“I’m not messing up your floor, mam.” I felt brave, superhuman.
“I don’t care about the floor,” she said.
She did care about the floor though; and the towel, that we threw between us for a while.
“Use the towel love, to stem the flow.”
“No.” I said. This was the most defiant I had ever been.
We were still passing the towel between us when the ambulance men arrived.
“Blimey – got a bit of a scratch have you darling?”
“Always been the master of understatement Dave,” his mate said in the direction of my mother.
Dave started to bandage my leg. It felt tight.
“You’d better get your stuff love… and some night clothes for Flossie Teacake here.”
“I’m called Mary,” I said.
When we got into the street a crowd had gathered around the blue flashing lights of the ambulance. There was a traffic jam of people. Me – in a wheelchair now – waved to everyone. It was like being a celebrity and I knew as we drew away I would be the talk of the neighbourhood. Everyone would know the story by the end of the day and those who didn’t would make up the details. By the end of the week no doubt I would have had my leg amputated three times and re-attached – or I’d have had a leg transplant and would have one leg permanently longer than the other.
There was some kerfuffle when we finally arrived in A and E. Firstly, I’d had sweets which meant that I couldn’t be put to sleep. Secondly, and inexplicably, I told my mother that I wanted my dad. I knew this had wounded her, but I had no idea just how deeply this had hit her until years and years later, when she confessed it to me when she thought that she might die of cancer. She didn’t, and I spent the 30 years following that feeling like an utter moron for saying such a thing. I was 8. I was weak. And I was a daddy’s girl.
The details were bad but I had been lucky. The doctors said I’d missed the main artery by two millimetres. I didn’t really know what a main artery was but I could tell by the way the doctor looked at me a bit ashen and downbeat that it was a good thing I’d missed it. I stared back and forth between my mam and dad, who looked as though they hadn’t slept for a week and they smiled weakly. I was alive. I’d never noticed my mam’s grey hair until then or the lines on my dad’s face particularly around his eyes.
At about midnight, I was deemed fit enough to go down to theatre. My mother and my father had gone home, and I recall the tribe of doctors and nurses who steered the trolley I was on down the corridor. The taste of the rubber from the mask is a distinct but thankfully distant memory: I was told to count myself to sleep. When I awoke, I’d had 84 stitches. 61 inside and 23 outside. If this doesn’t seem that many think of the average 8 year old’s leg. I was very lucky.
The next day my brother and sister had arrived.
“You’re alive then,” my brother, K said, “I had to clean up the blood with Laurie next door. It was everywhere.”
My sister, KM brought me a comic. And didn’t say very much.
“There was flesh and stuff. Up the walls. Everywhere. Wouldn’t go down the drain. Everywhere. You know you’ve had a blood transfusion – that means you’ve got someone else’s blood in you. It could be an evil murderer. Or a Zombie.” K was excited.
“You’re only jealous,” I looked at KM. “Are you okay?”
“I should have been looking after you,” she said. “I’m supposed to keep my eye on you.”
“It could be a vampire’s. Or a werewolf’s. You’ll probably howl at the moon from now on whenever it’s full. It could be a crazed lunatic’s or a Druid or something.”
“It’s probably just the butcher’s,” I said.
Tracey and Dawn visited that evening. Their parents were very good – and Mr Cundill didn’t shout at me for messing up his greenhouse. He said that he’d given my mother some beetroot and would be taking the rest of the greenhouse down. “I didn’t know it was dangerous,” he said apologetically as he and Dawn’s mam retreated to the waiting room to give the us girls ‘space.’
“It’s only dangerous if you’re standing on it.” I said.
“He’s really upset.” Tracey looked around. “It smells a bit funny in here.”
“Probably thought he was going to be sued.” Dawn said. Tracey frowned as if to say he didn’t but didn’t speak.
“Can I see your scar?” Dawn was not backwards in coming forwards.
“It’s wrapped up. I haven’t seen it meself yet.”
“Me mam said you’d had 84 stitches. She said that’s more than you cast on for a jumper!”
“Where’s Michaela?”
I noticed a slight waver in Tracey’s stare. I looked at her, but she did not waver again.
“She’s not very well.” Dawn said. “Got a headache.”
“Is she going to come up to see me?”
They didn’t answer and talked about school instead – about the excitement of the last day of the year coming up, that I would miss.
A succession of people did come up to the hospital to see me – Uncle John and Aunt Vi brought me ten bars of chocolate which my mam said I would have to share with K and KM (which wasn’t fair), my teacher – Mrs Sweeney – gave me a jigsaw. Aunt Vic sent me a bundle of colouring stuff bought cheap off the market (“Probably fall to bits in a matter of seconds,” my mam said, curtly). Mrs Binchy from next door bought me some fruit, and my mam didn’t say I would need to share that! Loads of people came, but Michaela never did.
There was a very good reason for this, of course…
(To be continued…)
Reading this was like going back in time. It reads like my childhood, Yorkshire Irish. Had me enthralled.
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Thank you very much. I’m Yorkshire, but not Irish 🙂
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It’s the ‘Mam’. Yorkshire and Irish.
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I think it’s working class too: it’s definitely what I call my mother – she used to get cross if we called her anything else. 🙂 But also Irish, too, I guess?
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I’m not sure that any other English use the name, Mam. For me it’s Yorkshire. And working class. Not that I ever knew any English who weren’t. The Irish use it too, but it doesn’t have the class connotations.
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Agreed. I’ve a feeling they use it in the North East too, but not certain. I remember going to a school away from where I was brought up, and I was definitely the only girl in my class who used it. I think I did it out of defiance after that…
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Maybe you mixed with rather posher girls. It was a pretty working class expression.
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I did when I went to a posher school, yes 🙂
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Thanks for the likes and encouragement.
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Had me in stitches… !
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I realized from reading this how the child’s perspective could be so different from that of the adults around her. I enjoyed the children’s speculations about where the blood came for her transfusion.
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Its true – this was slight cheat this week, in that i have written this before and simply edited it. It’s the most fictionslised post i’ve written so far but the story is true. I did have 84 stitches though, and missed the main artery by those two millimetres!
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No wonder all the details seemed so realistic. That was a major accident. I like how you stayed focused on your perspective as a child and let the reader imagine what was going through the adults’ minds. I also wonder what Michaela had to do with the accident.
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To be revealed. 🙂 No spoilers here. That story is also true –
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Very interesting…especially knowing it is true.
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Thanks 🙂
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Very well done and just a little nauseating 😀
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And also true 🙂
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Scary for you and your family!
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Yes, at the time. But also useful for me: my mother seemed to think I’d had my quota of accidents by then. (She was wrong of course.) I was gifted at getting into bother.
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Whoo, boy! I’m glad you’ve made it this far, then 🙂
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Ha! I’m still kicking 🙂
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It seems so realistic!
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It is 🙂
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This is really good stuff!! Have you tried to publish?
And sorry about your leg: we should get together and compare racing stripes on our legs.
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Not so far. I have had a few things published in the past, but I am writing this all here together for the first time here. And thank you, that is very kind.
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truly, one of the best stories that I have read on a blog
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That’s lovely. I really would like to make sense of it first though, and I can’t think how else to store it – so I am working my way through it all.
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You are a great storyteller! I’m enjoying your blog!
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Thank you very much, I appreciate that.
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Dude, this is seriously great stuff. I remember looking back on some of my old pieces of writing as a child, one where I wrote about an accident and how I kept a surprisingly wry tone for a child. This is what it reminds me of. It’s a very realistic portrayal of children.
Also, if you do write a next chapter, please include a bit where you give a huge telling off to Tracey because damn she a bitch.
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Haha. Poor old Tracey. She was a bit of a sad girl.
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Whoa 84 stitches! You have a gift for the written word. Thank you for the follow on my blog – because I could come upon yours. Waiting for the next edition of this post. Cheers.
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Thank you: you are very kind!
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You’re welcome and not at all kind. Just an avid reader 🙂
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Hello there! Found my way here through Jackie’s party and I’m glad I did. You write very well and I was completely engaged in this account. I was smiling, cringing, swearing… All that through your story… Will look forward to more posts. Cheers 🙂
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Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I will fly over and sneak a peak at your blog, too.
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I was quickly drawn into your story. The authentic voice of a kid made this a great read. Simply fantastic fun.
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Thank you very much. I appreciate that!
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Again essence of my childhood in here. I fell through a glass potting frame at around 5 years. You are a wonderful storyteller and I have been enthralled by this one. I so look forward to the next instalment. Also thank you for the follow.
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Where is part two ????
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The next blog along: the Big Impossible 🙂
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84 stitches. Takes me back to when the decision was made to remove my leg following an accident. Luckily, they used me to test Streptomycin a new drug some 60 odd years ago. Good story, well told. And thanks for liking my post. Now have to see what follows this story.
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Thank you!
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Flossie Teacake…x
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Very well written and engaging. I found myself wondering (until I saw your note in the comments) as I read if it was fiction or nonfiction. As a former teacher who always encouraged my students to “write what they know,” I must say that advice works well for you. Bringing your experiences to the story makes it seem alive, in spite of your claims that your blog is about death. 😉
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It’s about life in the face of death (or near death!) I suppose, because in the end that’s what life is… thanks so much for your lovely feedback. I appreciate it!
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Oh dear! Not a pleasant accident, and just before the school holidays. Not what any little girl would want. It must have left a mighty scar. Thanks for sharing such an interesting story.
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Thank you! I realised this was 43 years ago just last week!
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Your ability to recall and tell the story is wonderful!
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Thanks 🙂
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