Chapter 17

SEVENTEEN

Later, when she looked back at her conversation with the doctor, Joanna was angry at herself. Stupidly, she'd hoped it was a good sign that he hadn't taken her away into another small room. In reality, there wasn't a soul in the lounge so he'd spoken to her there.

When Steve had been ill, they'd looked to the doctors to be their saviours. Believing in their ability to know what to do, what to try, to predict the future and know how to prevent it. Even when things go badly, doctors are expected to stay stoic, professional, unflappable.

But the surgeon in front of Joanna wasn't infallible. Or a superhero. He looked human and exhausted and utterly dejected. ‘I'm so sorry.'

They were the last words on Earth she wanted to hear. ‘Please,' she whispered. ‘Please don't be sorry.'

Sorry was what people said when there was nothing more to be done. No more drugs to try. No more trials to undertake. No more methods to employ. She didn't want to hear sorry. Sorry meant they were giving up. That it was over.

They sat halfway along the first row of chairs. She kept her hands in her lap, twisting her wedding band as she listened to, but couldn't hear, what he had to say.

The doctor was gentle, but his words were devastating. ‘The brain bleed was too severe. We tried to locate it but it was very deep and Charlotte's brain was already damaged. It was too much.'

She cursed herself for hoping that he'd have better news. ‘So she's still in a coma?'

The doctor took a deep breath before he spoke. ‘I'm afraid we lost her.'

Lost. That was another word she hated. Sorry. Lost. Sorry for your loss. It was a platitude. A euphemism. A sticking plaster on a gaping wound. ‘I don't understand.'

‘The bleed on the brain was too severe. Coming so closely after the initial injury…I'm afraid Charlotte has suffered a permanent and irreversible loss of brain function.'

In the reflection on the glass doors that led to the garden, she could see herself and the doctor. He was leaning forwards, hands on his knees. She was upright, immobile. This could have been a scene from a play. It couldn't be real. In the silent room, all she could hear was the ringing in her own ears. She tried again to understand. ‘I…don't…What does this mean?'

The doctor looked confused. He cleared his throat. ‘Charlotte is not going to recover. Her brain function will not come back.'

The ringing in her ears got louder. Charlotte was gone? ‘But she's pregnant. She can't be gone. What about the baby?'

‘We're keeping Charlotte on life support to give the baby as long as possible in the womb. We don't know how long that will be, but every day will make a difference. It's still possible that the child might survive.'

She was listening to what he said, but she didn't, couldn't, believe it. She needed to go to Charlotte. ‘Can I see her? Can I see my daughter?'

‘Of course. She will be back from surgery shortly. I'll ask one of the nurses to come and get you.'

The door at the back of the lounge flew open and Sally hurried towards them. The look on Joanna's face must've been enough because she slowed and her legs almost buckled beneath her. ‘No. Oh, no.'

The doctor looked relieved to be able to hand her over. ‘I'll leave you with your friend. We can talk again tomorrow.'

Sally reached her as the doctor moved away. She held out her arms and pulled Joanna close. ‘I've got you. Oh, Joanna. I've got you, my darling.'

She wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, clutching on to each other as if they were drowning. At some point, she'd managed to explain to Sally what had happened.

‘I just can't believe it.' Sally's words echoed her own thoughts. ‘How can she be gone?'

‘And how can she be gone but still be on life support?' She couldn't get her head around that. Might there not be a chance – however slim – that she might come back from this?

Sally blew her nose, then stuffed the tissue into her pocket. ‘And he said that the baby is going to be okay? They're sure about that?'

Joanna could barely remember what the doctor had said. ‘I don't know. He just said that they were going to keep Charlotte on life support. But the baby is twenty-eight weeks. Babies survive at twenty-eight weeks, don't they?'

She wasn't sure of anything any longer, but Sally nodded as she rubbed her arm. ‘I'm sure they do.'

It was as if Joanna's brain was split into two: one half was still trying to accept that her daughter was gone, the other had to worry about her unborn grandchild. And between the two halves, like a serrated edge, was an excruciating, unbearable pain. She wanted to collapse on the floor and never get up, but she couldn't. She had to take care of Charlotte's child. ‘I will get custody, won't I? Of the baby?'

Why she expected Sally to know the answer to that question, she didn't know. But she was nodding in support if not in agreement. ‘Well, if her father is in prison, I can't imagine that they would give him custody, will they? It must be you.'

Would Freddie have any rights to this baby once he was convicted? Would he be able to apply for custody? He'd taken her child away from her. She wasn't going to let him take her grandchild too. ‘I don't want him to get anywhere near the baby. I will not let that happen.'

‘Absolutely.' Sally sat up straight in her chair, back into action. ‘We need to get you a solicitor.'

She was right. And Joanna knew that practical things to do were the footholds that got you through these early days of grief. But she hadn't been in a solicitor's office since visiting her father's partnership when she was fifteen and even the thought of it made her nervous. When they'd bought the house, Steve had dealt with that side of things because she hadn't been able to. ‘Yes. I'll have to ask around and see if anyone can recommend one.'

Again, Sally came to her rescue. ‘Leave it to me, I'll find someone for you.'

The door squeaked open at the back of the room and a nurse approached. ‘Mrs Woodley? Your daughter is back from theatre. You wanted to see her?'

Charlotte was in a different ward to before, but still in a room on her own. To Joanna's eye, she looked exactly the same as she had earlier. There were still machines beeping and her hand felt warm to the touch. ‘She looks like she's still breathing.'

The nurse was very kind. ‘It's the machine. I know how it looks, but I'm afraid everything the doctor told you was correct.'

The nurse continued to hover. Was she expecting Joanna to leave shortly? ‘Can I still visit? Can I still come and sit with her?'

‘Of course. Just the same as you could before.'

‘And…how long…I mean, how long will you keep her like this?'

‘We don't know. It depends on the baby. While the baby continues to thrive, we'll keep things the way they are. But if anything changes, we might need to deliver the baby straight away.'

‘She's only twenty-eight weeks. Will the baby be okay?'

‘The survival rate at twenty-eight weeks is really good. But every day the baby can stay in the womb will help its development.'

Joanna looked at Charlotte. ‘Did you hear that, sweetheart? Your baby is still doing well. You clever girl.'

A buzzer sounded outside and the nurse stuck her head out of the door and looked up the ward, before returning to Joanna. ‘I really need to see to some other patients.'

‘That's okay. We're fine here.'

She looked uncomfortable. ‘Actually, we're a long way outside visiting hours. You can come back in the morning from nine?'

For a moment, she considered refusing to go, but Sally held out her hand. ‘Come on. Let's go home and get some sleep and then we'll come and see her tomorrow.'

But once she got home, she was too wired to go to bed. Sally found a bottle of red wine in the cupboard and poured them both a glass. ‘It might help us sleep.'

It wasn't just the going to sleep that was the problem. ‘I don't want to wake up tomorrow and know that she's not here.'

Sally's head dropped and she gazed into her glass. ‘I wish I knew what to say but there isn't anything. Except the baby. You have to stay strong for the baby.'

She knew Sally was right. ‘That poor child. Born without a mother and with a father who…'

She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. She didn't need to. Sally understood. ‘But he or she'll have you and they'll have me.'

Another fear bubbled to the surface. ‘What if she wouldn't want me to look after the baby?'

‘That's your exhaustion talking. Of course she would want you to look after her baby if she couldn't.'

Joanna wasn't so sure. ‘She hadn't even told me she was pregnant.'

Sally paused for a moment, sipping at her wine before she replied. ‘That was just the two of you being stubborn. Once the baby came, she would've needed you more than ever.'

Joanna screwed her eyes tight, trying not to let her mind play out a fantasy future of her helping Charlotte with a newborn baby. ‘How did I get it so wrong?'

‘Oh love, you didn't get it wrong. You've been a wonderful mum. She loved you and you loved her.'

That wasn't how it felt right now. ‘It was okay when Steve was alive. He knew how to…how to manage it all. Without him here, I've just made a mess of things.'

Sally put her wine glass on the coffee table and took Joanna's hand. ‘That's just not true. None of us get it right all the time. It's impossible to be a mother, you're either doing too much or not enough. No one tells you what the rules are and yet you are judged when you break them. There're just so many decisions to make and no idea what the right thing is, and the stakes are always so damn high that it's terrifying. You love them so much that you want to wrap them up and protect them from this terrible cruel world and then…and then…'

As she spoke, her voice became more and more strangled until she burst into tears. Joanna reached out to grab hold of her hand and searched her face for the reason for her reaction. ‘What is it? Is this to do with the argument you had with Graham?'

Sally wiped away her tears and picked up her wine. ‘It's not important right now. Ignore me.'

Joanna squeezed Sally's hand. ‘No, it is important. I'm not going to sleep anytime soon. Tell me, Sally. Please.'

Sally took a deep breath. ‘Graham has found a place for Harry to live. A sheltered housing kind of thing.'

‘That sounds good?'

Sally frowned. ‘No. It doesn't. Graham thinks that Harry is ready to leave home, but I think he just wants us to get our life back.'

Joanna knew that she had to tread carefully. ‘Is that the worst thing?'

‘Yes. He's not ready for that. We wouldn't know whether he'd got home safely every night. What he was eating. Who he was with.'

‘That feeling is a normal feeling for a parent. We all worry.'

Sally's voice rose. ‘It's not the same and you know it.'

She did know it, but that didn't mean she agreed that Harry wasn't ready for the next step. ‘What is Graham saying?'

‘He says that Harry is a young man now. That he should be able to have his independence. But he's only twenty-three. Loads of kids still live at home at that age.'

She was right. Hadn't she begged Charlotte to stay with her and not move in with Freddie? Although that was a different situation altogether. ‘Did you tell Graham that? I mean, would you consider it in a few years' time? Work towards it, maybe?'

Sally didn't answer her question directly. ‘Graham thinks that if we wait too long, he'll get too used to being at home with us. His college have been working with him to build his independence. They think this will be a good step for him. Graham thinks we should trust them. Says they're the experts.' When she looked up, she had tears in her eyes. ‘But I'm the expert. He's my son. I know what's best for him.'

Before all this happened, Joanna might've agreed with her. Now she wasn't so sure that it was true. ‘What kind of things has he been doing at college?'

‘Life skills. Shopping. Cooking. Ordering things over the telephone. It's not as if I've been mollycoddling him. I've always encouraged him to do things for himself.'

She had always made sure he helped out at home and taken him to whatever groups were going to help him socialise. But Joanna also knew that Sally wouldn't leave Harry alone in the house for more than a few hours. That she'd cut short plenty of evenings because Harry wasn't answering his phone. That she and Graham hadn't been on holiday abroad since he was born because he didn't like the noise of a busy airport or train station. Graham wasn't a villain for wanting a little more freedom to enjoy life with his wife. ‘The thing is, most people with a twenty-three year old at home don't have to worry about what time they get home or cooking their meals for them. You're a brilliant mum, Sally. And Graham is a brilliant dad. Isn't it worth just having a look at the place he's found? Where is it?'

Sally wrinkled her nose. ‘Ten minutes from where we live.'

Joanna reached for her hand. ‘Could you just take a look at it? See what Harry thinks. You don't have to commit to anything. And give Graham a break. He's a good man.'

Sally breathed out slowly; her shoulders relaxed from where they'd been almost at her ears. She looked Joanna in the eyes and nodded. ‘Okay. I'll look at it. But I'm not making any promises and I'll only go if you give yourself a break, too. Charlotte loved you, Jo. All families have arguments. And you were doing what you thought was best for her. You can't beat yourself up about this.'

She could beat herself up about the fact she pushed her away, straight into his arms. ‘I wish I could've saved her.'

‘We need to focus on that baby now. First thing in the morning, I'm going to contact a solicitor and find out what we need to do when the baby comes.'

Joanna nodded, but inside she was still thinking about Charlotte. Still hoping there was a chance that she could save them both.