Page 19 of The Long Walk Back

Kate slammed through the doors of A&E, still clad in her army fatigues. She knew she looked a mess but she didn’t care. She felt disgusting, dirty, but as soon as they had landed she had begged a lift from a passing officer and raced to her boy. She could feel the layer of dirt and dust that permeated her clothes, and she felt at odds with the bright white sterile starkness of the hospital reception. One of the receptionists recognised her, dashing around the desk.

‘Dr Harper, come with me.’ She nodded and followed dumbly, vaguely aware of the looks of sympathy the other staff behind the desk shot her when they heard her name. She dared not look at them, for fear their expressions would confirm the worst. Confirm without a doubt what she had feared since getting that call, that Jamie was dead. Her phone was in her kit bag, but like her, it was having trouble adjusting to the last few hours, and she couldn’t get a signal. She had received no news since the call from Neil, and it was freaking her out. She became aware that the receptionist was talking to her, holding and stroking her hand as they walked briskly from white corridor to white corridor. She couldn’t seem to make herself tune in, to hear the words the woman was churning out. She only saw one thing. SPINAL UNIT. The words, in huge white letters on the wall, jolted her into the present.

‘He’s not dead?’ she asked, confused. The receptionist stopped then, taking Kate’s face between her own two soft hands. ‘No! No, Doctor Harper, your son is alive.’

‘But… why?’ she asked, her words cutting out like failed fireworks. ‘Why?’ she tried again, forcing the very word from her chest.

The receptionist steered her to a chair, patting her hand and scuttling off.

Kate sat there, staring at the empty corridor, for a decade. It had to be a decade, it could be no less. Every second signified a week, every minute even longer. She felt as though her whole life experience was on this hard plastic chair, sitting in this corridor, her eyes smarting from the starkness of the white surroundings.

She thought of the day that Jamie had come into the world. Expecting her son to be late, as first babies and boys often were, she was at work, squeezing every second out of her maternity leave. Or so she told people. The truth was, the thought of being at home with a newborn with no work to challenge her was terrifying. There, in the hospital, she knew what to do. Broken bones, poking through skin and sinew, she loved. Mending people, fixing their injuries, helping them to walk, to hold their loved ones, to work – that gave her a high that she felt sure no infant would. Even hers.

So, when her waters broke two weeks early, just as she had finished setting a dislocated shoulder, no one was more surprised than her. She wanted to shout out, ‘No, it’s too early, come back in a fortnight’, but of course, baby waits for no nervous mother. Neil was away at a conference, the nurses frantically trying him all day. Nine hours later, exhausted, sweaty and angry at Neil for being sat in some hotel listening to some bore with a flipchart instead of with her, Kate gave one final push and felt her son slide from her body. He was placed on her tummy, Kate reaching for him instinctively, a mewling, purple sticky mess. She cut the cord herself, ending their journey as it had begun, just the two of them, and she waited for the nurses to check him over. She sat and chomped and slurped at her tea and toast, suddenly ravenously hungry and thirsty. She had always wondered at such a strange tradition, giving a new mother builder’s tea and white toasted bread slathered in butter – such an English thing to do after squeezing a small person from your own hoo-ha, but it was the best thing she had ever tasted.

Her son snuffled as they checked him over, giving one lusty cry as they prodded and poked at him, and then he was there. All wrapped in borrowed clothes, with her own overnight bag at home, not yet packed. He looked out at the world from his blanket peephole, a lone curl of dark hair licking the brim of his tiny blue hat. Kate held him in her arms, and the world she knew ended. One look into those blue eyes, and she knew, no matter where her work took her, it would be the two of them, together, forever. As she spoke to her son silently in her head, he reached out a wrinkled hand, touching her face, and she knew he understood. Her Jamie.

Dr Stuart Jenkins, the hotshot spinal surgeon at the hospital Kate worked at, was arrogant but respected. Kate herself had often crossed paths with him professionally, their skills often being required simultaneously, and she had a grudging respect for him and his practices. The nurses hated him, but he got the job done.

He stood in front of her now, still in scrubs, a smattering of blood on his clothing. Kate couldn’t bring herself to look at him, and chose to focus on the blood. Her son’s blood, no doubt. His lifeforce, there on her colleague’s uniform, like paint flecks on a contractor. He moved then, kneeling before her. His hand on her knee, warm and clean. She wondered where those hands had just been, working on her son’s body.

‘Kate,’ he murmured softly. ‘Kate, we have to talk.’

She looked at him then, his deep brown eyes soft and warm. He spoke in terms she understood, no layman’s speak; he told her straight, gave her the facts. All Kate could grasp was the fact that he said spinal compression. When he spoke of permanent lower paralysis, and wheelchairs, Kate stopped listening. All she could think about was the promise she had made her newborn son, the promise of the two of them, together forever.

From that day to this, Kate had never been far from Jamie’s side, but the Jamie she knew was gone. The boy she saw that day, tubes everywhere, sleeping off the cocktail of drugs in the large white bed, his thick dark lashes fluttering against the white pillowcase, was not her Jamie. This boy was broken, fractured, beaten. His face, swollen from the impact, cut from the glass shards, was unrecognisable from the cheeky boy she had left, and she hated Neil for it. She hated him for not protecting their boy, not shielding him from danger, but he wasn’t the one she hated the most. It wasn’t the driver of the other car either, a woman on her way to the gym after the school run, now utterly ruined by that morning. It wasn’t her fault. Neil had been the one distracted, pulling into her lane, putting her life at risk as well as his own – and his only child’s. She didn’t hate them, she saved that venomous hate for somewhere far closer to home. For herself.

11

Kate stared at her alarm clock, watching the seconds tick by to her alarm time. Again. Tick, tick, tick. Rolling onto her back, she lifted up her T-shirt and looked at the hollows near her hips, above her knickers. She had lost more weight. She could feel her ribs as she rested her arms along the side of her body. During her first years as a doctor, she had grown thin and gaunt – a mixture of long hours, no sleep and no food – and her colleagues at the time had been so worried. She wondered what they would make of her now, thinner still. Her hair felt lank as she pinned it back. Trevor knew better these days than to mention anything to her, choosing instead to look at her meaningfully when she saw him, communicating with his eyes his unspoken concern for her. She thought of Cooper then, feeding her cake and thick calorie-laden coffees. She had to admit, the thought of a nice caramel latte this morning made her want to leave her room for once. Turning off the alarm as it whirred into life, she dressed and went to leave the room, stopping herself at the door when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Turning back to her dressing table, after a good rummage in her drawers, she slicked on some light lipstick, a little touch of blusher onto her cheeks and a spritz of her favourite perfume. Looking back into the mirror, she saw a glimpse of her old self staring back, and almost smiled.

Leaving her room, she headed straight for her regular 8a.m. meeting. Opening the door, she started to say ‘good morning’ when a plastic cup sailed past her head. Ducking at the last minute, she watched as the water shimmered in the morning sunlight as it cascaded down the wall. The beaker settled at her feet. Bending down to scoop it up, she placed it on the nearby dresser. One of the regular nurses, Fran, was pleading with Jamie, trying to get him to put a jumper over his head. Kate stepped into the room and tried to help, but Jamie was flailing around, batting them both away. Kate looked across at Fran, and noticed she was bleeding from a small cut on her forehead.

‘Fran!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘What the hell happened?’ Fran, giving up on putting Jamie’s jumper on, sighed and sat at the edge of the bed.

‘I’m okay, it was the photo frame. I didn’t duck in time,’ she quipped, but Kate could tell by her face she was in pain. She spied the photo frame by her feet, a picture of her in the hospital, holding an hour-old Jamie. The glass was smashed into shards around her feet, and the wooden frame was hanging off on two corners.

‘Fran, you go and get that checked out, I will deal with all this.’

Fran frowned at her, not moving. ‘You sure?’ she asked, sounding uncertain. Jamie had taken off the jumper and was scowling at them both in the corner.

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ she replied, smiling at Fran fondly. ‘Thanks, hun, and sorry. I’ll deal with this.’

Jamie snorted from his chair, and Kate marvelled at the normal youthful sound he had produced for once. Fran wiped at the blood that was dripping down her face then left.

‘What the hell are you playing at, Jamie? Huh?’ Kate cried, grabbing the wastepaper basket and getting carefully to her knees. She started to pick up the glass, moving the frame to the side. It was utterly broken, but thankfully the photo was still intact. She tucked it into the pocket of her long cardigan, a staple wardrobe accessory for her uniform these days, with her feeling so cold all the time. No reply came, and Kate continued to clear the floor till she was sure all the glass had been cleaned up. She went to pick up the jumper, folding it up and putting it back into the drawer. Jamie only had a flimsy T-shirt on, and she knew that he would be taken out today, around the grounds of the centre. Pulling out another hoodie, she showed it to her son. ‘This one?’

The icy stare he gave her told her that this garment wasn’t favoured either. She pulled a face at him, gurning her lips and sticking her tongue out, and for a fraction of a glorious second, she saw a glimpse of a smile from her son, but it was soon gone. Her heart leapt at the thought, and she felt the pain of its loss once more. Where had her son gone? The boy she had left behind for a warzone had gone, disappeared, and in his place was this sullen, broken, angry young man. How did it go? Time to put away childish things? Well, the childish thing was her son, and she wasn’t quite ready to put him away yet. Every morning she tried to get through to him. Saw Cooper in him. The anger and rage at having his life as he knew it stolen from him. Jamie had been so active, so happy with his friends. Playing sports. Riding his bike. Going to school. Everything, like Cooper, had changed. Been taken away from him. And like Cooper, he blamed her. Was angry at her. She couldn’t bear it. Didn’t know how to get through to him. All of her training went out of the window when it came to her son. So they were here, trapped together in this new nightmare.

Sighing loudly, she passed him the hoodie. He took it from her, and she was just enjoying her little triumph when it came whizzing past her head. She said nothing, picking it back up and passing it to him again. This happened non-stop for the next five minutes, her passing him the sweatshirt, him throwing it back at her like a toddler playing a game in a high chair. On what felt like the fiftieth throw, Kate snapped. ‘Jamie, put the damn thing on! It’s cold outside, you need it on!’

He glared at her, turning his chair to the window. Kate felt so angry she had to clench her fists and take a breath to stop herself strangling her son where he sat. She brushed away hot tears, blinking furiously. ‘Fine,’ she said to the back of his head, when she trusted her voice not to break. She stormed out of his room and didn’t look back. Once again, she’d done the wrong thing, and made everything worse. She headed to her next appointment. Time to screw up another life.

Cooper had dragged himself out of bed this morning, after a night of sweats, pain and terror. He had resisted the urge to strip the sheets before the cleaners came in, for fear that they would think he had wet the bed, rather than saturated it with sweat. He had enough indignities in his life, without people thinking that he had peed himself too. Around 5a.m. he had resorted to lying on the bathroom floor, where at least he could feel the coolness of the tiles against his hot skin. The pains shooting down his leg had eventually abated around dawn, and he had slept a little, sat bolt upright against the sink pedestal. When he awoke at half past seven, he was so grateful that he wasn’t in pain he nearly wept. It was happening more often now, something he thought he might have escaped post-amputation. Cooper wasn’t afraid of much in life, but those pains did terrify him. The pain ran from the top of his hip to the tips of his non-existent toes, and he didn’t want to start taking painkillers. He didn’t want to become dependent like so many of his comrades had, so he kept quiet. What kind of man moaned about pains in his leg, when his leg wasn’t even there? He swore he could feel the pains, shooting down his nerves, muscles – all things no longer a part of him. His stump felt sore today, but he wasn’t sure whether that was in his head, or because he had given it a few good thumps in the night, trying to shock his body out of itself. It didn’t work.

By 8.30a.m., Captain Thomas Cooper was dressed in his workout gear, sat in his chair, heading to therapy via his usual morning coffee pick-up. The only signs that he was anything less than composed were his stubble, now longer than usual, his red eyes, and his expression. If you looked at him fast enough, you could still see the slight look of fear in his eyes, before it turned back to stony arrogance.

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