The Mummyfesto (39 page)

We drank some more tea. I offered the plate of biscuits. They both shook their heads. All I could think of was all those people out there whom we had touched with our campaign. All those other mums who were making similar sacrifices to stand for us. I’d got to know a lot of them over the internet during the past few weeks and was now on first-name terms with Val in Blackburn and Sally in Dorset, amongst many others. Women, and a handful of men, spread across the UK, who had come together because of us. I knew how passionate they were about what we stood for. How they were running themselves into the ground to try to make a difference. And I knew from their daily reports that the momentum really had spread across the country. That we were within touching distance of doing something truly remarkable.

‘Will you give it one more week?’ I said. ‘I’m not asking you to keep campaigning. You don’t have to do a thing. All I’m asking is that you don’t withdraw just yet. The
deadline isn’t until the sixteenth. A lot can happen in a week. We all know that.

‘If you pull out now it would send totally the wrong signal to the voters and I think there’s a chance it could frighten some of our candidates off as well. Make them think we’re not as serious as we claim to be.

‘If you still feel the same in a week’s time then go ahead and pull out. I will understand that completely. But let’s all try to get back on our feet and see how we feel then. What do you say?’

I looked at each of them in turn. Anna looked up at the ceiling and bit her lip. Jackie nodded. I looked back at Anna.

‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll tell David I’m withdrawing on the sixteenth. I’m supposed to be doing that hustings at the town hall on Wednesday, so I’ll go through with that, but it will be the last thing.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. My balloon had burst, but there was at least a tiny bit of air left in it. A week was indeed a long time in politics.

It was only about ten minutes after they’d left when Rob shouted down to me. I knew straightaway that something was wrong. Very wrong. I ran upstairs. Rob had the ventilator mask over Oscar’s face.

‘He started wheezing, he was struggling to breathe,’ he said. ‘We need to call an ambulance. Now.’

I ran into our bedroom and dialled 999. I could barely get out the word ‘ambulance’ to the operator. I got myself
together enough to give our address when they put me through.

‘Our son’s got spinal muscular atrophy type 2,’ I told them. ‘He’s got a cold and he’s just started struggling to breathe. We’ve got a ventilator on, but we need to get him to hospital.’

I phoned my mum straight afterwards. ‘Can you come round to look after Zach,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to take Oscar to hospital, he’s struggling with his breathing.’

‘Oh Sam. I’ll be straight round.’ I heard something in her voice which I recognised. It was fear. Fear that had finally been realised.

I put the phone down and turned around. Zach was standing in the doorway in his pyjamas. His eyes far too knowing for someone of his age. ‘Oscar’s going to hospital, isn’t he?’

I bent down and gathered him up in my arms, feeling him crumple against me. ‘Yes, sweetheart. He’s finding it tricky to breathe right now because of his cold. The doctors will help him. They have all the best equipment for him at hospital.’

Zach nodded, his jaw set. He was trying so hard not to cry.

‘Grandma’s whizzing straight round to look after you,’ I said. ‘She’ll get you to school in the morning if we’re not back.’

‘I want to go with Oscar,’ he said. ‘I want to go to the hospital with him.’

‘I know, love, but the doctors and nurses are going to be really busy and we won’t be able to look after you properly because we’ll be with Oscar. We’ll phone Grandma to let you know how he’s doing. I promise.’

Zach nodded some more. I wished he wouldn’t be so brave. I wished he would just cry. ‘You get yourself tucked back up in bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll get Grandma to come straight in to see you as soon as she gets here, OK?’

I kissed him on the forehead. He wouldn’t get much sleep tonight. I knew that. He could worry for England. And I knew full well where he got it from.

I whizzed around our bedroom throwing things into an overnight bag. It was something I’d rehearsed so many times in my head and yet now it was here I had no idea what to take, what I needed, even how to feel.

I went back in to Oscar. Knelt down beside the bed next to him and held his hand. His face looked grey, his eyes startled.

‘It’s OK, sweetheart. We’re going to get you to hospital. They’ll be able to help you there.’ His little hand gripped mine. I stroked his forehead with my other hand. It felt clammy. I glanced across at Rob. He nodded. He was thinking exactly what I was thinking.

There was a knock on the door. Rob ran down to let the paramedics in. I heard him talking to them as they came up the stairs. Filling them in on Oscar’s condition. Telling them what they needed to do. They practically ran into the room.

‘Hello, little man,’ one of them said to Oscar, as he knelt down beside him. ‘I’m going to quickly check you over, we’ll put you on our nice big ventilator and then you’re going to get a ride in an ambulance. We’ll even get the siren going and the lights flashing. How about that?’

I smiled at him gratefully. He had kids, I was sure of it. Only parents could work out a way to make something bad sound like huge fun to children. I watched as he ran through the tests, relieved it wasn’t up to us any more. That we didn’t have to worry about whether we were doing the right thing.

‘Right, he’s OK, but his oxygen levels are a bit low. We’re going to get him on our ventilator.’

I held Oscar’s hand while they took off the mask and quickly secured the new one. It made him look unfamiliar. He didn’t look like our Oscar any longer. He looked like a little boy who was very poorly.

‘OK,’ the paramedic said. ‘If one of you can carry him downstairs, I’ll carry the machine and then we’ll get him on to the stretcher.’

I looked up and realised Zach was standing in the doorway, tears streaming down his face.

‘Hey,’ I said, hurrying over to hold him. ‘It’s all right. They’re going to help Oscar now. They’re going to try to get him better.’

A few moments later I felt a hand on my shoulder and mum’s voice in my ear. I hadn’t even heard her come up the stairs.

‘I’ll take him now, love. I’ll sit with him until he gets to sleep.’

I nodded, I had never been more grateful to see her. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, delivering Zach into her arms. ‘We’ll ring Grandma as soon as we can,’ I told him. ‘Love you lots.’

I picked up the overnight bags and nodded to Rob, who bent to gently lift Oscar.

‘Don’t forget his chair,’ said Zach. ‘He’ll need his chair for when he comes home.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’

I held Oscar’s hand all the way in the ambulance. I wished he was still attached to me by his umbilical cord. Wished I could pump oxygen into him and take all the bad stuff away.

Rob followed behind in the car. He’d put Oscar’s chair in it just as Zach had asked. I imagined Rob trying not to look in his mirror to avoid seeing it empty and playing his Stone Roses CD very loudly to cover up the fact that Oscar wasn’t there to provide the usual running commentary.

We must have met up in the hospital car park though I didn’t even register it happening at the time. All I knew was that Rob and I arrived at A & E together with Oscar.

Everything went into overdrive. People in white coats were running. I tried to tell a nurse that Oscar had SMA. She wasn’t listening to me. I started to go after her.

Rob took hold of my arm. ‘It’s OK, they know,’ he said. ‘They all know. It’s on his notes.’

I nodded and swallowed hard. Rob ran his fingers down my arm and took hold of my hand.

‘I feel so bloody helpless,’ I said.

‘Me too.’

We stood at the end of Oscar’s trolley. I took hold of his foot. It was about the only part of his body I could get to. I kept craning my head to see through the doctors and nurses, trying to make eye contact with him. To let him know we were still here.

When the bodies finally parted enough for me to see him, he was hooked up to a drip. Oscar. Our Oscar.

Before I could say anything a doctor took us to one side. ‘We’re going to take him straight down to intensive care. We’re getting some antibiotics into him. We won’t know for certain until the test results come back, but I’m afraid we’re pretty certain it’s pneumonia.’

His mouth continued opening and closing, but I didn’t hear the rest of the words. I’d heard the only one that mattered. The one we’d dreaded ever since he’d been diagnosed. And which neither of us had dared speak.

It was the time of the month. Not that time. The other time. The time when we should be ‘trying’. It was a horrible word. Our failure to conceive suggested that we weren’t ‘trying’ hard enough. But I also knew Paul thought we were ‘trying’ too hard. And that maybe there was no point ‘trying’ at all, as it simply wasn’t going to happen.

But still I couldn’t let the window of opportunity pass without, well, trying. Which explained why I had put on a camisole and some French knickers and was attempting to slither between the sheets in something approach a seductive manner when, to be honest, I felt more like sticking on my pyjamas, taking a hot-water bottle to bed with me, curling up in a ball and going into hibernation in the hope that when I woke up in a few months time everything would be looking considerably brighter.

Paul slid his arm around my shoulders. He knew. He was like a male animal who waited for the female of his species to perform some colourful, elaborate mating ritual to alert him to the fact that the time was right. Only in my case it was simply sticking on something black and slinky instead of my pyjamas.

It was all pre-programmed from here on in. He’d slip one of the spaghetti straps of my camisole off my shoulder, give me a little nuzzle. I’d kiss him on the mouth, run my foot up and down his leg. And so it went on. One thing I’d learnt about spontaneity – it doesn’t sit comfortably with menstrual calendars.

Paul slipped one of the spaghetti straps of my camisole off my shoulder. I tried. I tried really hard to get everything out of my head. To clear out the jumble of emotions which appeared to have taken up residence there. But I’d told Paul often enough over the years; if I was troubled or tired or fretting about something, it was pointless, absolutely pointless, trying anything. Because if my head was elsewhere, the rest of me was, to all intents and purposes, absent too. And at that moment it really wouldn’t have mattered if George Clooney had been lying there next to me. Because I was so not up for it.

A big fat tear plopped off the end of my nose on to Paul’s chest.

‘Hey,’ he said, lifting up my chin with his finger. ‘Come here.’ And that was it, the floodgates opened and Paul was nearly washed away downstream. Some women cried beautifully. I knew, I’d seen them, it wasn’t just in films.
I didn’t. I did big, bawl-your-eyes out crying. The sort that left you puffy-eyed and red-nosed.

It was a long time before I was able to say anything. I needed to empty myself first. And whenever I thought I had, when I tried to draw a breath in order to speak, another snivel came instead. So I waited. Waited while the gaps between the sobs grew longer and longer. Until finally there were words there when I opened my mouth.

‘I’m sorry, I just can’t. It’s nothing to do with you, it’s all this crap going on in my head. I feel such a cow about pulling out of the election and I hate what I just did to Sam. I know I had to do it but now I have, I still don’t know if I can look after Mum properly and I don’t know what the hell to do about putting her into a home and I feel so bad because I can’t remember the last time I spent a day with Alice, just with Alice, with nothing else getting in the way. And now I feel bad because I know we should be trying and it’s not fair on you to put you through all this and then not be up for it myself, but I can’t. I just can’t.’

I managed to snort some snot over Paul’s shoulder. Not something that’s really encouraged in the ‘How to drive your man crazy with desire’ articles in
Cosmo
. He wiped it off with a corner of the duvet. That’s what I liked about Yorkshire men. They were practical to the end.