After the End(4)

I’m listening to Bringing Up B, a podcast recorded by a mum who sounds about my age. I don’t know B’s name, only that she has two siblings, she likes piano music and velvet cushions, and she’s profoundly disabled.

We’ve known for a few weeks now that Dylan has brain damage, not just from the tumour, but from the surgery required to remove as much of it as possible. Thinking about it makes my chest tighten until I feel as though I’m the one who needs help to breathe, and so listening to Bringing Up B helps me find perspective.

B can’t walk. She spends most of her time lying flat on her back, watching the CDs her sisters have strung into a shiny mobile to make rainbows on the ceiling. They collected the CDs from friends, and B’s mum found them ribbon and buttons, and they chattered to B as they argued gently over what should go where. There was laughter in her mum’s voice as she told the story for the thousands of listeners she won’t ever meet, and I wondered how many of them were like me. How many were listening with tears in their eyes but fire in their hearts, thinking, I can do that. I can be that mum.

The house is dark and unloved, the answerphone blinking. A neat pile of post on the table in the hall tells me Mum’s been here, and sure enough, there’s a Tupperware in the fridge marked lasagne and a note by the kettle saying Love you, M & D x. I feel suddenly tearful. My parents live in Kidderminster, where I grew up—more than an hour across Birmingham from the house Max and I bought just outside of Leamington. They visit Dylan at least twice a week, but Mum’s caught one cold after another, and they both decided it would be best to steer clear of PICU for a while. Nevertheless, every few days one or both of them still makes the two-hour round trip to Leamington to make sure their daughter and beloved son-in-law are eating.

My parents fell for Max almost as quickly as I had. Mum was charmed by his accent; Dad by the earnest way he promised to take care of their only daughter. With Max’s relatives all in America, my mum made it her duty to fuss over us both.

It’s too late to eat, so I put the lasagne in the freezer with the others, and make a cup of tea to take to bed. I pause in the hall and look around in the shadowy light thrown down from the landing. It had seemed extravagant, buying a four-bedroom house when we only needed two. Future-proofing, Max called it.

“We might have a whole football team of children.”

“One will do for now!” I’d laughed, finding it hard to visualise Dylan as anything other than an enormous bump that meant I hadn’t seen my feet in weeks.

One will do. My breath catches.

I open the door to the dining room and lean in the doorway. This will be Dylan’s new room. The little blue-and-white nursery upstairs was already too babyish for a two-year-old more interested in football than Peter Rabbit; this time last year we were talking about redecorating. This time last year. It feels like another world, and I screw up my eyes against the what-ifs that jab at me with accusing fingers. What if you’d noticed sooner? What if you’d trusted your instincts? What if you hadn’t listened to Max?

I open my eyes and distract myself with practicalities. Dylan’s almost three now. He’s easy to carry, but in a few years he’ll be too heavy to take upstairs to bed. In the dining room, there’s space for a wheelchair, a special bed, a hoist if we need one. I imagine a mobile of shiny CDs above Dylan’s bed, dancing rainbows across the ceiling. I close the door, and take my tea to bed.

I message Max.


Good day today—sats stable and no sign of infection. Our boy’s a fighter! Fingers crossed for tomorrow x



I’m too tired to work out the time difference, or whether Max will already have left Chicago for New York—the last leg of this trip before he comes home. There was a period in my life when I could have told you what time it was anywhere in the world. New York, Tokyo, Helsinki, Sydney. I could have recommended somewhere to eat, told you the exchange rate, suggested a good hotel. The cabin crew in business class aren’t just there to pour drinks and recite the safety briefing. We’re PAs, chefs, tourist guides. Concierges in a five-star hotel. And when the work stopped, the party started. Dancing, drinking, singing . . .

Whenever I miss the good old days, I remember why I left. I couldn’t do the hours on long-haul once Dylan arrived, not with Max away so much with work, so I swapped my stylish blue uniform for garish polyester, and luxury layovers for budget trips to Benidorm. Full-time for part-time. I didn’t love it, but it didn’t matter. It worked for Dylan. For our family. And then, when Dylan got ill, I stopped. Everything stopped.

Now, PICU is my job. I’m there by seven, before the winter sun makes it across the car park, and I leave long after it’s dark, long after the night staff have come on duty. I take a turn around the hospital grounds midmorning, and again in the afternoon, and I eat my sandwiches in the parents’ room, and the rest of the time I sit with Dylan. Every day, every week the same.

Upstairs, I switch on the television. When Max is away the house is too silent, my head too full of the beeps and whirs of intensive care. I find a black-and-white movie and turn down the volume until it’s almost inaudible, and pull my pillow into a Max-shaped lump beside me.

Three times they’ve tried to extubate Dylan. Three times he’s crashed and they’ve had to put him back on the ventilator. Tomorrow they’ll try again, and if he can manage on his own—if he can just keep taking breaths . . . then he’ll be one step closer to coming home.