by Casey Watson
But now Roman was a little quieter I could hear something else – a new noise. It was the sound of retching and it was coming from the bathroom. I crossed the landing in two strides. The door was partly open and as soon as I reached it, it was obvious what was happening, as I could immediately see a pair of feet, encased in fluorescent yellow socks. I pushed the door open further to see Emma kneeling over the toilet bowl, heaving, though nothing much seemed to be coming out.
‘Emma?’ I asked, my previous concern for Roman being supplanted by a rush of sympathy for her instead. ‘Emma, love,’ I said again. ‘Are you all right?’
Her response was to let out a long anguished groan, which turned almost immediately into a coughing fit. And then into a flood of shoulder-shuddering tears. Since I couldn’t look after both of them, I took an executive decision, grabbing a couple of big bath towels off the rail and throwing them in the bath, then laying a startled Roman unceremoniously onto them. I then turned my attention to Emma, whose tears had been truncated by another bout of retching, even though all she was bringing up was bile. I pulled her hair from her neck, feeling the clamminess of her pale skin. ‘Love,’ I said, confused, there having been no inkling she was feeling queasy when I left her, ‘when did this start? Have you been feeling sick for long?’
She reached for some loo roll, then shook her head miserably. And then, as I watched, it seemed to crumple in on itself all over again. ‘Oh Casey,’ she wailed. ‘I took a load of aspirins …’
‘Aspirins?’
She nodded wretchedly. ‘I took an overdose. I just wanted to … I just couldn’t … but now I don’t, and so I tried to …’ She trailed off then, seemingly incapable of continuing, her eyes swimming. ‘Oh, God, Casey!’ she said next. ‘Am I going to die?’
I called an ambulance and Mike, in that order. Emma was hazy about how many pills she’d taken, so though she thought she’d sicked up quite a lot (she’d opted for the traditional salt-water trick) there was no knowing how many had already been absorbed once she’d done that, and as one of the main ‘musts’ I remembered from training was that I must never take any chances, I wasn’t about to try and make a judgement about it either. Instead I got a plastic bowl and then relocated from her station by the toilet bowl to a chair at the kitchen table so that I could keep an eye on her while I made up Roman’s bottle.
Roman, by now exhausted, had fallen asleep in the bath, so that’s where I’d left him while I helped Emma downstairs. I knew he’d wake again soon enough and begin howling. And I needed to be ready for him – whatever happened now I knew we’d probably be headed off to hospital. I didn’t remember everything off the top of my head, but one thing that had stuck when it came to aspirin overdoses was that, even if the patient appeared to have got most of it out of their system, there still needed to be a period of medical observation. Which, given the time, probably meant a night in hospital.
Mike was back first. ‘Never rains in this house, does it?’ he quipped wryly as I shuffled him straight upstairs to change out of his work clothes and retrieve the baby. I knew I’d also need to get some night things and toiletries together for Emma, but I could do that once Mike was back down and feeding Roman. In the meantime, or so the remnants of my first-aid course seemed to be telling me, the important thing was to keep Emma upright and conscious. Though this was clearly no time for light-hearted small talk. Nor did she seem to want it to be.
‘I can’t believe I did it, honest I can’t,’ she said, as I bustled round getting teats from the steriliser while trying at the same time to keep an eye on how she was looking. I was pleased to see that she had a slightly better colour now she was up off the floor, though her skin still looked damp. She was crying still, but not convulsively now – just a steady stream of miserable tears, which she mopped intermittently with sheets of kitchen roll.
‘That makes two of us,’ I said, just stopping short of asking her any of the questions that were teeming in my head. Had she planned to do this? Had she just been waiting for her opportunity? Because chief among the answers I was after was where precisely she’d got all the aspirins. We never used them. In keeping with most people with youngsters in the house, we had ditched them when it came out that, albeit in rare cases, giving them to children under twelve could be fatal.
Which meant Emma had either had them all along or had been secretly stockpiling them with just this eventuality in mind. It was a depressing thought – potentially a whole other can of worms – and it made me more angry at her mother than ever. I knew alcoholism was a disease and needed to be treated accordingly, but I couldn’t help thinking how much I’d like to see Emma’s ‘sick’ mother witness what her daughter had just tried to do.
But it seemed I was way off beam. Way off.
‘I just wanted to show him …’ she continued. ‘Just punish him. Just make him realise …’ her voice was rising now. ‘And all I’ve done is –’ she broke down again, but she didn’t need to finish. I knew what she was thinking about. About her child.
But him? She had said him. ‘What, you mean Tarim?’ I asked her.
Her voice hardened now. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I mean Taz! The one fucking person I thought I’d could fucking rely on! But, oh, what a surprise – I fucking can’t!’
Emma grimaced then, just as I was taking all this in. ‘Oh, God!’ She grabbed the bowl. ‘I think I’m going to be sick again …’
At which point the doorbell rang, Mike appeared, and Roman recommenced his screaming. Mike was right. No rain in our house. It always poured.
I had made more visits to our local A&E than I cared to remember, so after Emma had been examined, reassured she wasn’t about to die and given some medication to counteract the acid, I steeled myself for the long stint ahead. No, she wasn’t going to die – in all probability she would need a ‘gastric lavage’ to be on the safe side, but that was that – but now we were on a road without turn-offs. The paramedics – two lovely guys, one very young, one close to retirement – were as patient and upbeat as they always were, but even through their smiles I could see them taking in an all too familiar situation. They’d seen most things, done most things and above all knew one main thing – that it would be a very long-drawn-out evening, as, once in the care of the NHS, as she was now, procedures had to be carried out and protocols followed. Still, I thought, as I climbed into the ambulance with one very disconsolate and whey-faced fourteen-year-old, at least this might be the start of some proper conversation between us.
And I was right. ‘I feel so bad, Casey,’ Emma said as we pulled up outside the ambulance entrance of A&E and the paramedic jumped down to sort out the ramp. ‘Will Mike be all right? You know – with Roman? Will he manage okay on his own?’
I gave her a smile. ‘He’ll manage fine,’ I reassured her. ‘Why on earth would you think he wouldn’t?’
She shrugged. ‘I dunno. It’s just – well, it’s not really men’s stuff, is it? Looking after babies and that.’
I didn’t know quite where to start with that one. And perhaps I shouldn’t. Get me on that one and I could have a field day. So I didn’t. It was only another one of Tarim’s ridiculous pronouncements, no doubt. ‘Mike’s an expert,’ I told Emma firmly. ‘So don’t you worry, okay?’ I leaned across and drew an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in for a hug. ‘At this moment, the important thing is to make sure you’re all right, okay.’
Which only served to make her start crying again. ‘If he just hadn’t ignored me,’ she cried into my chest. ‘I’ve messed everything up big time now, haven’t I?’
If Emma was beginning to regret the impetuosity of her actions, I was beginning to feel a chill wind of inevitability blowing with increasing force around my plastic chair in A&E. I knew exactly what would happen now, every step of the process; and as we went straight from triage to a side room to another examination to doing the blood tests (to check her blood for toxins), I also knew the next part, given that this was a suicide attempt, would
be an admission to the ward and the allocation of a kindly attentive nurse, who would gently probe Emma to see why she had done it.
In the meantime, I had left Mike with instructions to phone the crisis team at social services. The hospital would obviously be obliged to call them as well, but it was important that we make our own report, to cover ourselves legally. Then it was a case of ticking the correct boxes. After a night on the ward, with checks of her vital signs every four hours, Emma would greet the morning and a concerned team member simultaneously, and in all likelihood be immediately referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. This was not just box-ticking either. With social services in loco parentis it was vitally important that they assess her thoroughly to see how much, if any, danger Emma posed to herself. Would she need further psychiatric treatment, either as an in-patient or out-patient, or would she be considered safe to be returned to me?
But before that, I had news to impart to various people myself. When I left the hospital, at around 9 p.m., it was with the grim realisation that I would spend the next half hour on the phone to John Fulshaw, then Maggie and finally Hannah, all of whom, understandably, would be concerned.
‘So she’s being referred to CAMHS?’ asked Hannah.
‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘I think that’s the plan.’
‘Good,’ said Hannah, who had to be properly filled in, obviously. And who was currently in the middle of making an assessment of whether Emma was considered fit to be Roman’s mother.
Chapter 9
I woke up the next morning feeling guilty. Not so much about what had happened as what I had said about what had happened. I knew this incident would affect Emma’s progress report badly and as a result I had chosen my words carefully. Her ‘cry for help’ (a clichéd expression, but an accurate one in this case) had been directed not at her mother but at her absentee boyfriend – it was him she’d wanted to punish by taking that overdose of aspirins. But that wasn’t quite how I’d described it. Even though I knew differently – or, at least, I thought I did – I’d made much more of the business of Emma having been devastated by her mother’s letter, hoping that Maggie and Hannah would agree with me that it was a terrible thing to receive and might push any already fragile teen over the edge. Perhaps then they’d feel more sympathetic. And perhaps less convinced than they might be that with Tarim pulling strings – as he seemed to be doing – Roman’s future with Emma needed serious thought.
Which put me on dangerous ground. Suppose they accepted things, and let Emma keep Roman, and then her boyfriend turned out to be the father from hell? How would I feel about everything then? That wouldn’t happen, I told myself sternly. I wouldn’t let it. If he came out of prison and I had the tiniest concern, I’d share it, whatever the consequences for Emma. I just hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
I’d been told to call at ten the next morning, to establish whether Emma was going to be discharged, and was pleased and relieved to be told that she was. Yes, she’d looked rueful and reasonably calm when I’d left her the previous evening. She’d been seen by someone from social services and they were going to try and get her CAMHS appointment scheduled but, in the meantime, she was apparently good to go. Mike had taken the day off so we could go up and collect her together, and I was pleased. It wasn’t a big thing, but presenting a united front was just one of the ways we could show her our support. It also made it easier to bring Roman.
But though she cooed when she saw him I could tell she was preoccupied. Her eyes were red, too, from what I judged was recent crying. And a gentle enquiry, while Mike showed off Roman to the nurses, revealed she had been; she was still extremely upset about Tarim.
‘I hate it when he does this to me,’ she said, when I asked her how she was feeling. ‘I hate him!’ She pulled her few bits from the locker and threw them on the rumpled bed, where I’d placed her pink holdall for the purpose. ‘An’ I know why he does it, too. He’s such an S.H.I.T., Casey! He ignores me for ages almost as if he’s trying to push me away from him, just so that when he does get back in touch with me he can start giving me grief about what I’ve been up to.’
It struck me as a strange kind of logic, but she was obviously on a roll now. I’d barely opened my mouth to answer when she started up again. ‘I know what his game is. He’ll ring – in the end he will – and then it’ll be all “Where’ve you been going? Who’ve you been seeing?” and when I swear blind I’ve been nowhere it’ll be all “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet. It’s not like I’d know, is it? Stuck in here rotting.” He never believes me, Casey. Never.’
I folded Emma’s crumpled pyjama bottoms and added them to the bag. What I wanted to say to her – or, more specifically, have her point out to him – was well, whose fault was that, matey? But that wouldn’t be helpful. So instead I said, ‘Come on, now. That’s just silly, love. You should tell him that if he were to use some of his money actually phoning you, then he would know where you were, wouldn’t he?’, but as soon as I said it I realised I was actually condoning his ridiculous reasoning – more or less telling Emma that staying in and waiting for his phone calls was the answer when, actually, the reverse was true!
I zipped up the bag and rethought what I didn’t say originally. ‘Love,’ I said, ‘I know it can’t be nice for Tarim being stuck in prison, but you didn’t put him in there, did you? And he really has no business thinking the worst, or any excuse for punishing you – not that you deserve to be punished because you’ve done nothing wrong – by purposely ignoring your calls and letters.’ I looked over to where Mike and Roman seemed to be completely derailing the smooth running of the ward – there were eight or nine nurses clustered around them now.
‘Emma,’ I said, ‘Tarim needs to learn to trust you. You are doing nothing wrong, and if he loves you like you say he does, he’ll want you to have a life while you’re waiting for his release. I know you’ve got Roman to think about but that doesn’t mean you should be sitting at home every day and night; that’s no good for anyone, least of all a teenage girl. He’s going to have to learn to trust you, and you need to learn not to be so reliant on his texts and calls. That’s half the problem; he knows that’s exactly what you are doing, so he has you where he wants you. But is that what you really want for yourself? You need friends, Emma. Everyone needs friends. He might mean everything to you, but he isn’t the be all and end all, and nor should he be. And he needs to know that – you’ve got to stand up to him, be a bit more independent.’
There was a sullen silence, which I took to mean she was digesting my words, albeit reluctantly. I ploughed on. ‘What about that young girl you lived with when you had Roman? Are you in touch with her at all? Why don’t you get back in touch with her again? You must be missing her.’
Emma looked at me so intently that I thought she was going to kick off, to berate me for telling her what to do, who to see, and for ‘dissing’ her precious Tarim. But she didn’t. She thrust her arms into the sleeves of her jacket and narrowed her eyes. ‘Kemma?’ she said, laughing entirely without humour. ‘You think I want to speak to her again after she and her mum threw me out? Do me a favour! She’s no friend of mine any more.’
‘Ah, I see …’ I started saying, but she obviously hadn’t finished. ‘You know what?’ she said then. ‘You’re right, actually, Casey. Tarim really thinks I’m some kind of numpty, doesn’t he? Sat at home, bringing the kid up, while he does nothing. Well, I’m not going to be,’ she sniffed. ‘Not any more!’
And, with that, she snatched up the holdall and began heading off out of the ward, leaving a bemused Mike and Roman and me following in her wake, grabbing the CAMHS appointment letter from the staff nurse as we went.
By the time we got home, Emma seemed in a much less pugilistic mood and I was pleased to see that Roman finally seemed to be clawing back most of her attention once again. And with everything calm, Mike decided to head into work for the afternoon after all. ‘No sense in using up a half day’s holiday unnecessarily,’ he said,
‘since I’m no longer required to hold the baby.’
I kissed his cheek and said we’d see him later. No sense in jumping in and telling him that what I had in mind involved exactly that, well, sort of. Not till he’d had his tea, at any rate.
‘So, I was thinking,’ I was saying to Maggie Cunliffe, not twenty minutes later, ‘I know the plan was that we weren’t going to make one till it’s settled that Emma’s definitely keeping Roman, but do we have to wait? Because I was thinking that perhaps the sensible next step would be for Mike and me to become Roman’s official child minders. You know, just like regular child minders, looking after Roman on a day-to-day basis, so that Emma can resume her education.’
‘You two?’ Maggie said. ‘Are you sure about this?’
Emma was out of earshot, upstairs changing the baby before putting him down for an afternoon nap, but I still kept my voice low as I answered. ‘Yes, I am. I think it’s important that she gets back into some sort of school environment. I’m really concerned at how isolated she seems to be from her peers. From what she’s told me and what I’ve read, she’s not attended school properly in something like eighteen months now, which I know is partly due to the pregnancy but that is only a part of it. It seems to me it’s mostly been to do with Tarim telling her who she can and can’t hang out with. Which isn’t healthy, is it? She needs to have friends her own age to offload to. Not to mention needing some sort of focus and routine. If she’s to support a baby – not to mention build up her own self-esteem – then she needs a life beyond the boyfriend. And right now – with him out of the picture for a bit – seems the perfect time to try and set that up.’
