The Poppy Factory (8 page)

‘I’ll secure his airway,’ Dave shouted. ‘Start CPR, now.’

No, no, no, no, she muttered to herself, in rhythm with the pumps on his chest, like a mantra. Not again, not again. It can’t be, can’t be. Now, the rest of the world disappeared and the only thing that mattered was counting out loud the chest compression pumps: one – two – three – four – five – six – seven – eight – nine. Eighty to a hundred pumps a minute for two minutes, a quick check of the pulse and then start again. Dave was squeezing air into his lungs from the bag now, twelve breaths a minute. If we keep doing this he will come back, she said to herself, I’ve seen it happen, just so long as we can keep it up.

Just as the muscles in her arms felt as though they would crumple with exhaustion Emma returned and took over for a while, and they alternated for what seemed like hours, all through loading him onto the ambulance and the crazy race back to the hospital; even as they were wheeling him into A&E.

The doctors declared both casualties dead on arrival. They were the young parents of the baby. The old man who’d lost control of his car and driven onto the pavement at forty miles an hour was completely unharmed.

When they got back to the ambulance station Dave said, ‘Want a coffee?’

She nodded numbly and followed him into the kitchen, barely aware of her surroundings, finding it strange that she could even breathe or put one foot in front of another when she felt so completely shell-shocked. He placed a mug of hot sweet tea onto the table in front of her but when she went to pick it up her hands shook so badly that she slopped it all over her uniform.

He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘It happens to all of us, you know,’ he said, kindly.

She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, it doesn’t happen to all of us, not like that. You saw me, Dave. I lost it again. Some kind of flashback thing. God knows how long it was before you arrived and took over.’

‘Only a few moments, I’m sure. Besides, you’d already controlled his bleeding.’

‘But the delay could have meant the difference …’ The thought was simply too enormous and too terrible to contemplate. She felt overwhelmed and exhausted; barely able to think straight.

After a long pause Dave said: ‘I think you need to take a few days off. Why don’t you ask Frank?’

‘Oh God, I couldn’t face Frank, right now.’

‘Do you want me to ask him for you?’

She nodded.

‘Okay. I think you need to talk to someone, but perhaps not today. The best thing for you now is to go straight home, have something to eat and a couple of glasses of wine. Try to think about something else. I’ll text to let you know what Frank says.’

It was this simple act of kindness and understanding which finally broke the dam, opening the door to all the horror, the guilt and the shame. She began to weep, with long, agonising gasps that seemed to wrench all the air out of her lungs. Dave moved his arm around her and she rested her head on his warm, broad shoulder till the sobs abated.

Chapter Four

She was relieved to see her father in the station car park because he wouldn’t ask too many questions; after a heavy date with a whisky bottle, she was feeling particularly fragile.

When she’d got back to the flat the previous day she’d found it deserted and remembered that Vorny and Hatts were away on exercise for two weeks. She slumped down on the sofa and wept, desolate and desperate for someone to talk to. Why weren’t they here, when she’d needed them most? She considered calling Nate but decided she couldn’t dump her problems on him, not just yet. After a while she dried her eyes and stomped around the flat wondering what to do with herself. Then, reluctantly, she dialled her parents’ number.

‘I’ve got a few days unexpected leave, Mum. Can I come and stay?’

‘Of course, dear. Are you all right?’

‘Ish. Talk tomorrow, okay? I’ll be there on the five o’clock train. Can someone pick me up?’

As they drew up to the house her mother was on the doorstep, with Milly the dog, both regarding her with inquiring eyes. Why the unexpected leave? Why wasn’t she spending it with Nathan? Of course her mother was far too wise to ask directly. Jess would share any problems, in her own time. She always did.

‘How’s things?’

‘Fine, thanks. Glad to be here.’

‘You look pale, love. Are you feeling okay?’

‘Just a bit weary. Heavy week.’

The truth was that she didn’t really feel anything much right now, except numb and confused. All her adult life had been spent working towards, training and then becoming a medic. She’d wanted to make a difference, to save lives and she’d loved it, mostly. Until yesterday she had been determined to spend the rest of her life doing it, couldn’t imagine any other form of career.

But somehow all that certainty had now disappeared, washed away like the poor young man’s blood on that dismal pavement. She had broken her promise to James, her vow to prevent anyone dying through any delay in stemming their loss of blood.

The future felt like a quicksand, untrustworthy and perilous. Last night, during her long commune with the bottle, she’d argued with herself, sometimes out loud, as the logical, calm voice of reason struggled to be heard over what her instincts seemed to be shouting:

You’re a good medic, well-trained, highly experienced. You’ve made a difference, even saved lives.

I’ve failed to save lives. I failed that young man. I punched that idiot in the street.

Just a couple of blips, you’ll get over it.

It’s not that. I can’t trust myself any more: the flashbacks, the anger. I failed my promise to James.

Just two events in four months, Jess.

I’m a danger to patients. My confidence is gone. The thought of going back to work makes me feel panicky and sick.

You could get help, counselling perhaps? That’ll sort it.

Do I want to put myself through all that self-examination crap? Anyway, I don’t know if I really want to go on putting myself on the line every day.

Okay, so give up being a medic. But you need to earn a living somehow. What would you do instead?

Oh Christ, that’s it. What else could I do? There is nothing else.

The argument raged in her head until, finally, she’d passed out, fully dressed, on the sofa.

Jess had envisaged walking with her mother on the beach, perhaps sitting on the dunes, a neutral, impersonal place to talk because you naturally sat looking outwards, your eyes drawn to the sea and the horizon, rather than facing your companion. Quite why this made it so much easier to be honest with yourself she never completely understood, but it always seemed to work.

She recalled days and nights of teenage angst when she would rush to the sea, weeping her eyes out over some spotty, undeserving youth, or spending hours with her best friend in the dunes dissecting every nuance of their latest romances, imagined or real. Alone or in company, self-pity never survived for long out on the beach. The soothing, rhythmical shush of the waves, the wide open skies and grey sea stretching to infinity always helped her to find a sense of proportion, reminding her of how small and insignificant we are in this vast universe, how unimportant our problems in the wider scheme of things.

But this time it didn’t turn out like that.

After breakfast, she’d just made another pot of coffee and was sitting at the kitchen table while her mother fussed around, washing up, putting away. Her father had drifted off to his greenhouse.

‘Look what I got for supper,’ Susan said, pulling something out of the fridge. ‘I went to that lovely butcher’s yesterday. I know it’s your favourite.’ She placed the parcel on the table and unwrapped it, revealing a large leg of lamb, its severed flesh oozing dark red blood onto the worktop.

Jess had time to blurt out, ‘Lovely …’ before the nausea hit her, like an unstoppable wave. She made it to the cloakroom just before she vomited, violently and uncontrollably, into the toilet, groaning with pain as her guts turned themselves inside out. She gagged, again and again, her throat burning with the vicious acid residue of last night’s whisky.

She heard her mother at the door and then by her side, and a soothing hand stroking her shuddering back. When it was all over she allowed herself to be led back to the living room, on trembling legs, gratefully accepting the glass of cool, clear water she was offered.

Her mother sat down on the chair opposite. ‘Are you feeling better now?’

Jess nodded.

‘What was it? Something you ate, do you think?’

Jess took a sip of water, trying to delay answering until she’d put her jumbled emotions into some expressible order. She was about to brush it off with a jokey remark about a dodgy take-away but then, as if the phrase had formed itself independently of any conscious thought, the words came out of her mouth: ‘I’m giving it up, Mum.’

‘Giving what up, love?’

‘Being a paramedic. I’m going to quit. I can’t do it any more.’ Just as soon as she heard herself admit it, an almost overwhelming wave of relief sluiced through her body.

Her mother’s eyes widened, but she managed to keep her voice calm. ‘This is sudden, Jess. I thought you loved the job? Has something bad happened?’

The tears began to flow freely as she found herself describing the events of yesterday. The way she’d lost control, found her mind flashing back to the desert, the shocking outcome.

The discussion that followed went much along the same lines as the internal debate she’d had on the sofa with the whisky bottle last night. Her mother made all the reasonable responses
: take your time, seek some help, you’re a great medic, it would be a loss to the service, it’s what you’ve been working for all your life.
But the more the conversation continued, the more Jess became convinced that what her inner voice had been telling her head was right. She couldn’t carry the responsibility of saving people’s lives, not any longer.

Eventually her mother stopped offering suggestions. ‘It’s your life, my love. Whatever you decide will be for the best.’ She leaned over and stroked Jess’s hand. ‘But shouldn’t you also get yourself checked over by a doctor to find out what caused you to be so violently sick?’

Jess hesitated, unwilling to inflict another disappointment, but she would have to admit it in the end. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but it was the leg of lamb. It brought everything back. It’s what that terrible stump yesterday reminded me of, and when I stood up afterwards there was a butcher’s just beside us and the meat was just like that poor young man’s flesh.’ She shuddered involuntarily, remembering the red of the meat and the silvery slivers of shattered glass.

They had fish and chips for supper instead and, much later that evening, after her father had gone to bed, they sat on the patio together watching the stars come out. It was September now, the evenings were drawing in and there was a dampness in the air with that autumnal countryside smell. She always found this time of year melancholy: the swallows gathering for their long migrations, the changing sounds of birdsong, dew on the grass in the morning, the yellowing of the leaves. They all felt like endings. Only this year she was facing a very personal ending, a big, terrifyingly full stop to what had been driving her, her reason for living, her passion for the past ten years.

After a while it grew cold and they went inside. ‘Whatever am I going to do with myself now, Mum?’ Jess said, cuddling up on the sofa with Milly, who wasn’t usually allowed to sit there.

‘Have you got any ideas?’

‘Not a clue,’ she admitted.

‘What about something to do with animals?’ Susan said. ‘You’ve always loved them, and when you were a very little girl – before you joined the St John Ambulance – you used to say you wanted to be a vet.’

‘It’s a six year training. Anyway you have to be super-bright. I’d never have got in with my two Bs and a C.’

They chatted for a while and then, out of the blue, her mother said, ‘You know what you told me about the leg of lamb today?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘It reminded me of something I’d read somewhere and it was really annoying me because I couldn’t remember where.’

‘And have you remembered now?’

‘I have. Something rather like that happened to your great-grandfather Alfred, too.’

‘Like what?’

‘He was in the First World War and came back injured – lost a leg. Afterwards he tried working as a butcher, but he couldn’t take it because the raw flesh reminded him of something he’d experienced in the war.’

‘That’s strange. How do you know all this, anyway?’

Her mother disappeared upstairs and returned a few minutes later with a small cardboard box. ‘It’s all in here,’ she said. ‘Your great-grandmother’s diaries.’

As Jess opened the box, a comforting, musty smell of old paper wafted out into the room. Inside were stacked six dog-eared notebooks, the old-fashioned kind once issued by schools, yellowing pages of cheap lined paper stapled between soft buff-coloured covers. On the front of each one was written, in a neat rounded hand in fading blue ink, ‘Rose Barker. PRIVATE’.

‘Oh my goodness, look at this. They were written by your grandmother? My great-grandmother?’

Susan nodded. ‘Everyone knew her as Rose but her full name was Jessica Rose. You are named after her. She died when I was only five so I barely knew her, but she was a tough cookie by all accounts.’

‘This is amazing. Why haven’t I seen these before?’

‘We only discovered them after granny died last year.’ Jess had been given leave to return home for the funeral but had to fly back immediately afterwards. She’d been sad not to be able to stay longer, to help her mother with the gloomy task of sorting out her grandmother’s belongings.

‘Have you read them yet?’ Jess said, starting to rifle through the notebooks.

‘Not completely. I got up to the bit about poor old Alfie but then I got too busy to carry on.’

‘Did you know about them before?’

‘Mum never mentioned them, but then her memory was pretty dodgy and I suspect she just forgot they were there, locked way in the attic all those years.’