Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Violet

Lemon Hibiscus

Her lashes close and she thinks of her father. She knows he cannot come to the hospital– her mother has said he needs to be away, to take on extra work– but maybe he is thinking of her. She drifts back from dreams of musty sheep and sun-dried grasses. Her skin is baking like cracked earth. Nothing moves but the heat pulsing in time with her breathing. She tries to think the sheets off her burning legs, keep their weight away from her body.

Words she cannot grasp float in the hot air above her. She wonders if they have been left there by the doctor who is always leaving things in her room: a pencil, a pebble, a snail's shell wrapped in a handkerchief. Now she supposes he has left his words behind, to be picked up and tidied away by the nurses that drift around her bed like ghosts.

She may still be a child– eleven next birthday– but she knows that the doctor likes the dark-haired nurse with the merry eyes. She watches them as they move around her bed, both unaware she is studying them through her lashes.

Now the doctor turns, speaking to the merry-eyed nurse at his side.

‘Move her into the garden.'

A pause.

‘Yes, the whole bed.'

She hears a murmur of surprise, and she wonders if they are going to plant her there like a flower.

Merry Eyes queries, worried, ‘Will she be all right out there at night?'

Above the rasp of her own breath, she can just unravel the doctor's reply, and through half-closed eyes she sees him take the nurse's hand.

‘There is no more we can do, and I have heard this little one loves flowers. Why not let her sleep among them?'

Her mind flits to her doll, still sleeping under the sage bush– if the cat hasn't got her by now.

The doctor sighs, ‘It should be no trouble to move her. She weighs less than a small bird.'

She would like to fly into the air like a bird, away from the heat that presses in on her, to find a shaded pool and dip her wings in cool water.

She cannot fly, but the bed is travelling with her in it. The words that flutter over her head are drowned out by the rattle of wheels, squeaking and bumping over tiles.

When she opens her eyes, she is in the garden. Above her the trees drip with hibiscus the colour of lemon sherbet.