Runaway Girl Page 7

  Or perhaps – and more prosaically – she was simply suffering from some kind of post-viral syndrome. Though I’d never had personal experience of it, I knew things like glandular fever could linger for weeks, even months. Then there was ME – myalgic encephalomyelitis. Which was something you didn’t really hear much about anymore, but was presumably still diagnosed.

  And there was so little of Adrianna, physically, to fight anything off. And we still knew hardly anything of the circumstances that had preceded her coming to us. How did we know she wasn’t suffering from some long-standing illness? She might be immune-compromised. Have Addison’s disease (something we’d come across in another child). Or be an as yet undiagnosed diabetic.

  There was a whole host of medical possibilities, clearly. And, being no doctor, I should stop trying to second-guess the one who was (hopefully) soon going to be attending her. Still, I thought, as the Casualty doors hissed and parted to admit me, at least now there was no question of her avoiding being properly examined by one. Male or female, whether she liked it or not. Despite my stresses about what might be ailing the girl, I had this overriding feeling that I was about to get to the bottom of something, which of course I probably was, but it was more than that, and it gave me butterflies in my tummy as I rushed ahead.

  The waiting room was half full, and a quick scan revealed no sign of Lauren, whom I presumed was with Adrianna in a side room or cubicle. It was just the usual mix of late-afternoon Accident and Emergency patients. A couple of pensioners, sitting patiently. A man hopping along on crutches. A young mum jiggling a grizzling baby on her lap. Another mum, trying to calm a six- or seven-year-old boy with some sort of leg wound, while simultaneously trying to quieten what was obviously a younger sibling – fresh out of school, still full of energy, and running amok in the aisles.

  Back in the day I remembered there being a pretty well-stocked play area. But, along with magazines and picture books, health and safety had obviously long since put paid to that – and in doing so, I reflected, watching the man on crutches dodging the pink-cheeked little boy, creating all sorts of other health and safety issues in its place.

  There were two people in front of me in the queue for the receptionist, so I used the time to text Mike and let him know where I was, having rushed out of the house without thinking to leave a note. At least I didn’t need to worry about Tyler. He was having tea over at Denver’s and Mike was collecting him on his way home from work, but knowing A&E as I did (and I’d certainly been a regular attendee in my time), there was a fighting chance that once Adrianna had been booked in and triaged there would still be a lengthy wait for treatment. Well, unless she had something seriously wrong with her, of course. I pressed ‘send’ on the message – which, as I was in a notoriously signal-challenged place, failed to go – and could only hope not.

  And it seemed not. At least, as far as the receptionist knew. ‘She’s being seen now,’ she explained, once I’d told her who I was. ‘So if you’d like to take a seat, I’m sure there’ll be some more news soon.’

  ‘I can’t go to her?’

  ‘Well, you could, but I don’t know where she is currently. If you’ll let me see to this gentleman’ – she nodded to a man who was now standing behind me – ‘I’ll try to find out for you.’

  With nothing for it but to wait, I decided against a seat in the waiting room itself, preferring to head off to where I knew there was a bank of vending machines and, crucially, a better mobile-phone signal.

  And it seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d had the same idea. I’d no sooner sent the message to Mike than I saw Lauren in the distance, approaching from the far end of the long corridor that led to the main building. She waved when she saw me and speeded up.

  ‘She’s okay,’ she said as soon as she reached me, in answer to my as yet unspoken question. ‘But they’ve admitted her. To one of the medical wards. Number 7.’ She tapped her temple. ‘Remembered to make a mental note of it. Though there’s probably no point in you going up there just yet, because I think they’re about to take her down for an ultrasound scan and, depending on that, I think she might be going to surgery. Oh, and she’s got to have a blood transfusion, which they’ll do at the same time.’

  ‘A blood transfusion?’

  Lauren nodded. But she was glancing at her phone, checking the time. She looked distracted about something. ‘Er, yes … sorry, look – I really need to call my grandma before I do anything else,’ she said. ‘Mum had to drop the baby round to her, because she had a tooth drilled and was feeling really icky. And she’ll be wondering where on earth I’ve got to, bless her. Bloody hospitals – they’re like black holes, aren’t they?’

  ‘Just go, love,’ I urged. ‘Don’t worry. You don’t need to stay now. You get off. I’ll sort all this out.’

  Lauren shook her head. ‘No, no – just let me do this –’ She was texting with her thumbs while she was speaking, a skill I had not as yet been able to acquire – and probably never would.

  ‘No really, just go,’ I said again, thinking of her poor gran. She was at least in her late sixties and not the nimblest on her feet.

  Lauren shook her head again as she finished composing her text. ‘There. That’s that done. Don’t worry. Kieron will call her now. And listen, before I go, I need to tell you something.’

  It was only now that I realised she had something else pressing on her mind. ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Something you are not going to believe, trust me.’

  Which would have worried me, were it not for the fact that I could read Lauren’s expression. Which was shocked, yes. But not accompanied by any signs of distress. So, what could it be then?

  ‘Go on, then,’ I said. ‘Try me.’

  ‘You might want to sit down first …’ she said, taking my arm and drawing me to the side of the corridor, so that a gaggle of medics could pass by.

  ‘Sit down? Now you’re worrying me. Go on. What? What’s so shocking?’

  ‘You’re never going to believe this. Adrianna isn’t 14 at all. She’s 16 –’

  ‘Sixteen?’ There was clearly more to come than this. ‘Sixteen? Really? And?’

  ‘And she collapsed because she’s had some sort of birth complication.’

  I almost spluttered. ‘Birth complication? How?’ The words came out of my astonished outbreath.

  ‘Exactly. That’s what I thought. But it’s true, Casey. She’s had a baby! And, by all accounts, literally just the day before she came to you!’

  Chapter 7

  I gawped at Lauren, stunned. I think my mouth was probably hanging open. But then, after hovering in front of my mind’s eye for a few seconds, each piece of the jigsaw began settling neatly into place.

  Her laundry. I almost laughed out loud at my own stupidity – not to mention my complete naïvety – in not putting two and two together. Not that I was that daft – I had a 14-year-old female staying in the house. So making her aware of the location of all the feminine supplies she might need had been one of the first things I’d done. That was taken as read, and we didn’t discuss the matter further. Why on earth (how on earth) would we? Jeepers – I’d even reflected on it half an hour back, hadn’t I? Had even wondered about the possibility that she might be anaemic as a result of having heavy periods. Why never this?

  But the washing. What an idiot. The whole issue around the washing. All these weeks and one thing had been an absolute constant; that Adrianna wouldn’t, under any circumstances, allow me to do her washing. Not so much as a sock. And not even her bedding, which, strictly speaking, was our bedding. But which she absolutely would not let me get even slightly involved with, stripping it and changing it and washing it herself – sometimes, it seemed, almost by stealth. Definitely, more often than not, when she was alone in the house. I’d come back to find it laundered, ironed and back in its place. As if she were a little domestic fairy.

  Which was fine, or so I’d thought, in as much as I did think – independence, thou
ght I. Not wanting to be a burden, thought I. Some cultural detail that I didn’t understand, thought I. What an enormous great klutz I had been. It had been right there under my nose. Our ‘independent Polish girl’ had been all of that, with knobs on. She’d been recovering from childbirth, for goodness’ sake!

  The jigsaw complete, I pulled my lower jaw back up again.

  ‘Okayyy,’ I said to Lauren. ‘Just updating the database. So. Sixteen.’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘There’s a nurse who speaks Polish.’

  ‘Blimey, that was lucky.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ she said. ‘There are several here. The doctor was joking with me, actually – says it’s like a regular United Nations. Says at the last count they’ve got something like 20 languages covered. Anyway, yes. She’s the sister on the medical ward Adrianna’s been put on. And they sent for her. She came down and joined us in A&E when we first arrived.’

  ‘And Adrianna really gave birth just the day before coming to us? She actually told them that?’

  Lauren nodded. ‘Apparently so. That’s why she ended up going to social services. Anyway, listen. I told her – the nurse, that is – you know, what the situation is, and everything. And who you are, and so on. Hope that’s okay. And I told her you were on your way. So she’s expecting you. She’s really nice. And she’s on a late, too. She says she’ll fill you in on as much as she can …’

  Lauren glanced at her phone again. ‘God, sorry, love,’ I said. ‘Go on. Skedaddle. Get yourself home to the baby.’

  The baby. The thought hit me, but it was too late to call Lauren back.

  What had happened to Adrianna’s? I felt cold.

  After explaining to the receptionist – who seemed to have forgotten I was there anyway – that I no longer needed her help, I walked slowly out of the double glass doors to get some air before going to Ward 7.

  Since I had a signal – and the hospital had recently ended its decade-long cold war on the dangerous, life-threatening forces previously deemed to be living inside mobiles – I thought I would call Mike as well.

  ‘You know what?’ he said, once I’d gabbled through everything and bemoaned the fact that my fostering antennae must have been tuned to the wrong channel. ‘She is one dark horse, that one. I would never have suspected that. Sixteen?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘And the day before?’

  ‘The day before. Beggars belief, doesn’t it? I mean, you’d never have guessed, would you? I mean, there’s nothing of her, for one thing – how on earth didn’t we see? I mean – not to be too graphic – but her boobs and her stomach? Christ – after Riley I felt like a whopping great blancmange! It took weeks for me to get back some sort of shape. How didn’t we see, Mike? I just keep coming back to that. I feel terrible. I should have seen …’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Case – because she made sure you couldn’t. That was why.’

  And I realised that he was right. There was no way we were going to know, because she made damn sure we couldn’t. Because it mattered that much to her that we didn’t know anything about it. But why?

  Stop bloody speculating, my sensible inner voice said. Go and find out, you stupid woman. And she was right. That was exactly what I must do. ‘Anyway,’ I said to Mike. ‘I’m heading up there now and I don’t know how long I’ll be, because there’s talk of an operation. They’re fairly sure they’d be operating. And doing a blood transfusion, too. So I’m not sure about tea. Shall we –’

  ‘Fish and chips,’ he finished for me. ‘Seeing as it’s Friday. Though you’ll need some things for her, won’t you? Can’t imagine they’ll let her home tonight, can you? Not if she’s – God, all this time, and we had no flipping idea!’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘I can’t quite take it in. I just –’

  ‘What happened to it,’ Mike interrupted, his voice low. ‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? What’s she done with it?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘God, Mike. D’you think she dumped it somewhere and ran away? D’you think that’s why she’s been so tight-lipped about everything? Because she thinks she’ll go to prison for it? God –’ I stopped, it all suddenly beginning to make perfect sense.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if it was stillborn or something? Or what if she …’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it. Desperate young girl. Far from home. Penniless and terrified …

  ‘Stop bloody whatting,’ Mike commanded. ‘Go and flipping find out.’

  He was right. I needed to skedaddle myself, and fast.

  I went back inside to see a small knot of people now by the vending machine. And a marked increase in human traffic on the main corridor. The main artery, I thought, pleased with having thought of the analogy. A hospital really was a lot like the human body; a complex dynamic system that all fitted together – almost like a living, breathing thing.

  And one in hyper-drive, I thought as I joined the river of people and wound my complicated way from Accident and Emergency on the ground floor to the medical ward Lauren had directed me to on the fourth – a journey that took a good ten or fifteen minutes.

  Hospitals have their own rush hours, and once again I had found it. The office staff leaving, the outpatient clinics closing, the various ward staff and ancillary workers doing change-overs and patient transfers, plus – as the various aromas on my journey confirmed – the massive operation that was feeding tea to the presumably several hundred inpatients. A big university hospital such as ours was really a whole community in itself. All human life really was represented here.

  I wasted no time in speculating about the circumstances of Adrianna’s labour – well, except to be clear that it probably hadn’t taken place in any hospital, because there was no way in the world they’d have discharged her. Unless she’d run away, of course. Which I had to concede could have happened if she’d been determined.

  But once again, it was pointless to speculate. No, I was on a mission now; to find the nurse to whom Adrianna had spoken when she’d first arrived here, and, while Adrianna was safely out of the way having her scan, to try to establish as many details as I could.

  And, happily, I found the nurse in question almost right away. The nurses’ station was at the entrance to the ward and, like nursing stations everywhere, was the beating heart of their patch of the hospital. There was a big white wipe-clean back board that held details of patients and their locations, framed by a dense border of overlapping thank-you cards. There was a high counter, behind which two nurses currently sat surrounded by the usual array of paperwork. As in hospitals and in teaching and fostering, I mused. The usual, tedious, endless slews of paperwork.

  And I spotted her without a moment’s hesitation, by virtue of the surname on her badge. She was a tall woman, pale skinned and long limbed and fair – and definitely not at all Polish-looking. Not in my admittedly limited experience, anyway. She was standing beside the seated nurses, her hand cradling a mug, and when she looked at me I realised she’d recognised me too. I smiled, imagining what Lauren might have said to her. Five foot nothing. Long black hair. There was little else needed, was there?

  Obviously not. ‘Ah, you must be Mrs Watson,’ she said, smiling back. ‘Adrianna’s foster mum?’

  I nodded. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘She’s down having a scan at the moment,’ she went on. ‘So –’

  I nodded again. ‘I know.’

  ‘Ah, your daughter-in-law found you then,’ she said. There wasn’t so much as a trace of a Polish accent, which surprised me.

  ‘Yes she did, and I’d love a chance to chat to you, if you can spare the time. Lauren said she explained? That we’re fostering Adrianna temporarily? And, well, as you can imagine, this has all come as something of a shock. And what with the language barrier, you can imagine it’s such a huge help that she’s been able to talk to you. We had an interpreter round early on, but Adrianna really didn’t take to him, and w
ith none of us speaking any Polish …’

  She drained her mug and nodded. ‘Yes, of course I can. Well, what little I know so far, at any rate. Come into the day room,’ she said, coming round from the back of the station. ‘It’s this way.’

  Sister Skaja – for that was her name – didn’t look Polish, it turned out, because she wasn’t. She was English. From somewhere in Kent. She spoke Polish because she had been married to a Polish man for a very long time. And had made a real effort at it too, she explained, because they wanted their children, all now grown-up, to be bilingual. So it was both my and Adrianna’s lucky day.

  Sister Skaja explained that Adrianna would indeed be kept in overnight. Till early next week, in all probability. Possibly longer. ‘She is seriously anaemic,’ she explained. ‘Probably due to chronic blood loss following the birth. Which is probably the result of birth trauma, and there being retained products. Which could obviously lead to peritonitis, if it hasn’t already, so, once she’s had her scan, I imagine they’ll call the on-call gynae surgeon in because they’ll have to deal with that as a matter of urgency.’

  ‘So it’s quite serious?’ I said, feeling a fresh wave of guilt, remembering the need for the transfusion. How the heck hadn’t we known about all this?

  Sister Skaja placed a hand over mine. ‘She’ll be fine,’ she reassured me. Yes, it’s urgent that it’s done, but it’s usually a routine procedure. Though we’ll obviously have to keep her in for a bit, as she’ll need IV antibiotics. Then, all being well, she will be right as rain. She’s young and fit, of course, which helps enormously, obviously.’

  ‘She must be,’ I said. ‘So she did give birth alone, then? Hence the business of –’

  ‘Oh, yes. Definitely. No question. Well, in terms of there being no medical or nursing support on hand.’