After the Fall

CHARITY
NORMAN
After the Fall

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Allen & Unwin

First published in Australia in 2012 by Allen & Unwin
(under the title Second Chances)

Copyright © Charity Norman 2012

The moral right of Charity Norman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Allen & Unwin
c/o Atlantic Books
Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.

ISBN 978 1 74331 096 0

Internal design by Lisa White

Printed in Great Britain by

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Paul

Hawke’s Bay Today
Local News

In the early hours of this morning, the Lowe Corporation rescue helicopter was
scrambled to airlift a five-year-old boy from a coastal address north of Napier.
He was flown to Hawke’s Bay Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery
for extensive internal injuries.

It is understood that the child was injured as a result of a fall from a
first-floor balcony. However, hospital staff declined to speculate on the circumstances
of the incident.

‘I can confirm that a small boy with life-threatening injuries was admitted
earlier today,’ said a spokesperson. ‘At this stage it would be inappropriate to
comment further. Police and child protection agencies have been alerted, and
comprehensive enquiries are ongoing. I am not in a position to release any
details until that investigation has taken its course.’

The injured child remains in the hospital’s intensive care unit, where his
condition is reported to be critical. His name has yet to be released.

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

One

Finn fell.

I don’t think, if I used a million words, I could call up the horror. It isn’t a matter of words.

My son plunged headlong, tiny hands clutching at nothing. He never made a sound. I can see his pyjamas disappearing into the greedy dark. Mr Men pyjamas, from his Christmas stocking. I can see his pirate doll, cartwheeling out of reach.

No moon yet. In films, tragedy always strikes during a torrential storm amid lightning and thunder, and the heroine’s hair is plastered to her tear-streaked cheeks—though she’s wearing waterproof mascara so no harm done. But it was a calm night, when Finn fell. A starry winter’s night, and the hills were gentle swells against a singing sky. There was only the screech of a plover in the fields; the mother-in-law bird, bossy and reassuring. A calm New Zealand night.

And then the world exploded. I can still hear the swish of bushes. I can feel the thud as my baby hit the ground. Really, I can feel it. It shook the house. It shook the hills. It shook the heavens. I hurled myself down the stairs, trying to outrun this unholy terror.

Something lay lifeless beside a lemon tree, a dark little mound in the garden of my dream house. I thought my boy was dead. I touched the white face, feeling the miracle of his pulse, bargaining with a God in whose existence I’d never believed. You will, too. Oh yes you will, if ever your own nightmares come alive. You will pray with all your heart, and all your soul, and with some part of your brain that you’ve never used before, never even knew was there. Believe me, you will. At such a time, atheism is a luxury you can’t afford.

It took so long for them to come.
So
long, while Finn hung suspended over the abyss of death, and fear pressed us both into the black earth. Buccaneer Bob sprawled close by. Where Finn goes, his pirate goes too. At last I sensed the throb of rotor blades beating through the pitiless dark, the rhythm of rescue; brilliant lights rising over the hillside. The Heavenly Host. They landed in our front paddock in a hurricane of sound, sprinted towards my waving torch—two men in red coveralls, not a choir of dazzling angels—and worked with urgency and few words: fixed a line into Finn’s arm and a brace around his neck, muttering together about his spine as they lifted him across the lawn and into the helicopter.

Neither asked how it happened. Not yet. They knew—as I knew—that this could be Finn’s last journey. He’s in trouble, they were thinking. Head injury, internal bleeding, God knows what else. In all likelihood, this one isn’t coming home.

We were gone within minutes, Finn and I, lifting tail-first into the future.

Even as we landed, people and equipment appeared out of nowhere, mobbing us in an efficient scrum. Through a fog of panic I heard that Finn’s blood pressure was falling, that heart and respiration rates had increased. Figures were called out—eighty–forty; sixty–thirty—with increasing insistence. They cut away his favourite pyjamas and covered him with a worn flannel blanket. Now he was anonymous.

I was with him when they began a blood transfusion, when they fed a plastic tube through the gentle mouth and into his airways, when his lonely body moved through the massive complexity of the CT scanner. I couldn’t hold him, I couldn’t care for him. I was useless. Soon they took him away, wheeling him rapidly through impassable doors to where surgeons’ knives were waiting.

I know someone led me to this quiet cubicle and tried to explain what was happening. They’ve done their best, but my mind has seized. I’m hunched in a plastic chair, my fingers wrapped around a white mug that has inexplicably appeared in one hand. I clutch Buccaneer Bob’s floppy body to my chest. We’re trying to comfort one another.

Finn is alone under vicious white lights and the eyes of adult strangers. They’ll be discussing the weather as they cut my baby open. Hardest frost on record . . . nearly two metres of snow up at Ruapehu, going to extend the ski season. We’re losing him, says the anaesthetist.

A woman ambles past. Another patient’s mother, I imagine. She has wide hips and a comfortable bread-dough face, and she reminds me of Louisa. I’d give anything to see my sister’s matronly form in a flowered skirt, swinging solidly up the hospital corridor with her arms held out wide and love in her smile. I’d give anything to see an old friend, someone who likes and trusts me because we go back a lifetime. I’ve no old friends here. In this whole country, this whole hemisphere, there’s not one person outside my family—no, including my family—who truly knows me.

I curl my legs onto the sharp plastic of the chair, knees pulled up. I know I look a sorry sight, a bag lady on a bad day. A passing nurse obviously thinks so because she turns into my cubicle, tugging on the curtain. She’s a tidy creature with a curling fringe. When she speaks, I dully register a familiar accent. Liverpool, I’d say.

‘How’re you doing?’ It’s made-in-China sympathy, but better than nothing.

I shake my head, driving my teeth into my knees. I’m rocking.