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‘Has Dawn told you what the tablets were?’ I asked, praying that she hadn’t found the key to the medicine cabinet and taken the paracetamol, although the bottle only contained half a dozen tablets – far less than Dawn had swallowed.

‘Her mother’s Valium,’ the doctor said, ‘and a bottle of artificial sweetener tablets, which are just as dangerous in the quantity Dawn has taken them.’

I looked at him. ‘But she will be all right, won’t she?’

‘Let’s hope so,’ he said nodding stiffly, and looked from Dawn to the monitor.

The nurse returned, carrying a number of sealed sterilised packages and a small plastic bucket. Dawn’s eyes opened as the nurse approached the bed, then closed again.

‘I need to phone my husband and tell him what’s happening,’ I said. ‘Can I come back in a minute? I want to be with her.’

The doctor nodded.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ I said to Dawn. I didn’t know if she had heard me or not.

I returned to reception, where I found a pay phone. Delving into my bag for coins, I dialled our number and when John answered I told him what the doctor had said.

‘So she is going to be all right?’ he asked.

‘From what they’re saying I think so.’

‘Will they keep her in?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I’ll find out and call you again later. If it gets too late you go to bed you’ve got work tomorrow. I’ll get a taxi home.’

John said he would, although he added he wouldn’t sleep until we had both returned safely. We said goodbye and I returned to the cubicle. There were two nurses present now, one on either side of the bed, but the doctor had left. Dawn was on her left side with her head slightly lowered. One nurse stood behind her, with her hands on Dawn’s shoulder, steadying her into position, while the other nurse sat on a chair with Dawn facing her. A thin tube ran from Dawn’s nose into the bucket and I could hear a gurgling and suction noise coming from it. Both nurses glanced at me as I entered, and then returned their attention to Dawn.

I stood out of the way, at the end of the bed, and looked at Dawn. The stomach pumping didn’t appear to be causing her too much discomfort – less, I thought, than when she had been continuously retching and vomiting. Her eyes flickered open and she moaned slightly, but I thought the worst part was probably when the tube had been inserted up her nose and down the back of her throat. From what I could see, the fluid in the bucket wasn’t so chalky and I hoped this was a good sign. After a few minutes the nurse attached what looked like a large syringe to the end of the tube and slowly depressed it, injecting a clear solution down the tube and into Dawn’s stomach. She removed the syringe and the suction began again, with fluid appearing in the bucket. The nurse repeated the procedure a second time and then glanced at me.

‘It’s all clear now,’ she said.

‘Does that mean all the pills have gone?’

She nodded. ‘Apart from those she has already digested. Her blood pressure is down and her heart is racing slightly. We’ll monitor her overnight.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much.’

The nurse slid the tube from Dawn’s nose and Dawn coughed and retched. ‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse said. ‘It’s a reflex action as the tube comes out.’

I remained at the end of the bed as the nurse wiped Dawn’s mouth, and then both nurses gathered up the tube, empty packages and bucket, and left the cubicle. I went over and sat on the chair the nurse had vacated and gazed down at Dawn. She was still on her side and appeared to be sleeping. She looked so young and vulnerable. Thirteen years, I thought; thirteen short years. Whatever had happened to make her do this? And what life experience had made her hate herself so much that she slashed her flesh, and had now actually tried to take her life? The books had said that self-harming was a coping mechanism and rarely a suicide attempt, but this was certainly a suicide attempt. And the number of tablets Dawn had swallowed suggested it was a serious attempt, in which Dawn had thought she’d guaranteed the outcome. She had only been saved by taking so many tablets that her body had rejected them, and by coming home in time for us to call an ambulance. Dear God, I thought, if she had taken less tablets, or not come home in time, I would have been identifying her body in the mortuary.

Chapter Eighteen

Rejected

I
waited with Dawn until she was found a bed on the children’s ward. She slept the whole time, while I listened to the comings and goings the other side of the curtained cubicle. A porter helped Dawn into a wheelchair and then pushed her to the ward, while the nurse and I walked behind. Once I had seen that she was comfortable, and the nurse had reassured me that she would most likely remain asleep until morning, I kissed Dawn goodnight and went down to reception, where I phoned for a taxi.

It was after midnight by the time I arrived home, and I was utterly exhausted. John looked gaunt and strained too. I told him what had happened at the hospital while I drank the mug of tea he had made for me. Then we both went upstairs, and I stood for a moment looking at Adrian’s little sleeping face before I climbed into bed. John said he would take the following day off work so that I could return to the hospital without having to take Adrian with me.

It was 7.30 a.m. when I woke, and John had taken Adrian downstairs and was giving him breakfast. I quickly washed and dressed, then packed Dawn’s nightdress, some clean clothes and her wash bag in a small overnight case. I gulped down a mug of coffee, and giving Adrian and John a big hug, I drove to the hospital.

It was just before nine o’clock as I pressed the security buzzer on the wall beside the locked doors of the children’s ward. ‘It’s Cathy Glass, Dawn Jennings’ foster carer,’ I said as a female voice came through the security intercom. There was a short pause before the door clicked open, and I went in, making my way to where I had left Dawn the night before.

To my surprise and absolute delight Dawn was sitting up in bed in a hospital gown and eating breakfast. Her face lit up when she saw me.

‘Hi, Cathy,’ she called across the ward.

‘Hello, love,’ I said, going over and giving her a big kiss. ‘How are you? You look so much better.’

‘I am, but my throat is sore.’

I smiled and pulled up a chair. ‘I expect your throat is sore from being sick yesterday. Didn’t they have anything softer you could have had?’

‘Only porridge and I didn’t like it.’ She carried on eating the toast, so I thought the discomfort couldn’t be too bad.

‘Did you sleep well?’ I asked, glancing at the other occupants in the four-bedded ward.

‘I must have. I don’t remember anything until they woke me to take my blood pressure.’

A television mounted on a tall stand was on at one end of the room and Dawn, like the other children, was looking at it. In the bed next to her was a young boy of about nine or ten with his father sprawled beside him, also watching the television. Opposite was a girl of a similar age to Dawn who was by herself, and in the bed next to her was a much younger girl of about five or six, who had her mother with her. I smiled at the woman as she looked over and she smiled back.

‘The doctor’s going to do his rounds soon,’ Dawn said very knowledgeably. ‘And then I can go home.’

‘Great!’ I said. ‘You won’t be needing this, then. I put your nightdress in just in case.’

Dawn nodded absently and returned her attention to the television; I looked at it too. Clearly I wasn’t going to start talking to Dawn about what had happened the day before. That would come later; for now it was enough that she had recovered.

Fifteen minutes or so later a nurse came on to the ward and, removing Dawn’s breakfast things, said that the doctor was doing his rounds now. I felt somewhat apprehensive and nervous as we waited for the doctor to arrive; so too apparently did the nurse, judging from the way she was tidying the ward and straightening all the bed covers. When the doctor appeared half an hour later, with an entourage of two nurses and three young student doctors, it was a different doctor to the one we had seen the night before. Coming straight to the end of Dawn’s bed, he unhooked the clipboard and, without saying hello, began studying the chart. The students grouped around him. I sat upright and waited in respectful silence, while Dawn, apparently less impressed by our visitors, gave them a cursory glance and then returned her attention to the television.

‘How are you today?’ the doctor eventually said, glancing up from the clipboard and finally acknowledging Dawn. The students looked at Dawn too.

‘Good,’ Dawn said, not taking her eyes from the screen.

He looked at me. ‘Are you mum?’

‘No, I’m Dawn’s foster carer.’

One of the nurses said something quietly to the doctor, which I couldn’t hear, and he in turn said something quietly to the students, which I also couldn’t hear. Replacing the clipboard at the end of the bed he took a couple of steps closer to Dawn. ‘You’ve had a very lucky escape, young lady,’ he said brusquely. ‘Next time you might not be so lucky.’ Dawn took her eyes off the television and looked at him, while I wondered at the wisdom of even suggesting the vaguest possibility of their being a ‘next time’.

‘I’m discharging you with a letter for your GP,’ he said, no less tersely. ‘You’ll be sent an appointment to see a psychiatrist.’ Then addressing me, ‘We always refer to a psychiatrist after a suicide attempt. And she needs to talk about why she’s cutting herself too.’

I assumed the nurses had noticed the scars on Dawn’s arms and leg when they had changed her into her hospital gown. I opened my mouth to speak, but the doctor was already turning and moving away from the bed. With a brief glance around the ward he left, followed by his entourage. I had hoped for a chance to discuss what Dawn had done, and maybe to have even received a few words of advice, but clearly that would now have to wait until we saw a psychiatrist. The doctor’s manner had been so terse that I wondered if he resented having to deal with a patient who had tried to take her own life when his work centred on trying to save lives. However, I thought, if one good thing had come from all this, it was that Dawn was now being referred to a psychiatrist and would get the help she so badly needed.

* * *

An hour later, Dawn having had a wash and in her clean clothes, I thanked the nurses and we left the hospital. Once we were in the car I didn’t immediately start the engine.

‘Dawn,’ I said, looking straight ahead through the windscreen. ‘Did any of the nurses or doctors ask you why you did what you did?’ I found it too difficult to say the words ‘taken an overdose’ or ‘attempted suicide’.

‘No,’ she said, fastening her seatbelt. ‘I was asleep until breakfast.’

I hesitated. ‘Can I ask you, Dawn? Can you tell me why?’

I turned sideways to look at her. She gave a small shrug. ‘It was Mum, I guess. I wanted to teach her a lesson.’

‘Why?’ I asked slowly. ‘Did she do something?’ It was a pretty dire lesson, I thought, and the outcome could have been far, far worse.

Dawn shrugged again. ‘It seems a bit silly now, but at the time I was angry and upset with her. When I went to see her yesterday she went out as soon as I got there, to see that Mike.’

‘And was she planning on returning home again to spend time with you?’

‘No. That’s what made me upset and angry. She can see Mike any time, but we only have one hour a week. I went all that way on the bus and she just said hi and left me. They were going to the cinema. She’s done it before – gone out as soon as I got there.’ Dawn paused and looked at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. ‘I don’t suppose you understand, but one hour a week isn’t going to hurt her, is it? I mean it’s not much of her time.’

‘No, Dawn, it isn’t,’ I said quietly. ‘And I
do
understand.’

She paused again, still gazing down at her hands. ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it, Cathy, but I thought if I swallowed all her tablets, when she came home and found me it would make her feel really bad. Then she would be sorry she hadn’t spent more time with me. I just wanted to punish her.’

I nodded slowly. ‘I see. Thank you for telling me.’ I could see the logic only too clearly, but Christ, what a way to go about teaching your mother a lesson! We were still sitting side by side in the car park with the engine off. ‘Dawn,’ I said after a moment. ‘Did you actually intend to kill yourself or was it more to shock your mother so that she would spend time with you in future?’

She wrung her hands together. ‘To begin with I wanted to kill myself, as I was so upset she didn’t want to see me. But once I’d finished taking all the tablets and began feeling ill, I wasn’t so sure. That’s why I came home to you. I hoped you’d make me better.’

‘Thank God you did,’ I said, placing my hand on her arm. ‘And it was just in time. Dawn, you won’t ever do anything like that again, will you? There are ways of working out problems even when they seem huge, without doing something like that.’

‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like being sick. It frightened me. Has anyone told my mum yet?’

‘I would think so,’ I said, wondering if Dawn was still hoping her mother would learn from the ‘lesson’ and be sorry. ‘The hospital was going to notify your social worker, so I think Ruth will have phoned your mum. I’m going to phone Ruth later. I think we need to do something about the time you spend with your mum. There’s no point in you going over there if she’s not going to be in.’

‘No,’ Dawn agreed quietly. ‘I’m not sure I want to go again.’

I started the engine and drove slowly out of the car park, winding my window down as I went. Dawn lowered her window too. At just after eleven o’clock the heat was already building up, heralding another very hot June day. As I drove, my thoughts centred on Dawn and all her problems, as they were increasingly doing now; indeed I was always thinking or worrying about Dawn, and what was going on in her head. I was desperate to try to find a key: something that would unlock her past and better explain her disturbed behaviour, thereby hopefully giving us a way forward. I realised she had been rejected by her parents, but while that in itself was bad enough, I couldn’t help feeling that it didn’t fully explain her extreme behaviour – even more so after last night – and I kept returning to one point in particular.

‘Dawn,’ I said as the engine idled at a set of traffic lights that had just turned red. ‘Your social worker said that there was a gap in your life when no one knew where you were. Between the ages of five and nine,’ Dawn nodded and again looked down into her lap. ‘Do you have any memories of that time? Do you know where you were or who you were living with? I expect Ruth has asked you the same question.’

‘She did,’ Dawn said flatly. ‘And she asked Mum and Dad if they knew where I was.’

‘And?’ I prompted after a moment when she hadn’t said any more.

‘Mum says I was living with my dad, and Dad says I was with Mum.’ Which was what Ruth had told me after the meeting. And I remembered the essay Dawn had written for school about being five, which she had made up, claiming she couldn’t remember that time. It seemed ludicrous: either she or her parents must have some recollection of where she was and who she was living with.

‘And what about you, Dawn?’ I asked. ‘Do you know where you were? It wasn’t so long ago. Do you remember?’ The lights changed to green and I pulled away.

I glanced between the road ahead and Dawn, and as I did I saw her face crumple. Tears began streaming down her cheeks and her chest heaved with silent sobs. ‘Oh, Dawn, love, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ I immediately pulled over and switched off the engine. Releasing my seatbelt, I leant over and put my arms around her. ‘It’s all right, love. Please don’t upset yourself.’

‘Cathy, I don’t know, I really don’t know,’ she stammered between breaths. ‘I can’t remember anything. Anything at all.’ I reached down and pulled some tissues from my bag and passed them to her. ‘I remember being with Mum and Dad when I was very little. And I remember Dad leaving. Then there’s nothing. The next thing I remember is living with Mum again. It’s like I suddenly woke up and I was there. I was nine and at a different school. Then I spent time living at Dad’s place and then at Mum’s, going backwards and forwards because I was so naughty – neither of them wanted me for long. And I know I was bad – I felt bad, and I did bad things – but I don’t know why. The time before that is like a big black hole. Sometimes I get weird dreams and think I remember things, but the dreams are awful and I get really frightened and confused.’

I hugged her. ‘I understand, love. I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.’ I waited as she blew her nose and dried her eyes. ‘Dawn, when you see the psychiatrist I want you to tell him all this. It might help. All right?’

She nodded and blew her nose again. Then looked at me, her cheeks flushed and her eyes red from crying. ‘It’s really scary, not knowing. It’s like part of me is missing. But the more I try to remember, the worse it gets. I see me at Mum’s when I was five and I know those memories are real; then I disappear, and suddenly come back again all those years later. I was already being naughty then; I don’t know why – I just was. I think something might have happened to change me, something dreadful that I can’t remember.’

I hugged her again and thought that she might be right. What she had described sounded like a type of amnesia. I remembered reading an article in a newspaper about people who had lost their memories after a really bad experience, a trauma. I thought the condition was called dissociative amnesia, when the brain blots out what it can’t cope with, but I didn’t know any more. ‘It must be dreadfully worrying for you, love, but I’m sure the psychiatrist will be able to help you.’

‘Will he?’ she asked, looking at me with a spark of hope.

‘Yes, that’s his job – to help unravel the past and make sense of it. So let’s leave it to him, shall we? Don’t force yourself to remember. Let’s concentrate on the present.’ I smiled, and Dawn smiled back.

‘Thanks, Cathy. Can we go home now? I’m starving. Can I have a fry-up?’

‘Of course, love, anything you like.’

It was just before midday when we arrived home and John greeted us at the door.