Angel of Death (3 page)

Chris and Joanne went to the cubicle where Liam was being treated. Something had happened in the short time they had been away and Liam was suddenly fighting for his life. He had changed beyond recognition. His eyes were closed, his face grey and it looked as though his whole body had just ‘shut down'. He was covered in wires to his chest, attached to heart monitors and a drip into his arm.

Joanne burst into tears and had to be comforted by a nurse. Nurse Allitt was standing in the doorway to Liam's room with her arms folded in front of her.

Joanne asked her what had happened while they were away and the nurse told her: ‘While I was feeding him he was violently sick. It was so bad I had to go and change my uniform.'

The couple listened with growing unease as Allitt told them that their baby had actually stopped breathing for a minute because he was being so sick. They took an instant liking to the young nurse who was being so open with them. In the difficult hours that lay ahead they felt she would be an ally and friend.

The hospital had two paediatric specialists: Dr Nelson Porter and Dr Charith Nanayakkara, a Tamil known to most at the hospital as ‘Doctor Nana'. They were both experienced doctors, used to handling emergencies, trusted by parents. Neither of them could have foreseen the appalling events that were now beginning to unfold on their ward.

It was Dr Nanayakkara who arrived that afternoon to tell Chris and Joanne that the next twenty-four hours would be crucial for baby Liam. Nurse Allitt continued to care for her tiny patient on a one-to-one basis until 10pm when she went off duty.

The Taylors were no strangers to the hospital. Chris's father had worked there as head porter for sixteen years and Joanne's mother was a ward orderly. Through the night, with another nurse now monitoring his progress, Liam was getting better. His vital signs were looking more healthy and Chris and Joanne were able to snatch some sleep in a room down the corridor reserved for parents.

The next morning Nurse Allitt came back on duty at 7am and took her place again at the bedside. Liam was on drips and there were tubes feeding him. By now, Chris and Joanne had come to rely on the girl who had become ‘Liam's nurse'. They didn't like the thought of Liam being without her and, when one nurse went sick, Chris asked Allitt to return and work an extra night shift to care for Liam. Chris asked her: ‘Would you please come back and look after him?'

Nurse Allitt went off duty at around midday, promising to return for the extra night shift. While she was away, Liam got progressively better. At 3pm he actually smiled; then, at one point, he stretched out as if he was trying to reach for his teddy.

He was so much better that he was moved into Mr Happy's Room – a cubicle with the smiling
figure of the ‘Mistermen' character painted on the window. Joanne said later: ‘I felt pleased that he had been moved. I remember thinking: “Oo! Look. They're putting him in Mr Happy's Room.” It seemed a good sign.'

The staff kept praising Liam. He took some feed out of a bottle, opened his eyes wide until they looked as big as saucers, kicked his legs to try to shake the monitor wires free, and cooed at the nurses and his parents. It was as if Liam wanted to tell the world that the worst was over.

Relieved at his improvement Joanne decided to go home and tell the neighbours and their friends waiting for news that Liam was getting better. As she drove home from the hospital Joanne suddenly found herself crying tears of joy.

Nurse Allitt returned to the ward at 10pm ready to stay at Liam's side throughout the night. By this time Joanne had returned to the hospital. Content in the knowledge that he was in safe hands and pleased at Liam's recovery, she went down the corridor at 10.30pm to try to catch up on some sleep in the parents' room.

Husband Chris remained at Liam's side and chatted with the nurse, asking if she had managed to sleep. But she said she had gone shopping instead. Eventually, at around 1am he, too, went to bed, confident that Liam was going to be all right.

That night the world was plunged into war in the Gulf – Saddam Hussein snubbed the ‘High Noon' deadline and the battles began. But the peace of Chris's and Joanne's sleep was shattered
at 5.30am when they were woken by Sister Jean Saville, the hospital's night services manager and the most senior nurse on duty. She told them that the news was bad. Liam had suffered a relapse.

She said: ‘I am sorry, your baby has just stopped breathing for a few minutes and the doctor is with him.'

Chris and Joanne rushed down the corridor to Mr Happy's Room. The room was packed with people, all crowded round Liam's incubator. Dr Nanayakkara was already there, along with Nurse Allitt and the hospital emergency team. Liam, they were told, had suffered respiratory failure but was now breathing again. He was alive, but only just. He was lying on a resuscitaire, being given oxygen, with drips attached to his body feeding him drugs.

Quietly, the specialist told them the dreadful news that he believed Liam had suffered severe brain damage, caused by a lack of oxygen when he had stopped breathing. Now he was critically ill. Chris and Joanne were devastated by the sudden and unexpected catastrophe. When they had gone to bed Liam was getting better, and now here was the doctor saying his life was in the balance. Even if Liam lived the damage to his brain meant he would never be the same again.

Chris and Joanne were asked if they wanted the chaplain, the Rev. Ian Shelton, to christen Liam. When they agreed he arrived minutes later from his home opposite the hospital. Only Joanne, Chris and the chaplain were in Mr Happy's Room as he
conducted the short christening service in which the baby was named Liam James Taylor.

The couple went to see Dr Nanayakkara in his office. Chris asked: ‘How severe is the brain damage?' The doctor told them that, in his professional opinion, it was severe. He said that Liam had stopped breathing for a considerable period of time.

‘Normally, in children who have respiratory failure, their condition can be stablised in a matter of minutes but, in Liam's case, it took 1 hour 15 minutes.'

The parents' world was suddenly in pieces.

Chris later said: ‘I turned to the doctor and asked: “Are you telling me we have to decide what we are going to do?” He nodded “Yes.”'

Now they had to face an awful dilemma. Was it best for Liam to die, rather than endure a lifetime of suffering? They discussed their options, deciding that all that mattered was doing their best for Liam. ‘We went off to the canteen on our own and we decided then that he had been through enough.'

Joanne remembers turning to Chris and saying: ‘This is meant to be. Our little boy has tried to leave us once, and the doctors have pulled him through, but now God is taking him back … I felt then we should let nature take its course. I remember thinking, why does God want him back? Why can't he take our house, anything, but not our baby?'

Quietly, they agreed that he should be taken off the equipment. They turned to chaplain Ian
Shelton and asked him if he thought they were making the right decision. ‘He told us, in the circumstances, he thought we were right, but he couldn't put himself in our position,' said Chris. They told the staff of their decision. Liam's drips and monitors were removed. It was 6.30am.

Chris picked Liam up in his arms and the couple sat together, waiting for the end to come. They were told it would not be long.

But Liam didn't die. Instead, little ‘Pudding Pants' was so strong he fought on, clinging to life. They sat cradling Liam in their arms for more than five hours. As they watched and waited they were told that, even without support, Liam was now holding his own.

Then, at about midday, Dr Nanayakkara called them to his office and told them that he hadn't expected Liam to survive so long. He asked them what would happen if he woke up and needed feeding. Chris told him: ‘I'll feed him if he has the will to survive. We will help him all we can if he wants to fight.' He later said: ‘I couldn't stand to see him suffering for the rest of his life but, if Liam was going to pull through, then we were going to give him every support.'

Consumed by anguish, Chris and Joanne decided to carry on and let nature decide the issue. They asked everyone to leave the room so they could be alone with their baby. About twenty-five friends and relatives had gathered at the hospital, knowing that Liam's life was hanging by a thread, and the pressure on the couple was mounting.

They sat together with their baby son. The monitor, which would have detected the slightest shift in Liam's condition, was no longer there. The nebuliser, which would have fed him oxygen to help his breathing, had been removed. So had the drip which had helped stabilise his condition.

The physiotherapist, who had worked so hard to try to clear the congestion from Liam's chest, wasn't at his bedside any more. Chris and Joanne felt the medical world could do no more for the baby they loved so much. Liam was linked only to a simple alarm which ticked and flashed green each time he took another breath. If he stopped breathing his parents knew the green light would turn red.

Chris and Joanne took it in turns to cradle Liam in their arms, treasuring the precious moment, knowing now that time was running out. Their baby was exactly eight weeks old to the day and they knew, beyond all doubt, that he was going to die.

As the end approached chaplain Ian Shelton arrived in the room to say a prayer for Liam which began ‘Little Child Come Unto Me …'. Somehow the words were a comfort.

A nurse, who had been so excited the day before at seeing Liam kicking his legs, cooing and smiling from his cot, went off duty telling Joanne: ‘I'll see you tomorrow.' But Joanne already knew she would not be there the following day.

‘I remember thinking we wouldn't be there when she returned to the ward. I knew Liam
wouldn't wake up. It was instinct. His little legs were shaking all the time. His arms were moving up and down. When Chris passed him to me, he was like a rag doll. I was frightened of dropping him. He looked so beautiful, not poorly at all. His nose wasn't blocked any more and his skin was perfect.'

At 2pm the flashing green light began to slow and the ticking began to fade. Chris turned to Joanne and said: ‘I think he's going. We told Liam we loved him.'

They had been waiting seven and a half hours, holding their baby in turns. Suddenly Liam took three final deep breaths and the red light flashed on. Only after he had died, when they were absolutely sure he had gone, did they call in the hospital staff who confirmed that Liam was dead. A nurse gently placed baby Liam in a Moses basket, put his hands together and wrapped his little fingers around a tiny posy of small white flowers.

Bewildered by all that had happened Chris and Joanne drove home to the house where Liam's bottle still lay waiting for his next feed.

With Liam gone his parents wanted the answer to only one question. What had caused their little boy to stop breathing so suddenly and without warning, recover briefly and then die in the space of a few short hours? In her torment Joanne was prepared to consider the most bizarre theories. ‘I even wondered if it was something to do with me warming Liam's milk in the microwave oven. I'd
been scratched by a rabbit during the pregnancy, and I even thought about that and wondered.'

The hospital asked the heartbroken parents for their permission to perform a post mortem to establish the cause of Liam's death and, anxious to help find a reason, Chris agreed. The death certificate, issued by Dr Nanayakkara, had specified pneumonia and suspected septicaemia, but the post mortem, which was carried out under the supervision of the coroner, came to a different conclusion. The pathologist, Dr Terry Marshall, decided Liam had suffered an ‘infarction' of the heart; effectively, the muscles of the heart had died.

The coroner's officer, Maurice Stonebridge-Foster, relayed the verdict to Chris and Joanne. He had done his duty and there was now no reason why Liam's funeral couldn't take place. Still desperate for an explanation Chris made an appointment to meet Dr Marshall.

Over a cup of tea in the hospital canteen the pathologist told Chris he did not know what had caused Liam's heart to die. ‘He told me it was the sort of thing you would expect to happen to a middle-aged or old person who'd been a drinker and smoker all his life. He simply couldn't explain it happening to an eight-week-old baby boy.'

Chris spent an hour talking to the pathologist but went home with all his questions still unanswered. A night or two later he watched a TV documentary about heart attacks. Afterwards, Chris phoned the programme makers to ask: ‘Have you
ever heard of a little baby being killed by a heart attack?' They, too, were at a loss to explain why Liam had died. After all, they said, it was virtually unknown for the muscles of a baby's heart to die. It was terribly sad, but they couldn't help any more.

Dr Nanayakkara was so disturbed that he wrote to the coroner saying that he was unhappy with the finding of the post mortem. He told Chris that he was sure that it must be something else. He wanted a child pathologist called in to perform a second post mortem. ‘He was frustrated and annoyed because they wouldn't let him study the findings on which the original result had been based.'

Chris and Joanne were resigned to the fact that they might never know what had really happened to their baby on Ward Four.

Liam was cremated on Friday, 1 March at Grantham. It seemed right that Ian Shelton, the chaplain who'd whispered words of comfort when Liam was close to death, should conduct the short service.

Liam's ashes were buried the next day at the parish church in Great Gonerby on the hill above the town. A white, marble headstone, carved with a sleeping teddy bear, marks his tiny grave. The epitaph, carved in the headstone, reads:

Liam James Taylor

Pudding Pants

Died 23rd February, 1991

Aged seven weeks