DORSET, 2010
ONE YEAR LATER
She has probably fainted, but it could be anything: a heart attack, a diabetic coma, a stroke. Maybe she’s had a fit or an abdominal crisis of some kind, though her face is symmetrical and her abdomen feels soft. There could be clues—medication on a table or a blood-sugar-testing kit somewhere—but the house doesn’t have the neglected air of chronic illness. She stirs, her lips move, then her eyes open, puzzled rather than frightened. She looks directly at me as I explain how I found her, and I notice her eyes have the milky rings of cholesterol around the iris. I hold her hand as she slowly gathers her words. The swollen joints and fragile skin are familiar; they feel just as my mother’s old hands used to. I feel a tug of guilt that I am sitting with a stranger now, but I never had time for my mother the year before she died.
BRISTOL, 2009
NINE DAYS BEFORE
I was pushing notes into my bag when the phone went.
“Hello, darling.”
I was caught. Damn. “I can’t be long, Mum.”
“Are you working today, then?”
“Yes, you know I work every day, except for Fridays.”
“It’s just that dizzy thing again. Silly, isn’t it? Last night I felt really poorly, so I thought—”
“Poorly? What do you mean, Mum?”
“Just poorly. I can’t explain, Jennifer.” The tone was accusatory, returning me to twelve years old. “Let’s talk about something else.” Her voice picked up: “How’s Jack?”
“Jack?”
“Your husband, darling.”
“Mum, Jack is Kate’s ex-husband.”
“Of course. Silly me. Who’s your husband, then, darling?”
I can see her as clearly as if I am in the same room. She will be looking out at the empty paths around her sheltered accommodation; she sighs and touches her pearls, looking back at the television set with its bloom of dust and the neat piles of magazines. There’s a smell of mothballs and Pledge. Her memory is bleeding away. I mustn’t lose my temper.
“Ted. Look, Mum—”
“I don’t know what to do about the cottage. Kate doesn’t want it.”
Not the cottage now. “I’ll come and see you. We’ll talk about it then.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Friday. My day off.”
“How lovely, darling. It’s only that I feel poorly.”
FRANK WAS WAITING in the parking lot at the medical office. I got in his car and was surrounded by taped chords of a violin concerto. He looked grim.
“Let’s get this over with.” He eased the car out of the lot.
“Sorry you have to do this, Frank.” His patients had been canceled for the first part of the morning; we hadn’t even had time to go through the day’s results properly.
“Not like I’ve never made mistakes. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“What mistakes have you ever made?” I looked at him; his eyes were focused on the road.
“Missing the case of hyperthyroidism, so that chap went off his head.”
“He was all right after he had treatment,” I reminded him.
“What about the ankle fracture I thought was a twisted ankle?” He shot a quick glance at me.
“You’ll have to do lots better than that.”
“I’m not telling you the really bad ones. Look at the Medical Protection Society magazines. That’ll make you feel better.”
I did look at them, often, picking them off the top of the lurching piles in our bedroom. They made difficult reading. Children with pyrexia left unvisited, then the midnight dash to the hospital with meningitis; the altered bowel habit that was cancer, not irritable bowel; the headache that was a brain tumor, not stress. I read them with a sinking heart.
“Makes me feel much worse.”
Jeff Price opened the door and stood aside, stony-faced.
We crowded awkwardly into the narrow hall. His face was so near mine I could feel the heat from his skin. He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen.
“Come down here. Don’t want Ma to have to hear this.” He led the way to the kitchen, where he stood with folded arms, waiting.
“I made a mistake,” I said, my face felt hot. I had the sudden sensation that I might start crying.
“That’s great, that is.” It was obvious Mr. Price was not going to forgive me. “My child is taken into the hospital on suspicion of abuse, I get arrested and cautioned before they let me go, and you’re telling tell me you made a mistake?”
I’d been taught to own up to mistakes in medical school, but now I wondered if that was the right advice. It seemed to be making everything worse. The vein that ran down one side of his forehead began to throb visibly as he spoke.
“Mr. Price,” said Frank evenly, “Dr. Malcolm has come round with important things to tell you.”
“I asked a hospital doctor to see her because of her bruises.” I tried to keep my voice from trembling. “We didn’t know—”
“I told you that I didn’t know about them bruises. I told you when you came snooping around here before, when I thought you was trying to help.”
“I’m sorry.” The words sounded small in his kitchen.
“So? It’s not going to go away just because you decide to feel guilty all of a sudden. She’s still in there, isn’t she? They cut her hair and all. Just for flipping lice. When can we get her?”
“Not yet. They told me yesterday when I went to the hospital . . .” I paused; this should be told gently, bit by little bit, but it was too late for that. “This is not good news, Mr. Price.”
“What are you on about now? Hang on.” He raised his voice. “Trace. Tracey, get down here, will you?” He stared blackly at us, and pulling a cigarette from a crumpled packet on the table, he lit it and inhaled deeply.
I sensed Frank watching closely and I fought the impulse to step behind him.
Mrs. Price came into the room in a dressing gown. She was smoking and had been crying; the mascara had run down her cheeks in black lines.
“Hello, Mrs. Price.”
She looked at me with no expression.
“I’m sorry but I have some difficult news for you both.”
“Difficult for who, Doctor?” Mr. Price’s voice got louder. “Out with it, then, for Christ’s sake.”
His wife put her hand on his arm. Her fingernails looked different today, bitten to the quick.
“I’m afraid she has a disease in her blood.” I paused, looking at their faces, which had suddenly become blank with disbelief. “It’s called leukemia.”
“That’s cancer, isn’t it?” Mr. Price’s voice had dropped.
“Yes, it is; a kind of cancer, one that we can treat.” I was nodding as I spoke, trying to project a confidence I didn’t feel.
“Bleeding Christ,” he whispered.
Mrs. Price sat down heavily, her eyes fixed on me.
“How do they know? Could be wrong, couldn’t it? Hospitals get things wrong all the bloody time.” Her voice was defiant.
“From the blood tests. They’ve done them twice. I’m afraid there is no doubt.”
They stayed silent for a minute; I watched Mr. Price’s head sink between his shoulders.
“What now?” Mrs. Price was twisting her hands, her eyes fixed on mine.
“She needs to stay in the hospital for the moment.”
“Then what?” her husband asked.
“She will have some powerful drugs, which have been shown to be helpful.”
“No.” He spoke slowly. “I mean, will she die?”
By now I should have been able to answer questions like that, but there was never an answer, or at least not an easy one. “It’s a serious diagnosis. Many children survive and go on to have normal lives. I can show you statistics—”
“Let’s go to the hospital.” Mrs. Price got up. “Now. I can’t listen to her anymore, not with my child going to die.”
“She has a good chance. We can’t know yet—”
“If she dies that will be your fault.” She turned her head away as she said it, as if she couldn’t bear to look at me anymore.
“Dr. Malcolm made sure Jade got to the hospital.” Frank spoke carefully. “She knew the bruises were serious. The tests were done immediately. That wouldn’t have happened without her intervention.”
I don’t think the Prices even heard him.
Mr. Price looked at me. “The wife brought her to see you four times. Four times. You could have done something and you never bothered. I’ll bloody have you for this.”
Although, afterward, I could never remember if that was what he actually said or if that’s what I thought he said. In any case, his eyes told me exactly what he was thinking. They had looked at me with loathing.