FOREBODING
In the languid hours of the night, Emily stirred in her bed, the shifting shadows on the ceiling rippling like black water. Not a wink more could she steal; some uncanny dream, now faded and untouchable, and a tangled mass of half-formed worries clung to her. A heaviness pressed upon her chest, suffocating and inexplainable, until tears trickled unbidden down her cheeks. She was lost for a reason. However hard she tried, she couldn’t pin it down; only a creeping sense of looming disaster crawled over her skin.
Emily tiptoed to the cot where her tiny son slumbered. Matthew wriggled in his dream, a smudge of a smile curling his lips, while his mouth made gentle, popping sounds. She tucked his blanket around him, her hands uncertain, and then drifted to the kitchen, where outside the windows, blackness reigned so absolute it seemed the world had been erased.
“Can’t sleep again, Em?” came David’s voice from behind, soft and a shade concerned.
“It’s its happening again,” she whispered, unable or unwilling to explain. “I dont understand, Dave, whats going on with me.”
“Probably the famous postnatal blues, love,” her husband replied with an attempt at levity. “They talk your ear off about it these days!”
“But Matt is nearly six months now. I was never down beforewhys it started now?”
He squeezed her shoulder. “Who knows? Hormones, nervesdont worry. Everything will straighten itself out.”
“But somethings wrong, Dave,” she murmured, pressing closer to him. “Im scared.”
“Itll be alright,” he whispered, folding her into his embrace.
Three weeks tiptoed by as if just out of reach. Then came a phone call from the local surgeryMatthew was due for his six-month check-up, nothing out of the ordinary, a quick run of tests, a visit with the nurse. Still, the ring of the surgery phone unsettled her.
“Is something wrong?” Emily asked, anxiety lodging in her throat.
“Try not to fret, Emily darling, the doctor will explain it all,” answered the nurse, reassuring but evasive.
The doctors waiting room buckled beneath the hush of suffering and anticipation. By the time they were called, Emilys nerves had splintered into sharp fragments.
“Take a seat,” said Dr Pennington quietly. “I need to tell you something. Dont be alarmed, but we do need to run some extra tests.”
“Whats happened?” Emily barely managed to breathe.
“Matthews resultshis white blood cell count is much higher than normal. There are other worrying signs as well. Well need to repeat the bloods, and this time at a specialist unit.”
“Where exactly?” she barely managed to whisper.
“The County Oncology Centre,” Dr Pennington replied.
Emily had no memory of her walk home, only the shattering cold of a path she didnt know she walked. David was already waiting, having ditched work as soon as her message arrived, his face ragged with worry.
“Em, whats going on?”
Tears raced down her face, but she felt as if they belonged to someone else. “Theyre sending us for testing at the oncology centre,” she choked.
He tried to anchor her. “Its just tests, Em. Dont leap to the worst.”
Her voice was tired, a threadbare thing. “It wont stop at tests. I felt this was coming, Dave. Something hollow inside told me, but I couldnt catch its meaning until now.”
Emily clutched Matthew to her chest as she wept, the baby sighing and shuffling in his sleep, unaware of the gathering storm at the edge of his life.
“Acute leukaemia,” intoned the elderly doctor, peering over the top of the charts, “treatment must begin at once.”
Emily cried and cried; reality craned in, monstrous and incomprehensible. Chemotherapy was undertaken while she remained locked outside the ICU. Matthew was silenced in a sterile room, mother marooned behind closed doors.
“Go home, love,” entreated the night nurse. “You cant see him tonight anyway.”
“But what would I do at home without him?”
Eight years had passed since Emily and David had wed, each year drawing out her longing for a child like a wound. Theyd seen specialists, submitted to endless tests, always told there was nothing wrongand yet, Matthew hadnt arrived until the eighth year, rendering his arrival a miracle woven with constant, fragile fear. David cosseted her during pregnancy, forbade any lifting heavier than a mug of tea. The final month was spent in hospitaldoctors ordersagainst the threat of an early birth. The day their boy arrived, they named him for Davids late father, killed in a car crash a few years ago.
“You mustnt name a baby after someone who died before their time,” her grandmother muttered ominously when she heard.
“Nonsense, Gran, its just an old superstition,” Emily waved her off, clutching her little happiness greedily, eager to shield it from clouds.
Now Emily sat at Matthews bedside; the boy, once glowing, had faded, cheeks drained, dark shadows scored into his skin. Her tears were ceaseless. The only way she got past the head of the wards refusals to enter was through a desperate confrontation that ended in a privilegeone that brought the risk of infection to her son. But she could not be elsewhere; her hunger to simply look on his face was too great.
“We dont do such procedures here,” announced Mr Geoffrey Masters, the portly Chief of Oncology, the next day.
“Where do they?” Emily demanded.
“In London, possibly, or perhaps specialists in Oxford. Those are your best chances. But its frightfully expensive.”
“Well find the money. Please prepare everything I need to send.”
Correspondence and test results were sent to a specialist childrens cancer centre in London. An answer came: they could take Matthew, but the cost was more than £200,000.
“Em, even if we sell the flat and the car, well barely touch a fourth of that,” David said, desperation biting at his words. “I put a note up, but it wont be fast.”
“We havent more than two months,” Emily sobbed. “We’ll think of something.”
Friends and strangers, shopkeepers and clerics, staff at David and Emilys workplaces, even the council, pooled together whatever they could. Some offered grants, some handed jars of coins, and still others donated weeks wages. In the end, just over half the sum materialised. But time was a hand pressing at their backs; the choice could not wait.
“You go to London,” David insisted. “Whatever else we get, Ill send it on. Maybe well find a buyer for the flat after all.”
The village hummed with their story, yet the gulf of money that yawned before them was unfathomable here.
With paperwork finalized, Emily and Matthew boarded a train to London. The rituals begantests, pre-op procedures. Emily cast off thoughts of the missing sum. She only dared nurture hope. In a months time, Matthew would be one year old.
In the ward next door, another mother sat by her son, a three-year-old with the easy bruises of his illness. They had lived in a nearby townSally and her son Dannyand by some twist of fate, their stories had entwined. Sally had managed to raise the sum for Dannys operation, but the boys leukaemia was severe and surgery kept drifting out of reach, delayed time and again.
“Dont cry, Em,” Sally urged. “Itll all turn out for you. Youll still take Matthew to the circus, to the zoolast year I took Danny, he just loved the big black bear, stared at him for ages. I didnt know then that he was ill. His first nosebleed happened at the zooI couldnt stop it, was terrified It kept coming back, and when we went in, it was already stage three. I shouldve noticed, how thin he was, how he didnt eat Mum warned me, but I just couldnt see it.”
Emily tried to comfort her. “Dont cry, Sally, well visit the zoo again, all of usyou, Danny, MatthewI promise!”
But Sally broke down, her guilt consuming her. “Its all my fault!”
Nothing Emily could say would undo the past.
A few days later, Danny took a turn for the worse. He was swept into intensive care; Sally not permitted at his side, stationed on the corridor floor, crumpled with misery.
“Come, rest a bit,” Emily begged, helpless.
“I must stay here. Hell know Im close, and itll ease him,” Sally replied, slack-eyed with hope.
Even the nurses sedative did little; Sally watched the walls, wordless and spent, waiting for a miracle.
That evening, David phoned. Emily, holding Matthew close, counting in her heart each trembling minute she still had him, was calmed for the first time since theyd arrived.
“Em, Ive transferred one hundred thousand. Theres no more yet. A young couple came to see the flattheyll let me know in a few days, I dropped the price.”
“Alright,” she whispered, and was cut off by a wail echoing up the corridor. The phone slid from her hand as Matthew awoke and began to cry. She soothed him, tucked him in, and ran into the corridor, already knowing and yet not wanting to believe, as she saw Sally collapse, the world around her fragmenting. Nurses fussed, injections were attempted, but Sally screamed and screamed, her grief unfillable, her eyes two hollowed pits. Emily knelt and held her, tears mingling.
“Sally, hold on,” she wept raggedly. “You must live for Danny!”
“But why should I live now? My Dannys dead. I did this. How can I bear it?” her friend keened, lost.
Emily stayed by her side until the nurses injection brought numbness, leading the empty woman back to the ward.
“Let her rest,” the doctor sighed. “Therell be time to grieve later.”
That night Emily dared not sleep; she sat by Matthew’s side, drinking in his every movement, as if to memorise him for all time.
The next day, Sally appeared at her doorshe looked older by years, the collapse of a single night having undone her. They stood a long time in silent embrace.
“You must have luck, Emily,” Sally murmured as she left. “You still have a chancetake it. I must go lay Danny to rest: the service, the tenth day, the fortieth I’ll put up a stone, and after” she broke off, wiping her face dry. “Read this when Im gone. I cant say ititd break me.” She pressed a sealed envelope into Emilys hand.
Emily nodded mutely, her heart battered. Matthew was rattled away for procedures.
Emily opened the envelope.
“Dearest Emily,” the note began, the writing shaky, “I want your Matthew to live for both our sonsto grow, to thrive, to learn and play and find happiness. Please, when hes older, take him to our zoovisit the great black bear for Danny and let him know. Enclosed are the funds that were for Dannys operation: let them save Matthew. He wouldnt need them now, but perhaps your boy will.”
Emily wept and wept, joy and pain entwined till she could hardly breathe. The operation could go ahead. But the price, she thought, had been too high.
“No need to sell the flat, David,” she told him by phone the next day. “Matthew and Iwell need somewhere to come home to.”
“But what about the money?” he asked, startled.
“We have it now. Everything will be alright!”
He hung up brimming with a certainty revived at lasta faith in her voice that spread like sunlight after a black storm.
Matthews operation took place the day after his first birthday. Emily, like Sally before her, haunted the corridors of the ICU, her hope a precarious thing, but now there was genuine promise. Soon visits were allowed, and eventually they shared a room together, months ahead dedicated to recovery and waiting, a necessary pause. The hardest work, at last, was over; every new sign pointed to hope.
Slowly, Matthew came back to himselffrom dwindling to laughing, from fear to curiosity. He reached for toys, he nibbled on food, and one day, almost as a whisper, tried to say “mummy.” Emily criedher childs life was growing again, resilient and unbelievable.
“Bear!” Matthew exclaimed, pointing a small finger at the enormous black creature pacing its cage.
“Not bearr, love, its bear!” Emily laughed, correcting his pronunciation.
Theyd made it to the city zoo at last, to stand before the very bear little Danny had once adored.
“Hello there, big bear,” Emily whispered, “greetings from Danny.”
Matthew romped and chortled, licked a melting ice cream, rode on Davids shouldersyoud never know the shadows that had trailed their steps. Childhood joys spilled over, the hospital growing fainter behind them like the odd remnant of a mad, impossible dream. Now, sometimes waking in the night, Emily would pad to Matthew’s cot, anxiety flickering, until she heard his calm breathing. The worry would recede. Ahead, a whole life waiteda life rich enough for two boys, one alive, the other forever remembered, both bound by a kindness that had once seemed utterly beyond belief.
