Mummy’s Fear of Needles

The little girl was kneeling on the ottoman in her parents’ bedroom and peeping out over the front garden.  She had been there some time, and the upholstery fabric was leaving a pattern of red dimples on her knees.  She turned to see her mother looking intently at her, squatting down by the side of the bed with a finger to her lips.

“Ssshhhh” said Mummy.

The little girl nodded and turned back towards the window.  This was a funny game, and not the sort of game that Mummy usually liked to play.

An elderly car swung into view around the bend in the road; a squat, pale blue Morris Minor.  And, as Mummy had predicted, it stopped outside their house.  Out of it came the Lady Doctor, prim in a tweed skirt, dark green mac, and a hairdo like the Queen’s.  The Lady Doctor stooped to reach inside the car.  The little girl could see the seams on the Lady Doctor’s stockings as she bent over and lifted a large black bag from the passenger seat.  The car door closed with a clunk.

Mummy had levered herself up into a half crouch with her fingers on the windowsill.  The two of them looked out, side by side.

“Now, when she rings the doorbell, stay very, very quiet.”

The little girl picked at a runnel of dried paint on the windowsill with her fingernail.  She felt scared.  Everybody knows that when somebody comes to the door, you have to answer it.  Especially if it is somebody important, like a Doctor.  Today, Mummy didn’t want to let the Doctor in, and the little girl was not sure why.  The Lady Doctor was coming to give the little girl some jabs, Mummy had said.  They weren’t going to the surgery because Mummy had sprained her ankle and couldn’t walk there, and the arrangement had been made, a week or so ago, that the Doctor would come to the house.

The little girl heard the Lady Doctor’s shoes clip-clopping up the drive and then – and then, the shrill “pring pring” of the doorbell.  She squeezed her eyes closed very, very tight and put her hands over her ears.  She prayed to Jesus that the Doctor would go away.  Suddenly it went quiet.  Thank you, Jesus!

She didn’t understand why Mummy didn’t want her to have the jabs.  Mummy said she was too young for so many vaccinations and anyway, it wasn’t good for you to have them all so close together.  They could go at half-term instead.  But Jennifer Keenan next door had had her jabs, and her birthday was much later in the summer.  Jennifer Keenan said that the jabs really, really hurt, and that the Doctor stuck the needle in your bottom!  The little girl shivered.

And there was the doorbell again!  Oh please, please, make the Doctor go away!  What if the Lady Doctor found out that they had been hiding?  She and Mummy would be in so much trouble.  The little girl was sure she would get smacked again, and she wasn’t sure what they did with grown-ups who were naughty.  Mummy was sitting down on the floor now, her back against the radiator, her hands up to her face and her lips pinched tightly together.  The little girl twisted round and sat on the ottoman, rolling and unrolling the fabric of her skirt up over her knees and down again.

There was a last, insistent knock on the front door, and a rattle of the letterbox.  The little girl could imagine the Lady Doctor trying to peer through the frosted glass to check whether there was anybody in.  Then, finally, came the sound of the Lady Doctor’s shoes clip clopping back down the drive.

Neither of them moved until the car doors had slammed shut again and the fading sound of the engine told them that the danger was over.  Mummy pushed herself up from the floor, taking care not to twist her bandaged ankle, let out a long, loud sigh, and went out on to the landing.

The little girl thought that Mummy must be very afraid of needles.  She dangled her legs over the edge of the ottoman, and slid to the floor, her skirt flicking up as she went, and on the way down she caught sight of the large, purplish marks near the tops of her legs.  She prodded them with a chubby finger to see if they still hurt.  They did.  And the little girl noticed, with some interest, that the freshest of the bruises was the same shape as Mummy’s hand.