Maisie let out a soft cry. Meningitis. A parent’s worst nightmare, for the disease moved so quickly and aggressively.
‘Are you at home?’
‘Yes.’ Maisie gulped back a useless sob. ‘But I’ll come now. Just tell me which hospital and I’ll come right away.’
Maisie knew she was in no fit state to drive. Twenty minutes later the taxi she’d called pulled into the paediatric unit of the nearest hospital, Maisie’s heart thudding harder than ever. Antonio met her at the doors, ushering her quickly inside.
‘How is she? How did this happen?’
‘She’s stable at the moment—’
‘At the moment?’ Panic clawed at Maisie’s insides. She couldn’t lose Ella. She just couldn’t. ‘What does that mean?’
‘She has bacterial meningitis,’ Antonio said quietly. His voice was steady but his face was taut and pale, his eyes like dark shadows. ‘At least they think she does. It came on so suddenly...’ His voice choked and he took a quick breath. ‘I thought she was just upset because of a cold or teething...’
‘Just let me see her.’ Maisie couldn’t bear to hear any more, not when she hadn’t even seen Ella. ‘Where is she?’
Moments later Maisie stood in front of a bassinet, Ella’s inert body lying in it, tubes snaking out of her. She looked tiny and so very sick. Tears started in her eyes and she brushed them away angrily, too impatient, too anxious to give in to such emotion now.
‘What are they saying, Antonio? What’s the prognosis?’
‘They don’t know.’
‘So she might...she might...’
‘We just have to wait and see, Maisie. She’s got the antibiotics she needs, and it’s just a matter of time to see how she responds, if there’s been any damage.’ An internet search on her phone had informed her of the potential dangers. Brain damage, deafness, death. Maisie closed her eyes.
‘How could you let this happen?’ The question was squeezed out of her, a desperate whisper of the utmost pain. ‘I was gone one day. One day I left her, and now this.’ She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself, and turned away from him, filled with grief and fear.
* * *
‘How could you let this happen?’
The question echoed through the emptiness inside him, reverberating on and on. He’d heard it before, when his mother had heard that Paolo was dead. She’d turned her anguished eyes on Antonio and demanded to know how, and he’d had no answer. No excuse. It was the same now, and to his shame Antonio saw the same anguish and accusation in Maisie’s eyes that he’d seen in his mother’s.
‘How could you let this happen?’
How could he? The one day he’d had sole charge of his daughter, he’d risked her life. Unknowingly, perhaps, but it had been the same with Paolo. His actions, or lack of them, were the direct cause of Ella’s situation. If he’d taken her to the doctor sooner, if he’d considered the signs and symptoms, if he’d acted faster... Instead he’d waited far too long, thinking that Ella had nothing more than a cold. He’d been stupidly lulled into a false sense of security. So stupidly.
He’d thought he was being careful, keeping his distance, but he’d only been protecting himself, not the person—the people—he loved most. He hated himself for it. His selfishness was unforgivable.
‘She hasn’t had the vaccine,’ Maisie said in a leaden voice. ‘They don’t offer it in America until children are older, but I should have thought...going to another country, I should have thought...’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Antonio answered in a low voice. ‘It’s mine. I... I waited too long.’
‘How long did you wait?’ Maisie turned to him, her eyes wide and frantic, and Antonio bowed his head under her rightful judgement.
‘I put her down for a nap and when several hours had passed I went to check on her. She was unresponsive, floppy... I called an ambulance right away, but they took so long to arrive...’
‘Hours, then.’ Maisie hugged herself, as if she was cold, despite the warm air. ‘All it takes is hours.’
‘I know.’ He’d learned far more about meningitis than he’d ever wanted to know as he’d waited for Ella to start to respond to the antibiotics. ‘I know. It’s all my fault.’ Maisie didn’t reply, and that was all the answer he needed.
Once again he’d endangered the life of someone he loved deeply and dearly. Only time would tell whether this would be as devastating and fatal as Paolo’s accident had been.
The hours ticked by, endless and agonising, as Maisie and Antonio waited for news, isolated in their private worlds of grief and fear. Antonio didn’t, in his own wretched guilt, attempt to comfort Maisie, or offer her false words of hope. It surely was not his place, and in any case Maisie barely looked at him. She wanted nothing from him now, and he couldn’t blame her.
Then, finally, in the pearly light of dawn, with both of them nursing cold cups of coffee in a stupor of fatigue and fear, news came.