Chapter 35
It was so quiet on the children’s ward. Nancy sat in the chair by the side of Danny’s bed and listened to the quiet rustling sounds as the night nurses glided about, speaking in hushed tones to the patients who needed something. A glass of water here. A painkiller there. Quiet words of reassurance for both a child who was whimpering and a parent whose low urgent questions punctured the darkness.
Danny lay fast asleep in his favourite Paw Patrol pyjamas, his chest rising and falling gently. He seemed so small, so pale, so fragile. So reliant on this place.
Why, Nancy asked herself, wasn’t she freaking out? She’d always been such a panicker, yet when Patricia had told Sam on the phone she’d called the GP because Danny kept falling asleep on his feet, she had felt a calm sense of unreality descending on her. She was the one who had taken the phone and grasped the mechanics of the situation, while Sam had gone to pieces.
She was the one who had sat calmly considering the facts and their implications on the seventeen-hour flight home. Sam, in the seat next to her, had kept asking her to go over her subsequent conversation with the doctor.
Danny had aplastic anaemia. It was a serious condition, resulting from his bone marrow and stem cells not producing enough blood cells. Also known as bone marrow failure, it could develop over a long period of time or, as in Danny’s case, suddenly and acutely.
Nancy repeated all this off pat. In a way, reciting the facts made her feel calmer, just as it had when she’d been revising for her high-school science exams. Symptoms of aplastic anaemia, she’d explained to Sam, included bleeding gums. Poor Patricia had put that one down to Danny being overenthusiastic with the toothbrush song actions. Tiredness was another symptom, although she’d attributed that to Danny’s new-found interest in football and also being exhausted after playgroup.
Nancy’s tone became even more matter of fact when she continued to go through the facts. If she didn’t pretend this was a case study in a textbook she would fall to bits, and then where would that leave Danny? Sam, by contrast, was gripping her arm and hanging on her every word as though recognising that this time, she was in charge.
Danny’s illness could be treated by drugs and blood transfusions. If that didn’t work, bone marrow transplants were the only hope. Usually the best matches were from parents or close relatives.
One of the first things they did, after arriving at the hospital where the GP had sent their son, was to get tested for suitability as donors. They were still waiting for the results. Nancy’s mother was flying in from the States at the end of the week to be with them, and to be tested herself. ‘I want to help, dear,’ she’d said on the phone, her voice quivering.
So did everyone. As Nancy sat by her son’s side in the hospital, she counted once more the huge number of colourful get-well cards which the little Puddleducks had made. There was even one from Tracy’s mum (which was generous, given her unfortunate mistake over the ‘bump’) as well as Doug the mosaics tutor, all dwarfed by the giant teddy that Patricia, who seemed to be blaming herself, had brought in.
‘I thought he was just a bit run-down dear, after his first half-term at playgroup. So I didn’t take much notice when he kept falling asleep on the sofa.’
Nancy had reassured her, promising that she didn’t hold her responsible in any way. If anything, she said, it had been her who should have noticed.
Still, there was no point in blaming herself or others. They needed to concentrate on the here and now. Right at this moment, that meant waiting to see if the recent transfusion was having any effect.
The consultant, a lovely bear of a man in his fifties who was, Sam kept saying as though to reassure himself, old enough to be experienced but young enough to be aware of new developments, hoped that they might know how the treatment was progressing by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, she couldn’t bear to leave Danny’s side. Nor could Sam. Nancy’s doubts about her ‘husband’s’ commitment to parenthood had been put to one side when watching him cradling his boy in his arms and telling him to imagine that his body was a fort containing lots of big brave soldiers.
‘Imagine that they are fighting an army of evil monster germs in your blood,’ he had said in a voice that had wobbled. ‘Your soldiers are going to win. Trust me, Danny. They will.’
‘Oh no.’ Danny’s face crumpled.
It was as though he was frightened that his father was going to tell him off, remembering Sam snapping at him for splashing water on the floor during his bath or not staying in his own bed at night.
‘Monster germs!’ He looked panic-stricken. ‘Mum said I’d get them if I didn’t wash my hands.’
No, Nancy had tried to explain, realising too late that she had fussed too much about insignificant stuff. It wasn’t anything to do with washing hands. It was … what? One of those things? How did you explain a random, terrible illness to a child?
Now, as Nancy tried to get comfortable in the chair, she wondered how she and Sam would cope if anything happened to Danny. Her son was everything to her. More than Sam, if she was to be honest.
‘Mummy?’ Danny’s long eyelashes flickered as his eyes slowly opened. He sounded so sleepy that she could barely hear him. Carefully, so as not to knock him, she pulled back the corner of the duvet and slid into bed with him, wrapping her arm around his thin shoulders.
‘Yes, darling?’
His voice came out all breathy. ‘Do people eat cornflakes in heaven for breakfast?’
Nancy’s chest felt as though it was going to cave in on itself.
‘Why, darling?’
His warm hand crept out and squeezed hers. ‘Cos Granny said if I didn’t eat my cornflakes, I wouldn’t grow big and strong. Is that why I might go to heaven? Cos I’m not going to be big and strong?’
Nancy bit her lip. Sometimes a parent had to be economical with the truth. ‘Of course not. Now, why don’t I tell you a story?’
Danny nodded. ‘A story about a dog. A black dog with a kink in its tail.’
Nancy hugged him gently. How ironic. She had texted Toby’s dad only that morning to see if Pongo the kinky-tailed puppy was still available. If so, she would have bought him there and then. Anything to see Danny smile again. But he had been sold to a couple who had apparently been looking for a dog just like him, kinky tail and all.
‘OK, then,’ she began. ‘Once upon a time, there was a dog with a funny bend in its tail.’
Danny moved under the covers. ‘Not its tail. His tail. Pongo’s a boy, like me.’
Nancy smiled in the half-light spreading out from the nurses’ office at the end of the ward. ‘OK. With a funny bend in his tail.’
Danny’s voice was sleepy but firm. ‘No, Mummy. Start again. Begin with “Once upon a time.”’
Before this, Nancy would have got irritated. Now she couldn’t help admiring her son for his preciseness. She had been exactly the same as a child, according to her mother. Maybe it was a sign that he was going to be a scientist too when he grew up.
If he grew up.
‘Once upon a time,’ she began again, ‘there was a black dog with a kink in his tail. And do you know how he got that kink?’
No answer.
Nancy felt her heart lurch. Was he still breathing? His chest was only just rising and falling, but there was a definite low steady warm breath on her arms. She held him gently, protecting him from whatever evil she could.
‘Do you know why Pongo had a kink in his tail?’ she repeated.
Still no answer. Danny had fallen asleep again. Nancy felt a sickening realisation. His earlier chit-chat about cornflakes and dogs with kinks in their tails had fooled her into thinking that he was getting better. But he wasn’t. He was sleeping more and more. As she watched his chest rise and fall so slightly that she had to rest her hand on his body to feel it, fear encompassed her, and a line of sweat trickled down her back.
What would they do if, one day, he simply didn’t wake up?