Crying For Help Part 18

'Tell me about it,' I agreed, giving him the same edited version about the morning as I'd given his sister.

'Humph,' he said decidedly. 'I know I shouldn't say this, but you know, Mum, I am going to be so glad when she goes.'

Which I knew Sophia couldn't have heard, as it was a full five minutes later when she got home. But when she came in it was almost as if she had heard straight away I could see she had a face like thunder. 'There you go!' she spat at me as she came into the kitchen, plucking her lunch box from her bag and flinging it across the worktop. 'I didn't eat any of your s.h.i.+t!'

Nothing surprised me these days, so I didn't even gape. Not even when she glared towards the chips I was cutting and said, 'And I won't be eating any of that s.h.i.+t, either!'

'Sophia, just knock it off,' I said instead, more in sorrow than in anger. 'You know, I am really getting tired of all this.'

'Get used to it,' she snapped. 'Because from today I'm on hunger strike.'

I felt my heart sink. Was there no end to her manipulation? 'Don't be silly,' I said, pulling off the lid from her lunchbox, to see that she had indeed failed to eat a single thing. I removed the contents methodically, and placed them in the bin. Hunger strike. Brilliant. That was all I needed. And what was I supposed to do about it exactly? Tie her up and force-feed her?

'Sophia,' I said again. 'Don't be ridiculous. You know you have to eat, or you'll mess up your medication ...'

But she had already stomped out of the kitchen.

I took a long, slow, deep breath then, and finished doing the chips. At least Mike would be happy, I thought wryly, as I rinsed them. Pie, chips and mushy peas with lots of gravy, his favourite dinner. Just the small matter of a 13-year-old hunger striker to deal with, and we could all enjoy a jolly family evening.

I would have to ring the GP again, I decided. Get some advice on what best to do. And though it was hardly rocket science leave some tempting salty snacks in her bedroom, trust to hunger kicking in and taking over I felt better for having spoken to Dr Shackleton. He'd also rea.s.sured me that he'd be happy to come out if needed, so at least I felt I had some professional support.

'But what about her pills?' Kieron wanted to know, after I'd hung up. 'How are you going to make her take them if she refuses?'

'I have no idea,' I told him truthfully. 'Just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.'

'Or,' he said, 'you could just ring the fostering agency. Just tell them you've had enough. Make them come and get her.'

I smiled wanly at Kieron's oh-so-simple solution. He had a point. It really could be as simple as that, couldn't it? And, heaven knew, not a soul could berate me. Fostering was supposed to be a job of work, wasn't it? Not a penance.

But every fibre of my being railed against giving up. Giving up on Sophia went against everything I'd signed up for. No matter how hateful, how hurtful, how horrible she was to me, I had to keep on keeping on with her. She couldn't help it. I had to keep that in mind at all times. She was sick. She was crying for help. She couldn't help it. And I also knew that I along with Mike, and my own poor beleaguered kids was all that stood between her and a secure adolescent unit. There'd be no putting her in a children's home, not with her history, and her illness. No, it would be straight to a place of incarceration. Which I knew would be the beginning of the end for her. You only had to take a quick look at the statistics to know how terrible the likely long-term outcome would be if that happened. Kids in those places almost never made it back to a normal life.

Since Sophia had taken herself off to the living room after her p.r.o.nouncement and I'd left her there when I dished up I decided to take her plate in to her. It went against all my rules about sitting at the table, but perhaps the smell of the gravy would sway her just a little, and with the rest of us out of sight and out of mind in the dining room, maybe she'd be unable to resist. I'd already briefed Mike, who had sighed and rolled his eyes, as if, like Kieron, pleading, 'Why are we still doing this?'

Sophia looked up as I entered. Once again her expression was brutally hostile and I had to say it again, in my head: She can't help this. She needs you.

'You don't get it, do you?' she snapped. 'I'm not eating. End of.'

I had a bit of a brainwave, then, standing there, clutching her steaming dinner. 'Okay,' I said, placing it on the coffee table, along with cutlery. 'Don't eat, then. I'll leave the plate, but it's up to you. You should know, though, that I've already told the GP, and he's said that if you don't eat, and then refuse to take your steroids, you will definitely go into a full-blown crisis. And when that happens I have to follow the emergency procedure, so I will immediately call an ambulance, which will take you to hospital, where you will be fed and medicated, via drips, for as long as it takes. So this is pointless, all this. Just so you know.'

But she wasn't interested. 'Fine,' she said calmly. 'Do whatever you like. Makes no difference. I'll just do it again. A body without stress hormones can only take so much, you know. Eventually it'll work and eventually I'll die.' She turned back to the television. 'End of.'

For a second or two I just stood there and stared. How did you respond to that? What did you say? Nothing in the handbook seemed appropriate for the occasion. Did I rush to her, fling my arms around her and plead with her? Don't talk like this! Don't think like this! What are you saying? You are loved! You are cared for! It will all be all right!

How could I? When none of that was true? I wished I could say that my heart had gone out to her then. That in that instant I did feel her pain. But it was impossible. Her manner was so ice-cool, so measured. Don't think for a minute, she was saying, that you can stop me. Don't think that I think, for one minute, that you do care.

I went back to the dining room and ate my own dinner well, a bit of it. My appet.i.te, unsurprisingly, had disappeared. And when I finished, at Mike's urging, I did call the doctor, who promised to get to us within the next two hours. Which rea.s.sured me. Even if I couldn't get any food into her, at least I knew he'd see to it that she took her medication administering it by force, if that was necessary. She sauntered into the kitchen just as I was finis.h.i.+ng the call, and went straight across to sc.r.a.pe her untouched plate into the bin. 'You really think anyone can stop me?' was her only comment, before she sashayed out and went up to her bedroom.

The three of us plus Bob then regrouped in the living room. It felt like we were in the middle of a siege. And Kieron was growing more adamant about things by the moment. 'Dad,' he said, 'I told Mum: you have to give this up. Not fostering, but this one.' He nodded towards the stairs. 'It's crazy. She's crazy.'

Mike nodded. 'I know, son. And you know what I honestly think, Case? I think the longer she's with us, the worse she's getting. Don't you? That can't be right, can it, love?'

I shook my head. 'No. Maybe we need to sit down and talk to Dr Shackleton. You're both right. We can't go on like this, can we?'

'No,' Mike said firmly. 'We can't.'

But it seemed that we weren't going to have to. Because five minutes later Sophia returned to the living room, and in doing so took all decisions about her out of our hands. Perhaps she had listened to my little homily earlier, after all. Perhaps the futility of refusing to eat anything had sunk in. Or perhaps she'd just realised she was as fed up with things as I was, and had decided to speed the whole process up a bit.

In any event, there she was, standing in the living-room doorway, ashen faced, her arms hanging limply by her side. And I was so mesmerised by the expression on her face that for some moments I completely failed to register what was happening. Indeed, it was Mike who alerted me, by leaping from the sofa, yelling, 'Jesus Christ, Case! Jesus! Oh, G.o.d! Call an ambulance! Kieron, find some bandages! Anything! Just find something!'

It was then that I noticed all the blood. There was just so much blood. Pouring from both her wrists, dripping from her fingers, forming two dark spreading pools on the carpet.

She caught my eye then, as I leapt up myself, stunned. 'I'm sorry, Mummy,' she whispered. 'I'm so sorry.'

Chapter 25.

Mike was incredible. While I stood there horrified, stunned into inactivity, he'd already scooped a drooping Sophia up into his arms and laid her down gently on the sofa.

'Ambulance, Case,' he said again. 'Go and call an ambulance.' The words sunk in and I finally juddered into action as, with incredible calm and instinct, he gently raised her arms to stem the bleeding. She was deathly pale, grey, and seemed to be losing consciousness. G.o.d only knew how much blood she'd already lost.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone from its rest in the hall and dialled 999, conscious of Kieron das.h.i.+ng past me, back into the living room, his own face looking green. I really thought that at any moment he might throw up. I thought I might.

Though it felt like it was happening in super-slow motion, it was probably only a couple of minutes before I'd given the emergency services our address and gone back into the living room, gaping anew at the grisly pools of blood darkening on the floor.

Sophia, droopy lidded, looked in my direction as I entered, and, seeing me, her body started jerking, racked by sobs. 'I'm so sorry, Mummy,' she said again. 'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.'

Mike was now kneeling at the head end of the sofa, trying to carefully wrap strips of bandage round her flayed wrists it was a pathetically thin roll of the stuff that Kieron had found from somewhere, and the blood was just seeping straight through it.

I sank to my own knees by Sophia's head and started stroking her hair, saying, 'Shhh, Sophia, shhh, sweetie. You'll be all right, don't worry.'

'I'm sorry, Mummy,' she said again. 'I'm so sorry.'

I looked to Mike, who shrugged helplessly. She was clearly delirious.

'It's all right, Sophia,' I kept saying. 'Shhh, it's all right.'

'Call me Sophie,' she said. 'Why don't you call me Sophie any more, Mummy? Like when I was little. Please call me Sophie. I'm so tired. I'm so tired ...'

The tears were pouring down my cheeks now. My heart was breaking for her. How had she done this to herself? What the h.e.l.l had she used? I felt the weight of Kieron's arm around my shoulder. He squeezed it.

'Don't cry, Mum,' he said. 'Please don't. Don't be upset. This isn't your fault.'

Kieron's words just made me cry harder.

When the ambulance came, sirens blaring, a scant ten minutes later, it seemed everything in contrast to the slow-motion reel earlier sped up to an incredible rate. Before I'd even really got my wits together Sophia was examined, attached to a drip, stretchered out and into the ambulance, and Mike was herding me to the door, pressing my handbag into my shaking hands.

'Go on,' he was saying. 'She wants you in the ambulance with her. Go on, they're waiting. Kieron and I will follow in the car.'

I did as instructed, half-blindly, stumbling up the steps to the back of the ambulance, and perched on a little pull-down seat while they made Sophia comfortable, attaching straps to her, checking and re-checking her vital signs, a blur of efficiency that made me shrink into my little chair, feeling useless.

She was growing less lucid and sleepier by the moment.

'Still with us, love?' asked the paramedic. She was a young woman who had a real air of rea.s.suring calm about her. 'Still with us, Sophia?'

'It's Sophie.' Sophia mumbled. 'I'm Sophie ... where's my mummy?'

Where had this come from? I wondered. I remembered back to when Sophia first arrived and gave Riley a ticking off for calling her Sophie G.o.d, it felt like a lifetime ago now and wondered if her anger about people calling her Sophie was some sort of defence mechanism related to her mum. We all had our own versions of our kids' names our private pet names. This had obviously been hers. I bit my lip to stop myself crying again.

'Can you come up here, love?' the paramedic was beckoning to me, I realised. 'Just sit by her. Important that we keep her awake.'

'Of course.' I stood, lurching as the ambulance began moving, and finding another s.p.a.ce in which to crouch, close to Sophia's head. I took her hand. It felt so cold. 'It's okay, love, I'm here.'

Her eyelids fluttered and I felt a rea.s.suring pressure around my fingers.

'She'll be okay, won't she?' I whispered to the paramedic. And at that instant the sirens once again started blaring. 'She'll be fine,' the paramedic said firmly, above the racket. 'You'll be fine, Sophie, love. Hey you still with us?'

I felt Sophia's response as another rea.s.suring squeeze. But when I looked up it was to see that, despite her brisk words, the paramedic's expression didn't quite match her voice.

As promised, Mike and Kieron had been right behind us all the way, and once we were disgorged from the ambulance and Sophia whisked away for treatment, the three of us were shown into a small waiting room. I felt completely drained, as if every single muscle in my body had been tensed up, and that, now I'd released them, I'd lost the power to stand up. I leaned against Mike, while Kieron went in search of a vending machine, unable to even raise the energy to talk to him. I had seen some things in my time, obviously, but the sight of all that blood was something I knew would stay with me for a long time. Mike was splattered in it it had even crusted, brown and sticky, under his fingernails, and after a few minutes of just sitting with me, propping me up and holding me, when Kieron came back, he went off to find a sink in which to scrub them.

Kieron's expression was still grim, but his colour at least had returned now. 'You okay, Mum?' he asked, handing me a little white plastic cup of coffee. Black, the way I liked it. It was scalding.

I nodded as I took it from him, taking care to hold it by the rim. 'I'll be fine, love,' I said. 'Just a bit shaken up. I think we all are.'

'Do you think she'll die?' he said, in his usual, straight-to-the-point manner. No messing with euphemisms for Kieron.

I shook my head automatically even though I didn't know. She'd still been conscious, albeit barely, when we'd arrived at the hospital. I didn't know much about medical matters, but wasn't that a good sign? I felt sure remaining conscious was key.

As was the fact that she had come downstairs once she'd cut herself. She might not have been in full possession of her senses, but she had come down to find us. Had she wanted to die really wanted to die she'd never have done that. She'd have stayed where she was. An image filled my head then: the most distressing kind of image. Of my going up to her bedroom, ready to rail at her again about not eating, and about taking her hydrocortisone pill, only to find her dead on the floor. I s.h.i.+vered. How far away from that scenario had we been? Half an hour? It wouldn't take much longer than that, would it? Not if the bleeding went unchecked.

So she hadn't wanted to die. She had wanted to be helped to live. It was as clear as the gla.s.s on the door of the little waiting room. She'd wanted help. She had wanted to live.

I fought back a fresh wave of tears as the realisation hit me that she didn't even know yet that her mother was dead. That blow was still to come. Or would it be a release from her pain? I didn't know. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel about any of it, only that it filled me with so much emotion, it was all I could do not to shout it out loud.

But then distraction was there, in the form of a young doctor, who came and told us Sophia would indeed be okay. That they had transfused her and been pumping intravenous steroids into her, and that, thankfully, we'd got to her in time. She'd be poorly but there was no reason why she shouldn't make a full recovery.

At least, physically. In terms of her psychological condition, there was obviously much work to be done. I know! I wanted to scream. I have been saying that for ages!

But I kept silent. 'So if I can take some sort of history,' he told us. 'That would be enormously helpful. I understand from your husband ' he looked to Mike, whom he'd obviously already spoken to, perhaps when he'd gone to clean himself up a bit 'that there's a psychiatric evaluation already pending?'

We spent a further half hour with the on-call doctor, explaining all the circ.u.mstances, the details of her background, and updating him about how things stood with Dr Shackelton. I also pulled out the emergency injection kit I'd had the foresight to grab as we'd left. 'Do you need this?' I asked. 'I thought I'd better bring it, just in case ...' But even as I started speaking, my voice cracked and I welled up again.

The doctor looked at me sympathetically. 'All under control,' he said calmly.

It was impossible to sleep that night, even though all of us were exhausted, and when I woke the next morning I felt like a zombie. Somehow, however, normal life just resumed around me. Kieron went to college, Mike went off to work, and before it had turned eight the house, suddenly so empty, felt oppressive enough to make me want to leave it.

So when John Fulshaw called, just moments after nine, I was ridiculously grateful to hear the sound of his voice. I had planned on calling him as soon as the office was open, of course, and in the meantime had been manically cleaning trying to get my home back into some sort of order. Right now it felt more like a crime scene. I'd actually been scrubbing the living-room carpet a grisly business when the phone rang, so I had to strip off a rubber glove before I could answer.

'Ah, you are there!' he said brightly. So brightly, in fact, that I felt guilt for having to quash his good mood.

It took me fifteen minutes to run through everything that had happened, and at the end of it he was indeed subdued.

'Come down,' he said. 'Casey, drive down to the office. If you're going to the hospital anyway, it's not going to be too much of an extra journey. Come on, come down and let's talk. This is not a good day for you to be soldiering on alone.'

'I don't know, John ...'

'Or shall I come to your house? I can jump in the car now, if you'd like that better.'

'No, no. That's crazy. As you say, I'm going to the hospital anyway. But I'll come to you first. That makes more sense, with visiting ... Okay, then. I'll see you in about an hour or so.'

I don't know why I felt so reluctant to go down and meet with John at the fostering agency offices. He was so much more than just our contact there and mentor. He'd become a good friend. But I wasn't sure I could face him. Any of them. I just felt so wired, as if my body was functioning purely on adrenaline. I felt permanently on the edge of the shakes, and just wanted to hide away and sleep.

Of course, as soon as I got there it was clear why I'd been so reluctant to go and see him. As soon as he jumped up and said, 'Right! Time to brew up some coffee!' I just lost it completely. Fell apart. Burst immediately into hot, frustrated tears.

But John was great. He just pulled out a chair and plonked me on it. 'You get it all out, Case. I'll go deal with the kettle. Go on,' he urged. 'Just allow yourself to weep.'

And I did. I sat and cried for a full fifteen minutes, my shoulders both heaving, gulping air, inconsolable, as the events of the last few hours not to mention weeks and months seemed to ma.s.s within me, clamouring for escape.

'I'm so sorry, John,' I sniffed, once the spasms had died down. 'I knew there was a reason why I didn't want to come here this morning. And now I know what it was.' I smiled wanly as he pushed my mug of coffee across the desk at me. It had grown cold, but I didn't mind. My throat felt raw.

'G.o.d,' I said, putting the mug down and plucking a tissue from the box on his desk. 'I feel such an idiot! You must think I'm such a b.l.o.o.d.y wuss! Coming all this way just to sit here and blubber.'

But he was having none of it. 'Don't be daft,' he said. 'You've just had a terrible shock, Casey! A terrible time altogether, let's be honest. And I'm amazed, now I'm finally getting the full picture, that you've held it together for as long as you have. And I feel responsible. You should have had much more support.'

'You did all you could, John,' I said. 'It's not like you haven't tried. And this is hardly your fault, all this, is it?' I gulped down more coffee. 'It's just the b.l.o.o.d.y system, that's all. And I don't know about you, but I for one haven't the energy to even think about what can be done about that.'

'But there's a bright side,' he said.

'There is?'

'Well, in a way. If it's not too macabre to voice it. At least the word "choice" has been removed from the equation. At least there's no more waiting for Panel and CAMHS, is there? She's where she needs to be, by default.'

'For the moment '

He raised a hand. 'No, Casey. Until further notice. And whatever happens, she won't be coming back to you.'

'She won't?'

He shook his head. 'Now she's in the system, she's going to stay in the system. With all that's happened well, it would be entirely the wrong course of action to even think about fostering as an option for her now. For the foreseeable future, at any rate, so you can rest a bit easier. You don't have to worry. Not your responsibility any more.'

Which should have made me feel as if the biggest weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But it didn't. I just burst out crying all over again.