Emily Maitlis

Emily Maitlis

The thing on Milo’s foot is getting bigger. No one knows where it came from. Or what it is. We have tried ignoring it, cajoling it, prodding it and staring it down. He returns from a school trip – eight hours walking a day – and now it is huge, angry and ugly. It looks like a hostile takeover of the whole big toe.

It needs to be seen.

At the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital it is greeted with something close to pathological ecstasy. They have not been shown a thing like this before. A thing asking to be popped and drained. The very mention makes Milo go white.

‘This is what I became a doctor for,’ the medic tells me, with the excitement of a kid who’s just won a day out at Alton Towers. It is almost certainly not true, but I am loving his enthusiasm. The nervous fourteen-year-old at my side, meanwhile, is burying his fears in sulky teenage nonchalance. He is inscrutable. He cannot meet their gaze. He gives nothing away. And somehow the doctors manage to find this endearing too. Milo has the lowest pain threshold of anyone I know. He was born early, which probably has no bearing on anything whatsoever, but it’s what I tell myself when I see him clench up with anguish. We have shouted down entire GP surgeries at the prospect of a flu jab. The vaccination needle has machete-like proportions in Milo’s mind.

This time, it is inconceivable a doctor will take any instrument to his foot. I look between the doctor and Milo. I look between Milo and the doctor. There is a quiet stalemate where we all ponder, in slow motion, what could happen next.

Then, into the growing silence, someone mentions laughing gas. I forget if it was the doctor himself or the bemused nurse at his side, watching her young patient’s stern, unyielding face.

Within moments, a cylinder is rolled into the room. It looks big enough to inflate 500 helium balloons. Milo’s interest is piqued. This is a story he can take back to his friends. He is now genuinely curious to see what it can do.

They place a scuba-like breathing apparatus over his face. All I can see of it is furrowed eyebrows and sceptical eyes. He breathes. The furrow goes. And the jaw relaxes. He reaches for my hand. Yes, my hand! For the first time in a decade he wants to hold my hand! I refuse to believe it is drug-related. He is just feeling particularly tactile right now.

Then the first bubble of laughter washes over him. And the next. He is now holding my hand more firmly and gently swinging my arm, as if we are off for a summery stroll in the park. He’s almost ready for a full-on hug. There are little sighs and gurgles. More giggles. This child is having the time of his life. I want some.

The doctor has meanwhile set to work on the foot thing. He works with a speed and intensity that suggests there is an optimum length of time for laughing gas inhalation. Too much and the patient can end up turning a bit green. Milo and I have entered a new land: we are Dorothy finding Oz, we are linking arms and trotting along with lions and scarecrows and poppies and lollipops.

How we laugh! The anecdotes we tell! The memories that surface! What a time to be alive!

I am brought back to the room by the sound of a rather surprising pop followed by an actual eruption. There is now essence of toe on the doctor’s scrubs. And a look of utter satisfaction on the doctor’s face. Milo has felt nothing. Giggling. Reminiscing. Hugging. In his own little laughing gas world. And within minutes it is all sewn back up. Stitches, sterilisation, bandages. The neatest package of toe I have ever seen.

‘Milo,’ I say tentatively, ‘it’s all done. This brilliant team have done it. You’re done.’

But Milo is not quite ready to give up the gas yet. It has to be gently but emphatically prised from his tight grip. There is no hurry, the team tell us. Take your time. But Milo is in danger of taking this too literally. He seems happy to settle in for the rest of the afternoon. When he realises the cannister is on wheels he suggests we perhaps take it home.

Finally, it is me, comically, who boots my own son from the hospital bed where he has managed, against all the odds, to have the time of his life during the most skilful, professional, efficient piece of outpatient surgery I can ever imagine.

I am trying to find our team to say thanks. It has been bewilderingly fast, effortlessly empathetic and highly impressive. But they have already moved on seamlessly to the next kid with a dodgy something else.

‘Come back for a check-up on Tuesday,’ we are told at the outpatients’ desk. ‘We can change the dressing with laughing gas again, if you need it.’

And at this, Milo instantly perks up. We’ll be back.

Like Arnie, essentially. But with a slightly lower pain threshold.

⇐ Предыдущая 36 37 38 39 404142 43 44 45 Следующая ⇒