The large hospital atrium was crowded with press. Your TV fame from presenting the ‘Hostile Environments’ series had attracted them. ‘Not fame, Gracie,’ you’d corrected me once. ‘Familiarity. Like a tin of baked beans.’
A smartly dressed man arrived and the people who’d been buzzing around with cameras and microphones moved towards him. I wondered if Jenny also felt vulnerable and exposed in this swarm of people, but if she did, she gave no sign of it. She’s always shared your courage.
‘This will just be a brief statement,’ the suited man said, looking annoyed at their presence. ‘Grace and Jennifer Covey were admitted at four fifteen this afternoon with serious injuries. They are now being treated for those injuries in our specialist units. Rowena White was also admitted suffering from minor burns and smoke inhalation. At this point we have no further information. I’d be grateful if you would now wait outside the hospital rather than here.’
‘How did the fire start?’ a journalist asked the suited man.
‘That’s a question for the police, not us. Now if you’ll excuse me.’
They carried on shouting out their questions, but we were looking out of the glass wall of the atrium for you. I’d been looking for our Prius and it was Jenny who spotted you first.
‘He’s here.’
You were getting out of an unfamiliar car. The BBC must have driven you in one of theirs.
Sometimes looking at your face is like looking in the mirror – so familiar it’s become a part of me. But there was a mask of anxiety covering your usual face, making it strange. I hadn’t realised that you are nearly always smiling.
You came into the hospital, and it was all wrong seeing you here in this hectic, frightening, sanitised place. You are in the kitchen getting a bottle of wine out of the fridge or in the garden waging a new offensive against snails, or driving out to dinner, me next to you, bemoaning traffic jams and praising sat-navs. You belong next to me on the sofa and on the right-hand side of our bed, moving slowly in the night towards mine. Even your appearances on TV in a jungle on the other side of the world are watched by me and the children on our family squashy sofa; the foreign mediated through the familiar.
You didn’t belong here.
Jenny ran to you and put her arms around you, but you didn’t know she was there and hurried on, half running up to the reception desk, your stride jerky with shock.
‘My wife and daughter are here, Grace and Jenny Covey.’
For a moment the receptionist reacted, she must have seen you on the telly, and then she looked at you with sympathy.
‘I’ll bleep Dr Gawande, and he’ll come to get you straight away.’
Your fingers drummed on the counter, your eyes flicking around; a cornered animal.
The journalists hadn’t yet spotted you. Maybe that mask over your old face had foxed them. Then Tara, my ghastly colleague at the Richmond Post, made a beeline towards you. As she reached you she smiled. Smiled.
‘Tara Connor. I know your wife.’
You ignored her, scanning the room and seeing a young doctor hastening towards you.
‘Dr Gawande?’ you said.
‘Yes.’
‘How are they?’ Your quiet voice was screaming.
Other journalists had seen you now and were coming towards you.
‘The consultants will be able to give you a fuller picture,’ Dr Gawande said. ‘Your wife has been taken to have an MRI scan and will then return to our acute neurology ward. Your daughter has been taken to our burns unit.’
‘I want to see them.’
‘Of course. I’ll take you to your daughter first. You can see your wife as soon as she’s finished her MRI, which will be in about twenty minutes.’
As you left the foyer with the young doctor, journalists hung back a little, demonstrating unexpected compassion. But Tara brazenly followed.
‘What do you think about Silas Hyman?’ she asked you.
For one moment you turned to her, registering her question, and then you walked quickly on.
The young doctor accompanied you swiftly past outpatient clinics, which were deserted now, the lights off. But in one empty waiting room a television had been left on. You stopped for a moment.
On the screen, a BBC ‘News 24’ interviewer was standing in front of the gates to the school. I used to tell Addie that it was a seaside house which had grown too big for the seafront and had to move inland. Now its pastel blue stuccoed façade was blackened and charred; its cream window frames burnt away to reveal pictures of the destruction inside. That gentle old building, so intricately associated with Adam’s warm hand holding mine at the beginning of the day and his running, relieved little face at the end of the day, had been brutally maimed.
You looked so shocked, and I knew what you were thinking because I’d felt the same when the rug was melting in my hands and masonry was falling around me – if fire can do this to bricks and plaster, what damage must it do to a living girl?
‘How did we get out of there?’ Jenny asked.
‘I don’t know.’
On the TV, a reporter was giving the facts but, shocked by the image on screen, I caught only fragments of what he was saying. I don’t think you were listening at all, just staring at the school’s cadaver.
‘… private school in London… cause at the moment unknown. Fortunately most children were at sports day. Otherwise the injuries and death toll… Emergency services were prevented from reaching the scene as desperate parents… One thing as yet to be explained is the arrival of press before the fire services…’
Then Mrs Healey came onto the screen, and the camera focused on her, mercifully blocking out most of the school in the background.
‘An hour ago,’ the reporter said, ‘I spoke to Sally Healey, the headmistress of Sidley House Preparatory School.’
You went on with the young doctor, but Jenny and I stayed for a little while longer watching Sally Healey. She was immaculate in pink linen shirt and cream trousers with manicured nails occasionally coming into view. I noticed her make-up was flawless; she must have retouched it.
‘Were there any children in the school when the fire started?’ the reporter asked her.
‘Yes. But not one child at the school was hurt. I’d like to emphasise that.’
‘I can’t believe she put on make-up,’ Jenny said.
‘She’s like one of those French MPs,’ I said. ‘You know, with the lipgloss next to the state papers? Make-up in the face of adversity.’
Jenny smiled; sweet, brave girl.
‘There was a reception class of twenty children in the school at the time of the fire,’ Sally Healey continued. ‘Their classroom is on the ground floor.’
She was using her assembly voice, commanding but approachable.
‘Like all our children, our reception class had rehearsed an evacuation in the event of fire. They were evacuated in less than three minutes. Fortunately, our other reception class were at an end-of-term outing to the zoo.’
‘But there were serious casualties?’ asked the interviewer.
‘I cannot comment on that, I’m sorry.’
I was glad that she wasn’t going to talk about Jenny and me. I wasn’t sure if she honestly didn’t know, if she was being discreet on our behalf, or if she was just trying to maintain a pink-linen façade that everything went according to plan.
‘Have you any idea yet how the fire started?’ the reporter asked.
‘No. Not yet. But I can reassure you that we had every fire precaution in place. Our heat detectors and smoke detectors are connected directly to the fire station and-’
The reporter interrupted. ‘But the fire engines couldn’t get to the school?’
‘I am not aware of the logistics of them getting to the school, I just know that the alarm went immediately through to the fire station. Two weeks ago some of the same firefighters came to give a talk to our year-one children and let them look at their fire engine. We never dreamt, any of us, that…’
She trailed off. The lipgloss and assembly voice wasn’t working. Under that carefully put-together frontage she was starting to fall apart. I liked her for it. As the camera panned away from her and back to the blackened school it paused on the undamaged bronze statue of a child.
We caught up with you in the corridor that leads to the burns unit. I could see you tense, trying to ready yourself for this, but I knew nothing could prepare you for what you’d see inside. Next to me I felt Jenny draw back.
‘I don’t want to go in.’
‘Of course. That’s fine.’
You went through the swing doors into the burns unit with the young doctor.
‘You should be with Dad,’ Jenny said.
‘But-’
‘At some level he’ll know you’re with him.’
‘I don’t want to leave you on your own.’
‘I don’t need babysitting, really. I am a babysitter nowadays, remember? Besides, I need you to keep me updated on my progress. Or lack of.’
‘Alright. But I won’t be long. Don’t go anywhere.’
I couldn’t bear to have to search for her again.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘And I won’t talk to strangers. Promise.’
I joined you as you were taken into a small office, grateful that they were doing this by degrees. A doctor held out his hand to you. I thought he looked almost indecently healthy, his brown skin glowing against the white walls of his office, his dark eyes shining.
‘My name’s Dr Sandhu. I am the consultant in charge of your daughter’s care.’
I noticed that as he shook your hand his other hand patted your arm, and I knew he must be a parent too.
‘Come in, please. Take a seat, take a seat…’
You didn’t sit down, but stood, as you always do when you are tense. You’d told me once it’s an atavistic, animal thing, meaning you are ready for immediate flight or fight. I hadn’t understood until now. But where could we run to and who could we fight? Not Dr Sandhu with his shining eyes and softly authoritative voice.
‘I’d like to start on the positives,’ he said and you nodded in vehement agreement; the man was talking your kind of talk. ‘However tough the environment,’ you say in the middle of some godforsaken place, ‘you can always find strategies to survive.’
You hadn’t seen her yet, but I had, and I suspected that ‘starting with the positives’ was putting a few cushions at the bottom of the cliff before pushing us off it.
‘Your daughter has achieved the hardest thing there is,’ continued Dr Sandhu. ‘Which is to come out of that intensity of fire alive. She must have huge strength of character and spirit.’
Your voice was proud. ‘She does.’
‘And that already puts her ahead of the game, as it were, because that fight in her is going to make all the difference now.’
I looked away from him to you. The smile lines around your eyes were still there; too deeply etched by past happiness to be rubbed out by what was happening now.
‘I need to be frank with you about her condition. You won’t be able to take in all the medical speak now, so I’ll just tell you simply. We can talk again – we most definitely will talk again.’
I saw a shake in your leg, as if you were fighting the instinct to pace the room, flee from it. But we had to listen.
‘Jennifer has sustained significant burns to her body and face. Because of the burns, stress is being placed on her internal organs. She has also suffered inhalation injuries. This means that inside her body her airways, including part of her lungs, are burnt and not functioning.’
She was hurt inside as well.
As well.
‘At the moment I’m afraid I have to tell you she has a less than fifty per cent chance of surviving.’
I screamed at Dr Sandhu: ‘No!’
My scream didn’t even ruffle the air.
I put my arms around you, needing to hold onto you. For a moment you half turned towards me as if you felt me.
‘We are keeping her heavily sedated so that she won’t feel any pain,’ Dr Sandhu continued. ‘And we are breathing for her with a ventilator. We have a highly specialist team here who will be doing everything possible for her.’
‘I want to see her now,’ you said in a voice I didn’t recognise.
I stood close against you as we looked at her.
We used to do that when she was small, after coming in from a party. We’d go to her room and stand and watch her as she slept – soft pink feet sticking out of her cotton nightie, silky hair across her stretched-out arms, which were yet to reach beyond her head. We made her, we’d think. Together we somehow created this amazing child. Chocolate moments, you called them, to make up for broken nights and exhaustion and battles over broccoli. Then we’d each separately give her a hug or a kiss, and feeling – I admit it – smugly proud, we’d go into our own room.
I was glad, for your sake, that her face was covered in dressings now. Just her swollen eyelids and damaged mouth visible. Her burnt limbs were encased in some kind of plastic.
As we looked at her, Dr Sandhu’s sentence coiled inside us like a viper. ‘She has a less than fifty per cent chance of surviving.’
Then you made yourself stand tall and your voice was strong.
‘Everything is going to be alright, Jen. I promise. You’re going to get better.’
A pledge. Because as her father your job is to protect her; and when that’s failed you make everything better.
Then Dr Sandhu explained about the intravenous lines and the monitors and the dressings and, although he didn’t intend this, it quickly became clear that if she got better it would be because of him, not you.
But you don’t take that lying down. You don’t just hand over power over your daughter. So you asked questions. What did this tube do exactly? That one? Why use this? You were learning the lingo, the techniques. This was your daughter’s world now, so it was yours and you would learn its rules; master it. The man who stripped down a car engine at sixteen and then rebuilt it following a manual – a man who likes to know exactly what he’s putting his trust in.
At sixteen I would have been reading George Eliot; as equally useless now as a car engine manual.
‘How badly will she be scarred?’ you asked.
And your optimism was glorious! Your courage in the face of it all was marvellous. I knew you didn’t give a monkey’s arse about how she looked compared to whether she lived. Your question was to show your belief that she will live; that the issue of scarring is a real one because one day she will – will – face the outside world again.
You’ve always been the optimist, me the pessimist (pragmatist, I’d correct). But now your optimism was a lifebuoy and I was clinging to it.
Dr Sandhu, a kind man, didn’t mention your question’s hopefulness when he replied.
‘She has suffered second-degree partial thickness burns. This type of burn can be either superficial, which means the blood supply is intact and the skin will heal, or deep, which inevitably means scarring. Unfortunately it takes several days before the burns reveal which type they are.’
A nurse came up. ‘We’re arranging a family room for you to stay in tonight. Your wife has been brought back to the acute neurology ward, which is just across the corridor.’
‘Can I see my wife now?’
‘I’ll take you there.’
Jenny was waiting for me in the corridor. ‘Well…?’
‘You’re going to be fine. A long haul ahead, but you’re going to be fine.’
Still holding tightly to your optimism. I couldn’t bear to have told her what Dr Sandhu said.
‘They don’t yet know about scarring,’ I continued. ‘If they’re the kind of burns that leave a scar.’
‘But they might not?’ she asked, her voice hopeful.
‘No.’
‘I thought I was going to look like that permanently.’ She sounded almost euphoric. ‘Well, maybe not quite as bad as that, like a Halloween mask, but something like that. But I really might not at all?’
‘That’s what the consultant said.’
Relief shone out of her face; made her luminous.
Looking at me, she didn’t see you come out of the burns unit. You turned your face to the wall and then your hands slammed onto it, as if you could expel what you’d seen and heard. And I knew then how hard-won your hopefulness was; the bravery and effort it took. Jenny hadn’t seen.
We heard footsteps pounding down the corridor.
Your sister was hurtling towards you, her police officer’s radio hissing at her side.
I instantly felt inadequate. If Pavlov’s dog had had a sister-in-law like Sarah it would be a recognised emotional reflex. I know. Unfair. But spiky emotion makes me feel a little more resilient. Besides, it’s not that surprising, is it? The most important woman in your life from the age of ten till you met me; a sister-in-law/mother-in-law rolled into one; little wonder I feel intimidated by her.
Her voice was breathless.
‘I was in Barnes, doing a joint thing with their drugs- Oh for God’s sake it doesn’t matter where I was, does it? I’m so sorry, Mikey.’
That old childish name that she uses for you. But when was the last time?
She put her arm around you, held you tightly.
For a little while she didn’t say anything. I saw her face stiffen, hardening herself to tell you.
‘It was arson.’