by Cole, Cheryl
‘She’ll be fine, Cheryl’s a fighter,’ my mam said calmly. She never, ever flaps. I don’t know how she does it.
I had the worst strain of malaria you can get. George Clooney has the other one, the one that isn’t as severe initially but lives with you and resurfaces from time to time. I had falciparum, the one that hits you like a steam train but when it leaves your body it’s gone for good. It was attacking my liver and new blood cells. That’s what it does. The body tries to shut down and your veins shrink, which is why it was so difficult getting the needles in.
My malaria count was rising rapidly. They were taking blood all the time, and the parasites in my liver were doubling.
‘We can’t facilitate her here. She needs to go to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.’
My mam kept strong. She said there was no way she was letting any negativity in.
‘Cheryl’s tough. I know she’ll pull through.’
I was aware I had to move, and I heard someone say it wouldn’t take long to do the short journey, especially on a blue light at 5 o’clock in the morning. ‘There’d better not be paparazzi,’ I thought. Even in that state I was scared of the paps. That’s how bad it had got with them.
There was a young woman tending to me when I came round in intensive care at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. She explained that they were waiting for me to pass water. ‘That’s a vital sign we’re looking for. It will show your kidneys are still prepared to flush waste from your body.’
It was so frightening, and I felt absolutely exhausted too. I just wanted to go to sleep and make everything stop.
I can clearly remember asking the nurse if I was dying, and feeling relieved when she told me, ‘It’s a possibility.’
‘Make this end,’ I thought. I just had nothing left.
Afterwards I said to my mam, ‘I’m gonna write me will. Bring me some paper in. I need to tell you what to do. Gillian can have most of it and Andrew – don’t give him a thing.’
I was matter of fact. I was so over it by now. The exhaustion was overwhelming, and I was too tired to take any more.
‘Cheryl, you’ll be fine,’ my mam said. ‘We’ll be laughing about this in the future.’
She told me afterwards she would slip outside and pray to God, to nature, whatever might help. ‘Please God, don’t take her,’ she would say. I was moved when she told me that. My mam’s never openly affectionate and rarely shares her feelings, and on the few occasions she’s said she loves me I’ve practically fallen off the chair in shock.
I was given loads of different drugs and I couldn’t take the oxygen mask off or within minutes I couldn’t breathe. My left lung was filled the most with fluid, and if I lay on that side or rolled over on to it by mistake I couldn’t breathe at all.
Derek slept on the floor beside me, refusing to leave. He also started to blame himself, saying we would never have gone on the safari if he hadn’t said he wanted to see a lion in the wild.
‘It’s not your fault,’ I told him later, when I could talk. ‘I’m the one that said, “Let’s go”, and we weren’t even in a malaria region. How can it be your fault?’
When I thought about it, I was sure the mosquito bites I got at the airport must have been the ones that had done this to me because they were so extreme, but we’ll never know. ‘It was just really bad luck,’ I told Derek. ‘I won’t have you beating yourself up. You saved my life.’
One day a nurse tried 10 times to take blood. It was horrendous. It felt like she had a massive needle that was digging into the bone in my left wrist, and I really lost it.
‘I’m gonna call the police!’ I threatened. I called her names I’m too embarrassed to repeat, and Derek said you could hear me right down the corridor.
When the nurse failed to get the needle in my wrist she told me it would have to go into a vein in my neck.
‘No way, I’d rather die! There’s no way you’re poking that big thing in my neck.’
‘Can’t you go in higher up her arm?’ Derek suggested.
‘You’re not a medic,’ the nurse told him. ‘Please get out of this room now.’ The nurses were fed up with Derek because he was poking his nose into everything, trying to make sure I was getting the best possible treatment.
He laughed about it later, telling me they all hated him but he didn’t care what they thought. He was there for me, not to make himself popular.
I was so grateful to him that day, because the nurse did manage to raise a vein in my left arm, halfway up, and so my neck was spared. She fitted a tap to it so that the next time they needed to take blood they could just switch it on instead of using a needle.
‘I won’t have any blood left in me system because you lot are taking it all,’ I accused her, but that’s exactly what it felt like.
The minutes dragged, and a ticking clock on the wall in front of me started to drive me insane.
‘Can you hear that tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock? It’s cracking me up!’
Derek sprung to his feet and took it off the wall. When the nurse came in she went mental and kicked him out yet again, but it wasn’t long before he was back.
At last a few drops of urine appeared in the bag I was attached to. This is what we’d been waiting for. Derek took a photo of it and I started going mad at him.
‘Are you crazy? You’re worse than the paparazzi!’
‘It’s a happy moment,’ he laughed. ‘Be joyous!’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I finally started to feel a bit better once I was passing water again. It was my third day in intensive care by now. I wasn’t eating anything yet and was being fed though a tube that pumped stuff into my arm, but I definitely felt less poorly.
Mam brought in a bottle of Victoria’s Secret perfume so I could smell something clean, and a nurse gave me a foot massage and bed bath which helped me sleep.
When I was drifting off I could hear my mam and Derek talking about the paparazzi and about The X Factor. Because I wasn’t at the auditions everybody knew something was wrong, and the doctors had had to give out a press release. It bothered me. I was starting to worry about what was happening outside the hospital walls.
Simon texted: ‘Thank God you’ve pulled through,’ and I found out later that Louis had been an idiot and told the press I didn’t have malaria but just wanted time off, so I hope he ate some humble pie. The girls and Will were all sending messages, but I didn’t want to see anyone but my mam and Derek. I just couldn’t have coped with visitors and I couldn’t bear anyone else seeing me looking the way I did, because I knew it would upset people.
At the end of my fourth day in intensive care I managed to breathe without the oxygen mask, and I was suddenly so ravenous I felt I could have eaten my hand. Derek got me a load of sandwiches, crisps and chocolate from the canteen, but I could only take a few mouthfuls without feeling full. Still, it meant I was now well enough to leave intensive care, although the doctors said I would need a further week of respite care.
I begged them to let me recuperate at home, but they convinced me the London Clinic was the best place for me. They made it sound like a hotel with room service, so when I got there and a nurse arrived to take a blood sample I was horrified and started kicking off and shouting all over again.
‘I thought I was just here to rest! This is just another hospital. I’ve been conned!’
I had another stupid tube put in my hand for drugs and I was under observation. Every hour someone would stick a thermometer in my ear and check my pulse by clipping a plastic thing on my finger.
‘I feel like an old woman,’ I complained to Derek. I was all frail and bony, and I hadn’t walked for days and days.
I had a craving for raw tuna and Derek got a big carry out of sushi from Nobu. I’d always hated that type of food but I tried it and loved it. I started eating tubs and tubs of Häagen-Dazs ice cream too because my blood sugar was seriously low and I needed building up, and every day I felt a little bi
t stronger. After about three days someone would come and get me up and try to make me walk a few yards.
‘Ashley’s here,’ my mam had said at one point, while I was still in intensive care. ‘He’s beside himself. Do you want to see him?’
‘No.’ I replied. ‘I do not want him anywhere near this hospital.’ I didn’t even think about it for half a second.
The thought of the paparazzi taking pictures of both him and Derek at the hospital made me feel physically more ill. That’s what made my decision. That worry overshadowed everything.
Now, I look back and resent how the tabloids interfered in my life to that level. It was a ridiculous decision. What if I’d have died and Ashley never got to say goodbye? However badly he had broken my heart, I would never have wanted him to suffer like that. It would have destroyed him and I wouldn’t wish that on any anybody. I just didn’t want another media circus kicking off when I was in no fit state to deal with it.
The days went by very slowly at the London Clinic, and as my brain became more and more alert, I was doing a lot of thinking. I was making connections in my head I’d never thought of before, and they disturbed me. The most profound one will always stay with me. I thought back to when I was a teenager, taking out a loan for £100 with the ‘Provi’ man so I could buy an outfit and some shoes for my Popstars audition.
Then, in the blink of an eye I saw myself buying a pair of Christian Louboutins. They were the most gorgeous shoes I had ever seen and they cost £800. I was clicking buttons on Net-a-Porter, spending thousands of pounds.
‘What could me mates buy for that back in Newcastle?’
That’s what price tags like that used to make me think, but I was over thinking like that now. I’d discovered what the term ‘retail therapy’ meant when Ashley cheated on me, and being on The X Factor took away any guilt I may have had in spending that kind of money. The shoes were not a guilty pleasure; they were a pleasure I’d earned and deserved.
‘I might have the shoes, but I can’t walk to the shops in them.’
That was the very next thing that came into my head, and it hung there like a big, black rain cloud. I opened my eyes in that hospital room and everything still looked black.
‘I might have the shoes but I can’t walk to the shops in them.’
I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. It was so true. Even though my whole brain felt sore and dizzy, the words were crystal clear in my mind.
‘Who the hell am I?’ I said to Derek eventually. I don’t think he knew what to say. He must have been thinking to himself, ‘How am I here, in London, with this girl I haven’t long known, who’s nearly just died.’ He mustn’t have known what had hit him, but it was just so typical of me to be in a situation like this. My whole life had been like a mad rollercoaster ride. I was so used to experiencing extreme highs and extreme lows; it was all I had known, all my life.
Being in here was just the latest example. Who else climbs a mountain to raise money to protect children against malaria and ends up nearly dying from the disease the following year? It was just so typical of me. Who has a number one record and gets locked in a police cell, all at the same time? All these crazy combinations of events flashed in my head. Walking the red carpet one minute, visiting my brother in prison the next; marrying the man of my dreams in a fairytale wedding and then seeing him splashed across the newspapers exposed as a ‘love rat’.
You just couldn’t make it up. I’d had enough. I wanted to be floating around on the carousel now, not watching my knuckles turn white on the rollercoaster. I just had to work out how to change my life.
17
‘Do they not think I’m a human being?’
‘Simon, don’t worry what everyone is saying, I’ll be there for judges’ houses.’
‘Good, I’ll see you there then,’ he replied.
I’d finally been allowed home after a week at the London Clinic and Hillary had told me I wasn’t doing The X Factor any more and my album would have to wait until next year.
My initial thoughts were, ‘D’you wanna bet? The X Factor’s one thing, but I’m doing the album. I’ve lost my husband and my health, but I’m not losing me album. No way. It’s all I’ve got left.’
I reacted that way because The X Factor meant less to me personally than my album, but after a couple of days of sitting around at home, watching the telly and trying to build myself up by eating Sunday roasts and my mam’s home-made mince and dumplings, I was starting to feel bored and sorry for myself.
I wanted to be busy, and I thought that going to the judges’ houses stage of the competition would do me good, especially as Will had agreed to help me.
The truth was I didn’t want to sit still, because then I would have to face how I felt. I was so sad and disillusioned with my life it was easier to run away and keep running, even though I was nowhere near fit. I was all skin and bones, my muscles had wasted and my hair was falling out in clumps. It took me an hour to take a shower in the morning because I was so weak, but I didn’t care. At least I was out of hospital and on the mend.
I told Simon I’d be there when filming started again in a couple of months, and plans were made to hold my part of judges’ houses in Ascot instead of Cannes, just in case I wasn’t fit to fly.
However, in the meantime I’d already made up my mind that I was going to beg the doctors to let me go to LA, as I already had studio time booked.
‘I’m sorry, it’s out of the question,’ the doctor said when I laid out my plans, which completely shocked me. ‘Your haemoglobin is far below what it should be. In fact, I’m afraid that for the time being, the only place you’re going is back into hospital. You need a blood transfusion.’
I’d been out of hospital for about a week when I was given that news and I was horrified at the thought of going back. The doctor explained that I didn’t have sufficient ‘adult’ blood cells and that to wait for my ‘baby’ blood cells to mature could take three months, so a transfusion was the best course of action. I went back to the London Clinic very reluctantly, but the thought of having someone else’s warm blood running though my veins made me go cold.
‘I can’t do it,’ I said at the very last minute. ‘What if I don’t have the transfusion?’
‘You’ll be suffering a little while longer. You’ll feel tired and weak for about three months.’
‘OK, I’d rather suffer than have the transfusion.’
They gave me an intravenous B-vitamin through the tube that they’d intended to use for the blood transfusion, to give me a boost. They also kept me in overnight, and I actually felt better than I had for weeks. The best thing of all was that I asked one of the hospital doctors if I could go to LA and he agreed, saying I could travel in two weeks’ time, provided I wore surgical socks on the flight and made sure I listened to my body, ate well and tried to relax.
‘I promise,’ I said, but as far as the ‘relax’ part went, I was already struggling. There had been a pack of photographers outside my house all day, every day, and they were really making me feel stressed.
I couldn’t understand how they could hound me like this, knowing I’d been severely ill. Some of them had actually followed me home from the hospital that day, and when my car pulled in it felt like I was in the middle of a lightening storm as so many flashbulbs popped all around me.
‘Are they not gonna give me time to recover?’ I thought. ‘Do they not think I’m a human being?’
When I shut the front door behind me, I felt like a prisoner in my own home. I wanted to leave the country, immediately, and the thought of spending another two weeks holed up like this was making me crazy.
‘They’re ruling my life,’ I said to Derek one day. ‘I just want to go out and have a walk in the sunshine, but I can’t even do that in peace.’
‘Just do it!’ Derek said. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I’d be happy just to go to Starbucks down the road.’
‘Then go!’
I was in a dark, dark hole, and I knew I had to climb out of it. I listened to Derek, and I changed out of my pyjamas, threw on a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans and decided to go for it. I’ll never forget it, actually. Every day, I’d been feeling like the walls were closing in on me a little bit more. The pressure of having the paps outside made me feel like I was trapped in a furnace. There was a wall of fire to get through to get outside into the fresh air, that’s how it felt. I had to brave the flames to break out of the hell I was stuck in, but I had to do it or I’d lose my mind.
The scrum lunged towards me, shouting and closing in on me. ‘Cheryl, how are you feeling?’
They all got their picture, but they didn’t go away. I was followed to Starbucks and photographed getting a freezing cold strawberry Frappuccino. When I drank it, I had a brief moment when I didn’t care about a thing. It tasted like the most amazing drink I had ever had, because I was out in the fresh air, doing what I wanted to do, paps or not.
I made plans to go to LA, and I was absolutely determined not to be followed. Ashley had texted me one day to ask how I was, but I didn’t feel strong enough to reply. I kept thinking about how I’d refused to let him come to visit me in hospital, and I felt gutted. He was still my husband, because my illness had delayed the end of the divorce proceedings. How could I have turned him away like that? I’d behaved like that not because of our relationship, but because of the media.
That’s when I knew, once and for all, that the paps had to get out of my life. They had crossed the line, a long time ago, and they were not just cataloguing my life with pictures, they were interfering in it and ruling my decisions. I was honestly so scared and paranoid about them by this time that I really thought I would crack up if I had to put up with any more scrutiny.
I spoke to my lawyers about how I could go about getting an injunction against the press, and then I chartered a little private plane to take me to Paris, so I could fly from there to LA and avoid the paps at Heathrow. I literally had to sneak over the back wall of my house to get in the plane, and Lily helped me set up a whole decoy car at the front to make absolutely sure the plan worked.