Saving Baby Amy

by Annie Claydon

  Amy wriggled round, reaching for Chloe. ‘Beautiful Auntie Chloe...’

  Amy enunciated the words perfectly. Something she’d heard, maybe, and was mimicking...?

  No. They were just words. Probably jumbled together without any particular meaning. Amy was beginning to do that, mixing the baby talk with the odd word that sounded as if it had some thought behind it, but generally didn’t.

  Jon looked as startled as she was. ‘I...wonder where she picked that up from.’

  ‘So I’m not beautiful?’ Teasing him wasn’t a bad way to cover her own discomfiture.

  Jon narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m a little too tired to come up with an answer that’s not going to incriminate me.’

  So maybe Amy had heard it from him. If so, it was probably best not to enquire. She took Amy from him, hugging her. ‘So what did you get up to today?’

  ‘We went to the park. There’s a great playground...’ He grinned. ‘Amy enjoyed it too.’

  ‘She didn’t give you a chance to sleep?’ Jon had reassembled Amy’s cot, and it stood next to the sofa.

  ‘She slept. I reckoned I might sleep, but...’ He shrugged. ‘I ended up watching her.’

  ‘Just to make sure her dreams were good ones.’ Chloe had done exactly the same when she’d been with Amy at the hospital. Hours when she could have been sleeping had somehow turned into hours watching Amy sleep.

  ‘Yeah. I’ll get an early night tonight. If I drop off before about nine o’clock perhaps you’ll give me a good shake and wake me up.’

  A good shake or just the flutter of a child, sleeping on his chest. It seemed that either would be equally as effective. ‘How does the smell of coffee work?’

  Jon nodded. ‘Every time.’

  * * *

  She’d brought him coffee and then disappeared upstairs, taking Amy with her. The transformation between work, the plain blouse and skirt, which weren’t plain at all when draped around Chloe’s curves, and the casual trousers and tops she wore at home took place out of sight, but that didn’t mean that Jon was unaware of it. Just thinking about it woke him up more effectively than if she’d flattened him with a steamroller.

  He sat for a while, listening to her moving around in the kitchen. She was singing, and he heard Amy’s voice joining in with hers. He collected the rest of the toys off the floor, adding them to the pile, and wondered whether he should get a proper toy box. Perhaps not. Today might have felt like a new venture, but it was too temporary to warrant anything as solid as the wooden toy box he’d seen in the window of the furniture shop by the park gates.

  The smell of cooking drew him into the kitchen. Chloe was chopping tomatoes to add to a bowl of salad, and he could see a large dish of lasagne in the oven. Amy held out her arms to him and instead of just smiling at her and getting on with his job, the way he did with the children at the hospital, picking her up seemed suddenly as if it was his job.

  ‘Again...’

  ‘Again?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Again what? I haven’t done anything yet.’

  The logic was lost on Amy. ‘Again!’

  ‘Ah. You mean this?’ He swung her up above his head and the little girl laughed with delight.

  ‘You’ve done it now.’ Chloe’s face was bright as she looked up from the chopping board.

  ‘Yeah. She kept this up for half an hour this morning.’

  ‘And then she was sick on your head?’ Chloe shared the joke with the tomato in front of her, slicing it decisively. Jon swung Amy up one more time then sat down with her on his lap before she could stop squirming and laughing long enough to get out the dreaded word.

  ‘No. I managed to avoid that indignity.’ Amy hiccupped, and he jiggled her gently and rubbed her stomach.

  Chloe turned. ‘You want me to take her?’

  That was usually the way. A child got hiccups and either their parents or one of the nurses dealt with it. His job was to deal with the rather more serious issues.

  Amy hiccupped again, scrunching her face up. At the moment this seemed just as serious, but rather more difficult to deal with than any medical problem. Living with a child was different from treating them. For one thing, he didn’t get so many breaks.

  ‘No, that’s okay. Amy and I will deal with this.’

  * * *

  Amy had been fed, and they’d eaten. Jon had taken the cot upstairs, and Chloe had bathed Amy and put her down to sleep. He opened his eyes, after dozing on the sofa, to find her standing in the doorway.

  ‘Do you think if I sit down she’ll start crying?’

  He smiled. ‘Maybe. Would you like a cup of tea?’ Suddenly it was as if the one thing he’d tried to avoid, becoming a part of the household and living here instead of just sleeping here, had become a reality. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it might be.

  Chloe nodded. ‘Yes, thanks.’

  She followed him into the kitchen, sitting down at the table while he made the tea. ‘Do you mind my asking? About the Guillain-Barré...?’

  ‘You mean am I feeling tired yet?’ She grinned, saving him the awkwardness of working his way onto the question that had been bothering Jon for much of the day.

  ‘Yeah. The last few days have been a break in your routine.’ She must have been worried about Amy, and Hannah. And she can’t have had a great deal of sleep next to Amy’s cot at the hospital.

  ‘I’m okay. I still have a few after-effects, but they haven’t got any worse.’ Jon shot her a querying look and she grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not keeping quiet about anything.’

  ‘Okay. Just as a matter of interest, what are the after-effects?’ He put her tea down in front of her and sat down.

  ‘Sometimes my toes tingle a bit, or the bottom of my foot feels a little numb. But I’ve been pretty lucky on the whole, and I don’t get any pain.’ She leaned forward towards him. ‘Go on. You can ask whatever you like. It’s actually a good thing if doctors know a bit more about it.’

  He took her at her word. ‘So what caused it?’

  ‘I had campylobacter. I’d got over that, and had gone back to work and then...’ She shrugged, taking a sip of her tea.

  One of the more common triggers for a rare disease. Guillain-Barré Syndrome was a result of the immune system being triggered by a viral infection and attacking the nerves. First a tingling in the hands and feet, which could spread throughout the whole body, causing weakness, paralysis and pain.

  ‘I had a fall at work. Lucky really, because there were a lot of doctors on hand and someone recognised the symptoms and called in a neurologist. He ordered an EMG test and before I know it I was in the neuro ward, with about a thousand medical students hanging around, taking furious notes.’

  ‘I heard you made the best of your audience.’

  Her eyebrows shot up. ‘You’ve been talking about me behind my back, have you?’

  ‘No, one of the nurses in A and E mentioned it. I’ve been listening to other people talking about you behind your back.’

  ‘I suppose I did give them a very full list of my symptoms, so they’d recognise them if they saw them again. My right arm and my legs were completely paralysed for some weeks, but I could still talk if I put my mind to it.’ Jon saw a trace of mischief in her smile and almost choked on his drink. She was indomitable.

  ‘They say doctors make the worst patients.’

  ‘I was a very good patient. I did exactly as I was told, and tried to smile at everyone, which isn’t all that easy when one side of your face is paralysed. Dr Malik used to say that he didn’t need to explain much to his students, he just sent them to me.’ She took another sip of her tea. ‘I think he was humouring me.’

  Chloe was fingering the gold chain at her neck, absently winding it around her finger. She always seemed to wear it, and what hung on it must be of s
ome special significance to her because it was usually hidden inside her clothes. But he could see now that it was a yellowish crystal.

  ‘Did humouring you work?’

  ‘Lots of things work. Intravenous immunoglobulin for starters. Good food, plenty of sleep. The kindness of strangers...’

  ‘Herbal tea and crystals?’ Jon had seen the crystals on the mantelpiece in the sitting room but hadn’t realised that Chloe wore one as well. It surprised him that a doctor should put any store in such things.

  ‘Who knows? Not being able to move isn’t just something that affects your body.’ She shrugged. It seemed that was where Chloe drew the line. She talked about the physical aspects of her illness freely enough, but Jon knew that the emotional ones could be just as devastating and she kept those to herself.

  But he’d have to wonder about that later. He was so tired now that whatever conclusion he came to was bound to be the wrong one.

  ‘I really should turn in...’ He looked at his watch. It was almost nine o’ clock.

  She grinned. ‘Will you sleep? After a cup of coffee?’

  ‘I needed the coffee to get me up the stairs. I’ll sleep.’

  * * *

  It was odd that Chloe should note that the house had been quiet for the last hour, because generally it was quiet. But this was a different kind of quiet, one that seemed to curl around everyone in the house, both sleeping and awake.

  She heard a whimpering cry from her bedroom and hurried upstairs. For all Jon’s assertions that he could sleep through Armageddon, he’d already proved that a child’s crying was enough to wake him, and Chloe picked Amy up from her cot, soothing her.

  ‘All right, sweetie. Mummy can’t be here right now, but she’ll be back soon. You’ll see.’ Amy might not fully understand the words, and almost certainly didn’t see all of their implications, but they gave Chloe some comfort.

  ‘Papa...’ Amy struggled in her arms, and Chloe leaned over, picking up Papa Bear and wiggling him in front of Amy. She quietened for a moment and then pushed him away.

  ‘Okay then...’ Chloe decided to try something different and started to hum the tune of the song that she’d heard Jon sing to her to quieten her tears.

  It appeared that Amy liked rock ’n’ roll a bit better. She settled into Chloe’s arms, staring up at her face for a while and then reaching up, catching the dark yellow citrine that had slipped from the neck of her T-shirt and pulling it.

  ‘No, sweetie, you’ll break it.’ Chloe pulled the chain over her head, dangling the citrine in front of Amy, who batted it with her hand, seemingly mesmerised by its sparkle in the half-light.

  ‘See how pretty it is? It’s magic as well. If you hold it in your hand, it makes all the bad things in your heart go away.’

  Chloe had needed something like that when she’d been ill. Something to help her summon her courage at the times she’d felt most alone. The crystal had been like a mascot, something for her to hold onto and remember the promises she’d made to herself.

  And now she’d made a promise to Amy. She’d promised that, whatever happened, she would make things right, find a way to support Hannah so that she felt confident about being a good mother to Amy. That was one, inviolable promise that wouldn’t be broken. Jon’s promises to help might or might not be followed through, and Chloe couldn’t bring herself to rely on them, however much the warmth in his eyes tempted her to.

  ‘Mummy’s coming back, sweetie. You’ll see.’ She whispered the words, cuddling Amy tight, and the child’s eyelids began to droop.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HE’D SLEPT DEEPLY and for enough hours to make him feel human again. When the smell of cooking wafted up the stairs, Jon levered himself from his bed and made for the bathroom. But the time he’d emerged, the smell of coffee had been added to the mix.

  He hadn’t expected her to be cooking for him, and when Jon went downstairs to the kitchen-diner he didn’t expect her bright smile either. Both were very welcome.

  ‘What’s that?’ He craned over her shoulder as she slammed the lid down on a large electric waffle iron.

  ‘Oat waffles. And coffee for you.’ She switched off the coffee machine and put the flask of coffee on the table.

  ‘You didn’t need to do that.’ He sat down anyway at the place that was laid for him. No one had cooked him breakfast since... Jon’s mind recoiled at the thought. This was nothing like that, it was probably just a thank-you for taking care of Amy.

  ‘A decent breakfast never did anyone any harm.’

  That was obviously a matter of pride with her. Chloe’s fridge was always well stocked with good, fresh food, and he didn’t need to look in the larder to know that there would be fruit and vegetables there.

  He poured the coffee, noticing that her cup stood next to the kettle, with the tag from a herbal teabag hanging over the side. Chloe struggled momentarily with the waffle maker, and just as he was about to go and help her she got it open and the waffles out onto two plates.

  ‘You like bananas?’ She turned to him and Jon nodded. ‘Good.’

  A liberal helping of sliced banana, along with kiwi fruit and blueberries went on top of the waffles, and she carried the plates across. One waffle for her and three for him.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want any more?’ Jon could eat three. He could probably eat half a dozen, but he didn’t like the idea that she was giving him the lion’s share.

  ‘No, one’s enough for me.’ A glass jar with home-made nut butter clattered onto the table in front of him in a no-nonsense invitation to help himself. Then Chloe fetched her tea and sat down.

  ‘These look really good.’ Jon took a mouthful and it tasted even better than it looked. ‘Where’s Amy?’

  ‘In her playpen, in the sitting room. Let’s see whether we can get breakfast eaten before she realises we’re not paying enough attention to her.’

  Chloe managed it, and was halfway out of the front door before Amy started to grizzle. Jon’s fuller plate was only part finished, and he picked it up and walked into the sitting room.

  ‘It’s just you and me, then, Amy. Let’s see what we can get up to today.’

  * * *

  Despite all Chloe’s misgivings, they’d fallen into a routine that worked. Every morning, she ignored Jon’s assertions that he’d probably stumble across something that would pass for breakfast later and made a proper breakfast for all of them. And every morning he cleared his plate and said that he might be tempted into getting used to this.

  Each evening was different, too. Someone to ask about her day, and give an account of how Amy had fed the ducks in the park, or almost managed to sneak a packet of chocolate buttons out of the supermarket without paying.

  Amy was beginning to settle, and wasn’t waking up so many times during the night. Jon and Amy had become firm friends. He talked to her all the time, and just the sound of his voice was enough to have her gazing wide-eyed into his face. Chloe sometimes envied her niece the privilege of looking at him so unashamedly when her own glances at Jon were so often stolen. The way Amy had no hesitation about being close to him, steadying herself against his legs as she heaved herself up into his lap, curling up there while he read the paper or a book.

  But there was one, magic hour. After Amy was in bed, and when the house was quiet, they sat together in the kitchen, talking about everything and nothing. Jon spent two evenings assembling a moon and stars mobile to hang over Amy’s cot that somehow failed to catch Amy’s eye but which Chloe gazed at every night before she closed her eyes to go to sleep.

  * * *

  ‘She doesn’t like my cookies, then?’ Breakfast at six on a Saturday morning made jumbo sized cookies with elevenses all the more welcome. But Amy had licked the icing off hers and thrown the rest on the floor.

  ‘Maybe she’s just
saving the world as we know it.’ Jon took his second cookie from the plate, and Amy started to make loud explosive noises, clapping her hands together.

  ‘Ah. And who taught her how to do that?’

  ‘If you’re going to make Dalek cookies, you can’t expect them not to fight a bit before you eat them.’ He bit off the Dalek’s head, rolling his eyes at Amy, while the little girl crowed with glee. ‘Although I’ve never seen a pink Dalek before.’

  ‘The pink ones are the ones you have to look out for. Much more dangerous. And when I looked in the cupboard for some colouring for the icing, I only had pink.’

  ‘That explains it.’ He broke off a piece of his cookie, handing it to Amy, and she put it in her mouth and then spat it back out again. ‘Actually, I don’t think she does like them. I’ll just have to finish them off myself.’

  ‘I’ll make some more. That’s the last of them.’

  He grinned, leaning back in his chair and reaching for the paper. ‘I’ll get blue food colouring when we go shopping.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to your house?’ Chloe had expected to be alone with Amy today, but instead Jon had gone out for the paper and seemed ready for a lazy Saturday.

  ‘The builders have it all in hand. But I suppose I should pop in later, just to see what they’ve been up to...’ He paused for a moment and then put the paper down. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy coming with me? It’s a mess at the moment, but I like to think it’s got potential.’

  ‘Bit like this place, then.’ Chloe stared up at the sitting-room ceiling, wondering how many times she’d lain on the sofa, tracing the cracks with her gaze. Looking at the crystals on the mantelpiece instead had been an exercise in ignoring what she couldn’t change and concentrating on something a bit prettier.

  He chuckled. ‘It’s nothing like your place. Mine’s really a mess. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this house that a bit of filler and a couple of cans of paint wouldn’t remedy.’

  Chloe quirked her lips downwards. ‘That’s what I reckoned when I moved in, over three years ago.’