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‘Did she fall? Hit her head?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Any history of seizures, epilepsy, fainting?’
‘No.’
‘Is she allergic to anything – peanuts, bee stings, shellfish, eggs?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
I feel stupid and useless because I have no answers. We ate fish and chips and ice cream. Evie had a double scoop – chocolate and fudge sundae. I had hazelnut and vanilla bean.
The paramedic is looking for needle marks or bruises or abrasions. She claps her hands loudly in Evie’s ear. She holds up Evie’s arm and lets it drop.
‘Is she your daughter?’
‘We’re friends. We share a house.’
This earns me another odd look, as though I’m already guilty of kidnapping a child.
The ambulance is moving. Evie’s eyes are open, but there’s no spark of recognition or emotion. Her breath is warm, her skin is soft, her lips are moist. At any moment, I expect her to reach up and brush hair from her eyes or make some inappropriate comment.
Each time the ambulance slows at an intersection or for traffic, the siren becomes louder, as though the sound is catching up and chasing us again. I’m holding Evie’s hand and the paramedic continues monitoring her vital signs – her oxygen levels and blood pressure. She types the details on a computer tablet.
At the hospital, the rear doors swing open and trolley wheels unfold and rattle across the pavement, carrying Evie through the entrance. The waiting area is crowded with the burned, bleeding, broken and feverish, as well as the clumsy, drunk, stoned and unlucky.
Evie is taken to an annexe room where I answer the same questions from a male doctor, who has the same pencil torch, which he shines into Evie’s eyes. He taps a reflex hammer against her knee.
‘Does she have any next of kin we can contact?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘Do you have any proof of her identity?’
‘She has a driver’s licence, but I don’t know where it is.’
He scrapes the bottom of her bare left foot, looking for her toes to curl. This is called the Babinski reflex – a neurological test developed more than a century ago. He passes smelling salts beneath her nose and jabs parts of her body with a needle, checking her pain receptors.
Scrawling a note on a chart, he turns to leave.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘We have a neurologist on call. I’ve paged her.’
Twenty minutes later, they move Evie to another room. She is lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.
‘Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?’ I ask.
She doesn’t reply, but I keep talking. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t waiting for you. What did the psychic say? Did she tell you your future?’
Through the partially opened blinds, I see more ambulances pulling up at a separate entrance. The bodies from the beach are being delivered to the mortuary. They are quickly taken through swing doors, out of view from the TV cameras and photographers who are milling outside.
In the waiting room, nurses and patients have gathered around a TV. I join them as a grey-haired announcer delivers the news.
‘At least seventeen migrants, including women and children, have drowned off the coast of Lincolnshire while trying to reach Britain in a small boat. At Westminster this afternoon, the Prime Minister held an emergency Cabinet meeting to consider the government’s response to the tragedy, saying he was shocked, appalled and deeply saddened by the news. In Paris, the French president announced that he would not allow the Channel to become a graveyard and called for a joint European response to the crisis.’
The camera switches to a reporter standing on the beach in Cleethorpes.
