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‘It’s my fault that he’s so poorly. I should never have left him.’
The words were torn from her as she gazed helplessly at her sick son.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’ Drogo’s voice was calm and firm, his clasp of her hand unexpectedly comforting. She wanted to cling to it, Emerald realised.
The doctor had folded back the bedclothes and unfastened Robbie’s pyjama jacket. On her son’s torso Emerald could see a rash of spots.
‘What is it?’ she asked the doctor anxiously. ‘He’s had chicken pox and measles and—?
??
‘I think the best thing for your son right now, Lady Emerald, would be for us to get him into hospital,’ Dr Salthouse told her, without answering her question.
‘Hospital?’ Her worried gaze lifted to Drogo’s face not the doctor’s. ‘Then it’s…it’s serious?’
Dr Salthouse looked at them both and then said slowly, ‘I can’t say for certain just yet but I think that Robbie may have meningitis. There’s been a small outbreak in the city over the summer, and of course it is contagious.’
Emerald stared at him.
‘Meningitis? But that’s…that’s very dangerous, isn’t it? Children die from it. I…’ One look at Drogo’s face told her that she was right and that he shared her fear.
‘We mustn’t look on the black side, Lady Emerald. We don’t know yet that Robbie does have meningitis and if he does, then we have penicillin.’
‘But I read in the newspapers last week that three children have already died recently.’
‘If I may use your telephone, Lady Emerald, I will arrange for Robbie to be admitted to Ormond Street. They’ll send an ambulance.’
‘I want to go with him.’
The doctor frowned.
‘Lady Emerald and I will follow the ambulance in my car, Doctor,’ Drogo suggested, taking charge.
The unthinkable, and unbearable, was true. Robbie had meningitis, and he was a very sick little boy.
He had been given aspirin to help break the fever, and penicillin to fight against the infection.
‘And if it doesn’t work?’ Emerald had asked the paediatrician at the hospital.
The look he had given her had confirmed what she already knew.
‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’ she had demanded hysterically. ‘My baby is going to die and it’s my fault.’
‘We don’t know that,’ the paediatrician had told her. ‘Meningitis is a very serious disease, yes, but in some children it can disappear almost overnight, leaving them untouched. Others survive the infection but go on to have problems later in life. Yes, there are those who sadly do die, but it is too early to say yet what will happen with Robbie. All I can say is that he is in the very best place now to be helped, and the penicillin gives us a fighting chance of overcoming the infection.’
Emerald had been close to collapse when the doctor had left them. Only the fact that Drogo was there to witness both the effect of her neglect of Robbie and her own weakness as she realised what she had done, kept her from doing so. This was a thousand times worse than the fear she had experienced when she had been the one in hospital.
Sister came bustling into Robbie’s private room in a rustle of starched cotton, her shoes squeaking on the shiny clean linoleum, bringing into the room with her a fresh wave of disinfectant-laden air.
‘Now, Lady Emerald, why don’t you go home and try to rest? We will telephone you in the morning. Visiting hours are—’
‘No. I’m not going anywhere. I want to stay here with Robbie,’ Emerald stopped her immediately.
Sister’s expression firmed. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’
‘I can’t leave him. What if he…?’ Emerald blinked away agonised tears, unable to stop herself looking desperately at Drogo.
‘Sister, you won’t be aware of this, of course, but several weeks ago Lady Emerald approached me to ask if I would co-chair with her a committee she is planning to set up to raise money for this hospital in the name of her late father, my predecessor. Lady Emerald has a particular interest in sick children. Sadly her own brother lost his life at a very young age. I’m sure in the circumstances, as a particular friend to the hospital, it might be possible to allow Lady Emerald to stay here in Robbie’s room with him?’
