Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

January. It was cold that fateful afternoon. Dinner was supposedly being cooked, but the Brockman parents were in the middle of a heated argument in the kitchen so the children had retreated to the living room. Jake was on the sofa pretending to read a magazine (really he was trying to catch his parents' "conversation"). Ben was sitting by the new electric heater taking apart the plastic safety covering. Karen went over to see what he was doing.

Years later, Jake would think how it's funny how mundane the world can be a minute before an emergency, or a downward spiral into crisis. 

“Ben, what are you doing?” Karen asked.

“Did you know the heater works by electricity heating up the wires? Metal conducts heat and electricity. Do you want to be in an experiment?”

“What experiment?”

“I want to know what would happen if you put something else metal in there and then switch it on.”

“You would get electrocuted,” Jake said flatly.

“Like if you stick a knife in a toaster!” Ben grinned. “Because a heater and a toaster are basically the same thing except one heats up toast. I have a knife,” Ben picked up a table knife he had smuggled out of the kitchen. “Put it in there,” he pointed at the array of metal filaments inside the heater.

Karen took the knife and jabbed it in. “It’s not doing anything,” she said and wiggled it in further.

“Wait, stop, you’re not actually…” Jake looked up in terror. “Ben! Don’t!” Ben was shuffling over to the switch on the wall and giggled as Jake shouted. Jake lunged at him, but too late.

And then Ben flicked the switch.

The heater usually took a few minutes to heat up, but the electric current was instant. Karen was silent for a second (in that second Jake had landed on top of Ben, pinning him to the floor). Then she screamed an ear-piercing scream. Ben and Jake turned.

Karen’s convulsive grip on the knife handle was so tight her knuckles were completely white. Her eyes were shut just as tightly. She continued to scream.

Their mum burst into the living room, horror in her eyes. Jake snapped out of his shocked silence to shout, “Don’t touch her!” as Sue reached out towards the little frozen screaming girl. He turned off the wall switch. Karen had clearly jammed the knife in really hard, because even as she fell limply to the ground it stayed there.

Ben and Jake scrambled to look as Sue lifted Karen and cradled her on her back. Her eyes were wide open but staring up at nothing and she was limp, unmoving. There was a wet patch on the carpet where she had been sitting. Their dad came in just as Sue shouted for him to call an ambulance.

“Karen, Karen,” Sue said as she rubbed then gently shook Karen’s shoulders, trying to get any kind of response. Jake felt a sick dark dread creep over him as he saw his sister’s blank eyes. Dead? Even Ben was a bit concerned.

“Is she breathing?” Pete asked, home phone in hand.

“I don’t know.” Sue’s voice wobbled. She put her palm in front of Karen’s small mouth and nose. “I can’t tell.”

“Is she dead?” Ben asked.

Jake reached his fingers to Karen’s tiny wrist. “She has a pulse,” he said.

“Ben, go outside,” Sue said shakily.

“She has a pulse,” Pete repeated on the phone. “But she isn’t breathing.”

“But why?” Ben made a puppy face. “I want to see if she’s alive.”

“For god's sake shut up!” Sue snapped at him, her voice breaking.

“Ambulance on their way,” Pete said. “Oh god, look at her lips.” They had turned greyish blue.

“Ben, you could have killed her!” Jake said.

“I didn’t.”

“What did you do?” Pete asked in a low stern voice.

“She wanted to feel electricity,” Ben said.

“You absolute liar!” Jake lunged at him.

“Boys, break it up!” Sue shouted. “What the hell were you thinking, Ben? Why can’t you be normal? Just fucking normal. For once in your life.” Ben saw tears in her eyes. He looked down at Karen again, whose head Sue was cradling close to her.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. Pete grabbed him by the collar of his blue school polo shirt, pulled him upright and half-dragged him out of the room. “Let go of me!” Ben protested.

Meanwhile, Karen took a shaky breath. It sounded like a wheeze. “She’s breathing!” Sue cried. “Karen, can you hear me?” Karen blinked, shifted a little and moaned like someone half-asleep, then her eyes flicked shut.

“Jake, go open the front door for the ambulance.” Jake went to do so. In the hallway, Pete was had Ben pinned to the wall by his shoulder with one hand, phone on the other, hissing a quiet but furious tirade at him.

Jake saw the ambulance coming up the street after he opened the front door, so he stepped onto the garden path and waved with his arms. It pulled up and two paramedics stepped out with bulky green bags of gear. Jake led them inside.

“How old is the patient?” a paramedic asked.

“Five,” Jake said shakily. At the back of his mind he noted that once again he was doing exactly what his parents should be doing instead. But Pete was still having a go at Ben, only stopping to smile awkwardly when the paramedics looked his way.

They entered the living room, introducing themselves, and Karen was moving a bit more, turning her head slowly away from the noise with half-closed eyes.

“She’s breathing now,” Sue told them.

“That’s good. We’ll just put this mask on to get her more oxygen.” The paramedics got out a small plastic face mask, attached its tube to a mini tank of oxygen and held it on her face. Jake stood back anxiously watching as they lifted her onto a small stretcher. They carried her out.

In the hallway, Pete had finished lecturing Ben. He had tears streaming down his cheeks, Jake noticed. “Shall I go with her to the hospital?” Pete asked.

“No,” Sue shook her head urgently. “Remember last time with Ben?” she said under her breath. “I’ll go.”

The paramedics had Karen in the back of the ambulance and hooked up to several machines in there. Sue got in with her and Jake and Pete stood at the front door watching them as shut the ambulance and drove off. The blue lights and sirens came on as they turned onto the main road.

Jake felt numb. “Is she going to be alright?”

“Yeah, she’ll be fine.” Pete sounded like he was trying to convince himself. They stood a moment longer before he shut the door.

Ben was still leaning against the wall, shuffling his feet on the carpet. Remorsefully? Jake wondered.

“You,” Pete pointed a finger at Ben, “are going to go up to your room and stay there.”

“Dad, it’s my fault,” Jake blurted, a bit pathetically. Ben looked at him, surprised. “I… I should have stopped him.”

Pete looked at Jake rather blankly, processing. The statement did not compute. “No, Ben has to learn his lesson. He has to learn he must not mess around with electricals or chemicals or fire, anything dangerous.”

“Yeah, Jake should have stopped me,” Ben said. “He’s older and more responsible.”

“Ben, you can’t blame others for your behaviour. You have to grow up!” Pete’s voice raised to a furious shout.

Ben’s face furrowed and darkened then. “I hate you!” he yelled in his childish high-pitched voice. “I hate you I hate you I hate you!” He punched the wall with each tiny hand before storming through the kitchen and out the back door. He slammed it behind him.

Jake ran his hands over his face and through his hair. What kind of messed up family was this? He was the most responsible adult and he was only eleven. Karen’s scream and glazed eyes played back in his mind. Without a word or even glance at his dad, he went upstairs to his room.

Jake laid face down on his bed and sobbed.

*

Sometime later he emerged from a comatose-like state and found himself lying on his bed in his now dark bedroom. He had no idea how much time had passed, whether he had slept or blacked out or simply forgotten. He was starving after missing dinner. Dad probably ate, he thought as he crept downstairs.

“Have you heard anything from mum?” he asked Pete in the kitchen.

Pete looked up from his laptop. He hadn’t heard Jake some down the stairs. “Yes, she says Karen is doing well and they’re running some tests on her.”

“Tests for what?”

“I don’t know, really. General things like brain scans, heart monitoring.”

“Have you seen Ben?”

“He’s in the living room.”

Jake took some snacks from the cupboard (crisps, biscuits) and found Ben sitting on the living room floor. He was surrounded by Karen’s soft toys and building on his elastic band ball.

“I’m going to make this elastic band ball so big, when I throw it at dad he’ll get a brain injury and die,” Ben said.

Jake realised all of a sudden that neither of his parents heard Ben tell Karen to stick the knife in the heater, or saw him switch it on. They simply assumed he was 100% guilty with only the slightest evidence, as always.

“Have you had dinner?” Jake asked quietly.

“Nope. Dad wouldn’t give me any.” He sounded almost proud of it, like he’d made an accomplishment of being naughty, but Jake knew that was a façade.

Jake split the snacks between them. They ate in silence.

Chapter Text

In the ambulance, Sue tried to explain what had happened.

“I only turned my back for five seconds and suddenly she was screaming,” she said.

“There was a knife sticking out of the heater, can you explain how…?” the paramedic asked.

“Yes, erm, her brother Ben must have taken it from the kitchen but I didn’t see that. Then she went and poked it in the heater.”

“And the heater was switched on.”

“Yes. I swear I can’t with these kids, it only takes a second for them to injure themselves when I’m not looking. I can’t handle them.” Especially Ben, she thought. But she held back from saying that out loud.

“Well, it seems her heart rhythms are normal, but she’s still in a semi-conscious state and her oxygen still low. When we get to A&E they’ll probably just put her on an IV and oxygen and run some tests,” the paramedic said.

Suddenly she was interrupted by an alarm beeping from somewhere amongst the tangle of medical equipment and wires.

Karen was completely still and her face pale white underneath the oxygen mask.

“Pulse is unstable,” the other paramedic, the man, said. “Looks like delayed ventricular fibrillations. We’re nearly at the hospital, luckily.”

“What? Is she going to be ok?” Fear crept back into Sue’s voice.

The alarm went up a tone, beeping more urgently. “She’s going into cardiac arrest. I’m radioing A&E to let them know.”

Just then the ambulance pulled up outside the Accident & Emergency department of the children’s hospital. The paramedics rushed to open the ambulance door and get Karen’s stretcher down. There were already a couple of hospital medics there to assist at what looked like a side entrance to A&E. “Get her to resus!” one of them called. They ran pushing or pulling Karen’s stretcher through the doors.

Sue followed anxiously but cautiously behind the crowd of medical professionals. She wasn’t sure she wanted to witness what was happening. Inside, in a medical bay marked RESUS 1 on the wall, Karen was now lying on what looked like a surgical table. They had cut her school polo shirt open and put wired sticky pads on either side of her chest.

“Clear,” one of the doctors said as they all stood back from the table.

The defibrillator ran a counter-electric shock through Karen’s heart, causing her torso to jerk upwards convulsively, then relax. One of the monitors showed her pulse return to normal rhythm, with a slow beeping.

“Karen,” Sue whispered. She felt like she had been zapped herself. Tears spilled over her eyelashes and she let out a breath that she didn’t realise she had been holding.

“Pulse stable but slow,” the doctor said, “and she’s hypoxic.”

“Increasing oxygen flow rate,” a nurse said, adjusting the valve at the top of an oxygen tank.

“Cheers, that’s us then,” the paramedics thanked the hospital staff and headed towards the door. Sue was standing rigidly still in the doorway. One paramedic put a hand on her shoulder. “She’s in good hands. They’ve stabilised her now. All the best.”

After the paramedics left, a doctor told Sue they would take Karen up to the cardiac ward as soon as they found a bed for her. “Now, can I take the patient’s details and medical history?” the nurse said. He got some forms and Sue tried to collect herself as she spoke to him.

“Patient’s full name and your name?”

“Karen Rose Brockman, and Sue Brockman.”

“Address?”

“19 Keely Road.”

“Does she have any medical conditions or take any medication?”

“No,” Sue said.

“Ok. Can you come with me to reception? We’ll pass these forms to them and so on.”

The nurse stayed at reception after handing over the documents getting Sue to fill in contact forms. Then she was told to wait in the waiting room. “Can’t I stay with my daughter?” she asked.

“Sorry, there are a few things we need to check and we need you to stay here.”

The waiting room was noisy, with children crying and whining. The parents tried to console or distract them but looked exhausted. One mother, sitting with a sullen girl about 12 years old, looked sympathetically at Sue as she sat down near her.

“Are you alright?” the woman asked.

Sue put her face in her hands. “I don’t know.” Tears welled up again. “My daughter… ugh…”

“There, there.” The woman reassured her with a gentle touch.

“She’s in resus still,” Sue sniffled. “They said they needed to check some things while they put her on the cardiac ward.”

“Oh no! If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?”

“I’d rather not talk about it. But I can’t believe they simply dumped me out here when I could be with her.” Sue tried to keep looking extremely upset. But inside, the upset was being replaced by paranoia. They wanted to talk to her. What about? What did they know?

About five minutes later, the receptionist called out “Sue Brockman.”

The same nurse as before was there at the desk.

“We’d like to have a little chat with you,” he said. He took Sue out into a quiet spot in the corridor. There was a woman waiting there.

“Hello Mrs Brockman, I’m Adele Sharp. I’d like to know about what happened this afternoon.”

Sue froze. “Sorry, who are you?”

“I’m a social worker with London social services. Can you tell me what events led to Karen’s injury?”

“Well I… sh-she was electrocuted,” Sue stumbled over her words. Her heart was racing. Social services were on her case now?

“And who was with her at that time?”

“I was,” Sue lied. “And her brothers were there. My husband was in the kitchen.”

“Ok. And none of you prevented her from being injured?”

“I turned my back for just a few seconds,” Sue emphasised indignantly. “You know what young children are like. It could have happened to anyone’s child.”

“Ok.” Adele said “ok” very blandly, like she didn’t believe it in the slightest. “The paramedics reported you told them you have difficulty handling your children’s behaviour. Is that true?”

“The paramedics have reported me? I’m sorry,” Sue said, obviously not sorry, “I didn’t know they were scrutinising my every word in the back of the ambulance.”

“Actually, it isn’t just the paramedics. I also heard that your son Benjamin has been admitted for injuries several times over the last few years.”

“He is a hyperactive seven-year-old boy, of course he hurts himself occasionally.”

“But he didn’t exactly cause the injury himself when your husband swung him by his ankles, did he?”

“He likes being swung by his ankles. He asks for it. My husband had this conversation here before, we are not abusing our children!”

“Mrs Brockman, I don’t think there’s so much sign of abuse but there are signs of neglect. As such, I have been allocated your case. I will need to make a house visit within the next two weeks to assess the situation. Can we arrange a suitable time when all household members will be at home?”

Sue steeled herself. “No. There is nothing like that going on in my family. We are perfectly fine.”

“I must warn you, if you don’t agree to a house visit within the time frame then I will have to involve the police.”

A moment of silence passed. “Fine then. How about the 18th?” That was two weeks away exactly. Enough time to figure a way out of this.

“Perfect. Here’s my number,” Adele passed a business card to Sue. “I already have yours. I shall see you then at 9 am.” The social worker left.

“You may see your daughter on the ward now,” the nurse said.

Chapter Text

The next morning Pete and Sue told the boys to walk to school so they could drive to the children’s hospital to visit Karen.

“Can’t we come too?” Ben asked. “Please please please please.”

“No,” Pete said. “You’ve done enough damage. No more.”

“Come on, we have to see her,” Jake whined, “she’s our little sister!”

Sue said, “I think it’s alright if they come. I can phone school and explain.” If we can make an impression to that nurse that we look like a functioning family, she thought, he might report a positive word to the social worker.

“After what Ben did?” Pete raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe if he saw the damage he’s done he’ll learn better,” Sue glared.

“Alright. You do that. I have to send some emails.”

“Jake, can you phone the high school while I call Bishop Bridge Primary?” Sue said.

“What, and explain myself why I’m not going to school?”

“Just do it, Jake.” Sue was already out of the kitchen.

Jake sighed and called the school on his mobile.

*

At the children’s hospital, Sue checked in at reception and took the boys and her husband up the stairs to the cardiac ward. The walls were painted with bright colourful animals and cartoon characters.

“Wow look at Winnie the Pooh, he’s massive!” Ben said loudly. “And there’s Batman!” He started to run across the ward.

“Ben, come back here!” Sue managed to shepherd him away from the other patients’ beds.

The curtains were drawn around Karen’s bed, where she was sitting playing on a kiddie tablet. She was wearing a patterned red, yellow and blue hospital gown and had a cannula in her nose and an IV in her arm. Her blonde hair was tangled and messy.

“Hi Karen,” Sue said quietly. “Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes. But it was all yucky and sloppy so I didn’t eat it. Mummy, can I go home?”

Ben said, “I thought you died. You went all blue and floppy and like-” he pulled a face with his eyes wide and unfocused and his mouth hanging open. “And you wet yourself.”

“That’s enough, Ben.”

The nurse from the day before peeped around the curtain. “Mr Brockman, is it?”

“Yes, hello.” Pete gave Sue a look saying silently, what does he want?

“Good to see you all here together.”

“He’s the one that gave me yucky breakfast!” Karen pointed.

“Karen, don’t point,” Sue said. The nurse only smiled then went away.

“They didn’t recognise our surname, did they?” Pete asked Sue.

Sue pursed her lips. “Nope. Not at all. I’m going to grab a coffee. I’m shattered.”

“Sure. I’ll come with you,” Pete said.

“Mummy! I want to go home!” Karen shouted.

“Ssh, later,” Sue tried to hush her. She and Pete stepped outside the curtain.

Jake sighed, for what felt like the millionth time that morning. “I think you’ll be going home today,” he said. “Mum says you’re getting better.”

“Look, there’s bubbles in it,” Ben grinned. He had squeezed Karen’s IV bag and made little bubbles form.

“Er, I don’t think that’s good,” Jake said.

“What does this button do?”

“Don’t press that.”

Ben pressed it and Karen’s hospital bed started to tilt forwards. “Hey!” she said. “Stop it!”

Jake managed to stop it. “Can you please stop messing around, you’ll get in trouble again.”

Ben frowned, thinking. “I get in trouble anyway,” he said.

“Well, messing around doesn’t help.”

“When are mummy and daddy coming back?” Karen asked.

“Soon,” Jake said. He’d picked up that answering technique from his parents.

“I feel funny.”

“Ben, don’t swing on the curtain, you’ll break it!”

Ben tried to climb the curtain instead. One of the curtain rings broke with a satisfying snapping sound. He turned to face Jake, then saw Karen, and let go of the curtain and pointed.

“Look, she’s being electrocuted again.”

“Yeah very funny, I’m not falling for that.”

“No, she really is!”

Jake looked and saw Karen convulsing on the bed. Her lips had turned pale blue again and her arms and legs shook, her face twitching and making bizarre expressions.

“Shit!” Jake said under his breath. He had never seen anything like what was happening to Karen before. He dashed out of the curtain and shouted, “I need a doctor!”

The nurse from before headed towards him. “What’s wrong?”

“Karen’s…” Jake didn’t know how to describe it. “I don’t know.”

The nurse reached Karen’s curtained off bed and turned her onto her side, checking his watch.

“What is she doing?” Ben asked innocently.

“She’s having a seizure, a tonic-clonic seizure. It should last only a minute or so.”

Jake struggled to stay calm. “But she doesn’t have epilepsy. Is it because of the electric shock?”

“Hm, that seems unlikely. I’ll have to ask the doctor.”

“I’ll get the doctor!” Ben exclaimed and darted out of the curtain. They heard his footsteps and him shouting “Doctor!” as he ran.

“You’re Jake, right?” the nurse asked. Jake nodded. “Where are your parents?”

“Er, they went to get coffee.”

“Do they often leave you and your siblings alone?”

Jake almost said yes, but hesitated at the last moment. “Well, not usually…”

Then Ben came back in with a doctor. “She has a stethoscope,” Ben said proudly.

Karen’s convulsions started to slow down, with pauses in between. Then they stopped completely and the nurse checked his watch again. “That lasted just over a minute.”

“Is she ok now?” Jake asked as the doctor looked her over, shining a light in her eyes and checking her pulse.

“She’s sleepy,” the doctor said. “That’s normal after having a seizure. I have a feeling I know what caused this one. Where are her parents?”

“Not here,” the nurse said pointedly.

Karen mumbled incoherently. “It’s alright Karen,” the nurse said. “It’s Nurse Ondrej.”

“Yucky bekfast,” she mumbled.

“Yeah, that’s right. The yucky breakfast nurse.”

The doctor gathered her tools and announced, “I’m going to find her parents. But first I’m going to book an urgent CT scan. Get her an ECG and an EEG.” She left.

Nurse Ondrej then saw the bubbles in the bag of IV fluid. “How did that happen?” he said, quickly disconnecting it from the tube in Karen’s arm.

“Ben did it,” Jake said. He felt bad saying it. “But don’t be mad at him.”

Ondrej looked at Jake with a little concern. “I won’t be mad at him. He’s only a… Wait, where has he gone?”

“Shit,” Jake whispered. “Ben!”

*

Ben was following the doctor. She hadn’t noticed. He followed her out of the cardiac ward, down a corridor and up a flight of stairs. She entered a little room that looked like an office and Ben hid flat against the wall outside.

“Boo!” he yelled, jumping out from his spot as she came back out of the office. She dropped the file she was carrying in surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see the CT machine. I’ve seen them on TV and they look like cannons for people to go inside.” He smiled sweetly.

He was quite cute, the doctor thought, but exasperating. “Look, come with me. Let’s go find your parents.”

“No!” Ben’s mood suddenly changed.

“I’m afraid you have to. Little children can’t wander around the hospital by themselves.”

“I don’t want to! I’m going to find the cannon machine.” He ran down the corridor.

The doctor sighed. “This is Dr Allison,” she spoke into her pager microphone, “there is an unattended child on floor 3, please can someone catch him.”

Dr Allison met the Brockman parents on the stairs as she was going down to find them. “Please come back to the cardiac ward with me,” she said.

*

Back on the ward, Karen was fast asleep. Ondrej was thankful for that. It made it easier to run the heart test, with electrode stickers on her wrists and ankles, and the brain electrical activity test, with an electrode cap on her head. Jake sat on a chair watching. He didn’t want to talk to Ondrej anymore.

Then their parents entered with Dr Allison. Sue was saying to her, “She does not have anything wrong with her. I thought she would be discharged today!”

“She might be, depending on the test results. But I think it would be wise to keep her in another night for observation on the neurological ward,” Dr Allison explained. She grabbed the clipboard that hung from the end of Karen’s bed, read Ondrej’s notes, and wrote some more on it.

“Rhythm is normal, you see,” Ondrej said. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking the hypoxia she experienced last night was prolonged enough to cause damage, possibly permanent damage, to both hemispheres of her brain. It’s possible that she has acquired generalised epilepsy.”

“She can’t have.” Sue shook her head. “She is normal and healthy and recovering.”

“Mrs Brockman, your daughter has had a seizure,” Ondrej said calmly. “Jake and Ben saw it occur.”

“Where is Ben?” Pete asked.

“We’re going to find him, then we’re leaving.”

“Indeed, why don’t you know where your son has run off to?” Dr Allison asked, scrutinising Sue’s gaze. “Why, when I saw him, was he reluctant to be with you?”

“Dr Allison,” Ondrej cautioned.

“I’m taking my children and leaving,” Sue reiterated. “I don’t want them near him,” she pointed at Ondrej, “because clearly he can’t look after children. I don’t want him anywhere near my daughter.”

Ondrej looked at Pete for his response. He looked distressed but remained silent.

Karen woke up, slightly dazed. “Mummy?”

“It’s alright, Karen. We’re going. Jake, pack her bag for her.”

Jake had shared his father’s facial expression throughout the exchange. He wordlessly gathered Karen’s clothes and things.

As if on cue, Ben came into the ward just as Sue pulled back the curtain. “Ben, come on, we’re going home.”

“But what about the scan?”

Sue scooped Karen into her arms. “She isn’t having one.”

Dr Allison said, “I strongly advise you to let us run more tests. If not right now, then tomorrow at least. This is potentially extremely serious.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Sue did believe it. She knew the situation was serious in more ways than one. She didn’t want to admit it.

Chapter Text

At school that afternoon, Jake was immediately informed he would be in detention after classes finished. For being absent without parents informing the school. He tried to explain to his form teacher that he had informed the school, and he was absent because he was visiting his sister in hospital. But the teacher didn’t accept that excuse.

Jake zoned out for most of history and all of maths. For English that afternoon they were in the library. He sat next to Luca at the table in the back corner.

Luca was probably his closest friend right now. He was cool, laidback and didn’t care too much about schoolwork either. And he had his fair share of being targeted by the same bullies. That drew friends together like nothing else.

“Did your sister really go to hospital?” Luca whispered.

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is she ok?”

“I don’t know. The doctor said she needed to stay another night but my mum took her home again anyway.”

“Fucking hell.” He said it a bit loud and there were a couple of giggles in response.

The librarian was walking by them just then. “Luca, that is not appropriate language!” she hissed. “Get on with your work. This is your final warning.”

“What happened anyhow?” Luca asked once the librarian had passed.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He paused. “It’s just… you know my family’s batshit crazy, right? Like, imagine how a hyperactive little kid, a gullible even littler kid, and the fucking electrical mains, mix together.”

“What the hell?” Luca laughed. It made Jake feel better.

“That’s it. Detention for you after school.”

Neither Luca nor Jake minded being in detention together after their English class finished at half past three.

*

After detention was over, they walked together in the direction of the park. “Did I miss anything, this morning?” Jake asked.

“Pff, not really mate. Jenny set a bit of paper on fire in chemistry. Ms Reed wasn’t too impressed at that. You missed the homework for IT.”

“I don’t give a shit about IT homework. Mr Smith hates me anyway.”

“Tsk tsk tsk, another detention for you then!”

“Oh poor me, sat in detention all alone! If only Luca weren’t such a goody-two-shoes I might not be so lonely all the time!” The boys laughed.

They sat on the swings at the park, dumping their bags on the ground. It was cold. Jake’s smile faded as they sat in silence for a moment, swinging ever so gently.

“My mum told me not to tell anyone what happened.”

“You mean what happened to Karen?”

“Yeah.”

Luca pulled a quizzical face. “Why?”

Jake pushed off the ground with his feet, then waited for the swing to slow again. “She was arguing with my dad in another room when it happened. Karen electrocuted herself. Ben gave her a knife… it looks bad, doesn’t it? She could have died.” He pushed off again.

“A knife?!”

“Like a butter knife. A blunt one.”

“Still, what the fuck... That boy is crazy. Anyway, you’re telling all this to me. Why?”

“You’re not a grass. There was a nurse there, in the hospital this morning, who tried to ask me about my ‘home life’,” Jake made air quotes with his fingers. “I saw through that pretty quick.”

“What would they do? Arrest your parents for having three fucking insane kids?”

“You don’t get it, do you? They would think it’s neglect. Neglecting kids is how they get injured like that. They’re wrong but the system is fucked up. If they don’t like you, or how your family looks, you get put in foster care.”

Luca was quiet. Then he grinned. “I’d foster you.” Luca was both taller and older than Jake and it was a running joke that he was his “dad”.

“Shut up,” Jake laughed. He checked his watch. “Shit, I should probably go. I forgot to tell my parents I had detention.”

“Go on then, it’s almost five. My parents would kill me if I was that late.”

“Nah, I don’t want to,” Jake sighed. “They don’t really care. Probably won’t notice because they’re fussing over Karen.”

“Yeah, no offence but your family sucks.”

“I know.”

“Would it be that bad if you were put in foster care?”

“It could be a hell of a lot worse, believe me. At least at home they just ignore me most of the time.”

“Woah, I was joking... Like it’s shit, but they aren’t abusing you, so you can’t really be taken away.”

Jake stayed quiet, then pushed off the ground hard so he swung up high, back and forth.

“Jake?”

“Of course they aren’t,” Jake finally said, still swinging.

*

He was right that his parents took no notice of him when he came home very late. He found some leftovers in the fridge to eat and went to check on Karen before starting his homework. Karen and Sue were both asleep in Karen’s bed, curled up together.

It was weird, how his home life had felt totally normal until he realised one day that maybe it wasn’t. It was a difficult thing to comprehend. It would be even more difficult to explain to other people, maybe impossible, he thought. 

He woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of his mum’s soft voice from Karen’s room. He put a pillow over his head to block it out. When he fell back to sleep, all he had was bad dreams.

Chapter Text

“I’ll race you to the climbing frame!” Alexa shouted as she, along with the rest of Year 1, stampeded out onto the playground.

“No, I’m gonna win!” Karen replied. She was lagging behind already. The bulk of the crowd caught up around her, about two dozen five-year-olds in identical Bishop Bridge blue jumpers all desperate to go play.

“Alexa!” Karen shouted. She felt dizzy being surrounded by moving people. She spotted her friend’s hair, in two bunches, already high up the wooden climbing frame at the far side of the playground as the crowd passed.

“I’m the king of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal!” Alexa sang.

Karen huffed. “How can you be the king of the castle when you aren’t a boy?” She climbed up the horizontal logs that formed a kind of ladder up the side of the frame. “And I would have won except for all the people in the way.”

“I won though,” Alexa said, acting smug, then breaking off into giggles.

“Let’s play lookouts,” Karen said, positioning herself to scan her beady eyes over the playground. The top of the climbing frame was the best spot for it.

“No, I played that yesterday.”

“But I wasn’t here yesterday!” Karen frowned. “You can’t play lookout without me.”

“I did, with Maisy.”

“Well, I don’t want you to. You should only play it with me.”

“I can’t with you when you aren’t here. I had to play with another person instead,” Alexa explained.

“Well… you should wait next time until I’m out of hospital then we can play it together.”

“Were you in hospital?” Alexa asked.

“Yeah,” Karen began to chew on her hair, “because of a knife. But I’m better now so mummy took me home. She shouted at the doctor.”

“Oh,” Alexa said. “Let’s play lookouts now.” She didn’t really care, not as much as she cared about enjoying playtime now her best friend was back.

“And Ben ran away and got lost in the hospital. And mummy was very angry at him about that. She said ‘I wish you weren’t my son!’” Karen imitated Sue in an exaggerated squeaky voice.

“Let’s watch the boys playing tag.”

“No, let’s watch Maisy,” Karen said, forming her hands into binoculars. “Because Maisy isn’t allowed to play here. So she’s a spy trying to, um, trying to sneak up the tower,” Karen said very seriously, “and we’re the tower watchers. And she’s trying to take over the tower.”

“We have to guard the treasure,” Alexa added, making her own hand-binoculars.

“And it’s night time, it’s all dark and she wants to sneak up here.”

They watched intently from their vantage point as Maisy ran between her friends, playing some kind of game involving a skipping rope and several hula hoops laid out on the ground.

“What evil spy thing are they doing?” Alexa said.

“Hmmm. They’re building a, a torture chamber,” Karen pronounced. “And that’s where they put the people they’re going to torture. First they bring the person in and then, they come in the room and they tie them on the hoops and, and hurt them.”

Alexa watched the group wave the skipping rope and thought about what that could be in their game. “They have a spy snake,” she said. She gasped in make-believe surprise. “What should we do?” She looked away from her binoculars to see Karen’s response.

Karen wasn’t looking through her binoculars either. Her hands were dangling down loosely over the side of the log they were using as an armrest. She was staring forwards into space, very still.

“Karen,” Alexa reached out to shake her friend’s arm, “We should go down there before the snake…”

Her words trailed off as Karen suddenly slumped forwards. The top half of her body fell over the log and dangled, head down, high above the ground.

“Are you still playing?” Alexa asked nervously. “Karen? Don’t fall.” She started to panic, with no idea what to do. She looked across the playground and saw one of the teachers come running towards the climbing frame.

Then Karen started shaking all over, like she was shivering really hard, Alexa thought. Her shaking made her inch forwards on the log she was hanging over head first.

“Alexa, can you hold onto her?” the teacher, Miss Liao, called up. Alexa was frozen in fear.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s ok, I’ll… shit,” Miss Liao trailed off. She realised she was not able to climb up there with her bad knee. And she could hardly send another kid up, into possible danger. She turned to the crowd of kids that was gathering the base of the climbing frame. “Get back, all of you! Zahra, go and get Mr Heaslington. Quick!”

One of the older kids said, “Should I call 999?”

“Yes, good boy. Go to reception and tell them to call them. And remember to say it’s Karen Brockman, got it?”

Mr Heaslington came running. “Karen? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Liao said. “She was in hospital overnight yesterday.”

Mr Heaslington started climbing. He had long legs so it would only take a few steps for him to be able to reach Karen. “Careful!” Miss Liao said.

“Karen, can you hear me?” The convulsions were dying down now. But as they died down and became further apart, they temporarily got stronger. With a violent jerk, Karen twisted onto her side and slid further. Her middle passed over the log, past tipping point.

The kids on the playground gasped as Karen looked like she was on the edge of falling headfirst onto the tarmac ground, when Mr Heaslington reached forward and grabbed her by the ankle. Her body was now entire dangling freely, arms swaying limp.

“Catch her!” Alexa shouted, suddenly finding her voice again.

“I’ve got her,” Miss Liao said, holding onto Karen’s shoulders. The two teachers gradually lowered the unconscious Karen down until she was safe in Miss Liao’s arms.

“Come on kids, let her have some space!” Mr Heaslington waved one arm motioning the kids who had crept forward to move back again.

Miss Liao laid Karen gently on the ground. “Zahra, give me your jumper,” she said. She folded up Zahra’s jumper and put it underneath Karen’s head. “You’re alright, Karen. You’re safe.”

“Can she hear you?” Zahra asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but if she can it’s best to reassure her.” She rolled Karen onto her side in the recovery position.

The boy who had run to call 999 was back. “They called her parents and the ambulance is on its way,” he said.

“Thank you, Toby.”

“What happened to her?” he asked.

“I think she’s had a seizure. It seems to be over now.”

“Miss, look!” Zahra said. “She’s twitching…”

“Ah… don’t worry, Karen, it’s going to be alright.” Karen’s eyelids flickered rapidly and her jaw opened and snapped shut repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Mr Heaslington had helped Alexa down from the climbing frame. “What’s wrong with Karen?” she cried, afraid.

Karen started properly convulsing again. Miss Liao stroked her hair. “Sh, sh, sh.”

“Are you timing?” Mr Heaslington asked.

“Yep, the last one was about a minute. But now does this count as a second one or is it all one long one? Because she didn’t wake up in between.” Miss Liao bit her lip nervously.

“Oh god, I don’t know. Paramedics should know though.” He took a deep breath. “Alright, everyone back in,” he called out to the crowd of kids, “You can have the rest of playtime inside.”

*

Sue Brockman arrived at the children’s hospital A&E several minutes after the ambulance.

“Where’s Karen? Where’s my daughter?” she frantically asked the reception staff.

“Resus 3.”

Sue ran to the resus bay. Karen was lying still and unconscious on the table, wearing an oxygen mask. Medics surrounded her but a step back from the table, like they had finished their major tasks for now.

“Karen! How is she?”

Dr Allison made eye contact with Sue. They stared at each other for a moment. An extremely tense moment.

“She’s had a seizure lasting six minutes and a continuous period of unconsciousness lasting ten minutes and counting.” Dr Allison removed her medical gloves and picked up a paper form. “I’ve given her an anticonvulsive injection. She responded to the drug but we still need to wait for her to come round. If you sign this form,” she handed it to Sue, “we’ll run the CT scan and an extended electrical activity test.”

Sue glared, stalling for time but trying to look angry instead of frightened.

“Think it over.” Dr Allison put the form back down. “This could have been prevented if we’d caught sight of abnormal brain activity earlier, say, yesterday when you decided to ignore medical advice.”

Ondrej poked his head out from behind another nurse and gave Dr Allison a “really?” look. Sue hadn’t spotted him until then. They must have heard the name Brockman from the paramedics and specifically made sure they were the ones on the scene.

“You two are really not going to leave me alone, are you? I don’t care what you think, I am not abusing my child.”

Some of the other medics looked up in surprise.

“Mrs Brockman, will you sign the form?” Ondrej asked patiently.

“I will.”

*

“Did I hurt my brain because I fell off the climbing frame?” Karen asked.

“No darling, you didn’t fall off it,” Sue said, crouching by her bedside.

Karen was on the neurological ward and covered with adhesive electrode pads. She looked quite funny with them dotted on her face and wearing a cap with a massive bunch of wires coming out the back. Sue was trying not to laugh.

“Did my brain go- did my brain get zapped by the, um, like the thing and the toaster?”

“Are you a bit confused?” Sue stroked Karen’s arm.

“Mummy, when can we go home?”

“When the monitoring has finished. After the nurses come and take all these sticky pads off. It won’t be long.”

“Well, why don’t they just take them off now and then I can go home now?”

“No, they’re busy right now,” Sue smiled.

“Where are they?”

“In a little room full of computer screens along the corridor.”

Karen took a deep breath. “Come back!” she shouted in the general direction of the door.

Sue chuckled. “You really are something.”

“What thing?”

By way of an answer, Sue kissed Karen’s forehead. “I’m going to get you out of here,” she murmured. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

“Mrs Brockman,” a female voice said as the door to the ward opened. It was Adele Sharp, the social worker. She was smartly dressed, as before, and carrying a large file.

“What are you… Can I help you?” Sue said tactfully.

“I’ve had a word with Nurse Ondrej. I am going to reschedule my home visit, to be as urgent as possible.”

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