Kitabı oku: «Keep You Safe», sayfa 3

I started to reply, but Lucy beat me to it. ‘Ah leave it, Christine. To be fair, you don’t usually vaccinate for chicken pox anyway.’

At this, my ears pricked up. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, turning to her. ‘What’s that got to do with the Coopers?’

Rosie’s allergy or the fact that she couldn’t be immunised wasn’t common knowledge amongst the school community, mostly because of the inevitable negative reaction it provoked amongst parents. And I didn’t want my daughter to be singled out in any way because of reasons she (or I) couldn’t control. So when before Easter the school secretary had sent out Health Service permission forms for the MMR booster to be carried out in the school, I had quietly marked an X in the ‘Decline’ box and forgotten all about it.

But now I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the Coopers and I had something in common.

‘But Madeleine and Tom don’t believe in vaccination full stop,’ Christine said bitterly. ‘Complete nonsense. Not to mention irresponsible.’

My mouth went dry. So while I’d had no choice but to opt out of the standard vaccination programme, it seemed the Coopers had wilfully declined.

‘Don’t believe in… you mean the Cooper children haven’t had shots – for anything?’ I asked, feeling more than a little unnerved.

This was what Greg and I had worried most about – the idea that so-called ‘herd immunity’ wasn’t guaranteed to protect Rosie so long as there were parents who chose not to participate. Yet I couldn’t condemn the Coopers for anything when I didn’t know the reasons. For all I knew, their children might also have some kind of autoimmune condition or other valid reason not to go along with protocol.

‘Yep. Apparently they don’t trust the HSE and the pharmaceutical companies, even though all that controversy over the MMR jabs was written off yonks ago.’ Christine rolled her eyes. ‘Give me a break. They’re just lucky this time that chicken pox is fairly harmless.’

This time.

I swallowed hard, not sure what to make of this.

‘Well, I hope Kevin avoids it anyway. Nasty, scratchy dose,’ I mumbled sympathetically. ‘But not too hard on the kids if it’s mild enough.’

Lucy had gone unusually quiet and, sensing she was uncomfortable with the discussion, I decided to change the subject. ‘Oh look, they’re starting,’ I said, turning back to the ballet class and feeling bad for bringing all this up in the first place.

But Christine wouldn’t be diverted. ‘A bit poorly my ass. Kevin was saying that Clara was coughing the day before that too,’ she said. ‘What kind of mother sends a sick child to school so she can go off to flatter her own ego? And what kind of parents take their kids out of class for an extra week over Easter so they can go and sun themselves in Florida?’

I remembered Rosie saying something about Clara being absent the first few days back after the break, but hadn’t realised it was because she was still on holiday. Must be nice to be able to fly off somewhere warm and sunny for so long. I could only dream.

‘Ah, Christine, it’s not as if the kids missed that much for the few extra days they were away,’ said Lucy. ‘And in fairness to Madeleine the other morning, she really didn’t think there was anything to worry about…’

‘Oh save it, that’s no excuse. A blind man could see that the child was coming down with something, though of course maybe those Prada sunglasses her mother likes to wear messed up her eyesight…’

‘Christine, seriously,’ Lucy reproached, ‘there’s no need for that. I know Madeleine. If she honestly felt that Clara was ill, she would have cancelled the TV thing, end of story. As it was, the little dote just had the sniffles and a bit of a temperature when I went to pick her up.’

‘Well, Kevin said he spotted a cluster of spots on her neck. And if a five-year-old can see it, I don’t understand how the child’s own mother—’

‘That could just be heat rash from the temperature,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘Pox don’t cluster.’

‘Thank you, Nurse,’ Lucy chuckled, evidently hoping to lighten the mood. ‘In any case, Christine, Maddie was distraught and full of apologies when she got back from Dublin,’ she insisted. ‘She couldn’t have known.’

As Christine muttered something unintelligible, a thought started rattling around in my head. It was what I had just said: that chicken pox didn’t cluster.

They don’t, I reminded myself. There were just individual sores when the rash popped up.

I nodded, affirming my own train of thought. Christine’s son was probably just being a typical five-year-old boy. Making everything seem more dramatic and exaggerated than it actually was.

Returning my attention to the studio where Rosie practised, I smiled with appreciation as she pirouetted gracefully. She did a slight bow in front of her teacher and classmates and then returned to the barre.

Whereupon once again, almost absent-mindedly, my daughter raised her arm and scratched her back.

Chapter 5

Rosie turned over in bed and pulled the covers up over her head. Shoving her face into the pillow, she tried her hardest to stifle the sound of her cough. She rolled over onto her back, then sniffled and pulled her leg up to her chest, so she could scratch her knee.

She didn’t feel well.

And she was very itchy.

Rosie had noticed when she got home from ballet and started undressing to put her pyjamas on that she had some little red dots on her arms. And there were a few on her chest, too. She was sure that if she turned on the light and looked at her knee, she would probably find some spots there too.

But her mum said that you couldn’t get chicken pox twice.

Rosie felt worry build in her chest. She really didn’t want chicken pox again. It had been miserable the last time. She couldn’t stand the thought of being cooped up in bed, not being allowed to play with her friends or her dinosaurs, and having to take long, warm baths just to try to ease the itch that came with those yucky blisters.

She shuddered, thinking about it.

Maybe she was just tired. That had to be it. It had been a long week and maybe she was just feeling a bit worried because her friend Ellie wasn’t well and then Clara had gone home sick the other day too.

Kevin hadn’t looked like he was sick though – and he said he’d never had chicken pox before – so how could she get them twice?

She swallowed hard and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. That was what Mum had told her to do any time she was feeling overwhelmed. Of course, she had told her that because of what she had seen with her dad, but Rosie supposed that trick could be used in this situation as well.

Taking one, two, three deep breaths, she closed her eyes in the darkness and willed herself to go to sleep. In the morning, everything would be fine. She would feel better.

But then her eyes sprang open as it felt like something had bitten her on the back. She cranked her arm around awkwardly to shove her hand up the back of her pyjama top to reach the area. Once the itch was scratched, she ran her fingers over her skin and felt a few flat bumps. There were more of them all over her too, she just knew it.

Breathing hard again, she whispered to herself like her mum told her to do when she needed to calm herself down. ‘You’re fine, just go to sleep. Everything is OK. You don’t have chicken pox. Everyone knows kids can’t get them twice.’

Debating on whether or not to get up and tell her mum about this, she decided against it. Mum worried about things. And Rosie knew she’d be even more worried if she had to take time off work to take care of her, when there was no need.

She was a big girl now.

‘Just go to sleep,’ she told herself quietly in the darkness, trying to count sheep like her dad had once told her. But that had never worked, so instead Rosie decided to try counting the names of all the different dinosaurs she knew – especially all the new ones she’d learned from the exhibition she’d been to over Easter. And after tossing and turning for an hour or more, she finally fell asleep, achieving a fitful slumber.

Several hours later she woke, realising that she had kicked all of her covers off. She felt hot and cold at the same time and her pyjamas felt wet and her skin clammy. She was covered in sweat!

At once, the problem of the previous night came rushing back to her and Rosie realised that she didn’t feel better – at all. Instead she felt much, much worse.

‘No, no, no,’ she said, feeling a fresh wave of panic. She was so warm – she had to have a fever, like that time she’d had a bad flu and her mum had explained all about how fever was the body’s way of getting rid of bad germs.

Bad germs like chicken pox?

And as much as she wanted to jump out of bed to look at herself in the mirror to confirm that the spots were still there, she just couldn’t. She felt exhausted.

Rosie wanted her mum, but when she opened her mouth to call out, she found she could barely manage a squeak.

‘Mum…’ she croaked. When she didn’t hear any footsteps on the stairs, she tried again, this time a bit louder. Her mum had to hear her – mums just knew, somehow, when their kids needed them. Particularly her mum.

Sure enough, a moment later, Rosie heard, ‘Coming, honey,’ and she felt some of her panic subside.

Mum would make this OK, she thought. In just a second, Mum would tell her that everything was fine – that this was just a flu and she would be right as rain in no time.

*

On Friday morning, I pushed the button on the Nespresso coffee-maker Greg had bought the year he died, and waited for my morning dose of caffeine to be dispensed.

Looking quickly at the clock on the microwave, I guessed that I needed to get Rosie up this morning. Usually she was very good about getting herself out of bed and ready for school. No worries, still plenty of time, I told myself as I grabbed my coffee cup and took a tentative first sip, savouring the warmth.

Then, picking up my phone to check for any messages from work, I heard a small whine coming from upstairs.

Rosie was calling for me, and something about her voice wasn’t right.

Immediately, my brain defaulted to panic mode, as it did so often.

How would I shuffle my day around if she needed to stay at home because she wasn’t feeling well? Trying to summon just how many days of annual leave from work I had left, I called out back to her.

In fairness, I’d been lucky – Rosie hadn’t missed a single day since starting school last September. Quite the feat considering most of her classmates seemed to have perma-sniffles, and I chalked it down to my insistence on her eating Vitamin C-rich fruit and veg as well as a regular multi-vitamin for us both to heighten our immune system – especially given my own exposure to various bugs at the hospital.

But it was impossible to fight everything all of the time.

I placed my coffee cup on the counter and raced upstairs, mentally reorganising my day as I opened my daughter’s bedroom door to make the inevitable diagnosis: Yup, you’re staying home today. My thoughts drifted to Madeleine Cooper who had evidently faced that self-same scenario earlier in the week.

But nothing could have prepared me for what I actually saw when I entered Rosie’s room.

My little girl lay uncovered, her dark hair limp and damp and sticking to the sides of her face. Her skin was flushed and her pyjamas had patches of wet here and there, as if she had been sweating throughout the night.

And on the surface of her skin that wasn’t covered by clothes there were spots. Lots and lots of small red spots on her face, her neck, her hands, even her feet.

My mouth dropped open in shock, and my mind automatically jumped to the thought: Of course she had to be the kid who gets chicken pox twice.

But then my professional training sprang into action and cautioned me against being too hasty with my diagnosis. I saw Rosie looking at me, studying me, and a small crease appeared on her forehead, while her expression changed from worry to fear and finally… panic.

I quickly tried to rearrange the look on my face, willing myself to appear calm and in control.

When I was feeling anything but.

‘Mummy, I don’t feel well,’ she whimpered.

I picked up my pace, closing the distance to her bed. I sank to my knees and reached out, placing my hand on her forehead.

She was burning up.

‘Do I have chicken pox again?’ she asked weakly. ‘How could I have it again?’

‘Shush, honey, I don’t know. Let me take a look at you,’ I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice as I peered at the spots on her skin. ‘Let me unbutton your top, sweetheart, I want to see your chest.’

Rosie allowed me to unbutton her pyjama shirt while my fingers trembled. Somehow I just knew what I was going to find next.

Her chest was covered with a rash. Small, red clusters. Everywhere.

My mouth was suddenly dry and I licked my lips, willing myself to say something to comfort my daughter.

‘I’m so itchy, Mummy. And so hot.’ She was still watching me closely, and then she coughed violently, spittle lining the corners of her mouth.

My mind raced as I placed a hand on her forehead again and my heart pounded with fear. ‘I know, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’ll take you to the doctor. We’ll get you sorted.’

The rash, the clusters. This is different, the nurse inside me protested. This isn’t chicken pox. Chicken pox don’t cluster. And they aren’t flat either. This was something different…

And with a sudden terrifying realisation, I knew. But I couldn’t allow myself to even think the word.

No, it simply wasn’t possible. Where would Rosie have picked it up? It was chicken pox that was going around the school. Not…

Unless…

My thoughts turned then to the other sick child, Clara Cooper. Who, according to Christine, wasn’t vaccinated against serious childhood illnesses.

Just like Rosie.

Clara – who had been sent home from school three days ago with suspected chicken pox.

Except she hadn’t. This wasn’t chicken pox.

This was out and out measles.

Chapter 6

‘It’s OK, petal, we’re going to make you feel better,’ Madeleine soothed as she hovered over Clara’s bed.

On Tuesday morning, while in make-up at the TV station, her worst fears had been realised with a text from the school principal confirming that Clara was indeed sick. Talk about timing…

She’d given her some Paracetamol after all the coughing and sneezing the night before hoping to nip whatever it was in the bud, but noticed at breakfast that her youngest was still a bit off. But she really couldn’t keep her at home that day, she had the TV thing to do, and Tom had already left for work hours earlier…

So Madeleine had very quickly weighed up the odds and decided that she’d chance sending Clara to school, and would rush straight back once she’d done her thing at the studio. It was a gamble but what choice did she have? She couldn’t cancel Morning Coffee at the last minute; the show aired at eleven and she needed to leave right after the school drop-off.

Chances were Clara would be grand – kids were always up and down with these things and usually rallied well – but just in case Clara felt worse, she could mitigate the risk by asking Lucy to do her a turn. No point (or indeed time) in getting her husband to trek all the way home from Dublin, and she couldn’t ask her mother-in-law for a dig-out either, because Harriet didn’t have a car.

Ever the trooper, Madeleine’s friend immediately agreed to collect Clara just after eleven and stay with her at their house until she got back. ‘It’s no bother. Knock ’em dead and Clara will only love being able to watch you on TV.’

The two had been friends for ever – Lucy’s eldest was the same age as Jake so she and Madeleine had shared the whole Newborn Mania thing – and routinely helped each other out when it came to their offspring, often alternating school runs and sports practice drop-offs. Her friend was also decidedly non-judgemental about Madeleine’s columns, something that was rare enough in Knockroe. Many of the other women in her circle (in particular Christine Campbell) had already been a bit suspicious and defensive about how Madeleine had mostly kept to herself when Jake was born – very quickly dropping out of local mother/baby groups, and unwilling to get into discussions about the trials of sleepless nights or feeding routines, or engage in the seemingly endless debate between breast and bottle.

At the time, she felt it was hard enough getting to grips with the huge changes a newborn wrought without overanalysing every last aspect. Their own parents’ generation didn’t have that luxury, and for the most part just took things as they came, which suited Madeleine down to the ground. She hated how motherhood was so damn competitive and judgemental. She’d heard about that aspect from other friends before, of course, but nothing could have prepared her for just how damaging and destructive it could be to insecure newbies. ‘There is no “right way”,’ Madeleine’s mother used to tell her, when in the very early days with Jake she fell into the trap of worrying and comparing herself to other women who seemed so sure about what they were doing. ‘Same as marriage, you just take it one day at a time. But the most important thing of all, pet, is to enjoy it.’

It was the best piece of parenting advice Madeleine had ever received. Thankfully, Tom too held little truck with outsiders interfering or undermining, and agreed that the two of them should trust their instincts for what they did know, and just research anything they didn’t.

Some days were great, others absolute shit, but from then on Madeleine refused to put pressure on herself to make everything ‘perfect’ or ‘normal’. Like her mother said, to a baby every experience was their perfect and their normal, so no sense tying yourself up in knots about it.

Lucy was of a similar mind in some aspects, but was also much better than she at finding common ground with others who didn’t share the same philosophy. Whereas Madeleine’s own failure to do so had driven her to find solidarity with like-minded mums online via her blog, rather than suffer her more judgemental local counterparts who refused to admit that motherhood could be anything other than unicorns and rainbows.

Though she admitted she’d got things badly wrong with Clara this week and, worse, hadn’t she known deep down that her daughter was coming down with something – especially when they’d heard a dose was doing the rounds?

She probably should have kept her at home – and on any other day would have – but if she’d cancelled at the last minute the Morning Coffee producers would likely never invite her back.

As it was, the team were delighted with the reaction to her appearance on the panel, and had already asked her back for another stint. It could only lead to bigger and better things as the show’s viewers were exactly her target audience and, following the slot, Mad Mum’s blog and social media engagement had skyrocketed. Good all round, apart from the fact that that journalist, Gemma Moore, seemed to have taken an immediate dislike to her, which she couldn’t understand. Everyone knew how these things worked and surely Gemma realised that Madeleine was purposely hamming it up for entertainment?

In any case, based on the social media response, it had worked.

So while she still felt terrible for sending Clara to school when her daughter truly was ill, all in all Madeleine stood by her decision to bite the bullet and take things as they came. Tom had agreed with her, which made her feel somewhat better at least.

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself – sure, for all we knew, Clara was just coming down with yet another bout of the sniffles,’ her husband reassured, kissing her on the forehead, when Madeleine had remonstrated with herself for the decision.

There was no denying the various iterations of coughs and colds had indeed seemed endless since the kids started school, and in fairness their youngest was strong as an ox most of the time…

Clara coughed violently then, and Madeleine stroked her little girl’s hair, feeling guiltier still. She truly hadn’t believed there was anything to worry about, and even now, a few days on, there was no sign of any telltale sores.

But if her daughter did in fact have chicken pox, there was nothing to do now but wait it out and let the thing take its course. Heartbreaking to see her little girl so ill though, she thought, softly caressing Clara’s cheek. At least she only had one sick child to concentrate on – Jake had had the dose before, so Madeleine sent him to school the next morning without the worry at least that she would get another recriminating phone call…

At that moment, her mobile phone sounded from where she had placed it on Clara’s dresser, and a sudden surge of panic rushed through her. Hell, what if she’d just jinxed herself and her son was in fact now down with something too?

But when she looked at the caller ID, she felt herself calm down. It was Lucy. Likely calling to get the scoop on Clara. She was a good friend and, after picking her daughter up from school on Tuesday, had gone out of her way to reassure a panicky Madeleine that all was in hand. ‘No need to break any speed limits on your way back. Take your time – she’s fine.’

‘How’s Clara doing?’ her friend demanded now, before Madeleine could even issue a greeting. Taken aback at her tone – it wasn’t like Lucy to be so short – she looked again at her daughter who seemed to be dozing off.

‘She’s fine, thank goodness – you know yourself, you’ve been through it with Steph. Poor thing will be itchy and miserable for the next few days but—’

Lucy cut her off. ‘Have you talked to anyone from the school since?’

Madeleine furrowed her brow. What did that have to do with anything? Everyone knew the thing was going around, hadn’t they got that note on Monday…

‘Well, I obviously phoned to tell them that Clara wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week, that the poor little thing had caught the blasted pox and—’

‘Oh God, you really don’t know, do you?’

What the hell? Madeleine thought, irritated. Why all the drama for crying out loud? Was there a reason why Lucy wouldn’t let her finish a sentence? It was actually starting to sound like she was phoning for a gossip and Madeleine didn’t have any time or inclination for gossip. Just then, Clara was her only concern. ‘Well, I kind of have my hands full here. I don’t know what else is going on at the school and, to tell you the truth, I don’t particularly care—’

‘Maddie,’ interjected Lucy harshly, ‘I don’t think Clara has chicken pox.’

Her eyes widened in disbelief. ‘What are you talking about? Of course she has chicken pox. Ellie got it first, and now Clara has it. Her temperature’s subsided and granted there’s not many sores showing up yet, but all we can do now is let it take its—’

Again, her friend cut her off. ‘Madeleine, let me finish. I just got off the phone with Kate O’Hara. Rosie is sick too.’

‘Ah, poor thing.’ Madeleine felt sorry for Kate, who was a single mother and would be seriously put out by having to miss work to look after little Rosie. And as she expressed as much to Lucy, she could almost sense her friend shaking her head on the other end of the line.

‘No, you see, Rosie already had chicken pox a couple of years ago. And before you say it, no, she isn’t one of those kids who gets it twice either. Please, Madeleine, quick, just tell me what Clara’s chest looks like – is there a rash?’

Madeleine felt confused, but did as she was told. With the phone pressed to her ear, she looked at her sleeping child – thankfully Clara had found some peace in slumber – and pulled down the bedclothes a little.

Then she whispered quietly into the phone. ‘I don’t know. Like I said there isn’t much of a pox outbreak yet, but now that you say it, just under her neck there is a kind of rash, I suppose, little bumps clustered together. Pretty much what you would expect with—’

‘Madeleine, you have to get Clara to a doctor, fast. And get Jake out of school too. I’m serious.’ Lucy sounded almost frantic on the phone and her normally mild-mannered friend’s panic made Madeleine’s mind race. But her heart almost dropped into her stomach with her friend’s next words. ‘I don’t think that Clara has chicken pox, sweetheart, but she could have measles. Rosie definitely has – Kate recognised the difference right away. You know she’s a nurse. But, anyway, it’s not common knowledge yet, at least I don’t think it is, the way that people know… well… the way people know about Jake and Clara. But it seems Rosie isn’t vaccinated either. She has some allergy that prevents it and—’

Feeling like her head was spinning, Madeleine looked down at her daughter and tried her hardest to recall what Jake had been like when he’d had measles, but it was a good six years ago and she really didn’t remember. It had been a mild dose, so hadn’t really stuck in her mind, other than the fact that the doctor had berated her for not vaccinating her eighteen-month-old against it in the first place…

And now it seemed Clara had picked it up. But where?

Suddenly, Madeleine’s mind drifted back to their holiday in Clearwater over the Easter break. There’d been something in the news at the time – she’d hardly paid attention to it amidst all the activities – about some kind of outbreak in one of the Orlando theme parks?

And little over a week ago the Coopers had shared an eight-hour flight home from that very location, with countless other Irish families who’d spent Easter in the theme parks…

‘Oh my goodness,’ Madeleine gasped, as the full realisation of what might be happening hit her.

The countless hours and days she and Tom had spent researching measles when Jake was a baby, trying to decide whether or not they could realistically avoid the MMR vaccination.

First and foremost, they’d been hugely uncomfortable about the vaccine’s link to autism, and while the original research paper suggesting the connection had long been discredited, it was very difficult to ignore the multitude of real-life anecdotal experiences that were so prevalent. The very idea of their happy, thriving, babbling Jake regressing to a withdrawn, unresponsive state within days – perhaps hours – of receiving the vaccination was enough to break Madeleine’s heart, and it certainly gave her pause.

While Tom had been raised a free-thinker and found it easy to rail against the establishment, she hailed from a more traditional Catholic background, used to trusting and going along with generally accepted advice and thinking.

Initially, Madeleine couldn’t credit that the government and health boards would realistically offer something that could harm, rather than protect, children. That was before she started to read through the reams of research on the vaccine and its potentially harmful ingredients, as well as the troubling suggestion of collusion and lobbying from the pharmaceutical companies.

But it was the worrying realisation that worldwide governments’ and health officials’ ultimate priority was not the health of an individual child but ‘herd immunity’ that truly concerned her. She’d spent hours upon hours reading up on both sides of what was a very heated and controversial argument, but, ultimately, the whole decision came down to her baby son’s safety.

‘Suppose we don’t give him the vaccination,’ she’d said to Tom, when Jake’s first MMR shot was imminent and they were by then seriously wavering about going along with protocol, ‘and he catches something terrible? I don’t think I could ever forgive myself—’

‘Could you forgive yourself if we do vaccinate and it triggers something potentially worse?’ he’d argued, and Madeleine’s heart constricted. ‘It’s a huge leap of faith, Maddie,’ he went on, but by then she no longer needed persuading. The health board’s concerns might be for the safety of the population at large; but, as parents, theirs had to be for their son.

And once you understood something like that, once you’d come to a realisation that rocked the very foundations of your beliefs, you couldn’t go back. Their family knew that all too well.

‘Look, it’s not as if measles is the end of the world either,’ her husband concluded. ‘I had it when I was a kid and, yes, it was nasty, but I recovered fine.’

Madeleine’s brother Paul had also seen off mumps as a child, and she herself had gone through a mild bout of measles when she was ten.

So they figured, even if the worst came to the worst…

But then poor Jake went and picked the disease up only a few months later anyway, while they were still hand-wringing over the whole thing.

Admittedly, it was at first terrifying to discover that their helpless little one-year-old had contracted something serious, but she and Tom had managed it and, thank goodness, all had been OK.

So when the time came to vaccinate Clara, they truly didn’t even think twice. What were the chances of her contracting measles too? And, if she did, wouldn’t they just deal with it again?

Despite repeated protests from their GP, urging them to reconsider, Madeleine and Tom eventually concluded – based on both their research and experience – that avoiding the vaccine was the lesser of two evils. It was a risk, but a calculated one.

Or so they’d thought.

Rosie isn’t vaccinated either…

But now, like a blow to the solar plexus, the big difference in this situation hit Madeleine full force. Jake had been young enough to contain and to prevent infecting others, but Clara was in school. With lots of other children. And, given that their daughter had contracted the disease by nature of the fact that she was unvaccinated, it was obvious she’d now passed it on, and even worse, to someone who, according to Lucy, didn’t have the vaccination option.