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Pete

Pete feels light-headed at the thought of how close he came to almost missing her altogether.

A couple more steps and he would never have seen her, tucked away like that.

He presses his hands over his eyes for a moment.

He doesn’t know what it was – instinct or something else, something more …

spiritual – that made him pause as he approached the old oak tree besidethe stream, just before the path rounds the last corner back into theforest, but he prays his thanks to a god he doesn’t believe in that he did.

It was the lettering on the M she seems smaller than ever, if that’s at all possible.

Her face is hidden by the oxygen mask, and as the doctors rush her into a private room Pete feels as if he has lost all control for the first time in his life.

‘Mr Maxwell, please.’ A nurse firmly stops him at the door to the room where they have Erin, one hand up to prevent him from entering.

‘You can’t come in here.

I have to ask you to move to the waiting area.

’

‘You don’t understand.

’ Pete’s voice is croaky, his throat dry and sore from shouting for Erin.

‘That’s my baby … Erin, she’s my daughter.

’

‘I’m sorry.’

Behind the nurse, Pete sees a doctor tilting Erin’s head back, a thin tube being pushed down her tiny throat.

His own throat closes over and once again he feels the threat of tears.

The nurse firmly closes the door behind her, and Pete moves to the small window to the side of the room.

There is no way he’s going to sit on some plastic chair in the middle of a waiting room full of sick people.

He needs to be here, needs to keep his eyes on Erin at all times.

He’s let her down enough tonight; there’s no way he’s letting her down again.

Pete watches helplessly as the nurses attach sensors to Erin’s hands, wires trailing to a machine beside the bed.

More pads are pressed onto her tiny chest, and Pete is struck by how white and waxy her skin looks as the doctor attaches the pads to another machine and a high-pitched beeping fills the air, constant and repetitive.

A nurse taps the end of an empty syringe and then inserts it into Erin’s arm, and Pete’s eyes follow the line Erin’s blood makes along the attached tube into a small vial.

Pete feels almost woozy as he watches the nurse draw Erin’s blood, a thick, dark maroon, a shocking contrast to the paleness of her skin.

He feels it again: that overwhelming sensation that he has lost control of things for the first time in his life.

Even with Vanessa telling Natalie about their affair, he still thought he could fix things – could take control of the spiralling situation – but not now.

Not over this. Pete presses his forehead to the window, the cold glass welcome against the heat of his skin, as a metallic taste fills his mouth.

The taste of fear.

All he can do is wait.