I was having one of my periodic big cleans when I heard my mobile tootling at me. A full-on ‘Casey-athon’, prompted by the bright late-February sunshine, the prettily nodding daffodils in the pots on my back patio and the fact that the stars had aligned in such a way that I had the house all to myself for a change. Not to mention no grandmotherly duties to perform. I had the CD player blaring too, and was adding to my workout by attempting to twerk as I scrubbed the conservatory floor, there being no risk of anyone seeing me.
And it was a happy twerk, as it had proved to be a positive couple of weeks, during which Adrianna had really seemed to blossom. There was no doubt that Lauren’s interest in her had made a massive difference. And, though I definitely had no intention of going into politics, had you given me a soap box I’d have clambered upon it instantly to point out to the likes of some of my sister Donna’s former customers that humans are good in the vast majority of cases – good, and responsive to positive interventions, such as being given the chance to make some sort of contribution, and having their skills and propensity for work appreciated.
I wasn’t a naïve, fanciful idiot and I knew politics were complex, but I really wanted to hold Adrianna up as a kind of poster girl, almost, to prove the power of trying to always see the best, rather than the worst, in our fellow Homo sapiens. Luckily for the world there were no soap boxes within reach.
I was also tickled, and very touched, by Adrianna’s relationship with Tyler, whom I feared (because Adrianna was still likely to be but a temporary fixture) was as besotted by her as was Marley Mae.
And to an extent that even Mike and I possibly hadn’t quite appreciated, evidenced by the fact that, only a couple of days previously, he’d returned from an after-school sortie to the shops and presented Adrianna with a gift.
She’d looked stunned, slightly embarrassed and, very soon, extremely tearful, as she opened the bag, which contained a paperback book.
‘It’s Lord of the Flies,’ he’d explained as she ran her hand over the cover. ‘I know it’s not your birthday or anything,’ he clarified. ‘Well, not as far as we know, anyway. I just thought I’d give it to you as a way of saying sorry. For having made you learn all my silly words.’
‘Oh, Tyler,’ I couldn’t help but say, clapping my hands together happily. ‘What an incredibly thoughtful boy you are.’
His blush, always threatening, now deepened perceptibly. ‘It’s one of the first proper books I ever read,’ he said to Adrianna, glancing briefly at me and Mike. ‘Casey gave it me,’ he explained. ‘D’you remember?’ he said to me. ‘Remember you trying to get me to read it when I first came? And I was, like, sorry, but I don’t read books? It’s still up in my bedroom,’ he added to Adrianna. ‘But I thought you’d want to have your own copy. To keep. It’s brilliant. You’ll like it. And it’ll help with your English, too.’
Adrianna had been speechless. Had sobbed her thanks rather than said them. And had started reading the book right away.
It was a while before the sound of my phone filtered through to me past the warbling of my disco classics compilation – ‘Rock the Boat’, currently – and it had stopped and restarted by the time I’d downed tools, stripped my Marigolds and remembered where the phone was. Which turned out not to be in my handbag over the banister, as I’d thought, but on its charger in the kitchen, having been forgotten in my handbag the previous evening and run out of juice. No wonder that my children so often despaired of me.
‘Ah, so you are there,’ came Lauren’s voice – for it was her name on the phone display. ‘It’s me.’ She sounded stressed. ‘Are you driving?’
‘No,’ I told her, immediately thinking of Dee Dee round at her other gran’s. ‘I’m at home. What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Adrianna. She’s collapsed. The paramedics are examining her now, and –’
‘Adrianna? Paramedics?’ I switched immediately into stressed mode myself. ‘God, what’s happened?’
‘I’m not sure. They’re not sure. She just – well – she just keeled over. She’d been looking a bit green, saying she was feeling a little hot and couldn’t seem to catch her breath, and, well, she just kind of folded up while she was showing the girls some bar stuff. Honestly, she was lucky she was right by the pile of floor mats. It was just, like, “whump” – she went down like a ton of bricks.’
‘You mean fainted?’
‘That’s what we thought. But then we couldn’t bring her round. Which was frightening, to say the least.’
‘God, I’ll bet –’
‘Which was why I called the ambulance. They’ve just arrived.’
‘Oh, lord,’ I said, my mind whirring. Had she seemed ill earlier? No, she hadn’t. Pale, of course, but she seemed always to be, and we were used to that now. ‘So is she still out for the –’
‘It’s okay,’ Lauren reassured me quickly. ‘She’s conscious again now. But they want to take her to hospital to examine her properly. She’s not quite with it,’ Lauren explained. ‘I’m not sure she’s herself. She’s struggling to make herself understood by the paramedics, which makes it hard for them to assess her, and, what with the girls all going mental, and everything else –’
‘Oh, lord,’ I said again. ‘Poor you. So shall I come straight down there?’
‘No, I was thinking that probably wouldn’t work. I’m going to go in the ambulance with her, so … could you maybe drive down and meet us at the hospital?’
‘You sure? It won’t take me long to get to you. What about the girls?’ Some 15 of them – eight- to ten-year-olds, if I remembered rightly. A bit of a handful.
‘It’s okay. There’s no problem there. Debbie’s here today as well. She’ll stay here till all the girls are collected so I can go with Adrianna. Which I have to. Honestly, she’s in such a state, Casey … I can’t let her go in the ambulance on her own. Mind you, I’ve got to get back to collect Dee from my mum’s, because – oh, yes … hang on a tick, Casey …’
Debbie was Lauren’s friend, who came sometimes and played the elderly piano. Thank goodness for that, at least, I thought. I wondered what on earth could be wrong with Adrianna. Since her initial virus she’d seemed fine, by and large. No, not perfect, but I’d begun to put that down to a general long-term lack of nourishment. If she’d been sleeping rough it was odds-on she’d been eating appallingly, and it would take time for her body to build itself back up. But you never knew, did you? She might be anaemic, for example. Girls could be, at her age, if they suffered heavy periods. That fitted with her paleness, and the way she’d romped through my ‘girl’ supplies soon after arriving. And anaemia could definitely cause her to pass out … And the timing was right. She’d been with us a month …
But I knew it was pointless to speculate. The most important thing was to get there, so I tugged at the strings on my cleaning apron while Lauren finished speaking to whoever she was talking to. I heard the rumble of a male voice, presumably one of the paramedics. And was that Adrianna’s voice I could hear in the background? Wailing? ‘Okay,’ Lauren said again. ‘Casey, I’ve got to go. Meet you there? In A&E, I imagine … I’m so sorry …’
‘No, no. Of course, love,’ I reassured her. ‘I’m on my way.’
I pressed the end button with an unexpected feeling. Not of foreboding – even though I couldn’t quite say why I didn’t feel that. No, it was more one of expectation finally fulfilled – of having been waiting for this day to dawn all along. Now perhaps we’d finally get some answers.
I was in the car minutes later, but only making ten-mile-an-hour progress, having been caught up in the traffic bulge on the road out to the hospital. It was the last of the school run mingling with the beginnings of the rush hour, the sun dipping down now and winking off the rows of cars.
And, as I expected, it was a full 40 minutes before I turned into the hospital grounds, now mostly in shadow, as the watery late-winter sun was almost gone. Happily, though, the visitor car park was beginning to empty, and, having rummaged for the requisite king’s ransom for the privilege, I was soon parked up and hurrying across to Accident and Emergency.
My sense of inevitability was by now even stronger. I had no idea what had happened, but wasn’t remotely surprised that something had. It could be nothing, of course – and I sincerely hoped so, obviously – but, on the other hand, for all that we’d all commented on the improvement since that first week, Adrianna had never really seemed completely well since she’d come to us – not well in the accepted ‘rude health’ kind of way. I wondered again if she was seriously anaemic. Or – another thought I’d had simmering on a back burner – perhaps anorexic, or bulimic, and just extremely good at hiding it. She was still painfully thin, despite the huge appetite we’d all remarked upon, and so private in her habits that it was impossible to know.
Or perhaps – and more prosaically – she was simply suffering from some kind of post-viral syndrome. Though I’d never had personal experience of it, I knew things like glandular fever could linger for weeks, even months. Then there was ME – myalgic encephalomyelitis. Which was something you didn’t really hear much about anymore, but was presumably still diagnosed.
And there was so little of Adrianna, physically, to fight anything off. And we still knew hardly anything of the circumstances that had preceded her coming to us. How did we know she wasn’t suffering from some long-standing illness? She might be immune-compromised. Have Addison’s disease (something we’d come across in another child). Or be an as yet undiagnosed diabetic.
There was a whole host of medical possibilities, clearly. And, being no doctor, I should stop trying to second-guess the one who was (hopefully) soon going to be attending her. Still, I thought, as the Casualty doors hissed and parted to admit me, at least now there was no question of her avoiding being properly examined by one. Male or female, whether she liked it or not. Despite my stresses about what might be ailing the girl, I had this overriding feeling that I was about to get to the bottom of something, which of course I probably was, but it was more than that, and it gave me butterflies in my tummy as I rushed ahead.
The waiting room was half full, and a quick scan revealed no sign of Lauren, whom I presumed was with Adrianna in a side room or cubicle. It was just the usual mix of late-afternoon Accident and Emergency patients. A couple of pensioners, sitting patiently. A man hopping along on crutches. A young mum jiggling a grizzling baby on her lap. Another mum, trying to calm a six- or seven-year-old boy with some sort of leg wound, while simultaneously trying to quieten what was obviously a younger sibling – fresh out of school, still full of energy, and running amok in the aisles.
Back in the day I remembered there being a pretty well-stocked play area. But, along with magazines and picture books, health and safety had obviously long since put paid to that – and in doing so, I reflected, watching the man on crutches dodging the pink-cheeked little boy, creating all sorts of other health and safety issues in its place.
There were two people in front of me in the queue for the receptionist, so I used the time to text Mike and let him know where I was, having rushed out of the house without thinking to leave a note. At least I didn’t need to worry about Tyler. He was having tea over at Denver’s and Mike was collecting him on his way home from work, but knowing A&E as I did (and I’d certainly been a regular attendee in my time), there was a fighting chance that once Adrianna had been booked in and triaged there would still be a lengthy wait for treatment. Well, unless she had something seriously wrong with her, of course. I pressed ‘send’ on the message – which, as I was in a notoriously signal-challenged place, failed to go – and could only hope not.
And it seemed not. At least, as far as the receptionist knew. ‘She’s being seen now,’ she explained, once I’d told her who I was. ‘So if you’d like to take a seat, I’m sure there’ll be some more news soon.’
‘I can’t go to her?’
‘Well, you could, but I don’t know where she is currently. If you’ll let me see to this gentleman’ – she nodded to a man who was now standing behind me – ‘I’ll try to find out for you.’
With nothing for it but to wait, I decided against a seat in the waiting room itself, preferring to head off to where I knew there was a bank of vending machines and, crucially, a better mobile-phone signal.
And it seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d had the same idea. I’d no sooner sent the message to Mike than I saw Lauren in the distance, approaching from the far end of the long corridor that led to the main building. She waved when she saw me and speeded up.
‘She’s okay,’ she said as soon as she reached me, in answer to my as yet unspoken question. ‘But they’ve admitted her. To one of the medical wards. Number 7.’ She tapped her temple. ‘Remembered to make a mental note of it. Though there’s probably no point in you going up there just yet, because I think they’re about to take her down for an ultrasound scan and, depending on that, I think she might be going to surgery. Oh, and she’s got to have a blood transfusion, which they’ll do at the same time.’
‘A blood transfusion?’
Lauren nodded. But she was glancing at her phone, checking the time. She looked distracted about something. ‘Er, yes … sorry, look – I really need to call my grandma before I do anything else,’ she said. ‘Mum had to drop the baby round to her, because she had a tooth drilled and was feeling really icky. And she’ll be wondering where on earth I’ve got to, bless her. Bloody hospitals – they’re like black holes, aren’t they?’
‘Just go, love,’ I urged. ‘Don’t worry. You don’t need to stay now. You get off. I’ll sort all this out.’
Lauren shook her head. ‘No, no – just let me do this –’ She was texting with her thumbs while she was speaking, a skill I had not as yet been able to acquire – and probably never would.
‘No really, just go,’ I said again, thinking of her poor gran. She was at least in her late sixties and not the nimblest on her feet.
Lauren shook her head again as she finished composing her text. ‘There. That’s that done. Don’t worry. Kieron will call her now. And listen, before I go, I need to tell you something.’
It was only now that I realised she had something else pressing on her mind. ‘Tell me what?’
‘Something you are not going to believe, trust me.’
Which would have worried me, were it not for the fact that I could read Lauren’s expression. Which was shocked, yes. But not accompanied by any signs of distress. So, what could it be then?
‘Go on, then,’ I said. ‘Try me.’
‘You might want to sit down first …’ she said, taking my arm and drawing me to the side of the corridor, so that a gaggle of medics could pass by.
‘Sit down? Now you’re worrying me. Go on. What? What’s so shocking?’
‘You’re never going to believe this. Adrianna isn’t 14 at all. She’s 16 –’
‘Sixteen?’ There was clearly more to come than this. ‘Sixteen? Really? And?’
‘And she collapsed because she’s had some sort of birth complication.’
I almost spluttered. ‘Birth complication? How?’ The words came out of my astonished outbreath.
‘Exactly. That’s what I thought. But it’s true, Casey. She’s had a baby! And, by all accounts, literally just the day before she came to you!’