Mousie: In The Garden

Look though any window, yeah,
What do you see?

The nurses here are very nice, but they do keep changing. No not their clothes, silly, them. I never know who's going to come when I press my button. That shouldn't bother me by now, but it does. Maria's my favourite nurse. She hardly ever changes.

It's quite boring here a lot of the time and there isn't very much to do. I'd like to read some books if I could, but by the time they reach me they're all messed up. The pages are wrinkled and the covers are bent and the colours have run like washing. Mum says that's because of the autowhatsit thing they have to put them through to get rid of the germs.

Mum comes to see me nearly every day. Dad doesn't come as often, but he has important business to go to. Sometimes he's here after teatime and he's still wearing his suit from work.

There's a television at the foot of my bed and I've got a remote for it. It's gone a bit melted from going through the autothingy but it still works if I press the buttons right. The telly picture's not very clear through the plastic the tent's made of. I wish it could be inside here with me.

Mum calls me Mousie, which isn't my real name. If I went to proper school she'd probably have called me Mousie when she picked me up at going-home time and all the other kids would have made fun of me over it.

- 0 -

Let me tell you about my room. It's quite big but most of the space is taken up by my special bed. There are lots of boxes on stands with flashing lights and bleeping buzzers on them and they flash and bleep all the time. It used to keep me awake but it doesn't any more. I hardly notice them; only when the bleeps or the lights change, or a new one starts, and then all the doctors and nurses come in and look very serious and important. Usually they fiddle with my tubes a bit and go away again. Mum is a lot more smiley when that happens and quite often Dad turns up with her, even though his job is so busy. He calls me Graham, which is my real name.

Mum can't kiss me because of all the plastic. Instead there's a kind of glove attached to a tube she can put her arm in and stroke me or fluffle me that way. She always says she loves me when she says goodbye. It's a kind of magic spell to keep me from harm.

Look; I was talking about my room. Apart from the telly and the big bed with the plastic tent all around it and the bleeping flashing boxes there's a door and a window. The door leads into a corridor and if I'm feeling well enough to sit up and lean over I can see the doctors and nurses and sometimes the other kids going backwards and forwards. None of the other kids can come and see me in case they do something wrong to the flashing-light boxes and break them.

I haven't been in a bed in a tent in a room in a hospital all my life. It's only been since my tenth birthday. No, that's wrong, I was here a lot when I was six. Mum says I was in a preemie unit when I was born. She says I came too early.

There's something else in my room. I nearly forgot to tell you. There's a window. I can't see out of it very well as it's too high up, which makes me sad, but Mum says it doesn't matter because it only looks out on another building in the block. It's not as if you can see mountains or the ocean or people through it. Mum's always trying to cheer me up like that but I still wish I could look out of it. You never know, there might be something interesting out there. More interesting than clouds or sky which are all I can see through it.

I don't mind it when Maria calls me Mousie even though she's not my Mum.

The telly's all right, but I'd like a change.

- 0 -

I've asked Mum to get me some books. I don't care if the autowhatever messes them up. I want books about gardens. Why gardens? Mum asks. I say it's because I like gardens. When I wasn't in hospital I used to play in the garden at home and I liked it when we went to Cornwall on holiday and I could go to see the big gardens that are in an enormous plastic tent like mine, only my tent isn't enormous.

If it was enormous I'd be able to walk about in it instead of being stuck in bed. I could run around. Sing. Shout. They get worried by shouting here so I don't do it and my singing is terrible, so I don't do that either.

It's not soppy me liking gardens, is it?

- 0 -

It's very boring here. Did I say that already? I often wonder when I'll be able to go home again. I've got lots of friends at home. Some of them are real and some of them are on the Internet. I talk more to the Internet ones than the real ones because the real ones don't come round very much. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because they're afraid they'll catch what I've got, even though you can't. No really. It's in my blood, what I've got. Don't worry. You'd have to drink it, like a vampire, if you wanted to catch what I've got. Of course you don't want to catch it, because if you did you'd end up living in a tent in a hospital like me.

Oh. Maybe it's because they don't want to hurt me and kill me by mistake or in an accident. That's what Mum said when I asked her. I like to believe what Mum tells me and I usually do, but I didn't believe this one because it's rubbish. Why should anybody want to kill me, even in an accident?

There are other children in the hospital but I don't see them because I'm in a tent and they've got germs. I wish I could have my computer in here with me so I could talk to my internet friends, but the autothing would melt it and anyway they say it would stop the bleeping flashing boxes working properly.

I think they're making that up.

- 0 -

Mum has finally brought me in some books! Gardening books! With forks and spades and trowels in them. I told her I didn't want books on how to make a garden, I wanted books about being in gardens. I don't know if she understood me. Grown-ups can be terrifically dense sometimes. I'll carry on watching the telly and being bored instead, I suppose.

- 0 -

I've been sleeping a lot more than usual recently and having funny dreams. They have to wake me up in the morning now, I'm so dozy. Usually I'm all ready for them when they come in. I wonder if they've been giving me stuff to make me sleep more. I asked Maria about it but she only smiled and told me not to worry.

That's what she always says. She's pretty and she's nice and I like her a lot but she never says anything much. She never answers questions properly, but none of the grown-ups do that. They never have. They keep secrets from me.

Those dreams. They're... bothering me. I'm running in them, or I'm flying all by myself or I'm swimming under water without running out of air and talking to the fishes and the crabs and the prawns and the lobsters and singing to the whales. Shouting, even.

So to stop me from being bothered by the dreams I'm reading the crinkled-up garden books. They bother me too; only differently.

- 0 -

There's this programme on the telly just after teatime. It's for little kids really but I like it. It gives me a funny feeling, like the dreams do. This boy with a funny blue head goes by boat to a garden full of friends and funny creatures. Nobody's ever sad or cross there and at the end the birds sing a song and they all go to sleep in their beds. There's a nice man with a kind voice who talks to the characters, but you never see him. The music is nice and gentle. I'd love it if I could go for a walk in that garden.

Of course it's not the only thing I watch. I like Tracy Beaker and My Parents Are Aliens and Judge Judy and Blue Peter and Ninja Turtles and the Chuckle Brothers and Jeremy Kyle and the News. And Home And Away and Neighbours. And Coronation Street, though that's on a bit late for me.

- 0 -

Nobody seriously believed he would be going home again, not even his mother and father. Not this time.

- 0 -

Mum brought me some new storybooks yesterday. They're much more like it. There's one about a boy who wakes up in the middle of the night and goes into a garden and meets a girl there. I like that book a lot. Then there's another where a boy is very ill and there's a garden that's hidden behind a wall and when a girl finds it she stops being bad-tempered and he becomes well so he doesn't have to be pushed about in a wheelchair any more.

Both those books make me feel happy-sad, especially the second one. I don't like to cry when Mum or Dad are here, so I do it after they've gone home. It'd be smashing if I was one of those boys.

I'm reading the books over and over again. I think I prefer the other one now, the one where the clock has to strike thirteen before the boy can go into the garden and see the girl. There's an ill boy in that book too, only he's not part of the story.

- 0 -

I'm still having the dreams where I'm swimming or flying or running with the creatures. They're getting stronger every day.

There's one special creature in my dreams. She's a girl, like the girl in Tom's Midnight Garden, only she's not. I mean she's not a human girl. She's an animal, but she can talk. She talks to me all the time in the dreams. We have adventures together and we help each other. Her name is Mousie, just like me. I told her my real name is Graham Hugo Dreyford and asked her what her real name was but she said no, it's Mousie, really it is. I laughed a lot at that. It's fantastic having her around. We like each other so much I'm sorry when it's time to wake up and say goodbye. When I wake up it's back in the tent in the hospital.

- 0 -

I've got my Mousie every night now. I think I know what the books mean when they talk about people falling in love. I think it's like this.

- 0 -

Something wonderful has happened! Mousie has come true! She's here with me during the day now as well as when I'm asleep. One lovely morning she didn't go away when the dreams stopped. I have to hide her under the pillow or beneath the sheets so nobody can see her. I talk to her all the time. I wonder if I'm going bonkers. It might be the pills doing it. That's happened before with pills. I saw some amazing things. You've no idea how happy I'm feeling now. Mousie and me; we tell each other the most fantastic stories.

- 0 -

Graham's mother and father noticed the change straight away. After all, it was the same change that had been taking place all across the world. First in babies, then in toddlers, then older children, then adolescents and now in adults. But they had wondered whether, given the desperate nature of Mousie's condition, the great change would manifest itself in him.

They stood, hands clasped, watching the pair through the translucent walls of the tent. Would their brave boy's familiar be able to save him or was her end approaching as relentlessly as his?

- 0 -

I don't bother hiding her now. Nobody seems to worry about my Mousie, even when she turns into a mouse or a rat. She's not dirty and she's not got any germs on her, has she? I asked the doctor this morning and he said there's nothing to worry about, it's all perfectly natural, you're doing very well, we're all very proud of you. Which is what he always says.

I like it best when Mousie's a bird. It's a shame she can't fly up in the real sky with the real birds - only she's real too, as real as could be - but she says she doesn't want to fly very far away from me and if she did it would hurt both of us very much.

Her feathers are very soft when I stroke them. I love to be with her, loving her, doing nothing but just being together.

Nothing…

But, I say to her, there is one thing she could do. One special thing. It's that window up high in the wall. If she could fly up to the window and look out of it she might be able to look down and see what's outside. You see, I remember when I came here before there were gardens in the gaps between the buildings. It would be great if she could see one of those gardens for me - I'm sure there's one there. Perhaps she'd be able to go down into it and explore it and come back and tell me all about it.

Mousie? Would you go and look at that garden for me? Find it, I mean, and then come back and tell me where it is and what it looks like? I'd love to see it. I bet there's a real garden down there, with real flowers growing in it and a bench to sit on and drink orange squash and eat a Mars bar like they used to let me do at home sometimes. Wouldn't you like to see it? Wouldn't that make us extra specially happy? Don't you think?

Go on Mousie! Don't wait! Off you go! Fly for me!

- 0 -

A gap in time; immeasurable by any clock.

Wings beat. An aspiration of flight, an ascension of dreams.

There is no fear now; even in this place that is so very full of fear. Instead, nothing but an effortless yearning reaching for a place beyond.

There is no pain.

Muscles that tense and relax, tense and relax, tense and relax while the world turns very, very slowly.

Gravity is defeated - it is, after all, the weakest of all forces. Why should it hold any of us down, let alone such as they?

Freedom calls. Who could possibly resist it?

And a great, joyous peace.

- 0 -

Staff Nurse Maria Stokes was the first to reach Graham's bedside when the crash call went off. She was as quick as she possibly could have been, but she was still too late.

The torn edges of the tent fluttered in the escaping oxygen. Maria turned off the gas valve; there was a fire risk. Then she walked slowly around the bed to where Graham's body - small, much too small for his age - lay. The boy lay unmoving on his front, his head resting on the floor, his feet caught up on the side of his bed, facing the window. His arms were outstretched, like wings. There was no sign of his familiar.

'Poor little chap,' said Bene, Maria's fox-familiar. 'Do you think he...'

'No,' Maria replied. 'I don't think - ' but then she had to pause and help the ward sister get Graham back into bed and tidy away the broken catheters and torn dressings.

'No,' she said again, later, when she had closed the door behind the boy's parents and left them alone with their son. 'I don't think he reached the window.'

'But?'

'But, of course,' said Maria, holding Bene next to her cheek. 'I'm sure she did...'

Outside the window, in the garden, the flowers nodded to one another in the gentle afternoon breeze.