Chapter Sixteen
The fifteen-mile trip to Exeter General, with blue lights and sirens all the way, took twenty-one minutes. Andrea counted every single one of them, her eyes glued to Nina’s tiny figure.
They sat in the rear of the ambulance, two paramedics separating her and Gabriel from Nina, wires and machines attached to her every extremity. As Andrea stood for a moment to look over the paramedics’ shoulders, her daughter’s eyes rolled back in her head and her lips once again foamed with froth.
Andrea wept, her grip on Gabriel’s hands like a vice, his own tears falling on their locked fingers.
At the hospital, the vehicle shut off its siren, gunned left, right and then reversed into position as the rear doors were flung open.
Andrea scrambled forward to grasp for Nina’s hand but, before she could touch it, Nina was lifted out of the vehicle on a gurney and propelled inside through double doors.
Andrea and Gabriel climbed out of the rear of the vehicle and were told to wait by the driver.
They stood in the car park, hesitating before following the circus of noise and movement and terror that surrounded their daughter. Had they heard someone say ‘meningitis’? Hadn’t the consultant ruled that out?
Gabriel felt in his pocket for the bag with the yellow ampoules in and remembered the doctor had taken it with growing urgency.
‘I’m wearing the wrong clothes,’ said Andrea blankly. They both looked down at her dressing gown and slippers, claw-footed monster ones that made Nina chortle with glee.
‘It’s OK,’ croaked Gabriel eventually. ‘Nina loves those slippers.’
And then Andrea’s knees gave way and together they huddled, sobbing, on the cold concrete of the loading bay, until a kind nurse ushered them inside once more – back into their living hell.