The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1159 by Angharad Copyright © 2010 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

Talking as a scientist, the first thing to do was to go back home or wherever and collate my data, and that of the other surveys. However, I had two young and one teenage starver with me. So we stopped at a cafe, washed our paws and ordered an all day breakfast each. Once I saw the bacon and eggs before me, I realised I was unlikely to ever become a vegetarian. Phoebe, despite being only as thick as a rasher of bacon, tucked into and demolished her lunch with gusto, plus a thick piece of apple pie and ice cream.

The two youngsters managed to eat their scaled down breakfasts, and a piece of the apple pie–I stopped at the first course and made do with a cuppa after mine. The drive home was a struggle, my ankle was really hurting and the boot felt very tight. At home I limped in and after soaking it in cold water, and then ice packs, I had Trish fussing round me and Simon tutting at my clumsiness.

Half an hour later, I got a chance to laugh at him–he walked into a cupboard door and gave himself a black eye. More ice packs and Trish’s healing touch.

“Have you ever thought your body might be asking you to sit down and rest a bit?” Jenny asked me as I sat with my foot elevated on a stool, feeding our growing vampire–who seemed intent on using my nipples as teething rings.

“I haven’t been doing so much lately–not since you came.”

“Lady Cameron, you’re hardly still for a moment unless you’re feeding the baby or doing something on the computer–and it surprises me you haven’t found a way of feeding her while on your blessed laptop.”

“Now that’s a great idea, if I sat sideways on to the kitchen table I could...”

“Oh no, you don’t. If you do that I’ll hand in my notice immediately. Babies need the full attention of their mothers when they’re feeding.”

“But if it saves time,” I protested.

“It doesn’t.”

“But of course it would.”

“Why don’t you do the ironing or vacuuming then as well?”

“The noise of the vacuum cleaner frightens her.”

“And the ironing?”

“I need two hands, if she could hang on by her teeth–ouch, don’t bite you little bugger–um, maybe not.”

“Okay, but you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, even a dormouse brain like me can understand your argument.”

“And do you agree?”

“I can see where you’re coming from.”

“That isn’t the same.”

“How about we call it a draw and you make some tea.” I deftly changed the subject and Jenny filled the kettle, giving me a very old fashioned look. Seems I can’t fool anyone these days.

“Why isn’t your ankle better, Mummy?” said a disconsolate Trish.

“I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“I gave it some blue light.”

“I know, sweetie, it doesn’t hurt as much since you did.”

“Is it hurting then?” she squeezed it and a pain shot up my leg causing me to jump and the baby to pretend she was a stapling machine, clamping down on my poor boob. “Sorry,” said Trish, although the pain she caused was a great deal less than her baby sister who I’m sure had given me nipples like a sprinkler system. I was quite relieved to see she hadn’t quite bitten them off–it certainly felt like it.

“Yes, it’s still painful, sweetheart.”

“I’ll try again,” she roughly grabbed my ankle and I felt like asking her to just leave it in peace in case I jumped again and my nipples got amputated by the little carnivore sucking on them.

The heat she generated made me feel as if my foot was being burnt off and I felt myself sweating. Then it suddenly went cold and she let go of me, smacked her hands together as if she’d just finished a job and said, “That should do it, let me know if it doesn’t.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My ankle was black and blue when she started and suddenly it’s nearly normal colour again. Now I know such things are impossible but that was what I saw, and the swelling was going down very quickly.

“Quite an impressive trick. She doesn’t walk on water too, does she?” Jenny asked looking at my ankle.

“Only at bath time, she hates getting wet.” I replied and she laughed.

“How does she do it?”

“Search me,” I answered, hoping it would stop the questions.

“Has she always been able to do it?”

“No, it’s quite a recent development.”

“D’you think it’s related to her transgender thing–some sort of special quality she has to make up for or caused by her gender disturbance?”

“I have no idea.”

“But you can do it too, can’t you?”

“On what do you base that observation?”

“Because I could see what was going on. You were feeding her the power and she just channelled it back to you, didn’t she?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied.

“No–okay, I’ll tell you what I saw, I saw this blue light moving from your hands into Trish, who in turn pushed it back into you. She isn’t big enough or strong enough to do it herself yet, is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please don’t treat me as a fool, Lady Cameron. I’ve heard rumours of a mysterious healer, a woman, not a child: who’s brought children back from the dead and adults from life threatening conditions–it’s you isn’t it?”

“They’re just rumours, tabloid stuff.”

“Why don’t you trust me?”

“I do trust you, d’you think I’d let you near my children otherwise?”

“You need me to help you care for them, so that’s just evading the issue.”

“If, and only if I said it might be me, what difference would it make to anything?”

She stopped and thought for a moment, “I don’t honestly know, but I wouldn’t tell anyone if that was your concern.”

I handed her the baby and did my bra back up and adjusted my clothing. I stood and my ankle felt almost back to normal. I was about to take the baby back to change her–preferably for one who didn’t bite, when Danny came dashing in.

“Mummy, come quickly, Phoebe’s done something awful to herself.”

“Watch her,” I said to Jenny who was left holding the baby quite literally, and rushed out of the door and up the garden.

Phoebe was lying very still on the grass and beside her was a football. “She went to kick the ball and she just keeled over, is she alright?” Danny explained.

“Get an ambulance,” I told him while I began an examination of the young woman. She didn’t appear to be breathing and I could find no pulse. I laid back her head gently to clear the airway and gave her two small breaths, then began chest compressions to Nellie the Elephant, which I hummed in my head.

Simon came rushing out accompanied by Jenny, “What happened?”

“She collapsed, according to Danny.”

“Ambulance?” he asked.

“I sent him to call one.”

“I’ll check.”

“Good,” I said feeling quite tired with my exercise in compressing the hapless girl’s thorax.

“Here, let me have a go, you blue light her.” Jenny knelt down, “It’s okay, I have a certificate to prove I can do it.” She took over and very competently. I moved over and laid my hands on Phoebe’s head, cradling it as I knelt above her.

“Phoebe, c’mon sweetheart, I need you to come back to me–home in on my voice and come back to us, come back now–follow the light I’m sending you, let it guide you back to your body–let it come–NOW,” I slapped her gently on the sides of her face and she gasped and opened her eyes.

“What happened?” she asked in a very shaky voice?

“We think you must have fainted, why?” I reassured her–it was totally untrue, her heart had stopped.

“I felt everything was black, like some awful dream and then I heard your voice and this wonderful beam of the most beautiful blue light led me back and I could hear you talking to me.”

“Yeah, well that’s what would happen when you faint, isn’t it Jenny?”

“Sure,” she said giving me a strange look.

The paramedics arrived and I explained what I thought had happened–sudden death syndrome.

“So how come she’s sitting up and talking?” the paramedic replied.

“I gave her a precordial thump and chest compressions.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t have got her sitting up.”

“I guess I got lucky.” I said, “But please check out her heart, she wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.”

“Look, lady, I know you mean well, but I’ve been doing this job for fifteen years and I’ve never seen one yet who could sit up after a cardiac arrest.”

“Please check it.” I insisted and he did so finding something not quite right in the print out.

“What’s going on here?”

“Exactly,” I replied.

We ended up at the QA yet again, I’m thinking of reserving my own chair in the waiting room. After two hours of tests, it came back that she had a heart anomaly which would require further tests to confirm.

It was only when Ken Nicholls came into the waiting room that I knew I was in for trouble.

“You did it again, didn’t you?” he said to me quietly.

“Did what?”

“Stopped someone dying.”

“She’s fifteen years old for God’s sake, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but I need a hospital to do it, you did it in your back garden by all accounts.”

“Sudden death syndrome?”

“Looks like it, may never happen again, but they can do an operation to sort it–unless your magic can save the NHS the bother?”

“Like me to try?”

“Be my guest.”

We had to explain to Phoebe that Mr Nicholls wanted to try an experiment and I sat and talked to her, imagining my light working on the vagal nerve, which misbehaved and stopped her heart. Half an hour later, I deemed it was over, but recommended she had the tests back home, which Ken agreed upon–he would write and suggest that to her GP at the same time he winked at me when he said it. She was cured, I knew that but her mother wouldn’t until the tests were done.

I phoned her mother later who was all of a twitter, not surprisingly, and Simon took the girl home despite her protests that she was okay.

Later, when were washing up together, Jenny said, “You are the mystery healer, aren’t you?”

“It was your CPR which seemed to make her come round.”

“Lady Cameron, you know as well as I do that doesn’t happen. They usually die despite our best efforts or nothing happens until the paramedics or hospital.”

“We got lucky, or she did.”

“I saw you pull that girl’s soul back into her body, and the effort it took you to do it because she was dead.”

“Don’t ever tell anyone what you saw because I’ll deny it and so help me, I’ll get you struck off your nannies register.”

“I have no intention of saying anything to anyone.”

“Good.”

“Why can’t you trust me?”

“I’ve been betrayed before–I don’t take risks now, I get nasty.”

“Okay, d’you want me to leave?”

“Not at all, I want you to stay, you’re a very good nanny and a super person.”

“So why do you feel it necessary to threaten me?”

“You have access to the most precious thing in my life–my family. If the media were able to tie this down to me, the affect it would have on my children would be immeasurable. I will do whatever I have to do to protect them.”

“I believe you.”

“Good, now let’s have a cuppa and forget any of this ever happened.”