Part 31 (1/2)

'Rosie, could you let me read a couple emails? Then I'll help fix supper. Meantime, please quit fretting about Joe?'

But my feeling this was something bad just wouldn't go away. 'I think you need to take him to A and E,' I said.

'What's A and E?'

'You know to the ER.'

'I can't take him to the hospital. I don't have the forms.'

'What do you mean, the forms?'

'The little guy's insurance. Lexie has a bag with all that kind of stuff in it and when I have the kids she always makes me haul it round. But when I called there Friday I forgot to pick it up.'

'Pat, you don't need forms! When you're ill in London or anywhere in the UK, you get yourself to hospital. They sort you out. They don't ask you for forms. They don't let children die for want of forms!'

'Joe's not dying, Rosie.' Pat smiled at me all calm and rea.s.suring, as if he were telling an anxious student that his grades were fine and not to worry. 'The kid is tired, is all. He'll be okay after a good night's sleep. But maybe we won't stay for supper. I'll take Polly to your bathroom then I'll get these children home to my apartment, put them both to bed. They can go back to Lexie in the morning.'

Joe was moaning softly in his sleep. I had no experience of children's ailments, didn't know what could be wrong with him, but alarm bells rang inside my head. 'If you won't take him, I will,' I told Pat.

'Rosie, you will not take Joseph anyplace!'

Obviously exasperated with the lot of us, Pat shut down his laptop. Then he collared Polly. They went into my bathroom and he closed the door behind them and now alarm bells rang inside my head so loud they deafened me.

I didn't care what Pat might think, what he might say, what he might do. I only knew that someone had to get his son to hospital. So I scooped Joe up into my arms, relieved he was so little and so light I doubted he weighed any more than Polly ran into the street, flagged down a taxi, told the cabbie to take us to the nearest A & E.

'What's the problem, Mum?' the driver asked, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror.

'I don't know, but something's very wrong. Please could you hurry?'

He put his foot down hard.

We pulled up outside the A & E at the Royal, Paddington. I realised I had come without my handbag. 'I'm so sorry.' I began to cry. 'I haven't any money on me. I-'

'It's okay,' the driver said. 'You have this one on me.' He got out of the cab and held open the door for me, something I had never seen a London cabbie do before and was sure I'd never see again. 'Good luck, Mum,' he added. 'I hope your little boy will be all right.'

I stood outside the hospital with Joe half-fainting in my arms and knew I couldn't do it. But I had to do it. I had to fight down my own selfish fears. I had to move.

I had to go into a hospital.

So, hyperventilating, feeling sick, I made a dash at it. I ran into the A & E with Joe, sprinting up the steps and charging through the automatic doors which magically opened wide for me and sucked me into h.e.l.l.

I thought I'd have to wait around for ages. Then, when we were clerked, make up some story that Joe was my son and beg them on my bended knees to treat him, make him better ...

But, as it turned out, I didn't have to say a thing. As I stood there dithering with a practically unconscious child in my arms, half a dozen medical professionals swooped down on us like angels. Joe was on a trolley and they were das.h.i.+ng down a corridor and I was das.h.i.+ng with them. A nurse running beside me touched my arm. 'It's okay,' she told me. 'It's all under control.'

'He's going to be all right,' added another nurse.

I wished I could believe them.

'What's his name?' the first nurse asked me as we reached a cubicle and as they got him on a bed and somebody began to wire him up to various machines.

'Joe, it's Joseph Riley,' I replied, wondering if this was all a dream, or rather nightmare, the nightmare I had had a hundred times before.

'Joe, we're going to make you better,' said the nurse. 'Joseph, can you hear me? Joe, we're going to make you well again. Mum, you hold his hand, okay, and talk to him? He needs to know you're here.'

So I held Joe's hand while doctors in blue scrubs and nurses in blue uniforms and plastic ap.r.o.ns murmured, whispered, took phials of Joe's blood and filled in charts.

'But what's wrong with him?' I wailed, as Joe's eyelids fluttered open, closed and then reopened, as his eyes themselves rolled in their sockets so just the whites were showing, as they cut his clothes off his Angry Birds black hoodie, his favourite H&M blue jeans, his bleeding jaws shark T-s.h.i.+rt so they could attach more wires, more lines. 'Please, can't you tell me what's the matter?'

'We don't know yet,' a nurse replied. 'But we need to stabilise him, get some fluid in him, help him breathe.' When the nurse said that, I choked. I practically forgot to breathe myself.

I thought they might send me out while doctors plugged him into yet more bleeping stuff. But they let me stay and hold his hand. 'So I'm not wasting your time?' I faltered.

'No, Mrs Riley, you are not.' The nurse looked at me kindly, rea.s.suringly. 'You acted on your instincts. You realised your little boy was ill and not just tired or fretting. We mums, we know these things.'

A little time, a lot of time went by. Why do I contradict myself? I honestly didn't know if it was minutes, hours or days. Then they told me they were taking Joe up to the ICU. They needed to do various things to him which I might find distressing. So a nurse would find me somewhere I could wait until I was allowed to see him. I was taken to a room where relatives and friends could sit and fret and drive themselves insane.

I must ring Pat, I thought. He'll be so worried. But although I had some change in my jeans pocket, so I could have made a call, there was no payphone in the little room. I didn't have my handbag so I didn't have my mobile. I didn't dare to move in case they came to find me and I could not be found.

Then a doctor and a nurse came in and I could see from both their faces it must be bad news. The nurse sat down beside me, took my hand.

'We've run some tests,' the doctor told me. 'I'm sorry, but your little boy has septicaemia. He must have picked up an infection somewhere and it's quite a nasty one. Mrs-'

'Miss Miss Denham.'

'Joe is very ill. But you got him to us in good time. If you'd waited any longer, we'd have been in lots more trouble. Now, we're doing all we can, and hopefully we'll-'

'Joe is not my child. I just brought him here. He's-'

What was Pat?

'-he's my partner's son.'

'I see.' The doctor nodded, as if this was the most natural thing in all the world, a girlfriend bringing in a boyfriend's critically sick or injured child. 'We'll need to find Joe's parents.'

'I don't have my mobile.'

'There you go.' The doctor handed me his phone.

By the grace of G.o.d or some kind angel, I had memorised Pat's number months ago while I was in America and obsessed with all things Pat, so now I punched the keys.

'Rosie?' he demanded or rather yelled at me when he picked up on the second ring.

'Yes, it's me. Pat, don't get angry, listen carefully-'

'What? I'll give you listen carefully! When I get my hands on you where are you?'

'At the Royal, Paddington,' I said, as calmly as I could. 'You'd better get yourself here quickly. Joe is very ill.'

'What's wrong with him?'