The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1731 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

We left word with Julie as to what we were doing, grabbed a coat and my bag and were gone–using my car in case we needed to bring the girls back with us. By the time we got to their house, the ambulance was just departing, the blue lights flashing as it went.

Gareth was standing in the doorway with an expression like a stunned mullet. “How is she?” I asked but he couldn’t tell me.

I told Simon to take him to the hospital, presumably the QA while I waited with the girls, who were presumably in bed. He was in no state to drive, however, they took his car and left mine at the house. If the worst came to the worst, I could at least take the girls home with me and collect Simon later.

I called home to check on things there, and Julie and Jacquie had everything under control, with Tom’s help. I told them to tell Tom that Gareth was unlikely to be in work for a day or two, unless Stella’s condition improved dramatically, assuming she was still alive–something we didn’t know for sure. Hopefully, Simon would call when he’d ascertained the state of play.

I went and checked on the children, they were both asleep and breathing normally. I checked to see if there was anything I could do while I was there. I found a hamper of washing, and I could see the machine worked, so I sorted it and put the machine on wash. It was sure to be done before I had to leave.

While I was watching the machine churn, I ran through the scenarios that I could see happening. Number one, Stella would recover and take over her life and those of her children again. In the next, I wondered what would happen if she died. It was a worst case situation, and either Gareth would attempt to bring up his daughter and Puddin’ or he’d dump them on me. What would happen after that, I had no idea. If necessary, I’d raise them, I seemed to acquire children like other people collect stamps.

Something occurred to me, which was probably pure ego, but just for a moment imagine this was all meant to happen. Okay, it’s completely crazy, but what if the universe needed me to be a foster mother to many children and some immature adults? Take it a stage further, how could it best make me available as a mother for children other than my own? Make sure I couldn’t have any–so make me a barren woman. Perhaps not the most straightforward way of doing that could be to make me a transsexual woman, who was female looking enough to attract a mate who could finance the necessary material things, and also someone who was soft and generous enough to allow me to do it. Then all we need is children–and so far there doesn’t seem to be a shortage.

I mused on this for a few moments before I pooh-poohed it and rational thinking returned. It was all simply coincidence and like all humans because we’re programmed to see patterns even where they don’t exist, we see them even though they don’t exist–oh well, no worse than seeing gods in everything, and they don’t exist either.

I looked at the clock, it was about an hour since they went off to the hospital. It would probably take them half an hour to get there and then they’d have to wait while the medics did their bit.

I switched on the telly and sat watching some mind numbing programme about looking for aliens in space. I don’t actually believe there are any, leastways, not round this part of the galaxy. I can’t believe we’re the only show in town, especially if we were just here because of a cosmic accident, it should have happened elsewhere. But then as Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, suggested, the conditions for life as they are here, are in such a narrow range of environmental factors, it is possible that life on any other planet is much reduced if it’s a form like those on this one. So we could be more special than we thought, but not as special as the god-squad would have us believe.

I closed my eyes as I worked through these abstract ideas–none of them were worth wasting brain cells on, but they were more interesting than looking at endless pictures of radio telescopes. What if there is life elsewhere but it’s no more evolved than a slime mould? They are hardly going to send us pictures and fly spaceships to meet us, are they?

All this talk of UFOs and aliens, grey ones and white ones or little green men from Mars–no not the chocolate bar; is pure nonsense. We’re alone on the cosmic zoo floating round the galaxy, that we call earth. I don’t feel upset by that possibility, in some ways, I feel secure. I was obviously affected by HG Wells, War of the Worlds and I don’t mean anything other than the book paying no heed of Tom Cruise or Orson Welles. I read it when I was a teen and found it an astonishing piece of writing, as was Nineteen Eighty Four Orwell’s great dystopian novel. That depressed me so much I’ve avoided the genre ever since, even such regarded works as Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale.

I was well into my reverie when I thought I heard a noise. I immediately jumped up. I could hear the boiler–obviously, I had washing on, it was using hot water. Standing there I felt very strange and my skin felt flushed. I went to walk and almost fell down. What was going on? I felt sick and struggled to the kitchen, where I vomited in the sink.

Catching sight of myself in the window, the reflection against the night outside, I could see that I looked very pink. We hadn’t had any sun recently and I hadn’t exerted myself though I had just been sick. My head felt muzzy and my limbs difficult to move, like I was trying to walk through treacle.

I felt in need of air, and with a struggle staggered to the door and eventually worked out how to open it. I stepped out into the clean cool air and breathed deeply. My head began to clear a little. It felt like someone had poisoned me. I was sick again and stumbling against the conservatory door, I caught the back of my hand and it began to bleed. Goodness, my blood was very red–must be the light from the conservatory.

I walked uncertainly back to the kitchen to wash the cut, and under the fluorescent tube of the kitchen light, I could see my blood was very red, a cherry red. Must be my eyes are going funny. Then a shiver went down my spine–carbon monoxide–shit, the girls.

I looked for the control for the heating and couldn’t find them to switch off the boiler. I then stumbled up the stairs to find the girls and to my relief found they were still breathing. I flung open the windows and picked up Fiona and carried her down to my car and laid her on the front seat, wrapped in her duvet. Then I repeated the exercise with Puddin’ placing her on the back seat. Then I left the back door wide open and went to sit in my car, borrowing the blanket I found in the conservatory. Finally, I called Simon and asked him to send help, before I passed out.