The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1537 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I was cold when Simon eventually persuaded me to come to bed. I’d been sitting on the loo for maybe an hour dealing with my grief and my tiredness. Sometimes I felt I just wanted to walk away from everyone here and never come back. I looked at my watch, it was getting late and I had an appointment with Anne Thomas at ten. But I made that when I had Jenny to help look after the babies. Simon will have to help, either go and have therapy instead of me or look after Catherine.

We cuddled, he felt nice and warm and I deliberately put my cold feet on his warm legs–he didn’t say anything–normally he tells me off–tonight he just held me. Sometimes I get tired of being the strong one and just enjoyed being held by someone–someone I loved.

I struggled up at seven, feeling I’d only slept for an hour or two. Even though I think it was probably four I’d had, it didn’t feel enough. I managed to rouse Julie and get the girls and Danny up and out. Simon took Danny, and I took the girls to school. I stayed in the car to avoid being asked by the headmistress if I’d stand as a school governor. I didn’t feel strong enough to say no.

Back home, I changed and put some concealer under my eyes to cover the dark lines, no point in letting her know too soon that I wasn’t coping with this grief thing. I waited until Simon came back and went off to my appointment.

It was as I expected, I was soon in tears as I explained how the new horror of Jenny’s suicide attempt had brought the pain of Billie’s death back to me. We talked about the dream I’d had with the Shekinah and she tried to use that to calm me down. She had spoken to Sam Rose who confirmed what he told me, that Billie had the aneurysm and could have died at any time even without the accident.

I came out feeling quite distressed and exhausted. However, I went to the hospital to see if there was any news on Jenny.

“She stabilised so well, we sent her by ambulance to Southampton this morning.”

Oh well, I did something right by the look of it. I felt a bit better, but still knackered with a capital K. I got some extra bread, milk and potatoes and went home. After a cuppa and feeding Catherine, I went back to bed for an hour. I’d made up a bread mix for the machine to bake, but what we’d eat with it, I had no idea. Simon came and woke me and told me that Caroline had made scrambled eggs to sit on top of our warm slices of bread. It was delicious. She’d added a small amount of Worcester sauce to eggs before she heated them in the microwave.

Rested and replete, I felt a bit better and went off to collect the children, well able to refuse the charms of the headmistress, except she didn’t turn up–all that wasted energy, I had really wound myself up to say no.

I stopped at a shop on the return drive and we each had an ice cream–I enjoyed it as much as the girls did.

Simon had ordered pizza for the evening meal which although I don’t like, I decided I’d have a cheesy jacket potato for my meal, so I popped the spud in the oven to cook while we waited for Tom to get home. He’d been warned it was ordered for six, the pizza that is and when it arrived it had virtually everything on, including what looked like its own penicillin.

Talking of which, penicillin that is, I remember as a kid being given a book with potted biographies of the great and the good, presumably to inspire me to go to university and discover the next medical miracle or excavate Troy or whatever. Of course, I wanted to be the next Marie Curie and discover some bizarre chemical which would magically change my genitals into female ones and win the Nobel prize for it. I also curiously wanted to play cricket for England, until my parents told me I was actually Scots born.

I also learned that playing about with all those radioactive chemicals had caused Madame Curie to die of aplastic anaemia, which I thought would be quite a fitting end for me as well–dying like some melodramatic operatic heroine. It’s not my fault, I saw a children’s film about her and that’s how they portrayed her end, collapsing at her laboratory bench. These days I suspect it would be very different and I’ll settle for dying of old age, having lots of grandchildren and great grandchildren to dote upon. I guess I just love children.

I learned much later that although Flemming took the credit for penicillin, he didn’t deserve it all–his researchers did much of the work and got left out, sounds a bit like some more modern winners, who conveniently forgot the people who helped them discover the structure of DNA. Science is every bit as competitive as sport and just as financially rewarding for a small number of elite. I’m quite grateful that ecology doesn’t command the fees that medical science does–there’s not much of a market for dormice or even saving the world, compared to selling drugs that might or might not do what they’re supposed to. Apparently only 23% of prescription drugs actually do what they’re supposed to.

I called Southampton General and they told me that Jenny was comfortable but still unconscious and they were contemplating surgery on her legs the next day. I got permission to visit and naturally Julie decided to come. Trish, we virtually had to lock in her room to avoid taking her, and in the end agreed she could help by sitting with Livvie and Mima to send us their love and healing light–I’d phone once we got to the hospital.

Portsmouth’s QA is a big general hospital, Southampton is a huge one, a regional centre for all sorts of things and has its own medical school. We eventually found the relevant ward and went and sat with Jenny. Her bruising was coming out and she actually looked a little worse, like she’d jumped off the bridge and been hit by a number of articulated lorries before the train got her.

Julie was still a bit squeamish about being there in some respects, but once we got started, she settled down and we plugged Jenny into the blue light and zapped her for an hour. Once again I spoke with her and told her what we were doing and how she was wanted back home and that we all loved her. This time we noticed her eyes moving under the closed lids and once or twice the lids flickered.

I kissed her on the cheek and she smiled. Julie kissed her and she smiled even more. “Is there something going on between you two?” I asked her jokingly and Julie blushed, whereas Jenny smiled again.

The next day I got a call from the hospital to say she’d opened her eyes and had asked for me. They postponed the leg surgery, sending her for scans instead, and found that her brain injuries seemed to be healing spontaneously. Julie and I went to see her that evening and were met by the Professor of Neurosurgery, who just happened to call by at visiting time–yeah, sure he did.

“I’ve never seen healing like this before,” he said in the sister’s office. He showed us two scans, one taken at Portsmouth and the other that day at Southampton. He pointed out the improvements in brain swelling and how tissue had regenerated. “It’s more like scans of muscle than brain tissue. Brain tissue doesn’t regenerate very well at all.”

I shrugged, “She’s obviously special then.”

“Undoubtedly, but I believe things changed after you visited her last night, and according to the notes from the nurse on ICU at Portsmouth, she improved dramatically after you visited her there–stabilising enough to be brought here.

“There are all sorts of stories circulating about the angel of the QA. Am I talking to her?”

“Sorry, I’m an agnostic, don’t believe in such things.”

“Neither do I, but we had a case here which seemed to be spontaneously healing and you were mentioned there as well, Lady Cameron. A Maureen Ferguson recovered incredibly quickly from life threatening injuries caused by a severe beating, including probable brain injuries.

“I did some further digging, and discovered a certain Luke Perryman had severe injuries which should have killed him but he survived after you helped him, although he subsequently died.”

“Yes, he hanged himself.”

“Oh yes, something about child pornography wasn’t it?”

“You know perfectly well, Professor Chesters.”

“So I do. I think I’ve caught me a real live angel, or even a pair of them–haven’t I?”

“If that’s what you think, you’d be mistaken but it’s allowed, even for professors. I live with one, he’s always making mistakes.” I smiled but there was no amusement in my eyes.

“Okay, here’s the deal. You go in there and do what you do and let me watch.”

“Then what?”

“That’s it.”

“Do I have your word on that?”

“Yeah, d’you want me to sign it in blood?”

“Ink will suffice. But there must be no follow up.”

“Meaning?”

“You can watch me simply talk to someone and to hold their hand. If it seems to help them, fine–but you don’t try to duplicate it, I won’t see any other patients, and you must tell no one about it.”

“Look, I’m a scientist.”

“So am I, Professor–I also have one of the best legal teams in the world at my disposal.”

“Ah so the angel uses the devil’s playthings,” he smiled.

“I don’t claim to be anything but extremely wealthy and married to a billionaire who owns a bank and very expensive set of lawyers. I am certainly no angel,” I smiled again.

“Okay, this intrigues me so much, I need to see it.”

“You probably won’t see anything much except me falling asleep while I talk to her.”

“I have never seen brain tissue heal like that–show me what you do.” I gave him a look of disdain, no one orders me about. “Please, show me.” I nodded.

Jenny was sleeping and didn’t wake even though I spoke to her. She smiled at my voice, so we had some degree of recognition from her. Things were looking up.

I sat and holding her hand talked to her for an hour. Julie held the other hand and immediately I felt a surge of power flow through me, Julie was becoming a very useful booster pack.

We stopped when I felt the power depleting and we both kissed her and told her we’d come back again. Her eyes flickered open and she smiled before falling back to sleep.

“I watched the bruising reduce on her face and neck–what is it you’ve got? What’s the blue stuff you were shining on her?”

I held out my hand and he took it, “This,” a surge flew through my hand and he was thrown backwards slightly.

“What happened?” he asked picking himself off the floor.

“I don’t know, you were standing there a moment ago and the next minute you fell backwards–perhaps you need a holiday, Professor?”

“There was something I was going to ask you but I’ve forgotten what?”

“Can’t be important then, can it?”

“You induced that improvement by suggestion–that was it, you did all that by a sort of hypnosis?”

I smiled at him. “I think you’ve hit on it.”

“I’ll have to get a psychologist in and do some trials.”

“Hmm, good idea.” I left him there and Julie and I went back to the car.

“What happened with him falling over?”

“The energy protected itself, it brought on a partial amnesia, he can’t remember what he saw, only what he thinks he saw.”

“So he can’t tell anyone?”

“He can, he can tell them that love helps to heal people, but we know that anyway.”

“You are one kewel cookie, Mummy.”

“Yeah, I suppose I am.”