He handed us over to a nurse from the unit. She indicated the hand-gel machines dotted along the ward and told us to use them before and after every contact with the patient. She asked us to put on aprons and gloves from a dispenser outside the room before we went in. All part of the drive to minimize the spread of infection that continued to plague hospitals. And of course, people in intensive care were most at risk.
My first sight of her, head bandaged and hooked up to tubes and wires, brought with it a lurch of pity and grief. I sniffed hard and grasped Phil’s hand. Heard him breathe, bracing himself too. Her eyes were closed, her face and hair visible beneath the dressing. There were brown streaks in her hair, sticking it together in uneven clumps. Dried blood. Her lips were cracked and dry, her eyes stamped with bruises, and through the oxygen mask I could see traces of blood rimming her nostrils. There was a patch of raw skin on her cheekbone. A frown marred her forehead. I wondered if she was in pain.
Phil pinched the bridge of his nose and turned away for a minute. Then he brought a chair from the corner of the room and set it beside the bed for me. ‘I’ll find another,’ he said.
I sat down. Naomi’s hand was cool and limp. I held it for a while.
It was like being underwater, in a submarine, submerged in the murky light, enveloped by the cacophony of noises, the beeps and soughs and gasps of the machines, the clicks and whirrs. An echo chamber. For a moment I was six again, on the carpet in front of the television, heart racing as the admiral in
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
gave the command to
dive, dive, dive
and the hooter sounded. There was always a happy ending for the
Seaview
and her crew after their adventures fighting aliens and monsters and thwarting spies. But for Naomi?
‘Hello, darling,’ I said in a whisper.
Phil called her name, told her she was in hospital.
We waited some more, quiet, each lost in our own thoughts. Finally Phil suggested we come back later on.
A nurse checked our details so they could contact us if needed. In case she gets worse, I thought, in case she dies. What was Naomi’s status? Poorly, serious, critical, stable, seriously ill, gravely ill? All the code words you heard on news reports. I asked the nurse. ‘She’s doing very well, a long time in theatre,’ she said.
‘Please?’ I wasn’t looking for reassurance; I needed to know where we stood. ‘How would you describe her status?’
‘Critical,’ she said, ‘but half of them are – we have an excellent record.’
I didn’t dare ask for percentages or success rates; it was enough to know she was on the danger list.
‘What about Alex?’ I said to Phil. ‘We should see him.’
‘I need to lie down,’ Phil said, ‘before I fall.’
‘We can just ask how he is, then,’ I suggested. ‘Visit later.’
He nodded.
The staff were obviously used to this sort of situation, and one of them spoke to her counterpart on one of the acute medical wards. Alex was comfortable and visiting was between two and five, and six and eight. We could visit Naomi any time. Another pointer to how ill she was.
The sun is in my eyes. Dazzling. Too close. And a humming noise. The noise is in my head. A great ball of it, pulsing like a phone stuck on vibrate. I try to wake up, to drag myself away from the glare and the drone, but there is too much weight. Like someone has altered the strength of gravity, or like I’m underwater where the pressure is heavy on all sides. Snorkelling? Scuba-diving? I did it once, a trip to Tenerife, all four of us in flippers and wetsuits. Suzanne being anal about how long we’d be down there and the straps on her tank.
I can feel the ripples around me like the ocean, but the light is white, not blue or green. So I’m not sure.
When I try to move, to kick, or wake or float up, nothing happens.
I picture my hands and knees and feet away in the distance, like one of those rubber toy animals that stretch and stretch and stretch. Like looking into the wrong end of a telescope. I try to connect with them. If I can just twist my ankle or close my hand, it should do the trick.
But everything is sleeping, lazy.
The pressure is growing and the hum in my skull is getting louder. Am I drowning? If I were, wouldn’t I be coughing and spluttering, like when I learnt to swim? Dad standing in the water with his arms wide open, calling to me. Or did I already do that, the choking? And this is the next stage, my lungs full of seawater. I can’t find my breath. When I search for it, for my lungs in my chest, I can’t find them. They’re hidden in the blaze of light and the din in my head. The ripples tilt me again, to and fro. I like that. There is someone singing, a simple tune, a children’s nursery rhyme, but I can’t put a name to it.
Spinning round and round makes me dizzy. I love that feeling, like being full of bubbles. Out of it. Am I tripping? Are we living it large at some club or a party? But it must be pretty heavy-duty stuff, because I can’t see anyone or hear the music, not even the singing any more. I think there was a party. Now the sun’s gone and there is just a hissing sound. A waterfall of noise. I like the dark. Floating in slow circles, round and round and far, far away.
We got lost on our way out, had to ask directions twice. Then Phil couldn’t remember where he had parked. We wandered up and down the bays like zombies until we found the car. It was almost funny.
Before we set off, I called Suzanne.
‘How is she?’
‘She’s in intensive care,’ I said, and repeated the list of procedures the surgeon had relayed to us, glancing at Phil in case I had missed anything, but he just nodded. ‘They say she’s critical.’
‘Oh, Mum.’
‘I know, darling. They’ve got her sedated, so she’s sleeping. We’re going home for a bit now, but you can visit her any time. I’ll ring you later.’
‘Right.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘Do they know what happened?’
I didn’t want to say it out loud. I wanted to keep it smothered, safe, secret.
‘Mum?’
‘All they’ve told us is that Naomi hit a little girl, on a bicycle . . . She was killed.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘I know, it’s so awful.’
‘What the hell was she thinking?’ She sounded angry.
‘Suzanne?’
‘She shouldn’t have been driving.’ Tears in her voice, and a tight rage. ‘She was drinking all afternoon!’
The shock of what she said hit me like a thump in the guts.
Oh God!
I could barely speak. I finished the call and told Phil what Suzanne said, and saw him blanch.
‘She’s never driven when she’s been drinking,’ I said.
‘Not that we know of,’ said Phil.
‘No, she doesn’t. When they go out, she and Alex, her mates, they always decide who’s going to drive. You’ve heard them.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know, maybe she lost count, meant to have one or two and then stop like I did.’
‘And why did Alex get in the car if she was drunk? He’s not an idiot.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps Suzanne was wrong,’ I said. ‘You know how giddy Naomi can get if she’s having fun.’
‘We saw her with the champagne,’ Phil said.
‘Just a glass, and that was hours beforehand.’
I heard him sigh. ‘Suzanne wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,’ he said eventually.
‘She exaggerates when she wants to make a point. They must have checked, the police or the hospital. They couldn’t breathalyse her, but they’d take blood, and that would show how much was in her system.’
‘So until we know that,’ Phil said, ‘we don’t know if she was drink-driving.’
‘Anyone can take a bend too fast, anyone can swerve.’ I could hear the desperation in what I was saying, a plea for things to be not as bad as I feared. ‘Alex will be able to tell us, won’t he? He’ll know.’
Phil gave a nod, then stretched and rubbed at the back of his neck. He started the engine.
They’d been so happy, I thought: the new job, the way Naomi’s eyes danced as she raised the bottle of bubbly. Alex would have heard his news when he picked up the post from his mum’s. Came round to ours to tell Naomi and collect her for the barbecue. A red-letter day. Why had she had taken such a risk? Had she, or was Suzanne mistaken?
‘I want to see where it was,’ I said.
‘Now?’
‘Now. Please.’
‘There might not be anything there.’
But there was. We approached it from our end, as though we were heading for Suzanne’s. The road was cordoned off,
Road Ahead Closed
, and diversion signs were the first indication before we reached the stretch leading to the S-bend. Blue and white police tape was strung between barriers, shivering though there was no breeze to speak of.
Up ahead we could see several vehicles – police cars and vans – and a prefab, a mobile investigation unit. On the steps that led up to it, a young police officer was smoking a cigarette, a large polystyrene coffee cup in her other hand. Beyond that were people in protective suits, their heads covered, working. And a white structure in the middle of the road. A square tent. I knew it must be where the girl had died.
Phil parked and we got out. Only as we crossed to the river side did I see the car. A blackened, mottled heap, resting on its roof, the front end partly on the narrow grass verge, the rear crushed, mangled with the railings that edged the riverbank. The trees immediately above were stripped of foliage, their branches burnt and black, blasted like something in a war zone.
‘Jesus,’ Phil said under his breath.
From where we stood, the stink of molten plastic, the charry smell of burning caught in the back of my throat. Crumbs of glass, fragments of metal and a layer of white powder covered the ground, and curls of grey ash riffled in the breeze, echoing the shivers of the police tape. Larger pieces of debris were scattered all over the road and beside them bright yellow markers, like mini sandwich boards, each numbered.
There were birds singing too, oblivious, a song thrush in the canopy of the trees further along, its sweet, trilling melody clear in the relative quiet of the day.
‘She wasn’t burnt,’ said Phil.
‘No, they must have got out before.’
I turned and looked across at the school and the pedestrian crossing beyond. The playground was deserted. Were they in lessons; would they be kept in, as though it were raining, because of the tragedy? It struck me that perhaps the girl went to the school. That her friends and teachers would be in mourning for her today. Maybe school was cancelled.
‘Oh, Phil.’ He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed it. I thought of the parents, of the dark place they must be trapped in. Of their anguish. Imagining what it would be like if one of my girls was dead, if one of mine had been killed as a child. Never grown up.
‘See the gatepost?’ He nodded to the school gates, where one of the stone posts listed to the side. There were lots of markers close to it, and labels on the post itself as well as the railings further down next to the yellow sign:
Show You Care – Park Elsewhere.
‘They must have hit the post,’ he said.
Or the child did?
I didn’t say it aloud.
A plane flew low overhead, the roar something to be endured. I watched its shadow ripple over the school roof and then the road, darkening the little white tent before moving on over the trees that fringed the river. In its wake a quiet fell before the song thrush resumed its serenade, one of the CSI people called to another at the far end of the stretch and a hornet whined close to my ear, perhaps mistaking my earring for a flower.
Looking again at the car, I noticed the dark pools on the ground around it. Blood? There had been blood in Naomi’s nose; had she spilled more on the road? Or had Alex? Monica never mentioned that he had any wounds like that. When I pointed it out to Phil, he thought it was probably something else, molten plastic or burning fuel. ‘It’s melted the road surface, see? You can see the difference.’
The heat. My stomach swooped as I imagined that heat, what might have happened if they hadn’t got out.
‘She wouldn’t have stood a chance,’ Phil said, his voice old with sorrow. Momentarily I thought he was imagining the fire, and then realized he was looking at the white tent. The glow of guilt licked my cheeks.
One of the CSI people picked something up and placed it in a bag, then wrote on it.
‘She might not have used the crossing. Thought she’d risk it,’ I said.
‘You think she was crossing the road?’ When I didn’t reply, he touched me. ‘Carmel?’
‘Because that makes more sense.’ I tried not to sound defensive, but all my muscles were stiff, there was a tension across the back of my skull and down my neck, and I had to force the words out. ‘There wouldn’t have been time to stop, to swerve. Naomi’s not a bad driver.’
‘You heard Suzanne, she’d been drinking.’
‘It was an accident,’ I said, as if that was some sort of excuse. I was unwilling to face the facts head on, even though they were laid out for me in the charred metal chassis by the trees, in the markers that littered the tarmac, and the bright white canopy concealing the site where the girl had lain. It was all too new, too raw, and I wanted to twist it into a different pattern, to bend it and weld it until it was something less dangerous, more palatable.
Phil had no such compunction. ‘If she’d been drinking and then drove that car and that child is dead . . .’ There was steel in his voice, and disgust, disgust for his own daughter. So unlike Phil. My vision blurred and I blinked to clear it.
That child
. My mind veered away whenever it came close, like a wild animal smelling smoke, instinctive, protective. It hurt to think of her, of her and her nine years and her family.
Above the trees a flock of starlings came wheeling and turning in formation, then settled in the branches. Their high piping cries overlapped, fast and insistent, like a mob running rumours, trading gossip. The sun was hot on my scalp and my shoulders but I was chilled to the core.
‘We might lose her, Phil.’ I turned to him, my back to the police tape and everything beyond it.
His mouth tightened and his brow creased and he gave a fierce nod.