A nurse came to her side, speaking gently, as if cajoling a child. ‘We’re doing everything we can, Mrs Cole. Why don’t you come and wait in the visitor’s room?’
Alicia felt the woman’s arms close around her shoulders, trying to coax her away.
No! Did they think she would leave him? Did they think she would leave her baby? She needed to stay. She needed to talk to him. He would respond to her voice. He would respond. Oh God, she needed to hold him, feel his warm body next to hers, his tiny heart beating. ‘Please help him. Somebody, please help—’
Justin. Her gaze shot to the resuscitation room doors as they crashed open.
‘You need to step away, Dr Cole,’ someone ordered, as he moved towards Lucas. ‘It’s too personal. You have a possible pneumothorax. You’re in no fit state to—’
‘He’s my fucking son!’ Justin shouted, struggling to get past two colleagues who were attempting to hold him back.
‘Pulmonary contusions evident,’ another doctor said, as he pressed a stethoscope to their baby’s small chest. ‘Get hold of paediatrics. Tell them—’
‘He won’t make it!’ Justin screamed. ‘He’s about to go into respiratory arrest. You need to intubate. Now!’
The doctor looked towards Justin and then, his expression foreboding, back to the other medical staff gathered around him. ‘Tell paeds to stand by,’ he instructed a nurse, as Alicia’s heart slowed to a dull thud inside her. And then to another, ‘Get me an EZ-IO drill. And get the fast scanner here now.’
Alicia knew what he was about to do. She couldn’t bear it. Didn’t think she could stand to hear the sound of the drill whirring and cutting.
She felt Justin’s arm around her. Instinctively, she turned to him, felt his other arm enclose her, pulling her towards him. Guilt rose inside her, her mind screaming what she already knew. It was her fault. All of it, her fault! This was her punishment for the wicked thing she’d done, the dreadful mistake she’d made. But it was her mistake. The punishment should be hers, not her baby’s. Not Justin’s. Not Sophie’s. Her’s alone.
‘You shouldn’t touch me!’ She pulled away from him, feeling she might taint him. Everything she’d ever done had shaped his life, had brought him to this terrible place. He shouldn’t be with her. She should never have made him be. ‘You shouldn’t be anywhere near me!’
Justin stepped towards her, tried to ease her back. ‘Alicia, don’t…’ He stopped, drawing in a harsh breath. Hearing the wheeze rattle his chest, Alicia looked sharply up, saw the agony in his eyes, the perspiration mingling with the salty tears on his cheeks as he looked towards his broken baby. He was hurting. Hurting so badly. How could he ever forgive her? How would she ever forgive herself?
He would never come back from this. He would blame himself. He would never stop blaming himself if…
‘Blood pressure’s dropping.’
Five
ALICIA
Feeling closer to him there, Alicia had stayed in the same place for two solid days since coming home from the hospital: sitting in the chair in the nursery. It was an antique rocking chair. Justin had bought it – to make feeding times easier, he’d said. Lucas had been easy to feed, a contented baby. It was a perfect chair for cuddling and snuggling him, though.
Her heart squeezing painfully, Alicia caught a breath in her throat as she recalled how she’d woken from an exhausted sleep shortly after bringing Lucas home, panic immediately engulfing her when she realised it was past his feed time and he wasn’t crying. Her heart rate had slowed to somewhere near normal when she’d found Justin’s side of the bed empty; she’d crept tentatively along the landing to find her husband nestling his son in the crook of his arm, humming softly as he rocked him gently back to sleep.
He’d done it many times since, when he hadn’t been working. Alicia accused him of quietly hoping she would sleep through, so he could spend precious alone time with his son, and Sophie made merciless fun of her dad getting in touch with his feminine side. Alicia had pointed out he’d taken his fair share of night-time feeds with her too, the only difference being they hadn’t had a rocking chair. At this, Sophie had bemoaned her deprived childhood.
Alicia smiled at the memory, and then swallowed hard against the cold stone wedged like ice in her chest. Shivering involuntarily as Lucas’s wind-chime mobile tinkled the softest of sounds, she eased his patchwork quilt higher towards her face, breathing in the smell of him. His smell was everywhere: on her clothes, in her hair. She couldn’t bear to wash him away. He permeated every surface, every wall, every pore of the house.
Looking towards the mobile, sure she could hear his delighted chuckles and gurgles as it jangled, she realised Justin was standing on the landing, watching her, not moving. He didn’t come in. He hadn’t come into the room once since he’d been discharged. Because he couldn’t cope with it. Because his pain was too raw. Alicia could see it. It was etched deep into his eyes.
He needed her. He needed his family, his baby. She couldn’t bear it. Alicia looked away.
‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked hesitantly.
Alicia shook her head. She couldn’t eat. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe.
‘Some tea or hot chocolate?’ he tried.
‘We’d only just started weaning him,’ she said, for no reason other than she could see the confusion in Lucas’s beautiful summer-blue eyes when she’d first fed a spoon into his mouth. ‘He opened his mouth for the spoon on Sunday. Soft fruits. He liked soft fruits mixed with his milk.’
Justin breathed in. ‘I know,’ he said throatily.
Another minute stuffed full of silence passed by, then, ‘You should try and eat something, Alicia. At least let me get you some tea?’
Alicia smiled sadly. Her mother had always gone for the kettle in a crisis. A tradition passed on from her gran. A ‘cure-all cuppa’, her gran had called it. It couldn’t cure this, couldn’t take away the ache in her chest where her heart should be. Her hand strayed to the soft round of her tummy. The emptiness where her baby had grown.
She wished her mother was here. That God, in whatever infinite wisdom it was, hadn’t seen fit to take her away from her too. She would have judged her, no doubt she would have done that, but she would have kept loving her. It was selfish, but she needed that love. She desperately needed the love of someone who could know all there was to know and still keep loving her. To be held until her heart had stopped breaking and the unbearable pain went away.
But it wouldn’t go away. Couldn’t. Ever.
Justin, would he hold her? Could he bear to, now that he suspected? And he did. She could feel it. How could she let him? Only to tell him she’d betrayed him in the worst possible way a woman could betray a man? He was bleeding too, just as steadily as her, and she had no idea what to do.
She needed to try. Needed to help him get through this. Could she at least do that, before she broke him completely? Glancing away, she wiped a tear from her face. ‘I’ll come down soon,’ she said, though she had no idea how she would. She couldn’t bear to see Lucas’s things in the kitchen – his little bowl and his feeding cup. Couldn’t conceive the idea of throwing them out. Here she was, surrounded by his things, his tiny baby clothes, his toys, by him. There were no surprises, nothing that would leap out at her and force the air from her lungs.
Alicia listened to the landing clock ticking, loud against the silence, as Justin nodded defeatedly and walked away. How she wished she could wrench the hands of the clock back, eradicate time, her mistakes – and the cruellest second of all, in which God had taken their baby away.