Rosamund Lupton - Afterwards

‘I am not aware of the logistics of them getting to the school, I just know that the alarm went immediately through to the fire station. Two weeks ago some of the same firefighters came to give a talk to our year-one children and let them look at their fire engine. We never dreamt, any of us, that…’

She trailed off. The lipgloss and assembly voice wasn’t working. Under that carefully put-together frontage she was starting to fall apart. I liked her for it. As the camera panned away from her and back to the blackened school it paused on the undamaged bronze statue of a child.

We caught up with you in the corridor that leads to the burns unit. I could see you tense, trying to ready yourself for this, but I knew nothing could prepare you for what you’d see inside. Next to me I felt Jenny draw back.

‘I don’t want to go in.’

‘Of course. That’s fine.’

You went through the swing doors into the burns unit with the young doctor.

‘You should be with Dad,’ Jenny said.

‘But-’

‘At some level he’ll know you’re with him.’

‘I don’t want to leave you on your own.’

‘I don’t need babysitting, really. I am a babysitter nowadays, remember? Besides, I need you to keep me updated on my progress. Or lack of.’

‘Alright. But I won’t be long. Don’t go anywhere.’

I couldn’t bear to have to search for her again.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘And I won’t talk to strangers. Promise.’

I joined you as you were taken into a small office, grateful that they were doing this by degrees. A doctor held out his hand to you. I thought he looked almost indecently healthy, his brown skin glowing against the white walls of his office, his dark eyes shining.

‘My name’s Dr Sandhu. I am the consultant in charge of your daughter’s care.’

I noticed that as he shook your hand his other hand patted your arm, and I knew he must be a parent too.

‘Come in, please. Take a seat, take a seat…’

You didn’t sit down, but stood, as you always do when you are tense. You’d told me once it’s an atavistic, animal thing, meaning you are ready for immediate flight or fight. I hadn’t understood until now. But where could we run to and who could we fight? Not Dr Sandhu with his shining eyes and softly authoritative voice.

‘I’d like to start on the positives,’ he said and you nodded in vehement agreement; the man was talking your kind of talk. ‘ However tough the environment ,’ you say in the middle of some godforsaken place, ‘ you can always find strategies to survive. ’

You hadn’t seen her yet, but I had, and I suspected that ‘starting with the positives’ was putting a few cushions at the bottom of the cliff before pushing us off it.

‘Your daughter has achieved the hardest thing there is,’ continued Dr Sandhu. ‘Which is to come out of that intensity of fire alive. She must have huge strength of character and spirit.’

Your voice was proud. ‘She does.’

‘And that already puts her ahead of the game, as it were, because that fight in her is going to make all the difference now.’

I looked away from him to you. The smile lines around your eyes were still there; too deeply etched by past happiness to be rubbed out by what was happening now.

‘I need to be frank with you about her condition. You won’t be able to take in all the medical speak now, so I’ll just tell you simply. We can talk again – we most definitely will talk again.’

I saw a shake in your leg, as if you were fighting the instinct to pace the room, flee from it. But we had to listen.

‘Jennifer has sustained significant burns to her body and face. Because of the burns, stress is being placed on her internal organs. She has also suffered inhalation injuries. This means that inside her body her airways, including part of her lungs, are burnt and not functioning.’

She was hurt inside as well.

As well.

‘At the moment I’m afraid I have to tell you she has a less than fifty per cent chance of surviving.’

I screamed at Dr Sandhu: ‘No!’

My scream didn’t even ruffle the air.

I put my arms around you, needing to hold onto you. For a moment you half turned towards me as if you felt me.

‘We are keeping her heavily sedated so that she won’t feel any pain,’ Dr Sandhu continued. ‘And we are breathing for her with a ventilator. We have a highly specialist team here who will be doing everything possible for her.’

‘I want to see her now,’ you said in a voice I didn’t recognise.

I stood close against you as we looked at her.

We used to do that when she was small, after coming in from a party. We’d go to her room and stand and watch her as she slept – soft pink feet sticking out of her cotton nightie, silky hair across her stretched-out arms, which were yet to reach beyond her head. We made her , we’d think. Together we somehow created this amazing child. Chocolate moments, you called them, to make up for broken nights and exhaustion and battles over broccoli. Then we’d each separately give her a hug or a kiss, and feeling – I admit it – smugly proud, we’d go into our own room.

I was glad, for your sake, that her face was covered in dressings now. Just her swollen eyelids and damaged mouth visible. Her burnt limbs were encased in some kind of plastic.

As we looked at her, Dr Sandhu’s sentence coiled inside us like a viper. ‘ She has a less than fifty per cent chance of surviving .’

Then you made yourself stand tall and your voice was strong.

‘Everything is going to be alright, Jen. I promise. You’re going to get better .’

A pledge. Because as her father your job is to protect her; and when that’s failed you make everything better.

Then Dr Sandhu explained about the intravenous lines and the monitors and the dressings and, although he didn’t intend this, it quickly became clear that if she got better it would be because of him, not you.

But you don’t take that lying down. You don’t just hand over power over your daughter. So you asked questions. What did this tube do exactly ? That one? Why use this? You were learning the lingo, the techniques. This was your daughter’s world now, so it was yours and you would learn its rules; master it. The man who stripped down a car engine at sixteen and then rebuilt it following a manual – a man who likes to know exactly what he’s putting his trust in.

At sixteen I would have been reading George Eliot; as equally useless now as a car engine manual.

‘How badly will she be scarred?’ you asked.

And your optimism was glorious! Your courage in the face of it all was marvellous. I knew you didn’t give a monkey’s arse about how she looked compared to whether she lived. Your question was to show your belief that she will live ; that the issue of scarring is a real one because one day she will – will – face the outside world again.

You’ve always been the optimist, me the pessimist ( pragmatist , I’d correct). But now your optimism was a lifebuoy and I was clinging to it.

Dr Sandhu, a kind man, didn’t mention your question’s hopefulness when he replied.

‘She has suffered second-degree partial thickness burns. This type of burn can be either superficial, which means the blood supply is intact and the skin will heal, or deep, which inevitably means scarring. Unfortunately it takes several days before the burns reveal which type they are.’

A nurse came up. ‘We’re arranging a family room for you to stay in tonight. Your wife has been brought back to the acute neurology ward, which is just across the corridor.’

‘Can I see my wife now?’