Little Disasters

by Sarah Vaughan

She stands abruptly, her voice querulous. ‘I just said so, didn’t I?’

  On her doorstep I try to put my arms around her to give her a quick hug but she stands tense inside them, characteristically resistant. Perhaps this death coloured her mothering of my brother and me? Did it numb her, and does it explain her lack of affection; her emotional detachment; those unpredictable bouts of anger that came from nowhere and were never mentioned afterwards as if, once the bruises had vanished, they had never occurred?

  ‘Well, bye then. Take care,’ I say as I drop my arms, my words inadequate and inconsequential.

  She nods, refusing to look me in the eye.

  ‘Will you at least let me put you to bed?’ I try again.

  ‘I’m not one of your patients.’ Her anger flares, sharp as a lash. She busies herself with the latch, her movements jagged.

  ‘Well, goodbye, then. Bye.’

  JESS

  Tuesday 23 January, 10 a.m.

  Sixteen

  Jess stretches her hand tentatively over her baby’s pudgy fist and strokes the back of it. Beside her, Lucy Stone stiffens. Does she know that she fears causing her baby harm?

  She moves Betsey’s rabbit away from her face. Lucy is watching closely; her breath caught in anticipation, as if wondering quite when she will lash out.

  She catches the social worker’s eye, withdraws her hand and nods towards her baby daughter.

  ‘I just want to hold her.’

  The desire to do so is overwhelming but so is the need to appear like a normal mother: someone who can be trusted with her baby girl.

  Because her mind is playing tricks on her, she knows this even while she is sucked into its stories. When she reaches out her hand, she sees her palm smack flat against Betsey’s downy cheek. When she strokes Betsey’s back, her fist strikes down on it, the punch reddening the delicate flesh. When she lifts the toy rabbit, she thrusts it into her baby’s nostrils, depriving Betsey of air.

  Bad thoughts always escalate when she’s stressed, and there’s no environment more stressful than this hospital. Just being here reminds her of Betsey’s labour: the manhandling and the obstetrician’s fear.

  Her breath is high and light. She mustn’t think of that now; must focus on Betsey and appearing rational and compassionate. But it’s impossible to act naturally, when every single tic or movement is being observed.

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ she tells Betsey, and her voice sounds unnatural and saccharine. ‘It’s all right, baby. Mummy’s here.’

  Nothing from Betsey. What was she expecting? A smile? A ‘mum-mum’?

  ‘Do you think she can hear me?’ she pleads with the social worker. She sounds pathetic.

  ‘I expect so,’ says Lucy – but it’s clear she’s humouring her.

  She sits on her hands so there’s no risk of her touching, let alone smacking or punching, Bets. Will Lucy smile at her to acknowledge the risk has passed? She must really dislike me. Must think I’m the lowest type of individual. There is no one more morally suspect than an abusive mother.

  It would be better if she went home, she thinks. She is just creating extra work for Lucy and the nurses, who watch through careful, narrowed eyes.

  ‘I don’t think I’m helping,’ she says. Betsey is asleep; it makes no sense for her to be here. ‘I’m wasting all of your time.’

  She makes her excuses and gathers her coat and bag, almost dropping them to the floor as she scrabbles to get ready.

  ‘Are you sure? You’ve only been here half an hour.’ The young woman looks surprised.

  ‘No, really. She’s asleep and you must have so much to do.’ Her voice singsongs, the cadences light and carefree as if this is a social visit.

  And Lucy’s relief is palpable; Jess can see that, she hasn’t imagined it. Her smile is less forced and her posture eases as Jess rushes away.

  *

  ‘You’re back already?’ Martha comes into the hall as Jess enters the house, rushes forward to try to hug her. She feels her sister’s full breasts flatten as she presses against her own slight chest.

  ‘How was it? How was Betsey?’

  Her sister’s face – a wider version of her own with a more unruly mass of curls – furrows in concern. Warm and nononsense, she’s a more generous version of Jess: expansive where Jess is closed, ample where Jess is slight. When they were children, Martha would stand up to her waist in the sea, feet planted in the shingle as Jess clung to her, letting her legs swirl around her like seaweed. Thirty years on, Martha is rock-like, still.

  ‘Just the same,’ Jess says now. ‘Still wearing that bandage and I still can’t hold her.’ Her voice cracks with self-pity and she busies herself tidying the clutter Martha has created: the slumped handbag; the battered boots, good quality but uncared for, that she’s failed to put away.

  ‘That will change. She will get better.’ Martha, pragmatic and unremittingly positive, is desperate to instil some optimism. For a moment, Jess remembers how fiercely she missed her big sister when she went away to school. Left at home, she would plunder her drawers for empty bottles of Body Shop White Musk or a tennis shirt, infused with the soft, sharp scent of her. At night, she would creep into her sister’s room and remember curling up to her instead of watching moonlight spill across a cold, empty bed.

  Now, she is deeply grateful, and simultaneously resentful that Martha is permitted to do all the mothering, while Jess aches for her baby girl. It’s the warmth of Betsey’s small body she craves, its compactness, and the way she would nestle into her in those few rare moments when she was happy to be still. Her head would loll on Jess’s shoulder while she clutched her rabbit and sucked her thumb, and if she were particularly tired her body would sag so that she almost melded into her. All too briefly, Jess would let herself enjoy her smell of warm, sweet skin and clean cotton but she never relaxed properly. She’d be too conscious of all the things she should be doing to maintain order, to preserve her baby’s safety, and would have to put Betsey down.

  Now, those things don’t seem so important. There is none of that intimacy in hospital. They might as well have an armed police officer guarding her bed, as they have elsewhere in the hospital where a drug dealer is recovering from a gangland shoot-to-kill. The faces of the doctors and nurses are sharp with suspicion. We have to look at the possibility someone harmed your little girl.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Martha is looking at her carefully.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ But she isn’t. ‘I just need some time on my own.’ She retreats to her bedroom, unwanted thoughts already crowding her head. She sees Betsey in the hospital, lying on her back, drowsy or asleep; she creeps towards her; Betsey’s eyes fly open as she presses a pillow down, the heels of her palms crushing the fabric against her cheeks.

  She’s being ridiculous. She left Betsey half an hour ago and she was alive. And yet what if she wasn’t? What if she has tricked herself into believing this because the alternative is too painful to bear? What if the images that fill her mind are real? She can feel the heft of the pillow as she leans over Betsey; hear her struggling, legs furiously kicking, as she fights for breath.

  Her insides turn to liquid. She needs to ring Ed. They are barely speaking but no one else is as tightly entwined in this nightmare. She can’t confide in Martha, still less in Mel or, and here she nearly gives into self-pity, in her previous confidante, Liz.

  He answers quickly, his voice a whisper, his manner hurried. He’s in a world in which her anxieties must be kept separate.

  ‘Is Betsey OK? I’m on my way to a meeting. Running late.’

  ‘Ed – I know it sounds stupid . . . but . . .’ Her fear spills in a burbled rush. ‘They’re not keeping anything back about her, are they? There’s nothing they haven’t told us?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Her fear is caught high in her chest like something she can’t swallow. ‘She’s not dead, is she?’

  ‘What?’ His voice cracks like a gunshot, causing her to flinch.

 
; ‘I mean, the hospital would tell us, wouldn’t they, if anything had happened to her? They wouldn’t hide it. They would tell us if she was already dead? If she’d died in some way?’

  ‘Jess.’ His tone is sorrowful. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I know it sounds mad . . .’

  ‘Yes, it does. Haven’t you just been to see her? You know this isn’t true. Don’t say things like that, please. She’s suffered a skull fracture and I know that’s horrific, but they would have told us if she was getting worse or it was more severe. She’s not in intensive care. There’s no reason to think she won’t get better. She’s just in hospital to give her the chance to mend – and, I guess, to give us all some breathing space.’

  He pauses. He thinks she’s mad, but surely he is? She’s in hospital to give us some breathing space? They don’t need breathing space. They need Betsey to get better, and for them to be allowed to get on with their lives.

  ‘Look,’ he continues. ‘I have to get to this meeting. We can talk about this later but please don’t think like this. You know this isn’t the case.’

  He sighs and she realises that she has become a problem Ed wants to be rid of. He has never had to think of her like this previously. She has always been so careful to hide the anxieties that nibble at the edges of her brain. But she can’t do that any more. She has broken a self-imposed rule: left the calm, contained Jess behind and let the anarchic version leap out.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ he repeats, effectively dismissing her and leaving her alone with her vortexing anxieties. ‘I’m sorry but I really do have to go now, OK?’

  *

  She spins her rings; cleans the kitchen; tries all her usual rituals. But of course she can’t keep her thoughts at bay.

  She sees it so clearly. Can feel the softness of the goose feather pillow, its heft, solidity and substance as she pulls it taut between clenched fists. The white pearls of her knuckles bead and she hears Betsey’s hiccupped crying: the cry of a baby who’s beside herself with distress. Her skin is slick, her face red, her pupils dilated as she stares back at her mother. And Jess sees herself leaning forwards and pressing down, as her baby’s tiny hands, with their shell-like nails, flail at her, trying to force her away.

  She must ring the hospital. She needs to check. But when a nurse picks up the phone she is silent. How can she verbalise these fears?

  It’s Jess Curtis. I just wanted to check that my daughter isn’t dead. That she’s only suffered a skull fracture. That she hasn’t been smothered. That I haven’t killed her, and no one’s noticed or mentioned this to me?

  ‘Paediatric ward. Can I help you?’ the nurse repeats.

  ‘Um. Yes.’ Some shred of self-preservation kicks in. ‘It’s Betsey Curtis’s mother, Jess. I wanted to know how she was since I left her?’

  But the nurse’s bland detailing of her daughter’s condition is far from reassuring. How can she know? How recently has she seen her? How can she be one hundred per cent certain that nothing has happened since she last checked?

  ‘Please could you check on her again? Check she’s OK?’ She is aware she has stepped beyond the boundaries of normal behaviour but it doesn’t matter because the alternative narrative is so compelling. The vision consumes her. She strokes Betsey’s right cheek and brushes her hair oh-so-tenderly before pressing down. Betsey struggles – legs kicking, torso straining, surprisingly forceful against the pillow – until finally she stops.

  The nurse wants to get rid of her. Jess can hear her rustling papers; hear, too, the note of over-bright reassurance. But Jess isn’t going to be fobbed off. Only a parent – only a mother - really knows what is happening to their child. The thing to do is to go to the hospital because all other reassurance is meaningless. There’s only one person she trusts, and that’s herself.

  ‘Just popping out. That’s all right, isn’t it?’ she shouts to Martha, and she is out of the door before her sister has a chance to object.

  The traffic flows, for once, and as she nears the hospital, what might seem ludicrous becomes a certainty until she knows that not only is Betsey dead but that she killed her baby girl. Her palms moisten and her vision blurs; her chest burns as if she’s pushed herself in a sprint and can’t gulp the air down fast enough. And her longing to see her daughter is tempered by a cold, sharp fear.

  *

  She half-runs along the corridors, darting around patients on trolleys or in wheelchairs. At the entrance to the paediatric ward, she catches up with a couple pressing the buzzer and follows in their slipstream, throwing them a quick smile. The nurse looks surprised by her second visit of the day but there’s no time to explain, to concede that she knows she’s not meant to just turn up. Her smile – the smile of Jess Curtis at her most composed, her most confident – will smooth over any confusion. At least, that’s what she hopes.

  She leaves the nurses’ station behind and walks briskly towards the six-bay ward and Betsey’s bed, hoping that she’s got it wrong and her baby’s alive and getting well. That she is just asleep, her cheeks no longer flushed with a high temperature, but their usual healthy colour. Or perhaps she’s awake. The bandage will be off and she’ll be smiling: she’ll give Jess her sunniest, most beatific beam, and gurgle, as she sometimes does for her, in her delicious, irrepressibly joyful way.

  But something’s wrong. As she rounds the corner of the ward, she sees a junior doctor and nurse gathered by Betsey’s bed, the one nearest to the entrance. The SATs machine is pinging, the blue wiggly line on the monitor dropping dramatically, and a tube snakes from this to the small body on the bed. The floppy-haired young doctor is looking down at his mobile phone. They’re shielding her baby from her but she can hear the most terrible noise: a rasping as if Betsey can’t breathe properly.

  ‘OK, my lovely,’ the nurse, who she thinks is called Zoe, says. The fetid stench of a suddenly filled nappy mingles with ammonia, cloying the already stale air.

  Jess steps forward, and manages to glimpse Betsey’s face. This doesn’t look like her child. Betsey’s eyes have rolled back and her eyelids are flickering, her back is arched, and her limbs are stiff. Her arms start to quiver: quickly, rhythmically, like a butterfly against a window. Then her legs begin.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she cries, not caring that she shouldn’t be here, because this is it, isn’t it: the prelude to her dying? But the junior doctor is looking fixedly at his phone. ‘Please, can you tell me?’ she tries again.

  ‘Mrs Curtis,’ Zoe begins. ‘You’re not meant to be on the ward.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Betsey?’ She sounds shrill, her voice babbling.

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ the nurse takes her by the arm. ‘She’s just having a seizure . . .’

  ‘You shouldn’t really be here, Mrs Curtis,’ the junior doctor repeats. He is far too young. Must only be in his mid twenties: he has spots, for fuck’s sake!

  ‘But I can’t leave my baby. I can’t leave my baby . . .’ She scans his unlined face. How can he not see? And where’s Liz?

  ‘Where’s Dr Trenchard?’ she asks. ‘And why aren’t you stopping this? Why are you looking at your bloody phone?’ Her gaze flits back to her daughter: Betsey’s eyes still freakishly flickering; her body stiff – like the corpse of a cat Frankie found in the garden one frosty morning. She can’t look away.

  The doctor turns his phone towards her. ‘I’m timing Betsey’s seizure, Mrs Curtis. It’s only been two minutes, fifty-two seconds, as you can see.’

  She sees the seconds flying: two minutes fifty-three, two minutes fifty-four, two minutes fifty-five.

  ‘It hasn’t yet been five minutes. A short-lived seizure is upsetting but safe. If it reaches five minutes, we’ll give her medication.’ He remains eerily calm. ‘But we do need you to go, Mrs Curtis. You’re not meant to turn up unscheduled like this . . .’

  ‘But she needs me.’ She struggles to remain controlled. And then something breaks inside her. If I leave, she will die. She is
absolutely certain of it. She cannot risk stepping away because if she does, who knows what will happen? She was meek and obliging and trusted Betsey would get better on their watch and this happened? She needs to remain here, to be vigilant, because when she isn’t terrible things occur.

  ‘I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving her.’ She makes her legs heavy and tense; braces herself against Zoe, who is not just plump but surprisingly strong, she realises as the nurse tries to shift her, her muscles honed by years of handling difficult patients or rolling them onto beds.

  ‘Five minutes,’ Dr Smith notes to the second nurse, who picks up a syringe and moves towards Bets, then prises open her jaw and squirts the contents of the syringe into her cheek. And Jess wants to cry, out of relief that something is being done, and outrage that they can all touch Betsey while she is being forced away.

  There’s a rush of footsteps and Zoe drops her arm. Jess senses the shift in the atmosphere. Someone more senior has arrived.

  Neil Cockerill is bearing down on her, his height imposing and his gaze severe.

  ‘Mrs Curtis.’ The look he gives her before turning to her baby is filled with contempt. She understands now why Liz might find him intimidating. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  LIZ

  Tuesday 23 January, 12.45 p.m.

  Seventeen

  ‘Your crackpot friend’s been in.’

  Neil is fizzing with bad temper as he checks some records on the computer. I am exhausted. Preoccupied by my mother’s behaviour, for a moment I think he’s talking about her.

  ‘Do you mean Mrs Curtis? Jess?’

  ‘Hmm?’ He looks up, irritated. ‘Betsey’s mother? She’s your friend, isn’t she?’ He hammers away at the keyboard. ‘I had to call security. She turned up unannounced – just came onto the ward – and her daughter was fitting at the time.’

  ‘Is she OK now?’ My heart clutches like a fist. Fitting is a risk with any head injury and the longer and more numerous the seizures, the greater the potential for damage.

  ‘It went on longer than I would have wanted,’ he says, with characteristic understatement. ‘The midazolam didn’t work so Rupert tried lorazepam and then the phenytoin. She’d been going nearly twenty minutes.’ He finishes typing. He is absolutely furious. ‘The point is, quite apart from the mother contravening everything we’d agreed with her, having her waltz in like that was hugely distracting. Can you imagine if we’d had to intubate?’