by Jenni Ogden
Noticing Lara’s sneakers, laces still trailing, peeking out from under a muddle of clothes dumped on the floor, I grabbed the curtain and hung on. I recognized Lara's blue jersey and her frayed designer jeans, soaked in blood now, with jagged edges denoting the path of the sharp scissors that had cut them from her slim frame. Beside them lay her bikini pants, cut open at the seams, looking ridiculously small and out of place on the cold green tiles, but thankfully with no crimson spattering their pure white.
Dragging my eyes back to the bed I watched as David checked Lara's pupils. The nurse was reciting her vitals: Pulse, BP, oxygen sat— I strained to hear but my head was buzzing and the numbers made no sense. I found myself beside David and managed to croak, “How is she?”
He didn’t turn from his task but answered me calmly. “She’s doing well; her pupils are a bit sluggish but reacting to light and there’s no airway obstruction. Nurse, can you repeat her other vitals for Dr. Grayson?”
“Oxygen sat ninety-eight percent, BP one twelve over sixty-four, heart rate eighty-five, respiratory rate eighteen, and Glasgow Coma Scale improving,” she recited rapidly, looking at her chart. “It was eight at the scene but it’s ten now.”
Lara suddenly groaned and her right arm moved up to push David’s hand away.
“Good, she doesn’t like that bright light in her eyes.” He released her eyelid and Lara's eye closed. Pulling the oxygen mask off her face, he leaned close and said loudly, “Lara, open your eyes.” She groaned again and said something unintelligible. David moved back from the bed and touched my arm. “You try.”
I took her slender right hand in mine and leaned over, my heart in my mouth. “Lara, it’s Mum. Squeeze my hand, darling.” I pressed her hand gently and waited. Lara's hand lay still. “Lara, speak to me.” I kept my voice steady. “Try hard and open your eyes. Dad and Finbar are waiting to see you. You’ve been in an accident, but you’re going to be fine.” I thought I saw her eyelids flicker. “Come on, Lara, open your eyes.”
“Can’t,” Lara croaked. “Won’t open.”
“Yes,” David almost shouted. “Good girl.”
I tried again. “Now squeeze my hand when I squeeze yours, so we know you can hear us. Come on, you can do it.” I felt the tiniest pressure on my hand and looked down, remembering that same feeling, that delicate pressure of baby Lara's much smaller hand holding mine. Her eyeballs moved below her almost transparent eyelids as she strained to open them.
“Come on, Lara, come on. Open your eyes.”
For a brief moment she looked up at me, both eyes bloodshot, but a hint of green still visible. “Mummy?” she whispered. Her eyes closed.
I swallowed hard. “Darling, I’m right here.” I bent and kissed her on her forehead, every cell in my body loving her.
“I hurt.”
“I know, sweetheart, but the doctors are fixing you up as fast as possible.” I looked at David who was fiddling with the intravenous drip.
“I’ve increased her pain relief. We should get her down to CT and X-Ray now,” he said, his long face tense with relief.
The trauma doctor who had been working on the gash on her thigh moved to the bottom of the bed. I gave David a wobbly grin as Lara made it clear she could feel the doctor scraping her feet and pricking her legs, torso and arms. Then she managed to wriggle her toes on command.
The doctor looked at me, his expression pleased. “I think we can move her off this spinal board safely. Apart from the broken arm, there are no other bones broken as far as I can see, but we’ll find out when we X-Ray her. And she has a scalp wound over her left temporal area with a possible fracture that we’ll need to watch.”
My smile disappeared. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
David put a hand on my arm, stopping me from moving towards the head of the bed. “It’s OK, Georgia. If there is a fracture, it’s minor; we’ll check it out properly after we get the CT scan and X-Rays. She probably won’t need surgery.” He looked towards the trauma doctor for his opinion.
“No, I don’t think she will; it didn’t look too bad,” the doctor agreed.
“Sorry, I’m a bit uptight. You’ve done a good job.”
“That’s OK, Dr. Grayson. It’s tough when it’s your own family.”
David was talking loudly to Lara again. “Do you remember being in the car?”
Tears squeezed from below Lara's closed eyelids and I moved quickly towards the head of the bed as David stepped out of the way. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. If you can’t remember, that’s OK. It will take time.” I tried to push away a strand of bloody hair that was clinging to Lara’s eyelashes, but it was stuck fast. Her bloodshot eyes opened and her voice came out in a whisper. I bent low to hear her.
“I remember having a big fight, you and Dad.” Her tears were flowing fast now; she sounded terrified. “Dad? Where’s Dad? I want him, where is he?”
Chapter 12
It was six in the morning when we reluctantly left the hospital, leaving Lara, still confused and drowsy, in the neurosurgery ward. I knew she would be woken every thirty minutes until David was confident that she was completely out of danger. My concerns about Lara’s skull fracture I kept to myself. The chances of it causing any problems were slight, but I wasn’t happy about its location so close to the middle meningeal artery.
We’d barely walked in the door of the house when my mobile vibrated. As I flipped it open I saw Adam stiffen, his face etched with fear. “It’s Lara,” I told him, as soon as my conversation ended. “Her GCS has dropped from fourteen to thirteen, so she’s been taken for another CT scan.” I managed to keep my tone even.
“What do you mean? Is she in a coma again?”
“No, but she’s become a lot more drowsy and confused. It sounds as if she might have developed a blood clot between her skull and her brain, and it’s causing the pressure inside her head to rise.”
“So you’ll have to operate? Isn’t that an emergency?”
I took Adam's hands in mine. “It’s not good, love, but David’s alerted the theater staff just in case, and he’ll start scrubbing up immediately. Lara will be all right.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I know, because she’s had this period of being fairly lucid. Her coma score was almost back to normal, and her CT looked good. That suggests that she didn’t sustain significant brain damage from the accident, so if we remove the clot quickly, her brain won’t suffer any damage.”
“But why is she bleeding now? That must mean they missed something.”
“It’s a small risk when there is even a minor fracture over the middle meningeal artery; that’s why she was being watched so closely.”
“How can you be so calm about it?” Adam's face was white.
“Oh, love, I’m trying to be objective, that’s all. I’m as scared as you, inside. But I’ve seen many cases like this, and she has a good chance of being fine. I’ve got to get back to the hospital. I’ll phone you as soon as I know more.” I started towards the door.
“I’m coming with you. I can’t stay here while Lara's going through this.”
“Phone Sonja and take Finbar over there first. He doesn’t need to be there.”
“Damn, no. I’ll take him on my way to the hospital. Are you going to operate, or are you going to let David do it? He’s not a consultant…” Adam's voice tailed off.
“David is perfectly capable of doing a straightforward burr-hole and evacuation. And you know I can’t operate on my own daughter. Even if I could, have you forgotten I’ve been banned from operating?”
“What about getting Jim Mason to do it? This is our daughter we’re talking about. I want a consultant, not a trainee.”
“David isn’t a trainee, you know that.” I could feel my tension escalating. “And I’ll be in theater observing, so stop worrying. If I have any doubts at all, I’ll call Andrew Wilson in. Mason’s not going near our daughter.”
“Get going then. Keep your mobile on.
And call me straight away when you find out whether she’s going to theater.”
“Of course I will. Adam, try not to worry.” I swallowed my fear as I looked into Adam's terrified eyes.
I went straight to the Imaging Suite, but Lara had already been taken to theater. The CT had shown the telltale pale convexity between the skull and the brain, indicating a rapidly forming extradural hematoma. It was still small, but it was essential that it be evacuated without delay, as a further rise of pressure could be fatal. I considered phoning Andrew Wilson but decided I was being over-cautious. If David got into difficulty I would simply take over, ban or not. I wasn’t going to let my daughter suffer because of some stupid rule. It was a straightforward procedure, for heaven’s sake. Hardly like clipping an aneurysm.
Fifteen minutes later I was scrubbed up and in theater for the first time in weeks, but this time standing well back from the table. David hadn’t looked too happy when I joined him in the scrub room, and had tried to discourage me from observing. I’d almost felt sorry for him. He’d clearly found it embarrassing attempting to keep his boss out of the operating room.
As the operation began, I tried, with increasing desperation, to focus on the technicalities of the procedure and ignore the body already covered in drapes before I’d entered the theater. The team worked silently, the only noise the bleep of the monitors and the regular whoosh of the respirator. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe normally as the high-pitched screaming of the drill began. The distinctive odor of burnt flesh and bone permeated the air as David ground a hole in Lara's skull so he could suction out the blood clot. The image of my daughter’s face flashed before my eyelids and I shuddered.
Why can’t you save our daughter? Adam’s voice echoed in my head. Then the acrid taste of vomit was in my mouth. I clamped my lips shut and rushed to the door, pushing it open with my shoulders and running, almost falling, down the corridor. My mouth filled up, and choking and gagging, I made it to the bathroom before the mess exploded out of me into the toilet bowl.
After washing my clammy face and swilling out my rancid mouth, I dressed and left the operating suite, careful to avoid the glass porthole in the door of Theater Eight. I found Adam in the neurosurgery ward, sitting on Lara's empty bed. He leapt up as soon as he saw me, his fear palpable.
“She’s still in theater, but everything is going well.” I prayed I wasn’t tempting fate.
“Thank heavens.” Adam sat down abruptly. “Why aren’t you there? I thought you were in theater with her. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just couldn’t deal with it. I’m no good any longer, Adam. I can’t even cope with observing a simple burr hole from the other side of the theater.” I sank down beside him, my head in my hands.
For a while Adam sat in silence. Then, wearily, he spoke. “Don’t be silly, Georgia. I should never have made you go into theater. I’m sure you would have been fine if it hadn’t been Lara.”
I didn’t reply. As the light faded we sat mute and apart in our daughter’s room.
The vibrating of my mobile jerked me out of my black thoughts, and I ripped it from my pocket. “David?”
“It went absolutely perfectly, Georgia. Lara is already coming around. I think she’s going to be fine.”
My eyes filled as I smiled shakily at Adam. “Thank you, David, thank you, thank you. I’m sorry I left so abruptly. Can we come down and see her, please?”
“You sure can. I’ll see you in Recovery,” said David, a smile in his voice.
Before Adam and I left her, Lara was awake and talking, drowsily recognizing us, and even asking where Finbar was.
Two days later she was shifted from Intensive Care into a single room in the main ward. Her broken arm had been pinned and encased in plaster, and on a follow-up head CT, the shadow indicating the blood clot had vanished and her brain had expanded back to its normal circumference. Her memory for new events was still patchy but was improving rapidly. It was time to tell her about Tony.
I took her hand. “Sweetheart, we talked to Selina this morning and she said she’d be in to see you tomorrow.”
“Thank goodness she’s all right. I suppose being in the back of the car meant she didn’t get hurt as badly as me.” Lara's voice wavered.
I could hear the traffic on the road far below as I waited for Lara's next and inevitable question. But she averted her gaze and stared out the window, her shoulders shaking.
“How well did you know Tony, Pumpkin? Was he—is he—a special friend of yours, or is he more Selina’s friend?” Adam's voice was gentle.
Lara turned her head and looked at us, her face pale under the purple bruises. Tears slid down her face. “He’s my boyfriend. I didn’t want you to know because you’d only stop me seeing him.”
Her words punched me in the stomach. “Oh, Lara. How could you think that? We’ve always enjoyed meeting your friends.”
“You’ve both been so shitty lately, and Tony has left school, and I knew you’d think he’s too old for me.” Lara scrubbed at her eyes with a sodden tissue.
“Darling, that makes me feel dreadful. I always want you to feel happy about bringing your friends home, whoever they are and however old they are.” I tried to hug her but was shrugged away.
“I know it’s been difficult at home lately, Pumpkin,” Adam said. “I promise we’ll be better. All we want is you home and well again.”
Lara sniffed and blew her nose. Then in something close to a whimper she finally asked the question we’d been dreading. “What happened to Tony? No one talks about what happened to him.” She tried to sit up. “You have to tell me. He’s badly hurt, isn’t he?”
I sat on the bed and brushed her hair from her face. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. His injuries were so bad that he didn’t make it. He took the full impact when the car smashed into the lamppost. He didn’t stand a chance.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t make it? You’re lying. Don’t lie to me.” Her tears welled up again.
“I know it’s hard to understand, and that you don’t want to hear it, or believe it. I know how much it hurts,” I said.
“He can’t be dead, he can’t be.”
I pressed her close, trying to still her shaking body. “Hush, darling, hush,” I murmured. I was weeping too as Adam closed his arms around us both.
Tony’s funeral loomed. With Lara still in hospital, Adam and I felt we must go, for her sake as well as for our own. We sat at the back of the church and listened to the heart-rending eulogies from Tony’s friends and family. Selina was there, sitting near the front with a large group of young people, most of whom I didn’t recognize. They looked so young and innocent, these friends of Tony’s and Lara's, their shoulders shaking with grief for their dead friend. Then a young boy, no older than Finbar, his face so pale it was hard to distinguish it from his hair, walked to the front of the church and sang Ave Maria in a voice so pure it really could have been an angel. I looked down at the printed service I held in my hand and saw that he was called Billy and he was Tony’s little brother. Billy’s round blue eyes were the only dry ones in the church, but his tears glistened in every note of the beautiful song he sang. When the last notes had died away, the only sound in the church the rasping sobbing of a woman sitting in the front row, Billy went and sat beside her and she pulled him close. On her other side a man sat seemingly frozen.
My sadness for all these people who loved Tony—the young man who a few nights ago I was cursing as an irresponsible lout—was almost too much to bear. My guilt about our own good fortune to still have our daughter while Tony’s parents stared into blackness, nearly sent me running out of the church, and it took all my strength to remain long enough after the service to murmur my condolences. I knew Adam felt the same. Tony’s father bravely thanked us for our sympathy and asked after Lara, but his mother, her eyes swollen and the agony etched into her face making her look much older than I knew she must be, was bereft of speech. I was unable to imagine how I would
cope in her place.
That night we collapsed, exhausted, into bed. As soon as Adam flicked off the bedside lamp I moved over to him and maneuvered his arm under my head. We lay still and quiet for a while, and then tentatively I gently stroked his chest, pushing aside his pajama jacket. My hand settled softly on his groin as my lips placed butterfly kisses along his chest and up to his chin, finally finding his mouth. He groaned, and I felt him responding to my hand, and I hungrily returned his kiss as he pushed up my nightgown. Our lovemaking was fast and intense and Adam spent himself quickly and collapsed on me, his head buried in my shoulder. We lay like that for many minutes, Adam’s body heaving with dry sobs and my tears soaking the pillow.
“Hush, my darling,” he whispered, when his body had stilled. “Hush. It’s all over now. It’s going to be all right.”
I pushed on his chest and he lifted up from me. His face was soft.
“Oh, Adam, what have I done to you all?” I caught his frown before he rolled off me.
“If Lara hadn’t heard us arguing and if I hadn’t been dragging you through hell for all these weeks, she wouldn’t have run out like that,” I said. “You know she wouldn’t. And she wouldn’t be lying in hospital now with a head injury and broken bones.”
“I was arguing as much as you,” Adam said, and I heard the weariness in his voice. “Let’s just be thankful that she’s going to be OK. She could have died.”
I shuddered. “I can’t seem to stop hurting everyone I care about—Lara, you, Finbar... Alfie's death seemed to start it all off and it’s because of me that poor Celia and those two little children have lost everything.”
“Please stop it, Georgia. I don’t know why you insist that Alfie's death was your fault. The Hospital Review Committee cleared you completely.”
“I’ve remembered more about my argument with Danny that night. I tried to find a time to tell you after my last session with Sarah, but then Lara had her accident…” I sat up, pushing away the stifling bedclothes. “Danny told me he didn’t want to marry me. It made no sense. His parents must have been against it. Perhaps they thought if he stayed in New Zealand that would be the end of his singing career. Married to some feminist neurosurgeon.”