Stella #3
‘We’re just waiting to be discharged,’ Lou adds.
‘What happened?’
‘Rose had a temperature and she was sick,’ Lou says.
‘Fuck,’ I say. ‘Okay, but that’s pretty normal. . .’
‘There’s slightly more to it,’ Lou says, sounding hesitant.
Mum is looking across the room, through the double doors out to the rest of the hospital.
‘Earlier tonight Mum gave her Calpol, but then she left the open bottle on the side by the cot, and then when she came back to check, Rose had the bottle in the cot and she thinks she might have drunk some of it.’
I feel like I’m going to scream and throw up. ‘How much?’ I say.
‘She can’t remember how much was left in the bottle, but she was sick again pretty much straight away anyway.’
Mum still isn’t looking at me. ‘Great,’ I say, staring out of the window.
What the fuck was I thinking? That woman doesn’t give a shit about me, or Rose, or Lou, or anyone other than herself.
Why would I leave her with my child? Only I know the answer to that, and it was to go and try get fingered by some beautiful blonde man with abs. What kind of a parent am I?
‘Stella?’ Lou prompts. ‘I called the NHS 111 thing and they put me through to the poison hotline, and they said that if she was sick straight away and it wasn’t more than twenty-four hours’ worth of dosage then it’s probably fine, but if I wasn’t sure I should come to the hospital, so we thought, just to be on the safe side. . .’
‘Yeah,’ I say weakly. ‘Best.’
A dark-haired nurse in navy scrubs comes into the waiting room. ‘Are you Rose’s mum?’ she asks me.
‘Stella,’ I say. ‘Yes.’
‘Right, well, we’ve done all her obs and it looks like she’s all right.’
I squeeze Rose. ‘Thank god,’ I say.
‘You do need to be more careful though, Mum,’ the nurse adds.
‘My name is Stella. Not Mum,’ I snap.
The nurse blinks, surprised at my reply. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Well, either way, you need to be more careful. It’s really not ideal for a little one to get hold of medicine.’
Isn’t it? I want to ask. Isn’t it ideal?
Thanks so much for telling me, I had no idea, I didn’t think my child was going to die of progressive organ failure or anything, I haven’t been clawing myself apart with guilt for the past hour.
‘It wasn’t me who was with her when it happened,’ I hear myself say.
‘Well, yes, but we need to be aware of who we leave the babies with,’ the nurse ventures.
Louella gets up, putting herself between me and the nurse, like we’re Real Housewives and I’m about to swing for her.
‘Thanks so much for all your help,’ Louella says, in a voice that makes customer service providers quake.
Mum has the good grace to look miserable in the taxi home.
‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she says. There’s baby sick on her Isabel Marant top. ‘I had no idea she could reach out of the cot.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, without stopping in the hallway, going straight up the stairs. ‘I should have known not to leave you in charge.’
She winces, because she knows that I’m telling her she’s not a good grandmother, not a good mother, not a useful, helpful person to have around, that she’s always been too selfish to be a real parent.
I carry Rose up to her bedroom. The floor is covered in towels and the air stinks of sick.
I can imagine the chaos that must have unfolded when they realised what had happened, how frightened they must have been.
I shouldn’t have left them. I lay sleepy Rose down on the single bed across the room from the cot, then strip her sheets and swap them for clean ones.
I place her gently into the cot and turn to go back to my room, then think better of it.
Downstairs, I hear the front door slam, meaning Louella and Mum have gone.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Then I drag the covers and the pillows off the single bed and pile them next to Rose’s cot.
I lie on the floor with my hand through the bars of the cot, holding on to her, so that if anything changes I’ll know.
Sleep doesn’t come and I don’t really want it.
I watch the light change. Listen to Rose breathe.
Wonder how all of this happened, whether I could convince Gavin to move back here and be a co-parent with me, whether I could just live with him until Rose is old enough to leave home, because he might not love me but the presence of another adult would shore up the foundations and stop me from making stupid, selfish, reckless choices with stupid, selfish, reckless men.
I conclude that Gavin probably wouldn’t come back, even if I begged him.
He had the most fun, sexy, happy-go-lucky decade of my life and still ultimately decided I wasn’t worth bothering with.
So that part of the equation is out. But there is a part I can control, the part where I stop looking for fun and distraction and just think about Rose, stay home with Rose, make my life revolve around Rose.
Other women seem to manage it, and if tonight has shown me anything, it’s that I need to be more like those women.