Just like riding a bike

Just like riding a bike

One

It’s a start.

Eleven

There’s still a long way to go.

Fifteen

The worst is over.

Nineteen

Stay optimistic.

Twenty-one

Not out of the woods.

Twenty two

We’re almost there, only one more to go. If she can cope, then we can be cautiously optimistic about the future

Twenty-three

The last tube, the last wire, the last piece of apparatus keeping her alive. Now we see if she can breathe on her own.

Police are still appealing for witnesses to the hit and run accident, at approximately three-forty-five last Thursday, near the Strawberry turn off on Abbey Road in Barrow-in-Furness. Thirteen year-old Kirsty Tate is still critically ill in hospital after being knocked off her bicycle on her way home from school. A dark coloured estate car was seen leaving the scene at speed and police would like to talk to the driver of the car to eliminate them from their enquiries. Kirsty’s parents are keeping a constant vigil at her bedside but the teenager hasn’t regained consciousness yet. Pupils at Thorncliffe School are holding a prayers by candlelight ceremony, in the assembly hall, tomorrow evening from seven-thirty, with tea and biscuits to follow and everybody is welcome to attend. There will be a two pound entrance fee to the Prayers for Kirsty event and, all monies raised will be donated to the scanner appeal at Furness General Hospital.

The tension in the intensive care unit is palpable as the crash team stand by. Jennifer and Paul Tate wait anxiously in a private visitor’s room. They have been allowed to mark Kirsty’s progress by being present as each wire and tube has been removed from their daughter’s life-support system. Each piece of equipment removed, down to the last drip bag and catheter this morning, has been a positive step towards Kirsty coming back to them. The last procedure is the taking of the breathing tube itself. Kirsty looks so wan and small. The surgery was deemed a success, and the terrifying haematoma has settled. The drainage tubes taking the blood and debris from her broken body are gone. There is no reason why Kirsty shouldn’t breathe.

There is no reason why Kirsty shouldn’t wake up.

But can she?

Jennifer nibbles anxiously at a cuticle, the French manicure of the week before no more than a memory of when life was normal, of when they had a life. Paul grips his wife’s other hand as though breaking physical contact between them will tear an invisible string between them and their child.

Kirsty can see her parents. Without the constraints of time or space she can see her friends. She can hear some of what they are saying. Miss Prescott is asking, ‘Which has the greater landmass, Canada or the United States of America?’ Angela Drake has her hand up. Miss Prescott points at her to answer, she is wrong. Kirsty knows the correct answer.

Kristy can see the lady who knocked her off her bike. She is in a bright kitchen feeding a baby in a high chair. There is a radio on the window sill. She can hear bits of, Pack Up. She likes Eliza Doolittle. The lady is singing and the baby has mushy food all over its face.

She can see her body. The tube is slowly removed. She watches as her mouth opens. She is choking, gagging, gasping for a breath that doesn’t come. It doesn’t hurt. She can’t feel anything. The Kirsty in the room is dying. She isn’t concerned about it, she’s just curious to see what will happen next.

Mister Ball, the consultant, holds up a hand. ‘Wait, wait. This is normal. Give her time. We’ve got fifty-seconds.’ The pretty nurse with the barrette in her hair is calling out stats in a controlled but tense voice. Kirsty can understand some of it, but it’s awfully muffled. ‘Come on Kirsty, come on sweetheart, it’s just like riding a bike, says Mister Ball. Kirsty wants to laugh at that, but she can’t remember how to. The nurse gives him a shocked look and she wants to laugh again as he mutters, ‘sorry,’ and goes red.

She wants to go back. She feels as though it should be easy to get back into her body, ‘just like riding a bike’, but she can’t remember how she got out of it, so has no idea how to get back in. Something seems to be pulling her away. The team aren’t calm now. A machine is emitting a piercing single note. They are frantically trying to make her breathe. In the visitor’s room, her mother is crying and her father is telling his wife that it’s all going to be okay, that, ‘She’s a little fighter.’ Kirsty’s never been in a fight, not even when Louise Bywood told Lizzie Thomas that Kirsty had called her a bitch.

She could hear other people now. The people there. She wanted to stay but it was time to go.