Simon's Choice

by Charlotte Castle

  “I’m just taking him to see the harem now, Muriel. We’ll get a drink in my study. Call us if you want help feeding the five thousand, won’t you?”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll manage.” Muriel said breezily, removing a cat that was winding its way around the plastic cups.

  Simon trailed after Duncan through the back door and into the garden, followed by a motley assortment of dogs and cats. “Is it appropriate for a Church of England vicar to be keeping a harem in his back garden, Duncan?”

  “Absolutely not, which is why I wanted one. Look. What do you think, aren’t they beauties?”

  No. They were not. Simon took in the appalling cluster of hens that stood with a rigid, un-chicken like stance in a large coop in a corner of the garden. Largely without feathers, they were the ugliest birds Simon had ever seen. “Aren’t they missing something, Duncan? Feathers for instance?”

  “Don’t worry about that, they’ll be back in no time. They’re battery chickens. Rescued them from a charity. They’re all a bit shell-shocked at the moment, if you’ll pardon the pun, but I’m assured they’ll perk up in no time. We’ve got a cockerel coming as well. Caligula. It’s his harem really, not mine.”

  “So will they lay?”

  “Oh yes. They just need a few days to get comfortable with their surroundings. Leonidas! Come away from there.” Duncan shooed away an enormous longhaired ginger cat, which was taking more than a passing interest in the hens. “It’s alright, he won’t get at them. Let’s get a drink, shall we? Tell me how everything’s going.”

  They went back into the house and into the dining room, which now served as Duncan’s study. Theology books lined the walls whilst more books quivered in unwieldy towers around the corners of the room. A glass vivarium housed a slow worm. Duncan had found the little legless lizard, so often confused with a snake, during a walk and had valiently rescued it from an attacking crow. The Reverend poured two generous whiskies from a cut glass decanter and gestured to a scruffy armchair covered in dog-haired blankets.

  “So, Simon. How is Sarah? How are you and Melissa? It’s been a rough ride.”

  “We seem to be coming to the end of the ride. Sarah comes out of monthly supervision next week. Chemo was stopped three months ago. Things are looking up. I admit there were some very bleak days. Overwhelming. You know, I don’t think I would have got through it all without you. Thanks for all your help, Duncan.”

  Duncan had supported Simon through some of the darker days. When they first got the diagnosis, Simon had raged against the Church and against God. Brought up by mildly religious parents and sent to a Church of England primary school, Simon had always kept a quiet faith. Neither pious nor devout, there had been periods in his life when he had not gone to church, when he had questioned the existence of God. Certainly as a medical student there were many times when he doubted the traditional idea of a pre-organized world, a universe in which he was merely a puppet to a grand puppeteer.

  Then, a couple of years into Simon’s career, Melissa and he had married. A year later, when Sarah was about a year old, they had started going to church weekly, believing an understanding of religious culture and tradition to be an important part of education. Simon enjoyed the simple comfort that came from being a member of a congregation, cushioned from the worries of life for just one hour each week. He enjoyed the ritual, the words and the music. He began to reclaim his faith and to trust there was a good and evil, an afterlife, a heaven. He offered his services for the occasional fête or community clear up and struck up a close friendship with the charming vicar and his elegant, generous wife.

  Then Sarah got ill.

  Two words: “It’s Leukemia”, and Simon's whole world, his happy life, came crashing down around him, his ordered existence immeasurably damaged, and it became clear to him that there was no higher being making great spiritual decisions. No Grand Master, looking over us and guiding us through life. How could he believe in a God that could torture a child? How could there be a deity that necessitated the need for Bone Marrow Aspiration from a terrified seven year old? That needle – so big, so brutal, plunging through skin, flesh, fat and finally into the child’s actual skeleton, was not the product of a celestial being. It was a man-made instrument made to deal with man’s own weaknesses. There was no supreme Father orchestrating a pre-formed plan that day. Only a biological father, scared, shaking and trying to be strong for the weeping little girl in his arms.

  So he had stopped going to church. Couldn’t face the blind optimism, the promise that we were all loved and would eventually be happy. How could God love his daughter and yet subject her to all this? How could God possibly love him? How was Simon supposed to love a God that had cursed his daughter?

  His parents tried to get him to go with them. He refused. Melissa attended when she wasn’t required at the hospital. She lit candles and prayed. She read books on theology and spent hours on the Internet reading studies on the power of prayer, trying to find a spiritual solution, an explanation of what was happening.

  She brought Duncan home with her one Sunday. Over roast chicken and Chablis, the Reverend reached out to his troubled friend. Simon, having reached a point of mental exhaustion needed a buoy in his emotional storm and trusting his friend and wanting a sense of belonging again, returned to the flock.

  Now, sitting in Duncan’s cramped little study, Famous Grouse in hand, Simon felt a great sense of calm. The separate components of his life were dropping back into place and the anxieties that had plagued him for two years were slowly seeping away.

  “You don’t need to thank me, Simon. You always had the strength. You just couldn’t remember how to channel it. We all lose faith from time to time.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even me.”

  “I should have thought you would need an unswerving faith to think those bloody hens are going to lay.”

  “You watch. You’ll be enjoying Oeuf à la Hughes by next week. Ah. That sounds like the troops.” A flurry of activity in the hallway commenced, as twenty thirsty scouts poured into Mrs. Hughes’s kitchen.

  “Should we go and help?”

  “No, we’ll only be in the way. Mrs. Hughes will deal with them. She rules the Foxes Biscuits tin with a rod of iron. I’m too soft and we run out before half of them have had one. Have to keep your eye on the little blighters.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, warmed by the welcome finger of whisky, Simon fought his way through the battalion of differing sized dogs in the hall. He climbed back into the Jaguar, glad to be sheltered from the heavy rain that had begun to fall during his time inside the vicarage. Feeling pleasantly satisfied after his catch-up with Duncan, Simon was looking forward to supper with his family.

  As he nosed his car down the familiar street, he was mildly surprised to see his mother-in-law’s car on the drive. Whilst the little red Honda was hardly a rare sight by his garage, it was nearing 8 p.m. and Diana, dedicated to her TV Times, would usually be happily ensconced in her sitting room by this time, snuggled up with her husband, dachshund and tray of Turkish Delight.

  He waved to her as she popped open the car door and stepped out, seemingly unbothered by the heavy rain. Simon parked the Jag in its usual spot, trying to ignore the slight feeling of unease creeping over him. “Hello, you” he said, grinning. He pressed the button to lower his car window. “Just can’t keep away can you?”

  Diana’s face remained neutral. No smile or amiable riposte was forthcoming. Simon immediately felt a charge in the air, the hairs on his neck rising with fear. “What is it?”

  Diana leaned down and peered through the car window. Her face showed the strains of a person who has been rehearsing the delivery of bad news. “Simon, I’m sorry. It’s Sarah. We’ve been trying to call you, but we couldn’t get through. Your phone … Why didn’t you have it on? Sarah, she - she collapsed. When she came back from school. They’ve gone to the hospital. She’s very unwell. Your phone was off …”


  “Get in.”

  Simon wrenched the car into reverse, his expression sharp and cold. Any warmth left from the whisky was gone.

  “Which hospital?”

  “Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, the ambulance man said …”

  Diana broke off, instinctively grabbing the handle above the passenger door as Simon screeched the Jaguar back down the street-lamp lit road. Back past St Matthew’s, back to the hospital.

  Back in the direction from which he had only so recently come.

  Chapter 4

  The car park was beginning to empty at the hospital, visitors reluctantly leaving for the evening. Simon, retaining a doctor’s parking permit, nudged his car at the barriers to the staff car park, impatient for the achingly slow hydraulic arm to raise and let him through. The large car splashed through puddles in the badly surfaced car park, the sheets of rain backlit by the neon hospital sign. Diana and Simon leaped out, oblivious to the rain, and ran towards the main hospital entrance.

  Inside, the vast four-story atrium was quiet, the only sound a squeaking of rubber shoes as porters scurried between lifts. A woman was packing up a second-hand bookstall for the day. She glanced up at the pair, then looked away quickly, embarrassed by the trauma she instinctively knew she was witnessing. At reception, the man in charge nodded a cool greeting. Simon snapped out his question, demanding the whereabouts of his daughter, and the man calmly checked the records.

  “Intensive Therapy Unit, 2nd floor, yellow lift.” Diana and Simon ran off in the direction of the lifts, their wet feet slipping on the smooth hospital floor.

  * * *

  “Why the fuck was your phone off?” Melissa rounded on them in the lobby of ITU, too anxious for preliminaries.

  “I forgot to turn it back on after surgery. I went to see Duncan. I told you.” Simon combed his fingers through his wet hair. “Where is she?”

  Melissa brusquely brought him up to speed. “She’s in there. She has an infection. Her temperature has been up to 106 and her organs were at risk of failing. They’ve got her hooked up to all manner of things and she’s stable. They’re carrying out another Bone Marrow Biopsy now. She’s under anesthetic this time.” She stopped and swallowed. “Simon, she was covered in bruises. All over her legs. I missed it. I fucking missed it.”

  Diana stepped forward and folded her distraught daughter into her arms, nodding at Simon over Melissa’s shoulder. Simon glanced at a set of swinging doors to his right, labeled ‘ITU Bay 4’. A nurse in scrubs shoved through, carrying a kidney dish containing blood-filled vials and assorted clinical detritus. He headed straight for the room, knowing instinctively that his daughter was inside.

  A doctor looked up from the bed where his little girl lay prone, attached to tubes, bags, lines, pumps and monitors. Her bare white hip protruded from under the cover, her skin almost as white as the starched sheet.

  The consultant looked up. “Dr Bailey? We’ve just finished the biopsy. Your little girl is very ill. We’re doing everything we can.”

  Simon stared numbly at the seven-year old, barely recognizable through the clutter of apparatus attached to her face and arms. “We missed it. It’s back and I missed it.” He moved towards the bed, wanting desperately to touch her, but terrified of hurting her, of contaminating her.

  “I’m afraid it looks that way. We’ll have the results of the biopsy as soon as we can. She has an infection that caused her collapse and we’re fighting it successfully at the moment, but it does seem the leukemia has returned. If it has, we’ll need to do a spinal tap to ascertain whether the cerebral spine fluid is under attack. If it is, then aggressive treatment will begin immediately. I’m terribly sorry.” The consultant covered Sarah’s hip back over with the sheet and made a note on a clipboard. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Dr Bailey. Relapses at this point can be hard to spot. Your daughter is still weakened by the months of chemotherapy. Parents get used to their child being frail. The parameters are different. The signs that originally rang alarm bells have become normal. The child often doesn’t report symptoms, unwilling to cause alarm and accustomed to a different level of wellness than other children. This is not your fault.”

  Simon stared right through him. “But I’m a doctor.” He sank into the institutional blue armchair in the corner of the room.

  “But you are a father first, Dr Bailey.” The consultant put his pen back in his suit breast pocket. “Sometimes we don't see things that are too close to our eyes.”

  Simon sat back against the familiar faux leather of the chair, ignoring the clammy stickiness as it pressed against his sopping wet shirt. Those plastic chair backs. He had sat in so many of them. The familiarity was matched by the fears and terrors as they rose to the surface. A machine bleeped, regurgitating dot matrix paper lined by violent peaks and valleys. A respirator wheezed and clunked, breathing for the troubled little girl as her lungs struggled under the attack of infection.

  As he watched her, statistics began to whirl once again in Simon’s mind, his medical knowledge as both a doctor and a parent of a seriously ill child spinning into action, computing data he had safely filed away. A figure popped up, an unwanted one. Relapse. Twenty five percent.

  A one in four chance of survival.

  Chapter Five

  January passed and with February came snow. Not the attractive white drifts that drive even the most mature of men to manically to turn out the garage in search of the family sledge – it was the dirty grey slush that coats every pavement and road, melting into dog muck, causing accidents and delays, soaking through shoes and making the whole country irritable.

  The Baileys and the Halfords convened once again around Simon and Melissa’s kitchen table. The easy companionship of the previous months had been replaced again by the hushed conversations of a family on the edge.

  Barbara fiddled with her napkin. “But at least she’s coming out of ITU. That’s got to be good news hasn’t it?”

  Simon nodded vaguely. “She’s going back onto the Cancer Ward. The infection has passed and she’s stable but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a very poorly girl. The biopsy showed up blasts….”

  “What’s a blast?” Robert interrupted.

  “New cells, presumably leukemic. The spinal tap showed the cancer has been found in the brain lining. She’s on the strongest course of chemo they dare give her.”

  Porridge sighed heavily in his dog basket, aware of the heavy atmosphere. He missed his friend.

  “What happens after the chemo - radiation therapy? How about the bone marrow transplant? They can do that, can’t they?” Terry stared intently at his son. Of course they would do something for his only granddaughter. It was 2009, for God’s Sake. They could cure everything now.

  “The transplant is better carried out during a remission. The state of a patient’s disease at the time of the transplant can affect the likelihood of a good outcome. Sarah isn’t in remission anymore. Allogeneic transplant was discussed during her remission, but the prognosis was so good a chemotherapy course was considered the least dangerous option. Also, her best chance would be a matched sibling transplant. Sarah’s an only child.”

  Terry sighed. “But she’ll get through it. She’s fought it off before. She’ll do it again this time.”

  “It’s not so bloody simple, Terry!” Melissa threw the saucepan she was washing to the ground, sending splatters of water across the floor. “You’re as bad as your son. Everything is not going to just go away. She hasn’t got mumps. It’s not a bout of fucking chicken pox. Jesus.” Melissa tore past the kitchen table, wrenching open the kitchen door and barging into her mother, Diana, who had been outside. A crunch of gears and Melissa’s car disappeared down the slushy street, leaving behind an astonished Diana, fag in hand.

  * * *

  Melissa was relieved to find nobody else in the ‘Family Room’, the cramped common room-cum-kitchenette provided for parents just off the Pediatric ward.

  She slumped onto a brown foam sofa, starin
g unseeing at the notice board in front of her which displayed a mix of taxi numbers, MMR jab reminders and pizza delivery flyers. When they had begun their long hospital stints two years before, the take-away menus scattered across the coffee tables had alarmed her. The cheerful leaflets, advertising ‘kebab meat and cheese’ and ‘super-sized, stuffed-crust Hawaiians’ appeared incongruous in the dour environment.

  For the first forty-eight hours, Simon and Melissa had survived on black coffee, dutifully flicking donations into the Tupperware container provided. Neither wished to admit to the selfish state of hunger, both embarrassed by their own petty requirements in the face of their daughter’s far greater need. Their fast was broken when another couple wandered into the little common room and calmly ordered a large pizza. The delivery boy had arrived quickly, obviously familiar with the route through the hospital. The other couple were old hands, parents of a boy with cystic fibrosis, and they shared the pizza with the grateful Baileys. Melissa remembered how the smell had seemed somehow sacrilegious in that temple to good hygiene and health. She had no such concerns anymore. She had probably shared fifty pizzas in that room over the years, though she had not tasted a single one.

  A twitch of a smile flickered at the corner of Melissa’s mouth. She had once gotten into an awful lot of trouble over a pizza at school. In fact, Melissa had gotten into a lot of trouble over a lot of things at school. ‘Pizzagate’ as her mother still referred to it, was merely one battle of many at the minor girls boarding school at which she had spent her formative years.

  Beecham House Independent Girl’s School was set in unremarkable grounds and produced largely unremarkable results. The girls did reasonably in their exams, and acquitted themselves moderately on the sports pitch. The fees were low and the parents, mostly middle to upper-middle-class professionals, put up with the lack of facilities and prestige in return for termly bills that didn’t bankrupt them.