The Only Boy For Me
Page 18
Charlie develops his version of the cold overnight, so I keep him off school and he spends the day draped on the sofa moaning and watching videos. He spends the night in my bed, kicking the duvet off every ten minutes and occasionally surfacing to demand a drink – but not just any drink; only warm juice will do, apparently. So I get up, make warm juice and by the time I get back to bed he’s fast asleep again. I end up stamping round the kitchen in frustration. He’s no better the next morning, so we go to see the GP at the surgery in the next village. He makes the usual speech: it’s a virus, keep up the fluids, give him Calpol, there’s no point in having antibiotics, and please bugger off now as I have thirty-eight OAPs in the waiting-room and want to get home before dark. Charlie sleeps, fusses and whines and generally irritates the hell out of me. I am not cut out for this nursing lark, and spend ages on the phone with Kate who agrees that children with colds are unbearable.
The next day he’s still not well, and is very hot and sleepy. He doesn’t even complain when I give him Calpol – which he usually manages to turn into his version of the suffragettes being forcibly fed in Holloway. I have a long and heated discussion with the GP’s receptionist and she finally agrees to book a home visit if I promise not to ring her ever again. The GP arrives mid-morning, and I explain that Charlie seems really unwell. He pokes him about a bit and then gives me a short lecture about how being a parent includes looking after ill children and I just have to get on with it. I thank him profusely for being so understanding; he looks at me like I am mad, and then rushes off muttering about home visits being for emergencies, not children with perfectly ordinary colds. I wish with all my heart that Charlie had been able to muster a bit of projectile vomiting all over the GP when he was poking him, but the poor little thing just lay there being pathetic.
By lunchtime Charlie is still sleeping on the sofa, but he now looks a pale-grey colour. I keep poking him to see if he’s all right, a technique I developed when he was a baby. During one of my prodding sessions I see what look like two tiny dots of purple Biro on his neck and I’m gripped by a terrible panic. I keep trying to convince myself that they’re paint or felt-pen marks, but deep down I know they are not. I have a strong desire to simply pretend I haven’t seen them. It’s almost like a physical pain; the minutes are ticking away and I’m gripped by a blind panic and can’t decide what to do. It feels like I’ve been hit by a huge invisible object. Finally I decide that I must call the doctor and need to hold Charlie close, so I put my arms round him to move him on to my knee and he throws up all over the sofa, but doesn’t wake up. This really terrifies me: he normally makes a tremendous fuss about being sick.
I stagger to the phone, half dragging Charlie as I don’t want to let go of him. He still doesn’t wake up, and I realise he’s semi-conscious, maybe even in a coma. I have visions of sitting by his bedside playing Lion King tapes for the rest of my life, willing him to wake up. I telephone the surgery, but the receptionist is not interested until I begin shouting. Then she puts the phone down. I ring back and say as calmly as I can that I think Charlie is unconscious and if she doesn’t put me through to a doctor in the next five seconds I will drive over there and slap her. Hard. This does the trick and she puts me straight through to the doctor.
Luckily it’s the same one who came out this morning, and I tell him Charlie now appears to be unconscious; this panics him and he says he’ll come right away. It’s only about a ten-minute drive, but I keep thinking I should be doing something, some vital piece of first aid that I can’t remember. So I sit on the floor holding Charlie and enter a kind of chasm of fear and pain, like a huge black blanket smothering us both. The doctor arrives, takes one look at Charlie and the two purple dots and gives him the biggest injection of penicillin that I’ve ever seen. It’s like an injection from a comedy sketch: he uses a huge needle and syringe, full of pale liquid. He sticks the needle straight into Charlie’s thigh, and pushes really hard, but Charlie doesn’t even stir. He begins rummaging around in his bag, finds his mobile phone and calls for an ambulance, stressing that this is a GP referral, an emergency, and then he gives very detailed directions on how to get here. Hearing him give our address is really strange. His voice sounds scared, and I notice his hands are shaking.
We sit on the floor, me clutching Charlie and rocking him backwards and forwards, and the doctor holding Charlie’s hand and trying surreptitiously to check his pulse. I ask him if he thinks it’s meningitis, which is the word that’s been lurking in the back of my brain although I’ve been too frightened to realise this until I actually hear myself saying it. He nods and looks at me, and I can see the fear in his eyes. We don’t speak after that. Charlie’s still in his pyjamas, pale blue with white stripes, and I count the stripes again and again as we sit in silence for what seems like hours until we hear the ambulance siren. There are seventeen white stripes, and sixteen pale-blue ones. The ambulance arrives, and the driver and the doctor begin a whispered conversation. I carry Charlie down the drive. He’s so heavy I can hardly manage but I don’t want anyone else to hold him.
Sitting in the ambulance is really strange. The ambulance man doesn’t touch Charlie but gives me an oxygen mask to hold close to his face, so I sit with him in my arms and try to avoid falling on the floor each time we go round a corner. No one speaks: just blank faces and silence. Maybe there’s nothing he can do, maybe he’s just a crap ambulance man, but I really wish he’d say something reassuring. We turn off the main road into the hospital and head towards Casualty, and I expect to see an expert team jogging on the spot waiting for us to arrive, but instead the doors are shut and the place looks deserted. They stick Charlie on a trolley and park it in a corridor. A nurse eventually wanders over and says Cubicle Three, but when we open the curtains a man’s lying on the bed. He glares at us. I glare back, and we stand in the corridor again while the nurse dithers about. Minutes are ticking away, and Charlie looks even worse than he did at home.
I can’t believe this is really happening, but finally realise I have to do something and somehow summon up the energy to throw another fit, and threaten to sue the hospital unless someone calls the paediatric consultant immediately. I grab hold of a doctor who’s walking past and demand he does something, and he agrees to have a quick look, obviously thinking I’m being very difficult and hoping I’ll let go of his tie in a moment or two. I tell him I think it’s meningitis, and suddenly things start moving. The nurse mutters that it’s not her fault, nobody told her, and gives me a furious look. I’m about to start screaming when a man appears at the end of the corridor. He’s causing a huge fuss by shouting at the nurses and generally behaving as if he owns the place, and I realise this must be the consultant. Or a very smartly dressed drunk.
It’s the consultant, and he takes one look at Charlie and starts yelling even louder. We move into the resuscitation room, and senior nurses in dark-blue uniforms start to appear out of nowhere with bits of equipment. They can’t find a really tall drip stand and the consultant, who’s introduced himself as Mr O’Brien, wants one, so I have to stand holding a bag of fluid above my head squeezing it as tight as I can while Mr O’Brien yells out orders. Terrifying reddish-purple bruise-like marks are appearing by the second all over Charlie’s chest and legs, and the rest of him is now a very pale grey. They have cut his pyjamas off, and he’s lying naked on a white sheet, making moaning noises but nothing recognisable even when they’re jabbing him trying to get needles in. This is so horrible I can hardly breathe.
Various nurses keep trying to get me to go and sit in the relatives’ room, but I’ve seen too many television programmes to fall for that one: I know if I go in there something terrible will happen. So I refuse, and get a nurse to ring Mum and Dad, and stand holding Charlie’s hand, willing him to wake up. Mr O’Brien disappears briefly and returns saying he’s called in the specialist team from Guy’s Hospital in London as these kind of cases are very rare and need expert handling. They’re on their way by helicopter.
All the other doctors and nurses stand back and watch in respectful silence, and the air of panic gradually seeps away. The chief of the hospital turns up, introduces himself, and joins the audience. Finally, when the new guy is satisfied he’s got things under control, he talks to me, sounding like he’s made this speech before to a variety of traumatised parents. He says his name is Steve Johnson, and he’s going to take Charlie to the paediatric intensive-care unit at Guy’s, by ambulance which will be less stressful than the helicopter. At the moment he’s stable, but things may deteriorate very rapidly, and he might need to be put on a breathing machine. The marks are septicaemia, which is a kind of blood poisoning, and they see it all the time with these kind of cases. The next twelve hours will be crucial.
I’m not allowed to go in the ambulance with Charlie, because there won’t be room. So he suggests I start making my way up to Guy’s and they’ll meet me there. He ends by repeating that I must not panic if the next time I see Charlie he’s on a breathing machine; it’s just a little tube and they can easily remove it. He smiles, trying to be reassuring, and then turns his attention back to Charlie. I nod to all of this. What I really want to say is Don’t fucking panic, are you kidding? I can do screaming sobbing panic, or quiet hysterics in the corner, but there’s absolutely no way on earth that I can do no panic at all. Let’s stick a tube down your throat and cover you in horrible bruises and you cannot panic and me and Charlie will go home. And could all these people staring at my naked baby please fuck off and leave us alone. I really feel like punching somebody, or smashing something. I want to make a huge scene. Don’t these people realise what’s going on? How can they be so calm? I feel completely overwhelmed with terror and rage.
I’m desperate to walk out of the room and just keep on walking until I get somewhere where I can collapse in a heap. But I can’t leave Charlie; I just know he can hear me endlessly repeating his name. I keep saying, ‘I’m here, Mummy’s here, it’s alright, Mummy’s here, it’s alright,’ again and again until even I’m sick of it. I want to insist that I go in the ambulance, but part of me just wants to run away which makes me really guilty and selfish. I also have a horrible feeling that they don’t want parents in the ambulance in case they have to do some hideous procedure on the journey. I don’t want to think what this might involve.
Mum and Dad have arrived, and I can tell Mum’s been crying, and Dad appears to have shrunk and looks very pale and frightened. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look frightened before, except for the time when I rode my bike into the river. He stands in the middle of the room saying, ‘Poor little thing,’ over and over in almost a whisper, and Mum stands next to him looking desperate, shredding tissues and staring at Charlie. The doctor comes over and talks to Dad and they seem to agree that we should leave now in Dad’s car and drive to Guy’s so we are there to meet the ambulance when it arrives. I also suspect Dad knows that I will not be able to watch them wheel Charlie out of the room.
I can’t leave Charlie without saying something, and don’t want to say goodbye, so in the end I ramble on about going with Grandad and we’ll see him at the hospital and it will all be alright. I’m about to lose it completely when Dad grabs my hand and practically drags me out of the room. Mum is staying with Charlie until the ambulance is ready, and then she’s going home to get things. I’m not sure what things, and neither is she. But it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t have left him there if Mum wasn’t staying with him. She’s gathered up the remnants of his pyjamas and is standing there folding and refolding them and whispering to him as we leave.
The drive to Guy’s is a nightmare: the traffic is horrendous and then we get badly lost. The desire to hit other drivers who don’t move out of the way and let us through is overwhelming, and Dad drives even more aggressively than usual, cutting up two taxis and a double-decker bus with manoeuvres which leave us all breathless. I feel an increasing sense of panic as I realise I can’t bear to be so far away from Charlie, and my mind fills with terrible images of what’s happening to him while I sit in traffic jams. I find my mobile phone in my bag, which I don’t remember picking up. Maybe the doctor gave it to the ambulance man.
I ring the hospital and they say Charlie is on his way to Guy’s in the ambulance, and was stable when he left. Then I ring Leila’s office and tell them to get a message to her, and I also ring Kate, who bursts into tears. I can’t work out what time it is in Tokyo, and anyway I can’t face making any more calls, so I sit in silence as Dad battles through the traffic. We finally find the hospital, but have to park miles away. It’s dark now, and very cold. Dad gives me his jacket to wear, and I notice that he’s shivering but he pretends he’s hot and refuses to take his jacket back. We look a sorry pair stumbling along the streets trying to find the entrance and then follow the arrows to paediatric intensive care. Finally we arrive, but there’s no sign of Charlie. I have visions of desperate roadside surgery somewhere on the motorway, but then the ward doors swing open and Charlie’s wheeled in on a huge bed, attached to all sorts of wires and drips but thankfully no breathing machine.
A large number of doctors and nurses surround him, and start adjusting the machines and drips and filling in charts. We stand to one side, thankful that so many people are focusing totally on our boy. The marks all over him seem slightly smaller now, but the shock of seeing him looking so tiny and ill is just too awful and Dad suddenly rushes off saying he’s going to get some tea but I think he’s actually crying. I can’t bear this, somehow Dad crying is the last straw, and I begin to weep silently while I stand holding Charlie’s hand. Dr Johnson notices this and puts his hand on my shoulder. He says that things are going well, the bruising is getting smaller – they are measuring it, apparently – and all in all we just have to sit and wait.
Lizzie and Matt arrive, and Dad says he should go and get Mum. He promises to ring later and puts his arms around Lizzie and me before abruptly breaking away and almost running down the corridor. Lizzie was there when Charlie was born. She was the first person to hold him after the midwife. She looks terrified. We don’t speak; we just sit staring at Charlie. He surfaces at one point, and says, ‘Mummy,’ but he’s looking right at me when he says this, which freaks us all out and starts a dreadful train of thought about how I’ll cope if he wakes up and is blind. The short answer is I won’t. I make all sorts of vows and pacts with God, promise to be a better person, anything, if Charlie can just be allowed to survive. It’s ridiculous really, as I have to start each pledge by admitting that I’m not actually a believer, but could he please not hold this against Charlie who really didn’t mean it when he said he was a pagan. Then I realise this might be rather annoying if there actually is a God, so I promise that anything can happen to me as long as Charlie is alright, and it’s not his fault he’s been brought up by a heathen mother. If this goes on much longer I think I’ll lose my mind completely.
A man in a suit appears and says he’s the hospital administrator, and has had a call from someone called Leila in New York, who has told him that no expense is to be spared to get her godson better. He says he thanked her but explained that there are no private intensive-care facilities, and that Charlie is with one of the best teams in the world. Leila has left a message saying she’s sitting by her mobile phone and will I please ring her because she’s going out of her mind, and he gives me a piece of paper with the number on. Lizzie goes off to track down a phone that can be wheeled to the bed, because mobiles aren’t allowed a
s they affect the machines. When I get through to Leila she bursts into tears and sobs down the phone that she’s coming home straight away. I finally manage to calm her down, and say she is to do no such thing because there’s nothing she can do, and promise to call her as soon as I have any news. I ask her to track down Mack in Tokyo and she promises she will. She says she’s due back tomorrow night anyway and will call as soon as she gets home, and then she starts crying again.
Charlie has his own nurse now, who sits on a stool at the end of the bed and watches him constantly. She keeps checking his hands and feet, and finally I can bear this no longer and ask her why. She says that in some cases the blood supply to the extremities can be compromised and there can be complications. Lizzie makes a weird noise at this point and Matt grips the metal on the side of the bed so hard his knuckles go white. I dimly remember reading about some poor woman who lost her fingers and toes after having meningitis, and feel a whole new wave of shock come racing towards me, like an avalanche. I spend the next hour massaging Charlie’s feet.
Dr Johnson comes round again and seems pleased with Charlie’s progress. He strokes Charlie’s arm all the time he talks to us. He says that usually if things are going to get really bad they would have done so by now, and that the prognosis is excellent. I do not want to think about what he means by really bad. This is as bad as I can take. The next few hours are still crucial, but he would be very surprised if things weren’t looking a lot more cheerful come morning. He looks totally exhausted, and I want to say something to him, but I can’t think of the words. Lizzie suggests I might like to go for a coffee while she and Matt stay with Charlie.
I wander off and find the parents’ room, which has a kettle and an odd collection of mugs and instant-coffee jars. I guess people are in here long enough to buy a jar of coffee, but not long enough to finish it. For some reason this frightens me, and I don’t want to use the coffee or the mugs, as if they might somehow be contaminated. There are a couple of other parents in here, looking shattered, and a woman is sitting on a chair in the corner crying in a desperate quiet kind of way, as if she’s been weeping for hours. I cannot face this, I don’t want to know what’s the matter with their children, and feel overwhelmed by selfish instincts. All I want is to sit in silence, drink a cup of coffee and think about Charlie. I leave and find a coffee machine and a room where I can smoke a cigarette.