15
“Look, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t keep an eye out, what I am saying is that for their sake, as well as your own, kids don’t need to be mollycoddled.”
“But how is helping them up and down a slide mollycoddling exactly? And perhaps those parents who ‘hover’ over their kids, as you like to put it, aren’t necessarily trying to keep them safe, but actually want to spend time with them, play with them.”
“Sure, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that...”
“Then why are you ridiculing them? Making fun of people for actually wanting to spend quality time with their kids, when chances are they’ve been out working hard all week and may have barely seen them from the start of one day to the next. But, of course, you don’t have to consider those things, Madeleine, because you’re at home all day—”
“OK, guys, let’s not turn this into a working versus stay-at-home parent situation...”
“Honestly, Gemma, I think you’re taking that piece way too seriously. My point was not that parents shouldn’t play with their kids—that helicopter stuff was completely tongue-in-cheek, as I’m sure most of our viewers can appreciate. But the crux of the article is that for kids, playgrounds have become joyless and safety oriented to the point of boredom. They want to explore, they need to get a bit scraped and cut up now and again... It helps with their development. It reminds me of this discussion I had with one of my friends recently about jelly head—have you ever heard of jelly head?”
“No, but perhaps some of our Morning Coffee viewers have...”
“Well, just in case, it’s this little soft spot on a baby’s head that acts as protection for their skulls—”
“The fontanel.”
“Yes, that’s it, thanks, Anita—I knew there was some fancy medical name for it.”
“Leave it to our author panelist to find the right word.”
“Haha, exactly. Anyway...it fuses up at around eighteen months, I think, but my point is that it’s there for a reason—to safeguard the brain. When they’re at crawling stage, babies need to be hardy, they fall over, crash into things, sometimes even get dropped by their parents...”
“Now, that’s a guilty look if ever I saw one—Madeleine Cooper, are you telling us that you might have dropped one of your own children at some point?”
“Um, guilty as charged, Louise, like many parents watching this morning, I’m sure! But it certainly didn’t do Jake any harm, not that I know of anyway. I suppose my point is, kids are hardy by nature, so there’s really no need for parents to drive themselves nuts worrying. And then of course there was this other time when Clara had just started to crawl... I laid her down on the bed, took my eye off her for a split second and when I turned back hadn’t she rolled off it...”
* * *
I sat in the hallway of the hospital, numbed by what had happened the night before.
I’d honestly thought that finding Greg dead on the kitchen floor two years ago would be the worst thing I’d ever have to endure.
But I was wrong.
Last night, watching the medical team crowd around my convulsing daughter, Rosie’s little body racked by seizures as they worked to stabilize her... The memory of that horrific visual prompted even more tears, when I honestly thought I could cry no more.
Lucy’s face when I finally arrived back at the hospital with Christine, telling me that they’d rushed Rosie to ICU following a sudden onset of multiple seizures. They’d put her on a cocktail of anticonvulsant drugs and back on the ventilator, but it didn’t look good...
Since day one, I had been struggling not to think about the official stats on childhood measles and its complications:
One out of twenty kids came down with pneumonia.
One out of every thousand will develop encephalitis.
Encephalitis can leave a child deaf or with an intellectual disability.
For every one thousand children who get measles, one or two will die.
Die.
A one-in-one-thousand chance. That was the type of odds my little girl was dealing with just then.
I stifled a sob, at the same time wanting to curse someone, something. I was so angry with myself, yes. But I was also terrified. Terrified that I would lose her—my little Rosie—the only thing I had left.
“Kate, you have to think pos—” Lucy began, trying to soothe me as she rushed along the corridor with me, trying to keep up.
“Please don’t tell me that just now!” I raged, tears filling my eyes afresh. “I’m scared to death and trying not to rip off my own skin. I’ve never felt so helpless.”
No, that wasn’t quite true. I’d also felt completely that way two years before when I’d found my daughter screaming in the kitchen right after she discovered her dad’s lifeless body. That was a pretty helpless moment, too.
My heart lurched for Greg, too. If there was ever a moment I needed him, it was then. But of course that wasn’t possible.
I reached the ICU then, frantically searching for Dr. Ryan, unable to believe that something like this could happen the minute I’d left her side.
Why had I left her side? To take a fucking bubble bath...
I thought my brain was literally going to explode while I waited, watching with horror as I noticed the body language and facial expressions of the medical team gathered around her. I knew that look.
Oh, please, God, no...
I can’t even remember being taken out of the room, Lucy’s arm around my shoulders, my body racked with sobs and my brain pounding with sorrow and despair.
Kids are hardy...there’s really no need for parents to drive themselves nuts worrying...
To go through all that, I thought, looking down at my hands to see my knuckles whitening, to spend all of last night watching my little girl fight valiantly for her barely lived life while I could do nothing but stand there, helpless...
She’s only five years old...
To go through all that—a night of utter torture and despair—and now have to hear that woman on TV, jabbering about how kids should be put in danger, that it didn’t do them any harm...
A loud sob escaped from my mouth, and I stared unseeingly up at the TV, fresh hatred burning through my veins.
How dare she? I raged, furiously wiping my eyes. How dare Madeleine Cooper say such a thing, when it was her bad decisions—her downright irresponsible choices—that had put me and Rosie through hell these last few weeks?
How dare she?
I’d heard those stupid voice mails, pathetic attempts at an apology and faux concern by sending balloons, when the truth was the silly bitch couldn’t care less. That woman and her family had simply picked up and gotten on with their lives, as if what had befallen Rosie was absolutely nothing.
And now here she was on national TV, dressed up to the nines with her perfect makeup and bouncy blond curls, being paraded as some kind of parenting expert...
I felt sick to the core. Now I was long past crying and still too numb for grief. The only emotion I felt just then was...rage.
Rage at Madeleine Cooper for visiting this misery on me, just when I’d started to pick up the pieces of my and Rosie’s life after Greg’s death. Rage at the woman for adding insult to injury by taunting me in my darkest hour.
I believe that those same people don’t understand the enormous damage their reckless decisions have caused...
Christine was right: the Coopers should be held responsible for this and be made to face the true cost of their recklessness.
My shoulders shuddered and spontaneously collapsed with another bout of tears.
Because my poor little Rosie was the one who’d ended up paying for it.