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“Isaac?” I scream into our gloomy surroundings, my lungs close to bursting with the effort it takes for me to shout that loud.
I still run, my eyes sweeping this way and that no longer sure whether to look up or down.
“Mum?” Isaac’s voice takes me by surprise when I hear it much closer than I expect.
“Isaac?” Something’s not right. Cold fingers of fear seep into my stomach.
“I’m here.”
I spin one last time, looking for the boy with the voice filled with remorse and fear. My boy.
“Oh my god.” My legs nearly give when I spot him on the damp floor with his face covered with scrapes and mud. In ten paces I’m across the space separating us and grabbing him into my arms. He screams in agony at my touch, and as my eyes rove across him I see his left leg is bent at the wrong angle, a twig sticking out of his leg. Bile rushes into my mouth.
“I’m going to pull the stick,” I whisper, kissing him all over his dirty face and hair. I place my hand on the splinter and give it a tug. Isaac screams like a hit animal in reaction.
“Mum, I don’t think it’s a stick.” Isaac turns white with his words, and I scrabble in the dirt to get closer to the wound. I just thought that if I got the splinter out, I could staunch the blood, but now I see it’s not a stick, it’s Isaac’s bone.
Bile rises rapidly and I swallow the acid fluid back down.
“I’m so sorry, baby.” I keep repeating the words, cradling his head on my lap as I scramble through my mind trying to work out what to do and how to do it. “Okay, I need to move you.” I’m talking to myself really. Isaac is fading in and out, his eyelids fluttering, a frown line furrowing between his eyes.
My voice brings him back and his eyes open a fraction. “My side is sore.”
“Don’t worry, baby, it’s just where you landed.” Tears slip down my face, escaping faster and faster until sobs are constricting my chest.
Think, Amber.
Think, Amber.
Think, Amber.
Running a hand under his left ribs, I try to work out where he hurts least so I can get a hold of him. That’s when I find the pool of blood forming under his body.
My mind goes totally blank as I stare at my sticky red hand. It makes no sense. The leg I can make sense of, the blood is eluding any part of my brain still functioning. Rolling him onto his other side, I try to keep in my cry of devastation when I spy a jagged flint rock that’s sliced Isaac open like a knife gliding through butter.
They say that when you are faced with the impossible, you surprise even yourself, and I cling onto that thought as I rip my jacket off my shoulders using the sleeves to tie tight around Isaac’s ribs, a crude pressure pad that will hopefully staunch the blood flow. Once that’s in place I glance again at the leg. That needs a splint, but where the hell am I going to find something like that?
Come on, Amber. THINK.
Kissing Isaac on the forehead I crawl away for him on my hands and knees, searching for twigs or branches I can use. Finally, after what feels like an age, I find two birch branches that I can snap to the right length. Back at Isaac’s side I place them as carefully as my haste will allow on either side of his leg and then try and work out how to tie them. Eventually with nothing else to use I pull off my boots and wriggle out of my leggings using the flint to hack at them below the knee. I pull back on the shredded remains. It will be of no benefit to Isaac for me to freeze to death because I’m running around a wood in my knickers. Using cautious, shaking fingers I tie the branches around his leg, keeping the natural pattern of the fall. The doctors can fix that, just as soon as we get to the hospital. That final thought fills me with the strength I need to squat next to my boy’s body and lift him into my arms.
I turn us in the direction we came and start to walk. There’s got to be a path somewhere, I’ve just got to find it.
Isaac is heavy and limp in my arms, but I keep going, my determination moving me forward. I keep losing people to accidents. I can’t lose another, not my son.
Mum’s gone.
I lost Freddy for ten years because a freak accident tore us apart.
I will not lose my son.
It’s all I can think.I will not lose my son.
When darkness falls and I can no longer see where I’m going, my optimism starts to fail. Isaac hasn’t opened his eyes for hundreds of steps.
“Wake up, baby," I murmur. "Wake up. We are going to be at the car soon.”
I’m lying, but I know now my parenting rule of never lying to Isaac has been the biggest failure of my life. I’ve always been living a lie with him: never telling him about his dad, even though I could have done; never telling him how much I loved his dad; and then recently, not telling him that he was sharing a home with his dad.
