Dad died in the air-ambulance on his way to hospital. He had a cardiac arrest, and his heart stopped for six minutes before they managed to shock him back to life. For six whole minutes, while I sat on my bed three hundred miles away, hugging my knees to my chest and desperately waiting for Mum to call back with more news, my dad was officially dead.
Thoughts don’t come more sobering than that.
I get the first train out of London. Dad’s been transferred to the General Infirmary for emergency life-saving surgery. Scans have revealed a catalogue of injuries: a fractured leg, broken ribs, a punctured lung, a ruptured spleen, internal bleeding and a serious head injury.
I tell Mum I’ll be there as soon as I can and that everything’s going to be OK. I say it as much for my benefit as hers, but I can feel her clinging to my reassurances, like a frightened child to their mother. I call my brother, but his phone is switched off and my messages go to voicemail. I try Nathalie. It’s the same. I keep trying them. The woman opposite me is giving me daggers. I realize I’m in the quiet carriage.
Vaguely I remember speaking to Edward, telling him what’s happened. He asks me if he can do anything; I say no, and start crying. The woman who’s been staring at me passes me a tissue and tries to console me. I notice people in the carriage are staring.
I don’t care. Fear does that to you.
It feels like the longest train journey in the world. We pass through grey towns and bleak countryside, and I gaze absently upon trees that have lost their leaves, their skeleton arms reaching into the leaden skies. Rain splatters against the window. I see it all but take in nothing. My mind is elsewhere, flicking through a series of questions and fears, until it seems to freeze, like a computer when you’re running too many programmes.
Then finally I’m in a taxi from the station and I’m arriving at the hospital, rushing through the maze of corridors to find Mum. She’s sitting in the waiting area, a small hunched figure in a winter coat, twisting her hands in her lap, her eyes all red and puffy from crying. She jumps up when she sees me.
‘Oh, Nell,’ is all she says, over and over, as she clutches me tightly.
‘It’s going to be OK, Mum,’ I tell her firmly. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
I’ve never seen her this scared or helpless. She’s always been so stoical, but now she crumples beneath me. I hold her tight. I haven’t hugged Mum like this since I was a little girl, but now the roles are suddenly reversed and I know I’ve got to be the strong one. She needs me. I can’t fall apart.
Dad had been driving back home from the rugby club when the accident happened. It had been a friend’s birthday. ‘John, remember? He worked with him at the council.’ Mum was supposed to go but she had a bit of a cold. ‘I insisted he went without me. I told him to go,’ she explains through her sobs. ‘It’s all my fault. If he hadn’t gone, this would never have happened.’
It had been raining heavily. According to the police report, visibility was poor. A truck on the dual carriageway lost control and veered into the central reservation, causing a multi-car pile-up. Dad was trapped in the Land Rover and had to be cut free by fire fighters. An attending ambulance crew performed life-saving surgery at the side of the road to stem the bleeding from his internal injuries. Without that he would have died at the scene. Not everyone was so fortunate. There were several fatalities. Dad was one of the lucky ones.
A nurse ushers us into a small office where we meet Mr Reynolds, the trauma surgeon responsible for saving Dad’s life. He informs us that Dad’s just come out of theatre, that it went well, but he’s still in a critical condition. Mum starts crying again. I don’t know if it’s relief or fear or both. The surgeon explains about Dad’s injuries, showing us different scans and X-rays, informing us of what’s happened.
The impact of the collision caused internal haemorrhaging. He’s been given two blood transfusions and had surgery to repair his ruptured spleen and punctured lung. The Land Rover wasn’t fitted with airbags, resulting in the head injury, which was caused by the blunt trauma of hitting the windscreen. He’s been put into an induced coma, to reduce the swelling and minimize potentially irreversible damage to the brain. The fracture to his right leg, most likely caused by slamming on the brake, has been stabilized until he can be transferred to orthopaedics. He’ll later need an operation to insert a metal plate and pins. That’s if he makes it through the next few days.
It’s an awful lot to take in. Mr Reynolds is grave, but calm and assured. His language is matter of fact and littered with the kind of technical medical terms I’m used to hearing on TV; not in real life about my dad. He must have done this hundreds of times with hundreds of different frightened relatives who are pinning their whole worlds upon him. I listen and nod, feeling strangely detached as I struggle to absorb all this information. I think I’m still in shock.
Mum doesn’t speak but looks at me for reassurance. She seems in a daze, her body shrunken beneath her coat. As the surgeon talks about risks and complications, I squeeze her hand and ask every possible question I can think of.
When he’s finished, we all stand up and shake hands.
‘When can we see him?’ asks Mum, finally.
‘Soon. He’s being taken to ICU where he’ll be made comfortable. If you take a seat in the waiting room, I’ll get a nurse to attend to you.’
As we leave his office, I tell Mum I’m just going to the ladies’ and I’ll meet her in the waiting room. As soon as she’s disappeared through the fire doors, I quickly double back.
Mr Reynolds is still in his office when I knock on his door.
‘I needed to speak to you alone,’ I say, closing the door behind me. I pause, wondering how to put it, then just blurt it out. ‘Is he going to be all right? You can level with me.’
He’s sitting at his desk. I notice the everyday details: the blind at the window behind him that’s been pulled up unevenly; a pot plant (is it real or plastic? I can’t tell); the silver-framed photograph of two young children on his desk. He’s someone’s dad too.
‘Your father’s condition is critical but stable. The next forty-eight hours are crucial – we’ll know more then.’
‘Could he die?’
I say it out loud. The fear that’s been circulating in my head ever since Mum called me last night.
There’s a beat before he answers.
‘We do everything we can for a patient.’ He meets my gaze and I silently will him to tell me the truth. ‘But with injuries this severe, there are no guarantees.’
I’m grateful for: