Marina Hyde

Marina Hyde

My first labour was 59 hours long and I watched three episodes of I’m a Celebrity … live during it. To put that into some kind of historic perspective, my waters broke at the moment Gillian McKeith returned to camp with nought stars, leaving the celebrities on basic rations for the foreseeable future, and me suffering contractions every ten minutes. Also, apparently, for the foreseeable future. A situation handled caringly, and eventually chemically, by the sainted Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in west London.

Returning twenty-one months later to the same place, I regarded my next son’s birth, which took place over eighteen hours, as a mere bagatelle. Twenty-four hours later, we took him home, and twelve hours after that we took him to the A&E department of St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. Our tour of London hospitals would, over the next few weeks, take in both the Chelsea and Westminster and Great Ormond Street. To say I love and worship them all would be an understatement; at the time, I would have died for them if it meant my baby could be saved.

What was wrong with him? Forgive the foray into deep clinicalese, but it was eventually established that his insides were all twisted up. It is the only time since the internet has been in our lives that I didn’t look something up to find out more about it. I simply listened, instead, to the cavalcade of angels who worked in neonatal emergencies at those hospitals. And I thoroughly recommend paying attention to people who say things like: ‘We really think it would be best for everyone if you weren’t in the room for the lumbar puncture.’ Also, don’t Google ‘neonatal lumbar puncture’. I still haven’t.

I say that his diagnosis ‘was eventually established’; in fact, it took only two days. Those two days weren’t simply the longest of my life – I firmly believe entire civilisations rose and fell in them, while ice ages swept in and out. I spent those epochs asking everyone from doctors to nurses to cleaners to random people in corridors whether my baby was going to die and was only answered with what felt like an increasingly tentative, ‘Look, he’s in the best place …’

The surgeon, Will Sherwood, at the Chelsea and Westminster, was the first to say ‘No’. No, he wasn’t going to die, because he was going to operate on him later that day. I still don’t know the precise details of what went on during those hours because I was too gibberingly fearful to ask in full.

When we were out of the worst woods, I returned to Google. My search terms were limited to ‘possible to fall in actual love with surgeon’ and ‘possible for husband to also fall in actual love with surgeon’. I obviously resolved to marry Will to one of my sisters and was hugely put out during one of the night vigils with the brilliant nurses when one of them confided that he was spoken for. ‘What a surprise,’ I hissed over the nest of tubes. ‘He’s young, good-looking and his job is SAVING BABIES. I literally can’t believe he’s not single.’ (You’ll note it wasn’t all surgical wins for us: my sarcasmectomy was unsuccessful.)

Nearly eight years on, I can still remember the names of the nurses who helped us, the cleaners who cheered me after night-time vigils, every extraordinary surgeon and consultant – all the people who did so much for us that when you finally leave you honestly can’t believe that you aren’t simply giving them everything you own to say thank you. But that, of course, is the immense and wondrous beauty of our NHS. You just say thank you.

When I told my son about this book, and that I was going to choose this – the jewel in the crown of our myriad family NHS stories – he wondered why I wasn’t going to do the one about when he used the lamp as a light sabre and St Mary’s spent ages picking the glass and burnt skin out of his arm while he chatted to them in his stormtrooper outfit. Two reasons, I said. Firstly, I’m still massively annoyed about that use of the lamp. And secondly, the origin story that enabled him to disport himself with decorative household electrics is – let’s face it – kind of the bigger one.

Interjection from the elder brother: ‘It’s so unfair that he gets to be in the NHS book! I want to be in the NHS book!’ Thoughtful pause. ‘If I cut off my leg, can I be in the NHS book?’ Interjection from the younger sister, after an even more thoughtful pause: ‘If I cut off his leg for him, can I be in the NHS book?’

Thank you, NHS, for performing the daily miracles without which there would be no one to have heartwarmingly violent family negotiations like this. Thank you, NHS, for each of my most beloved little negotiators, all of whom will be making further NHS stories with you their entire lives. But hey, this particular one is his story, and it’s all thanks to you. So thank you, NHS, for my Otto.

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