by Ruth Mancini
I look into my lap. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumble again. ‘I don’t mean to... I just don’t understand. He’s been fine for a year. And now this.’
Alex takes my hand. ‘That’s OK. I understand. But seizures can start up again. It can happen any time. You heard what the doctor said.’
By the time the tests come back, Ben has been admitted to the children’s ward. He’s still woozy from the sedation they’ve had to put him under to keep him still for the MRI and he’s had another dose of his medication, which has made him sleepier still. Alex has gone to feed the car park meter when the registrar comes onto the ward, spots me sitting next to Ben’s bed and gives me a smile. He asks me to follow him and waves me into a consultation room. He points to a sofa next to his desk and I quickly sit down.
I take a deep breath and brace myself for the worst.
‘Well, I’ve good news for you, Ms Kellerman,’ the registrar says, to my surprise. ‘Ben’s blood test results have all come back normal. There’s no infection showing. So we can rule out any viral cause for the onset of the seizure today.’
‘Seizures,’ I say. ‘Alex – my boyfriend – says there was more than one.’
The registrar shrugs. ‘Well, possibly. But there doesn’t appear to have been any lasting effect. Ben was fully conscious, if sleepy, when he came into triage, and the EEG doesn’t show any unusual activity, at least nothing that you wouldn’t expect for a child with his difficulties. Looking at his recent history, his medication appears to be working well. I think we’ll keep him on the same dosage and we’ll continue to monitor it. But I’d say that this was in all likelihood just one of those things. Seizures can happen at any time, unfortunately, but they don’t usually cause any long-term problems.’
‘What about the MRI?’ I ask.
‘Well, we won’t have the results for a few days, but I can tell you that there didn’t appear to be anything obviously wrong. The blood tests and the EEG support that. We’d like to keep Ben in for observation overnight, but he should be able to go home in the morning.’
I take a deep breath in and out and smile at him in relief.
He stands up. ‘So, the nurses will monitor Ben this evening. He should have a comfortable night’s sleep. We’ll have a look at him in the morning and then hopefully you can all be on your way home.’
I pick up my bag and push myself to my feet with the aid of one hand. My legs feel as though they’re made of jelly. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you so much for all you’ve done.’
‘My pleasure,’ he replies, and shows me out of the door.
Alex is waiting for me at Ben’s bedside. He looks up as he sees me walking back through the ward.
‘What did he say?’ His face contorts, anxiously, as he rises to greet me.
‘It’s OK.’ I smile. I put my hand on his arm. ‘He’s fine. Ben’s going to be just fine. They think it was a one-off.’
Alex looks surprised. ‘Really? That’s what he said? A one-off?’
I nod. ‘That’s what he said. He said there’s nothing wrong.’
Alex looks from me to Ben, who is sleeping soundly in his bed, and then wipes his arm across his brow. ‘Phew!’ he says, finally, and his mouth breaks into a smile.
‘Phew!’ I repeat. ‘I really thought... well, never mind.’
Alex takes me in his arms and holds me tight. His shirt’s slightly damp, as if he’s been running. I expect I could do with a shower, too.
‘Did you get to the parking meter on time?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Although, it looks as though we now need to go and find something to eat and somewhere to stay,’ he says. He nods at the window. ‘It’s getting late.’
I follow his eyes to the blackness of the window outside and then pull away from him, sharply.
‘Oh my God, what time is it?’ I reach into my bag for my phone. Alex points to a clock on the wall. ‘It’s half past eight,’ he says. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘What’s wrong?’
I glance up at the clock again, run over to Ben and kiss his head gently, throw my bag over my shoulder and run towards the door. ‘Stay here,’ I call to Alex. ‘Please. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
‘What? Where are you going?’ Alex calls after me.
‘Please, just stay with Ben. I won’t be long.’
I move through the children’s ward as quickly as I can without drawing huge amounts of attention to myself and raising alarm bells. What did Mary tell me? That she often ends up working beyond the end of her shift. Let this be one of those days for her, I pray. Let her be running behind.
But a gut feeling tells me when I get to the PICU ward – and am buzzed in by the matron to a still, silent atmosphere – that Mary has left the building. And I am right; she is gone.
16
We eat warm pitta bread, hummus and chicken at a lovely Turkish restaurant on Oxford’s Cowley Road, before driving back up to Headington and booking into a guest house nearer to the hospital for the night. I’d given serious consideration to the idea of sending Alex off alone, and the irony of the situation was not lost on me when I asked the nurses for a camp bed so that I could spend the night on the floor next to Ben. But he was out for the count, the nurses had told me; he would be unlikely to wake tonight after the sedation and the additional medication he’d been given. It was true that he hadn’t stirred before or since I’d come back from the PICU ward. With a promise that they would phone me instantly if Ben took a turn for the worse, I had followed the nurses’ suggestion that I take a break, get a decent meal inside me and then try to enjoy a good, child-free night’s sleep.
The guest house is basic, but clean and comfortable. I drift in and out of sleep all night and am awake before dawn. I pull my phone out from under my pillow, shower and dress hurriedly and then whisper to Alex that I need to get back to the hospital before Ben wakes up. He nods sleepily, and pushes back the covers. Moments later, he too is dressed and we arrive back at the hospital just before seven. It flashes into my mind how strange it feels to be so unencumbered, to move around so quickly and easily, just me and Alex, without bags of belongings, without nappies and car seats, without Ben.
Ben is still sleeping soundly when we arrive back at the children’s ward. We’re told he’s had a good night and after sitting with me for a bit, Alex heads off in search of coffee and pastries. I pull out my iPad and my notepaper and write up Mary’s statement as the sun rises up over Oxford. I then kiss Ben and head up to the PICU ward to find Mary, the handwritten statement ready in my bag.
The same matron greets me as I enter the ward and gives me the bad news that, whilst she was supposed to be on shift today, Mary has phoned in sick. My heart sinks. What am I going to do? We’ve got to get back to London today. Alex has work in the morning and, although I’ve already decided to ask for a couple of days’ unpaid leave so that I can keep an eye on Ben, it’s not going to be practical to stay here in Oxford with him on my own. Even if I could, I don’t know how long it will take before Mary’s back at work again – or how I would get to see her in any event, with Ben in tow.
I consider my options – which are few. It’s Matt’s case now – I’m not even supposed to be here. Gareth will be furious if he knows I’ve got myself involved again. I can already imagine the fallout of my dumping of my next two days’ workload onto Matt and others in the office while Ben recuperates, while I watch him like a hawk for the next forty-eight hours, which I know is what I’ll be doing, whatever the doctors have said. Two days’ leave will be, reluctantly, granted, I’m sure. But anything more than that will be pushing my luck. Eventually, I leave the statement with the ward matron, in an envelope, for Mary, with a note asking her to sign it and send it back as soon as possible.
Ben is discharged by lunchtime and we head out of the hospital into the crisp, cool sunshine. We drive back down the M40 in a companionable silence; Alex appears to know instinctively
that I don’t feel much like talking, and maybe he doesn’t either. We’ve been told that Ben will be sleepy for the next twenty-four hours following his ordeal, but it doesn’t stop me glancing over my shoulder every five minutes to examine his face for the characteristic dreaminess, the blank stares, the rolling of his eyes to one side that I’d checked for constantly for the first four years of his life – and that I’d so carelessly missed yesterday.
It’s true that, in the past year or so, I’ve gradually become accustomed to Ben’s new seizure-free status. Occasionally, if I hear a sudden thump or a bang – if he drops his sippy cup on the kitchen floor or turns over heavily in his sleep – my heart will skip a beat. But gradually, I’ve allowed myself to relax a little in the belief that his seizures are a thing of the past. Now, here I am again, back in that all too familiar place, that living, breathing state of hyper-vigilance that I know so well. I know that this is what my life is always going to be like and I know I will have to try my best to be pragmatic. I just have to learn to expect the unexpected, always. I have to come to terms with that, and in many ways I have. But, it’s such a huge responsibility. Even with Alex now sitting beside me, and with the hint of a possibility that I might not be facing the future with Ben alone, Ben will always be my day, my evening and my night job. It will always be me who is watching vigil over him, me who looks out for him, not just while he’s a child, but for the rest of my life.
Monday and Tuesday pass peacefully at home. Ben is subdued and happy to spend the first day lying on the sofa in my arms, watching Teletubbies DVDs. By Tuesday morning, though, he’s up and ready for his next session on YouTube. I smile in pleasure as I watch him surf the website, finding clips of his beloved Tubbies in a multitude of languages that are not English, which he watches and listens to intently. I entertain myself by learning how to say ‘tubby-toast’ in German and ‘naughty noo-noo’ in Spanish. I can also count to four (sadly, there are only four Teletubbies) in at least five different languages by the end of the day. I even learn a whole sentence in Polish, when Ben finds one particular clip that’s worthy of a half-hour rewind session. And, to Ben’s delight, I can hum the tune and dance along with a cheery Romanian folk tune, one which the Teletubbies and the noo-noo appear to have adopted as their own.
I phone the John Radcliffe PICU every day, first from home and then from the office when I return on Wednesday. Mary is still off sick; Mary hasn’t come in this morning; they don’t know when Mary’s next shift is; they can’t say when she’ll be back. On Thursday I phone Mark Greenhalgh and leave a message. By the following Friday, when I haven’t heard from him, I ring again.
It’s two days before Christmas when he returns my call. The signed statement from Mary still hasn’t materialised. I already know that it’s too late; Mary will be back in Ghana by now, picking out her jewellery and trying on her wedding dress. My heart sinks in despair as I think how close I just got to a major breakthrough, but that we’re now back to where we were: square one.
That’s not strictly true, of course. I may be able to give evidence myself of what Mary has told me, if the judge allows it. But it doesn’t alter the fact that it will be hearsay; it won’t have come directly from the horse’s mouth. I’m not sure how persuasive I’ll be when I tell the court, second-hand, that Mary had said, ‘fifty or sixty’, not ‘fifteen or sixteen’. I can just picture the prosecutor, Carmel Oliver, leaping to her feet to cross-examine me, suggesting that it’s me, not the police officer, who has got it wrong. It’s me who has misunderstood Mary, who has struggled with her accent, she’ll tell me. My evidence is no more than wishful thinking on my part.
The fact is that nothing is certain, and that’s what I thought I’d achieved for Ellie: certainty. Even though I know that it was simply the unfortunate hand of fate that caused Ben to fall ill at the precise moment he did, it feels as though I’ve let an opportunity slip through my fingertips, and that I’ve let Ellie down.
*
Christmas is a low-key affair. Alex is unavoidably called away overseas on a last-minute business trip, an investment opportunity that can’t wait until the New Year. Ben and I are invited to have Christmas lunch with my brother, who invites my father too. My brother lets Ben use his computer to play on YouTube while the presents are being unwrapped, but the internet connection is slower than Ben is used to, and before long, he is wailing and wobbling around on his unsteady legs, looking for the exit to the house. He gets more and more upset as he tries doors and cupboards, looking for the way out, while I try to steer him back into the front room again. It’s a house which he doesn’t know and which is full of people that he doesn’t know either, at least not well enough for them to be of any comfort to him when he’s this upset. I watch, hopelessly, as my father and my brother attempt to entertain him with various toys and gadgets in which I know instinctively he will have no interest, while my sister-in-law does her best to get the dinner onto the table as quickly as she can. The stress of the situation is too much for me and for everyone, not to mention Ben. After half an hour of this, I apologise, gather my crying son up in my arms and put him back in the car.
Back at home, I let Ben spend his Christmas in the way that he now loves best: on YouTube, surfing for video clips of nursery rhymes. I sit next to him and sing along, making the Makaton signs for ‘Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star’ and ‘Five Green and Speckled Frogs’ with one hand, a glass of wine in the other.
In early January, Ben’s MRI results come back. My GP tells me that everything is normal and I breathe a sigh of relief. A week later, a letter comes through from the SRA to tell me that, while my conduct is regrettable, they won’t be taking the matter any further. Gareth calls me into his room to tell me the news.
‘So I can go back to court?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
I stand up. ‘Thank you. That’s great.’
‘One more thing...’ he adds. ‘Ellis Stephens wants you back.’ I sit down again. Gareth turns to face me and presses his lips together. I can tell that he’s finding this hard. ‘She and Matt don’t... they don’t see eye to eye. She says that if we don’t allow you to run her trial, she’s leaving and going to another firm.’
I bite my lip, trying to hide my delight. ‘So I’m back on the case? As from now?’
‘It seems that way.’
I immediately phone Ellie, then Will for a conference. He suggests we meet at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese the following day.
He’s sitting at a table next to the fire when I enter. He looks up when I walk in and takes off his glasses. ‘So. What happened to you?’ He smiles. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to call in your winnings.’
I smile. ‘I found the nurse; I lost the nurse. I guess that makes us quits.’
I sit down at the table opposite him. He pushes a glass across the table towards me. ‘Well, I got you this. Lime and soda, right?’
I nod. ‘Thanks for remembering.’ I shrug off my coat and turn to warm my hands against the amber flames that are flickering in the grate.
‘So how did you find her?’
‘Her sponsor called me eventually and told me where she was. But without her signed evidence, we’re back where we started, aren’t we? Even if the judge allows me to give evidence of what she told me, it’s all hearsay. Carmel’s just going to say that it’s me who’s misunderstood her, that it’s me who’s got it wrong.’
Will looks at me kindly. ‘I suspect so. I don’t think he’ll allow it. Especially not now you’re her defence lawyer.’ He looks up. ‘But well done, Sarah. Really. Ellie was made up when I told her what you’d done.’
I shrug. ‘It’s not quite the news that I was hoping to give her.’
‘You’re on her side. That’s what matters to her. She’ll be very pleased to have you back on board. I know I am.’ He grins at me and narrows his eyes. ‘Matt’s OK, but he’s not my type.’
I smile. ‘He’s not Ellie’s, either, by the sound of things.’
Will shakes his head. �
�He wanted her to plead guilty. He said she didn’t have a defence.’
I frown. ‘Seriously?’
Will puts his glasses back on and looks me in the eye. ‘I am concerned, though. It’s less than three weeks until the trial and we don’t have much to work with.’
‘We have enough,’ I say.
Will leans forward and opens a fresh page on his notebook. ‘So, what have we got?’
‘OK.’ I pull out my iPad. ‘As regards the injuries, we have the schedules from the escort agency that confirm that Ellie was away for several dates between September and December last year, crucially for a whole week, on business with that politician, before Finn was hospitalised in December with the biggest and most pronounced of the bruises – the ones on his tummy, arms and legs.’
‘But we don’t have a name of the politician,’ Will says, ruefully.
‘No name. No politician, I’m afraid.’
‘I bet it’s Boris Johnson,’ says Will.
‘Maybe it’s Theresa May?’
Will raises his eyebrows and we both burst out laughing.
‘So, anyway,’ I continue. ‘Maria Shapiro, the owner of the escort agency, is happy to give evidence if needed, which is great.’ I scroll through the notes on my iPad. ‘We have some concessions from Paula Moore, Ellie’s heath visitor, who says in her statement that she observed Finn and Ellie together, that they had bonded well and that Finn appeared to be thriving – which rebuts some of the things that Heather Grainger says. We have the expert report from the family proceedings, which Anna faxed across to me this morning. This is the expert that can’t be sure that the injuries were deliberate. And we have our own toxicology report regarding the sodium levels, which is inconclusive and not very helpful, to be honest.’
‘Let me have a look at the expert report.’
‘Which one?’
‘From the family proceedings. The one you got this morning.’
I hand it to him. Will puts on his glasses and inspects it.