Christopher found it was easier than he’d expected to see Storme again. He simply took the lift up to the seventh floor and went on to the ward and asked Staff Nurse Fox if he could see her.
“Are you a relation?” she asked.
“I’m her other grandfather,” he lied.
She appraised him quickly. “She’s asleep, don’t wake her, she had a bad night.”
As they walked towards Storme’s cubicle, Staff Nurse Fox wondered how such a well-dressed, softly spoken man could have produced a scumbag son like Crackle.
Storme looked clean against the white sheet she lay on. Somebody had cut her fingernails and her toenails, and brushed the wisps of hair showing underneath the dressings which covered most of her head. He noticed for the first time how long and dark her eyelashes were against her cheeks. It worried him that her body did not look at peace. Her limbs twitched occasionally, and her eyeballs moved under the closed lids.
“Do you think she’s in pain?” asked Christopher.
“She’s well sedated,” said the staff nurse, cautiously.
“Poor little chick,” said Christopher. He asked when she would be better.
“They’re very resilient,” was all she’d say.
He wanted to see what she looked like when she smiled.
“Who else has been to see her?” he asked.
“Only her other grandfather,” said the staff nurse.
“Will her mum and dad be prosecuted?” he asked. He couldn’t bring himself to say, “My son.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What will happen to her, when she’s better?”
“I can’t answer any of these questions,” she said, growing impatient with him. “It’s up to social services.”
“And the police?” he asked.
“Deliberate cruelty is difficult to prove. Babies can’t talk,” she said.
“Perhaps she did fall out of her cot?” he tested.
“Perhaps,” she said, but he knew she didn’t believe this, from the little downward movement she made with her mouth.
“Can I sit with her for a while?” he asked.
“No, I’m sorry, in the circumstances…”
“You think I’ll hurt her,” said Christopher, angrily.
“It’s Mr Parker-Wright’s instructions,” she said, coldly. “Her family can’t be left alone with her.”
“Somebody should be with her all the time,” he said. “She shouldn’t be left. What if she wakes up and there’s nobody here?”
“We’re in and out of here all the time,” she said, stung by his inference that the nursing staff were neglecting Storme. She adjusted a catheter projecting from the baby’s groin. “We can’t spare a nurse to sit with her for twenty-four hours a day. We’re short staffed. She’s well monitored,” she added. He looked through the window of the cubicle, down the corridor. Most of the cots and beds had an adult next to them, an Asian toddler with a leg in traction was surrounded by a phalanx of relations.
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to go now,” she said.
Storme threw her right arm back and Christopher saw the name that was written inside the transparent plastic bracelet she wore on her wrist.
“Storme Natas.” He’d never known her surname. He waited for a moment to see if she would wake up, but her eyelids remained closed. He hoped that she was dreaming about an innocent world where there was no pain.
Staff Nurse Fox steered him out of the cubicle and down the corridor towards the lift. She wanted him off her ward. There was something about his intensity that made her uneasy.
The dog strained forward on its lead when it saw Christopher walk between the parting automatic doors at the main entrance to the hospital. It was hungry. Christopher had forgotten to buy a tin of dog food the night before, and the only food in the house was a packet of dried tortellini. They had shared this sparse supper in front of the gas fire in the living room, breaking the strict rule that the dog was only to be fed in the kitchen. Christopher needed company. He hadn’t wanted to leave Angela behind in her coldly tasteful house.
He crossed the road separating the hospital from the café, and saw Angela in the far distance ahead of him on the pavement. She was wearing her little ankle boots, and was walking more confidently now that the snow had melted.
A smallish man wearing a navy cashmere overcoat and an astrakhan hat slowed down on the opposite side of the road, and watched Angela go into Veronica’s Cafe; he then walked away in the opposite direction. As the man in the hat passed them, the dog growled at him. Christopher said, “Sorry,” and yanked the dog away. The man stopped and looked up hard into Christopher’s face before hurrying away in the direction of the city centre.