by David Moody
They both realised that as Ana got older and gained more independence, they would have to re-evaluate their own relationship. To try and determine whether there was anything left between the two of them, besides being parents. Gareth was terrified that if he looked too hard, he’d realise that although Jen was a wonderful mother and a close friend, he didn’t love her in that way anymore. Or worse, that Jen would realise that her feelings had changed.
Deep down, Gareth hoped that he still loved Jen and that the two of them hadn’t strayed too far from what made them fall in love with each other in the first place.
Gareth’s thoughts were interrupted when his phone bleeped.
Fishing it out of his pocket, he saw it was a work e-mail.
‘Fuck sake…’ he muttered, perhaps a little too loudly for the mums sitting next to him on the playground bench.
It was from his line manager.
‘Fucking Saturday, Ian.’
Attached to the e-mail was a spreadsheet which came out garbled when opened through his phone’s browser.
‘Tosser…’
While Gareth was deciphering annual statistics on his phone, Ana moved on to the roundabout with some other kids.
Unseen by either of them, a figure staggered along the pathway leading to the playground.
Despite still being a few hundred yards off, some of the more alert mothers started moving towards their children, perhaps sensing on an animal level, the odd otherness of the gaunt figure stumbling towards their offspring.
It was hard to estimate the age of the figure. Its sunken features were capped by glassy eyes which seemed to rattle in their sockets with each barefooted step it took. Its trousers glistened with an unknown dark wetness and through the un-tucked and stained white shirt it wore you could count each of its pronounced ribs.
Ana continued to spin on the roundabout, every few seconds seeing a blurry figure which she guessed was her father. Gradually the other children jumped off and rejoined their parents, leaving the roundabout all to Ana. It gradually started to slow.
She could see her father sat on the bench, playing with his phone. The world spun some more, shining bright warm sunlight into her eyes, alternating with shadow. She could make out her father still in the same pose. She narrowed her eyes in anticipation of another blast from the sun’s rays but something cast a dull shadow over her instead.
As her eyes adjusted, she smiled up into the face of the figure in front of her.
Gareth was busy drafting an angry e-mail back to his line manager when he heard the first scream. At first it sounded like the playful screams that he’d been subjected to all morning, but instead of ending in a playful yelp, it continued.
And continued.
And then died off in a croak.
Tearing his eyes from his phone, Gareth noticed some of the mums cowering in the corner of the playground. Others had starting waddling quickly out of the park, checking back over their shoulders as they disappeared. Assuming somebody’s precious little monster had grazed their knee, Gareth glanced over to the seesaw where Ana was playing with the snot-nosed boy.
Except she wasn’t there.
The last of the mothers and their spawn had now fled.
A cold, sickening feeling slid up Gareth’s spine, passed the base of his skull and crept onto the back of his neck. His mouth wrenched open, forcing air into his lungs.
Gareth looked around as if seeing the playground for the first time. Something wasn’t right.
He scanned back and forth before settling his eyes onto a figure by the roundabout.
It had its back to him, and it took him another moment to realise that it was holding something. Swinging something in its arms.
Gareth got to his feet. Part of his brain was shouting at him to find Ana, but another part knew that he was already looking in the right direction.
Gareth looked down at the figure’s bare, bloody feet. Beyond its knee, he saw a glimpse of something he recognised. Half of his brain had shut down but the other reptilian half was working overtime.
The something was Ana’s shoe.
With this piece of information, Gareth’s body reacted.
He took half a dozen steps and launched himself at the figure, spinning it around. Ana’s body dropped from its arms.
Gareth shoved the figure backwards, sending it stumbling to the ground.
He followed up with his foot, stamping on its head. A reassuring crunch under his heel.
He repeated the action.
Again.
And again.
He threw his full weight and anger behind each vicious stomp.
As the crunches turned to squelches, his brain started to reboot itself. Gareth regained control over his body and looked at the mess in front of him.
A torso with a mass of gore and splatter marks where the head used to be.
A moment later Gareth was trying to remember why he had acted in this way.
Ana.
Spinning around, he saw her.
A limp body. Part of her neck missing, replaced by an angry red wound.
Gareth picked her up.
She seemed lighter than she had for years.
He ran.
She bounced on his shoulder as he ran down the pathway.
He ran on to the main road.
His senses narrowed. Focused only on the horizon and the hospital somewhere beyond and the sound of his own ragged breathing.
The sound of his heart beat filled his ears as he sprinted down Bridgend Road. Soon all the other noise was drowned out by the sound of a siren.
Gareth was still trying to run even as the paramedics tried to load him and Ana into the back of the ambulance.
THREE
Gareth answered the consultant’s questions, even though they were identical to the questions already asked by the paramedics. His answers were identical to the ones he had given the receptionist at A&E, identical to those he’d given the series of nurses and the doctor who seemed too young to be a doctor. He sat by Ana’s hospital bedside, barely looking away from the small creature who used to be his daughter. When Jen finally appeared, he only registered her presence by the sound of her voice.
Jen asked Gareth the same questions that the police had asked. He gave the same answers, even though he himself didn’t know.
He didn’t know what had happened. Not really.
He only knew that, for some unknown reason, a man had tried to destroy his family. He had no logical explanation for why the man would target his daughter. What logical reason could there be for a grown man to attack, and bite, a five year old girl?
Jen continued with her questions, the insinuation was clear: How could you let this happen?
Gareth, to the best of his ability, continued to answer everyone’s questions. And yet, at no point did anyone attempt to address the sole question he wanted answered:
Is she going to be okay?
By 10pm, Jen was insisting that Gareth go home to rest. He flat out refused, until a nurse pointed out that he was still wearing his blood-splattered clothes and it was upsetting the other patients. Jen handed Gareth the car keys, as nurses began to set up a fold-out bed. Jen moved to Ana’s bedside and stroked her hair. She slipped her arm through the knot of tubes and wires which were keeping Ana alive.
On the drive home, Gareth kept peering into the rear-view mirror at the empty child’s booster seat.
He entered his pitch black house and turned on as many lights as he could. Without his wife and daughter the house was too quiet, so he sat down and turned the television on.
He tried watching something but he couldn’t comprehend why the shapes and sounds on the screen were talking about matters other than his daughter. Why would others continue with their lives when his was falling apart? Why would they screen such banalities when a child lay dying in a hospital bed somewhere? He turned over to one of the news channels and was confronted with images of conflict, disease and bloodshed. Perversely, he found c
omfort in them. Normally he would have registered concern at the proximity of some of the news stories, but his worry for his daughter meant he didn’t focus on the images of civil unrest and details of a pandemic which had come to his country’s shores. More maddening thoughts filled his brain until his body finally gave up and he slid into unconsciousness.
***
When he woke up next morning he wasn’t on the sofa. He was in his daughter’s bed among the assorted dolls and stuffed animals. Confused, he looked down and found that he was still dressed in the blood-covered clothes from yesterday. His temporary amnesia leaked away and was replaced by the knowledge that his daughter was in critical condition and that it had happened on his watch.
He peeled out of his blood-crusted clothes and found that the blood, the stranger’s blood, had soaked through and stained his skin. Numbly he stepped into the shower and washed off the blood, hoping that the guilt would wash off also.
Stepping out of the shower, his phone went off. Staring at the screen, Gareth didn’t recognise the number.
‘Hello?’
‘Gareth, its Tom O’Bannon.’
‘Tom?’
‘Your lawyer, we met yesterday at the hospital.’
Gareth’s body went rigid, the muscles locking. He couldn’t feel his face, just his heart pounding in his chest.
‘Oh.’
‘I’m just calling you with a quick update.’
‘Ok,’ Gareth managed.
‘It’s… Well, it’s quite odd, really.’
‘Odd…’
‘Yes, but odd in a positive way. The police have carried out their post-mortem on their John Doe, the attacker. Anyway the autopsy results, which were double-checked, dates the time of death several days before the date of the incident.’
‘Days?’
‘Even allowing for various environmental factors like heat or humidity, there is no way that the body could have been killed during the alleged attack.’ The lawyer’s voice was racing with excitement.
‘But-’
‘Gareth, this is good news.’
‘I don’t—’
‘This evidence, verified by the police themselves, combined with two other factors, is currently keeping you out of prison.’
‘Other factors?’
‘The autopsy evidence doesn’t tally and there were no witnesses to the alleged attack.’
‘You said two other factors.’
‘They’ve lost the body.’
‘How do you lose a body?’
‘No idea, some admin error probably, but they’ve managed it. When this gets to court, it’ll be a farce. They’re embarrassed.’
‘So, what next?’
‘I’ll keep you updated and out of prison. The police aren’t pursuing this at the moment as they’ve got their hands full.’
‘They’re too busy for a murder case?’
The line was silent for a moment. Before the lawyer replied.
‘Don’t use the “M” word, Gareth. But yes. And we lawyers are pretty busy at the moment. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the world’s going to hell right now, so business is good.’
FOUR
Later, Gareth and Jen sat by Ana’s bedside as a consultant tried to update them on their daughter’s situation. He informed them Ana had lost a lot of blood, and that they were giving her a transfusion. They were also running a series of blood tests on Ana in case of infection from her bite. Gareth and Jen listened abstractly to the information being delivered to them but could not process it. It sounded like exposition from one of the medical shows on TV that Jen watched, not something which told them about their child’s wellbeing.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ Jen asked numbly, interrupting the consultant’s spiel.
The consultant hesitated.
‘Physically, yes, she should be. Assuming the blood transfusion is successful and there are no complications, we should be able to give her antibiotics to fight off any infection that she may have. The wounds to her neck will have to be dressed and kept clean, and when she is discharged we can show you how to do that yourselves. Mentally and emotionally…’ Another hesitation. ‘Ana has been through an extreme traumatic event. At her age, she might bounce back straight away. But she might not, she could suffer with anything from night terrors to full blown catatonia. At this stage it is too early to tell. I’d like to monitor her progress in hospital for the rest of the week. If all goes well, we’ll arrange some regular appointments with a child specialist.’
‘A psychologist?’ Jen murmured.
‘We want to help Ana deal with this trauma as healthily as possible. If not, it could lead to complications for her in later life.’
‘Do they know what was wrong with him?’ Gareth asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ the doctor responded.
‘The… man who bit her, what did he have?’
‘I’m not sure-’
‘Did he have AIDs or HIV or—’
‘As I’ve said, we’ve tested Ana for those diseases and her results have come back negative.’
‘Was he mentally ill or—?’
‘I’m afraid that as the police have been unable to identify the man and, I understand, there have been further complications with the body, we have no way of checking his medical history to determine whether he was suffering from any form of mental illness before he died.’
And there it was. The reminder that, no matter what the reason, Gareth had ended a life.
Being wrapped up in concern for his daughter’s wellbeing, gave Gareth the perfect excuse to not focus on the fact that he had killed a man. But when he did allow himself to think about it, he came to the realisation that he could kill. It was no longer a theoretical question. Gareth would, under the right circumstances, end someone else’s life.
Pursuing the dark train of thought, Gareth knew that, if required to, he could do it again. And just before retreating from that morbid notion, he realised that he felt the briefest glimmer of pride at the idea that he could indeed kill to protect his family.
He gripped Jen’s hand on his lap and gave it a reassuring squeeze, as she lay her head on his shoulder.
While Gareth stayed by Ana’s bedside that Sunday night, Jen rang both their places of employment to leave messages requesting unpaid parental leave. Gareth knew that he shouldn’t be concerned with such mundane matters as work while his daughter lay in hospital, but he couldn’t help it. With Jen teaching, and the notorious difficulty she faced getting any leave during term time, Gareth knew that at some point he’d have to come up with a workable alternative to look after Ana.
At midnight, he lay back and tried to get comfortable on the fold out bed.
Sleep didn’t come for him.
He grabbed his phone, its light illuminating most of Ana’s ward. He hesitated briefly before loading up his work e-mails. As Ana slept, Gareth tried to respond to as many work queries as he could off his phone.
At some point after 3am, Gareth surrendered and lay back in his cot, staring at the ceiling and listening to the soundtrack of small children crying for their parents.
FIVE
The next few weeks were a constant cycle of different locations for Gareth and Jen, alternating between hospital visits, appointments with various consultants and Ana’s GP, and trips to pharmacies to pick up liquid antibiotics which their daughter promptly brought back up.
Gareth and Jen were pleasantly surprised by the news that the hospital was discharging Ana. Some new superbug or virus was doing the rounds and it was deemed that Ana would be safer at home rather than at risk in the ward. The early elation of being able to bring their daughter home became replaced by a dread when they realised how much work the entire team of nurses and cleaners had done looking after her. They quickly learned to miss the support and advice of the ward staff, with the crushing realisation that it was up to them to nurse their daughter back to full health.
Ana’s lack of verbal communication became replaced by b
ody language, sometimes in the literal sense. Gareth and Jen learnt to interpret their daughter through her bodily waste, divining her temperament via the colour and consistency of her stool. They ceased to become parents, their role becoming more like a janitor or caretaker of a broken system. They’d had plenty of experience of this when she was an infant, but neither were prepared for the exhaustion that they now faced.
If either of them had been less tired they might have been able to draw up the following routine that their lives had become:
Get out of bed (not wake, as there was no promise of sleep).
Attempt to give Ana her medicine (succeed in getting the liquid antibiotics all over their clothes, her clothes, bedsheets and walls).
Approximately 30 minutes later, clean up bright yellow vomit as best as possible.
Wash clothes and bed linen.
Hang up washing on line if sunny (more realistically keep heating on full blast and dry on radiators).
Visit pharmacy for renewal of medication.
Argue whose time it was to deal with Ana’s newfound incontinence.
Ignore mounting voice messages from places of employment.
Appear a cheerful, alert parent for the various consultants who visited their home.
Attempt to get Ana to eat or drink.
Throw away uneaten food.
Clean up black bilious vomit.
Scrub carpet with various cleaning products in vain hope that it won’t leave a mark.
Tuck Ana into bed.
Late night supermarkets.
Lie down in bed (not sleep, never sleep).
Rise at the sound of Ana’s night terrors.
Hug hysterical screaming child until she passes out.
And repeat.