Within These Walls

Please note: this piece contains descriptions of grief that some readers may find upsetting.

It was seven years ago, just before our son was born, that we first found ourselves within these red brick walls. We sat on sweaty chairs in an underground passage. I lay frozen inside a cavernous MRI machine, every clunk and whirr prolonging the excruciating wait. Richard held my hand. We saw the incomprehensible scan, looked up into the doctors’ serious faces. They shielded our shock and fear behind a plastic curtain, as under the harsh electric lights we tried to reimagine our future.

These steadfast walls became a place of refuge. Blue-lighted to resus in the middle of the night with an unstoppable seizure. Doctors called in from their beds in pyjamas. A choreographed mayhem we’d never experienced before, but which soon came to seem almost normal.

These protecting walls witnessed my shame and kept it safe. My failure and resignation as surgeons placed his first feeding tube; my guilt when I pulled it out; my terror when it could not be replaced. My endless pacing the maze of corridors as he underwent each surgery. My tears of relief, leaning against their cool surface, each time I got the call from recovery.

These clinical walls saw all the medical firsts but missed so many others: his first breath, his first smile, the first time he reached out his arms; his first wobbly tooth, first day at school, first cuddle with his new baby sister. They caught his last breath, but let his spirit escape into the cold winter night to shape our lives still.

These solid walls saw us begin each admission in a panic and end it exhausted but triumphant, his wheelchair wreathed in balloons. They watched us grow a little older, a little wiser, a little braver each time. They became familiar as an old friend: we knew which cubicles were so draughty they needed pillows stuffed around the windows. We knew the workaround route through the basement when the lift was broken; the radiators that never warmed up no matter how much the valve was turned; the world’s worst coffee machine, and the world’s second worst; which nurses made the best tea and toast during a long night in A&E.

We knew their secrets: which wards let you sleep on a camp-bed next to your child’s; which relegate you to the playroom; which are happy for you to curl up in his bed. The room you were taken to when bad news was coming; the random opening hours of the WRVS shop; the one shower that had strong, hot, reviving water; the bed-space where the ceiling once fell in. Some secrets they kept hidden until we needed them: the secluded Meadow Suite, with its fairy lights, cosy cushions, and refrigerated bed.

Our daughters spent their childhood within these centenarian walls: playing under their brother’s cot; breastfeeding in the chair beside it; drawing, sticking stickers, eating biscuits, getting bored; being rocked backwards and forwards in their buggies by a sympathetic consultant on his break. Occasionally we visited on the girls’ own account: one case of stubborn bronchiolitis; one broken elbow. The staff confused – they knew me, but they couldn’t place me: this was the wrong child. I introduced them as “Benjamin’s sisters”.

These poster-covered walls held more than a hospital: a hotel, office, playroom and school, sometimes prison. Within their bounds I applied for benefits, wrote letters, gave newspaper interviews, did my day-job, and video-called my daughters. We learnt new skills: chest physio, tube-feeding, naso-pharyngeal suction, CPR. We acquired a second language, full of strange acronyms and jargon: CPAP, BiPAP, NG, GJ, laparoscopy, omeprazole, pancreatitis, PICC line, TPN. We made new friends: nurses and doctors, cleaners and porters, paramedics, physios, dieticians and pharmacists, patients and families just like ours.

From their creaking windows we glimpsed life going on outside: chattering students, stumbling drunks, loitering traffic wardens, boisterous children, harassed parents. We surveyed the changing weather and shifting seasons: falling snow, fading blossom, autumn leaves and sudden rainbows. The day he died, icicles hung from the gutters. We laughed with clowns, sang with musicians, read stories, painted pictures, hugged gently and kissed hard. On these long-suffering walls we made handprints, drew flowers, spilt coffee, splashed blood, beat fists and wept.

These walls now cleaned, repainted, rebranded, repurposed; some demolished. All traces of the past papered over, destroyed, forgotten. Will the new inhabitants know what happened here? Will they care?

Seven years of our lives, played out within these precious walls. Seven years of birthdays, anniversaries, mother’s days, father’s days, holidays. Seven years of worst fears. Seven years of best times. Seven years of memories.

Within these walls.

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In memory of Benjamin Matthew Davey, 2013-2021, and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, 1895-2021.

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