The Mouse-Proof Kitchen by Saira Shah

Author:Saira Shah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

June

The thing about making an emergency call is that it fossilizes a single moment into a point of crisis. For weeks Tobias and I have argued about whether Freya is bad enough to go to hospital. Now, from the moment I say “baby” and “convulsions,” we’re in a different world.

“How old is she? How long has the fit lasted? We’ll send a fire ambulance—it will be faster and it has better breathing apparatus.”

I begin packing an overnight bag for Freya and for myself. The fire siren is blaring up the hill before I’ve finished.

“It’s a real red fire engine,” says Tobias, who seems to consider it necessary to appear detached. “The breathing equipment is for smoke inhalation, of course. The French have a very joined-up service.”

Six burly firemen rush Freya onto a stretcher and lay her in the van. “Jump in,” one of them says to me. Tobias loses all his sangfroid, leaps up too, and clambers into the van.

A minute ago I was fine, but now I’m swept up with the drama of the situation: the tiny figure laid out on the adult-sized stretcher, the oxygen mask covering her face, the monitor bleeping above her head. I cling to Tobias and weep.

The fire ambulance roars down the hairpin bends to the valley. Through the small, high window in the back door I catch glimpses of the vineyards and immaculate allotments vanishing behind us and of the old folks still resting on their spades where they’ve stopped to watch us pass.

The Aigues river valley itself is in the High Languedoc. As we continue to descend, the hills become softer and more rounded and then flatten out altogether. I crane forward to peer through the windscreen and get a glimpse of a wide plain shimmering in the heat with the glint of the Mediterranean beyond.

We drive at high speed through a baking yellow landscape. “By the end of the summer everything will be dry as dust,” says the leader of the firemen. “The trees will be ready to explode at the slightest spark. And if you should get a fire on a day there is a wind, well . . .” He makes a moue. He doesn’t look like a hero. He’s stocky and compact, probably one of the chasseurs. I can imagine him and his men strolling into the burning hell of a forest fire simply because somebody has to try to put it out. The wartime Maquis resistance must have been full of men like this.

At the A & E department of Montpellier General Hospital, we say good-bye. The leader of the firemen claps us on the backs and delivers an impromptu speech: “De l’avant! Il faut toujours aller de l’avant! Bon courage!” They take turns to shake our hands.

“Well,” says Tobias, “you heard what the man says. We’d better go forward.”

At Accident & Emergency we’re told to wait; there has just been a motorway accident. What are we doing here, I wonder, among people with real injuries, real blood running down their faces? Then Freya begins to fit again.

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