Break the Child: Chapter Thirteen: Death By Lorry

            Chapter Thirteen: She Almost Killed Us.

            It’s Wednesday and I’ve got a half day off school, how good is that? It means that I haven’t got long though, Mum’s taking me in a minute. I had a dentist appointment this morning, see, for everything good, you have to pay for it with something bad. It was okay though, no fillings so Dad gave me a tenner, five pounds to spend and five pounds to put in my savings account. I can’t decide whether to buy makeup or put it towards Fine Line, the Harry Styles CD. Mr Cobden, the dentist, said that I might need braces next year. I flippin’ hope not.

            Right got to go, Mum’s yelling that I’m going to be late. She’s all in a state because she has to go for her test results— too see if she’s as mad as a box of frogs— when they’ve dropped me off at school. I hope she’s going to be okay. I keep thinking that she’s going to die, but that’s just stupid. I need to give my head a wobble. I can’t talk anymore about it now on account of me being worried and that I’ve got to get to school, I might come back and write some more, later.

I’m shaking. I can’t type. I can’t stop crying. I was so scared; I thought we were all going to die.

            I’ve just got back from the hospital. I’m okay; we all are, I just needed to be checked over. But Mum’s got a black eye from the air bag and Dad’s got some whiplash because he was still twisted around from talking to me when we hit the lorry. I’m okay, but I was hysterical after it happened, and they kept me in for a few hours just to see that there was nothing wrong with me.

            My mum almost killed us all. Oh God, even when I think about it now, I feel sick. I’ve never been so scared in my life.

            Mum was driving me to school and then going to get her results so, luckily, my dad was with us but mum was driving. Dad was twisted around in his seat explaining to me about PH levels for biology. I was just chillin’ and wasn’t watching what was going on—neither was mum.

            Dad turned around just as we were coming up to a red light. Mum had completely zoned out. She was daydreaming, or something. Dad said that she was in a world of her own. I didn’t see, all I saw was the lorry. He said that she was just staring ahead and didn’t even try to stop for the light. She wasn’t going to stop at all. The light was red, and Dad screamed at her to stop, but she just carried on going. It was a busy main road and Dad said that, if it had been rush hour, there would have been a massive pile up.

            He leaned over and grabbed the wheel, but it was too late for him to make a difference. He yelled at mum to stop, first, and then he shouted, ‘Brake. Brake,’ but she just kept going. The lorry was going along the cross-aways road in front of us. Dad said that it was a miracle for us that it had nearly driven clear. We just clipped the back wheel and some of the metal stuff on the side of the lorry. God, I can’t stop crying and it’s making it so hard to type. This will probably be full of typos, if it was for English, I’d get like an F. He said that if we had been going just a couple of miles an hour faster, we’d have all been killed, and probably the lorry driver and some other people in cars behind us, as well.

            We hit the lorry and it spun us right around until we were sitting in the middle of the busy bit facing the wrong way. It was so scary.

            Some cars drove around us, but two cars stopped and made like a roadblock. A man got out and started waving his hands to warn the other cars. The lorry stopped and the driver got out. He went to the back of his trailer and rubbed his hand over where we’d bent all the metal and then he came over to us.

He was really angry. Dad said it was the shock. The man really shouted at Dad and called Mum a lot of names. Then Dad lost his temper and shouted back at the man. He took his jacket off and wanted to fight with him. I don’t think my dad’s ever had a fight in his life. The lorry driver was a lot bigger than Dad and Dad kept putting his fist up and saying, ‘Come on then. Come on.’ I was so frightened. A lady came and tried to get me out of the back of the car, but I couldn’t move. Not because I was stuck, just because I was so scared. And then she held my hand and called me ‘sweetie,’ and I got out. She took me to the side of the road and gave me a tissue out of her bag. Somebody else called an ambulance. I thought Mum was dead because she was just sitting in the car, not moving, and her eyes were all big and wide open. I was screaming and screaming.

            The police came and told mum to get out of the car, and Dad told her to get out, too. He kept asking if she was all right, but she wouldn’t move. She didn’t look at them or anything. She just sat there, and the lorry driver was calling her a maniac and saying that she should be locked up. He said that she was a danger on the road.

            And then, this big tear came down mum’s cheek, but she still didn’t say anything, and she still didn’t move. The ambulance men arrived, and Dad told them that she’s pregnant. They put her on a stretcher, and then they took her away.

            Dad kept apologising to the policeman, but he was still angry with the trucker for calling Mum names. He said he didn’t know how it had happened and then he just kept saying,’ Dear God. Dear God.’ We weren’t allowed to get in our car; we had to leave it there. The police said they would deal with it and be in touch, and a police car took us to hospital, but it wasn’t cool. I didn’t even try to look for anybody I knew to see if they could see me. It was really scary, and I thought I was going to be sick.

            At the hospital, the doctors said that we’d had a lucky escape. But we didn’t have a lucky escape; we were in a car crash with a big lorry. If we’d had a lucky escape, we wouldn’t have hit it at all. I heard Dad talking to a doctor about Mum being mental, but I don’t think he called it that, he just said she’s been doing lots of crazy stuff. He said how they were supposed to be getting test results, and the doctor patted his arm and told him not to worry and that he’d ring through and get the results. And then I was left by myself with only the doctors and nurses. Dad stayed with me until they gave me an injection. That was terrifying and I started crying again. It hurt a lot. They said it would calm my nerves and help me to get some sleep for a little while and that, if everything was okay, I could go home with mum and Dad when I woke up. But I didn’t go to sleep for a long time. I felt all woozy and dizzy, but it was ages before I went to sleep. I was upset and crying so a nurse came and sat next to me and she held my hand and kept saying, ‘Shush chicken, shush.’ She was really nice, but I’m not a chicken, I’m not even a kitten or a puppy or a bunny, I’m me and I didn’t want her, I wanted my mum. I thought that my mum had died in the ambulance and I thought that our baby was dead. She told me that Mum was being seen to somewhere else in the hospital and that she was absolutely fine, and the baby is fine, and I wasn’t to worry. But I did. Sometimes nurses tell lies to make people feel better.

            When I woke up, I was sick in a grey cardboard thing that looked like a hat. The nurse said it was the sedative. Mum and Dad were with me and Mum wasn’t acting nuts, she was just like my mum again, she held the hat and rubbed my back, and she couldn’t stop crying, either. She talked to me just like every other time that I’ve been sick, and I knew that if my Mum died it would be a lot worse than when Kali did, and I can’t imagine anything worse than that. My brain’s not old enough to have that much imagination, yet. I told her that I was so scared, and she just kept saying sorry, over and over again. I got a cup of hot chocolate and two slices of toast, but I didn’t want the toast.

            We got a taxi home and I was worried that Dad was going to shout at Mum, but he didn’t. He cuddled her and he cuddled me, and he told us that it was all going to be all right.

            Mum was white.

            When we got back Dad made hot drinks and Mum went out to sit in the garden, in the rain. I thought that she’d gone nuts again and started screaming. She cuddled me real tight and told me not to be scared. She said that she wasn’t being crazy, she just wanted to sit and think, and Aunty Linda came and went outside to talk to Mum. When she came in, she was crying, too. I told her not to be upset, that Mum’s black eye would get better soon and that the baby was okay, and that’s the main thing.’ She hugged me really hard and couldn’t stop crying. She must have been really shocked that we all nearly got killed by a lorry and she still kept crying even when I told her that it was all all right. She said, ‘This is terrible. How are we going to deal with it?’ And Dad told her to ‘drop it.’ I think she was overreacting slightly; I mean, she wasn’t even there. It was me and Dad and Mum who had to deal with it, not her.

            I heard Dad telling her that mum’s, not allowed to drive anymore, effective immediately. I think that’s probably a good thing, but it’s going to be a bummer on a Thursday when I go to Street Dance.

            I phoned Sal and she said that she was shocked when I didn’t come back to school at dinner time; she’d saved me a place in the queue, but she said that it was a good job I didn’t come back because it was semolina. Yeuk! She thought that I’d had to have a tooth out and said how horrible that would be. I told her that was nothing. And when I told her what had happened and about being sick in a bowl and everything, I started crying again, and she started crying, too, and said how horrible it would be if I was dead.

            And then, I ran out of credit.