It wasn’t exactly a surprise, but when Ken saw the ambulance parked outside as he came home from school a stone fell somewhere inside his body. In his stomach. A familiar black stone that he had always felt was there but that now, dislodged, sent a cold shock wave through him. A metallic taste flooded his mouth.The front door was stood open and Dad was in the garden just looking back into the house. Ken saw the skin shiny and tight on his forehead as Dad pulled his hand across his scalp, smoothing his thin hair.
As Ken approached, he followed Dad’s gaze and saw two paramedics inside, on either side of Mum, helping her down the stairs. She was in her nightie, as usual, and the blue woolly cardigan she always wore against the cold. Pink slippers, the ones Ken and Dad had chosen for her birthday.
She looked old, suddenly, Ken thought.
The paramedics were gentle with her, softly encouraging, allowing her the time she needed to place each foot carefully and ease her weight down onto it.
Kenny stood behind Dad. Slipped his hand into his father’s where it hung by his side. Dad didn’t look at him. Ken felt Dad’s fingers curl around his, but apart from that he didn’t seem to notice. He was too intent on the trio now coming down the hallway. Mum looked up at last when they had negotiated the front door and the steps down onto the path. She looked at Kenny. Smiled a weak smile. She rolled her eyes at him as if to say ‘Look at all this fuss I’m causing.’
Kenny felt himself try to smile but all he could manage was to stretch his lips across his teeth. It didn’t feel like a smile and he knew it didn’t look like one. He looked at Dad - his eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the slow progress the three were making down the garden.
As the paramedics passed them, Kenny felt Dad let go of his hand. Dad slowly started to follow the little procession down the path but then stole past them to open the front gate. Out onto the pavement they went and round to the back of the ambulance where the doors stood open. Ken watched his mother carefully attempt the steps, the paramedics at her elbows. He could see the weakness of her muscles after these past weeks in bed. But they had her. They had her now, these people. These men. These strange uniformed men. They’d got this. They knew what they were doing.
Ken wanted to run to his mum and throw his arms around her. But he shouldn’t - he knew he shouldn’t. She wasn’t his anymore. She was becoming theirs. Like when the furniture men had come and put all the cupboards in the back of their lorry at the old house. All their things taken away. Ken was only six then, but he remembered the puzzled feeling he had had as everything came out of the house and floated and bobbed past him on shoulders or swinging between the hands of people and then got piled up in the back of the lorry, covered by blankets, tied up with long cloth straps. He remembered how the house no longer worked as he ran from room to room, how it was dying without these familiar things, like when they had turned off the inflatable castle at Kyle's birthday party. He couldn’t settle anywhere in it. Except for in the dark corner of the cupboard in his bedroom. Mum and Dad had been so busy that day, they hadn’t noticed him gone, hadn't wondered where he was. He just sat there in the dark listening to shuffling feet on the bare floorboards, the strange grunted directions the men gave each other.
Mum and Dad didn’t seem to mind that these men were taking their things. They even helped them, watched them stow things in the back of the lorry.
Then the journey through the night to this house.
He remembered the Moon following them as they drove through the dark countryside - sometimes swinging behind the car, or hiding behind trees or clouds, but always racing along with them.
And then he had slept. And when he awoke the car was stopped in a lay-by. The sky was pearly grey and Mum and Dad were asleep in the front too. And they had to wait until morning had come properly before they could drive again and find a cafe. He remembered the first time he had stood in this garden and walked in through this front door.
And then the lorry had come again - the same lorry, and the same men had taken all the things out again and carried them into new strange rooms where they didn’t belong yet. And Mum and Dad were busy again telling them were to put things and arguing with each other and shouting at him to stay back out of the way but there wasn't a cupboard to hide in in the new house. Not yet.
But today was different. Ken didn’t feel the same anyway. He heard the men talking to Mum in the back of the ambulance. Were they covering her with blankets, tying her with straps? Were they lashing her round with ropes too like they had with the tall lamp from the sitting room?
Dad stood with his left hand holding the ambulance door. He suddenly looked up and stood back – the paramedics had evidently finished packing Mum in. One of the men stepped back down onto the road. He talked to Dad. Dad nodded as they both looked over at Kenny.
‘Ken. Kenny.’ Dad threw his head back a little, beckoning him. ‘Come over here, son, say goodbye to your Mum.’
Ken walked down the path to where Dad was holding out his hand. It came to rest on Kenny’s shoulder as he approached.
‘Give your mum a kiss, son.’
The paramedic inside the ambulance was crouched just inside the door. He reached a hand out and helped Kenny climb the steps into the back. It smelled in there - strange ointments, Ken thought.
Mum was sitting in a wheel chair sideways on to the side of the ambulance. It had been strapped into place somehow and there was a blanket across Mum’s knees. Her rosary hung from her hands.
She smiled at him.
‘It’s just for a few days, Kenken. I’ll be home again soon. Just a few days.’
‘We’ll come and see you tonight,’ said Dad, ‘ when you’re settled in. Eh, Ken?’
Mum lifted her hand a placed it upon Ken’s head. Her beads dangled across his cheek.
‘Yes, come and see me tonight. Now give me a kiss, Kenny.’
Ken leaned over the side of her wheelchair as she offered her cheek for him to kiss. She smelled of her bed.
‘There’s a good boy,’ she said, ‘ I’ll see you tonight. You come and see me tonight. All right?’
‘Okay, Kenny-boy,’ said the paramedic. ‘Jump out to your dad. We don’t want to be taking you with us by mistake, do we?’
Ken felt a dark shudder, a sudden urge to run, as if a large dog were chasing him.
His feet stumbled and he nearly fell as he stepped down but Dad hooked him around with his arm and pulled him in close to his hip. The pair stood on the pavement as the second paramedic clamped the backdoors shut, walked round the side of the ambulance and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Ken waited in frozen anticipation of the siren and flashing blue lights to kick into desperate life, but actually the ambulance started with a regular juggle of an old bus and pulled sedately away from the pavement.
Ken felt his father’s hand find his again and, Dad led him back through the gate. They stood and watched as the ambulance reached the end of the road and turned right.
'She'll be all right, won't she Dad?'
His father didn't speak. He just put is hand on Ken's shoulder again.
'Dad?'
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