by Casey Watson
Ten minutes later – ten minutes during which the three of us sat, not knowing quite what to do, bar drink coffee and fret – the ambulance arrived, disgorging a brace of paramedics, who were reassuringly smiley and in control. I felt immediately calmer just showing them through the door.
One went straight upstairs while the other asked for details.
‘So what have you done so far?’ he asked me.
‘Nothing,’ I said. I felt such an idiot. ‘I should have made her take her pill, shouldn’t I? Forced it down her somehow.’
‘Love, you think she would have let you, state she was in?’ Mike countered.
‘I suppose not,’ I agreed. Though it didn’t make me feel any better.
But the paramedic did. ‘It’s not life and death,’ he said, obviously seeing my concern. ‘Don’t panic. She’ll be fine. Probably just low blood sugar.’
‘There,’ said Mike. I could see the relief on his face. ‘Listen,’ he said, turning to the paramedic. ‘Can we get you a coffee or something?’
‘Coffee? Who said coffee?’ came a voice from the doorway. ‘Stiff drink, more like.’ He was grinning. ‘Proper little madam you’ve got there, haven’t you? Told me I could ’eff off out of her bedroom. Charming! Is she always this delightful?’
It broke the tension a little, having the paramedics laughing in my kitchen. They dealt with all sorts, and seemed to take everything in their stride. I explained that we were fostering Sophia, and that we were still feeling our way.
‘Absolutely understand,’ he said. ‘And you might find her a bit less demanding from now on. She gave me plenty of attitude, so as well as her tablet I gave her some back. About frightening everyone and wasting our time. Listen, you really don’t need to worry too much about something like this. There’s a simple rule of thumb here. And it’s stress, physical stress. If she has any sort of fever – gets the flu, say – or has a bout of diarrhoea and vomiting, that’s when you have to call the doc about upping her meds. The other thing, obviously, is emotional stress. The body doesn’t differentiate between a temperature and a mental trauma – it’ll go into shock just the same. So again, if in doubt, call the doc or give her more steroid. You have an injection pack?’ I nodded. ‘Well, you mustn’t be afraid to use it. Jab it in, do it fast, get it done.’
I felt the colour drain from my face, but the paramedic grinned. ‘It’s rare for that to happen,’ he said. ‘So you’ll probably not have to. As I say, don’t worry. Forewarned is just forearmed.’
I smiled at this. How many times now had Mike and I said it? ‘I’m just so sorry we had to call you out,’ I said. ‘This is all new to us, and I just wasn’t sure what else to do.’
The paramedic shook his head. ‘No, no. You did absolutely the right thing, Mrs Watson. Any time. That’s what we’re here for. Anyway, we’ll get off – oh, and our notes will go off to her GP. And you get a good night’s sleep. Don’t lie awake worrying. She’s fine now.’
But none of us were fine. I saw the paramedics out, and when I came back into the kitchen to make us all another coffee the expressions on Mike and Kieron’s faces hit me like a slap. They were sitting in silence, both looking so upset and bewildered, and it hit me – did they deserve all this, really? It was my job. My responsibility, and yes, they’d both been such rocks. And Mike had gone through the training with me – I couldn’t have decided to foster without my husband’s full support. But, hand on heart, was I asking too much of my family? This wasn’t just a case of bringing my work home – work was home. It was the business of bring children to live with, and be supported by, our family, that our kind of fostering – any kind of fostering – was all about. But was my desire to make a difference actually making the worst kind of difference? Committing my own family to much more than they’d bargained for? To all this?
It had been so hard at first, with Justin. We’d all been new to it, and had had to make adjustments. But this felt different. Where with Justin I had a clear plan and all my experience to draw on, here I felt completely out of my depth. And it wasn’t just the illness, it was the whole situation. She was so complex, so unpredictable, so difficult to manage. I really didn’t know where to start.
Mike must have seen the look of despair on my face. ‘Stop beating yourself up, love. It’s not your fault. We all know we can’t pick and choose the kids they send us.’
I know, I said, mechanically making more coffees. ‘But I hate that you and Kieron have to be witnessing it all. It was different in school. I know I would sit down and tell you about some of the kids. But at least it didn’t affect you. Not in this way.’
‘It’s your job, Mum,’ said Kieron. I could have hugged him. ‘We all knew it would be the problem kids we’d be having, didn’t we? So it was never going to be a bed of roses. But if you didn’t do what you do, where else would kids like Sophia go? If it wasn’t for people like you, Mum, they’d be dumped in secure units, wouldn’t they?’
I nodded, but sadly. Already my son, who up till a couple of years ago had been so innocent, knew the language of social services, and all about the kids on the scrap-heap. And he was right. The kids we were trained to take in were on the scrap-heap. They were the kids with such intractable problems and attendant ‘challenging’ behaviours (how was that for an understatement?) that no one else, literally, would have them.
‘It’ll get better,’ said Mike. ‘I’m sure it will. And remember, we’re only going to have her for a short while anyway. Once Jean recovers she can have her back and we can get back to normal. Well,’ he grinned, ‘as normal as it ever is in this house, anyway. And when she does, I think we should plan a nice little holiday. All of us. Invite Riley and David and little Levi as well.’
‘Perfect,’ said Kieron. ‘Brilliant idea, Dad. Somewhere nice and hot. Right, then – when’s she going?’
We all laughed then, and I felt much better. My family were perhaps not as badly affected as I’d feared, and, if they were, they were prepared to slog it out. So who was I to question it? Let’s just get this wretched weekend over with, I thought, as I climbed into bed, and fell into a fitful sleep. Little did I know that, after the weekend, I would be questioning absolutely everything.
Chapter 10
I was awake at six on the Sunday morning, the prospect of the day ahead being grim enough to ensure that, as soon as I was conscious, my brain wouldn’t let me sleep again. I knew it didn’t affect me personally, but there was something deeply unsettling about the prospect of taking a 12-year-old girl to visit her comatose mother, and it made me anxious in ways I couldn’t quite pin down. I didn’t know if we’d be going in with Sophia, but I suspected we might be. It would be distressing for her, surely, and she’d need our support.
But what would it be like to go in there, seeing Sophia’s mother like that? I had this vision – learned from years of watching hospital dramas on TV – of her lying there, motionless, wired up to stuff, the rhythmic sound of a ventilator hissing the only noise in the deathly hush. What did you do in a situation like that? Did Sophia talk to her? Did she have any sense of the hopelessness of the situation? And what about the future? What was it doing to her, psychologically? I found it creepy and disturbing. I couldn’t help it.
But it wasn’t for me to think about the future. I needed to concentrate on the here and now. I crept soundlessly from the bed and went downstairs, a delighted Bob, who could hear a pin drop, trotting along excitedly at my heels. I felt like death warmed up and he felt a million dollars. A dog’s life, I thought. I’d quite like one of those.
Saturday, surprisingly, had been a good day. Sophia had come down bright and early, immediately apologised – somewhat sheepishly – for her ‘strop’ the night before, and then, having done her homework, happily accompanied me to Riley’s. Once there she’d played with Levi for much of the afternoon, letting Riley and me have a good chin-wag. We couldn’t talk about my number one stress of the moment, of course, but then that was probably a good thing. I didn�
��t want to burden her.
We’d then all gone to a ribs restaurant in the evening – a planned treat for Sophia as the chain was one of her favourites. And everyone had had a nice, uncomplicated time. Perhaps this was something I should get used to, this seesaw existence. It would just be nice not to be thumped down so hard, and so often; to stay at that good end a bit more often.
After I’d made myself a coffee and let Bob out, I then, having not had a moment to myself yesterday, sat down with my laptop and emailed John Fulshaw, detailing the events of Friday night.
That done – to my shock, almost an hour had now passed – I set about getting prepared for breakfast. I’d decided on a fry-up as we had a long way to go, and with the hospital visit still an unknown quantity lunch might not end up happening at all.
There was no sign of Kieron by the time I’d started on the bacon, but Mike and Sophia had obviously both been drawn down by the smell of it.
‘God, there’s nothing like the smell of bacon frying,’ said Mike, coming up behind me to give me a hug. ‘Hungry, are you, love?’ he finished, turning to Sophia, who had already sat down at the table.
She nodded, but, half-way through an enormous great yawn, couldn’t answer.
‘Gawd,’ said Mike. ‘Is that the Mersey Tunnel?’
‘Oh, funny ha-ha,’ she said, pulling a face at him. But in a nice way. I exhaled mentally. She seemed in an okay mood.
And she certainly had an appetite, as she cleared her plate in no time, and even leapt up with it, offering to wash up. I shook my head. ‘No, you go upstairs and get ready, love. Mike’ll wash up. We’ve got to be away in half an hour, now.’
‘You can’t judge her moods at all, can you?’ said Mike once she’d gone back to her room to get dressed. ‘She’s so chirpy. It’s like she’s completely shut off from where we’re going today.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Defence mechanism, maybe? Or perhaps she just refuses to accept the finality of it. Maybe she really does cling on to the hope that her mum’s going to wake up. I mean, it does happen, doesn’t it? Occasionally. I think, if I were her, that’s what I’d be concentrating on thinking.’
‘Is it likely, though?’ Mike said. ‘What are the odds? From what John said, it doesn’t sound like anyone else thinks that. Anyway,’ he added, as he slid the last of the plates into the drainer, ‘I’m off to jump under the shower.’ He grimaced. ‘Sooner we go, sooner we’re home.’
The journey itself was pleasant enough. Sophia’s mother was in a specialist hospice in Derbyshire, about ninety miles south of us. It was attached to a big hospital, and catered for the terminally ill, but also people in vegetative states and long-term comas. The time flew by, in fact, Mike and I listening to Radio 2, which was our favourite, and doing what we often liked to do on long car journeys – playing our own version of ‘Name That Tune’, trying to be quickest to guess what each new track was. Sophia had plugged herself into her iPod as soon as we’d set off, and stayed that way, half-dozing, for the duration. We did stop for a quick comfort break half-way (mostly so I could have a sneaky cigarette) but were still there in good time for our 10 a.m. appointment.
From the outside, it was a welcoming, cottagey sort of place, tucked snugly beneath the clinical bulk of the hospital behind. It had extensive gardens, too, which, in the summer, I could tell would be full of flowers, and another with a duck pond and picnic tables. Even so, as I’d already anticipated, it was still somewhere you could tell most people wouldn’t want to spend time. They did such wonderful work but you could never escape the reality that this was somewhere people went to die.
It wasn’t a nice place for a 12-year-old to have to keep coming back to, I thought, as we introduced ourselves at the reception desk and waited while the receptionist wrote on our visitors’ passes. Inside it was as clinical as any hospital.
‘Good morning,’ the woman said to Sophia, somewhat belatedly, I thought. ‘Are you well?’ I got the impression she didn’t much like her.
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Sophia said politely. ‘Is mother ready for us?’
I winced slightly. That ‘mother’ sounded all wrong. Like an affectation. My bet was that they too probably had her tagged as a little madam, just like pretty much everyone else we’d spoken to. Yet the fact that she seemed to rub everyone up the wrong way made me even more determined to see beneath the surface.
‘Yes, she is,’ the receptionist answered. ‘All bathed and smelling sweetly. You could give her hair a bit of a brush though, if you’d like.’
‘Thanks,’ said Sophia, still sounding clipped and formal. ‘Come on, Casey, come on, Mike. Follow me.’
I glanced back at the receptionist as Sophia grabbed my arm and pulled me along. She was shaking her head. In sorrow? I couldn’t tell.
Sophia’s mother was in a private room, the last in a row of them, and like the rest of the interior it was painted off-white and was functional. Though two abstract paintings decorated one wall, and there was a good view of the gardens, there was little in there bar the bed – one of those pneumatic affairs that was air assisted and was designed to prevent bed sores – a chair, a bedside cabinet, with a CD player on it, and under the window a small table and two further plastic chairs. Unlike the other rooms we’d passed, there was no evidence of loving visitors. No cards, no flowers, no cuddly toys. The only homely feature was the floral-patterned duvet cover.
But I took these details in only vaguely at first, as all my attention was fixed on Sophia’s mother. She lay on the bed, attached to some kind of machine, which I presumed must be the ventilator. She looked quite beautiful, lying there, with long flowing hair and flawless skin. In fact, she looked very much like Sophia, and only slightly older. No wonder people would comment that they looked like sisters – they did. And despite her apparent serenity, I could now visualise the two of them together, and the spectre of the rows about those boyfriends … I wondered how old she had been when she’d had Sophia. Young, very young, was my guess. And how long had she been lying here, suspended in time? It sent a shiver down my spine, and also moved me. Such a tragedy. And this poor damaged child was now her legacy. In truth, I couldn’t take my eyes off her at first. She looked so perfect, it was difficult to grasp the gravity of her condition. The only clue that she was actually ill, besides the machine, was that her limbs were strangely twisted. You could see that her legs were at odd angles under the sheet. Her arms, however, rested on top. And the palms of her hands were facing upwards and bent up, as if she was waiting to catch something in them.
Sophia must have caught me staring. ‘She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? And don’t be scared by her hands. They went like that ages ago. It’s supposed to be quite a common thing.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said, making a beeline for the chairs under the window. I felt uncomfortable suddenly, as if we were really intruding. This was obviously a very personal thing between them, and I felt we needed to make ourselves scarce. I grabbed Mike’s hand and yanked him in the direction of the chairs. He’d said nothing yet. He was obviously as shocked as me.
‘You just get on with whatever it is you usually do, love,’ I said to Sophia as we sat down. ‘I’ve got magazines for me and Mike. Just ignore us. Forget we’re here.’
I bustled about in my bag and pulled out my gossip mags, handing one to Mike. ‘Dear Deirdre and all those pop stars? Great,’ he said.
I slapped his leg and gave him a ‘don’t start’ look, before opening my magazine up and pretending to read. But I couldn’t seem to concentrate. It was all just too weird. Sophia had by now put a CD on the CD player, at least giving us some welcome background noise, for which I was grateful. She was humming along to this as she leaned across the bed and brushed her mum’s hair. Perhaps this was how they went, I thought, these visits. She stood and brushed her mum’s hair, she hummed to the music. But I was soon to be proved very wrong.
It was the sound that caught my attention. I’d been reading, then I suddenly heard a slapping soun
d. I looked up and was shocked to see I hadn’t misheard the first time. She’d just slapped her mum around the face. It was already reddening. Then she did it again. ‘Wake up, you nasty bitch!’ she hissed. ‘Don’t you think I’ve paid for long enough?’
‘Sophia!’ I said, startled. ‘What on earth are you doing? Stop that now!’
She didn’t seem to hear me. She just walked round to the other side of the bed and said, in a completely different voice now, one that sounded genuinely gentle, ‘Oh, poor Mummy. You look so sad. Please wake up for me, Mummy. I love you.’
Mike looked at me, clearly uncomfortable. But I patted his knee. She’d gone quiet again. Maybe best not to inflame things.
‘Let’s just leave it for a moment,’ I whispered. ‘She looks okay now.’
Well, if not okay, at least more like you’d expect her to be. She’d started to cry now, in fact, very softly, but still audibly, and was stroking her mum’s arms. ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘All twisted and broken. Oh, why did you let it come to this, Mummy?’
I was braced for another outburst and watching her intently, when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I turned to see the faces of an elderly couple, who were in the corridor and staring in through the glass panel in the door. I nudged Mike again, and seeing that, Sophia followed our gazes. She stared for a moment, then looked away. The couple didn’t, though. They stayed, peering in for at least a minute longer.
‘Who were those people, Sophia?’ Mike asked once they’d gone. ‘Do you know them?’
‘No,’ she said, shrugging. ‘No idea.’ She was massaging her mother’s arms now, but seemed back in the room with us – no longer in that strange, trance-like state. So we got back to our reading, with just half an eye trained on what was happening, which, thankfully, seemed much more the sort of thing you’d expect. She wiped her mother’s face with a damp sponge, then her arms and her hands, then pulled out nail polish, a nail file and clippers from her bag, and began giving her mother an impromptu manicure. She was just finishing this when a nurse put her head around the door.