‘My friend’s little girl has just been brought in by ambulance. Polly Taylor. Her mum Raegan should be here somewhere.’
Before the receptionist could reach for her keyboard, a young nurse standing behind her put down the pile of folders she was carrying and gave me a sympathetic smile. The woman was a stranger, but I knew that smile and it did little to stop the jackhammer percussion of my heart.
‘I just took your friend to her little girl. The doctors are with them now, but I can take you to them ... if you like.’
I practically vaulted over the desk to get to her, which effectively answered that question.
‘How is she? Polly, I mean.’
The nurse either didn’t know or was too skilled at hiding worrying information from friends and family. I’d been on the receiving end of both alternatives too many times to count.
‘It’s the doctors you need to speak to.’ She broke protocol for a moment to lay a comforting hand on my arm. ‘But she’s in the best of hands. The paediatric staff here are amazing.’
Unexpected kindness had always had the power to take me down when Adam was sick, and it seemed it still could. I nodded and fought to gain greater control of my trembling lower lip before we walked through the next set of double doors. I would be no use to Raegan if I couldn’t put a clamp on my own emotions and stop thinking that hospitals were places where only bad news was delivered.
We walked swiftly past a row of curtained cubicles. There were ominous moans and groans coming from a couple of them, but muted voices from the one at the end of the line.
‘It looks like the doctors are still with her,’ the nurse said, bringing us to a halt in front of a nearby row of seats. ‘If you wait out here, you’ll be able to see your friend as soon as they’ve finished.’
As much as I wanted to insist that I join the crowd of medics in the cubicle, I did as I was instructed, perching on the very edge of the hard plastic chair so I was ready to leap to my feet at the first twitch of those curtains.
Infuriatingly, the voices in the cubicle were all softly spoken and muted, and although I could make out that several people were talking, nothing was clear enough to decipher. Instead, I counted the feet visible beneath the bottom of the curtain, trying to decide if the alarming number of medics attending to one little girl was a good or a bad thing.
I was still undecided when the curtains parted with a parrot-like screech of rings on metal. Four white-coated people strode past me, leaving just Raegan and a nurse standing beside a bed that held a version of Polly I’d never seen before.
Polly was a live wire, never still, not even in sleep. I’d babysat her enough times to know that. So, seeing her pale and immobile in the too-big hospital bed, where she looked like little more than a ruck in the blankets, was a real shock. There was a bandage encircling her head, beneath which I could see one hell of a bump, and an ugly purple bruise that went from temple to cheekbone. Her left arm had been splinted but wasn’t yet in a cast. My eyes went to her tiny chest, relieved to see its steady rise and fall. But her eyelids were closed, with blue spidery veins visible on the fragile skin that I could swear hadn’t been there before.
‘How is she?’ I whispered.
‘She opened her eyes for a moment when I got here,’ Raegan said.
It took me a second or two to organise my features so they reflected a more positive reaction. ‘That’s good. That’s very good.’
I think we both knew it really wasn’t.
‘Did she say anything?’
It took two hard swallows before Raegan managed to get out her reply.
‘She sounded confused.’ Raegan was biting her lip so hard she was leaving white indents on the tender skin. ‘I don’t know if she knew it was me, Lily. She seemed out of it.’
‘What are they doing now?’ I asked, reaching for the hand that wasn’t holding Polly’s and gripping it tightly.
I saw the visible effort it took for Raegan to formulate a reply.
‘They’re coming in a moment to take her up for a CT scan and God knows what other tests.’ She looked down at the bed and shook her head slowly. ‘How did we go from a perfectly normal Saturday afternoon to this?’
A hand squeeze wasn’t enough this time, so I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her in for a hug.
‘Shit happens,’ I mumbled into her shoulder. ‘And when it does, it’s never to the people who deserve it. But this is just a tiny blip. Polly will be fine, Raegan. I know she will.’
I had a horrible memory of telling Adam exactly the same thing after he got sick, but I refused to allow my thoughts to go down that path.
Footsteps made us both look up to find a nurse and a hospital porter by the opening in the curtains.
‘They’re ready for her in Radiology,’ the nurse advised. Her eyes went to Raegan’s. ‘You can come up with her, Mum.’
Raegan gave an emphatic nod, and I wondered if the nurse realised how many people it would have taken to stop my friend from doing exactly that.
