The Stolen Child

by Sanjida Kay

  The painting is full of Harris too. In spite of everything, my whole body aches when I think of him. I know he’s dangerous and aggressive and I should be grateful that nothing too much happened between us. But part of me yearns to talk to him about art and to be held in his arms again. He made me feel passionate about my work, as if I’m a proper artist, worthy of recognition. I’m bereft without him even though I know I made the right decision – to sever any connection between us. I can’t even remember the last time Ollie and I talked properly, or went out and had fun. It’s taken Harris to show me how weak my marriage is, but that’s no consolation.

  Just a few more touches and I can put my painting aside – it’s almost finished. I glance at my watch and go cold. It’s five to twelve. I hadn’t realized how late it is. Ben finishes nursery at midday. There’s no way I’m going to get there on time. I quickly wipe my paints off with a rag and run downstairs. I slip on my ballet pumps – I should get out my boots now it’s cold – and faff around for a couple of minutes trying to find my phone, purse and car keys. One day I’ll leave them all out together in a handbag I can just grab.

  Bella tries to come with me but I push her back inside and run for the car. I’ve forgotten my phone and I go back, unlock the house, retrieve it from the stairs; Bella escapes into the front garden and I have to catch her and lock up again, swearing under my breath at myself. I’m not too worried about Ben – he loves his teachers and he’ll be happy with them until I get there – unlike Evie who always cried when I dropped her off at nursery at his age and was in a rush to leave as soon as she saw me coming. But the staff will be annoyed and I’ll probably be fined.

  As I’m driving down Cowpasture Road, my mobile rings. I glance at the number. It’s the school. I snatch it up.

  ‘I’m on my way. I’m almost there. So sorry! I’ll just be a few more minutes.’

  ‘Mrs Morley, it’s Kate Stevenson.’

  Kate is the head teacher. I’m really in trouble now. I glance at the clock on the dashboard. It’s a quarter past twelve. Surely that’s not so bad? I still have to park and get to the school though.

  ‘Five minutes more? Honestly—’

  ‘Zoe,’ she cuts across me. ‘It’s Ben. There’s something wrong with him. We’ve called an ambulance and it’s just arrived. They’re going to take him to Airedale. If you get here in the next couple of minutes, you’ll be able to travel to the hospital with him.’

  ‘Oh my God. What’s happened?’

  ‘We don’t know. He’s unconscious. Can you make it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I throw down the phone and put my foot on the accelerator. I turn sharp left, cutting in front of a car driving along Bolling Road, which swerves and blares its horn. The Grove is full of cars and pedestrians. I drive aggressively down a street that’s so narrow, with cars parked along one side, it’s become reduced to single-file traffic. My palms are sweating and my heart is racing.

  Thank God, the ambulance is still there, in front of the school. I pull in behind it, parking on the zigzag lines, and run over. I’m vaguely aware of Mrs Stevenson and Ben’s nursery teacher standing on the pavement. I bang on the back.

  ‘Are you Ben’s mum?’ the paramedic asks, as she swings the door open. ‘We were just about to go. Get in, love.’

  Ben is strapped to a stretcher with an oxygen mask over his face. He’s blueish-white with a clammy sheen. He’s unnaturally still. I reach out to him.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ someone is saying over and over, and I realize it’s me.

  ‘Mrs Morley, sit here, next to Ben. Strap yourself in. Good to go,’ she shouts through to her colleague in the front.

  I hold Ben’s hand. It’s cold and lifeless. The paramedic turns back to me. ‘My name’s Julie. Ben had diarrhoea and vomited at nursery. He blacked out and that’s when the school called us. He hasn’t come round since then. We’re giving him extra oxygen. That’s all we know at this stage. We need to get him to A & E.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘We don’t know, love.’

  I can’t take my eyes off Ben. I’m vaguely aware of the siren; we’re going terrifyingly fast. Sometimes Ben’s fingers twitch and his eyelids flicker, but he doesn’t open them. I hold his hand and feel his pulse flutter in his wrist, light and fast as a sparrow’s. I can’t take it in – the change between this morning and now is so enormous I can’t grasp it. I smooth his hair back from where it’s sticking to his forehead. It’s damp with sweat but he isn’t warm.

  ‘Is he, is he going to be okay?’

  I stutter over the words and start crying.

  Julie isn’t looking at Ben, she’s studying a green screen. I hadn’t noticed it before – or the wires snaking from Ben’s chest.

  ‘It’s a heart-rate monitor,’ she says soothingly. ‘His pulse is erratic. As soon as we get him to hospital the doctors will be able to work out what’s wrong with your little boy.’

  I’m mesmerized by the flashing light. It follows a regular rhythm for a minute and then speeds up, faster, and faster, until my own breath increases too, and then suddenly it seems to stop, the light slowing to a hypnotic beat. I hold my breath. This is my son’s heart. I imagine that small muscle struggling in his chest. I feel sick. I call Ollie, my fingers fumbling, the phone slippery in my palm. There’s no answer. I hang up and try again but still get voicemail.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ollie, answer your phone!’ I leave a message this time: ‘Ring me back immediately. It’s Ben.’

  I should text but I can’t bear to let go of Ben’s hand. I’ll try him in a minute.

  Ben is mercifully free of vomit, but he’s wearing someone else’s clothes, pumps slopping off his feet, stained camouflage combats that hang past his heels, a navy T-shirt with holes, mismatched socks. They make him look even more baby-like than he is, and uncared for. We swing round a corner so quickly the seat belt cuts into my stomach. Julie tightens the straps holding Ben down.

  When we reach the hospital, a team of medics are waiting for him. Ben’s rushed straight into A & E. I run alongside the stretcher. I can hear our paramedic shouting over the noise, telling one of the doctors what’s happened. I catch Ben’s name and something about an erratic heart rate, now falling, and low blood pressure. Ben is lifted into a bed and it feels as if a swarm of nurses descend on him, some jabbing needles in his arm; one leans over and pulls his eyelids open, calling his name. I stretch out my arm as if I’m going to stop them, stop all of this. A woman peels away from the throng around him and introduces herself as Dr Agnes Vang. She has bright-blonde hair scraped back from her face.

  ‘Mrs Morley?’ She has a sing-song voice and pronounces my surname ‘Moor-lee’. ‘Can you tell me if your son has a history of heart problems?’

  ‘What?’

  She repeats the question in exactly the same way. There is no cushioning here, no easing me gently in to the situation.

  ‘No. Never. He’s always been fit and well.’

  ‘That was going to be my next question. Any history of illness? Anything you can think of that could have triggered this response?’

  ‘Blood pressure is dropping,’ someone shouts. ‘Heart rate is …’

  ‘Er, no.’

  And then I remember that Ben bumped his head twice, no three times in practically the same spot – but surely that wouldn’t cause—

  ‘Any problems with heart disease in the—’

  ‘I can’t find a pulse. There’s no pulse!’

  ‘Start CPR.’ It’s a tall Asian man in a white coat. ‘Give him ten millilitres of ten per cent calcium gluconate.’

  ‘Do you wish to wait outside?’ Dr Vang grips my elbow. ‘It can be upsetting to see this.’

  I have my hand over my mouth. I’m crying. A doctor is pressing my son’s chest, trying to restart his heart. Someone runs across with a defibrillator and one of the nurses is shouting, ‘Clear!’ My son’s small body leaps. I can’t believe this is happening. I press forward
but Dr Vang seizes my arm. The Asian doctor pushes his way forward, crushes Ben’s chest, up and down, without a pause. It’s so brutal I think his ribs will crack.

  ‘Pulse check in two.’

  I stare at the heart monitor. The line is random, like green static. Two minutes. The seconds pass like hours. I’m biting my lip, shaking with the effort of not screaming. Suddenly the monitor starts beeping. The doctor glances up and puts a finger to my son’s neck.

  ‘We’ve got a pulse!’

  Ben’s heart has restarted. He’s alive. My son is alive.

  ‘Get him to ICU now. Stabilize his blood pressure. Put him on the ventilator.’ The doctor turns to me. ‘I’m Dr Imran Kapur, consultant paediatrician. Come with me, Mrs Morley. Your son’s being taken to the Intensive Care Unit. We’ve restarted his heart but his blood pressure is abnormally low. He’ll be attached to a ventilator with a tube running into his windpipe to keep him breathing and his airway clear. We ran a preliminary blood test and Ben has massive amounts of potassium in his system, which is what we think stopped his heart. We’ve given him insulin to nullify its effects, but he’s still in danger. Right now we need to stabilize the arrhythmia in his heart rate and bring his blood pressure up to normal. I’ll hand you back to Dr Vang. She has more questions for you.’

  Within minutes Ben is in a ward with needles inserted in his arms, wires attached to his chest; a tube is pushed into his stomach. A bag of fluid on a stand slowly drips into a vein. There are a couple of screens by his bed, monitoring his heart rate, blood pressure, breathing. I’m reeling from what Dr Kapur just said – I didn’t take any of it in. I check my phone and want to hurl it across the room; Ollie still hasn’t called back. I send him a message, my thumbs slipping across the letters; predictive text can’t cope with my erratic spelling. There are other people in this ward, all equally as ill as Ben, but I try not to look at them and see how distressed the relatives are. Someone pulls a curtain part of the way round the bed to give us the illusion of privacy. There are three nurses, the consultant – Dr Kapur, Dr Vang, and another doctor from ICU – all leaning over Ben and talking. I can barely see him. I reach my hand between two of the nurses and stroke a tiny patch of skin on his arm. He’s so small, there’s barely any of him that isn’t hidden by tubes and wires, punctured by needles.

  ‘I need to make sure one more time,’ says Dr Vang. ‘You can’t think of any reason why Ben could have collapsed?’

  I shake my head. I tell her about the bumps to his head and she speaks to Dr Kapur.

  ‘Is he allergic to anything?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’

  I glance at the clock on the wall and my heart leaps. Evie will need to be picked up from school soon. Bella is still locked in the house. My car is illegally parked outside the school entrance and I’m sitting in Intensive Care, without my husband and with my baby boy, whose heart is possibly failing and who cannot breathe on his own. If ever there was a time when I needed my mum, it’s now. I wish she were still alive. I imagine calling her. She’d be kind and soothing, like she used to be. She’d pick Evie up from school. She’d take my daughter home and let the dog out. Somehow she’d sort out the car. I start crying with self-pity.

  ‘Check his kidney function in an hour,’ Dr Kapur says.

  I call and text Andy but I only get his voicemail. I need someone to fetch Evie now. Where the fuck is Ollie? I’m finding it hard to concentrate because I’m trying to listen to what the doctors are saying to each other and watch Ben and the heart-rate monitor.

  ‘Could it be something he ate?’ asks the ICU doctor.

  ‘Mum says he’s not allergic to anything.’

  ‘Could be a toxin.’

  ‘Anything he might have ingested at nursery?’

  ‘What could he have got hold of? This age they put everything in their mouths.’

  ‘Something in the playground?’

  ‘Chemicals? In the toilets?’

  I try calling some of the mums I know but I can’t get through to anyone. It’s that time of day when everybody is getting ready for the school pick-up, plus the reception here is terrible.

  ‘We’re running some more comprehensive blood tests now,’ Dr Vang tells me. ‘We will get the results shortly. In the meantime, we’re giving him activated charcoal.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘In case he’s eaten something. He might be having an allergic reaction. The charcoal will help neutralize it.’

  I call the school and speak to Audrey, the secretary.

  ‘How is Ben?’ she asks immediately.

  ‘The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him. They think he could have eaten something funny. He has Weetabix every single bloody morning! I can’t…’ Tears stream down my face.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m ringing about Evie. My husband hasn’t arrived and I can’t leave Ben. I can’t find anyone to take her home.’

  My voice rises with anxiety.

  ‘Don’t worry, Zoe,’ Audrey says. ‘I’ll ask Mr Mitchell to stay behind with her. Have you got his number? You can ring him directly when you know when you’ll be able to get here, or if you find someone to pick her up.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. I’ve got his mobile.’

  As soon as I ring off, my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s Ollie.

  ‘Thank God. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon.’

  ‘Sorry, I was in a meeting. I had my phone switched off. What’s the matter with Ben?’ His voice is tight.

  ‘I don’t know. He blacked out at nursery. He’s still unconscious. They think it could be a reaction to something he ate.’

  ‘Jesus. I’m on my way. You’re still in Intensive Care?’

  ‘Yes,’ I croak.

  I’m pathetically grateful that I won’t have to deal with this on my own.

  Dr Kapur comes over. ‘Ben’s stable and his vital organs seem to be functioning normally. His heart rate is low, but within a normal range. I’ll be back in half an hour when we receive the results of the other blood tests.’

  I nod. The space around Ben’s bed empties as the three doctors leave. One of the nurses stays and pulls the curtain all the way round.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do for the minute, love,’ she says, smiling at me. ‘Do you want to get a cup of tea? I’ll stay here with him.’

  I shake my head. She finds a chair for me and I sit down next to Ben and hold his fingers. His hands are small and pudgy. Bruises bloom beneath his semi-translucent skin where the needles have pierced his arms or where the nurses couldn’t find a vein. His eyelids, covered by a filigree of minute burgundy capillaries, flicker; his lashes are thick and dark blonde. I touch the dimple in his chin that’s identical to mine. I’ve never seen my child so still; even when he’s asleep he normally moves, murmurs, clenches his fists. I can’t believe his heart stopped. He was dead and now he’s alive. Will he be the same person when he wakes? Will he still be my Ben?

  Dr Kapur, Dr Vang and two nurses return. Dr Kapur is about to tell me something when Ollie bursts through the gap in the curtain around Ben’s bed. He’s pale and perspiring, his tie is loosened, his coat slung over his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry. I caught a cab from Leeds – the traffic was horrendous – it’s taken me ages. How is he? Oh God,’ he says when he sees Ben. He freezes. He’s finally realized how serious this is, I think, and I feel a jumbled mix of relief and anger.

  ‘Mr Morley?’ asks Dr Kapur, and shakes Ollie’s hand. ‘Ben is stable now that we’ve lowered the potassium in his blood – but it could climb again. However, I believe we’ve found out what’s wrong with him and we have an antidote. We’re administering it now.’ He nods at the two new nurses, who are disconnecting one drip and attaching a new one. ‘If it works, it should clear the toxin from his system.’

  ‘Toxin?’ says Ollie, reaching out to stroke Ben’s head.

  ‘The blood tests indicate that your son ingested a cardiac glycoside. Speci
fically an evonoside, most probably Euonymus europeaus.’

  ‘What?’

  I can’t process what Dr Kapur is saying.

  ‘The spindle tree. It’s a common wild plant. It’s often grown ornamentally too. Ben must have eaten some of the berries.’

  ‘But you’ve got the antidote?’ Ollie interrupts.

  ‘Yes, this is it. If it works, your son should start to recover. I’ll be back to check on him shortly.’

  ‘Will he be okay?’

  ‘It’s too early to say, Mrs Morley. But we are optimistic.’

  He puts his hand on my shoulder as he leaves. A nurse finds another chair for Ollie.

  ‘Where the hell were you?’ I hiss at him.

  ‘I told you where I was. What happened?’

  I describe the afternoon; I tell him Ben’s heart stopped. I think he’s going to hold my hand, apologize again for not being here, but he touches Ben’s face and his gesture makes me feel lonelier and angrier than ever. We sit side by side and watch our son. Even with his eyes closed, you can still see that they’re the same shape as Ollie’s.

  I google ‘Spindle tree’. The website for the Woodland Trust comes up first. It says the spindle, Euonymus europaea, is common in hedgerows and woodlands. It’s deciduous and flowers in May and June. If the flowers come early, it’s thought a plague will break out. The wood is hard and creamy-white; in the past it was used to make spindles for spinning wool, but more recently it’s used as charcoal for artists. There’s a picture of the flowers, pink ballgowns with orange stamens poking, like petticoats, through the gaps in the fleshy petals. In autumn they close to form fat hot-air balloon-shaped berries. The name comes from the Greek, Euonyme, meaning ‘Mother of the Furies’ and is a reference to its poisonous nature. I read on, my heart fluttering. The berries contain glycosides, which cause vomiting, diarrhoea, cardiac arrhythmia, hallucinations and loss of consciousness. Can kill.

  ‘How did Ben get hold of the berries?’ I wonder out loud.

  Ollie doesn’t say anything. Ben does put just about anything in his mouth and the berries look enticingly like sweets. But on the website, it says they taste bitter. Wouldn’t he have spat them out? I don’t remember seeing a tree like that growing near us or at the school, and surely no one would plant a poisonous shrub in a children’s playground?