Keep You Safe

by Melissa Hill

No, it simply wasn’t possible. Where would Rosie have picked it up? It was chicken pox that was going around the school. Not...

  Unless...

  My thoughts turned then to the other sick child, Clara Cooper. Who, according to Christine, wasn’t vaccinated against serious childhood illnesses.

  Just like Rosie.

  Clara—who had been sent home from school three days ago with suspected chicken pox.

  Except she hadn’t. This wasn’t chicken pox.

  This was out-and-out measles.

  6

  “It’s OK, petal, we’re going to make you feel better,” Madeleine soothed as she hovered over Clara’s bed.

  On Tuesday morning, while in makeup at the TV station, her worst fears had been realized with a text from the school principal confirming that Clara was indeed sick. Talk about timing...

  She’d given her some acetaminophen after all the coughing and sneezing the night before hoping to nip whatever it was in the bud, but noticed at breakfast that her youngest was still a bit off. But she really couldn’t keep her at home that day, she had the TV thing to do, and Tom had already left for work hours earlier...

  So Madeleine had very quickly weighed up the odds and decided that she’d chance sending Clara to school, and would rush straight back once she’d done her thing at the studio. It was a gamble but what choice did she have? She couldn’t cancel Morning Coffee at the last minute; the show aired at eleven o’clock and she needed to leave right after the school drop-off.

  Chances were Clara would be fine—kids were always up and down with these things and usually rallied well—but just in case there was any decline, she could mitigate the risk by asking Lucy to do her a favor. No point (or indeed time) in getting her husband to trek all the way home from Dublin, and she couldn’t ask her mother-in-law for help, either, because Harriet didn’t have a car.

  Ever the trouper, Madeleine’s friend immediately agreed to collect Clara just after eleven o’clock and stay with her at their house until she got back. “It’s no bother. Knock ’em dead and Clara will only love being able to watch you on TV.”

  The two had been friends forever—Lucy’s eldest was the same age as Jake, so she and Madeleine had shared the whole Newborn Mania thing—and routinely helped each other out when it came to their offspring, often alternating school runs and sports practice drop-offs. Her friend was also decidedly nonjudgmental about Madeleine’s columns, something that was rare enough in Knockroe. Many of the other women in her circle (in particular Christine Campbell) had already been a bit suspicious and defensive about how Madeleine had mostly kept to herself when Jake was born—very quickly dropping out of local mother/baby groups, and unwilling to get into discussions about the trials of sleepless nights or feeding routines, or engage in the seemingly endless debate between breast and bottle.

  At the time, she’d felt it was hard enough getting to grips with the huge changes a newborn wrought without overanalyzing every last aspect. Their own parents’ generation didn’t have that luxury, and for the most part just took things as they came, which suited Madeleine down to the ground. She hated how motherhood was so damn competitive and judgmental. She’d heard about that aspect from other friends before, of course, but nothing could have prepared her for just how damaging and destructive it could be to insecure newbies. “There is no ‘right way,’” Madeleine’s mother used to tell her, when in the very early days with Jake she fell into the trap of worrying and comparing herself to other women who seemed so sure about what they were doing. “Same as marriage, you just take it one day at a time. But the most important thing of all, pet, is to enjoy it.”

  It was the best piece of parenting advice Madeleine had ever received. Thankfully, Tom, too, held little truck with outsiders interfering or undermining, and agreed that the two of them should trust their instincts for what they did know and just research anything they didn’t.

  Some days were great, others absolute shit, but from then on Madeleine refused to put pressure on herself to make everything “perfect” or “normal.” Like her mother said, to a baby every experience was their perfect and their normal, so no sense tying yourself up in knots about it.

  Lucy was of a similar mind in some aspects, but was also much better than she at finding common ground with others who didn’t share the same philosophy. Whereas Madeleine’s own failure to do so had driven her to find solidarity with like-minded mums online via her blog, rather than suffer her more judgmental local counterparts who refused to admit that motherhood could be anything other than unicorns and rainbows.

  Though she admitted she’d gotten things badly wrong with Clara this week and, worse, hadn’t she known deep down that her daughter was coming down with something—especially when they’d heard a virus was doing the rounds?

  She probably should have kept her at home—and on any other day would have—but if she’d canceled at the last minute, the Morning Coffee producers would likely never invite her back.

  As it was, the team was delighted with the reaction to her appearance on the panel and had already asked her back for another stint. It could only lead to bigger and better things as the show’s viewers were exactly her target audience and, following the slot, Mad Mum’s blog and social media engagement had skyrocketed. Good all around, apart from the fact that that journalist Gemma Moore seemed to have taken an immediate dislike to her, which she couldn’t understand. Everyone knew how these things worked and surely Gemma realized that Madeleine was purposely hamming it up for entertainment?

  In any case, based on the social media response, it had worked.

  So while she still felt terrible for sending Clara to school when her daughter truly was ill, all in all Madeleine stood by her decision to bite the bullet and take things as they came. Tom had agreed with her, which made her feel somewhat better at least.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself—sure, for all we knew, Clara was just coming down with yet another bout of the sniffles,” her husband reassured, kissing her on the forehead, when Madeleine had remonstrated with herself for the decision.

  There was no denying the various iterations of coughs and colds had indeed seemed endless since the kids started school, and in fairness their youngest was strong as an ox most of the time...

  Clara coughed violently then, and Madeleine stroked her little girl’s hair, feeling guiltier still. She truly hadn’t believed there was anything to worry about, and even now, a few days on, there was no sign of any telltale sores.

  But if her daughter did in fact have chicken pox, there was nothing to do now but wait it out and let the thing take its course. Heartbreaking to see her little girl so ill, though, she thought, softly caressing Clara’s cheek. At least she only had one sick child to concentrate on—Jake had had it before, so Madeleine sent him to school the next morning without the worry at least that she would get another recriminating phone call...

  At that moment, her mobile phone sounded from where she had placed it on Clara’s dresser, and a sudden surge of panic rushed through her. Hell, what if she’d just jinxed herself and her son was in fact now down with something, too?

  But when she looked at the caller ID, she felt herself calm down. It was Lucy. Likely calling to get the scoop on Clara. She was a good friend and, after picking her daughter up from school on Tuesday, had gone out of her way to reassure a panicky Madeleine that all was in hand. “No need to break any speed limits on your way back. Take your time—she’s fine.”

  “How’s Clara doing?” her friend demanded now, before Madeleine could even issue a greeting. Taken aback at her tone—it wasn’t like Lucy to be so short—she looked again at her daughter, who seemed to be dozing off.

  “She’s fine, thank goodness—you know yourself, you’ve been through it with Steph. Poor thing will be itchy and miserable for the next few days but—”

  Lucy cut
her off. “Have you talked to anyone from the school since?”

  Madeleine furrowed her brow. What did that have to do with anything? Everyone knew the thing was going around, hadn’t they gotten that note on Monday...

  “Well, I obviously phoned to tell them that Clara wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week, that the poor little thing had caught the blasted pox and—”

  “Oh, God, you really don’t know, do you?”

  What the hell? Madeleine thought, irritated. Why all the drama, for crying out loud? Was there a reason why Lucy wouldn’t let her finish a sentence? It was actually starting to sound like she was phoning for a gossip and Madeleine didn’t have any time or inclination for gossip. Just then, Clara was her only concern. “Well, I kind of have my hands full here. I don’t know what else is going on at the school and, to tell you the truth, I don’t particularly care—”

  “Maddie,” interjected Lucy harshly, “I don’t think Clara has chicken pox.”

  Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What are you talking about? Of course she has chicken pox. Ellie got it first, and now Clara has it. Her temperature’s subsided and granted there’s not many sores showing up yet, but all we can do now is let it take its—”

  Again, her friend cut her off. “Madeleine, let me finish. I just got off the phone with Kate O’Hara. Rosie is sick, too.”

  “Ah, poor thing.” Madeleine felt sorry for Kate, who was a single mother and would be seriously put out by having to miss work to look after little Rosie. And as she expressed as much to Lucy, she could almost sense her friend shaking her head on the other end of the line.

  “No, you see, Rosie already had chicken pox a couple of years ago. And before you say it, no, she isn’t one of those kids who gets it twice, either. Please, Madeleine, quick, just tell me what Clara’s chest looks like—is there a rash?”

  Madeleine felt confused, but did as she was told. With the phone pressed to her ear, she looked at her sleeping child—thankfully, Clara had found some peace in slumber—and pulled down the bedclothes a little.

  Then she whispered quietly into the phone, “I don’t know. Like I said, there isn’t much of a pox outbreak yet, but now that you say it, just under her neck there is a kind of rash, I suppose, little bumps clustered together. Pretty much what you would expect with—”

  “Madeleine, you have to get Clara to a doctor, fast. And get Jake out of school, too. I’m serious.” Lucy sounded almost frantic on the phone and her normally mild-mannered friend’s panic made Madeleine’s mind race. But her heart almost dropped into her stomach with her friend’s next words. “I don’t think that Clara has chicken pox, sweetheart, but she could have measles. Rosie definitely has—Kate recognized the difference right away. You know she’s a nurse. But, anyway, it’s not common knowledge yet, at least I don’t think it is, the way that people know...well...the way people know about Jake and Clara. But it seems Rosie isn’t vaccinated, either. She has some allergy that prevents it and—”

  Feeling like her head was spinning, Madeleine looked down at her daughter and tried her hardest to recall what Jake had been like when he’d had measles, but it was a good six years ago and she really didn’t remember. It had been a mild case, so hadn’t really stuck in her mind, other than the fact that the doctor had berated her for not vaccinating her eighteen-month-old against it in the first place...

  And now it seemed Clara had picked it up. But where?

  Suddenly, Madeleine’s mind drifted back to their holiday in Clearwater over the Easter break. There’d been something in the news at the time—she’d hardly paid attention to it amid all the activities—about some kind of outbreak in one of the Orlando theme parks?

  And little over a week ago, the Coopers had shared an eight-hour flight home from that very location, with countless other Irish families who’d spent Easter in the theme parks...

  “Oh, my goodness,” Madeleine gasped as the full realization of what might be happening hit her.

  The countless hours and days she and Tom had spent researching measles when Jake was a baby, trying to decide whether or not they could realistically avoid the MMR vaccination.

  First and foremost, they’d been hugely uncomfortable about the vaccine’s link to autism, and while the original research paper suggesting the connection had long been discredited, it was very difficult to ignore the multitude of real-life anecdotal experiences that were so prevalent. The very idea of their happy, thriving, babbling Jake regressing to a withdrawn, unresponsive state within days—perhaps hours—of receiving the vaccination was enough to break Madeleine’s heart, and it certainly gave her pause.

  While Tom had been raised a freethinker and found it easy to rail against the establishment, she hailed from a more traditional Catholic background, used to trusting and going along with generally accepted advice and thinking.

  Initially, Madeleine couldn’t credit that the government and health boards would realistically offer something that could harm, rather than protect, children. That was before she started to read through the reams of research on the vaccine and its potentially harmful ingredients, as well as the troubling suggestion of collusion and lobbying from the pharmaceutical companies.

  But it was the worrying realization that worldwide governments’ and health officials’ ultimate priority was not the health of an individual child but “herd immunity” that truly concerned her. She’d spent hours upon hours reading up on both sides of what was a very heated and controversial argument, but, ultimately, the whole decision came down to her baby son’s safety.

  “Suppose we don’t give him the vaccination,” she’d said to Tom, when Jake’s first MMR shot was imminent and they were by then seriously wavering about going along with protocol, “and he catches something terrible? I don’t think I could ever forgive myself—”

  “Could you forgive yourself if we do vaccinate and it triggers something potentially worse?” he’d argued, and Madeleine’s heart constricted. “It’s a huge leap of faith, Maddie,” he went on, but by then she no longer needed persuading. The health board’s concerns might be for the safety of the population at large; but, as parents, theirs had to be for their son.

  And once you’d understood something like that, once you’d come to a realization that rocked the very foundations of your beliefs, you couldn’t go back. Their family knew that all too well.

  “Look, it’s not as if measles is the end of the world, either,” her husband concluded. “I had it when I was a kid and, yes, it was nasty, but I recovered fine.”

  Madeleine’s brother Paul had also seen off mumps as a child, and she herself had gone through a mild bout of measles when she was ten.

  So they figured, even if the worst came to the worst...

  But then poor Jake went and picked the disease up only a few months later anyway, while they were still hand-wringing over the whole thing.

  Admittedly, it was at first terrifying to discover that their helpless little one-year-old had contracted something serious, but she and Tom had managed it and, thank goodness, all had been OK.

  So when the time came to vaccinate Clara, they truly didn’t even think twice. What were the chances of her contracting measles, too? And, if she did, wouldn’t they just deal with it again?

  Despite repeated protests from their GP, urging them to reconsider, Madeleine and Tom eventually concluded—based on both their research and experience—that avoiding the vaccine was the lesser of two evils. It was a risk, but a calculated one.

  Or so they’d thought.

  Rosie isn’t vaccinated, either...

  But now, like a blow to the solar plexus, the big difference in this situation hit Madeleine full force. Jake had been young enough to contain and to prevent infecting others, but Clara was in school. With lots of other children. And, given that their daughter had contracted the disease by nature of the fact th
at she was unvaccinated, it was obvious she’d now passed it on, and even worse, to someone who, according to Lucy, didn’t have the vaccination option.

  This was a scenario that Madeleine and Tom hadn’t run the odds on.

  Realizing that she had left Lucy in silence on the line, she whispered, “And Ellie Madden, too?” Christ, had she passed it on to the entire Junior Infants class, the whole school even? Oh, God...

  “No, apparently Ellie actually does have chicken pox—that’s already confirmed. But, Maddie, get Clara to a doctor straightaway. And you have to get Jake out of school, too. Once it’s in your house, he’s likely still infectious, even though...” To her credit, Madeleine was grateful to Lucy for not making a big deal of their refusal to vaccinate. Goodness knew she and Tom had faced considerable ire from various quarters before about it.

  “I talked to the principal at Applewood,” her friend went on. “Kate made them aware right away, and they’re hoping to keep this quiet for the moment. It’s a good thing it’s nearly the weekend as they don’t want a full-blown panic, but they need to identify who is the highest risk—anyone with autoimmune issues or anything like that. There are very few others there who aren’t already immunized, thank goodness, but...”

  Lucy’s voice trailed off and right then Madeleine felt deeply ashamed that her family—her choice—had visited this on the school.

  “You know, kids that aren’t protected can still be helped, Madeleine. I looked it up and if you do vaccinate within seventy-two hours of a suspected outbreak, infection can still be prevented. So I just thought that maybe it’s not too late for Clara...”

  Despite herself, she felt defensive. “Lucy, I’m sorry but I can’t talk about it now,” she said wearily. “That’s between me and Tom. It’s a family decision.”

  And she knew exactly what her husband would have to say on the matter. No way.

  “Sorry, Maddie,” Lucy replied quietly. “I just thought... Sorry.”

  Madeleine took a deep breath. She knew her friend was only trying to help. “No need to apologize. It’s just a shock...and I’m trying to get a grip on what I should do.” In truth, she was still a bit floored that this had happened, but at the same time she needed to get her ass in gear... She’d have to call Tom at work and the GP, of course, as well as haul Jake out of school and a million other things...