They are in the waiting room, surrounded by the usual parade of sprained ankles and tummy aches and asthma attacks. A man in one corner is kicking the vending machine, and a woman is haranguing the triage nurse about how long they’ve been waiting, pointing out that they were here hours earlier and other people are ‘skipping the queue’. The nurse explains the basics of triage to her with a practised tone, and I walk over to Jake and Sophie, trying to shut it all out.
“He’s been admitted,” I say to Sophie, who looks like she’s about to cry. “They’ve done some tests, and we’ll know more soon. Sophie, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you came to look for me…”
She brushes it off, but I see Jake stiffen slightly. I wonder if he is feeling the same underlying guilt as I am.
I give Sophie directions to the ward, and am left with Jake, standing beneath those punishing lights, listening to someone cough up half a lung in the background.
I look up at him, and can’t even find a smile. While I had to stay strong for Connie and Sophie, I managed it – but now I am running on empty.
“How is he, really?” he asks, holding my hands in his.
“Not good,” I reply, shaking my head. “Pretty sure it’s meningitis, though we don’t know what kind yet. If it’s bacterial, and it spreads, then… Oh God, then so much could go wrong. He could lose limbs. He could be left with hearing loss, or seizures, or kidney issues… He could die, Jake!”
Saying it out loud makes it true, and I am swamped with terror. I can’t stop blinking, and the sounds and sights around me are blurred and dream-like. A cartoon version of reality.
Jake tries to take me in his arms, but I move out of his reach. I don’t want to be comforted or consoled. I don’t deserve it. I cannot accept it.
“This isn’t your fault,” he says quietly. “You did everything you could.”
“Everything I could apart from actually be there! If I’d heard the walkie, or if I’d been where I was supposed to have been when Sophie came for me, then we could have been here hours ago – and every second counts in a case like this. I let him down.”
“You didn’t. You got him here. And you don’t know how this will turn out – he’s young and healthy, you can’t assume the worst…”
I let out a bitter laugh, and move further away. This isn’t Jake’s fault either, but I am too raw, too wired, too anxious to let myself off the hook that easily. Being here, dealing with this, is sickeningly familiar, and I know I can’t cope if I don’t focus. If I refuse to let myself be distracted.
“That’s the thing, Jake,” I say, staring past him at the man who has finally retrieved a Mars Bar from the vending machine, “I’ve been trying so hard not to assume the worst, about everything. I’ve been trying so hard to be positive, to not expect everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Yet here we are – facing the worst. Look, this isn’t the time or the place for a conversation – and I’m in no state to have one. Thank you for your help, but you should go home now. There’s nothing more you can do here.”
I see the flicker of hurt that crosses his face before he manages to control it, and I hear the effort in his voice as he replies: “I can stay. For you.”
“No,” I answer, softening my tone, “that won’t help. Not right now. I’m tired and stressed, and it’s going to be a long day, and I don’t have anything to spare at the moment. Go home, Jake – I’ll call you later, I promise.”
I can tell that he doesn’t want to leave, note the reluctance in his body language as he turns to walk away. He wants to stay, to make me feel better at a time when I know nothing can, not even him. He wants to reassure me, to try and convince me that things will be okay in the end.
That’s easy to believe when you’re sitting on the beach at Starshine Cove, watching the tides. But here, in this place, in territory I know so well, it seems like an impossible dream.
I turn to walk back to A&E, tripping over my own shoelace and barely managing to stay upright. I have lost my balance, in every possible way.
ChapterThirty
Sophie goes home after a couple of hours, promising to feed and walk Larry, and fill in George and Archie. Connie gives her the world’s biggest hug before she leaves, brushing strands of blonde hair back from her face and kissing her exuberantly before she finally releases her. It’s the kind of gesture that would make teenagers cringe at any normal time, but this is far from a normal time.
I probably shouldn’t still be here either, but I suspect the registrar has figured out it would be a lot more trouble to try and make me leave than to deliberately ignore my presence.
The tests have come back, and Dan has been diagnosed with meningococcal meningitis. He is receiving targeted treatment now, and has had a CT scan, which was blessedly clear. The nurses have set up a fan next to his bed, and his temperature is coming down. The next two days will be vital, and Dan will be watched by several hawks, including myself, to see what happens next.
I explain all of this to Connie in clear layman’s terms, avoiding any of the long-term risk factors that I know exist but would completely freak her out before it’s even remotely necessary. Naturally enough, I can’t extend the same courtesy to myself, and I am tortured by visions of Dan facing a lifetime of disability. Of missing out on medical school, of his whole future being stolen, or at least radically changed. Of Dan not making it.
I’m not quite illogical enough to think all of this is my fault – these illnesses are out there, they happen, and I couldn’t control that. I did not invent meningitis. But I’m not sure I’ll ever quite forgive myself for the delay in getting him here, either.
We develop a routine, Connie and I, of sitting together, and of giving each other breaks while we seek out too-hot coffee from machines, visit the cafeteria, or take walks outside in air that smells of fuel and cigarette smoke. It is intense, being in a hospital – the strange combination of boredom and adrenaline, the way you get to know the staff by sight, overhear conversations about other people, lose track of time without your natural rhythms. I have worked in them, and now I am at the bedside of a patient, and it is challenging on both sides of the curtain.
The morning visiting hours bring, predictably enough, the arrival of George. I’d spoken to him on the phone and advised him to stay away while his own health status is still in question, but obviously he ignored me. Meningitis isn’t excessively contagious, but as a precaution the hospital pharmacy has issued antibiotics for the people who have had extensive close contact with Dan – Connie, Sophie, and a couple of friends he’d had a sleepover with. George will probably be fine, and he is wearing his mask, but I am still concerned.
He silences me with one hand held up in front of my face, and announces: “I’m here, love, and I’m staying. Don’t waste your breath.”
He looks tired, and Connie looks haggard despite her attempts at humour, and I wonder how hard this must be for them – not only to have Dan so sick, but to be back in the hospital that has so many associations for them. That must remind them of the day they lost Simon and Sandy.
I am surrounded by pain – theirs, my own, the suffering of the people around us. The young man who was admitted after a bicycle crash who I know is in a bad way; the daughter of the elderly man with terminal lung cancer; the junior doctor who looks exhausted and on the point of breakdown by dealing with it all. The pain is everywhere; it is a virus, it is airborne – and it is poisoning me with every breath I take.
