In a Moment

by Caroline Finnerty

  “Adam, it’s me – your mam. Dad’s here too and Rob. You’re in Dublin County Hospital. You probably don’t remember, Adam, but you were in a bad accident. That’s why we’re so relieved to see you awake.”

  “Where’s Emma?” His voice was weak and it took all his strength to get the words out. “Where’s Emma?” he repeated, wondering if he was making sense.

  No one answered.

  “Where are Emma and Fionn?”

  “She’s not up to it, Adam, she’s not feeling too great herself.”

  Oh shit, was she in the accident too?

  “Is she in the hospital?”

  Maybe they would let him go see her.

  “No, Adam, no, she wasn’t involved in the accident thankfully.”

  “Is she minding Fionn?”

  “Well, now that you’re awake, I’m sure she’ll be here later.” His mother had tears in her eyes and she was stroking his hand.

  At least she knew who Emma was; that was something. He felt rushes of thoughts pound his brain, making everything confused.

  “And Fionn, where is he?” he demanded but the tone he was using in his head didn’t match up to the feeble croak that came out instead.

  He saw her eyes dart manically towards his father.

  “Do you think he remembers?”

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

  I can hear you, you know!

  Joe White took a deep breath. “There was a bad accident, son.” He paused. “Now Emma is okay, she wasn’t involved and she’s at home, she’s . . . fine . . . but Fionn . . .” He took a deep breath before continuing. For Joe White this was the worst thing he had ever had to go through in his life. He had just lost his grandson, almost lost his son, and now he had to deliver this devastating news and watch him fall to pieces.

  “I’m afraid, Adam, Fionn didn’t make it . . . he . . .” his voice broke, “he died at the scene.” His dad lowered his gaze. “I’m so, so sorry. Truly I am.”

  Fionn didn’t make it. Didn’t make what? He tried to process the information as it was presented to him. He looked at his mother for answers but she had dissolved into big heaving sobs, rocking her whole body and shaking her head.

  Adam instantly felt the most acute physical pain right in centre of his gut. It was different to the other pain, it went much deeper. It was all starting to make sense to him now. The hospital, the tears, the worry on everyone’s face, the tubes, the wires and the pain all over his body. He felt his chest tighten and instantly an alarm was triggered. Hysteria broke out in the room; he could hear his mother screaming, his father shouting for help. Doctors came piling in from nowhere, pushing his family back. They flicked switches, changed settings until the alarm stopped again. They gave him some tablets to help him sleep and he drifted off on a high-up cloud.

  The next time he woke he had a few seconds to process everything before he remembered what had happened. They had said his baby son was dead but he had been in the crash too and he was still alive. Surely they had got things wrong? He forced himself to try and remember the exact sequence of events but he could only recall bits of it. He racked his head to recollect what had happened, anything at all that would give him some answers but he could only remember driving along in his car. That was it. He couldn’t remember more after that. He needed to talk to Emma; she would know what was going on.

  “Where is Emma?”

  “She’s not doing too well, love, she’s at home at the moment. I’m sure she’ll be in when she’s up to it,” his mother reassured him, rubbing his hand.

  Jesus Christ. Did they not understand? He needed to see her. He wanted answers.

  “I have to see her. I need to talk to her!” He tried to sit upright in the bed but the tubes kept him pinned down.

  “You can’t go anywhere, Adam – you’re still in a serious condition. You shouldn’t go upsetting yourself, love, it’s not doing you any good.”

  “I need to see him.” He couldn’t believe all of this until he saw with his own two eyes.

  “Who, Adam?”

  “Fionn, of course.”

  “You can’t, Adam.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, well . . .”

  “Why not?” He was becoming agitated.

  At this stage his dad had interjected, “Because, Adam, Fionn has already been laid to rest. I’m sorry, son.”

  His mother started dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

  They had already buried Fionn. Without him? He didn’t even get to say goodbye. That couldn’t be right surely? He closed his eyes shut again to allow his head to think straight. Was he just imagining all of this? He thought he would wake up now any minute and breathe a sigh of relief about all of this but when he opened his eyes they were all still there and the room was full of brightness with sharp edges and vivid colours and he knew it was too real to be a dream.

  “Was Emma there?”

  “No, love, I’m sorry, she wasn’t up to it at the time.”

  The frustration of the situation overpowered him and he started to cry big heaving sobs.

  “Why did it have to be Fionn? Why?”

  His mother sat holding his hand, crying with him. He was blistered with grief; it pained him no matter how he moved or what he did. It was everywhere.

  “I don’t know, love. I don’t have any answers for that one. Life isn’t fair. He was too good for this world.”

  ‘Too good for this world’ – what a ridiculous thing to say, Adam thought. His heart ached for Fionn. Their poor baby had been lowered into the cold ground without his parents at his side. It was wrong. He needed to see Emma. He had so much to ask her, so many questions. Why wasn’t she here? How was she coping? Was she going through her own personal hell like he was? Why didn’t she want to see him? Did she blame him?

  He drifted in and out of consciousness and every time he woke he remembered the awful news that his son was dead. It all came back to him, the grief flooding down over him, no matter how much he tried to digest it, more pain washed down until he felt as though he was drowning. Sometimes it was easier to stay asleep than deal with the pain and the worry etched on the faces of his family watching him from his bedside.

  46

  Every day when Emma woke, she had a few seconds of bliss before the nightmare was remembered again. The tablets she had been prescribed helped her sleep a deep sleep where dreams couldn’t find her but there was no tablet to ward off the reality of morning.

  The reality of her loss. The reality of having to bury her little son. The same priest who had christened Fionn only three months earlier had called to the house to discuss the funeral arrangements. He had gone upstairs and tried to console Emma but he had left her soon after, knowing nothing he could say would offer comfort to this particular mother faced with burying her baby. So he had gone downstairs and spoken to her parents instead.

  Emma hadn’t been able to face the funeral. How was she supposed to do something like that – a mother, bury her own child? The baby that she had carried for almost nine months and had then lived for only six? Her mother had begged her to go, telling her she would regret it, that it might even help her deal with events. And Emma had wondered if her mother was really on the same planet as her at all, did she even know what had happened to her grandson only days earlier? Sitting in a church and watching her son’s coffin being lowered into the ground was not going to help her grief. So she had stayed in her bed and the faces emptied out of her house until it was just Zoe left sitting with her and her son had been buried without either of his parents present.

  Then the day came when Emma heard the phone ringing and people shouting, loud happy shouts. She heard someone say that Adam had come round. Adam. Her husband. They quickly bounded up to her bedroom and relayed what she had already heard. Adam had just woken up from his coma. They asked her if she wanted to visit him, they were all heading to the hospital straight away. He was asking for her, they had told her, but she had said ‘No�
�� and turned over onto her side so that her back was to them.

  She had heard they had tracked down the driver of the white car. A seventeen-year-old male off his head after an all-night drink and drugs bender. It just made Emma angrier – his actions had ruined her life, she would never get her baby back. His mother had called over to apologise in person for her son’s actions but Emma didn’t want to see her. She was too afraid of what she might do or say. So she had stayed in her room and her parents had spoken with the mother downstairs. They had relayed it back to her that she was so sorry for what her son had done and that she was devastated beyond words that he was to blame for something so tragic. But, for Emma, no matter what words of comfort the woman offered, she still had her son. She’d had seventeen years with him, Emma had only had six months. She knew it would go through the courts and they would serve an appropriate punishment, but that would never be enough. It just served to heighten the sense of injustice that she felt.

  * * *

  They said when you lose a child that a part of you dies too. But Adam wished he had died instead of being in the half-limbo state he now existed in. He was in a numbed trance, with all his senses muted except for the awful feeling of loss that he had to bear. To outlive your own child was the cruellest blow a parent can suffer; it was a reversal of the natural order and he was left flailing in despair.

  The hospital had sent a bereavement counsellor to his bedside to talk it through with him but he had pretended to be asleep and ignored further efforts at contact.

  Everyone said how lucky he was to still be alive – he had been “minutes away from death” they told him. His crushed pelvis had perforated the surrounding blood vessels causing massive internal bleeding and his body had gone into shock. They’d had to perform major surgery on him, piecing his shattered pelvis back together but he wished they hadn’t bothered. He had broken his arm and his collarbone too and his skin was sewn together in a patchwork of coarse black thread. His mother in her Catholic zeal kept on saying that it was his Guardian Angel that had been watching over him: “Blessed he was, blessed.” But he didn’t feel blessed, how could he? On the contrary, life hadn’t done him any favours. His son was now dead. That wasn’t very “blessed”, was it?

  He had so many questions to which there were no answers. Why their car? There were literally hundreds of cars driving up and down that road all day every day – why couldn’t it have been someone else’s car? Or why couldn’t it have been him instead of Fionn? If he had died instead, he knew that Emma would do a good job of raising their son on her own. What if they hadn’t gone? He was only calling to visit his parents, hardly something he needed to do. He shouldn’t have gone anywhere. If he had left a little later or earlier or if he had driven fractionally slower or faster, the other car wouldn’t have met his at that instant in time. What if Fionn’s seat had been on the opposite side of the car? Why couldn’t the car have hit them from the other side? What if he’d had an SUV – nothing would have touched him in that. What if the council had gritted the road? What if the sun wasn’t glaring? What if? What if? What if? The words tortured his every thought until he couldn’t bear them any more and his brain would shut down again.

  He had gone over the journey that morning so many times before. He knew the Gardaí had arrested some little seventeen-year-old boy racer, but was some of it his own fault too? The post mortem had said that Fionn had died from trauma to the head, most likely caused by the impact from the car crumpling around him, but Adam was starting to doubt himself and wonder if he could have done something more to prevent his death. When Emma had been pregnant he had spent so much time researching the technical specifications for infant car-seats; which one had the best safety record and which was ranked highest by the experts and he thought he had followed the instructions on how to install the seat carefully, but maybe he hadn’t? He had heard the statistic that eighty per cent of all car-seats are fitted incorrectly. Maybe theirs was too? Did he have the car-seat mounted into the iso-fix system properly? Had the straps been tight enough?

  He couldn’t believe that he would never see Fionn again. He had loved every hair on his head, his Buddha-like tummy, his long toes with their jagged toe-nails because they had been too afraid to cut them. How he giggled infectiously if you swung him in your arms or bounced him on the bed. How he opened his mouth for more spoonfuls of baby rice. How he had started rolling over a few weeks before or how he had found his voice and now shrieked at everyone all day. He had bored the lads to tears with tales about his toxic nappies that always managed to leak out the sides. Fionn had sat up on his own for the first time only that week, his muscles finally strong enough to hold him. Adam had been so proud – as if Fionn was the first baby to sit up – because his son was another step closer to his independence. The unjustness of the situation made him so angry that he wanted to hit out at something or someone.

  Things were made worse by the fact that he still hadn’t seen Emma; she was the one person he really needed to see. His heart had risen when he saw her family coming through the door of his room but, when she hadn’t been with them, it had sunk back down lower than before. Every day he hoped he would see her face coming through the door. He knew she wasn’t coping too well from what her parents had intimated. It was the not knowing that was the hardest. If he could just see her, they would get each other through. He needed to see her.

  The next few weeks were spent in a blur of painkillers, physiotherapy and strengthening exercises. He faced a daily endurance test with the pain. The doctors were stingy with their doses of morphine so that he wouldn’t become addicted.

  It was six weeks after the accident before he took his first tentative steps on a Zimmer frame. The exertion wore him out after only travelling a few metres. It was gruelling but he was determined to get back on his feet properly so he persisted in his daily exercises until his face was bathed with perspiration. At his check-ups the doctors had said that the physical breaks were healing well but he was tormented with re-occurring flashbacks as he desperately tried to remember what had happened. Random scenes that he could put no order on constantly flitted through his head.

  The weeks went on and Emma never came to see him no matter how much he asked after her. No matter how many people he told to pass on the message to her that he needed to see her, she still didn’t come. He had tried phoning her a few times but she never answered. All anyone ever said was that she “wasn’t up to it”. He was beyond worried about her at this stage. So he persevered with getting back on his feet again so he could be well enough to get out of there and go home and be with Emma.

  47

  Emma still couldn’t bring herself to wash the Babygros that had been in the laundry basket since the day Fionn died or the blankets from his cot. Her mother had packed away things like the buggy, the steriliser, monitors, bottles and toys but the absence of these reminders wasn’t going to help her forget what had happened. Not being able to hold Fionn caused her to physically ache. It would overcome her whole body and on these days all she could do was stay in bed because she couldn’t face the world.

  Life still went on around her; the days rolled into night, Christmas passed unmarked, people went to work, children went to school, cars still went up and down the road, the post came through the letterbox and visits from concerned friends and relatives became less frequent. She felt like screaming at the world to stop. How could everyone just carry on as normal after all that had happened? But her grief was hers alone and, although people sympathised, they could never begin to imagine the pain she was feeling.

  Then the seasons moved along too, the snowdrops had braved the January frost to be pushed out by the daffodils in late February. The evenings got longer and brighter and then one day Adam came home. He just walked in through the door of their house and appeared in front of her in their living room as casually as if he had only popped out to the shops for milk. Seeing him there had startled her. She had felt the room close in around her as if she w
as a character painted onto the side of a spinning top. She reached forward and held onto the edge of the fireplace to steady herself. She just stood staring at the man, holding himself up on crutches. He was like a complete stranger to her; a memory from a different life. Looking at him was like looking at a living memory of Fionn, it was more than just the similarities in their look, their dark hair and pointed features; he was living proof that there had been an accident. While he stood in front of her the evidence was there in his repairing body. You couldn’t shut it out or deny it. He had been the last person to see her son alive, he had been driving the car when he had died and when she looked at him this was all she could see.

  “Emma, it’s okay, I’m here now.”

  Adam was shocked by his wife’s appearance. She was a shadow of her former self. Her usually slight frame was now gaunt and her eyes were hollow with blue-black circles underneath. They were vacant, as if nothing existed behind them. Her hair looked as though it hadn’t been brushed in weeks; her soft curls now were matted and frizzy.

  “I’m so, so sorry, for everything . . .” He trailed off. “Look, we need to talk. I’ve been worried sick about you.”

  He took a deep breath and took a step towards her on his crutches. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and look after her. He wanted to tell her that he was here for her now and that they would get through it together, but she stepped back away from him and slid wordlessly out past him. She went upstairs to their bedroom, leaving him standing in his own living room staring after her. He wondered whether he should follow her up or just stay where he was. He hadn’t known what to expect from Emma but it certainly hadn’t been a reaction like that. He realised that things were much worse than he had thought. He now understood what his family had tried to tell him in so few words. It was as if the old Emma had departed when Fionn had died. He had been waiting for so long, working so hard at getting better so that he could come home and be there for her, but it was like she didn’t even know who he was and what was worse was that she didn’t seem to care who he was. He had built it up so much in his head, imagining the scene. He had thought that as soon as she had seen him he would be able to lift her out from beneath the mountain of despair that she had been sinking under and they would get through it together. Over the last few months, all his energies were focused on getting strong enough so that he could help Emma; it was all that had helped get him through and kept him going. It had become his mission.