Cuckoo (20 page)
‘She hasn’t been seen a great deal, has she?’ the woman asked in a bright voice. Like the doctor on the ambulance, she looked impossibly young to be so authoritative. She even had a rash of what looked like adolescent acne on her cheeks.
‘Sorry?’ Rose didn’t understand.
‘By the doctor. You haven’t brought her to the doctor a lot. And there’s no record of any health visitor involvement?’ The woman was scanning something on her screen, frowning and leaning back slightly in her chair.
‘One came, but she didn’t ever come back,’ Rose said. ‘She said we’d do fine and just to get in touch if we needed anything.’
‘I see.’ The woman looked over and smiled again. ‘They do that when they think a second-time mother can manage. Cuts, you know.’ She went back to her screen and typed something. ‘Now, I need to ask a few more questions, Rose, about the household. So we can get a complete picture.’
‘Right,’ Rose said. Why was this girl needing all this information right now, when all that really mattered was whether Flossie was going to be all right or not?
‘Do you have any over-the-counter medicines in your house?’
‘Some. Not many, just Paracetamol, aspirin, that sort of thing. Calpol.’
‘And where do you keep them?’
‘In the medicine box. On a top shelf in the pantry.’
‘Out of children’s reach?’
‘Yes.’ Rose was beginning to feel like running away and hiding. She scanned the room for exit points – the door, the windows, any gaps in the skirting boards.
‘Is anyone in your house on prescription drugs?’
‘Polly.’
‘Who?’
‘Polly – she’s staying with us. Not in the house, though – she’s staying up at the end of the garden.’
‘I see.’
‘In the Annexe.’
‘Right. And is there anyone in your household – and let’s take “the Annexe” into account here – who might take illegal, non-prescription drugs?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really?’
Rose suddenly felt a shot of alarm. ‘Oh my God – you’re the police, aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not police. I’m the hospital social worker. Sorry, I thought I said. Look, these questions are just procedure in these sorts of cases. A child comes in with burns, say – any kind of injury that could just be an accident, but which could also be down to neglect or abuse. Or poisoning, say. It’s routine for everyone, Rose. It doesn’t mean you’re under suspicion, but we have to keep an open mind. Explore each situation without prejudice. I’m sure you understand.’
Rose nodded, and looked down again.
‘So,’ the woman went on gently. ‘Drugs?’
‘It’s nothing to do with us!’ Rose slammed her hand down on the coffee-table, making the spotty woman jump. ‘It’s her. It’s Polly. She let Flossie play with her pills. She didn’t pick them all up afterwards. She let my baby poison herself. She’s so fucking careless!’
‘Rose. You’re upset, that’s understandable. But behaving like this won’t help matters at all.’
‘My baby is ill, I don’t know what’s going on, and you’re talking to me like I’m some sort of criminal,’ Rose said. ‘Like you think I don’t know how to take care of my own child.’
The young woman sat back, folded her arms and looked at Rose, who, feeling her scrutiny, drew back inside herself, wrapping her arms around her body.
‘Someone will be visiting your friend tomorrow,’ the social worker said after a long pause. Then she returned to her computer.
There was a brief knock at the door and Kate came in.
‘There’s some news,’ she said, as she took Rose’s hand and sat down next to her.
‘Oh God,’ Rose began. ‘Oh no, no nonono.’ She tore her hand away and buried her face in her palms, pressing them deep into her eyes so that all she saw were dark spots. Her milk, long overdue for Flossie’s feeding time, leaked through her swollen breasts, crying lactose tears in place of the salt ones Rose was too scared to weep.
‘Rose,’ Kate said, taking her hands again, trying to make her listen. ‘It’s all right. She’s still with us.’
Rose looked at Kate with red-rimmed eyes.
‘She’s out of the woods for the time being. We’ve done everything we can, and she’s stable. But she’s poorly, Rose. We don’t quite know yet what’s going to happen.’
Rose didn’t move.
‘We’ve put her into a deep sleep. Her organs have a better chance of recovery that way. We won’t know till she wakes up what has happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve got to tell you, Rose, that there’s a risk that there will be some sort of permanent damage. It’s less than fifty per cent. But it is still significant.’
‘What do you mean, damage?’
‘It’s too soon to say, but it could be liver, or it could be kidney. Or, Rose, it could be brain damage. But we can’t say for sure, and even if we could, we wouldn’t know to what extent it might be.’
Rose closed her eyes and pressed her palms to her forehead. Please, she prayed. Turn back the clocks. Make this not have happened.
‘Apart from this, Floss is a very healthy little girl. You’ve done all the right things up to now, and she has the best chance in the world, given her current situation. There’s a good chance she’ll come out of it completely unscathed.’
‘So,’ Rose said, her eyes still shut. ‘You’re saying to me that she will survive?’
‘Yes. We’re almost entirely certain of that.’ Kate nodded, squeezing her hand.
‘But you’re not sure whether she’ll end up a vegetable?’
‘That’s most unlikely, Rose.’
‘But it is possible.’
‘Remotely.’
‘Thank you,’ Rose whispered. An angry heat took hold of her, brutally melting the chill that had set in since she found Flossie in her cot. She wanted to kill Polly. She wanted to force her head back, possibly by pulling her hair, and fill her mouth full of every single one of her bloody pills. Then she wanted to put stones in her pockets and kick her down the field and into the river.
‘Come through and see her.’ Kate took Rose’s hand and led her away from the social worker through to a cubicle at the far end of the A&E ward, where Flossie lay in what looked to Rose like a plastic box, with tubes and wires going in and out of her.
Rose walked slowly up to her, horror rising in her throat.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing at a mask that was taped over Flossie’s mouth and nose.
‘That’s to help her breathe. Just to give her lungs a rest,’ Kate said. ‘And these, these and these . . .’ she pointed out wires that disappeared into dressings that covered unseen holes in Flossie’s body ‘. . . are to make sure she gets enough fluids and nutrition.’
‘And this?’ Rose pointed to two long, red tubes leading from somewhere on Flossie’s body into a big, whirring machine.
‘It washes her blood,’ Kate said. ‘She’s on dialysis, just to keep her kidneys happy.’
‘Can I feed her?’ Rose whispered, pressing the damp patches on her T-shirt.
‘I’m afraid not right now,’ Kate said, hugging Rose. ‘She wouldn’t be hungry for it. She’s getting the nourishment she needs from the IV.’
Rose looked at her little girl, who seemed more machine than human.
‘Did you get all the drugs out of her?’ she asked.
‘We’ve done what we can. We’ve gone a long way to neutralising the overdose, but there’s a bit of that work that’s down to the liver, I’m afraid. It had gone too far through her. But she’s fighting.’
Flossie looked tiny. Stretched out inside the box, wearing nothing but a nappy and bandages, her arms flung upwards and her fists clenched, she looked as if she had aged backwards. As if she had lost her earthly months of life and reverted to a fragile, pre-birth state. Rose needed to touch her, but she couldn’t get at her through the plastic box and the wires and the tubes.
‘There’s a hole in the side of the box, here,’ Kate said, as she guided Rose’s hand to Flossie’s stomach. The bare skin felt like silk, and Rose could sense – thank God – the tiny thrum of life beneath her fingertips. She decided she would stay like this, her hand through the hole in the box, until Flossie got better.
‘They haven’t got a bed in the Children’s Centre ICU right now,’ Kate said, ‘so she’s going to have to stay here, I’m afraid.’ She went and found a chair, which she placed behind Rose so she could sit without breaking contact with Flossie. ‘It’s not ideal, but I’ve asked them to bring a camp bed up here for you.’
‘I’m not sleeping,’ Rose said in a low voice.
‘I know how you feel,’ Kate said. ‘But really, Rose, you need to think about getting some rest. The next couple of days are going to take it out of you. Flossie needs you to be strong.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll just stay here.’
‘Look. I’ve got to go,’ Kate touched her shoulder. ‘I’ve got surgery in half an hour. I’ll call in to see how she’s getting on this afternoon.’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ Rose said, never taking her eyes off Flossie.
‘Take care.’ Kate leaned forward and kissed Rose on the head. She stepped outside the cubicle that contained Rose and Flossie, but instead of footsteps, Rose heard her stop and sigh, shuddering in a way that she didn’t think Kate was capable of.
Thank God for the good people, Rose thought.
Eighteen
Rose didn’t know how long she sat there, stroking Flossie’s side through the hole in the plastic box. The regular beep of some machine she knew was playing a part in keeping her baby alive had also, in some way, sustained her. But the dim light that bled through the drawn blinds of their A&E cubicle had grown stronger, and she felt the glow of sunlight on her hunched back.
Then something else joined the warmth and she turned to see it was Gareth, who had placed his hand on the space between her shoulderblades. With a jolt she remembered she should have called him, kept him informed. Despite any reluctance from him during the pregnancy, Flossie was now as much his as she was hers.
She often forgot this.
‘Kate called by on her way back this morning,’ Gareth said. ‘I knew you would be too busy.’
Rose winced. She couldn’t have left Flossie’s side, and even if she had a mobile phone, she wouldn’t have used it, because she was scared that it might interfere with one of the life-saving machines that were ranged around them.
‘I’m sorry . . .’ she began, but he hushed her and drew up a chair to sit with her, his eyes on Flossie.
‘Look. She’s calm now, and not so floppy,’ Rose whispered, guiding Gareth’s hand into the hole in the box. Flossie’s fist closed lightly around his large, work-worn finger.
‘And she’s going to be all right,’ she added. ‘They think.’
‘They don’t know, though, do they?’ Gareth said. ‘Kate said there could be liver damage, or brain damage. They don’t know, Rose. And we won’t know for sure for years.’
Rose leaned against him and closed her eyes. It was like a bad dream. She kept thinking about the family in the car crash, feeling common ground with them, as if she were now placed right there in amongst them all.
‘I took Anna to school,’ Gareth said. ‘I don’t want that woman near my kids any more, Rose. I’ve told her I want her out by the end of the week.’
Rose nodded. ‘Yes.’
Gareth shook his head. ‘There’s something wrong with her. Those boys, they’re moving back to the Annexe tonight and that’s it. The lot of them. They’re out of our lives.’
Rose felt a lump grow in her throat.
‘The boys . . .’ She had forgotten that they were attached to Polly.
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