Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

My eyes slid over the type, the two short columns, reading it like some foreign language, trying not to translate it into meaning and empathy and understanding. A barrier around me like a concrete wall, unyielding.

The nine-year-old girl tragically killed in a road accident in Sale yesterday has been named as Lily Vasey. Lily was riding her bike on Mottram Lane near the family home when she was hit by a car. Her parents Simon (37) and Tina (35) and brothers Nicholas (16) and Robin (14) are reported to be devastated. Police are currently investigating the circumstances of the accident. The two occupants of the Honda Civic, a twenty-six-year-old man and a twenty-five-year-old woman, were both injured in the collision and are undergoing treatment at Wythenshawe Hospital. Sgt John Leland of Greater Manchester Police said, ‘This is a tragic incident that has resulted in the death of a young girl and our sympathies are with her family. We would ask anybody who may have witnessed the collision to contact the police. ’

I let out my breath. A twenty-five-year-old woman. That was Naomi.

She was the baby, Lily. Two big brothers. An afterthought? A miracle? A mistake?

Nine years old.

At nine, Naomi had been a determined tomboy, refusing to wear girlie clothes, best pals with Anthony at school and Usman down the road. She had a BMX bike and we’d rigged up a basketball hoop on the drive. She liked to show off break-dancing moves and play Tomb Raider on the computer. I’d wondered then if she’d turn out to be a lesbian.

Now I was scared about her waking up, as she came through the pain and physical healing of the operation and the injuries, and remembering it all: the barbecue, the drive home, the split second before impact when it was too late to act. She’d have seen the child, the bicycle, knowing in her bones that it was too late to stop, too late to avoid hitting her. The slow-motion last moments as the car flew closer.

Until she woke, there was this weird limbo, a breathing space. The sudden silence before the storm breaks, before the earth shakes. Though in fact the damage was already done. When Naomi sat up and remembered it all, it would be an aftershock. The rest of us were already experiencing them, on waking, and in between, all those little tremors when the mind and body forgets for a moment and then stumbles over the memory.

The girl’s family – they’d be doing it too, like being at sea among waves the size of houses, each one cresting, slapping the truth at them. And all their nine years’ worth of memories rising up on hind legs like shadows, like ghosts hungry for grief.

Carmel

I kept thinking about them, the Vaseys. I said to Phil, before we left to visit Naomi again, ‘They’re waiting for a post-mortem or whatever. Having to bury their little girl.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Out of nowhere,’ I said, ‘out of the blue, bang, and a whole life, a whole life…’ There was no other way to say it: Lily and all she encompassed, all she might have become. Destroyed. Gone. ‘I just feel so sorry for them. I can’t imagine…’

‘I know,’ he said, his voice close to a whisper.

After we’d been there about half an hour, Naomi opened her eyes and groaned a little, then scowled. ‘Mum?’ My heart swelled up and almost robbed me of speech, but I managed ‘Hello, love.’

Her eyes moved to Phil at the other side of the bed. He set down his paper, half the clues already filled in in the crossword, and reached for her hand. I moved my hand to cup her cheek, very tenderly, fearful of hurting her. ‘Hello,’ I said again. ‘You’re in hospital, there was an accident.’

Phil and I had agreed that we needed to give her the information gradually. She’d be weak and vulnerable. She didn’t say anything; she was still frowning, her eyes creased up. Had she followed what I’d said? ‘You’ve had some operations. They had to remove your spleen and repair damage to your bowel. You’ve broken your collarbone and your ankle. You’ve a punctured lung, too, broken ribs.’

‘Alex?’

I told her how he was. Then she flinched and her eyelids fluttered. ‘Are you in pain?’ I asked her.

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice squeaky. I wanted to give her a drink, she sounded parched, but the nil-by-mouth sign was still there. I offered her a foam lollipop, explaining that she could suck it if she was thirsty, but she gave a slight shake of her head.

‘Okay, I’ll get the nurse,’ I said.

The nurse came and took various readings. Naomi responded to her enquiries in monosyllables and the nurse gave her some pain relief.

I expected Naomi to have questions for us, or at least to share something of the trauma she had been through, but she didn’t speak again. After a while she closed her eyes, and soon her face relaxed and we could see she was sleeping.

We weren’t out of the woods, but I felt a lightness, a lifting of the dread that had shadowed us since first coming to the hospital. She knew us, she could talk. The spectre of brain damage, of finding her incapable, incompetent, receded.

Naomi

‘An accident,’ she says.

It makes sense. The weakness, the awful pain, the weird dreams.

She tells me how I am hurt, a list of stuff. It’s like a present, this explanation, a gift. I had no clue what was going on, where I was, how messed up I was, but now I’ve got an answer. An accident. Operations. In hospital.

‘Alex?’

‘He’s okay. Some broken bones, bruises, he’s on the mend,’ Mum says. ‘Concentrate on getting better,’ she adds. How? Maybe I just have to imagine myself all healed, nothing hurting. Back to normal.

I’d like to smile to show her I’m okay, but the simple things are so hard.

Still. I will get better, and go home, and everything will be all right again. I feel weepy for a moment, then sort of calm. Like I’m a little kid and they’re both there so I know everything’s going to be okay.

An accident?

Mum’s talking again, but my head has gone all swimmy and I can’t stay with her. She squeezes my hand and it hurts, but not much compared to everything else.

Carmel

‘We should eat,’ Phil suggested.

We went to the café and bought lunch, salad and quiche for me, chilli and baked potato for him. I found it hard to swallow even though I was hungry, my stomach still tense.

The canteen was busy with people, most of them older than us, many with sticks or wheelchairs. Ailing but still active, still out in the world. Unlike my mum, whose life existed in the confines of her nursing home and the wilderness of her imagination.

After we’d finished eating, I suggested we get some air. We were waiting for visiting time to start so we could see Alex. We had to walk a bit to escape the smokers dotted around the building’s exits. There are no grounds to enjoy in the complex; it’s carved out of brownfield sites and has grown and sprawled over the years. We sat on a bench with an unlovely view of the car park. The sunlight twinkled and glimmered on the windscreens and the chrome trims.

I watched a car arrive, drive slowly around the parking bay, find it full and make for the next one along.

‘I’ve been thinking about Petey,’ Phil said.

So had I, somewhere in the back of my mind. Petey, our friend who’d been run over and killed. A drunk driver. Though it turned out to be more complicated than that. There were bound to be echoes for us. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’

Phil’s phone went – Archie, his assistant, with a problem he couldn’t answer on his own. ‘Tell them we can try and get the parts but it could be costly. They might be better buying a replacement.’ Archie said something, then Phil answered. ‘Better than she was. She’s been awake for a few minutes.’ He sounded exhausted. We both were. Living on adrenalin and air.