Angel of Death (7 page)

Mother Judith told reporters: ‘It’s a miracle. There is just no other word for it. If it were not for the crash team at Grantham Hospital, he would not be here today.’ She added: ‘We never really gave up hope. We did some serious talking and were prepared for the worst but I knew he would make it. I suppose it’s maternal instinct.’

The cause of his heart attack, however, was ‘baffling’ doctors, Judith said. She couldn’t explain why her son had suddenly collapsed. She could only say: ‘He’s had a number of tests. He’s been on drips and ventilators and had all sorts of needles put into him, but they don’t seem to know why he had the heart attack or how he recovered so quickly.’

Within three weeks Bradley was well enough to be back at his desk at the Gonerby Hill Foot Primary School, apparently unaffected by his experience.

His mother Judith, an intelligent, articulate woman, would much later become the backbone of a Parents’ Support Group, formed to unite all the families of Ward Four children. Among them was Belinda King who worked as a nurse on a different ward at the same hospital. Even she was not to be spared; her month-old baby son, Christopher, was the next to follow, though he too survived.

The toll of children continued and staff were now reeling from the scale of it. Some were beginning to suspect that something was wrong, alerted only by the fact that there had never been so many emergencies, rather than by any medical proof.

One young nurse remembers: ‘We weren’t prepared for what was happening. You’d go off duty at 9pm, leaving one of the children perfectly OK, then, when you went in the next morning at 7.30am, you’d be told so and so had suffered a heart attack and been transferred to Nottingham. When it happened once or twice you didn’t think much about it, but it was happening more and more …’

Becky’s death had come as a blow to them. One of the nurses said: ‘I remember her going home. She was a lovely little thing. She was perfectly OK when she went home in the afternoon. The next day when I went on duty I said good morning to
one of the staff nurses. She said: “It’s not a good morning, it’s just morning.” I said why, and she said Becky had been brought into casualty dead on arrival. I couldn’t believe it. It was so ridiculous.’

Little more than seven weeks had passed since the death of baby Liam Taylor, the first victim, but by now the emergency crash team were frequent visitors to the ward. They had brought several children back from the brink of death.

Two-month-old Christopher Peasgood was to be the next. He’d been born at the hospital on 17 February, weighing 61bs. His birth had been a special blessing to mother Creswen and father Mick who had lost their ten-month-old daughter, Michelle, in a cot-death tragedy two years earlier.

There had been the worry that Christopher could die, just like Michelle, in his sleep, but, as the weeks went by, his parents began to feel that everything was going to be all right. At seven weeks Christopher developed a nasty cough, lost his appetite and began to struggle for breath. Antibiotics had no effect so, on Friday, 13 April, Christopher was admitted to Ward Four.

After Michelle’s death Creswen and Mick were taking no chances. ‘We insisted they took him in,’ recalls Creswen.

Specialist Dr Nanayyakara was quick to reassure Christopher’s mother. Her baby was suffering from bronchiolitis, but little children were durable and, given a couple of days, he would be fine. They put an oxygen mask on Christopher’s face, which
seemed to help him breathe, and Creswen and Mick were content enough to go home that night, leaving their son in the care of Ward Four.

When they returned the next day, Christopher was inside an oxygen tent which they were told was nothing to worry about, a routine measure because he wouldn’t settle with the mask over his face.

From time to time Nurse Allitt popped in and out of Cubicle Two to check on Christopher who was being fed by tubes. When it was time to give him some medicine Creswen called in Nurse Allitt; she remembers the nurse telling her: ‘Why don’t you go for a drink, and a cigarette? He’s all right. He’s fast asleep. Don’t worry, I’ll look after him.’

Reassured, Creswen and Mick took a break. They were only gone ten minutes but, as they returned, Creswen saw the ‘crash team’ rushing to the ward. Instinctively, she knew it was Christopher. ‘Something clicked in my brain and I suddenly thought: “He’s dead.”’

The doctors and nurses were already beside Christopher’s bed when she looked inside Cubicle Two.

It was a horrifying sight, she said. ‘The oxygen tent had gone and he was laid on the bed, totally blue. His face was the colour of a nurse’s blue hat. They were trying to bring him back, but I thought he had gone. I knew what a dead baby looked like because I’d carried Michelle to the ambulance in my arms.’ The realisation of what was happening to her little boy was just too much for Creswen,
who became hysterical, screaming to doctors: ‘Bring him back – don’t you dare let him die.’

It was Nurse Allitt who led Creswen from the room. Creswen remembers the nurse trying to comfort her. ‘She said, “Come on, he’s all right, they’re bringing him back. We’ll get you a cup of tea.” She took me to the tea room with her arm around me and she seemed ever so concerned.

‘They carried Christopher out, he was just limp, and they took him to the treatment room. Nurse Allitt came into the parents room where she told us: “Don’t worry, he’ll be all right. He’s in the best hands.”’

By mid-afternoon Christopher’s condition had stabilised and doctors said they were sure he was going to be all right. Creswen asked what had caused her son to stop breathing; she was told that sometimes children suffering from bronchiolitis had mild cardiac arrests. ‘We accepted what they told us.’

But then, suddenly at 8pm, it happened again. Christopher suffered another cardiac arrest and, this time, it was worse. The ‘crash team’ was doing its best, but Creswen feared it would not be enough. ‘We really thought we were losing him. The doctors and nurses mentioned we ought to get him christened, and we agreed.’

Creswen would never forget the scene. Hospital chaplain, the Rev. Shelton, was summoned again to the ward. A gentle man with a strong sense of faith, he had become a frequent visitor to the ward. The number of calls from the hospital had been
unusually high. In the space of a few months he had been summoned nine times to comfort parents on the ward, mostly in the middle of the night. Other ministers had answered two other calls.

He had tried to console Chris and Joanne Taylor after Liam’s death, and had conducted the funeral service at the crematorium on 1 March. He had also shared Peter and Sue Phillips’s grief and had buried Becky in his churchyard at Manthorpe on 10 April.

Now here he was, four days later, baptising little Christopher whose life was also threatened. It was all over in a matter of minutes. There was no time to choose godparents, only time to pray that Christopher had the strength to pull through. ‘Christopher was on the machines and there were tubes everywhere. We gave him the name Christopher William Stephen Peasgood.

‘The minister took two photographs of him just lying there. It was all so weird.’

It was decided that Christopher would have to be transferred to the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, but he was so ill that they were warned he might not survive the journey.

It was their decision but Creswen asked one of the nurses what she ought to do. ‘She told us, “Move him.” I’ll never forget her words. We thought we had nothing to lose.’

There wasn’t room in the ambulance for Creswen and Mick. Convinced they were going to lose their second child they drove to Nottingham, stopping off en route to collect two friends to
help them face the battle that lay ahead. When they arrived at the intensive care unit, however, they found that Christopher had made a remarkable recovery. ‘He’d had two arrests at Grantham and we’d been told he would die unless he got to a respirator, but when we got to Nottingham the doctor was full of hope. The doctor there said: “He’s not going to die, he’s perfectly all right.”’

Creswen only had to look at Christopher to be convinced he would pull through. ‘He was lying there on a huge bed big enough for a fourteen-year-old, and he was screaming his lungs out. He was hungry. I fed him a bottle and I couldn’t believe it. We’d lost Michelle, we’d expected the worst, and there he was safe and well.’

Three days later Christopher had recovered sufficiently to go home. In the weeks that followed Creswen would wonder at her baby’s lucky escape, and ask herself: ‘Why was he dying one minute and OK the next?’

On the day Creswen took her baby home from the Queen’s Medical Centre, still counting her blessings, another baby, seven-week-old Patrick Elstone, was admitted to Ward Four. Like most of the parents, Hazel and Robert weren’t unduly worried about their baby’s arrival at the hospital.

Patrick and his identical twin brother, Anthony, were their first children. There had been no problems until Patrick developed a cold and stopped taking his feed; at this point the family doctor had suggested a check-up at the hospital. It was a
routine precaution, simply a case of keeping him under observation.

But within forty-eight hours Patrick nearly died too. He stopped breathing without warning and was so ill that he, too, was baptised as he lay fighting for his life.

At first there had been no cause for alarm. Robert and Hazel spent two-and-a-half hours by their son’s bedside, then went home to put twin brother, Anthony, to bed at 9pm, satisfied that little Patrick couldn’t have been in better hands.

They sat by his side throughout the next day as Patrick lay in a maternity cot, seemingly doing so well that it wasn’t going to be necessary to put him on a drip. On the third day Patrick’s temperature went up slightly and staff suggested Hazel should take Anthony to the doctor for a check-up, in case he was suffering from something too.

Hazel left the ward at 2pm when Patrick was laughing in his cot, kicking and cooing.

But when her taxi-driver husband Robert phoned the hospital at 8pm he was told by a nurse that staff had been trying to reach them. Patrick had been ‘sort of playing up’, and the nurse said they should go straight to the ward.

Hazel bundled Anthony into her arms and the couple dashed to the hospital, a mile from their terraced cottage near the town’s railway station. ‘As soon as we got in we got the shock of our lives. We sat there and a nurse called Mary told us Patrick had stopped breathing at 8pm.

‘I said: “What’s happening, will he live?” She
said: “I cannot tell you one way or the other. We’re hoping to have him moved to Nottingham.” I just broke down in tears.’

Sue Phillips had been sitting with Katie near the cubicle where Patrick lay. She remembered watching Nurse Allitt come from Cubicle Six carrying Patrick in her arms, shouting that he had stopped breathing. She’d just gone in to check him, she had said, and found him already turning blue. The night sister, Jean Saville, helped, and Patrick quickly began breathing again.

Upstairs, in the canteen, Hazel and Robert met Sue and Peter Phillips, who, as much as anyone, knew what the Elstones were going through. They had already lost Becky and were still waiting for Katie to be allowed home. Hazel knew Sue from the ante-natal classes where they had met and chatted about the coming birth of their babies; they had both given birth to twins.

Sue tried to tell Hazel not to worry. She told them that the doctors were very good at Nottingham and she was sure Patrick would recover.

It was 9pm before Hazel and Robert were taken to see Patrick. All they wanted to know was whether he would live or die.

Hazel recalls: ‘I was crying, and saying, would he be all right? They were saying they didn’t know.’ She said specialist Dr Nelson Porter couldn’t tell her what was wrong with him.

Hazel’s last sight of her baby before he left for the Queen’s Medical Centre would live in her memory forever. She had asked if she could see
him, but one of the nurses replied: ‘Are you sure you want to …?’

Hazel thought she would be able to pick up Patrick and cuddle him. Instead she recalls: ‘When I looked through the door I was stunned. He had no clothes on, just a little white cap on his head.

‘There was a doctor holding a tube down his throat to help him breathe, and Patrick was fighting it. I looked at his little face but he had no colour at all. He was as white as a sheet.

‘I couldn’t believe it. When I had left him he had been playing, laughing and cooing. It wasn’t the same child in there. I just looked at him and said: “Oh my God – look at his colour.” The Sister dropped a blanket over him. Robert and I were just hanging on to each other.’

There was so much equipment in the ambulance carrying Patrick to Nottingham that there wasn’t room for Hazel and Robert.

When they arrived at the intensive care unit, a nurse quietly asked them if they wanted a priest to be called to baptise their son. If he was to die, then the Elstones felt he should be christened before it was too late. At 1 am the priest arrived and, when he realised that Patrick was a twin, and his brother was there, he decided to baptise both of them in the middle of the night. A nurse they didn’t know stood in as a godparent, though Hazel and Robert were in such a daze they never even asked her name. Patrick lay there surrounded by tubes, wires and monitors, limp, barely alive, with his eyes closed.

Staff advised the Elstones to get some sleep but, try as she might, Hazel couldn’t rest.

At 7am a nurse delivered good news. Patrick seemed a little better and was making progress. For two days he continued to get better.

Then, just as the doctors were beginning to talk of transferring him back to Grantham, Patrick suffered his first fit. Robert was holding his hand when he began to twitch and shake. ‘Robert asked the doctor what was happening. The doctor told us it was a fit and, after that, he started having fits every time he opened his eyes. They’d last about a minute each time.’

It’s a strange medical phenomenon that twins often share the same ailments, even feeling the same pain, and after Patrick had fought for his little life, twin brother Anthony also fell ill. Anthony, too, was admitted to Queen’s. The doctors diagnosed diarrhoea, but said it could be trauma triggered by being parted from his identical brother.