In Too Deep

by Samantha Hayes

  Hannah is lying how I left her, her breathing shallow and urgent. She’s pale and clammy and in agony. It’s not until I hear the wail of a siren in the distance and finally spot several paramedics running down the hill to where we are, grappling with their equipment as they approach, that I actually take a moment to allow the truth into my mind.

  Someone did this to Hannah. Someone did this to my daughter.

  As soon as they spot her, as soon as they see the shroud of dark red around her, the paramedics move faster. Within seconds they are on the ground, assessing her, cutting off her pyjamas, asking me questions about her health and condition.

  Portable monitors are unpacked and attached, beeping out results and readings that I don’t understand. A woman gets a line in the back of her hand, telling me she’s giving her pain relief to make her more comfortable.

  I nod furiously. ‘Do whatever you need,’ I say, trusting these strangers with my daughter’s life.

  Backup soon arrives with two more paramedics and a stretcher to get her to the waiting ambulance. The bleeding has thankfully slowed since they arrived, and I’m right beside my girl, holding her hand as they strap her on, carrying her up the steep slope.

  ‘You’re going to be fine, love,’ I tell her through teary eyes. She’s semi-conscious, and once or twice her head lolls my way. I’m not sure if it’s because she hears my voice or because she’s being bumped around as they get her up the steep hill.

  What would Rick say? I think shamefully, following on. I’m her mother. I’m supposed to be looking after her. I let her down. Looking at her in this pitiful state makes me want to weep, but it also makes me vow that nothing bad will ever happen to her again.

  I promise you, Rick . . .

  The ambulance doors are open and they slide her inside, swiftly doing their jobs with efficiency and confidence. Thank God they’re here. Thank God I’m not dealing with this alone.

  ‘Are you coming along too, Mum?’ one of the men asks. He has kind eyes and his warm look beckons me inside the ambulance.

  ‘Yes, yes, thank you.’ I climb in, sitting down on a small seat next to Hannah. She’s moaning and groaning, twisting in pain on the narrow bed. The only female paramedic in the crew sits beside her, making checks, constantly assessing her state.

  As I buckle myself in, as I feel the vehicle move, the woman leans across and speaks quietly. ‘She’ll need to go straight into surgery,’ she tells me. ‘All the right people are being alerted. She’ll be in good hands.’ She takes mine, giving them a squeeze.

  I look at her. She knows nothing about me or my family or what’s happened to us over the years, yet she’s as kind and caring as anyone could ever be to another human being.

  ‘I understand,’ I say, far too rationally for how I’m actually feeling. My heart is out of control and my limbs won’t stop shaking. I’m freezing and sweating all at once, especially when I see more blood soaking through the blanket covering Hannah. Then I remember I don’t even have my bag or phone.

  ‘How much can she lose . . . ?’

  ‘We have units on standby already,’ the woman tells me. ‘We’ll sort her out, don’t you worry.’ She gives a concerned smile, peering forwards through the front window, a little frown forming as she glances at her watch. ‘Fast as you can, guys,’ she says, trying to sound cheery.

  The journey seems interminable, even though the siren is on, parting the traffic in waves ahead of us, and eventually we arrive at the hospital. I’m ushered out of the ambulance as more medical staff meet us.

  The lead paramedic from our team calmly recounts Hannah’s condition to several nurses who have come out to help. Within seconds, they’re wheeling her away on a trolley, through the wide glass sliding doors of the hospital’s emergency entrance and down a short corridor to a bay ready and waiting for her.

  I try to keep close, but it’s tricky with so many people attending her. Questions are fired around by the doctor in charge – some at me, some at the recovery team – and I do my best to answer clearly, including giving them my mobile number for the file.

  No, she’s not on any medication . . . She’s allergic to penicillin . . . She’s never been in hospital before apart from a broken wrist . . . She’s eighteen and a student . . .

  My mind whips back and forth across Hannah’s short life, picking out relevant information that will help them give her the best possible treatment and outcome. My fingers are in my mouth, me tearing at my nails, my mind on fire as all the horrific possibilities scream through me.

  A doctor takes me aside. Her face is solemn, yet there’s something about her that gives me confidence.

  ‘Your daughter is going to need an operation. It could be life-threatening otherwise.’

  And she goes on to describe in detail the procedure I don’t want to hear. ‘We’ll take good care of her. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Will you be doing the operation?’ I ask, not daring to mention the outcome.

  The doctor nods. ‘I’m going to theatre now to prepare. I’ll make certain you get news as soon as there is any. You can have a moment with her before they bring her down.’

  I’m about to tell her I don’t have my phone but she strides off before I have a chance. Instead, I push back through the cubicle curtain to Hannah. There are only a couple of nurses with her now. One of them adjusts the line going into the back of her hand, while the other makes notes on a chart. She seems much more comfortable.

  ‘How are you feeling, love?’

  Her head turns to the side. I see in her eyes that she’s drugged up on painkillers.

  ‘It hurts,’ she whispers.

  ‘Where, honey?’

  ‘Everywhere.’ She shudders, screwing up her eyes.

  ‘Do you know what happened? I’d gone to get the car, but it broke down and then I couldn’t find you.’

  Hannah’s head turns the opposite way.

  ‘Think, love. It’s important.’

  The nurses are making noises about going to theatre, about the porters coming to take her.

  ‘Was it an accident? Did you fall?’ I pray she remembers.

  Hannah shrugs loosely, then slowly shakes her head. Tears collect in her eyes.

  ‘Did someone do this to you? Who hurt you?’

  She shrugs again.

  ‘You need to tell me who it was, Han. It’s really important.’

  The nurse whips back the curtain as the porters arrive, unlocking the brakes on her bed.

  ‘There’s a place for you to wait while she’s in theatre, Mrs Forrester,’ one of them says, ushering me away. ‘You can get a hot drink.’

  ‘Who, Hannah, who was it? Please, tell me,’ I say, hurrying along beside her, ignoring the nurse.

  Hannah’s gaze tracks mine as we go down the corridor. I chase after her, reaching out to touch her hand, each of us clinging on by our fingertips. The porters push her bed up to the lift doors, pressing the button and waiting. Hannah’s lips part as though she’s trying to speak, but can’t. There’s something dark and sad inside her – something hopeless and lost.

  ‘Hannah, it’s important. I can help you . . .’

  She looks right at me, and her mouth takes on the shape of a word that doesn’t quite make it out. Instead she turns away, the tears in her eyes glistening in the harsh light overhead. She screws up her face as if she’s searching for the right way to say it. As if remembering all over again is too painful to bear.

  Then, as the lift pings and the doors slide open, she turns back to face me. Her expression has changed to one of bitterness stitched up with fear. She judders in a deep breath.

  ‘It was Tom’s dad,’ she says, half closing her eyes, making me think she’s not sure. ‘Tom’s dad did it . . .’

  ‘Oh, love,’ I say, realising how drugged up she is. And then she’s trundled into the lift, the doors wheezing closed, cutting me off from my daughter.

  Gina

  The relatives’ waiting room is empty and consists of a gur
gling coffee machine, a dying pot plant and several plastic armchairs. I can’t face the emptiness of it, not with what Hannah said ringing through my head.

  Instead, I walk up and down the busy hospital corridors for over an hour, witnessing everything from trauma emergencies arriving, to pregnant women in labour pacing about in flapping robes, to kids proudly sporting their new plaster casts. Eventually I find myself in the main cafeteria, exhausted, tearful, feeling scared, but also grateful. Hannah is in good hands, and my mindless walking has somehow helped pass the time. I’m a little closer to seeing my daughter again.

  The canteen is buzzing with staff and visitors, and filled with the comforting smells of pie, gravy and overcooked vegetables. I queue for a cup of tea – grateful for the few coins I found in my pocket.

  I shuffle forward in the long line of staff and concerned-looking relatives, listening to their hopeful conversations, the nervous laughter, the exchanges between parents and their young children about what to have to eat. It makes me feel grounded and unusually calm, given what Hannah is currently going through.

  There’s a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Gina . . .’

  Susan is standing right next to me, with Tom hovering behind her. He has changed his clothes, looks more composed.

  ‘Susan,’ I say, not knowing what else is appropriate. She must feel really bad that this has happened at her hotel, yet I suspect she knows something. Especially given what Hannah said, though I don’t want to jump to conclusions.

  ‘We wanted to find out how she is, didn’t we, Tom?’ She turns briefly to her son, who nods solemnly, taking a step forward. ‘And to give you this.’ Susan hands me my bag.

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear about her accident,’ Tom says, almost as if he’s been instructed.

  ‘Who said it was an accident?’

  He looks pained and pulls a face. ‘I’m sorry, I just assumed . . . I heard that she was found at the bottom of the lake steps. It was natural to think she’d fallen.’

  ‘Rather than pushed.’ I hold his gaze, studying his reaction, even though the only movement on his face is a tiny jaw-twitch.

  ‘Will you be calling the police?’ Susan asks. She moves forward with me as the queue shortens.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I answer honestly. ‘I need to find out how she is first. She’s in theatre now.’ I reach the front of the line, asking if Susan and Tom want a cup of tea too.

  ‘Only if you’d like the company,’ she says. ‘Though Tom has to go and move the car, don’t you, Tom? The car park was full, so we had to leave it in a temporary spot.’

  The dented Range Rover flashes through my mind, but then I remember seeing Susan coming up the drive in an Audi once, making me wonder if what she said is actually true, that she doesn’t like driving the bigger vehicle.

  ‘It might take me a while,’ Tom says, sounding glad of his reprieve. ‘I hope you get news soon.’ He looks at me briefly before walking off with his head down, hands in pockets.

  Susan and I find a quiet table near the window. I sip my tea, but it’s still too hot.

  ‘He’s very upset,’ Susan says, as if I should feel sorry for her son.

  ‘That’s odd, considering him and Hannah have only recently met.’ The conversation we had by the lake is still on my mind, and I wonder just how much Susan is prepared to cover for her family.

  ‘Tom takes things like that hard,’ she says. ‘He’s very sensitive.’

  I swear she says something else under her breath, but she brings her cup to her lips so I don’t catch it. We both stare out of the window, which faces out on to a small lawned area. Several patients are sitting outside with visitors, a couple in wheelchairs, some with drip stands beside them and plastic tubes snaking their way beneath pyjamas and gowns. A man and a woman are smoking, even though the sign above them tells them not to.

  ‘You’d think they’d stop, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Susan turns.

  ‘Those two out there. Look at them smoking. They’re clearly ill, and he only has one leg.’ A thick bandage crowns the man’s stump. With Hannah in an operating theatre, my son dead, my husband missing, I feel pious enough to comment.

  ‘It’s not really for us to judge, is it?’ Susan says harshly. ‘I mean, we don’t know their stories, what brought them to hospital, what made them start smoking in the first place.’

  ‘They must know it’s bad for them.’ I can’t help the tremor in my voice. I was only trying to fill an awkward moment, and now it feels ten times worse. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.’ I sip my tea to stop myself saying more, but I burn my mouth.

  ‘Sometimes people don’t know what’s bad for them, Gina.’

  Tension crackles between us as Susan leans closer.

  ‘Sometimes people go through life blindly, hoping and praying that they’re doing the right thing, clinging on to what they believe is best . . .’ she looks out of the window again, before glaring back at me, ‘given the information they had.’

  Each word is clipped and precise.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘The thing is,’ she goes on, ‘if you don’t know something’s bad for you, if you don’t know that it’s doing you harm, then how can you help yourself?’ Her voice is getting louder.

  ‘But those smokers do know it’s bad for them—’

  ‘But what if they didn’t?’ She bangs her hand flat on the table. ‘What if they thought it was fine to smoke twenty a day? What if they even believed it was doing them good?’

  Susan is shaking, frowning, the veins in her neck standing out. She half stands with the heels of her hands leaning on the edge of the table. I sink backwards in my chair.

  ‘Then they’d keep at it, wouldn’t they, Gina? Day in, day out, they’d keep chuffing on those fucking fags, wondering why they weren’t feeling on top of the world. Wondering why they were getting sicker and sicker.’

  Spit collects at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes have turned black. The people at a nearby table are staring at us. I recoil even more.

  ‘And how long do you think they’d keep smoking before they realised it was a pack of lies?’ She glares at me, not letting up. ‘How long?’ she shouts.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. Look, Susan, I really didn’t mean to upset you . . .’ I trail off. Her eyes have glazed over. For a moment I wonder if she’s been trying to quit smoking herself and is suffering from withdrawal. But no, it’s way more than that.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and finish your tea?’ I suggest, and it seems I hit a moment of lucidity because she does just that.

  Susan brings her cup to her mouth, her hands shaking, her jittery eyes latched on to mine.

  ‘But the cruellest lies of all,’ she says, quietly now, ‘are the ones we tell ourselves.’ She puts her cup down, sloshing tea into the saucer.

  ‘You’re not talking about smoking any more, are you?’ I say, but then I hear my phone ringing in my bag so I pull it out, answering with shaking hands. The surgeon was true to her word, updating me now that Hannah is in recovery.

  As I listen, as I take in the enormity of what she’s saying, explaining everything to me precisely and calmly, I try to understand what Susan meant. For a few moments, I get a glimpse of it, almost as if we’re the same person, heading in the same direction, driven by the same things.

  Then I see her eyes flick over my shoulder. Tom is back again.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ I say. ‘Thank you for everything. I’ll be up to the ward shortly.’

  I’m shaking as I tuck my phone back into my bag, my heart thumping from relief and adrenalin, though also great sadness. Tom sits down beside his mother.

  ‘That was the surgeon.’ Everything seems unreal, as though it’s not happening to me.

  ‘How is Hannah?’ Susan asks.

  ‘She’s going to be fine,’ I say with so much relief that both tears and laughter well up. ‘She’s in recovery now.’

  ‘T
hat’s such good news,’ Susan says with all her usual warmth. It makes me wonder if I imagined how she just acted.

  ‘It is,’ I say, closing my eyes briefly. ‘But there was nothing they could do for the baby.’

  Gina

  Hannah looks pale. Almost dead. The nurse reads through the notes that came up from recovery with her, then checks her blood pressure, jotting the results down in her file. I sit beside her, stroking her limp hand. She’s semi-awake, in and out of a sleep that is so deep, I don’t think she knows where she is or what’s happened.

  ‘I need to go . . .’ she says, slurring her nonsense words. Her head rocks from one side to the other, then she faces me with a frown on her face. ‘The essay isn’t finished . . .’

  ‘Just rest, love,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t worry about any essay. You had a fall, but you’re going to be fine.’

  How do I tell her that she’s lost her baby? Part of me wonders if she even knew she was pregnant, but the bigger part hates myself for not knowing until I peeled apart her pyjamas down by the lake. I’m her mother. I should have been there for her.

  ‘Try not to talk,’ I say as she mumbles something incomprehensible. Then her other hand goes down to her tummy – the place where her baby was safe until an hour ago. She rubs it gently. Round and round with the flat of her hand over the top of the thin white sheet.

  I drop my head down, resting it on the side of her bed.

  Five months was the best estimation, the doctor said. Twenty weeks. A boy. Not quite at the point he’d have survived, even if they’d been able to operate earlier. She’d been in the first stages of labour for quite a while, the doctor confirmed. A Caesarean delivery had become necessary after the placenta began to detach.

  ‘The placental abruption was caused by her fall,’ the surgeon said. It was hard to take in. Severe blood loss, infection, a life-threatening risk to Hannah were all mentioned. I was holding out for the words She’s going to be OK.

  I look at my daughter’s beautiful face and wonder what Rick would think if he knew. Part of me is relieved he’s not here to witness this, to see the landslide of my bad parenting. Yet I’ve never needed him more. We’d somehow get through this together.