The Scarlet Sisters

by Helen Batten

  Nor was there any sign of brain damage.

  ‘She has an 80 per cent chance of making it,’ the paediatrician said.

  ‘What do you mean “making it”?’ I asked. ‘Just surviving, or growing up to be a completely normal, healthy adult?’

  Deep down my absolute worst fear – a fear I could barely admit to myself – was that she was brain damaged.

  ‘There is a very good chance that your baby will leave here completely well. Of course it will be months, if not years, before we will know for certain. But the first signs are very good. However, there is always the risk of infection. Premature babies are vulnerable because their immune systems are so underdeveloped. But we are very pleased with her. Poppy really is a miracle baby.’

  And it was then that my attitude changed. Now that there was a fighting chance, I was determined my miracle baby would survive, and I was prepared to go to any lengths to make it happen.

  I sent Mum off to tell them I would have that blood transfusion after all.

  I remember the first time I saw Poppy. I mean, really saw her.

  I’d had a row with Moira the midwife. The blood transfusion was taking hours. I was all wired up and unable to move as the blood slowly trickled down the tubes. In one of the beds opposite, I had watched as a new mummy was wheeled in. I could see through the curtains as she breastfed her baby for the first time.

  I felt desperate. I rang my bell.

  Moira marched in. ‘You rang?’

  ‘I need to go and express some milk.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere. I can’t disconnect you, not until this transfusion is finished.’

  ‘And when is that?’

  ‘Let’s see – another six hours, at least.’

  ‘I can’t wait six hours! I’ve got to go and feed my baby.’

  ‘She’s not going to starve, you know. They’ve got plenty of milk in the neonatal unit. You can go when this is finished, in the morning. Why don’t you just go back to sleep?’

  ‘Look, my baby is fighting for her life in there. You know that. You know this is the only thing I can do for her right now. I’m going, even if I have to unplug this stuff myself.’

  She stared at me over the top of her glasses, then shook her head and sighed. ‘OK, but not until this bag is finished.’

  About twenty minutes later she came back in. ‘You’ll have to go by yourself. I can’t leave the ward.’

  ‘Fine, I don’t care.’

  ‘No, I can see that.’

  Silently she disconnected me and watched as I struggled out of bed.

  I walked slowly along the hospital corridors pushing my lines, the only sound my drips clanging. I didn’t care.

  I walked into the ward. It was peaceful. Three o’clock in the morning, no visitors, no nurses, and for once the alarms were silent. I was on my own with four tiny babies and the gentle bleeping of their monitors. The lights were turned low. I shuffled to her incubator.

  The most amazing sight greeted me. There she was with no oxygen mask on, breathing by herself. The joy! No one had told me they were going to take her off the ventilator. She looked so strong – her eyes were open, and she was waving her arms and legs in the air. It was the first time I had ever seen her face properly, without all those horrible wires. And she was the image of her daddy – lots of curls, and my husband’s frown. For the first time I could see she was really my very own baby, our baby.

  ‘My baby, my very own baby.’ The words were going round and round my head.

  She looked at me. I held her hand and the world stopped moving. She held on to my finger with a fierce grip, stared straight into my soul and waved her arms at me. At that moment there was no one else in the world but her and me. Tears poured down my face. Until that moment I had been walking in a dream, but now I was awake. The extraordinary miracle that my husband and I had made: a baby. The joy of that moment; I guess that’s what they mean by bonding. But it was also more than that: for this was the first time that she looked like a real baby – incredibly small, but strong, alive, very much with us.

  For the first time I thought she might actually make it. I took a leap into the unknown and dared to hope.

  Parvati was right. It was a rollercoaster ride. Some of it was really bad but there were some amazing bits too.

  It was Poppy’s smell more than anything. I wanted to eat her. I poked my nose into her incubator and inhaled the smell of the most visceral basic love. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a bottle of newborn baby perfume? Surely it is the smell of heaven and the angels? And it was lovely because, despite her traumatic arrival, underneath all the wires and machinery, that smell told me more than anything else that there was a real baby in there. My baby.

  And she was cute. Well, she seemed so to me. The nurses said so too. We laughed at her huge frown and Churchillian features – Parvati called her ‘the lanky chick’ because of her unfeasibly long legs, which were rather curious considering how vertically challenged her daddy was.

  As Poppy began to grow and thrive, the nurses were anxious that we should start doing things for her. ‘It’s time you changed a nappy,’ they said to me. Back then I didn’t know one end of a baby from the other, and I was terrified of doing anything that might harm Poppy. What if I dislodged one of the wires?

  While I hesitated, my husband leapt in. ‘I’ll do it … what do I do?’

  The nurses laughed. They loved him, of course.

  With his usual deftness and confidence he got stuck in. I watched and marvelled and felt hopelessly inadequate.

  The most amazing thing was hearing Poppy’s voice for the first time. I hadn’t really thought about it, but of course the ventilator had stopped her from crying. The first time I changed her nappy, she gave a yelp and started to scream. I jumped. Her little cry sounded a bit hoarse, but it was a proper baby cry. I said a silent prayer of thanks for hearing her.

  Of course once she was able to cry we got a much better idea of her personality. Poppy didn’t grizzle for nothing: she was quite content to look around the room and wave her legs in the air, but woe betide anyone who tried to bath her, or put her flat on her back. She let us know her disgust in no uncertain terms. I was proud of my Poppy. My cool, lanky chick. Of course I was her mum, but here was a baby I could do business with.

  Like all the babies in the unit she wore a dinky woollen bonnet tied under her chin to keep her warm, and she had an old-fashioned crocheted blanket in bright colours. In the beginning they didn’t put her in a sleep suit, so that they could get to her quickly in an emergency. It meant we could stroke her skin. It was pink and warm and the softest thing in the world. Her little fingernails were tiny but growing.

  There’s a phrase about ‘seeing heaven in a grain of sand’. I held Poppy’s tiny hands and marvelled at the miracle of creation.

  When the nurses started to dress Poppy in proper sleep suits, I missed touching her skin, but it was another sign that she was getting closer to the start of normal baby life. I allowed myself to daydream about the outfits I would buy. Mum found an obscure baby shop which sold premature-baby clothes and sent a big parcel. Parvati and I discussed what colours suited her best. There was a light green and white striped suit that looked particularly fetching.

  One day I looked around and realised that the other babies had accumulated lots of toys, photos, pictures drawn by siblings, even a few plastic flowers. To me their incubators looked a little like shrines covered in votive offerings – sort of Roman Catholic, ghoulish. Poppy’s space looked neat and, most importantly, hygienic. However, maybe she just looked unloved?

  My sister-in-law had been struck down with terrible ’flu and had kept away; instead, she had sent a fluffy bunny. At first I had kept the bunny to myself: what microscopic nasties were lurking in its fur? Could stuffed bunnies catch ’flu too?

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said my husband. So, one afternoon I slipped the bunny into Poppy’s incubator. Then Nanna sent a letter. Typically, she’d enclosed a l
arge, dramatic, fabric poppy. I wound it around the top of Poppy’s incubator. I was pleased with the effect. Not eclipsing the precious occupant within but, nevertheless, showing that this was her home, and she was loved.

  It was my husband who held her first. I have the photograph. He’s wearing an enormous grin and all you can see is a bundle wrapped in a blanket with a whole load of tubes sticking out. After about ten nerve-racking minutes with my eyes glued to the monitors – I jumped every time he moved – it was my turn.

  I knew I should do it but I was very nervous. What if she died in my arms? I sat in the chair and they passed her over slowly and carefully. She was cradled in my arms, swaddled tightly.

  ‘I’ll leave you for a few minutes,’ said the nurse and, before I could stop her, she walked off.

  The minutes ticked by. Poppy’s oxygen levels dropped slightly, the alarm started to sound, but there was no one around.

  ‘Do you think you should get someone?’ I asked my husband.

  ‘No, it’s OK.’

  ‘Please, just get someone.’

  He came back with the nurse, who didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned – she increased Poppy’s oxygen and everything settled down again. But that was it – I wanted them to put her back.

  Over the next few days Poppy came out of her ‘box’ every afternoon. And I got a little more confident each time. When the alarms went off, I learnt to stay calm, whisper in her ear and she stabilised.

  One afternoon, I was the only parent around and all the babies were having a good day. The atmosphere was relaxed, the spring sunshine streaming in through the windows.

  ‘Now’s a good time to do some cuddling. What do you think?’ asked the nurse.

  ‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ I said, and I actually meant it this time.

  I settled into a chair and she opened Poppy’s incubator. Before I knew what was going on, she had got Poppy out, undressed her, undone my buttons, slipped her down my shirt and buttoned it all up again. She then put a blanket over the two of us so we were cosy.

  ‘I almost feel broody looking at Helen there, like that.’ The nurses laughed.

  It felt amazing – this warm, cuddly, wriggly thing down my shirt, with the smell of new baby wafting past my nose. I supported her little bottom with one hand and gently stroked her back with the other. I couldn’t stop kissing the top of her tufty head. The radio was playing gently in the background and I sang along to the tunes. I felt the most complete sense of peace.

  When things get really bad, I think back to that moment. Just at that moment I was truly happy.

  Three weeks later we got the phone call we had always dreaded. It was 10.30 p.m. and I had been home for a week.

  We were in the bedroom getting ready for bed. The phone rang and my heart fell to the pit of my stomach. I think at that moment we both knew.

  ‘We just thought we should tell you that we’ve had to put Poppy back on the ventilator. She’s OK but she needs a bit of extra help breathing. You don’t need to come in – we just didn’t want you to get a shock in the morning.’

  ‘I think we’ll come in anyway,’ my husband said.

  I felt sick. I pulled my clothes back on. Most of me was working on autopilot, but there was also a bit of my head working very fast and the question going round it was, ‘Are you going to be up to this?’

  I don’t remember the drive to the hospital – what I do remember is the horror when we got there. Poppy was in a terrible state. She looked grey and shrunken and she was writhing in agony, a real look of terror in her eyes; she was trying to pull out her tubes.

  ‘She’s going to kill herself,’ I thought. This tiny baby was so strong, it took all the nurses just to hold her down. No other baby was getting any attention that night.

  A young Asian doctor was in charge. His English was not good but we didn’t need a translator to feel his panic. The nurses were shouting at him to do something as Poppy’s oxygen levels crashed and the chorus of alarms deafened the room.

  My husband faced the doctor. ‘You obviously haven’t got a clue what you are doing. So you are going to get on that phone and find someone who does. I’m not suggesting, I’m telling you. I expect a consultant to arrive within the next fifteen minutes, because I am not going to stand here and watch while my daughter loses her life because you don’t know what you are doing.’

  And that is exactly what he did.

  I was in the corridor in time to glimpse the consultant arriving. Dragged all the way from another hospital in the early hours of the morning, he was grim-faced.

  There was a look of relief from everyone as he marched into the ward. I stayed outside, peeping through the window as he rolled up his sleeves and got down to business, hands straight in the incubator twiddling the dials of Poppy’s machines, giving injections and barking commands that sent the nurses scuttling to and fro.

  I retreated to the visitors’ room and lay down on the sofa listening to the alarms from Poppy’s monitors. They were getting less frequent, and then I realised they had stopped altogether.

  ‘She’s either dead or she’s alive,’ I said to myself.

  My husband walked into the room. ‘It’s OK. They’ve stabilised her,’ he said. ‘And he’s pretty sure it’s meningitis.’

  Then we were sitting side by side, and my husband held my hand as an exhausted consultant faced us.

  ‘Thank you. You saved our daughter’s life,’ my husband said.

  He looked traumatised and shook his head. ‘Just listen to what I’ve got to say first. I’ve had a call from the lab. It’s definitely meningitis.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ I cried. He stared at me. ‘Well, surely if you know what’s causing it, then you can give her the right antibiotics?’ I said.

  ‘Not at all. Meningitis is just a word we use to describe an infection in the brain. That infection can be caused by any number of bacteria and until we know which one, we won’t know the right antibiotic to use. We’ve put her on a general antibiotic to stop her getting any worse, but we won’t know if we can even treat it until we’ve identified it. Meanwhile, it’s already been rampaging around doing damage for hours. Every time she struggled she was having a fit. How many times did she do that? Once? Twice?’

  ‘Dozens of times,’ my husband said grimly.

  ‘Exactly. And every time she had a fit, another bit of her brain was damaged.’

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘The only way I saved her life tonight was injecting her with Rohypnol. You’ve not heard of it? Perhaps its other name, “the date rape drug”, will mean more to you. She was fitting so badly we had to paralyse her. She’s not stabilised, she’s paralysed.’

  At that moment I couldn’t take on board the full implication of what we had just been told. All I could think was at least Poppy was out of immediate danger.

  We were shown to a room on the floor above, where you go to sleep if your baby is either really ill, or dead. We didn’t even take our clothes off but fell into a fitful sleep holding each other close. Whatever the morning held, we were still a family. We had survived the night.

  I had vivid dreams in which Poppy died, over and over again. I can still remember a couple of them – we were on a fairground ride, Poppy’s booth shot off and I had to watch, helpless, as she was crushed to death. In another I drove off a cliff – I managed to swim to safety, but had to watch, clinging to a rock, as Poppy drowned. It was as if my mind was trying out every different scenario and, no matter which way I played it, the end was always the same – Poppy died. But those fevered nightmares must have served a purpose, because I woke up feeling stronger. Grim, but determined to face whatever the day held in store.

  In the morning Poppy was still alive, as I knew she would be. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, although I realised this was probably just the drugs. I slipped out to phone Mum. It was a beautiful May morning, the sun coming up in a clear blue sky.

  I sat on the pavement outside the ho
spital. Every so often an excited dad would come out to phone grandparents, or a car would come tearing in and an enormous lady would struggle out, helped by a partner clutching an overnight bag.

  I saw the irony, but I couldn’t feel it.

  ‘Hello. How is our darling Poppy today?’

  I remembered: the last time I spoke to Mum it had all been good news.

  ‘Mum, she’s not very well. She’s got meningitis.’

  ‘Oh.’ I heard her intake of breath.

  Mum had just started getting excited about Poppy. She’d started talking about the future. We’d had a few of those little conversations that mothers and daughters have when you have a new baby.

  Without thinking I said, ‘Mum, please can you come up? I think I’m going to need you.’

  ‘Of course. I was just thinking how I might get up there. Don’t worry, I’ll find a way.’

  Five minutes later she rang me back. ‘Uncle Nigel is going to bring me. Don’t worry, I’ll find you wherever you are. Give Poppy a kiss from me.’

  No matter how old you get, sometimes you do just need your mum.

  Back up in the ward, the doctors were gathering for the morning round. The paediatrician, Dr Martin, had already managed to speak to my husband.

  ‘I’ve been given a brief summary of what happened last night. Look, I’d like you and Helen to be there for the morning meeting. I think it’s important you hear what we’ve got to say. Is Helen going to be OK? I hear she was a bit shaky in the night.’

  ‘Helen? Oh, don’t worry about her. She’ll be fine. She’s tougher than she looks. Nails.’

  In the years that followed those words were to come back and haunt me. But actually I had rallied and I was now prowling around the unit feeling angry and dangerous.

  A group of doctors of all levels were gathered around Poppy’s incubator. It seemed a bit disrespectful to be standing having a conversation in front of her when she was lying there busily fighting for her life. Obviously a premature baby can’t understand what we say – or can they? My instincts told me it was wrong.