Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

‘I think she’s gone to sleep,’ I said.

‘Best medicine,’ the nurse replied. ‘If she does all right, she’ll be transferred to another ward in a few days’ time. She’s doing really great,’ she added, ‘but she’s not going to be up to much for a while.’

‘Is she in any pain?’ I asked.

‘We’ll be keeping an eye on that. There’s always some discomfort after surgery. Especially given the amount she’s had.’

My hands in the latex gloves felt hot and sticky; the apron was full of static and the skirt section stuck to my arms.

Naomi

It’s a labyrinth; the tunnels run through the earth, the smell of mud is strong. The roots of trees, knotted and gnarled, poke from the soil like fingers or bones. I have to crawl, the roof is so low, and when I come to the end of the passage, it is blocked off. A dead end. There is no space to turn, so I have to shuffle back the way I came, my hands and knees raw, stinging from the pieces of grit, the grains of dirt.

I don’t sense the chasm, don’t notice any change in the air until I’m in it, falling, falling upwards and…

Awake. Dim light. Mum, her face all funny and… I can’t see all of him properly, but enough to know Dad’s there too. There is something I should tell them. Is there? Then a whooshing comes and the ink races through the tunnels, leaping up the walls, rising to take me back, lapping at me.

Carmel

A little later, Suzanne and Jonty arrived, calling to us from the doorway to the room. There were only meant to be two visitors to a bed, so we said we’d come out and see them. We took off our protective clothing and put it in the bin, and left the room to meet them in the corridor. The sight of Suzanne made me feel wobbly again. I held her close, then Phil did the same.

‘How is she?’ Suzanne asked.

We told them. Jonty looked embarrassed, awkward. I wondered if he had a thing about hospitals. He kept rocking on his feet, up on his toes and down, his eyes wandering over the posters and notices.

‘We can’t stay long,’ Suzanne said apologetically. ‘Left Ollie with Julia down the road.’

‘She’s sleeping anyway.’

‘You both look shocking,’ Suzanne said with her customary honesty. ‘You should get some sleep yourselves. There’s stuff in your fridge,’ she added. ‘We’d loads left over.’

‘Oh, Suzanne, that’s so-’

‘Well, you won’t feel like cooking,’ she said, cutting me off.

‘We’ll just say goodbye to Naomi,’ I told her. Hand gel. Another pair of gloves, another apron. I bent close over Naomi and kissed her cheek. ‘We’re going home for a bit, darling. See you later. I love you,’ I added. It wasn’t something we habitually said aloud, but now it seemed important.

Back in the corridor, I hugged Suzanne again. As we stepped apart, she caught my elbows in her hands. ‘Mum, you need to know. It’s in the paper. The accident, the little girl.’

‘On the local news, too,’ Jonty said.

I nodded quickly, avoiding her eyes. I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to hear.

We made our way to Alex’s ward and found Monica in the waiting area just outside the ward itself. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Carmel, Phil – how’s Naomi?’

‘She’s had more surgery,’ I said. ‘Internal bleeding. She’s back now. She came round for a minute but she couldn’t remember anything about the accident – didn’t seem to know what we were talking about. What about Alex? We’ve not managed to see him yet.’

‘He’s just gone down to have his casts done. The fractures are pretty straightforward, so he shouldn’t need any operations. He’ll need to use a crutch for a while.’

‘Is it his leg?’

‘Ankle and wrist. He was lucky.’

‘Yes,’ I said. It was relative, wasn’t it?

‘It’s still such a shock,’ she said. ‘Alex said she took the bend too fast. If only… I passed them,’ she shook her head, ‘driving back from the gym. Tooted and waved, like you do…’

I nodded.

‘Her driving was fine then, honestly, she wasn’t speeding. If only I’d… Oh, I don’t know.’ She blinked fast.

What could she have done? Flagged them over? She’d had no reason to.

‘I do hope she’s all right,’ Monica said. ‘You’ll let me know – and Alex wants to see her as soon as…’

‘Yes. Thanks.’ The words about Naomi maybe drinking before they drove home were in my mouth, lodged there. I should mention it, I knew I should, but I said nothing. I prayed Suzanne was wrong, that Naomi had switched from wine to soft drinks not long after we left the barbecue and her greatest sin was not watching her speed.

Phil stayed quiet, saying nothing either.

‘There’ll be an investigation,’ Monica said. ‘The police are going to talk to Alex tomorrow.’

‘Yes.’ My mouth was dry.

‘I’ll give you my mobile number,’ Monica said.

I took her number and we said our goodbyes, and still I kept silent. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her; I couldn’t face her reaction.

And it was only Suzanne’s word after all, wasn’t it?

Evie and I spoke before I went to bed. I shared everything with her. And she listened. She didn’t make excuses for Naomi, or dodge the sheer ugliness of what I was telling her, and this time, thank God, she didn’t tell me it was all going to be all right. I think I’d have hung up if she had come out with any stupid platitudes like that. Because whatever happened, there was no gain saying that this was a tragedy, maybe plain and simple, maybe complicated, but an awful, awful tragedy. At the heart of it a nine-year-old, mown down on a Sunday evening as she cycled along the side of the road. Mown down by my daughter

I am used to other people’s crises. It’s what I do, how I earn my living. Social worker – emergency duty team. When someone’s life is turned upside down and it’s an emergency and out of hours (evenings, nights, weekends, bank holidays), the phone rings in my office. I do a rotating pattern of night shifts and back shifts (afternoon till midnight), and get one weekend off in four. I am the person who sorts things out: the admission to a mental health unit, the emergency accommodation, the removal to a place of safety. I act as an appropriate adult when a teenager is arrested in town, and am there for all the victims of fire or flood or explosion who find themselves suddenly homeless. I’m the person who can bridge the gap, hold your hand and list the steps that need to be taken the following morning or at the start of the week when normal service is resumed. I don’t panic or freeze or lose my temper. My training has equipped me with all I need to support you through the calamity in a calm and professional manner. I am objective, detached. If something about your particular case upsets or enrages me, you won’t have a clue. I will save it for my report and assessment, for my recommendations, which feed into a cycle of monitoring and improvements.

The bulk of my work, the real routine, is child protection. An unending catalogue of cruelty, neglect and misery. From the child with the mark of a hot iron branded into his back to the six-year-old turning up at school on a weekend in an attempt to escape her stepfather’s sexual abuse.

Of course there are some situations that stick with me, stark memories most of them of the cruel and desperate straits that people find themselves in. Like the little boy who survived the wholesale slaughter of his family by his father, or the elderly woman found wandering on the main London to Manchester railway line, abandoned by her son and his wife, or the young Somali woman who one evening escaped from the shed where her owners kept her as a domestic slave, running barefoot in a city thick with snow. But other memorable encounters are funny or heart-warming, because of the people, their tenacity and courage, and the kindness of strangers. Humanity in all its messy, mucky, glorious, beautiful colours. Like the young mother of a foundling baby boy who was traced and who went on, with support from her stepdad, to make a loving home for herself and her son. Or the retired head teacher who opened his house to a recovering drug addict and ended up adopting her. Or the lad poised to jump from his gran’s roof because his medication sent him loopy. He teaches boxing now, mentors others.