Mother: A gripping emotional story of love and obsession. Hannah Begbie
need to clean and scrub at them with antibacterial soap and while I was there, clean the floor that the dirty towel was on, with the bleach I had bought, then clean my skin, and her skin and maybe her mouth again.
Who would be the first to surrender? The bacteria or me? Of course defeat was coming, a horrible, inevitable defeat. It had been on its way from her first moments and there was no one to back us up when we fell.
I remembered Mum in that supermarket and how my thing wasn’t big or painful enough for her to finally look me in the eyes and say, That must be terrible for you. Not me. You, dear. You. The kind of thing that someone who loved you might say.
The kind of thing a mother might say as part of her battle cry as she stood by her daughter’s side, spear at the ready – to fight for life. To the death.
I don’t remember why I emptied the cutlery drawer on to the floor. Perhaps I needed a new sound to cut against Mia’s screams, or to wake me up from the screams in my head, or to tip me over.
I went to the drawer stocked with syringes and took out one box. I laid one aside because I would need it for Mia but the rest I tipped out and the plastic clattered lightly on to the floorboards. Then I stamped on them all, their plastic cases shattering under my bare feet, and I cried and screamed and shouted with the pain of it.
I opened the fridge and called out for Dave again. Was he in the house? He was in the house, of course he was, he could hear me and he’d decided not to come to me until I was calm. He was thinking about all those times I’d sat, perched on the bath, digging that lying plastic stick into my palm, and thinking: she needs to calm down first.
‘Dave, if you’re here, I need you. Please come.’
But he didn’t come and I needed to make him hear so I reached into the fridge and took other bottles. Milk. Orange juice. Dressing. And I threw them, one by one, at the floor. And when the sight of broken glass and liquid hadn’t made me feel better, I took the other medicine and I threw everything she needed on to the floor. Against the wall. On to the floor. Bang. Bang. Against the wall and on to the floor.
The ones that didn’t break I emptied down the sink, one by one, like a child pouring away her angry drunk of a father’s whisky bottles as his eyes glaze and he turns into someone she doesn’t know.
‘Go away. Get out of my house,’ I screamed – defeated and yet fighting – as I smashed anything I could find against the wall. ‘Go, get out!’
Then Dave was in the kitchen and his face was twisted with alarm. ‘Are you OK? Is someone here?’ But all I could do was cry. ‘Cath. Speak to me. Who’s been here? Are you OK? Who’s hurt you? Where’s Mia?’ He looked to Mia lying on her mat and satisfied she was OK, turned his attention back to me. ‘Please, speak to me.’
‘No,’ I managed through tears and gasps. ‘No one’s here.’ And I wept harder then, so much I thought I’d never stop. Part of me didn’t want to stop because stopping would mean talking and there were no words. ‘There is no one here.’
Dave held me tight at the wrist and a line of blood dripped over where his thumb grasped me. ‘Calm down and look at me. Look at me. Are you sure no one is here? Who did this to you?’
I felt my mouth and eyes stretch wide, spaces opening to allow an overflowing dark smoke to escape.
‘I did,’ I said.
Pity and anxiety filled his eyes and I thought he would cry when he turned abruptly away and towards Mia. He collected her up, made comforting sounds and Mia’s cries stopped right away. He glanced at me again then changed Mia’s nappy, her babygro. Whispered in her ear and held her tight. Put her down on the play mat. Gave her a bottle.
By the time he was with me I was sitting silently on the kitchen floor, the anger emptied from me, drained and dripping through the floorboards along with the antibiotics.
He tore off some kitchen towel and wrapped it around my foot, around my wrist – both, bleeding. I buried my face in his sleeve. There was silence and for a fleeting moment I was soothed. Oh, to be carried and loved and rocked until you sleep.
His eyes were full of sadness as he looked around the broken mess in the kitchen. ‘Why? What happened?’
I wanted to say:
I was sad.
I saw my mum but I wanted my dad.
Then we were drowned by a puddle.
I’m drowning in it all, Dave. Drowning every day.
‘Where were you?’ I said.
But when he saw an empty medicine bottle on the floor and the cracked syringes in a pile on the boards, he looked up at me with an expression I didn’t recognize – or didn’t want to recognize. ‘Are they … they’re Mia’s antibiotics. What have you done?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, straitjacketing my arms around me.
‘Have you given her the evening dose of Augmentin?’
‘No, no I haven’t. I dropped it on the floor. That was how it started …’
‘How it started?’ He looked at the open, gloating fridge and its empty shelves. ‘All Mia’s medicines are gone from the fridge. Cath? We don’t have any drugs for tonight or for the middle of the night. You know that all the pharmacies are closed? There’s nothing until the morning?’
Maybe it was the internet or possibly the doctors or even the leaflets that said:
The babies that do better, the ones that live a little longer, are the ones who have parents who stick to the regime. The ones who are compliant with treatment.
‘Cath? Are you even listening? This is a huge problem for us. She needs her dose. She can’t skip one.’
The babies that do best are the ones that avoid early chronic infection: their parents watch for any signs. They watch, they test, they assess, every day.
I curled over and laid my palms on the floorboards.
‘Cath? Snap out of it now. We need to sort this out. She needs her meds and physio and a bath and bed. We need to get her sorted out first.’
The babies that die slower are the ones that keep weight on. It helps them fight off infections when they’re too ill to eat. The consultants like their children to carry a little bit extra. Every meal helps. Every breastfeed.
‘You can do the crazy mental stuff after we’ve sorted this out, but I need you back in the room now helping me clear this mess up.’
The babies that are strong are cared for, and lucky. They don’t have mothers whose wrists shake, whose feet stamp on their syringes.
‘You’re frightening Mia, Cath. You’re frightening her.’
The babies that live.
‘If you don’t snap out of it I’m calling your mum.’
The babies that live a little longer.
‘Cath, for God’s sake, what are you looking at? Where have you gone? Look at me. Look at me, now.’
The babies that don’t live, they run to God, leaving their mothers to howl their names into all the empty years that lie waiting for them.
Of all the things you could have smashed up, why her medicines?
That’s what Dave said in the kitchen when I finally met his gaze. His eyes brimmed with black disappointment, as if it was Mia I had broken.
And I had wanted to say, Taste the salt on my lips,