The Best of Times (62 page)

Different times. Happy, safe times.

“Anyway, she ran into the road; she’d dropped her comic. Some lad was driving up—much too fast, I imagine.”

“Yes, he’s out there.”

“To give him his due, he stayed with her while Charlie came for me, insisted on coming to the hospital; he’s all right, really, nice boy, just desperately frightened … Has Mummy come …?”

“Yes, she’s there. Charlie’s just thrown up.”

“I’m not surprised. He’s beside himself. He was hysterical; I couldn’t stop him crying, screaming, almost, at first. Then he went terribly quiet, sort of disappeared into himself …”

“So what actually happened? I mean, why did she run into the road?”

“I told you, to get her comic; it was blowing away.”

“She knows better than that.”

“I know she does. But Charlie said she was all bothered, as he put it; she kept dropping things.”

“Chap must have been going a hell of a lick. Or he’d have seen her.”

“I know, I know.”

They stood there, staring at each other: she wild eyed, ashen, shaking, he frozen faced, shock-still. Unable to reach each other, comfort each other; each filled with the torment of guilt.

“I’m so, so sorry, Jonathan.”

“Laura, it wasn’t your fault.”

“It was, it was … I wasn’t there …”

“Neither was I,” he said, his voice hardly audible, “was I?”

He took a deep breath, stood silent for a moment, then: “What does the lad say? The driver?”

“He says he doesn’t know what happened. But he said … well …”

“Yes?”

“He said Charlie came running back to the car. So it sounds like he’d gone ahead. Not … well … not with Daisy. Not looking after her. But—”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Yes. He didn’t want to go, Jonathan; he was arguing with me, saying he wanted to go on the computer, do his wretched Warhammer stuff. I … well, I made him. I shouldn’t have; I should have seen what might happen … Oh, God.”

She dropped her face into her hands, began to cry.

“Don’t,” he said, and his voice was odd, cracked, “Don’t cry. It’s all right. It was an accident. These things happen.”

“They don’t have to. They—”

The curtains opened abruptly; a doctor came out. Behind him they could see Daisy, very white and still, a nurse standing by her, checking her pulse.

“I’m her father,” said Jonathan quickly, “and a doctor. What’s the verdict?”

“Well, it’s hard to say with any confidence. We need to do a brain scan. See if there’s any real damage to the skull. It could be just the violence of the contact, rather than a direct blow; it’s the equivalent of a very hard shaking. She’s certainly in shock … medical shock, that is. Only half-conscious, very distressed. Her blood pressure’s very low, which is worrying; it would indicate some internal bleeding. She has some broken ribs, which could cause liver damage. Or indeed lung damage. One of her legs is broken and one arm as well. And I think possibly her pelvis.”

“Oh, God,” said Laura, “poor little girl.”

“We’re setting a drip up immediately. Send her down to X-ray. And we’re probably going to intubate her; she’s having a bit of trouble breathing. I’m getting my colleague, Dr. Armstrong, down to have a look at her; he’s the main chest and lung consultant here. You’re lucky; he’s often in the country on Saturdays, but he’s on call today …”

“I know him,” said Jonathan. “Tony Armstrong. Good bloke,” he added to Laura. “Really excellent.”

The young doctor looked at him, and he seemed to be having trouble speaking. Finally: “I’m afraid this child is very sick,” he said, “very sick indeed.”

CHAPTER 49

It was very quiet on the ward; they called it a ward, ICU, standing for Intensive Care Unit, but actually it was a long corridor, outside some doors. Behind each door was someone very ill indeed, in need of the intensive care. Like Daisy. He hadn’t been allowed into the room where she was, but he had got a glimpse once when his father came out: it was a mass of machines and screens. She lay on a high bed, her
eyes closed; there was a tube in her nose, which his father said was helping her to breathe. Her hair was spread out over the pillow.

Charlie felt so afraid and so sick that he didn’t know what to do with himself. Keeping still was awful, because his head just filled up with what he had done; he saw pictures over and over again, and they seemed to go backwards in time, first of Daisy lying in the road, near the car, then Daisy running along behind him, asking him to wait, then Daisy trying to show him pictures in her magazine, then Daisy skipping out of the gate ahead of him, calling, “bye, Mummy.”

She’d been fine then: he hadn’t done it then, hadn’t killed her. He hadn’t argued with her, told her she was stupid, hadn’t got crosser and crosser with her, hadn’t not seen the car, hadn’t not seen her running after the page of her magazine; she’d been safe, held in the past, happy, laughing, alive, alive, alive …

At this point he felt so terrible he had to get up and walk down the corridor, away from the pictures; he kept going into the lavatory, thinking he was going to be sick, standing there, bending over the bowl, staring down into it, wondering how he was going to get through the next five minutes even, let alone the rest of his life. He hoped he could find some way of dying too, maybe run under a car himself; that would be right, really; that would make it fair, his death traded for hers; he certainly couldn’t contemplate years of this, or even many more hours …

His grandmother had gone, taking Lily with her; his parents sat on the chairs in the corridor outside the room. They had been told they could have a parents’ room for the night, but they’d both refused, said they wanted to be near Daisy.

It was when they’d said that that he’d known: known that it was so bad that she really was likely to die. Until then, he’d realised it had been terribly serious, that she was very, very badly hurt, in danger of dying; but now he could see from their faces, hear from their voices, that it was actually more likely that she would.

They’d told him to go with Lily, but he refused; he didn’t actually
argue—he didn’t seem to be able to say anything anyway; he couldn’t remember speaking since it had happened—he just shook his head and then folded his arms and stood there, daring them to make him go against his will.

“Darling,” his mother said, “you’ll be better with Granny, and the minute we know anything we’ll call you, promise, even if it’s the middle of the night …”

But he’d shaken his head again, furiously, and his father had said quite gently, “Laura, let him be. He’s better here.”

His father had been terribly nice to him—they both had; he wished they hadn’t. He wished they’d both attack him, shout at him, beat him up, injure him really badly so he’d hurt too, so he might need intensive care too, and then when he was all wired up, he could pull the wires all out so he couldn’t breathe or live any longer.

He walked back to them now, after another visit to the lavatory; his mother was holding his father’s hand, her head on his shoulder. For a minute he thought she was asleep, but then he saw her eyes were staring down at the floor.

“Hello,” his father said. “You OK?”

But still he couldn’t speak; just nodded and sat down next to his mother.

His father had explained as much as he could to him; Daisy had had a brain scan, and her skull had what was called a hairline crack in it. She also had some damage to her liver, which had caused it to bleed inside her, and that meant giving her some blood. The most worrying thing, it seemed, was that she had some broken ribs and one of them had punctured her lung, which could lead to an infection. “And you see, as she’s very poorly, she’ll have trouble fighting that. So they’re giving her some antibiotics as well.”

The other things, the broken leg and arm, sounded like nothing in comparison.

He wanted, more than anything, to say how sorry he was, but somehow he couldn’t. It was such a useless thing to say, because it wouldn’t do any good; it wouldn’t bring Daisy back or make her better, and
anyway, it was too easy; saying sorry was what you did when you’d spilt or broken something or not done your homework. Not when you’d broken your sister, broken her so that she could never be mended again.

The man who’d been driving the car was still downstairs; Charlie felt almost sorry for him. He had been driving a bit fast, but it hadn’t been all his fault; Daisy had run into the road in front of him. It had been Charlie’s fault for not looking after her, not seeing what she was doing, what she might do. She’d been crying in the end—no one knew that except him—he’d heard the tears in her high little voice as she called, “Charlie, please, please wait,” and thought how stupid and annoying she was, and how he wasn’t going to give in to her, make her more of a spoilt baby than she was already. It was completely his fault.

Suddenly he really couldn’t bear it any longer; he managed to speak, to say, “I’m going for a walk, OK?”

His mother said, “Darling, don’t go away, or at least let one of us go with you.”

But he’d shaken his head said he’d be OK, and his father had said, “Let him go, Laura; he’ll be fine. Charlie, don’t go into any of the wards; just go down to the front hall, I would, and if you get lost, just ask anyone where ICU is and they’ll show you.”

He’d nodded and stood up, and walked rather quickly down the corridor, into the lift. It felt better walking away from it; it felt like he could escape.

He went into the main reception area, and then walked down towards A&E. As he went in through the door, he saw the man, Mick, lying down on three chairs that he’d pushed together; he was all right, Mick was, staying all this time.

He thought he was asleep, but he was awake, like his mother, staring at the ceiling; he saw Charlie and jumped, sat up with a rush, said, “What’s happened; has she—”

“Nothing’s happened,” Charlie said. “She’s the same. Just the same.”

“Oh, shit,” he said, and lay down again; and then: “I’m going out for a fag. I’ll be just outside the main door if there’s any news, OK?”

Charlie nodded.

He sat down on a chair in A&E for a bit, but then the pictures began to come back and he started pacing up and down, between the front door and the lift, and then when they stayed with him there as well, he went to the front door and looked out into the area where the ambulances came in, and beyond that the high lights of the car park, and thought maybe it would be better if he ran; maybe he could get away from them that way; and he ran round the car park, round and round, weaving his way in between the few cars, until he was breathless and sat down on the wall by the road, staring out at it, and wondering if he had the courage to run into a car himself now, get it over. He looked back at the hospital, up at the third floor, at the lighted window where Daisy lay, probably dying, maybe even dead, and then back across the car park and saw his father walking towards him, waving at him, calling his name. This was it then; he’d come to tell him it was over; he’d not just nearly killed her now: he’d actually killed her, and he closed his eyes and waited, waited for the words.

But, “You all right, Charlie?” his father said.

And he shook his head, and finally managed, “What … what’s happened?”

“Nothing. She’s just the same. I came to find you, make sure you were OK.”

He didn’t deserve this, this kindness; it was wrong, all wrong. Why couldn’t they be cruel, as cruel as he’d been …?

And then his father put his hand on his shoulder and something happened, inside his head, and he started to cry, quite quietly, but desperately, and his father said, “Come on, old chap; let’s go inside, see if we can find somewhere a bit nice to sit, shall we?”

They couldn’t find anywhere exactly nice, but they did find a corner near a radiator, and his father fetched two chairs from down the corridor, and they sat down, and Charlie felt a bit dizzy and leaned forward and put his head on his knees.

“Poor old boy,” his father said, and he felt his hand gently rubbing his back.

And he sat up and pushed him away, saying through his tears, “Don’t, don’t do that; don’t be so … so nice to me. Why don’t you hit me—go on, hit me, hard, please, please …”