Inside Grandad Read Online Free Page A

warm and fill you with hot sweet tea and sticky cakes—got to get some sugar into your blood, right? As soon as anyone knows anything we'll come and tell you about your granddad. Up you get, then. Take it easy…."
    "I'm all right," Gavin muttered as he stood swaying in the corridor, though he would have fallen without the nurse's arm round his shoulders. In spite of what she'd said, he felt deeply ashamed of himself. It seemed dead feeble, passing out like that and wasting everyone's time when they should have been looking after Grandad.
    At least Mum didn't say "Told you so." By the time they got back to the waiting area, she was too busy telling him about insulin deficiency.
    "Wake up, darling," said Mum's voice. "Here's the doctor at last."
    Oh, yes—Grandad, the hospital, fainting, sweet tea and chocolate digestive biscuits—he could still taste them in his mouth….
    Mum was standing, so Gavin pulled the blanket off and got up too. Gran and a doctor were just coming into the waiting area. Gran looked utterly exhausted.
    "I'm sorry to have kept you so long," said the doctor. He was exhausted too. Gavin could hear the tiredness in his voice. "It's been the hell of a day—always happens at weekends. And I'm afraid there isn't a lot I can tell you yet. We can't be dead certain till we've done the scans, but all the signs tell me your husband's had a fairly severe stroke, Mrs. Robinson, so we'resending him up to the stroke unit. It may not be as bad as it looks at the moment—I've seen patients make almost complete recoveries from where he is now, but it's a slow process. In the next few weeks I'd expect him to regain some control over the right side of his body, and perhaps some power of speech too, but that's a gradual process. He'll be able to understand what you say to him some time before he can answer at all clearly. The left side is more problematic, and it's impossible to say at this stage how much movement he will recover there. It could be anything from very little to almost complete control. The physios will be able to tell you more when they've been working with him for a bit."
    "We can help with that too, can't we?" said Mum.
    "Sure you can. That's often half the battle. The physios will talk to you about it."
    "When can we have him back at the Kincardine?" said Mum. "It'll be much easier for us to visit him there."
    "They usually keep patients in the stroke unit for about a month. That allows them to see some recovery and assess how much further they're likely to progress and what level of future care they're going to … Yes?"
    He had turned away because a nurse had appeared. She muttered briefly to him. Gavin saw his shoulders sag still further before he turned back to them.
    "I'm sorry," he said. "I've got to go. I don't think there's any point in your waiting any longer. There's nothing more you can do, and there isn't going to be anything more I can tell you now."
    "They'll call us if anything happens?" said Mum.
    "Yes, of course. You gave all your details to the reception desk, including your telephone number? Great. Then it'll be going up with him to the stroke unit."
    And he hurried away.
    Gavin slept most of the way home and had to grope his way in through the door, and then got tangled up with Dodgem, who was capering round Gran, whingeing for his supper. He forced himself to stay awake and eat a bit of cold pie out of the fridge, and then dragged himself up past his bedroom into the attic. As he climbed the last flight he could hear Mum on the phone, trying to reach Dad on the ship satellite system. Last time Dad had called, his ship had just left Trinidad, heading for Panama. As he reached the top of the stairs Gavin heard her get through. Dad would be having his afternoon nap about now, maybe.
    He cleaned up the mess of painty turpentine on Grandad's workbench, put the brushes to soak in fresh turps, and made everything as neat as he could. As he groped his way down to bed he could hear Mum