Chapter twelve - grey
Dedicated to @EddieSThomas because dude, your comments are awesome, your writing is fab and to be honest, you're an amazing human being :3
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The first hour of school had been shitty, and neither Bob or I was convinced that it was going to get any better. We both silently agreed (through passing notes torn out of our Maths books) that it would be best if we skipped the rest of the day.
By this point, the amount of school I’d missed was probably enough to make me fail all of my exams, but I didn’t fucking care. It was all a waste of time. What were good grades going to do in the world of music?
And if I did end up dying in some epic battle against the council, what a waste it would be for me to have used up half my life in school learning things that sure as hell weren’t going to be of any use in the afterlife.
So we skipped class, climbing over the iron fence around the playground, then scrambling over the cement and brick wall of the incastum. We were going to spend the rest of the day with the Way kids (and maybe Ray), just a chilled afternoon, talking or playing cards or something if Mikey couldn’t speak.
Absolutely nothing could have prepared us for the sight that we were met with when we shuffled into Gerard’s tent.
Gerard’s mother was sprawled out on the floor, enormous stomach sticking up like a hill in the ground. Gerard was clutching her hand and trying to support her head on his arm, looking quite terrified and very unsure of what to do, and Ray was kneeling on the other side of her, encouraging her to breathe deeply and stay calm. Mikey was sitting bolt upright in his bed, eyes wide and scared shitless.
It took me a few moments to process what was actually happening, but when Donna cried out in pain and clutched at her stomach, I suddenly had a pretty clear idea of what was going on.
“Holy shit,” Bob said, kneeling down beside Gerard’s mother. “She’s in labour, right?”
Gerard nodded. “She, um, she was having stomach pains all day and she thought it would be fine, but then her water broke and she starting screaming a lot and I really don’t know what to do,” Gerard rushed out in panic.
“Call an ambulance!” I said quickly. That was all I knew you could do in a situation like this.
“We don’t have them,” Gerard said, voice small and scared.
“Jesus. Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“H-half a mile?” Gerard said uncertainly.
“Can you sit up?” Bob asked Donna.
She clamped her fingers tighter around Gerard’s hand and pulled herself into a sitting position, straining from the effort.
“Well, what do we do from here?” Gerard asked, frustrated. “We can’t carry her, can we?”
“There’s enough of us,” Bob observed.
“Then what are we going to do about Mikes?”
“You, me and Frank can try and help your mom to the hospital, and Ray can stay with Mikey.”
“No,” Mikey protested feebly. “I wanna be there.”
“Fine, Ray can help Mikey over and we’ll take your mom! Now hurry the fuck up!”
We all tried lifting Donna to her feet, and just about managed, with her holding tightly to our shoulders. Ray rushed over to Mikey, and carefully helped him stand, not letting go of the smaller boy’s waist out of fear that he would just crumble to the floor. He hastily grabbed the blanket off the bed and draped it over Mikey’s shoulders.
“Come on,” Bob insisted, already starting to lead Donna to the door of the tent. We followed, walking slowly so that Gerard’s mother could keep up. She was clutching my shoulder a little too tightly, and her weight was pushing me down, but I didn’t want to say anything.
We limped and trudged as far as we could, all of us getting weaker by the second, and Donna’s cries and shaking getting worse.
“Can we please stop,” she managed, “just for a moment?”
Bob looked unconvinced. “Just for a moment,” he said reluctantly.
Donna sank down onto the floor, sitting straight on the muddy grass and digging her fingers into the dirt. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing as slowly as she could.
I turned back to check how Ray and Mikey were keeping up, but my whole body was suddenly flooded with fear as all I saw was the empty track behind us. “Mikes?” I called, my heartbeat speeding up as all these horrible thoughts of what could have happened filled my head.
“We’re here,” Ray mumbled from behind one of the tents.
Finally, the two of them came into view again, Ray supporting a small, shivering, limping Mikey. Mikey’s teeth were chattering, and he had turned a weird washed-out dark grey. He looked really really ill.
“Frank!” Bob called impatiently. “We’ve got to go or we’re not going to make it!”
“I… Can’t I help Mikey?” I asked.
“Ray would have to take your place over here.”
“Oh. No. It’s fine, I’ll–” I hurried back over to help Mrs Way walk, and Ray and Mikey followed, gradually getting slower and further behind us.
I kept glancing back. I was worried about Mikey. “Ray,” he mumbled, exhausted, “Ray, I can’t.” He collapsed against Ray, and Ray quickly caught him and wrapped his arms securely around Mikey.
Ray murmured something in Mikey’s ear and Mikey hesitantly nodded, but then Donna screamed and I whipped my head around to face the front again.
When I turned back to check how Mikey and Ray were keeping up, I was surprised to see that Ray had lifted Mikey up into his arms and was carrying him, bridal style. Mikey was hiding his face in Ray’s neck, trembling, and clutching at Ray’s chest.
“Thank fucking god,” Bob muttered. We were at the hospital.
It was a pretty wrecked building, and I would have guessed that it was a block of council flats or something if it wasn’t for the glowing red HOSPITAL sign planted in the ground in front of the structure.
We rushed inside with Donna, quickly explaining the situation to the woman at the desk. She sent us away to the maternity ward, and soon Donna was laid back on an awful hospital bed, face contorting in pain as she tried not to scream in agony.
A doctor came to ask her a few questions, but then disappeared, leaving her crying and kicking her legs in panic.
Bob tried to calm her down, showing her how to breathe and reassuring her that everything was going to be okay, but I wasn’t so sure. I would be comforting her along with Bob, but I knew that the chances of dying in childbirth in a black community were frighteningly high, and I didn’t want to lie to her. They didn’t have epidurals or meds, so it was going to be fucking painful for her, and the whole place was dirty and unsanitary, so who knew what infections she could get?
Gerard just sat in the chair next to the bed, hugging his knees, looking traumatised and terrified. Ray had slumped down on the floor in the corner of the room, and Mikey was curled into his chest, the blanket making a sort of nest around them. Mikey was still an unhealthy colour, still shivering, still clutching at Ray like a lifeline, and Ray looked worried as hell, trying to warm Mikey up.
I just stood at the side, staring at everything going on around me. Nothing much changed for an hour. But then the doctor came back.
He examined Donna, asked her more questions. Noted a few things down in his book and frowned unhappily. “You’re going to need a caesarean,” he said.
“She’s– what?” Bob asked, eyes wide.
“A caesarean. She has some problems with–”
“You can’t perform a caesarean here! You don’t even have anaesthetic!”
“We have to take chances. It’s that or we just let her and the baby die.”
Gerard looked like he wanted to cry. Donna looked horrified.
“No,” I said. “No way.”
“What do you propose we do then?” the doctor asked.
“We’ll take her to a better fucking hospital!”
“This is the only hospital in Belleville.”
“No. We’re taking to her a real hospital.”
“You mean a white hospital?” Mikey croaked.
I nodded.
“They wouldn’t even let me into one of those. They have more important patients,” he mumbled.
“No!” I said indignantly. “This is ridiculous. We’re taking her to the proper hospital. It’s just down the road, just outside the incastum, come on.”
And that was it. We helped Donna out of the blacks’ hospital, and took her straight to a real hospital, Ray and Mikey following close behind.
Maybe going to a whites’ hospital was a stupid idea. But maybe it wasn’t. It might get some people thinking. Maybe it would get the council thinking.
Maybe going to the whites’ hospital was the best idea I’d had in years.
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Ha, that was so weird. One moment I was so blocked I didn’t want to go near my laptop, and the next, I had a zillion ideas and I wrote this whole chapter o__O
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Disgusting (Frerard)
Fanfiction"There's a reason we are white and pure, and they are black and dirty. There's a reason they stain our skin. That we are shamed if others see those stains. They're bad people, Frank. They're disgusting."
