Page 83 of Finding Jacob
“He’s alive but has a broken back and a brain injury. He’s been in surgery and in an induced coma now. We’ll know more in a few days.”
“Thank God!”
I couldn’t help the sense of relief that flooded through me. I thought they were going to tell me he had been killed.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Nathan explained that he’d been airlifted to King’s College and was operated on immediately. I’d been taken to The Portland and Paloma had decided she wasn’t waiting anymore. Because I had a suspected fracture of the hip, she had been born by emergency caesarean.
“I need to see my baby,” I said, pushing the duvet from me.
I winced as I swung my legs to the side of the bed.
“Please wait here, someone will collect you,” the doctor said.
“I need some clothes. Nathan, can you get me clothes? I have to go to him.” I knew I was rambling, and my heart was starting to race.
“Anna, right now you need to stay here,” he replied gently.
“No! He needs me,” I shouted, aware that tears were rolling down my cheeks.
“Paloma needs you more,” he replied.
“I can’t believe this is happening to us,” I said, slumping back against the pillows.
Dory helped to place my legs back on the bed.
“The police will want to speak to you,” she said.
“That’s it!” I said, something had been bugging me since I’d woken up. “It was him, the policeman, in the car. He tried to run me down,” I said, getting more and more distressed.
I began to sob as I remembered what happened.
“He tried to run me over,” I repeated, and Nathan nodded his head.
“His name was Harvey Salter; he was Jules’s cousin. It was his father who had abused her. When he, and the uncle, knew Jules was going to the police, they silenced her. And everyone else who knew,” Nathan said.
“Was?” I had picked up on the past tense.
“He died at the scene. Hannah had been duped by him, she claims. She said she wasn’t aware that Harvey had planned any of it. She’s in custody at the moment.”
“She wasn’t aware? Was she at my house?”
“She says not. Harvey was as corrupt as they come. He raided drug houses and kept the spoils, ran some girls, one came forward and said she’d been trafficked into prostitution. He had been suspended prior to turning up at your house.” Nathan’s anger was tangible. His jaw was rigid and his eyes darkened.
A nurse arrived with a wheelchair and although I felt fine to walk, I was seated and wheeled to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Paloma lay in a see-through, open-topped incubator. She had a tube in her nose and one in her ankle. She wore just a nappy, and she was tiny. I placed my finger in her scrunched-up palm and she opened her eyes. Bright blue eyes stared back at me. With her dark hair, she was the spit of her daddy. I started to cry. I wanted to hold her, to breastfeed her, I wanted Jacob to share the joy and the pain of her birth, and I felt robbed of all that.
“Can I hold her?” I asked. A nurse smiled and nodded.
I was transferred to a chair beside the cot, and she was lifted into my arms. I couldn’t believe how light she was. She should have still been inside me, getting those nutrients and growing to full size.
I saw my tears drip onto her head, and I raised her so I could kiss them away. She didn’t even smell as I imagined she should. She was clinical. When she opened her mouth and cried, however, I smiled.
“For a moderate preterm, she sure has a set of lungs on her,” I heard. The nurse who had handed her to me passed over a blanket to wrap around her.
“Hello, baby,” I whispered. “Her name is Paloma,” I told everyone.
“Beautiful name,” the nurse replied and left us to settle.
