by PN Moore
Dennis Lee
Emma had been in London to meet Bezz and Pippa, a young Latino couple who were representing her Texan art agent De-Hem for a night out. In part it was a stop over for the young couple and partly to meet Emma at De-Hems request. They had met Emma in Cork Street and toured the galleries. Emma hired a cab and asked the driver to show them the main sites. The driver took them to Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, the Kings Road, and Leadenhall market where the driver told them part of Harry Potter was filmed. They ended up at the Hampstead theatre where a college friend of Emma had a small part in the production.
Bezz told me later that De-Helm was looking forward to meeting Emma and the plans for her internship post in his company later that year. There was a happy excited atmosphere in the air that night as a photo Emma had taken was being used in advertisement campaign for a massive Jeans company in the states. The campaign was focused all along the West-Coast and would later be featured in New York in the Autumn. It was not until much later did I find out that the black and white billboard image at the LAX airport and riding the buses in New York was of Warren, our sometimes print helper.
There he was, looking off to the distance with a book on his head. It must have been a fun joke at the time, just messing around outside the studio/garage. There was not any text added by Emma so I believed it to be just a straight photo taken from the camera. One word had been printed onto the image by De-Hems studio: ‘WHATEVER’. I was told later that it was a ‘nerd’ look, and that it had performed well for the jeans company, and for De-Hems. He said it had a young fresh feel about, innocent yet knowing, ‘Like Emma’ he told me later.
After the play Bezz and Pippa said goodbye to Emma from the Taxi, agreeing to meet up in Texas in a few months time, with Pippa promising Emma a girls shopping day. We believe that Emma had got sick of waiting for a cab, so cut through the quiet Avenue to the main road to hail one down. She must have heard the car and turned to see it coming towards her, and she must have tried to back away, hands out stretched as if to protect her as the vehicle crashed into her. A man called Dennis Lee who lived not far away walked round the corner on his way home and ran to the car, he didn’t know at that time Emma was stuck behind it. He saw Lesley inside the car slumped over the steering wheel bleeding from a head wound from the crash. The passenger seat was empty but the door was open, the emergency services were called.
Emma was still conscious until the Paramedic arrived. In court Mr Lee said that Emma spoke to him briefly. He said that he came round the corner shortly after the crash and ran over to the car to help. Emma was wedged between the car and a wall, lying across the bonnet with her hands tucked somewhere underneath.
I could hear the young lady saying something. I lent over as close as I could get. She was bleeding from her nose, mouth and ears, which scared me. She was slumped like a rag doll with her eyes closed. I said to her that the ambulance was coming and that she would be all right. She was trying to talk, which I saw more than heard, because as she tried to speak, blood sprayed out of her mouth across the bonnet. I bent down beside her and could hear her whisper something but her voice was so low, so I put my ear next to her mouth. She said something like ‘move her, move her’. I didn’t know if she meant for me to move the woman in the car for some reason, or me move the car from her, but I couldn’t move her as she was so wedged in. I took off my jacket and put it over her as she was shivering.
‘I tried to move the car again, but she was somehow attached to the front of it, I didn’t realise it was her hands. All I could do was stay with her until the Police and ambulance arrived, then the fire brigade came, who cut her free. She must have passed-out because she went very quiet and no more spray came out of her mouth’
The car’s radiator grill was cut out with Emma’s hands still attached and was taken to Guys hospital not the local due to the head injury. After the accident, Dennis Lee was kind enough to visit Emma, sometimes, bringing her flowers.
For us at home we knew nothing of this, as it was a usual Friday evening. I had a light supper with Kenneth before he drove over to the gulf-club. I would bath and settle down to watch the gardening programmes on the BBC. I went to bed early nodding off every so often, only waking up when another car pulled up next door with the stereo blaring. There would be shouts of welcome from the other people in the house and the music escaped from their front door as the people went in. As Emma had laid in that morning, I had not seen her before she left for the city mid afternoon. She had bought Bezz and Pippa little kitsch London souvenirs: Beef-Eaters standing in front of a flat plastic Tower of London, encased in a globe of to be shaken snow. Pippa told me Emma had also bought them a red toy double-Decker bus and a black cab for each of them as a welcome to the city. Other than that I don’t know where she went that afternoon but she had left a note:
‘Mum and Dad, not sure what time I will be in tonight, but please don’t wait up. If Warren comes round about the book tell him it is in the second draw down. Love Emma x’
She had been looking forward to going out, yet the night before she had that child-like hesitant apprehensive look across her face. She still could not comprehend the attention accorded to her from De-Hems, Bezz and Pippa. Sometimes she would say she felt it wasn’t right getting money for taking photos of things she liked. It never went to her head when her photographs and images were featured in American art magazines that De-Hems people would send to her. I kept the magazines though, even Kenneth showed people at the ‘club’. He knew that the people at the golf club would probably not care for the pictures, neither did he half the time, yet there she was. His Emma, pictured looking unsure next to an article of the ‘Young Brit Star’. Like Emma we could not believe it was our quiet daughter gaining so much ground and becoming something of a cult. It helped that it wasn’t in this country, everything seemed so far away in America. Emma would still come shopping with me and lay the table for tea, things did move up a notch when we had French and Japanese journalists ring us up, in which Emma would ask them very kindly to ‘call her agent.’
De-Hems spoke to Emma every couple of weeks with Bezz calling every few days. They would be on the phone for ages, with Emma just saying things like
‘Yes, that sounds very nice’.
Somewhere along the line it was agreed that Emma would work for De-Hems company as an intern for a year. De-Hems had agreed that Emma should fly to New York and travel across the country coast to coast, following the route Andy Warhol took back in 1963 ending up at the media company in Texas.
Emma asked me to go with her, which I laughed at. I told her that I couldn’t drive that far, and on the wrong side of the road-it was ridiculous, Kenneth thought so too. Yet over the weeks with Emma asking me again and again, until I realised that I should be flattered that she had asked me to go with her. She could have called Bezz and Pippa and do the trip with them, that didn’t worry me, Emma was sensible. The plan was to ‘do’ New York the Andy Warhol way (galleries-shopping etc), then pick up a car and drive across country taking about three weeks. We would stop off each night in a prearranged hotel and end up in the last known stop for Warhol at the end of the trip, The Surfrider In Santa Monica CA. We would stay there a few days and fly to Houston. Emma was to stay for a year’s contract, flying home at De-Hems expense every few months.
I told Emma the car chosen for us was too big. Dale, De-Hems PA had arranged all the flights, car, and all the hotels along the route that Emma’s painstaking research had pieced together. The hotels looked wonderful if a little ostentatious. Emma just laughed.
‘We are not going to Eastbourne mum, lets have some fun!’
Of course she was right, but the car was like a large black monster; a cross between a Range-Rover and truck, Jet-black; fitted out with black tinted windows, I couldn’t drive that. What worried me were places like The New Jersey Turn-Pike, how the hell was I going to drive that truck around there not really knowing where I was going? We compromised to a
four-wheel drive Honda with GPS, that still looked too big but Dale had said there ‘wasn’t anything smaller.’
We didn’t hear the doorbell so the policewoman had to bang the doorknocker hard. At first I thought it was the boys from next-door having a joke.
‘Mrs Kirby?’ She stood there in her hat and smart uniform, no more that twenty-five yet she had a maturity about her, a marked contrast to the idiots next door, who must have been around the same age. A policeman sat in the patrol car across the street. I saw him speak into his radio on his shoulder as he got out of the car and walk towards the noise next door.
‘Yes’ I said pulling my dressing gown tighter across my chest, craning my neck to see what was happening next door. ‘It’s about time, listen to that racket’ I said huffily.
‘Can I come in for a moment please madam?’ We went into the kitchen where the music from across the fence could be heard.
‘Will you sit down please Mrs Kirby’, said the WPC ‘I am afraid I have some bad news’.
I went to sit on the dinning chair, then with a cold feeling creeping up my neck muttered; ‘what’s wrong?’
‘Please sit down’ said the WPC, a little firmer, fear gathering on her face.
‘It’s your daughter Emma, she has had an accident…’
‘Oh God’ oh God, is she alright, where is she? Tell me.’
She came and put her firm but gentle arm around my shoulders, guiding me to the chair.
‘Your daughter is in hospital, she was hit by a car in London.’
I realised why she had insisted in my sitting down as I could feel my legs collapsing beneath me. There was a numbness holding my body and mind together-just. The shock blanked my mind, leaving a single thought of how to get to her.
‘I must tell my husband’ I said, getting up and fluttering around, wringing my hands.
‘Yes you must’ replied the young woman growing more concerned at the demented woman hovering here and there around the kitchen.
Somehow I made it up the stairs and shook Kenneth
‘It’s Emma, get up its Emma, she’s hurt, in hospital somewhere, get dressed’.
I started to dress still in a strange fog, pulling anything out of the wardrobe.
‘Get up, your daughter has been hit by a car-in London’.
A little reluctantly, Kenneth got up and looked at the clock saying ‘God I knew this would end in trouble’.
I ran down the stairs to the waiting WPC saying that my husband would follow. The policeman had returned from the now quiet house next door. All the lights were still on in our house as we drove away, no doubt Kenneth would get up to turn them off. The policewoman sat in the back with me in silence, I, conjuring up images of Emma in the hospital that were contained in a frame of chaos and fear.
I had pretty much got the images right; drips, blinking machines and hospital staff milling around her looking worried. I struggled to get close to her, but there seemed so many people setting up monitor machines and pipes that it was difficult to see her lying in the middle of the horde. A young doctor eased me into a private room. He told me Emma had been stabilised, and that she was very lucky. He said that she would need to have a ‘CAT-scan’ as she had presented with a head injury, but all her major organs seemed in good condition, but it was ‘one step at a time.’
Sitting with my head in my hands in this nightmare, I was overwhelmed by a fear of losing her, totally selfish, what would I do without her? She had given me life, and that life meaning. The doctor sat down with me and put his hand on mine. ‘Mrs Kirby, there is something else I must tell you, I am very sorry but it was your daughter’s hands that took the brunt of the crash’.
Are they broken?’ I mumbled.
I am very sorry but we have had to remove her hands, we had no choice, they were so very badly damaged.’
I started shouting, ‘you had no right, you have mutilated her’. I stood up and ran to the door fixated on seeing Emma. Some nurses and the young doctor stopped me, holding me tight as I struggled, throwing screaming punches until I collapsed on the floor. A nurse sat down with me, holding me while I sobbed. Just the thought of my girl without her hands; my beautiful girl butchered, it was more than I could bear, it was unspeakable. The worst of it was, she didn’t even know about it. I was taken back to the private room sitting staring at the wall in shock. Much later I read the medical report, that said during the accident Emma’s hands had been pushed back at such a force that they has snapped at the wrist with the Ulna and Radius bones (the fore-arm) having been wedged into the front grill of the car.
Anger, self-hate, grief, fight and flight raged through me that night, but I wanted to be there, there for Emma. It was over two hours before Kenneth arrived with my sister in tow to shield him.
Why? That’s the question that hit me, why someone like Emma, what harm had she done? If there is a God why the hell would he do this to someone like my daughter. There was enough bad in the world, so why my daughter, what the hell had she done to anyone?, if this was meant to have some meaning it was lost on me. Some people say ‘Some things are just meant to happen, all things a have a purpose, there is a reason for everything’
Who made that up? How can there possibly by any justifiable significance to this contemptible disfigurement? The next question was, who did it?
I was given a side room to recover, I had been given something to calm me down which knocked me out cold. I was woken by Kenneth with a cup of machine tea, tough I was fully aware of the accident, my hands were feeling strange.
‘She’s going to be alright’ Kenneth told me. I sat up too quickly, then flopped back down feeling sick and giddy.
‘I have called work and they said I can have the day off’.
‘Shut up about work, who did this? Who did this to Emma?’ My sister tried to comfort me.
‘I am so sorry Helen, but Emma is doing fine’
‘Don’t fine me’ I snapped pulling away from her, ‘who did it?’
Jane kept her hand on my arm, and looked at Kenneth
‘It was a young nurse, American girl we think’
Kenneth butted in ‘She is going to be alright Helen’.
How did Kenneth know she was going to be alright? Emma had sustained a head injury, had her hands removed, so what the hell did he mean ‘going to be alright’. I sat up, outside was London grey and cloudy. Kenneth went to see Emma, Jane stayed with me, she knew better than to whitter on about Emma being fine, so we sat in silence. The young head nurse came in to see me, everyone seemed so young to be handling such important roles. I was told politely a counsellor was ready to see me, which I un-politely told them what they could do with her, but she introduced herself anyway as Wendy Smith.
She was practical rather than comforting, and explained the procedure and plans for Emma over the next week or so. She described in detail how Emma would be kept in elected coma for a period of time until she stabilised. The CAT-scan had been done and the results were good with only the slightest pressure showing in the brain. A small pressure such as that would be normal after such an accident, yet it would not affect Emma’s recovery or cause any retardation. Wendy very gently asked me if I would like to see Emma. I longed to see her but had become frightened.
‘She may well be able to hear and understand you, even in coma’ said Wendy, supporting me on one side, Jane on the other.
‘She may be waiting for you Helen, I think it will help you both’.
I felt like I was walking to the gas chamber, that walk down the long corridor to the waiting swing doors with small round covered windows, hiding the horror within.
Emma’s bed was now at the far end of the room by the window. It was good to see that the sun had come out and that most of the staff and machines had gone. I felt I was going break, so I held my fist to my mouth to gain control. She lay peaceful and pale, hair combed over neat and tidy. Her eyes where taped down as were the pipe in her mouth and nose. The arms were covered by the bedclothes
, but I knew I had to see them, needed to see for myself to witness them and not block it out anymore. She looked so beautiful and so very young and childlike. How on earth would I be able to tell her about her hands?
‘I want to see…’ I mumbled to Wendy, but she put her finger up to her lips and pointed to Emma. I moved Wendy back a little to the door where Jane was waiting.
‘I must see her hands, her arms…I have to’ I whispered to Wendy.
‘Yes, but it doesn’t have to be now, but please remember Emma may be aware of this happening.’
She held my hand and I took her over to the bed. Still holding my hand she lifted the sheet revealing Emma’s thin pale left arm. I gasped at the sight, the long gawky arms now foreshortened by at least 10 inches the stump, just reaching Emma’s waist, instead of her thigh. I turned away, sobbing hard into Wendy’s shoulder. She held me tight, as I cried quietly until I was done. Releasing myself I turned back to Emma, covering her arm. I put my hand on her forehead and touched her soft face with the back of my hand.
‘Where did you come from? How did we get such a beautiful girl, someone so kind and sensitive, where did you come from my beautiful girl?’
It was true, we never knew how we could create such beauty, we should have had a rather plain dull spiteful child, of whom we would have been glad to see the back of, and her us when she went on to university and self-hate. I believe we must have been frightened of Emma’s loveliness and believed we had to control it somehow. We disliked her a little, as we disliked all pretty and confident people, perhaps they made us look grey and drab in comparison. But she didn’t hate us, she could be very affectionate and loving, something else we were uncomfortable with. We were not used to such open displays of affection and did not encourage it. Therefore around the age of six or seven she stopped reaching out for us, stopped trying to sit on Kenneth’s lap, as he told her she was ‘too old for all that’. Gave up reaching up for a goodnight hug and kiss from me in bed because I told her ‘not to be so silly’.
I was proscribed tablets to calm me down, which I willing took knowing I would be like a zombie. I knew inside that I needed them and would remain like this until I could cope. My mother came to visit, sitting by me not knowing what to say, then saying things like; ‘she was very lucky’.
I stayed in one of the hospitals’ small parents rooms at the very end of the corridor that had a small window that overlooked the Thames and the City. I would make this room my own over the coming months that I would fill with my own clothes, books and a small radio. Most of the time I would just go and sit by Emma and talk as Wendy had told me, as this was good for us both. We did not have to play any of Emma’s favourite records as we were not trying to wake her up, just to let her rest and recover in peace, without the stress of the amputation or the shock of the accident. In the morning I would go and see Emma, then shower and have breakfast in a café. I could go to my window and watch people going to work in the morning bustle of the city. I would talk with doctors and Wendy and sit with Emma. Again in the evening I would be ready at the window watching the workers walk back over London Bridge to the station, home to their normal safe life. The police came to visit me, explaining that the young nurse had been arrested and was on bail. She had tested positive and would be sent for trial.
I began increasingly to spend more and more weekends at home, as Emma was stabilising well and the room was needed for other parents to stay. I walked myself to London Bridge station but I was not going home to a normal home. Things were very different now. I found it hard with Kenneth, had lost interest in work, the house and garden. I would sit staring into space. Kenneth would tell me to ‘pull myself together’ but I couldn’t.
One Monday morning I was invited to a hospital team meeting about Emma. It was time to think about waking her up and her future. The three months had gone very fast, partly because I was on happy pills, also the care of Emma had been so intense. Wendy, and a friendly social worker began to look for somewhere for Emma’s rehabilitation and a place was found in Sussex, it was time for Emma to wake up. That moment when Emma opened her eyes both appalled and simulated me. It was the first time she had looked at me in three months, so much had changed for us all in that time. I wanted nothing else than to care for her now, help her in any way to recover as best she could under the circumstances. Those rolling glassy eyes, now unable to focus looked more blue and beautiful than ever. Plans were being drawn up as Emma was beginning to stabilise. Even though she slept most of the day being heavily medicated, she made signs of recognition which gave me hope. We thought she understood what we were saying to her, that she knew she had been in an accident and that she was recovering in hospital in London and would soon be moving to the countryside. She had been having physiotherapy even while she was in coma ready for when she would begin her recovery properly.
The horror of this story did not take place until we had to tell Emma about her hands. Because of the extreme pains across her chest, shoulders and arms, movement have been very limited. She was dozy, and being fed with a tube, but she was becoming aware. Her limbs hand been bandaged heavily, with phantom pains sending messages to her brain that the hands were still there and a morbid curiosity was taking place, I would have to tell her, preparations were made. At this time she was without speech but could understand everything. One morning shortly after feeding her breakfast and having a last check at the morning meeting with the care team, I went and sat with Emma. I sat close to her and stroked the straight dark hair off her forehead, looking at the beautiful face in the morning light.
‘Emma my love, I have to tell you something’
I knew then she knew already as her face frowned and turned away from me, tensing her body taunt.
‘Do you know what I am going to say?’
She struggled, trying to turn away from me.
‘Please Emma, it had to happen, you can carry on with your work, everything is going to be the same, we will go to America, do the things you want to do…’
She was struggling violently, desperately trying to turn over, away from my words. Neither of us wanted to have her worst fears confirmed. The noise she made was like a dying wild animal, an inhuman primal wail. Rocking uncontrollably she nearly fell off the bed; I had to pull her back as she continued shaking herself off with wild fits. Her neck stretched and contorted, eyes staring and streaming with tears, legs flaying making her urine line fall out. With one last mad surge she lay exhausted, her head hanging over the side of bed. The withered pale arms hanging down towards the floor, now just two heavily bandaged stumps. She sobbed great convolutions, body heaving as I pulled her up onto the bed, then I lay down with her, holding her as tight as I could in my arms. My beautiful girl, long and thin, full of promise, both crying so heavily and with every tear, I became more revengeful and angry.