SCRIPT: Where were you yesterday? [June 27, 2018]

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John Millen |
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Amanda: Where were you yesterday? You missed the maths test. Mrs Chan is not going to be pleased about that: you’d better have a good excuse or she will be down on you like a tonne of bricks.

Ryo: You don’t think I was cutting class, do you? Thank you for having such a high opinion of me. 

Amanda: Well, it is a coincidence that we had an important maths test yesterday and you weren’t there.

Ryo: I was not skiving! I would rather have taken the maths test than have what happened to me yesterday. 

Amanda: Good grief. It must have been a bad day.

Ryo: It was really stressful! It started just after Mum left home to go to work. She always leaves the flat to go to work at eight o’clock prompt. Then I leave at eight-fifteen. Yesterday she’d been gone about five minutes when my phone went.  It was my gran. She lives three blocks away. 

Amanda: And?

Ryo: She’d had an accident. She’d been standing on a chair to get something out of a cupboard in the kitchen and the chair had collapsed. She ended up on the floor and couldn't get up. She thought she’d broken her ankle.

Amanda: Why didn’t she call an ambulance instead of calling you?

Ryo: I don’t suppose she thought of that. She wanted Mum to go over and help her, but Mum wasn’t answering her phone. So Gran called me.

Amanda: So you called for an ambulance?

Ryo: Nooo. My only thought was to get over to her place as quickly as I could. So I grabbed Gran’s spare key out of the drawer in the hallway, and rushed out of the flat, then ran all the way. I tried to ring Mum, but I couldn't get hold of her either. I must admit, I was in a bit of a panic.

Amanda: I bet you were!

Ryo: Mr Lee, the guard on duty when I got there, came up to Gran’s flat with me. When we went in, she was lying on the floor surrounded by stuff that had fallen out of the cupboard when the chair gave way.  Cereal boxes, packets of biscuits, packets of noodles - what a mess!

Amanda: Was she badly hurt?

Ryo: Mr Lee has done first aid training, so knew immediately what to do. He felt her leg gently and said he agreed that she might have broken her ankle. He called an ambulance, which arrived in about ten minutes. Two paramedics put Gran on a stretcher thing and carried her downstairs. And I still could not reach Mum on her phone.

Amanda: My mum is the same. She puts her phone at the bottom of her bag under tonnes of rubbish and never hears it when it rings.

Ryo: So annoying! Anyway, Gran was perfectly calm while all this was going on, not crying or panicking or anything. She is a tough lady. I went in the ambulance with her to hospital. The staff there were great. They X-rayed Gran and she had broken her ankle, so they booked her in to see a specialist. All this, and I still couldn’t get hold of Mum. I finally reached her at lunch time. She came straight over to the hospital and she was more upset than Gran. What a day! I didn’t get home until four in the afternoon. I was exhausted.

Amanda: I bet you were!

Ryo: The hospital kept Gran in over night. She’s going back home this morning and Mum is with her now. And you will be pleased to know that the first thing I did when I got to school this morning was go see Mrs Chan. I’m doing the maths test tomorrow after school!

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