As soon as she saw me turn the corner of our cul-de-sac, Kate started waddling out of the house, panting and clutching her stomach. “Mum and Dad will stay with Reef,” she said. “We need to get to Southmead Hospital as quickly as possible.”
I did a little mental calculation. The maternity unit at Southmead Hospital was north of Bristol, about twenty miles away, and would take a good half an hour in these conditions.
I put my foot down in our little Rover Metro as best as I could without skidding, and we dashed to the hospital with Kate squeezing my left leg the whole way there.
It was already dark, and it was a stressful journey through heavy, whirling snow. My adrenaline rush flattened, forming a pool of sickly fluid in the pit of my stomach. Kate was only seven months pregnant. Our baby was not meant to be born for another two months. What if Reef’s diagnosis was really bad, and what if the baby really was to be born tonight?
I kept my thoughts to myself and looked at Kate’s determined little face. Whatever happened, she would do a blinding job. I trusted her and I tried to tell myself that, in any case, the labor might very well stop once Kate was settled in hospital. She’d suffered so much stress worrying about Reef, and perhaps bed rest was all she needed.
Pulling in to the hospital, I abandoned the car by the entrance and I helped Kate get out and stagger to the maternity unit. I was shocked when she told the first midwife she saw: “I want a C-section, NOW!”
I actually laughed as I steered her hastily to a delivery room, no doubt more through nerves than anything. Kate had desperately wanted a natural birth with Reef but ended up needing an emergency Caesarean because he was getting distressed in the womb. I had a flashback of watching the surgeon mark Kate’s belly before she made the cut. “Can you go a bit lower, please?” I cheekily asked, knowing Kate wouldn’t want the scar to be visible in a bikini. The surgeon recognized me from my work as a paramedic and did her best to give Kate the lowest possible cut, and she even let me help her lift Reef out into the world, which was just phenomenal.
“I thought you’d want to try for a natural birth this time round,” I blurted out.
“Shut it, Singe!” Kate said, managing a smirk in between painful grimaces.
Kate had told me in the car that her labor started almost as soon as her mum and dad had driven her out of the Bristol Royal Infirmary car park following Reef’s appointment. Her contractions became so intense so quickly Christine started to time them. As soon as they realized they were getting quicker and quicker, they phoned me and then Southmead Hospital, to let them know we were coming.
Our appointed midwife appeared moments later, to Kate’s obvious relief.
“I want a C-section,” Kate practically begged her.
“OK, my love, let’s see, shall we? I’ll just examine you.”
The midwife was very tall and willowy, and she cranked the bed up to its full height to carry out the examination, so she didn’t have to stoop too low. There was a momentary pause, and then the midwife announced: “You’re far too late for a C-Section, my love—I can see the head!”
I looked at the midwife in absolute astonishment before giving Kate a quick kiss and taking a step toward the foot of the bed, not wanting to miss a thing. An unexpected “bang” stopped me in my tracks. It sounded like a water balloon popping, and when I looked again at the midwife she was drenched from head to toe in all sorts of nasty-looking liquid. A shocked Kate, who was sucking on gas and air to help with the pain, just stared in disbelief for a moment. Next I saw her look at the midwife, who was wiping her face and hair with paper towels, and Kate then burst into peals of hysterical laughter, only pausing to drag on more gas and air.
“Singe, did that just happen?” Kate gasped. “Did my waters explode all over the midwife?”
I nodded, and she cracked up laughing again, setting me off a bit too, even though, without the benefit of laughing gas, I was actually feeling quite embarrassed.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said to the midwife. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Thankfully, Kate’s giggling was as contagious as ever, and the midwife very gamely began to laugh herself.
“It’s OK,” she said. “Just give us a minute. I’ll have to get you a replacement midwife while I get cleaned up.”
She went across the corridor to the nurses’ station, and the roar of laughter we heard when her colleagues saw her standing there dripping wet set Kate off giggling again. Moments later a new midwife appeared. To my surprise, this one looked about three feet shorter than her colleague and could barely reach Kate on the elevated bed. There was a button on the side of the bed frame that she began to press quickly and repeatedly, but it lowered the bed in what felt like torturously slow steps. Each time it cranked down another notch Kate’s labor seemed to crank up a pace. Then, just as the bed was almost at the desired height, Kate let out an ear-piercing scream. To everyone’s amazement, our baby suddenly shot out at what looked like a hundred miles an hour.
I actually caught him before he hit the bed, and I looked at him in awe and fright. He was the tiniest little mite I’d ever seen, so small I was shocked to see that my wedding ring was bigger than his whole hand.
“Is he all right?” Kate asked anxiously, peering down.
The midwife and I were sorting him out together, cutting and clamping his cord. I was thrilled to have played a role in his birth too. With Reef, I also got to cut his cord after helping to lift him into the world. In fact, I had him cleaned up and put him in a diaper before the midwife had a chance. She wasn’t very pleased and told me he was the only baby she hadn’t put a diaper on in twenty-odd years of deliveries. Kate and I were too deliriously happy to let the ticking-off bother us. All we wanted to do was take turns cuddling Reef.
This birth was very different, and there was certainly no time for cuddles. As soon as Finn’s cord was clamped he was dressed in a doll-sized diaper and rushed into an incubator, pumped with oxygen and put under ultraviolet lights.
“He’s going to need a bit of help but he looks fine,” the midwife said. “Congratulations!”
Finn weighed just five pounds. As with Reef, we’d known he was a little boy and had chosen a name in advance.
“He’s big for a premature baby,” I reassured Kate.
“He’s diddy, though,” she said. “I just want to cuddle him.”
“I know, but ‘Diddy’ needs to go to NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit.”
“How long for? How long do I have to wait for a cuddle?”
“They don’t know yet, Kate, but don’t worry. He’s in the best place. Cuddle me instead.”
I gave her a gentle hug as she smoothed her hands over her deflated belly.
“He should still be in here,” she said flatly. I couldn’t argue. You didn’t need to be a doctor to figure out Kate’s premature labor had been brought on by extreme stress. Her face was etched with worry.
“What if it’s bad news about Reef? What if Finn has complications? Anything can happen with preemies, especially ones born this early. What if he . . . doesn’t make it?”
I kissed Kate’s forehead. My wife and my two little boys were all lying in hospital, one way or another. The truth was both Reef’s and Finn’s lives were hanging in the balance, and it was nigh-on impossible to keep coming up with positive things to say.
“Don’t think like that” was the best I could manage, even though it must have been written all over my face that I shared Kate’s darkest fears.
* * *
“Found it!” Reef bellowed. “Can I take it to my party?”
I’d been so lost in memories I’d forgotten where I was and what Reef was searching for. He charged at me from the conservatory, swishing his plastic sword, with Finn hot on his heels.
“We’ve been playing pirates for aaaages, Daddy. What
have you been doing?”
“Thinking,” I said.
“About what?” Reef asked.
“Lots and lots of things—your birthday included.”
“Not fair, I haven’t got a sword, Daddy,” Finn said crossly. “Can I get one for the party? Can I, please?”
“I can do better than that,” I said, feeling a welcome surge of gratitude flow through my body, washing away the dark fears of the past. It was incredible we’d come this far, with both boys thriving. “I’m going to get full pirate costumes for all three of us. It’ll be the best pirate party EVER!”
I sat the boys down and told them all about the history of The Matthew.
“More than five hundred years ago a man called John Cabot set sail for Asia aboard the original Matthew. It was a Tudor merchant ship, and he wanted to trade with people in Asia. But do you know where he actually went?”
Both boys shook their heads.
“America! He landed on the coast of Newfoundland—so he was actually the man who discovered America, not Christopher Columbus!”
“Oooh,” said Reef. “Is it the ’zact same ship we go on?”
“No, it’s the replica one in the docks. It’s been built to look exactly like the original one and it’s a really cool boat with big sails.”
We had lots more conversations like that over the next week or so as we waited for Reef’s big day—July 29—to come round. We also had great fun putting together our pirate costumes, complete with eye patches, bandannas and white shirts with billowing sleeves.
A local paper got wind of the party and wanted to run a story, as Kate and I had given a few interviews over the years about Reef’s cancer, plus Kate’s death had been widely reported. Talking to the reporter on the phone made me remember one particularly cheery headline about Reef’s progress that I’d read when the memory boxes had arrived. “Our Little Miracle,” the old newspaper clipping said. I wanted to read it again, and on the night before Reef’s party I decided to dig it out so I could enjoy reading it once more. I remembered there was a happy photograph of me and Kate and both boys splashed across the page, and I remembered Kate giving a detailed account of Reef’s illness to the journalist who wrote the story.
I had a rummage through the treasure chests and found the article on the top of a pile of faded newspaper cuttings I’d tucked into a brown envelope. My eyes fell immediately on Kate. The way the photograph was taken, there was a shadow over most of her face. It made her skin look grayer than it was, and she looked older than her years. The article was in the Weston Mercury, and it was dated July 30, 2008, the day after Reef’s fourth birthday. I scanned the piece for Kate’s words, and as I read them, I remembered her sitting on the sofa downstairs and saying them out loud to the reporter, bravely.
“We never thought we’d see this day. When we heard the prognosis there was no way we thought we’d get to this stage. He really has done remarkably well . . . It was surreal with one son in one hospital and one in another. At that time we had two children with minimal chances of survival . . . Reef has had sixty general anesthetics, thirty rounds of radiation and forty different rounds of chemotherapy, but he’s coped remarkably well and he’s always happy and smiley . . . He adapts so he can do things. He can’t walk up the stairs very well and has trouble putting on his socks, but he adapts to everything. He’s learning and improvising all the time; he’s remarkable . . .”
That was tough, reading Kate’s words, hearing Kate saying them in my head. Exactly two years had passed since then. It was no time at all, yet in that time Kate had fought for her life, and lost, while her “little miracle” continued to make incredible progress.
I remembered Kate’s reaction when we were finally given Reef’s full diagnosis. It was four days after Finn’s birth, and we were both in a terrible state. “Diddy” was still in special care under ultraviolet lights and receiving oxygen to help him breathe. Nobody could promise us we’d be taking home a healthy baby any time soon, and Kate was distraught as she looked at Finn through his sterile glass bubble, denied the chance to hold her newborn boy. All she could do was give him a little stroke or a tickle through the portholes in the plastic cot, which broke her heart.
Leaving Finn alone at Southmead Hospital to travel across town to hear Reef’s diagnosis felt surreal in the extreme. Kate and I tried our best to reason with each other that we couldn’t possibly receive yet more bad news, but of course that was exactly what was waiting for us. When we arrived at the Bristol Royal Infirmary we were ushered into a private family room, and you didn’t need to be a genius to work out we were about to hear something very serious. As well as a concerned-looking consultant and several nurses, including Reef’s ward manager, Jamie, there was a special nurse in attendance, who I knew was specially trained to deal with cancer in children.
Kate and I held hands as the consultant delivered the blow in a hushed but serious and authoritative voice. He said something like: “I’m afraid we are going to be blunt and honest . . .” before delivering the first horrendous line: “I’m very sorry to have to tell you that the lump, the tumor, in Reef’s abdomen is cancerous, and it’s malignant.”
The “C” word that had stalked us and frightened us was no longer a shadowy threat, it was real. Cancer was attacking Reef and in so doing it was attacking me and Kate. The words struck me like a physical blow. I felt wounded and I wanted to be sick. Kate searched my face, and I watched hers crumble. “Oh, Singe,” she sobbed. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.” I held her tight, feeling her shake and sob as my own tears splashed down my cheeks and soaked into Kate’s hair.
“Nor can I” was all I could say. “Nor can I.”
Through a haze of tears, we learned that Reef’s was an extremely rare form of cancer called rhabdoid soft tissue sarcoma. As the tumor had grown it had wrapped around the large femoral nerve in his leg, and the aggressive treatment he needed would be likely to damage the nerve further still. He was given a six percent chance of survival, and we were warned he might never be able to walk again.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. We should have been taking an excited Reef to meet his brand-new baby brother, yet even little Finn’s life was in jeopardy, being so frail and premature. The situation was absolutely hideous. I felt battered and helpless, like I was in an icy sea with wave after frozen wave crashing over me, stealing my strength and my breath whichever way I tried to swim.
We were also told that Reef’s cancer was so rare he was one of just eight cases in the world to be diagnosed, and we discovered that the oldest surviving victim of such a cancer had only lived until the age of sixteen. The consultant explained gently that Reef’s tumor was so aggressive they feared it could kill him far sooner than that. They had never seen a case like his before, with the tumor positioned in the pelvic area, and they had not yet worked out how to treat him.
“How long has he got?” Kate asked bravely. She was shaking from head to foot.
In my mind I was dreading them saying five years, or even ten. He was a toddler, just eighteen months old, but surely he would live to be a teenager, even if he didn’t make his sixteenth birthday?
“We are very sorry, but Reef may not survive for more than a few days,” the unbelievable reply came back.
“Days?” Kate said desperately. “Days?” Her voice sounded withered and confused. Every bit of color drained from her face, and she looked like a shrunken, wounded version of herself. I wrapped my quivering arms around her, afraid she might shrivel up and sink to the ground. We clung together and stared at each other in utter disbelief, and then listened in horror as a discussion began about whether the doctors should wait until they knew more about Reef’s tumor before starting a tailored regime of chemotherapy.
Despite feeling devastated and forlorn, Kate and I were in clear agreement on this point: Reef was so poorly he should be given some fo
rm of generic cancer treatment immediately. “Start treating him now, please,” Kate begged. “I don’t want to waste any time at all. We don’t have any time to waste.” I squeezed her hand and nodded my support. The doctors agreed, and they were amazing. They tried to calm the waters even though they had a very tough job on their hands, both in keeping our heads up and in treating Reef. Despite the dire prognosis we were not to give up hope, they told us.
Reef was given his first cancer drugs while also undergoing emergency bone scans, blood tests and cardiograms to work out his long-term chemotherapy plan. We gave our approval for Reef to be blasted with as much chemo and radiation as his little body could take, which we were told would go on for about a year, should he be lucky enough to survive that long.
“The chances of getting this type of cancer are like winning the Lottery forty times on the trot,” I remember one doctor told us in the blurry aftermath of Reef’s diagnosis. It was a surreal thing to hear, but then again everything felt surreal.
Kate broke down so many times I lost count. She should have been still in the last bloom of pregnancy, enjoying her well-earned maternity leave, not struggling to digest all this horrific news while Finn was fighting for his life too in his lonely little incubator across town. We both walked around like zombies, crying, shaking with fear, feeling sick with nerves, expecting a phone call or a tap on the shoulder from a doctor, delivering yet more bad news.
“I wish it was me who had cancer, not Reef,” Kate said when we were alone one night. I knew she meant every word.
“Don’t say that, Kate,” I said, not wanting to let such a thought into my head for even a split second.
“It’s true. I’d swap places with him in a flash. How can such a little boy take so much aggressive treatment?”
I had no answer.
“What if Finn takes a turn for the worse? The way our luck is going we could lose both of them.”
Every fiber of my body throbbed with pain and tension, and my heart ached with love for Kate. I couldn’t answer her because I couldn’t comprehend how our life had taken such a terrible twist in such a short pace of time. For the first time in my life I felt I had no control over our future. I’d never felt so vulnerable before. It seemed that our lives had been turned upside down in the blink of an eye.
Mum's List Page 17
