Hopefully this part is ok (I did do some research in order to write this as I wasn't sure how plausible it is - but hopefully it's ok). I probably should be some kind of warning on this part. Thanks to anyone reading / reviewing.
"Millie's had an accident" she whispers so quietly, the terror and panic colouring each word she manages to choke out.
"I'll drive you" he feels the panic rise in his own chest. He watches as her face contorts as she considers his offer. She thinks of her own ability to drive, in the state she is in, and how she will be off no use to her child if she ends up crashing her car. But she isn't sure she can face sitting with him in a small enclosed space with nobody else around, and she cannot let him see the child.
"You'll wait in the waiting room" she tells him, and he nods saddened for a moment but it is better than nothing. Silently he snakes an arm around her waist and waits for the moment when she pushes him away but instead she allows him to guide her to his car. He can feel the tension in her at the physical contact between them but still she allows him to lead her. He sees his car, and for a moment he feels a sense of embarrassment, the car is a wreck and he is certain he sees her expression change briefly at the sight of it though she recovers it soon enough. He presses her in to the front seat before he drives away towards the A&E where his daughter lies waiting.
"Jac" Walking through the doors of the A&E department with Jonny by her side, she was almost immediately greeted by Carl Taylor, one of the doctors she had occasionally had to work alongside when she'd been called down to this department.
"Where's Mil?" She doesn't even bother to greet him and Carl nods his understanding that now is most definitely not the time to chat, not that Jac has ever been one for mindless chatter. If it hadn't been for the child's admission to the hospital, he wouldn't even have known that she had a daughter.
"She's through here" he speaks gently, turning in the direction of the paediatric area, taking a moment to look at the man who is standing alongside his colleague; he cannot quite place where he knows him from and yet there is something very familiar about his face.
"Wait here" Jac hisses under her breath at Jonny, just loud enough for him to be able to hear but low enough that it wouldn't draw any attention from anyone else. She follows behind her colleague as he guides her through the maze that is the A&E department, in to the more brightly coloured area specifically designed for the younger patients. He takes her in to a small private room, where on the trolley bed her daughter lies with a teacher sitting by her side. It isn't a teacher that Jac recognises.
"Look Millie, mummy's here now" the teacher speaks softly to the child, who doesn't even seem to react. Instead she stares disinterested at the ceiling, her eyes wide. Jac frowns as she steps closer to her daughter. She tries not to react when she sees the scraps and scratches that cover her daughters face, the white bandage wrapped around her head and the cast that has been formed around her left arm. Bile rises in his throat as she takes in the state of her daughter, but it is the frozen state she appears to be in that shocks her all the more. The teacher too seems unsure by what is going on.
"What happened?" Jac asks finally, turning her attention to the woman whose gaze is flicking between the mother and child. The teacher frowns as she is forced to relive the moment again.
"Millie was playing on the climbing frame – you know how much she loves climbing up and then going down the slide" the teacher smiles a little at the thought. Millie is one of the easiest children to keep track of on the playground, "and I just don't know what happened, one minute she was on the platform, away from the opening and the slide, and the next she was on the ground" the world had seemed to slow to a crawl when she'd seen the child lying on the ground, the screams echoing around her, the reality that the other children had witnessed this and that Millie didn't appear to be moving, that there appeared to be a red pool forming on the ground around the girl's head.
"How did she fall?" Jac doesn't understand. She can picture the structure in her mind, her daughter runs to it each morning to have a play before the school day starts provided they aren't running late, and usually at the end of the day she begs to have one last go before they head for home. The platform is enclosed and it just doesn't make sense.
"I don't know" the teacher answers sadly, shaking her head slightly. It doesn't make sense to her either. She had always thought the structure was one of the safest, even for an adult it would be difficult to fall over the platform boundaries, so for a child as small as Millie it seemed near impossible.
"Was she pushed?!" Jac exclaims suddenly, looking down at her daughter, who doesn't even react to the outburst from her mother. It scares her how the child doesn't appear to have moved beyond the rise and fall of her chest. The teacher swallows hard, she can understand the mother jumping to that conclusion and the flash of anger that has appeared in her eyes at the very idea that someone could have done this to her daughter.
"She was the only one up there" the teacher sighs as she speaks. The only other child who had been playing on the structure was Ben and he'd been sliding down in the moment when she had seen Millie standing up there. Ben had been the first to scream when Millie had fallen, he had been so very close to her in that moment.
"Then how did she?" Jac swallows hard unable to understand how this happened. She looks down at her daughter, at the frozen battered face and sees pain-filled eyes which stare at something that nobody else can see. She doesn't even appear to be aware of what is going on.
"Miss Jameson, I think we need to have a few words" Carl speaks quietly. He hadn't wanted to talk in front of the child, "and I think Jac might like a few moments alone with Millie" he adds gently though he is reluctant to go too far away. The teacher nods and whispers something to the child which is inaudible to Jac before she steps outside with the doctor. Carl leaves the door open slightly, and smiles as he passes the man who had arrived with Jac.
Jac pulls down one of the bed-side rails that keeps her daughter contained within the trolley, before she perches on the edge next to her child. Gently she takes the girl's uninjured hand in her own. She sees how very small it is against her own, and how the pale flesh is scarred by red marks. Tears well in her eyes and she tries to force them away. She doesn't want Millie to see her cry.
"Oh my beautiful baby girl" Jac whispers, squeezing the little girl's hand. She closes her eyes in a vague attempt to push away the tears that are building there, when her daughter fails to respond even to that. She had never known her daughter to be like this, "My little girl in a million" she runs a finger along her daughters cheek, something she did when the girl was a toddler and wouldn't sleep. It had soothed her then, but beneath her touch the child flinches; the first movement she has made since her mother arrived. Jac pulls her hand away confused and looks in to the frozen eyes, which have now shifted and settled on her mother's face.
"What happened Mills?" she asks quietly, not expecting anything from her seemingly frozen child. The girl turns her head back to look up at the ceiling.
"I wanted to go visit daddy" the words are quiet, and it takes Jac a moment to realise that they have come from her daughter's mouth. The voice sounds so distant and strange. A sick feeling rises in Jac's throat as she comes to realise what her daughter is saying.
"You know you can't visit Heaven Mills" Jac whispers the words, and she watches as her daughter closes her eyes, blocking out the blue ceiling with its painted on clouds and birds. The guilt of her lie presses down heavily on her chest, stealing her breath while her stomach churns.
"I wanted to see him" the child repeats, eyes still tightly closed, the hand that Jac had been holding now bunched up in to a tight fist, "Daddy would look after me and protect me. I wanted to be with daddy" the words are still so distant, so strange but there is something in them that scares Jac beyond the implication of her words. She doesn't think Millie fully understands that Heaven isn't a place you can just visit and yet she seemed to know enough to act as she did to get there.
The sick feeling increases and the tears burn her eyes, Jac tries to push it away. To push everything away but it all seems to be building on top of her.
"I just need to go talk to your doctor" she speaks hurriedly and a glance at her daughter, tells her the child has slipped back in to her frozen state once again. Jac rushes from the room and in the direction of the ladies toilets, where she finds herself vomiting in to the toilet bowl. Her face streaming with tears. She doesn't hear the door open and close. She isn't even aware of anyone else's presence.
"You told her I was dead" she isn't aware until she hears his voice.