Page 66 of Spiralling Skywards: Fading
I had been right. He was on a ventilator. There were drips and machines all around the head of the bed and attached to him. Nan was sitting at his side, holding his hand.
I began to shake again, but Maggie placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and I blinked away the tears.
“Oh, Sarah, you shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have called you.”
“Of course you should have. I’d have been mad if you hadn’t. I’m okay, Nan, just had a bit of a wobble.”
Maggie pushed me as close to my nan and to the bed as she could get me and left to find herself some coffee. Nan and I were there for what felt like eternity, surrounded by the beeps and whooshes of the machines, before the doctor knocked softly on the door.
“Can we go to my office and have a chat about Archie’s test results, Mrs Carter?”
I reached out and took Nan’s hand.
“I’m not leaving him. You can talk to me here.”
The doctor looked towards me for guidance, all I could offer was a small nod. She moved around the bed and crouched down in front of Nan.
“As I’m sure has been explained to you, Archie has suffered a major cardiac arrest, and although we have managed to get his heart restarted, he was without oxygen for quite a while. The tests that we carried out were to look at damage that has been done to his heart and his brain.”
I leaned forward and put my hand over Nan’s as she held Grandad’s.
“The results of the tests show sever damage to the right side of Archie’s heart and zero brain activity.”
“No.” I sobbed out. I didn’t want to. I wanted to be brave and strong, but I wasn’t. “Nan, no, no.”
“Its okay, Sarah. It’s all gonna be okay. You mustn’t get yourself upset, my love, you’ve got those babies to think about.”
“What does all that mean, doctor?” My nan asked calmly.
“There’s no further treatment we can offer your husband, Mrs Carter.”
I leant forward on the bed, rested my cheek on Grandad’s legs, and cried.
“The ventilator is the only thing keeping him alive right now. If we were to remove that support, he wouldn’t survive.”
I looked up at the doctor. “Are you going to do that? Remove that support?”
“That’s a decision for your nan to make, Sarah.”
I looked towards Nan, who was nodding her head.
“We have to let him go, Sarah. Your grandad was a proud man, he’d hate to be left like this.”
I didn’t want her to be right, but I knew that she was. He’d hate it. With that in mind, and after another round of tests that confirmed no brain activity, Grandad’s ventilator was switched off at two o’clock the following afternoon. I kissed his cheek, and both Nan and I held a hand each as the man that had raised me, passed peacefully away, just twelve minutes later.
Liam and Luke finally made contact just two short hours after that. I’d just faced one of the most devastating moments of my life and once again, my husband wasn’t around.
I was sitting at my nan’s kitchen table when Liam’s call came through to my mobile. I was exhausted and emotional. I contemplated not answering, my head was pounding, and I felt a little sick.
“Sarah?” He spoke before I even got a chance to. “Thank fuck. What’s wrong? You okay?”
“I hate you so fucking much right now.” It was all I had to say. I ended the call and switched off my phone. I stood from the table, intending to go and crawl into bed with my nan, but dots started to dance in front of my eyes. At first, I thought I was having a panic attack, but the pain in my head suddenly became excruciating and I once again felt dizzy. I just made it to the sink, before I threw up.
Twenty minutes later, Maggie had me back at the hospital. There was an explosion of activity around me as a nurse rushed me from the emergency department, straight to a theatre up on the maternity ward. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me again. On the day my grandad died, I was going to give birth to twins in the very same hospital, and my husband was absent for both events.
With Maggie dressed in scrubs and holding my hand in the operating theatre, my twins came into the world. Archer Mason Delaney—Archie for short—weighed in first at four pounds one ounce, and forty-seven seconds later, Flynn Lewis Delaney arrived, weighing in at four pounds exactly.
They both looked exactly like Carter when he was born, including having full heads of blond hair.
