Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

A new moon, a sliver of white, cut the inky sky. The roads were quiet: Sunday evening, people facing work the following morning. Working on her.

As we approached the hospital, the lights glared out from the corridors and entrance bays, the car park.

At A &E I paid the driver and got out. An ambulance was approaching, still out of sight, but its siren, insistent keening, filled the night.

Outside the entrance there was a couple standing with two policemen. The man had an arm round the woman, hugging her close, and she was weeping into his chest. He was smoking, his own eyes bright with pain. I quickly averted my gaze, not wanting to intrude, hating the sudden surge of empathy that quickened my pulse and stung my eyes. Why were the police there with them? Had they done something wrong?

My phone rang and I slid it open. Phil.

‘Carmel?’

‘Oh Phil, it’s Naomi, there’s been a car accident. I don’t know… I’ve just got here, Wythenshawe. Come now, you must come now.’

‘Oh God.’

There was a chant in my head, pleasepleaseplease , a frantic mantra. Not to any particular higher entity. To the world, to the world and everything in it, pleasepleaseplease .

Naomi.

The enquiries desk was quiet. Half a dozen people waited on chairs nearby, subdued. One man had a dressing pressed to his ear. An older woman opposite him was bent double. I rang the bell for attention, my eyes skating over notices about abuse of staff and no-smoking policies.

A woman came through and sat down behind the counter. She asked how she could help and I gave her Naomi’s name and said she’d been in a car accident.

‘Date of birth?’

I reeled it off. A September baby. An Indian summer. The nights had been sultry, the days baking. I’d moved in a daze, barely sleeping, trying to look after her and Suzanne, who was two and a half going on middle-aged and patently jealous of the baby. We had laid blankets on the flagstones and filled a paddling pool with water, kept it topped up. Sometimes I’d pull up a chair and rest my feet in it, feeding Naomi while Suzanne water-boarded her dolls: ‘Naughty baby, you so dirty.’ Phil took a couple of weeks off, got a mate to staff the shop, so he could cover the washing and shopping and feed us. We lived on salad, bread and cheese.

‘Are you next of kin?’

‘Her mother.’

The nurse checked a clipboard, then the computer. ‘Yes, she’s here. I’ll ask someone to come and have a word. If you’d like to take a seat in the other waiting room, along the corridor on the left.’

There was no one in the waiting room, just two rows of plastic chairs and a low table between them with magazines on. Garish colours and chirpy headlines exhorting the reader to Eat for Health this Summer and Exercise for Energy! . Posters on the wall advised about bowel cancer and stroke, chlamydia and smoking cessation.

It was impossible to sit still and there wasn’t enough room to pace. I checked my phone. Where was Phil?

Naomi. My heart felt unsteady, beating more quickly than usual, and with each thump I felt an ache inside, as though the shock had bruised it.

In the end I settled for sitting down, elbows braced on my knees, head in my hands, rhythmically drumming my feet in an effort to release some tension.

I hadn’t let Suzanne know yet. Would they still be partying? We’d found it easy to maintain a social life when Suzanne was very small; she’d sleep anywhere and accompanied us to parties, concerts and festivals. But she probably already had a set bedtime for Ollie. She’d be feeding at four-hourly intervals through the night rather than on demand, and getting him to sleep through like a dream as soon as he’d gained enough weight. Suzanne didn’t do failure. She might be asleep herself, it was after ten. Or she might still be clearing up; she’d never leave a mess overnight.

I was selecting her phone number when there was a knock at the door. A man in a doctor’s coat. ‘Mrs Baxter?’

I dropped my phone as I sprang to my feet, then winced and scrabbled to pick it up.

‘Yes, how is she? Is she…’ My throat closed up, suddenly dry. I could feel the drum of a pulse under my jaw, hear a humming from the strip lights. Pleasepleaseplease .

‘She’s being prepared for theatre,’ he said.

‘Oh, thank God.’ The pictures I had been holding at bay – Naomi decapitated, Naomi crushed, Naomi on a slab – flooded in. I began to cry.

That was when Phil arrived. He said later that when he heard me crying, he thought we’d lost her.

The doctor sat us both down and explained that Naomi’s heart had stopped and she had been resuscitated at the scene. She had sustained a fractured skull, broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a broken ankle, and she also had extensive internal injuries. Their first priority was to isolate and stop any internal bleeding and repair damage to vital organs.

Phil kept asking questions: would she be okay, exactly what organs were damaged, how long would the surgery take, would she make a full recovery?

The doctor stressed that it was impossible to say at this stage how she would respond, or what they would find once they had her in theatre. He said it could be several hours. He had questions too about whether she’d had any previous surgery, any allergies or pre-existing medical conditions.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘She’s always been really healthy.’

‘And Alex?’ asked Phil. ‘Her boyfriend?’

‘I believe he’s in X-ray.’

‘Monica said he was okay, broken bones and bruises,’ I said.

‘Monica?’ said Phil.

‘That’s how I knew,’ I explained. ‘She rang me.’

‘The accident,’ I turned to the doctor. ‘Do you know what happened? Was it another car?’ Or an HGV, I thought, pinning Alex’s Honda Civic beneath the chassis. Had the fire brigade needed to cut her free?

‘I don’t know, I’m sorry. But the police are here and they’ll be able to tell you more.’

The couple at the entrance doors, the man smoking, the woman weeping: were they in the other car? In the absence of hard facts, my mind was hyperactive, swooping on anything to fill in the blanks.

‘She will be all right?’ I said, as he took his leave. A plea as much as a question.

‘We’ll do our very best,’ he said, confirming my fears.

Once he’d gone, Phil turned to hug me and we sat like that, twisted in the chairs, until I broke away, my arm deadened and my neck cricked.

He kissed my head.

‘We’d better ring Suzanne,’ I said.

He sighed. ‘She can’t do anything at this time of night.’

‘I know, but we can’t not tell her.’

He rubbed his face, sighed again, cleared his throat as he stood and keyed his mobile.

I listened to his side of the conversation as he spoke first with Jonty and then Suzanne. I closed my eyes and leant my head back against the wall. She was alive – now she had to stay alive. That was all that mattered. Pleasepleaseplease .

Phil had finished talking, promising to update Suzanne the moment there was any news, whatever time it was. Insisting there was absolutely no point in her coming to the hospital yet, while Naomi was on the operating table. Now he sat on one of the chairs opposite me, frowning, deep grooves between his bushy eyebrows, his mouth set. He looked over at me, shaking his head, his eyes raw. I walked across to him and put my arms around his head, pulled him close, felt the heat of his head against my belly, noticing how the hair on his scalp was thinning. Daft the things you see at times like that.

‘What on earth happened?’ When he finally spoke, his words were muffled.