The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1520 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I reached the site of Billie’s crash–the bike was stuck into a hawthorn bush and the front wheel and forks were badly buckled. The RAC man was looking at the hedge and talking on his mobile. “Yeah Portsdown hill, Portsmouth side, you’ll see my van, okay.” He slipped the phone in his pocket, “I’ve called the ambulance.”

“Thank you,” I tried to force my way through the shrubbery but it was a vain attempt. “Stay still, Billie, I’m coming, Mummy’s coming,” I shouted, feeling a sense of frenzy and fear at the same time.

“There’s a gateway here,” called RAC man and I saw him vault over it. I ran after him but had to open the gate which delayed me by several moments.

I ran into the field and saw him rise from her lying so still and then he grabbed me and held me back. “Let me go, that’s my child,” I screamed at him.

“You can’t do anything for her now,” he said and held me.

“I can, I can, let me go.” I wriggled free and pushed him away and ran to where she lay face down her head at a strange angle, her helmet all broken on her head. I couldn’t really take in the scene before me.

I rolled her over on her back holding her head as I did so, she wasn’t breathing and her eyes, which were open were lifeless and unseeing. I immediately began chest compressions–I couldn’t remember how many, I just did them, thinking of the Archer’s theme tune.

“She’s dead,” said the man and in the distance I heard the wailing of the ambulance siren. “Her neck’s broken.”

“No,” I screeched at him, “I won’t let her die, I’m her mother.”

“I’ll go and get the parmamedics,” he said and walked off. I continued my urgent task, two breaths and thirty compressions.

“Hang in there kiddo, c’mon we can beat this, c’mon, get well and I’ll get you your surgery even if you have to go to bloody China. Please don’t die,” I pleaded with the lifeless body which lay in front of me, continuing the compressions and trying to call up the blue light to fix her.

Time seemed to standstill, I was still pounding away on her chest when the green uniformed male paramedic dropped down beside me. “Keep going,” he said and began opening his cases, then his colleague, a young woman arrived with more bags.

I kept up my chest compressions and the breaths, my back was hurting but not as much as my heart–the pain there was inconsolable. The woman began to take over and I stood and watched as they placed sticky patches on her chest and I knew they were checking for heart and possibly going to defib her.

“Stand clear–shocking,” said an electronic female voice. “Assessing–preparing to shock–stand clear–shocking.” I think I’ll remember those words for the rest of my life, they were repeated over and over as the two paramedics fought to save the life of my child. While I stood and watched though tear laden eyes, the RAC man his hand on my shoulder.

I watched as they administered injections and even put up a drip but it was all in vain. I went in the ambulance watching in a dreamlike state as the male paramedic continued to treat and save my child. I waited in the QA A&E department the RAC man having followed behind the ambulance with the bikes, and then came to support me until Simon could get there.

Simon had just arrived when the doctor came into the little room to which they’d taken us. He was Indian, I think, but his English was very clear. “I’m sorry, but your little girl didn’t make it.”

I think I screamed and then all I remember was Simon lowering me into a chair, before everything went black. I came round lying on a trolley in a quiet part of the hospital. I had a blanket over me and Simon was sitting beside me holding my hand. It took me a moment to orientate myself–then I felt as if I’d been deflated, disembowelled and crushed at the same instant. The pain I felt consumed my whole body yet everything felt numb.

“How ya doin’?” said Simon.

“I wish I was dead,” I replied and began crying. He held me and I cried some more.

“Feel up to going home?”

“I want to see her.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“I want to see her and hold her.”

“Okay, wait here and don’t move. I’ll go and find someone.” He left me clutching his soaking wet handkerchief and sobbing. I felt a total failure.

Sometime later he returned and told me they were getting her ready, then he put his arm round me and held me, a sobbing pile of snot and tears. “I’m a failure as a parent.” I heard myself say between breaths.

“You’re a wonderful parent,” he said and squeezed me.

“No I’m not, I let her die–it was my fault–I should never have taken her to that hill–she was too young.”

“It was an accident, Babes, it could have happened at any time to anyone. It’s just one of those things.”

“One of those things,” I screeched at him–we’ve just lost one of our children and you dismiss it as one of those things?”

“I wasn’t dismissing it, I was trying to say that you couldn’t have stopped it once it began. John, the RAC bloke saw the car get very close to her and heard the horn sounded before she wobbled across the road. He’s given the police a statement and gone to show them exactly where it happened.”

“She wasn’t going that fast–how can she be dead?” Nothing made sense to me.

“She landed on her head, the ground was hard. She broke her neck and she had brain injuries as well. Even your magic couldn’t sort all that.”

“What magic? I’m as useless as it is–and those religious morons have the nerve to tell me there’s a fucking God–where is He when we needed Him? In their fucking imaginations, the only place He ever fucking existed.”

“Calm down, Cathy, remember we’re going to see her in a moment–she’s at peace, let’s leave her there shall we?”

I looked up and saw Sam Rose standing before me. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. I nodded back to him. “I’ve seen the notes–if it’s any consolation, she wouldn’t have felt very much–it would have been very quick.”

“It isn’t any consolation, Sam. I couldn’t even say goodbye to her.”

“You’d like to do that now?” he asked and he led us away to the mortuary.

She lay on a small trolley, wrapped in a sheet and was cooling rapidly. Her body was stiffening with rigor but I was determined to hold her one last time. I kissed her and talked with her, asking her to forgive me and that I’d remember her forever and love her forever too.

I think I’d have stayed there until I starved to death but a porter came and Sam and Simon held me while he wheeled her little body away and I collapsed with grief into Simon’s arms and don’t remember much else until I woke up in my own bed with Stella hovering over me like my fairy godmother.

“How d’you feel?” she asked.

“I want to die.”

“What about the others?” she asked quietly.

“What others?”

“The other children, your other children–they need you more than ever now.”

“What for? I let one of my children die–perhaps they’d be better off with someone else.”

“Look, I know it’s a sad time and I share your grief, but I have no time for self pity, so get off your bloody arse and go and look after your other children–they need to mourn as well and they need you to help them understand what they’re going through. Lying there like wet lettuce isn’t going to help anyone–you have to be strong for them, you have to be a mother for them, Cathy. Now come on, get up, have a shower and I’ll go and make you some tea.”

I watched her go and my eyes still dripping tears dragged my stupid body out of the bed and lurched into the bathroom.