B002RI919Y EBOK

by Peters, Joe

  Eventually the staff decided she was becoming too distressed and I had to leave the delivery room. It was past ten o’clock by then and dark outside the windows of the almost silent hospital. I slumped down in the waiting room, exhausted by the stress of the day and the hopelessness of everything. All the will to fight had drained out of me. About an hour later the doctor came back in to find me.

  ‘You’ve had a baby boy,’ he said.

  ‘Can I see him, and Lisa?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Lisa is being sedated,’ he explained. ‘She was in a bit of a state. Can you wait a little while for us to clean the baby up before you see him?’

  He went out again and I paced up and down the room, waiting to be told when I could go through, crying. Part of me was desperate to see him while another part was frightened of how painful it was going to be. I still wondered if perhaps they had made a mistake and I would be holding him and he would suddenly cry and take a breath and be alive.

  The counsellor eventually took me to a room with a cot standing in the corner. I stood in the middle of the room, frozen, staring at my feet, too scared to look over. The counsellor picked him up and brought him to me. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hold him, or whether I would be able to cope with the emotions that would unleash.

  ‘Sit down, Joe,’ she said, nodding towards the chair, placing him in my arms wrapped in a yellow blanket. Taking a deep breath, I lifted the corner of the blanket. They had dressed him for me and he looked beautiful, so perfect and tiny. It didn’t seem possible that he wasn’t alive. I stared at his little fingers, unable to believe that this was my son and he had gone from me already.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Aftermath

  An explosion of noise interrupted my thoughts, making me jump. Alarms were going off all over the hospital and a midwife came bustling in.

  ‘We have to put Baby back now,’ she commanded, ‘and I have to ask you to go back to the waiting room, Mr Peters.’

  ‘I think Mr Peters needs to hold his baby for a little longer,’ the counsellor told her, but the midwife wasn’t having it.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘We need to put him back and take Mr Peters to the other room.’

  I didn’t know what the alarm was all about, but everyone seemed to be rushing around in a panic and I didn’t know what to say. The counsellor seemed to realize she had been overruled and gently took the tiny bundle from me, wrapped him back up in his blanket and placed him in the cot. The midwife was so fierce and bossy that she reignited all the anger that always lurked beneath the surface inside me, reminding me how much I hated having my life dictated to me by other people, especially women who reminded me of my mother.

  ‘You fucking bitch!’ I shouted at her as the counsellor led me out. ‘You can’t stop me from holding my baby!’

  But she could and she did, leaving me feeling impotent and vulnerable. Back in the waiting room on my own I had no idea what was happening or what I should do next. Should I go and look for Lisa? Should I have insisted on holding my baby for longer or should I just walk away from the whole thing and come back again tomorrow? Only later did I discover that the alarms had gone off because Lisa had woken from her sedated state feeling so miserable that she had smashed a glass and slashed her own throat with the jagged edge. The staff were having to put all their efforts into restraining her, which was why they needed to ensure I was nowhere near by to cause any more trouble. I knew none of this. All I knew was I had only been given a couple of minutes with my dead baby and now I was being ordered around by people I didn’t know and who didn’t seem to like me.

  Once they had got control of Lisa, the medical staff’s next objective must have been to get me out of the hospital quickly in case I somehow upset her again. They came to the waiting room to tell me I had to go but they wouldn’t tell me why. I suppose they thought that if I knew what Lisa had done I would start trying to rush into her room. I pleaded with them to tell me what was going on. I begged them to let me see Lisa, but all they would say was she had hurt herself and that she needed to talk to a psychiatrist before I could see her again.

  ‘Go home now and get some sleep,’ a nurse told me, ‘and come back again tomorrow. We’ll be able to tell you more then.’

  I didn’t want to leave the hospital as long as Lisa and the baby were still in there. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to hold my baby again. The counsellor seemed to be the only one on my side but she didn’t seem to be able to get through to anyone any more than I could. Once I was outside in the dark I felt completely alone and lost in the world. There was nowhere for me to go but back to the squat.

  By the time I got there it was about one o’clock in the morning. Everyone else in the house was awake and seemed to know more about what had happened to us than I did. I guess the people at the outreach centre had been phoning the hospital or something. They were all trying to comfort and cuddle me, but I didn’t want to be touched. I needed to be comforted but I didn’t know how to accept sympathy, having experienced so little of it through my life. I felt angry and suspicious and worried and frightened and lonely and desperate. The whole world seemed such a hostile, cruel place. I couldn’t understand why even Lisa had turned against me after all we had been through together in the previous nine months. I had thought she was my soulmate and that we were going to start a family and spend the rest of our lives together, and now she had pushed me away and I was on my own again. I couldn’t sort it out in my head; I couldn’t work out how I was going to cope with the pain I was feeling at finding myself rejected yet again.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Jake told the others as they fussed around me. ‘Let him mellow out.’

  Grateful to him for understanding what I needed, I went into our bedroom to have a few moments alone. Lisa’s blood was still on the sleeping bag, which lay in the same place we had dropped it when we had rushed from the house that morning. I sank down on to the mattress and cried and cried, thumping the walls with my fists, kicking out at everything that was in my way like a small child in the grip of a tantrum. There was a bottle of vodka tucked down beside the mattress and I drank deeply, trying in vain to numb the pain. The walls seemed to be closing in on me and I didn’t want to talk to any of the others. Everything about the house reminded me of Lisa and of how happy she had made me feel over the previous nine months. Unable to stand it for another moment and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sleep even if I tried, I stormed back out into the night.

  Jake saw me going and came running after me.

  ‘Fuck off and leave me alone,’ I shouted as I ran down the street.

  ‘I’m not letting you go off on your own,’ he said firmly. ‘I won’t bother you.’

  Although I didn’t want to have him around me, I couldn’t help but be touched that he was concerned about me. He might have been a treacherous little bastard in the past, but he was at least trying to act like a friend now. Without saying anything else I ran off and he followed a few paces behind, giving me space but keeping an eye on me. My anger was completely out of control and when I reached the town centre I ran from one shop window to the next, hurling bricks and flowerpots, smashing everything I could lay my hands on. I didn’t steal anything; I just wanted to take it out on the world. I didn’t care what happened to me at that moment.

  My rage was beginning to abate as I heard the distant sound of sirens. They were growing louder, coming closer.

  ‘Run,’ Jake shouted, and I noticed he was carrying his bag with him. Maybe he had been planning to pick up a few things, but it looked empty as he sprinted away down the streets, so he must have thought better of it. I ran after him, not wanting to get arrested that night on top of everything else.

  Once we were a few streets away from the scene of devastation that I had caused, we slowed down to a walk. The sudden burst of exercise had left me panting and feeling slightly calmer.

  ‘Do you want to go back to the squat now then?’ Jake asked.

  ‘No,’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t want to go back yet.’

  I felt I needed the quiet and the fresh air. I wasn’t ready to bury myself back behind the boarded-up windows yet. I wanted to try to straighten my thoughts out and work out what was going on inside my head. We walked on for a while, talking a bit now and then. Then Jake noticed that the lace had come undone on one of his trainers and was trailing in the dirt.

  ‘Hold this a second,’ he said, passing me his empty bag before crouching down to retie it.

  I waited for him, looking around, and that was the moment that I saw the police car creeping round the corner and drawing up at the kerb. Two cops got out of the car and came over to us. I’d been stopped and searched before when I’d been out and about late at night. Luckily they had never come across me when I was carrying anything. I knew I was clean that night and I couldn’t see how they could pin the broken windows on me, since we were a good few streets away by then. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the usual pantomime.

  ‘Fuck off, copper!’ I growled as one of them came over, the other one standing a little way back, watching and waiting to see what would happen and whether he would need to intervene. ‘I ain’t done nothing.’

  ‘You won’t mind it I stop and search you then,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘There’s been some incidents in the town and we just need to check you out. We can take you into the station if you prefer or we can do it the easy way and I can search you now.’

  I shrugged. I didn’t care much either way any more. I dropped Jake’s bag on the floor and lifted my arms up to let him pat me down. Once he’d done that he picked up the bag.

  ‘Mind if I look in here?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not my bag,’ I said.

  ‘You were holding it.’

  ‘I was just holding it for him.’ I nodded towards Jake, who was staying strangely quiet.

  ‘It’s not my bag,’ Jake said.

  ‘What are you on about?’ I asked, still not really taking in what was happening.

  ‘It’s not my bag,’ he insisted.

  ‘Oh, just search it,’ I said, tired of the whole business. ‘There’s nothing in there anyway. It’s empty.’

  It might have felt empty, but in fact there was a single pair of jeans neatly folded inside the bag, left over from a burglary Jake had done a few nights before. They still had their security tag on. Jake had stitched me up yet again. He had been pretending to care about me and be my friend and the moment the chips were down he was framing me to save his own skin. I couldn’t believe it. I called him every name under the sun, ranting and screaming at him.

  ‘How can you do this?’ I wanted to know. ‘You know what I’ve been through tonight already.’

  But he kept the innocent act up without a blink of conscience. The second copper must have been able to see that I was in a dangerous mood and stepped forward to provide back-up as his mate went to handcuff us. Jake put his hands out, good as gold, but I wasn’t ready to give up that easily and wriggled free. I tried to make a run for it, but they were too fast for me and one of them caught me halfway up the road while his colleague put Jake into the car. Once he had a grip of me he didn’t take any chances, throwing me on to the ground on my face and cuffing my hands behind my back.

  ‘Just fucking calm down,’ he said, his fingers round my throat as he dragged me back to the car and pushed me in next to Jake. It seemed a bit excessive to me, but I guess I seemed like trouble and he didn’t know what I had been through that day. I suppose it looked to him as if I was the one trying to blame my mate for my crimes rather than the other way round. It was all so unfair that I just wanted to scream. Being locked in the back of a car yet again made me panic all the more. What were they going to do to me once they got me to the station? How was I going to be able to get back to the hospital in the morning to see the baby before they took him away if they were going to lock me up? I was becoming more and more desperate as the coppers got into the front seats and started to drive. I was kicking at Jake and at the door, lashing out without any idea of what I hoped to achieve. I was completely out of control and the driver stamped on the brake, while his mate came round to the back to sort me out.

  The moment he opened the door and bent down to grab me I managed to kick him hard in the face, sending him sprawling backwards. Recovering himself, he lunged back, grabbed me and pulled me out of the car, throwing me back down on the ground while his mate radioed for back-up and for a van to take me in to the station.

  By the time a couple more police cars turned up, and then a van, the policeman I’d kicked was coming up with a nasty black eye and the others taped my ankles together so that I couldn’t kick out again and damage anyone else. They were obviously pissed off with me, giving me the odd punch and kick as I wriggled and struggled and made their lives as difficult as I could.

  ‘Little bastard,’ the first kept saying, dabbing gingerly at his eye.

  Once they had me safely trussed up, they lifted me bodily and swung me into the back of the van like a sack of potatoes.

  When we got to the station, they carried me out and into the custody suite, straight past the sergeant and into a cell. I suppose they could tell I was not in a mood to give anyone my name and details, so they didn’t bother to waste their time even asking. Once I was in the cell, they finally undid my wrists and ankles and left me to cool down, slamming the door behind them as I screamed and yelled abuse at them like some mad caged animal, locked in a cell yet again with all the hideous memories that brought back. I was head-butting the door and going mad, shouting at Jake in the next cell, telling him I was going to kill him when I got my hands on him. I must have sounded like a right nutter.

  The police later told their boss they came into the cell because they were worried I was going to injure myself, but in reality I suspect they had just had enough and wanted to shut me up and teach me a lesson. I lost count of how many of them came bursting in through the door to give me a punching and a kicking, led by the man I had given the black eye to. I fought back like a wild thing, not caring any more about the consequences, but I didn’t stand a chance against so many grown men. It was all a blur of pain and blows, but through it all I saw an older man come in behind the others.

  ‘All right,’ he said loudly, ‘that’s enough. Out!’

  By the time they had all left the cell I was lying in a heap with a good few of my teeth missing. But I was still shouting abuse at them, and looking back now I have to confess I probably deserved that hiding. I was being a right pain, even though I couldn’t see it at the time. I had pushed my luck too far. I had also made things a hundred times worse for myself. I was desperate to get back to Lisa and to hold my baby boy again to say goodbye, and if I had just cooperated with the police a bit that night maybe things would have gone better the following day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nowhere to Go

  I didn’t sleep much that night. I just stared around the cell, lost in my own thoughts, trying to work out what I should do. There was graffiti scratched into the paintwork of the door, and glass bricks had been set high up in the wall to allow at least a little light to infiltrate from outside. At six o’clock the cell door opened again and an inspector came in. I recognized him as the man who had called the others off me a few hours before. He was older than the men who had beaten me up, as well as more senior.

  ‘Right, Mr Peters,’ he said. ‘Have you calmed down now?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and then I spat a mixture of phlegm and blood in his face. ‘Now I’m calm, you bastard.’

  ‘There was no need for that,’ he said, wiping his eye.

  ‘Fuck off, pig!’

  He nodded his understanding of the situation and walked calmly out, closing the door firmly but softly behind him. I thought he had gone to send the others back in to give me another going over, but nothing happened. About an hour later he tried again, talking through the hatch.

  ‘If I co
me in,’ he said, ‘are you just going to spit at me or can we talk sensibly?’

  I appreciated the fact that he hadn’t sent his officers back in. ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘Do what you like. I just want to get out of here.’

  ‘OK. Sit back down on the bench then.’

  Once I was safely sat down he opened the door and came in, obviously wary in case I went off on one again.

  ‘I’ve got something for you to eat and drink.’ He put a cup and plate down. ‘I’m just putting it down there. OK?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  He stood back and looked at me. ‘Do you want to see a doctor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be back in a minute. If you want anything else, just press the buzzer.’

  I couldn’t understand why he was being so nice to me when a few hours before they had been beating me up. I didn’t trust any of them. I looked down at the plate. There was a piece of bread and some scrambled egg. I was hungry, so I took a mouthful, spitting it back out again immediately. It was the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted, even worse than the stuff Mum and my brothers used to make me lick up off the floor. The inspector came back half an hour later.

  ‘Weren’t you hungry?’ he asked, glancing at the abandoned food.