He sat for a while, listening to her moving around in the kitchen. She was singing, and he heard Amy’s voice joining in with hers. He collected the rest of the toys off the floor, adding them to the pile, and wondered whether he should get a proper toy box. Perhaps not. Today might have felt like a new venture, but it was too temporary to warrant anything as solid as the wooden toy box he’d seen in the window of the furniture shop by the park gates.
The smell of cooking drew him into the kitchen. Chloe was chopping tomatoes to add to a bowl of salad, and he could see a large dish of lasagne in the oven. Amy held out her arms to him and instead of just smiling at her and getting on with his job, the way he did with the children at the hospital, picking her up seemed suddenly as if it was his job.
‘Again...’
‘Again?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Again what? I haven’t done anything yet.’
The logic was lost on Amy. ‘Again!’
‘Ah. You mean this?’ He swung her up above his head and the little girl laughed with delight.
‘You’ve done it now.’ Chloe’s face was bright as she looked up from the chopping board.
‘Yeah. She kept this up for half an hour this morning.’
‘And then she was sick on your head?’ Chloe shared the joke with the tomato in front of her, slicing it decisively. Jon swung Amy up one more time then sat down with her on his lap before she could stop squirming and laughing long enough to get out the dreaded word.
‘No. I managed to avoid that indignity.’ Amy hiccupped, and he jiggled her gently and rubbed her stomach.
Chloe turned. ‘You want me to take her?’
That was usually the way. A child got hiccups and either their parents or one of the nurses dealt with it. His job was to deal with the rather more serious issues.
Amy hiccupped again, scrunching her face up. At the moment this seemed just as serious, but rather more difficult to deal with than any medical problem. Living with a child was different from treating them. For one thing, he didn’t get so many breaks.
‘No, that’s okay. Amy and I will deal with this.’
* * *
Amy had been fed, and they’d eaten. Jon had taken the cot upstairs, and Chloe had bathed Amy and put her down to sleep. He opened his eyes, after dozing on the sofa, to find her standing in the doorway.
‘Do you think if I sit down she’ll start crying?’
He smiled. ‘Maybe. Would you like a cup of tea?’ Suddenly it was as if the one thing he’d tried to avoid, becoming a part of the household and living here instead of just sleeping here, had become a reality. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it might be.
Chloe nodded. ‘Yes, thanks.’
She followed him into the kitchen, sitting down at the table while he made the tea. ‘Do you mind my asking? About the Guillain-Barré...?’
‘You mean am I feeling tired yet?’ She grinned, saving him the awkwardness of working his way onto the question that had been bothering Jon for much of the day.
‘Yeah. The last few days have been a break in your routine.’ She must have been worried about Amy, and Hannah. And she can’t have had a great deal of sleep next to Amy’s cot at the hospital.
‘I’m okay. I still have a few after-effects, but they haven’t got any worse.’ Jon shot her a querying look and she grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not keeping quiet about anything.’
‘Okay. Just as a matter of interest, what are the after-effects?’ He put her tea down in front of her and sat down.
‘Sometimes my toes tingle a bit, or the bottom of my foot feels a little numb. But I’ve been pretty lucky on the whole, and I don’t get any pain.’ She leaned forward towards him. ‘Go on. You can ask whatever you like. It’s actually a good thing if doctors know a bit more about it.’
He took her at her word. ‘So what caused it?’
‘I had campylobacter. I’d got over that, and had gone back to work and then...’ She shrugged, taking a sip of her tea.
One of the more common triggers for a rare disease. Guillain-Barré Syndrome was a result of the immune system being triggered by a viral infection and attacking the nerves. First a tingling in the hands and feet, which could spread throughout the whole body, causing weakness, paralysis and pain.
‘I had a fall at work. Lucky really, because there were a lot of doctors on hand and someone recognised the symptoms and called in a neurologist. He ordered an EMG test and before I know it I was in the neuro ward, with about a thousand medical students hanging around, taking furious notes.’
‘I heard you made the best of your audience.’