Crying for Help (19 page)

Sophia was lying face down on the medical bench, her face turned to one side and her cheek pressed against the mattress. There was a teacher sitting beside her, one I didn’t recognise, who was rhythmically stroking her hair back from her brow. Her eyes were closed. She did indeed look as if she might be unconscious, but, equally, she could have just been asleep.

Nearby, Edith, the school nurse, was standing with a clipboard, writing notes. She looked up as I entered. ‘Ah, Casey,’ she said smiling a weak, troubled smile. ‘Sorry to have to ruin your morning like this, but it looks as though we are going to need you to inject Sophia with her medicine. She’s been like this for a good ten minutes now.’

The ten minutes it had taken me to get there, in fact. I looked closely at Sophia. I felt sure I could see her mouth twitch. The trace of a smile, perhaps? I just couldn’t seem to shift the idea that this was all part of an elaborate grand plan. I felt like a puppet having my strings jerked.

‘Oh, dear,’ I said, frowning at Edith. ‘I’d hoped the paramedics would have been here by now. You know I’ve never done anything like this before, don’t you?’

‘You’ll be fine,’ she soothed. ‘There’s nothing to it, really there isn’t.’

Then why couldn’t she do it, then?
I thought crossly, even though I already knew the answer. I fumbled in the emergency bag, my fingers beginning to quiver, and prepared the syringe as I’d been shown to. I then took one last hopeful glance through the still open medical room door, willing the paramedics to come belting down the corridor and save me. But there was nothing.
Nope!
I thought, trying to still the shakes.
You’re on your own.

I took a deep breath, to steady myself. This really wasn’t complicated. All that was required was for me to jab the needle into her leg and to push the plunger till the contents had gone in. Simple, at least in theory. But, in practice, still quite difficult. It was all I could do not to close my eyes as I jabbed the needle into her – just the idea of wilfully sticking a needle into another person felt wrong, even though I well knew how silly I was being.

I winced as I pushed on the plunger to deliver the vital hydrocortisone, and then sighed as I heard the sound of boots in the corridor. Typical, I thought. The paramedics had arrived now. I pulled the needle out of Sophia’s thigh just as they entered the room.

She had, almost immediately, come round. She rolled onto her side now, and then pulled herself upright. Her face, though, was a shock. It was a picture of anger. ‘I bet you fucking loved doing that, didn’t you?’ she snarled at me. ‘Couldn’t wait to stick the needle in, eh? Bitch!’

I felt a rush of heat in my cheeks. ‘Don’t be silly, Sophia,’ I answered. ‘I was just doing what had to be done. You were unconscious.’

I was confused then – hang on, I thought, if she’d been unconscious, how had she even felt that? I also felt embarrassed, because I could sense the shock in the room at the way she’d spoken to me. And what the hell was I doing, defending myself to her? I bent down a little. I was not having this. Not again. ‘Anyway,’ I said solicitously, maternally, patting her. ‘How are you feeling, love? Better?’

One of the paramedics was now getting some background from Edith, making his own notes about what had happened. The second now came over to speak to Sophia, who was sitting there, doggedly ignoring me.

‘Now then, missy,’ he said, getting down on his haunches. ‘What d’you think happened?’

Sophia slowly looked him up and down before answering. ‘Aren’t you a little young to be a paramedic?’ she asked him. ‘And I had an Addisonian crisis – heard of them, have you?’

‘Yes, I have,’ he said, seeming completely unruffled. ‘And I also see we have a little madam on our hands. Sophia, I think we both know that you haven’t had a crisis, because if you had, that would have been the fastest recovery in history –
Guinness World Records
kind of fast. Come on,’ he said, rising again. ‘Let’s check your blood pressure.’

Scowling, she rolled her sleeve up so he could get the cuff around her, and said nothing while he pumped it up and took the reading. He smiled and shook his head then, and glanced across at me. ‘I think you’ve been giving your mum the run around,’ he told her. ‘Your vital signs look perfectly fine to me.’

‘She not my mother,’ she barked at him. ‘She’s just a
carer
. And I’m telling you, I
did
have a crisis, okay? I know my own body, thank you very much!’

‘Sophia!’ I interjected. ‘That’s quite enough, thank
you
very much! This man knows his own job, too!’

The nurse, who’d watched all this, beckoned to me then, and I followed her and the other paramedic outside. He introduced himself as Phil and led me a little way down the corridor.

‘My colleague’s right,’ he said. ‘That sort of recovery doesn’t happen, Mrs Watson. Just so you know for the future, it normally takes some time for the hydrocortisone to take effect. And you’d know it. Right now we’d be rushing her to hospital and putting her on a drip. But as you can see, she’s just fine. Seems like young Sophia’s leading everyone a merry dance here.’

I felt stupid, then, but also quite angry. My first instinct had obviously been right. ‘But what do I do?’ I said. ‘How am I supposed to know the difference? I can’t
not
follow the procedure for a crisis, can I?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s the rub. You can’t, I’m afraid. It’s a tough one. You can always try to shake her and get a reaction. But if she wants to play dead … well, then, you’re right. You have no choice. An unnecessary injection of steroid won’t do anything terrible in the short term – not if it’s only occasional, anyway, whereas, if it
is
a crisis, the consequences of
not
giving it are very dangerous.’

‘I’m just so glad you got here,’ I said, ‘and know what you’re doing!’

‘Stroke of luck,’ he said. ‘Colleague of mine’s the expert – not me. He genned me up on the way over.’

So there was a God, after all. I nodded. ‘I think I’ve met him.’

He nodded sympathetically at me, having obviously spoken to Edith, now, as well. ‘Quite a handful you’ve got on your hands with that one, eh? On all fronts …’

And that, of course, was the problem. Every day that went by it was just hammering itself home to me. I was just so woefully ill-equipped to help Sophia. I listened quietly as the other paramedic lectured her on the dangers of ‘crying wolf’ and also about how wrong it was to use emergency resources when they had other real emergencies to deal with. I knew it was important that they do this, but I was listening half-heartedly, pretty certain that she’d heard all this many times before, and that not a bit of it was even sinking in. It also occurred to me that, from what I’d read, these crises were really rare – how likely was it that she’d have had two in as many months? And if she had, she’d be really very ill. And the vomiting, too. I realised that it had never been confirmed that she had
actually
been sick that previous time in school. We’d only had her word for it, after all.

God, this child was so ravaged, so bent out of shape by her wretched life, that her anger at the world seemed to take precedence over everything, causing her to lash out at anyone and everyone – no matter the cost to her own health. It was almost as if she couldn’t allow herself happiness; every instance of pleasure had to be immediately expunged, beaten off by her self-imposed punishments. It was as if she really did want everyone to hate her.

I took her home in silence. She didn’t speak, not a word. And I was perfectly happy with that state of affairs, as I felt perilously on the edge of tears now. I needed to get her off to bed; crisis or no crisis, a lie-down wouldn’t hurt her, and I needed her and her demons out of my sight for a while, at least till I felt strong enough to face them.

It was this sense that I was in the presence of such anger, I imagine, which left me totally unprepared for what happened next.

I had just stepped out of the hall and into the living room when she seemed to fall, literally, at my feet. Where she’d been standing, she was now lying in a miserable, crumpled heap, grabbing my ankles and sobbing uncontrollably. My first thought was
Shit, now she really has collapsed!
But it was soon apparent that her problem wasn’t physical.

‘Oh, Casey,’ she sobbed up at me. ‘What’s
wrong
with me? Why do I feel like this all the time? I can’t bear it.
Why
?’

Shocked, and also shackled, all I could do was shuffle slightly, so I was perched against the arm of my sofa.

‘I can’t bear it,’ she sobbed again. ‘I hate my life. I
hate
it. I just want to die. I swear to you. Why can’t I just die?’

The events in school suddenly took on a chilling new complexion. But against that sat my now almost knee-jerk reaction.
Crying wolf
, I thought, as I leaned down to soothe her and stroke her hair. Was this more of the same? Was she crying wolf now? She was such a good actress. I’d more than ample evidence of her skill at it. And yet … and yet … this didn’t
feel
like it was acting. ‘It’s okay,’ I said softly. ‘It will all be okay.’

But would it? To be honest, I didn’t think so. We were currently living such a yo-yo existence, us two, neither of us, it seemed, knowing what was coming next. She couldn’t control herself and I couldn’t control her. And how exactly was that state of affairs going to change?

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Sophia knew exactly what she was doing. Perhaps even now she was engineering what would happen. But what difference did that make? If it were true then perhaps that was worse. I was so confused, but one thing I knew above all else was that this child – this desperate young girl – needed me.

I shuffled down then and joined her on the floor of my living room, and, forgetting the events of what had already seemed a very long day, I lay beside her and gathered her into my arms. I then gently rocked her as she cried her little heart out, tears sliding down my own cheeks as I listened to her strings of apologies – for what she’d put me through, and Mike through and Kieron through and Riley through, her wish – and here her clarity of speech and logic chilled me – that she could just die, so that she didn’t have to hurt any more. Saddest of all, though, was her desperate, plaintive crying for her lost mother, about which no one could do anything at all.

It felt like hours – in reality about one hour, perhaps longer – before she stopped crying, and, even then, her chest and shoulders still continued to heave spasmodically. It was longer still before she was able to pull herself up beside me and agree with my suggestion that she could perhaps do with a sleep.

I took her up to her room and she crawled into bed fully clothed.

It was all I could do not to take half a dozen steps across the landing and crawl under the duvet myself.

When Mike and Kieron got home I was still feeling like a zombie, and though I had managed to speak to John (keeping myself calm through sheer willpower; I couldn’t bear the thought of snivelling down the phone at him) I had achieved nothing in the way of dinner. Mike was, of course, still angry at the events of first thing in the morning, and emotionally in a completely different place to me. As was Kieron, once Mike had filled him in. I wearily brought them up to speed with everything that had happened subsequently, reflecting, as I did so, that if you wanted a definition of the phrase ‘rollercoaster of emotions’ you could take our day, wholesale, and just use it.

This was the reality of having such a badly damaged girl in our lives. All the normal emotions you’d apply to a situation – anger, frustration, irritability, exasperation – had to be taken out, shaken out, inspected and put back again; the usual rules just didn’t apply. It was one thing to sit in a psychiatrist’s office and accept intellectually that Sophia wasn’t responsible for her actions, but actually living with it … now that was a whole different kettle of fish. I knew my arm would ache tomorrow, from the wrenching it had suffered, but it was the constant snapping of nerves that was becoming the real issue. I felt drained. Wrung out.

‘Go and have a lie down, love,’ Mike counselled, once I’d finished. ‘You look exhausted. Go on. I can rustle something up for me and Kieron. I’d rather have a rubbish dinner than have my wife in this state. Please, love, just allow yourself to down tools for a change, okay?’

The concerned looks on Mike and Kieron’s faces made me feel even more wretched. Eyes once again threatening tears, I fled the kitchen before they noticed.

I slept all the way through to Saturday morning.

I woke to the smell of breakfast cooking. Bacon. Mushrooms. And, hmm. Those delicious herby sausages? And for a moment I couldn’t work out which day it was. Saturday, that was it. So Mike would have popped in to work by now, wouldn’t he? So was Kieron cooking breakfast? He was many, many good things, my darling son, but no chef. I pushed the covers away, got out of bed and pulled on my dressing gown, feeling guilty for having deserted all my loved ones the night before.

But it wasn’t Kieron standing proprietorially over the frying pan, it was Mike.

‘Oh, love,’ I said wrapping my arms around him. ‘You should have woken me. I’d have done that. Besides, shouldn’t you be at work?’

He shook his head. ‘I called the office. I’ve officially taken the whole weekend off.’

This was a rare treat, and I felt grateful.

‘Where’s Kieron?’ I said. ‘I’d have thought his nose would have already dragged him down here. And Sophia –’ Just saying her name aloud lit a small flame of anxiety. What would be next in this ever-changing drama?

Mike nodded towards the window. ‘Take a look,’ he said.

I followed his gaze, to see the pair of them outside in the garden, both tucking into their breakfasts at the table and chatting away nine to the dozen. I noticed they even had Kieron’s CD player out there. I could hear the tinny sound through the open window.