Memory Bank

Everything is Bad and Nothing Makes Sense

something is wrong

daddy is shaking me awake but it is all dark. not dark light early morning but dark like nighttime

daddy must have made a mistake. i try to tell him but the words come out funny. silly daddy. go back to sleep.

but daddy keeps shaking me harder not giving up. i squirm around and see his face and his eyes are too wide and his mouth too firm. he is not funny joking daddy he is serious. he looks the way he looks when i have been bad

“Cally, you need to get up.”

i don’t understand. daddy looks like he is mad at me but it is too early for me to have done anything yet. his voice is soft and careful and kind but his face does not match.

what?

daddy drags me out of bed and leads me downstairs by the hand. i am sleepy and muddled as he stuffs my feet into my wellies and pulls my arms through my coat. i am also very frightened. i don’t understand anything. our house is all dark. all the lights are switched off. it is way way past bedtime. all the normal rules have gone bye-bye. is this a dream? am i awake?

“daddy, what’s happening?”

daddy does not answer. his face is like stone. he is concentrating like when he cleans peoples teeth. i am very frightened now. i am worried this is a punishment for all the bad things i have done and am still to do. the world is topsy-turvy. i feel like i need to bend down and hold onto the grass to stop me tumbling into the sky when it all topples over.

i feel even worse when daddy opens the front door and takes me outside. why are we going out there? there is no reason for anyone to go out there. i dont want to go outside into the nasty cold dark. i’m so confused and scared now that i forget to cry. my feelings cant keep up with my questions.

now daddy is leading me towards our car. where are we going? i decide to try again

“daddy what’s happening?”

daddy answers: “Your mummy’s not well.”

“has she got a cold?”

“No, Cally, she can’t breathe.”

“what?”

Daddy stops. “She can’t breathe.” he shows me breathing in and out. “She can’t get any air.”

he pulls me to the car. i go to the back door but he pulls me to the front instead. i feel badness in my tummy. ive always wanted to sit in the front seat but the front seat is only for big boys. now i am finally sitting in the front seat but i am so scared and confused that i cant enjoy it. daddy puts me in the front seat and clips my seatbelt and closes the door behind me.

suddenly i know why i am so frightened. its because mummy is missing. she will explain everything. once mummy shows up it will all be okay again.

outside daddy is fumbling to lock the front door. i sit in the too-big front seat swinging my legs and wondering why.

then something wheezes behind me.

the noise is a bad noise. it sounds like someone squeezing the air out a broken accordion. it rattles and bubbles and scrapes like boot heels on concrete pavements. i feel horror all over. i am almost too scared to crane my neck and look behind me.

almost

i shake all over as i turn in my seat. and i go cold all over when i see what is in the back seat. who is in the back seat.

its mummy

mummy is lying flat on the seats at the back of the car. her eyes are closed. her mouth is flapping open like a landed fish. in the moonlight her skin looks blue. she looks like something half-alive. she is hurting but i am too scared to help. too scared to think.

but that’s not the worst part

the worst part is that she is the thing making the horrible noise.

and now i am more frightened than i have ever been before. this is the scariest thing i have ever seen. scarier than any monster under the bed i have ever imagined. this makes strange angel voices seem like nothing at all. i am so scared i cannot squeeze out tears. all at once i now know that the world is not a safe and kind and sensible place. that nothing is really under control. that everything can be turned upside-down in an instant.

my head is filled with white noise. i reach out to hold mummy but my seat belt holds me back. i don’t even know if she knows i am there.

across from me the door opens and daddy climbs in the drivers seat. he looks at me and his expression is too complicated to read. too grown up.

“Okay, ” daddy says. “Here we go.”

he turns the keys in the ignition as i tremble in my chair and mummys breath rasps in her throat. and we reverse out the driveway and speed off into the late late night.

***

What really happened was that my mum had an asthma attack, and a pretty bad one at that. I’ve been hospitalised from asthma once or twice, but even at my worst I was still able to walk and stay upright. Whatever triggered my mum on that strange night long ago could have easily killed her.

I know in retrospect that my dad, instead of calling an ambulance, managed to get his weak and wheezing wife into the car and drive down to the end of the road to the local fire bridge. They had a ready supply of bottled oxygen to hand, and dad reasoned in his panic that this was closer than the hospital, and thus a better bet. I’ve no idea if that was a sensible or stupid decision, but my mum is still alive and breathing well now, so it can’t have been a complete non-starter.

If the above description has horrified you as much as it horrified me, you can take solace in this: going on an impromptu visit to the fire brigade after lights out was pretty much the most exciting thing to have ever happened to me. Ask any three-year-old and they’ll agree that this is the Great British Night . I was a massive fan of Fireman Sam at the time, my Playmobile fire engine was my most prized possession. So, to actually stand in their actual base of operations was literally a dream come true. I even got to wear one of their yellow helmets, although I was gutted to learn there was no pole to slide down.

I do think the word ‘trauma’ is overused these days — referring to any and all unpleasant experiences folk have the misfortune to suffer. But I do think that anyone can agree that this is the real deal. This is old school. This experience did me measurable harm, even if it was totally blameless and utterly unavoidable. There is something about this memory — the chaos and confusion and the terrible dread — that actually makes me regress just thinking about it. I can’t, even now, even be sure it wasn’t a nightmare. No child should ever have to look into their mother’s cold, blue face in the middle of the night, and that she could simply stop, forever, at any moment at all.

She could have died, and I knew that. I knew and understood it in an instant and I still think about that, even now.