And then I cried and you cheered – actually cheered! – and the baby equipment trolley was wheeled out, no need for that now. A normal delivery. A healthy infant. To join all the billions of others on the planet who breathe, in and out, without thinking about it.
The next day your sister sent me a bouquet of roses with gypsophila, known as ‘baby’s breath’, sprays of pretty white flowers. But a newborn baby’s breath is finer than a single parachute from a blown dandelion clock.
You told me once that when you lose consciousness the last of the senses to go is hearing.
In the darkness I thought I heard Jenny take a dandelion-clock breath.
3
I told you already what happened when I woke up – that I was trapped under the hull of a vast ship wrecked on the ocean floor.
That I slipped out of the wrecked ship of my body into the inky black ocean and swam upwards towards the daylight.
That I saw the body part of ‘me’ in a hospital bed.
That I felt afraid and, as I felt fear, I remembered.
Blistering heat and raging flames and suffocating smoke.
Jenny.
I ran from the room to find her. Do you think I should have tried to go back into my body? But what if I was trapped, uselessly, inside again, but this time couldn’t get out? How would I find her then?
In the burning school, I had searched for her in darkness and smoke. Now I was in brightly lit white corridors but the desperation to find her was the same. Panicking, I forgot about the me in the hospital bed and I went up to a doctor, asking where she was: ‘Jennifer Covey. Seventeen years old. My daughter. She was in a fire.’ The doctor turned away. I went after him, shouting, ‘Where’s my daughter?’ He still walked away from me.