Page 117 of Marley
“George and Maca were on the pavement outside a baby shop on Brentwood High Street.” He started. “I don’t know the exact details, Milo’s still with the police, but a car came up onto the pavement and hit them.”
He started to cry. I squeezed Ashley’s hand as she started to cry too. I don’t know if I started or if I was already crying. I don’t know. I don’t know. Idon’tfucking know.
“Marls, it’s not good. It’s so not fucking good.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God,” Ashley chanted from beside me.
“He’s gone, Marls. Maca’s gone. They’re keeping—” He cried and cried and cried. We all cried. I hurt. Everything hurt. My insides, my outsides, my breath and my soul. It all hurt.
I wanted my babies. I just wanted go home and hold my babies. I wanted to go to my house, hold my wife and kids, and lock out the world.
“They’re keeping Maca alive on life support until George is out of surgery. She has massive internal bleeding. She’s lost the baby. She’s lost the baby and they’re just trying to save her now.”
“No.” It just came out of my mouth. “No, tell them no. Don’t save her. They mustn’t save her, Len. She won’t want that. They need to let her go. They need to be together.”
Before he replied or I said any more, my parents arrived with Bailey and Jim. Everyone was crying. Everyone was hurting but it didn’t change anything. All the tears, all the pain, all the love in the world. None of it changed anything.
When Georgia was brought out of surgery, I volunteered to be the one to tell her what happened. I brought Maca into her life that sunny August day back in 1980, and I’d be the one to take him away on that bitterly cold December day in 1999.Nineteen years. They’d lived, laughed, loved and cried more than most do in a lifetime, but they’d only known each other for nineteen years.
My mum insisted that we were all there when George woke up, but I should be the one to tell her.
She opened her eyes and looked straight at me. I gave her a chance to get her bearings, remaining silent until she was fully conscious.
“A car hit us, Marls. A fucking car came up on the pavement and hit us.” Tears rolled down the side of her face and into her ears as she spoke. She was hooked up to blood and fluids and had wires on her chest, as well as a blood pressure monitor that kept tightening automatically. The bed she was on was huge, and she looked so tiny.
“Porge—”
“Where’s Sean, Marls? Is he with Beau? Did they have to do a C section? Can they get me a wheelchair so I can see him?” Her jaw and lip trembled. She knew ... she must know.
“Porge, they had to operate.”
“To get Beau out?”
“Yes Porge, they had to operate to get Beau out, but he didn’t make it, baby girl. He didn’t make it.”
She let out a sob. It came from her throat, her chest, her DNA. It came from every part of her being and it echoed through every part of me.
All I could hear around us were tears; tears rolling down cheeks, tears being held back, tears that would never stop.
“Where is he, Marls? Is Sean with him?”
“No, no, no.” I knew that was my my mum without even looking around.
“It’s okay, Mum. Sean’ll keep him warm till I see him. We’ll get through this. There’ll be more babies.”
I heard the door to the room open and close and I assumed that it was all too much for my mum. Instead, a nurse and a doctor approached the bed, the nurse took Georgia’s hand.
“Mrs. McCarthy, are you aware of what’s happened with your baby? Has everything been explained to you?” The doctor asked.
The nurse let go of her hand and put a tissue in it. George wiped her nose and nodded at the doctor.
“Very good. Well, we have a policy at this hospital of giving the parents time to grieve and the opportunity to spend time with their child. Is that something you would like to do?”
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’d like to see him.”
“Well we’ll get that arranged for you then.”
The nurse and Doctor leave and we’re all left to destroy what’s left of Georgia’s heart.
