by Fiona Perrin
Oh, no, oh, God, oh, no. Aside from holding her by her arms I felt paralysed; it was as if, however hard she breathed, she couldn’t manage to find any oxygen. As I held her wrists, I could feel her pulse racing as if her veins and arteries were going to jump out of her body. She fell back onto the bed.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said as calmly as I could. I knew instinctively that it wasn’t a heart attack, but – recalling my work mental-health training – it would feel exactly like that to the victim. This was a panic attack: all that anxiety and terror turned into a full body meltdown. And watching it happen to my daughter, rather than hearing about it in a training room, was horrendous.
I shouted to Daisy: ‘Come quickly, your sister’s having a panic attack.’ All I wanted to do was breathe for her. As she writhed on the bed her muscles were twitching uncontrollably. My own heart felt as if it would jump out of my body with fear.
Daisy’s head appeared round the doorway. ‘Quick, get a paper bag from the kitchen,’ I cried. ‘Lily, listen to me, it’s going to be OK.’
What if I was wrong? What if this wasn’t a panic attack but her young body was in real trauma? Should I call an ambulance? From Daisy’s face, which went quickly white with distress, I figured we shouldn’t waste a moment.
‘Wilf,’ I shouted. ‘Quick, come here!’ But there was no sign of him – probably wearing his headphones and impervious to the world.
‘Lily, it’s all going to be OK,’ I said as I heard Daisy race back up the stairs. Lily’s eyes were open in real fear and her thin chest heaved back and forwards in her school shirt as if she was pleading with me to make the whole thing go away. I undid her top button. ‘I’m not going to hug you as that will only make it worse, now shush, shush…’ I grabbed the brown paper bag that Daisy held out and put it to her lips. They looked blue instead of the natural pink colour they should’ve been.
‘I had to empty out onions,’ Daisy said. She was stiff with terror. ‘Lil, it’s all going to be OK.’
‘Now breathe into the bag, Lily,’ I instructed, still as calm as I could be. I tried to hold it to her face as it moved to create a seal around her mouth as I’d been instructed in first aid. I thanked the gods of HR.
‘Ambulance?’ Daisy mouthed as she watched her sister try and do as I’d instructed. The bag puffed up like a balloon and then Lily was pulling back in the air from inside it; the air she’d just breathed out. There was a scientific reason concerning oxygen and carbon dioxide that made this the right treatment; I couldn’t remember what it was, and, in the moment, I didn’t care.
‘Yes,’ I mouthed back as I held her sister’s back with one hand and the paper bag with the other. Daisy raced off – always better in action mode.
I sat beside Lily as she breathed into the paper bag, time after time, first violently in a gasp for any air she could reach, and then, gradually, after torturous minutes that felt like hours, more slowly, in and out, in and out.
My hand was on her back and I could feel her heart rate start to slow too, from the feverish thumps to a still too-fast beat. Her eyes held an expression of terrible fear. All I could do was repeat ‘shush’ and tell her everything was going to be OK, over and over again.
Daisy came running back. ‘They’ll be here very soon,’ she said in a soothing, but scared voice. ‘Oh, she looks a bit better, doesn’t she, Mum?’
‘Yes, she’s getting there now,’ I said in as reassuring a voice as I could. ‘I think you’re having some sort of anxiety attack, Lily. We had training at work about it. They are surprisingly common in times of stress. Still best we let the paramedics check you out.’
Lily burst into tears. This came as a huge relief, as she pushed aside the bag; the weeping came with wailing. I remembered what it was like to hear them both cry all those years ago back in the maternity suite; the acknowledgement that they were alive, that they survived that traumatic journey from amniotic sac to fresh air and were both crying at the shock of it all.
I sat down and pulled her to me. ‘Lily, you’ve got yourself into a bit of a state, that’s all. There’s no reason why this should ever happen again.’ Recalling that first-aid session I knew, however, that there was every likelihood it would happen again. Victims needed training and techniques in how to cope with stress, and how to avoid it. Mindfulness lessons. Yoga.
She leant into my shoulder and gasped. ‘It’s physics. I just got a D in a practice paper.’
‘Was it last year’s paper?’ Daisy said in a bright voice. ‘Everyone said it’s a complete bastard.’
I couldn’t be bothered to argue with her about the swearing at that moment, I just felt the benefit of her strength and hoped that by process of osmosis her sister would absorb even a little bit of it. She sat down on the other side of her sister and went on. ‘Yeah and loads of famous people have panic attacks and they all get better. I mean, think about Robbie Williams. Or Zayn Malik. I mean, he’s seriously, like, a worldwide superstar.’
Lily’s sobs started to reduce to an occasional blubber. ‘He didn’t have to sit a physics exam though.’
‘All you have to do is get into the exam room and do your best,’ I said as they both looked at me with exasperation. ‘And if your best isn’t a nine that really doesn’t matter. You can sit the exam again or go and do something else.’
‘Not if you want to be a doctor,’ Lily said. I took an inward breath. It had been Lily’s dream to be a hospital doctor since she and Daisy had played as children. Later, obsessed with other people’s babies, she’d always said she wanted to be an obstetrician. She watched and rewatched episodes of Call the Midwife. It was one of those things we did together. If she was going to succeed she would need to develop a real resistance to this awful anxiety that had crept up on her in adolescence.
Resilience; that word again. I would call Sunil, I thought, and see what he recommended. Take her to the GP. And make her stop revising and take some time out. And be there for her. At every moment.
‘Sunil says that the more people who talk about mental health, we’ll all start to see it as just the same as our physical health,’ Daisy said.
‘No different from having a broken leg,’ I joined in. ‘Except for this is nothing serious at all, like having a little sprain.’
Just then we heard the ambulance tear into our street, its flashing light visible through the window, a small screech of tyres as it came to a halt. God bless the NHS; we were getting our taxpayers’ money’s worth lately.
‘I’m going to go down and talk to them,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’ll want to have a look at you.’
Wilf came out onto the landing as I did, headphones now round his neck. ‘What’s going on, Cal?’ he said, his eyes lit with fear as if he could easily imagine further rocking of his world.
‘Lily just had a bit of an anxiety attack,’ I said. ‘There’s no emergency. It’s all OK now, they just need to check her out.’
He came downstairs with me and two paramedics stood at the door. I explained quickly what was going on and they pushed past us both and went up the stairs to make sure Lily was OK.
Wilf clasped my hand. ‘It’s the exams,’ I told him. ‘She’s got herself into a bit of a state.’
All I want is someone to give me reassurance. But it’s what everyone needs from me.
Just then, the blue door at number 36 sprang open. And there was Patrick, still in his running shorts, in the yellow arc of the streetlight.
‘Callie,’ he shouted. ‘I saw the ambulance. Is everything OK?’
‘It’s one of the girls,’ I said as he came racing down the pavement. ‘She’s fine, I think, just very stressed about the exams.’
‘Thank God,’ he said.
‘Hey, Patrick,’ said Wilf.
‘Hey, Wilf.’ They looked genuinely pleased to see each other.
‘I’m going to see what the paramedics are saying.’ I left them to it.
In Lily’s crowded room, one paramedic was taking her blood pressure, while
another stood by with an oxygen tank.
‘Mum gave her a paper bag,’ Daisy was explaining, squashed now up against Lily’s dressing table.
‘Exactly right,’ said the second paramedic with the oxygen tank. ‘Now, how old are you, Lily?’
‘Sixteen,’ Daisy said on her behalf and gave their mutual date of birth.
‘Twins always answer for each other.’ The paramedic smiled. ‘But right now, young lady, we need to be talking to your sister and your mother.’ She indicated that she should move outside onto the landing, and she had a point – the room was no bigger than twelve by eight and Lily needed all the air she could get. ‘You OK with me talking in front of your mum, Lily?’
She nodded, even while she looked at her arm compressed in the rubber tourniquet. Daisy went reluctantly outside; I heard her go down the stairs.
‘Now, Lily,’ went on the paramedic. ‘Looks like you’ve had what people call a panic attack. Absolutely nothing to worry about, at all. Your blood pressure is a bit high but that’s normal after what’s gone on. You’ll need to pop with your mum to the GP in the morning, but you’ll be all right now. Your mum did exactly the right thing.’
I felt a small flush of pride, but mostly enormous relief.
‘Now you need to get some sleep as your body needs to recover,’ the paramedic went on.
‘But I’ve got to revise, I’ve got GCSEs starting,’ Lily said, looking as if she was going to start crying again.
‘No more tonight,’ the paramedic said with authority. ‘And you need to make sure you’re taking regular rest breaks in the run-up to the exams and through them. Spend a bit of time with your mates.’
Lily looked very doubtful, but I nodded approvingly. The other paramedic unwrapped the tourniquet and got up from the bed. ‘Now lie down. And you’ll feel a lot better in the morning.’
They indicated to me that we should leave. I was dubious: what if something happened to her again when I wasn’t in the room? But the second paramedic made another gesture with her head and I followed her downstairs to the hallway with her colleague behind me with the equipment.
‘We see it all the time at the moment,’ she said in a whisper when we got there. ‘Girls especially. Putting themselves under so much pressure to pass their exams. You’ve got to make sure she stays as calm as possible, realises it’s not the end of the world.’
‘I’ve told her all that, time and time again,’ I whispered.
She nodded sympathetically. ‘I’m sure you have. Now, just try and make everything as unstressy as possible. Normal life, even though there’s exams.’
I could see Wilf and Patrick out on the pavement, where a couple of my other neighbours had come out to find out what was going on. They seemed to be telling them that it was all OK and for a moment I was grateful for Patrick’s presence.
The ambulance left and Patrick waved and went back inside his own house.
‘He’s kind of cool, Cal,’ Wilf said as he came through the door. He quickly forgot this though as we went up the stairs to Lily. As he saw her, pale and depleted on the pillows, he sat down beside her and said, ‘Hey, Two, sorry I didn’t hear you and call the ambulance. I shouldn’t have had my headphones on.’
She patted his hand as I quickly told him it wasn’t his fault at all.
‘Yeah,’ said Wilf. ‘It’s just that, what with going and everything, I’d really like to know you guys are going to be OK.’ And he said it as if he was the man of the house, which I supposed, for a while, he had been.
*
Eventually, Lily slept, and it was only then that I left her, door firmly ajar, and went and lay on my own bed. My limbs wouldn’t stay still, and I kept jumping up to go and look at her, colour finally coming back into her face as she slept away the horrible pressures of growing up.
I needed help. This was more than I could cope with alone. I’d take Lily to the GP in the morning, get some time off work to focus on the kids.
But I needed someone now. Not Marvin and the AAs, who meant well but thought the answer lay in the bottom of a bottle of Sauv Blanc or in fixing my decaying face. I got up and padded down to the kitchen and picked up Sunil’s card. ‘Youth worker’ it said, with the logo of Resilient.
I typed the number into my phone and waited to leave a message. I was ringing him out of hours after all, but I hoped we could make a time to meet up.
But he answered, and his voice was lovely and reassuring. ‘Hello, this is Sunil, how can I help you?’
‘This is Callie, Daisy’s Mum,’ I said nervously. ‘I’m sorry to call you so late and…’
‘Oh, hello, I was hoping you’d call,’ he said warmly. ‘I sensed there was quite a lot going on.’ I felt like a drowning person who was being thrown a very thin lifeline. He’d been hoping I’d call. He wanted to help me.
In a rush, I gave him a rundown of what had happened to Lily. He occasionally gave a soothing and concerned, ‘I see,’ but let me talk until breathless, until I finished with: ‘and it’s all on top of what’s been going on with Wilf and… you talked about resilience. I think we could all do with some of that right now.’
‘Look, it’s my job, but, much more than that, I’d really like to help you. Daisy is a top kid and I’m sure the others – all of you – are going to get through this. I want to do what I can.’
My overwhelming feeling as I promised to meet him at the youth centre at 11 a.m. for a coffee, on Friday, when the children would be at school for study revision, was that I no longer felt quite so alone. I’d tell Eli I needed some time off. Get Greg to step up to the plate. Misogynistic arsehole drivers seemed very irrelevant right now.
It’d never really occurred to me to feel lonely and I was very rarely by myself. There were the kids, my folks, Marv and the AAs, colleagues, other friends. But as I clicked ‘off’ on the phone, I realised quite how alone I’d really been feeling. And for quite a while now, even before this all happened.
It was a chilly place, full of responsibility and a need to hold it all together.
15
I woke up from a frenzied sleep and texted Eli that I had some personal problems to deal with, simply getting a curt response:
OK, you’d better get those bozos you work with going then
No ‘hope it all works out’, no bunch of sympathy flowers; he was just concerned with making sure the job got done. So, I emailed Greg, Ayesha and Charles with a series of instructions about making sure no one cheated on the pay-roll run and so on. Ayesha sent the predictable email about handing in her notice and a possible racial and sexual discrimination claim but, while I felt sorry for her, I had to put her off and tell her I’d deal with it on my return.
Then I battled the phone system for the local GP. This meant calling exactly as the clock on my iPhone turned to 8 a.m. to immediately get held in a queue telling me that thirty people were ahead of me, and wailing, ‘How is that even possible?’ before listening to piped music and information about smoking cessation clinics for half an hour. When I finally got through to a receptionist, she said all today’s appointments were gone. I told her it was an emergency and unless she let my teenage daughter see a doctor that morning, I would personally stage a one-woman sit-in of the surgery. Then I waved Daisy off to study group and tucked in Wilf’s school shirt before he went off on his bike, his blue and white scarf wrapped round his neck. I wondered what state of dishevelment he normally went to school in, in my absence, and felt a massive spike in mother guilt. Maybe Ralph was right – Wilf would get much more attention in Cape Town with full-time support from his father.
Putting that aside, I gently coaxed Lily from her bed – ‘Will you stop asking me if I’m all right?’ – her face wan and pale, and drove her to the GP. We saw a locum in the end, who looked as if he couldn’t have passed his A levels let alone got to medical school; he asked her a series of gentle questions.
‘Do you want to talk to me without Mum?’ he said after she mumbled a few answers about being fine, j
ust a bit worried about the exams.
‘No, it’s all right, Mum’s cool,’ Lily said and smiled sadly at me. ‘I just feel like she’s got enough to deal with at the moment without me being a nightmare.’
Oh, the guilt again. ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I reassured her, taking her hand in front of the doctor.
‘It sounds like your mum did exactly the right thing last night,’ the very young GP said, and proceeded to give Lily instructions about carrying a paper bag with her at all times and scheduling rest periods. ‘You will perform better in the exams if you do,’ he said. Then as he typed into the computer, kindly: ‘What do you want to do in the end?’
‘I want to be a doctor,’ Lily told him.
He appraised her as if she were completely nuts, obviously remembering recent ninety-seven-hour-a-week shifts, but only said, ‘Well, then, you know you need to look after your mental health.’
He went on to say he wasn’t going to give her drugs, because the side effects could be worse than managing any further attacks during the exam period, but told her to come back at any time she needed.
As we left, and I dropped her outside school, I kept asking her whether she wouldn’t rather study at home that day. ‘Or go to bed and have another rest?’
Lily shook her head and said she needed to ask the teacher about some of the formulae she couldn’t remember, and went off into the glass and concrete of the old school building, looking fragile in the spring breeze.
It was as I turned the ignition on to drive away that I spied a Mini with a very naff number plate come into the school car park, a blonde steering the car. My blood became instant boiling lava in my arteries. Petra! What the hell was she doing at the school?
I turned the car off. This was my turf. My kids. The school where I turned up time after time to go through the shenanigans of parents’ evening. The school she’d never set foot in until very recently.
Before I had time to think about what I was doing, I’d jumped out of the car and, as she got out of hers, neatening a red scarf round her teensy, tiny neck, I found myself blocking her path. We were between a shiny blue Astra and her own car; there was nowhere for her to go unless I got out of the way.