ILLUSIONS AND LIES: Chapter 2

The hospital doors flung open and I followed closely, frantically, as the paramedics charged through, pushing the two gurneys that held my broken children. They spoke fast to the hospital staff, using words that, to me, might well have been another language. They discussed my children’s injuries using words like hematoma and craniotomy.

Hang on! Doesn’t craniotomy mean removing part of the brain?

“You can’t take out part of his brain. Why do you need to take out part of his brain?” I screamed.

One of the surgeons stepped toward me –I only knew he was a surgeon because he was wearing scrubs like the ones I’d seen surgeons wear on TV and in movies– and placed a tender hand on my shoulder.

“We don’t intend to take part of his brain out, I promise.”

I don’t know a lot about anatomy, but I knew ‘craniotomy’ had something to do with cutting into the brain.

“But you said craniotomy… Doesn’t that mean…”

He cut me off. “It’s ok ma’am,” –Again with the ma’am– “we have no intention of removing anything. What you’re thinking of is called a lobotomy. Craniotomy simply means brain surgery. Your son has a lot of bleeding around his brain and we need to operate to control it and relieve the pressure.”

“Is he going to… be ok?” I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question the way it was phrased in my mind –‘Is he going to die?’ Before arriving at the hospital I hadn’t dared ask the question at all, so I allowed myself a minute sliver of hope as I asked it now.

“We will do everything we can to save him,” the surgeon replied.

“Please, you have to save him. Please save him, OK?” I begged with every desperate fibre of my being.

His eyes turned grim. “I’m afraid we have our work cut out for us. We will do everything humanly possible to save both of your children.”

I was grateful for his honesty. I wanted hope, I needed hope, but the last thing I wanted was to be placated with false hope. If he didn’t make it –if, god forbid neither of them made it– I didn’t want to be sitting around thinking everything was going to be peachy, only to have the doctors come out and give me the news that no parent should ever have to hear.

He patted my shoulder gently with pity in his eyes as he left me standing alone and desolate. It felt like I was drowning in myself, in my fear and my panic. The team of doctors, surgeons and nurses began talking again and I watched, unmoving, as they split into two groups and wheeled Bailey and Sarah in different directions.  

It was surreal, like I was watching this hospital, and this poor woman losing her children, from somewhere outside of my body. It wasn’t happening to me, but in front of me, to someone who looked just like me.

An attractive woman approached me. She was a vision with bouncing locks of blonde curls that radiated around her ivory face. I was in no condition to notice much, but I noticed her. She seemed to glide toward me with no effort in her step. For a moment I thought she must be an angel.

“Hi sweetie, I’m Dr. Abigail Fagley. I understand this is very difficult for you, but do you mind if I take at look at your injuries? You need to be in good health when your children come out of surgery.” Her tone was so sure, and she threw me a smile so convincing that I almost believed her.

I followed her dumbly, to one of the emergency beds. In the limited privacy provided by the flimsy hospital curtain doctors and nurses encroached on me, poking, prodding and hooking me up to myriad machines and IV drips.

With every second that passed the small flicker of hope that had manifested from Abigail’s words faded. Every face that smiled with some personal triumph or joke, every passing body in the hospital halls going about their daily routines, filled me with despair. Why was everyone going on as they always did? How was the world still turning when its axis had been shifted so completely?

I didn’t know anything was seriously wrong with me until I heard that beautiful doctor yell, “We need to get her to theatre, right away.”

I felt a sharp jab and within seconds my body became feeble. A wash of darkness pulled me out of the conscious world, and I welcomed it.

A man came to my bedside, a doctor. I think it was the same doctor who had touched my shoulder with pitied affection before taking Bailey and Sarah into surgery. His face was morose, and I didn’t want him to speak. I knew what he would say. I put my hands to my ears, in a perfectly puerile gesture, and began chanting, “La la, la la, la la.” If I didn’t hear him say it, it wouldn’t be true.

“I’m not sure if you can hear me, Ms. Palmer, but I have some terribly sad news.” I stopped chanting but kept my hands to my ears. The doctor regarded me momentarily, before continuing. “We lost them. We lost them both.” He sat in the chair by my bed. I didn’t speak, I couldn’t. “We did everything we could. Their injuries were just too substantial.” He gazed at the floor, his hand on mine, his eyes filled with tears.

I was touched by the sight of the doctor crying for my children, yet I did not cry. I did not move. I did not speak. I lay, quivering with shock, my eyes fixed on the doctor’s bleak face.

Quiet murmurs, like people talking underwater, broke though my woeful reverie. My head was heavy and none of the sounds made any sense. I drifted back away from them momentarily. Then the sounds came louder, until I could make out words.

The light was too bright when at last I opened my eyes. I couldn’t focus on any one thing in the large white room, like I was looking through an out-of-focus camera. Was it a dream then? Had the doctor not just given me the most tragic news any parent can imagine? Or had I passed out from shock after hearing what he had to tell me?

The stationary objects began to take form. The fuzzy outlines became clear edges. The people were harder. As they moved I tried to see them, to make the distinction between doctors, nurses, and everyone else. I tried to speak, to call out, but my voice was hoarse and the sound that came out was no more than a tenuous croak.

As my vision continued to clear I analysed my surroundings more closely. I was in a ward that was open but not very big –only five beds. The curtain around each bed was drawn back, giving the nurses a clear view from their station on the opposing wall. A crash cart –I knew what it was because it had a big red label marked ‘CRASH CART’– was standing against the same wall next to a steel trolley filled with needles, blood vials, bandages, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t recognise.

To my right were an empty bed and then the wall. The bed directly to my left contained a sleeping man. He looked to be close to eighty years old and very frail. The two beds beyond him were both occupied. A young girl with black curls and ivory skin sat up colouring in a book next to the elderly man. The person in the farthest bed was turned away, shuffling slightly under the covers. In front of me was a small table on wheels –the likeness of which I had seen in every hospital I had ever been in– with a jug of water and a plastic cup sitting on it. Beside me was a stainless steel dresser with sharp, right-angled corners and little round handles on the drawers. On it was a clock that read 2:23pm. It was a typical scene in a typical hospital.

Longing to speak to someone, to inquire after the doctor who may or may not have given me the news I didn’t want, I reached for the water, intending to moisten my mouth enough to add some volume and clarity to my voice. I tried to sit up. My head spun. I set it back on the pillow and the spinning slowed. I reached for the edge of the table, to pull it closer. My head spun again. I paused again, then wriggled my foot free from the covers, hooked it around the table leg and, slowly and clumsily, pulled the table to me. A plump nurse in her fifties, very friendly looking, came to my aid.

“You poor dear! You’ll fall out of bed if you’re not careful.” She proceeded to lift my leg, as though I had no control over it myself, and tuck it back under the covers, fixing them so tight around me I found it difficult to move at all.

“There was a doctor here, a surgeon. He came and spoke to me earlier. Can you find him please?”

She simply looked at me with pity in her eyes and sadness in her smile. 

“Please, I need to know if it’s true. I need to know.”

“You poor dear,” she said again. “I think I had better fetch your doctor.” And with that she left me.

Flashes of the accident, of my children and their pale lifeless faces, the feel of their limp bodies, the smell of blood and burnt rubber, the sounds of crushing metal and sirens, and the scene of the paramedics working desperately to save my babies, all came crashing into my mind at once. I pushed them back as far as I could until I went numb. I locked my emotions into a tight fist and pushed them down into my stomach and stared blankly at the wall, clenching my arms firmly around myself to restrain them, hold them in. I was afraid if I let them out, if I let them touch me, my heart would burn to charcoal and my mind would cease to function.

I don’t how long I sat like that –it could have been minutes, it could have been hours. I had no concept of time, only a battle to keep the fist from escaping my stomach.

The blonde doctor came to my bedside. “Hello, Charlotte.”

“Charlie!” My voice was a robotic monotone, “It’s just Charlie.”         

My eyes remained fixed on the same paint chip in the wall that I had been staring at since the stout nurse had walked away. I’d stared at it so long that it stared back. The little round patch of undercoat was the eye, the jagged edges of the remaining paint around it its eyelashes, and the worn dirty centre was the pupil that saw everything that went on in this place. And it understood. The eye saw inside my heart, saw the pain there.

It was nothing more than a hole in an otherwise-impeccable sheen of paint. But to me, in that moment, it was something else entirely. It was an entity full of recognition and compassion.

“I need to check your dressings, Charlotte. And when I’m done there is someone here who has been waiting patiently for quite some time to see you.”

I could have commented that she’d ignored me about my name, but the manner in which my doctor addressed me wasn’t high on my list of priorities. I could have asked her about what the other doctor had said to me –the thought of it hadn’t left me, not for second– but I wasn’t ready to know the truth. Instead, I simply nodded.

When she was done tending my dressings, the blonde doctor brushed my arm lightly. A fluttering ran under my skin from her touch, a warm quiver that quickly spread.

“I’m done here, love. I’ll go and retrieve your visitor.” She smiled sweetly and left the room.

A few minutes passed before a familiar figure approached. In the excitement of seeing Richard’s face I lunged forward, forgetting my injuries. Sharp pangs of pain threw me back against the pillows and pinned me there.

Richard was the night manager of my café, and a close friend. He stood just inside the doorway, a gentle whisper of air tussled his mess of short brunette hair. I hadn’t realised it until he was standing in front of me, but he was the one person I wanted to see more than any other, with the exception of my children, of course.

He was young, gorgeous, and absolutely charming. On a normal day it was difficult to be in the same room as him without daydreaming of him taking me to bed.

“Richard!”

“Hi, Charlie.”

His expression was mirthless: his mouth turned down at the corners; deep lines in his forehead which looked alien on his face; his eyes dark and brooding, or maybe that was indicative of a lack of sleep. Whatever the reason, it gave fortitude to my fear that speaking to that doctor was not a dream.

“Why so glum, aren’t you happy to see me?” It was a stupid thing to say, under the circumstances, I know. I just wanted a moment of normality, however fleeting.

Richard kissed my forehead and sat down by my bedside. He took my hand in his, and kissed that, too.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he said. “If I’d lost you without having told you how I feel I would never forgive myself.”

“What do you mean, ‘how you feel’?”

“I can’t be around you, Charlie, without wanting to kiss you.” Richard looked away from me as he spoke. “I have had a massive crush on you for years, and, forgive me for being so crass, but since your husband died I have been trying to find the right time to tell you that… I love you.” He leaned toward me and looked me in the eye, “I love you, Charlie.”

I swear to you, I almost choked on my tongue. It was at that moment, though, that I realised how much, and for how long, I had wanted him to say it.

“Your timing is quite off, isn’t it? I mean…” I paused when I saw the dejection in his face. “I’m sorry. I feel the same, but it’s not really the best time to be thinking about romance. I don’t even know if Bailey and Sarah are… okay.”

“I know it’s not right to tell you this now, and I don’t expect anything to change.” He was looking away again, “But after today, I would hate myself if I didn’t tell you. I hope you can understand.”

Richard sat with me for a long while, talking about work, mutual friends, and football, among other things. I didn’t say much, just muttered a few single syllable responses and smiled at his attempt to keep it casual. He did a convincing job of feigning ceremonious conversation.

As much as I tried to ignore the speculation in my mind, ignore the fear, I had to face the truth. I had to know if my world was at an end. I had to know if my children had died. I asked Richard to fetch my doctor.