Page 45 of Watching You
‘Oh my God, oh my God, what are these?’ she shouted, grabbing bottles and reading labels. ‘Painkillers, sleeping tablets, more sleeping tablets …’
‘S’okay,’ Molly groaned. ‘Let me.’
‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ Beth yelled. She charged back into her own bedroom and ripped her mobile from its charging cable before running back to Molly, feeling for her daughter’s pulse with one hand as she dialled 999 while trying to count in her head as she asked for an ambulance and gave their address.
Mol’s pulse was sluggish, weak and erratic. The woman who’d taken the emergency call was trying to give advice shedidn’t need, but Beth couldn’t form the words to explain that she was a doctor. She left the call line open but set the phone on the floor.
‘Stay awake, Molly,’ she insisted, lightly slapping her daughter’s face. ‘Don’t even think about doing this to me.’
An ambulance would take at least fifteen minutes. Molly had stopped groaning and her tongue was lolling from her mouth where her head had fallen to one side.
‘No, no, no,’ Beth chanted. ‘No you don’t.’
She couldn’t get Mol to vomit up the drugs while she was nearly unconscious, but she could be ready to perform resuscitation if it was needed, and it was better done on the floor than a soft mattress.
‘Come on,’ she said, hauling Molly’s dead weight out of bed, then getting her into the recovery position on her side. ‘How long?’ she shouted into the phone.
‘They’re on their way. See if you can keep her awake and don’t leave her side except to let the paramedics in.’
‘Damn it, the door’s locked and bolted,’ Beth muttered. ‘Molly, you hold on. Just a few minutes. Help’s coming.’
She ran downstairs, mindful not to trip and make things even worse, fumbling the lock and the bolt three times before getting it open and leaving the door ajar for the ambulance crew to enter. Sprinting back up the stairs, she was already calling Molly’s name as if she could make her conscious again through sheer force of will. Back in the bedroom, Molly’s eyes were rolling and her breath had slowed to just a few times per minute.
‘Molly, do you remember when you were four and you got lost at the supermarket? You just stood still and called my name, and I found you and you were safe again. That’s all I need you to do now, sweetheart. I need you to concentrate on me. I needyou to believe that if we can just find each other again, I can make you safe. I can make everything better, Mol. I promise I will. I’m your mum, so that’s my job.’ She cradled Molly’s head on her lap and stroked her hair. ‘I know you’re in there, I know you can still hear me. Please just come back and I’ll make you safe again, baby. Let me try. I can’t lose you.’ Her tears splashed down onto her daughter’s face.
As the paramedics charged in, Molly’s pulse faded into nothing.
‘You have to help her!’ Beth said. ‘Please! Please? You have to bring my baby back.’
‘Defibrillator,’ one said to the other. ‘Make sure her airway’s clear.’
The pads were held to Molly’s chest and Beth let her daughter go.
‘Clear.’
The charge made Molly’s body convulse.
‘Still no pulse. Let’s go again.’
Another charge.
Beth looked at the young woman on the floor and saw her baby crawling for the first time. She saw a toddler crying because her favourite toy, Lambie, had been dropped in a shop and tossed into a bin by someone who didn’t understand that a toy, no matter how old and tatty, was still precious. She saw the little girl who looked ridiculously tiny in her uniform on her first day at school, and the young woman who’d long since outgrown the need to wear a uniform by the end of it. And most of all, she saw the girl-woman who had become her best friend, her confidante, her companion, as they had grown together, just the two of them.
Finally she saw the ashen face of end of life, and knew she had failed as a mother. She hadn’t seen the chasm of her daughter’sdespair, had underestimated the need for it all to be over. She saw how thin, how emaciated her daughter had become, and understood the lies she’d failed to decipher about how Mol was okay, doing better, learning to cope.
And before she could be told anything more, Beth Waterfall fell to the floor, unconscious.
Chapter 32
14 June
‘So you’re sure his death isn’t linked to his drug abuse?’ Connie asked. ‘One hundred per cent?’
Dr Nate Carlisle had the decency to consider his position once more before answering.
‘One hundred per cent,’ he said. ‘Mr Campbell’s cause of death was an air embolism in the heart. It takes a bit of work to confirm it, and we were lucky the hospital was careful about not just writing it off as a natural death.’
‘I’m guessing they didn’t want to be responsible for discharging a man who died five minutes later. That would have raised some eyebrows,’ Baarda said. ‘How soon did they call you in after he was found?’
