Second Chances (12 page)

The night shift leave. Staff become ordinary people again, heading for home and families. The hospital shakes itself into the routines of daytime.

It’s after seven when a surgeon appears—a Roman general, wearing scrubs instead of a metal skirt. I have an impression of corrugated-iron hair and battle weariness. He’s flanked by two captains.

‘Mrs McNamara?’

I am ushered dumbly into another little room. Terror sucks at my lungs. There is no air. No air in the world. They are the news breakers, this grim-faced posse. They’ve come to tell me I’ve lost my Finn.

They motion me to a chair and lean around the walls.

‘Neil Sutherland, general surgeon.’ The General has baggy eyes and powerful hands. He swiftly introduces his colleagues. There’s a woman from the trauma team, and a paediatrician—a long thin giraffe, who says he has a special interest in child protection.

‘Finn?’ I ask faintly.

‘He’s been very sick,’ says the General. ‘We’ve done all we can for now, and he’s stabilised. That’s the important point.’

I look around at the three, trying to read their expressions. ‘But what . . . he is going to . . . he
is
all right?’

‘Well. We’ve established that there is no spinal injury, which is good news.’ Neil Sutherland looks gloomy. ‘The CT scan showed a ruptured spleen. It’s been removed and we’ve stopped the bleeding there. He’s fractured his right forearm—the orthopaedic team have dealt with that. The most pressing concern at the moment is a head injury.’

These are words I dread. I’ve seen enough of such injuries to loathe them. ‘How severe?’

‘Finn was extremely lucky.’ Sutherland is avoiding the question. ‘We don’t actually have a resident neurosurgeon, but one was visiting Hawke’s Bay this week to take a clinic. She’s based at Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland, and she was right on the spot. She’s done a superb job.’

I persist. ‘How severe is this head injury? I’m an occupational therapist. I know what they mean.’

‘All right.’ Sutherland pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘The scan showed some bleeding, and there were two unstable bone fragments which the neurosurgeon removed. She’s inserted a small plate. We’ve induced a coma to reduce stress and swelling on Finn’s brain.’

I shut my eyes.

‘His condition is critical,’ says the woman. ‘He’s in the intensive care unit.’

‘He’s in ICU? Can I see him?’

Sutherland sounds unhappy. ‘Very soon. First, we need to ask you about something.’ He hands me a sheet of thin paper. ‘This is an image of Finn’s upper arm.’

I feel bewildered by the irrelevance. It’s grotesque to have taken a picture of Finn’s tiny arm, while he lies in mortal danger. I won’t even look at the flimsy thing. ‘His arm? His
arm
? For God’s sake! He’s got a plate in his head and a ruptured spleen and you’re telling me about his arm? Is this the one that’s broken?’

‘No.’ Sutherland points with a blunt, well-manicured forefinger. ‘See these marks around here?’

I look at the photograph, and then I understand. Completely. Until now, I didn’t imagine things could get any worse.

‘I don’t know.’ I sound drunk. My tongue seems to be swelling.

The neon light’s too white. It isn’t kind. It glowers and hums and accuses me of trying to kill my son. The image is a close-up of a child’s arm. Around it are four small discs of a deep, livid blue.

Behind me, the giraffe moves in for the attack. He’s an angrier man than Sutherland, overflowing with energy. ‘It’s bruising,’ he says curtly. ‘Finger marks, see? They’re very obvious.’

‘He fell,’ I insist. ‘He fell about fifteen feet. I imagine there is bruising all over his poor little body. Now, can I
please
see my son?’

I sense the three exchanging glances. Sutherland sighs. He wants to go home to bed but he can’t, because there is this child. This injured child.

Giraffe jabs at the picture. ‘There are four finger marks there, Mrs McNamara. See? And a fifth around the back of the arm, which we are agreed is consistent with a thumb. These suggest an adult hand, gripping the child’s arm very forcibly.’ He demonstrates a grabbing motion with his own long fingers. ‘Like this, see? It’s a classic presentation. Whose fingers, Mrs McNamara?’

‘He’s always squabbling with his twin brother,’ I protest.

‘An
adult
hand.’

‘He goes to school. Maybe the teacher . . .’

They stare as I meander to a standstill. Then Giraffe says, ‘From the colour, I’d suggest they could be contemporaneous with his fall. And they were made with considerable force. Whose fingers?’

I feel the heat spread up my neck, across my face. I try to swat it away like a fly, but I am pinned down by terror. For Finn. For all of us.

‘Are you suggesting . . . what
are
you suggesting?’ I stare at the image of Finn’s vulnerability. ‘He fell,’ I repeat, stupidly. ‘The flowerbed’s edged with stones. That’ll be what did it.’

‘He was lying on his right side when the team arrived,’ says Sutherland wearily. ‘He’s broken his right forearm. These marks are on the left, and they’re the only visible injuries on that arm.’

‘It’s my fault,’ I whisper.

‘Why is it your fault?’

‘Because I should have locked his door. Because I couldn’t run fast enough. Because I brought him here in the first place.’

‘Where’s Finn’s father?’ asks the woman suddenly.

‘Kit’s on his way back from Dublin.’

‘When do you expect him home?’

I only hesitate for an instant, but her gaze sharpens. ‘I’m not sure exactly when. There was some complication. He changed his flight.’

‘Have you been able to contact him?’

I shrug helplessly. ‘No answer from his mobile, but then he’ll have turned it off if he’s on a plane. I’ve left messages.’

‘Life must have been stressful for you recently,’ she says.

‘Stressful?’

‘With your husband away, and two small boys, in that isolated area.’

‘Well, fairly. But—’

‘I gather you’ve only lived here a year. Perhaps you haven’t any close friends yet? No one to call on when things get on top of you.’

‘He fell,’ I say dully.

They let the silence lengthen. Eventually Sutherland pushes himself upright. He doesn’t look angry. He looks depressed. I really think he and I might have got on, if we’d met at a dinner party.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs McNamara,’ he says heavily. ‘This issue has been raised now, and there are procedures that we have to follow. We must inform the paediatric social worker that there is a child injured and indications that it may be non-accidental. We’ll liaise with her to decide whether there needs to be a formal referral to Child, Youth and Family. And possibly the police.’

‘There’s no need for that! The police have already been here. They were perfectly satisfied.’

Briefly, he lays a hand on my arm. ‘That was routine,’ he says. ‘This, I’m afraid, is not.’

Eleven

That spring at Patupaiarehe, we were gypsies. The container with all our possessions was somewhere on the high seas, rocking and rusting, becalmed in the doldrums or tossed in the roaring forties. Through September and October we had no clutter. No
stuff.
It was liberating. We were settlers, blazing with pioneering spirit.

We fell madly in love with our house at the head of the valley. A couple of men came and rewired while others laid terracotta tiles on the kitchen floor. Within a day we’d stopped locking the front door when we went out; within two we’d given up bothering to shut it. The place felt so secure, so storybook, far up a pitted track and nestled into the motherly bosom of the forest. There
were
no evils, lurking. I was sure that if the twins ever wandered off, the only person to offer them a lift would be some taciturn farmer in enormous gumboots (Kiwi for wellingtons), sheepdogs tail-wagging on the flatbed of his truck. He’d haul them in and bring them home.

Sacha often stayed up until midnight to have Facebook conversations with English friends and complained—justifiably—about the slowness of our internet connection. She seemed to be coping, though; she thrashed us both at tennis, got her learner driver licence and quickly became adept on the quad bike. The one thing she wouldn’t do was play her flute. It lay untouched in its case.

Once we’d repainted the shabbiest rooms, Kit asked Sacha if she’d help him with a mural for the boys. His thinking was that it would be good for her to have a project, and he was right. The pair of them were closeted for days, yelling convivially over the racket from Sacha’s favourite radio station. They finally unveiled their masterpiece: an African savannah, teeming with animals. None looked hungry. Even the leopard contentedly dozed in a tree.

‘These are mine.’ Sacha closed the cupboard doors to reveal a flock of vivid flamingos standing in a lake. ‘Aren’t they cool?’

‘They
are
cool.’

‘Obviously Kit helped,’ she admitted. ‘Quite a lot, actually.’

Kit was cleaning brushes. ‘No, the fabulous flamingos are down to you. What next, Sacha? Your room?’

She politely refused. ‘I’m too old now,’ she said, with a touch of sadness.

‘Nobody’s too old,’ said Kit.

Instead, he whitewashed his conservatory-studio and hung yards of gauzy curtain to diffuse the brilliant Hawke’s Bay light. Pamela showed him a wonderful art-supply shop and he threw himself into sketching, experimenting, practising. I guiltily searched the place more than once but found no hoard of bottles, full or empty. Finally he began a series of small landscapes in acrylic.

The studio was a sanctuary, with its mellow light and smell of tomato plants and paint. I used to spend my evenings peacefully lolling in a deckchair, intrigued by the confidence with which Kit mixed the subtlest colours and gave them life. I loved to watch his eyes, narrowed and intense, seeing things that I never could. It was as though those brushstrokes were a language; it was Kit’s mother tongue, and at last he was allowed to speak it. I began to understand what Gerry Kerr had been talking about.

Now we had a base, Dad insisted on sending Muffin. We drove the five hours to Auckland to liberate our old friend from her crate—safe, well and crazy with joy at the sound of our voices—and brought her back in triumph to Patupaiarehe. She seemed to know she was home, taking a ladylike snuffle around the garden before plumping with a contented sigh into her basket in the kitchen. There she lay, groaning and wheezing with love, the treacle-black buttons of her nose and eyes half submerged in blanket and hair.

‘I’ve even missed her smell,’ said Sacha, brushing the shaggy coat. I knew what she meant. Now Muffin was in residence, the kitchen felt right.

Nostalgia is dangerous stuff, of course. Time blurs and distorts the past. When I look back on those first days I remember a holiday: sunshine and space, translucent air and silver-threaded sea; gangs of lambs playing King of the Castle on a rock. When real holidays end, you go home. You open your mail, phone your friends, maybe look through your photos and dream of owning a bar in Crete; but the next day you’re back at work and showing off your tan. For us there was no going home. In October, the Christmas school term began.

On her first morning Sacha appeared downstairs in her hideous tartan uniform, fretting that she was having a bad hair day. She made brave, buoyant conversation in the car but her heart wasn’t in it and her nails had been bitten. I was feeling slightly sick myself, as I’d arranged to meet my new manager after dropping her off. When we pulled up at the school gates the pavement was an ants’ nest, swarming with adolescents—not one of whom we knew.

‘Good luck, doll,’ I said, with a tug of her ponytail. ‘There’s a best friend here, waiting for you.’

‘Good luck to you too, Mum. Let’s both kick ass.’ She kissed Ivan’s locket before sliding it under her shirt, and gave me a weak smile. Then she swung out of the car, wending her way through the crowd. I watched the lonely figure, remembering a self-assured celebrity who was mobbed as she left her school in England. We must have been mad, I thought. How can a lifestyle replace family and friends? Work is work, and school is school, however pretty the views. At that moment, if I could have turned back time and kept the whole family safe in Bedfordshire, I would.

Twenty minutes later I was grinding up a hill towards what had once been a tuberculosis hospital. The last set of buildings had an aquamarine sign:
CAPEVIEW LODGE, Residential and Community Rehabilitation.
Below, in smaller letters, I read
NELSON HEALTH CARE SERVICES
.
I wasn’t contracted to begin work until December, but my new manager had issued a summons. I was also keen to have a look at the place.

I parked, slapped on lipstick and presented myself to the bustling gorgon at the reception desk. It was ten minutes before a figure crept from behind a pot plant, proffering a lifeless hand.

‘Lillian Thompson,’ she murmured. My manager was getting on a bit, but cherry-red sugar cubes dangled from her ears and her hair was an implausible shade of ochre. I followed her into a worryingly tidy office, and we sat down.

‘How are you finding New Zealand?’ she asked, woodenly. It was a stock question; I’d answered it many times already. A trick question, too, I’d found. Ambivalence was not appreciated.

‘Loving it,’ I gushed, beaming. ‘What a fantastic place to bring up kids.’

She nodded without pleasure or interest. I’d passed the first test. Had I failed to express unconditional love, I’d have been written off as a whingeing Pom who was never asked to come and could always go home if I didn’t like it.

All I learned from Lillian Thompson is that there are managers with limp handshakes and chips on their shoulders in both hemispheres. I spent the next half hour trying to work out what, exactly, she disliked about me. After an awkward silence I realised she’d just asked something, but I hadn’t caught it because I was mesmerised by those appalling earrings.

‘Te Reo,’ she repeated, with exaggerated clarity.

‘Yep.’ I’d expected this. ‘Maori language. Fascinating! I’ve been mugging up.’

‘This is not just a language thing; it’s bicultural awareness. You need to do a paper that covers customary concepts, values and the Treaty of Waitangi.’