The Nurse by J. Corrigan (list of ebook readers txt) 📕

And they took her away. Samira. My child.

47

4 January 1992

When I woke up, Cam told me it was the next day and that Daniel was waiting to visit me. I refused to see him. They were all expecting me to change my mind. I did not. And Daniel did not come.

It was a full forty-eight hours after my baby had died that my mother finally came to my room. She entered holding a huge bouquet of flowers, placing them on my bedside table and not saying a word. I thought she was waiting for me to mention her belated appearance, but I was past that. I was past everything.

At last she spoke. ‘Daniel asked me to give them to you.’ She sat down.

I didn’t reply.

‘How are you feeling, love?’ she carried on.

‘I don’t feel anything.’

‘I mean, are you in any pain?’

I looked at her then. ‘Of course I’m in pain.’

‘Then tell Mark. He can give you painkillers.’

‘It’s not my body that hurts.’

She leaned closer. ‘You look terrible.’ She wasn’t hearing what I was saying. ‘You should stop being so silly, Rose, and let Daniel see you. He’s beside himself.’

‘There’s nothing stopping him walking through the door.’

‘He won’t if you keep saying you don’t want to see him.’

‘It’s over between us.’

‘You’ll change your mind.’

I peered at my mother. ‘He hasn’t killed himself coming to see me. Maybe he’s glad this has happened.’

‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’ She carried on. ‘Mark says you’re stable and can be discharged tomorrow.’

I was just about to answer when an excruciating pain shot through my abdomen, one I’d been feeling since Samira’s death and hadn’t mentioned to Mark or Cam. Maybe the pain would get worse. Maybe I’d die. I felt so empty that dying wasn’t such a bad thought. I waited for it to abate, and waited for my mum to mention the death of my child. She did not.

‘Were you here when Daniel brought me in?’ I said, finally finding the strength to carry on talking.

‘Daniel said you thought you’d seen me. No, I wasn’t here, Rose. I’d been out all day sorting something out for Sam. I didn’t know you’d been brought in until the next morning.’

She explained all of this while rearranging the flowers, the scent of which, together with the pain in my stomach, was making me feel sick. I didn’t bother asking her why it had taken her so long to turn up at my bedside. The mother-and-daughter healing of the past seven months had been forgotten.

My mother went on, ‘What’s happened is tragic and unfortunate, but it does happen. You know that, love.’ She paused. ‘I have to go, my shift starts in ten minutes and I’ve got to get changed. I’m meeting…’

‘Who?’

‘No one. I mean, I’m meeting the receptionist I report to. I’ve sorted out your old room at home. Sam’s staying with his girlfriend at the moment, so the house has plenty of space.’ She touched the bed, but not me. ‘It’s best you stay with me,’ she finished with weary acceptance. ‘Daniel’s got Ed to move your stuff. He’s dropping it,’ she looked at her watch, ‘around now, I’d imagine.’

‘Ed has a key to your house?’

‘He does.’

I had no fight left in me to ask more about Ed Madden. I didn’t care any more, although I did ask about Abigail. Had I seen her the day I was brought in or had I imagined her? ‘Have you seen Daniel’s sister?’

‘No, I haven’t. She lives in Herefordshire, you told me. What would she be doing here?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I have to go, Rose,’ she said. ‘I’ll pop in after my shift’s finished.’

She didn’t return that day, or before I left the hospital.

It was Tom who came to see me that evening, and it was Tom who looked over the notes that sat near my bed and pointed out my elevated temperature. I told him I didn’t feel anything, and it was true, I didn’t. Nothing. I didn’t feel ill. I was totally and utterly empty. The sporadic and terrible pain living within me was a physical hallucination. That was what I told myself.

Tom disappeared for a while, I suspected to go and talk to Mark, because later, Mark came to examine me.

Nothing untoward, he said. Only a slightly elevated temperature. Nothing to worry about. Your young student friend is overreacting.

And I did think then that the pain was completely psychosomatic. Mental pain transferring to my physical body.

48

5 January 1992

The next day, I left Bluefields in a taxi that took me to my mother’s. I’d done a complete circle, back to where I’d started, but maybe being at my old home would be the best thing, for a while, until after Samira’s funeral anyway. Tom had thought me mad going back and suggested I stay with him and Casey. I couldn’t do that to my friends.

Neither Mark nor Cam mentioned Daniel as they helped me into the car. And that suited me fine.

We were over.

That night, lying in my childhood bed, I woke up lathered in sweat and entrenched in pain. Real pain. It was only when I finally made it to the tiny bathroom across the hallway that I saw it wasn’t sweat. Blood covered the floor like a vermilion liquid blanket.

I sat on the toilet, in shock as well as agony. Was I going to die? Oddly, this thought composed me. The blood was still gushing, all over both the bathroom floor and me. With difficulty I got up from the toilet and lay on the floor, legs outstretched, waiting, the pain coming in more frequent waves. I don’t know how long I’d been there when my mum came in, took one look at me and called Bluefields. I heard her on the phone.

‘Mark says you’ll be okay until the morning. He says that a little bit of blood goes a long way. It’s no emergency,’ she said, mopping up the blood with a