Today I’m joining the blog tour for Can I Speak To Josephine Please? I’m sharing an extract from the book with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to the publisher for providing the extract.

Blurb:

Theirs was an unlikely life together. Sheila gave birth to Josephine on 11th May 1993 and for twenty-three years they co-existed in a loving mother-daughter relationship, but one with a difference. Josephine suffered catastrophic brain injury at birth, never spoke to Sheila, rarely smiled and was barely able to see the faces of the people who loved her. Without a how-to guide, people around Josephine strove to make her life better through years of multiple medical procedures, tortuous therapies and uncomfortable equipment. But this isn’t a misery memoir; it’s the story of a person who touched the lives of so many people – a bright and beautiful young lady who could ‘work the room’. despite her enormous limitations. She brought out the best in people. Expect to cry, expect to laugh, but don’t expect to be indifferent to this story.

Extract:

Prologue

‘We’re driving very slowly,’ says Asher.
It’s true; we aren’t going much faster than the cows
ambling across the fields alongside us.
‘That’s what these cars always do,’ I explain gently. ‘It’s a mark of respect.’
‘Not in the middle of nowhere,’ says Peter. ‘Usually
only in town and close to the cemetery.’
Far down in the front of the limo, the driver clears
his throat. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he says. ‘We are having a little technical difficulty with the car. It’s an electrical problem. It should resolve itself. If not, they will send a backup vehicle.’
‘They won’t bury her without us, will they?’ Asher looks at Peter and me.
Peter and I exchange glances. Josephine is in a separate hearse, presumably one without electrical problems.
‘Of course not. They have to wait for us.’
There is something perversely ridiculous about arriving late for our daughter’s funeral. So ridiculous that Peter and I start laughing.
Asher looks at us and begins to laugh, too.
‘This is just typical of Josephine,’ says Peter. ‘She’s not going to be rushed.

Chapter 1
Twenty-three years earlier

Sometime in the early hours of the morning I was lying on a hospital bed completely naked, alone and utterly bewildered. The bed was so narrow I thought I might fall off.
Peter appeared, frowning, looking worried and preoccupied.
‘Are you okay, love?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
What’s the fuss?
‘Where’s the baby? Why am I here?’
I lay there, confused, cold, hot, then cold again. I looked down. My pregnancy bump seemed as large as ever.
I’m sure I’ve already had the baby.
My obstetrician appeared, saying something about not having delivered the placenta. She’d need to do it manually.
‘Do you want some pain relief?’
I felt light-headed, slightly sick and I had a fierce thirst. A slight nod was all I could manage.
*
A young doctor appeared to administer the pain relief.
He’s a looker.
‘Would you like to cover up? Maybe put on a nightdress?’ said a nurse.
‘No thank you.’
I’m not embarrassed.
The doctor injected me with something, and I felt
some tugging and pulling which almost made me fall off the narrow bed. Then I was told it was done.
‘Where’s our baby? Is something wrong?’
The obstetrician had disappeared.
Peter was standing alongside my bed. He was frowning and pumping his arm against his side, something he always did when he was worried.
What’s the matter?
‘She’s in intensive care. She’s not doing too well.’
‘What do you mean?’
He disappeared again and a nurse busied herself with my blanket and the machines beside me.
‘Let’s put a nightdress on you,’ she said.
What’s going on? Where is everyone?
Peter reappeared.
‘Where is our baby?’ I asked.
‘We’re going to go and see her. Look, they’ve brought a wheelchair for you.’
Unseen hands helped me to sit up and ease me off
the bed into the wheelchair.
Peter pushed me along a cold corridor and into a
lift. The next thing I knew, we were in intensive care, looking at our daughter through the sides of an incubator.

Chapter 2

‘Where the fuck is the midwife?’ screamed the woman in the bed opposite. ‘For God’s sake, where the hell is everyone? I’m in fucking awful pain here!’
It was much later in the morning, several hours after I’d given birth.
‘What kind of a place is this?’ said the young woman
sitting by the bed of the screaming woman. ‘My sister is in labour and no one’s coming to help her!’
She jumped up from her sister’s bedside and ran over to the midwives’ station in the middle of the ward, her dress billowing out behind her as she moved. I marvelled at the beauty of the swirling yellow, gold and turquoise silk.
‘Come on now, Mrs P, you’re doing really well,’ called one of the midwives from across the ward.
Full-blown pain right opposite my bed, poor woman. At the same time, I could hear newborn babies crying further down the ward. It was like being stuck in some sort of time machine where I had gone forward in time and then back again.
Yesterday, when I’d arrived on the ward, I’d heard babies crying but I’d tried to shut it out of my mind. Today, I was a mother and a woman opposite me was in labour. None of it made any sense.
Peter sat beside me, staring at the distressed woman, then he slumped forward with his head in his hands. Every so often he let out a sigh. By now, the screaming and shouting was impossible to ignore. The young woman who was with Mrs P rushed across the ward again and practically hauled the midwife over. Curtains were swiftly
drawn around the bed.
‘Now Mrs P, let’s see how you’re getting on, shall we?’
Peter and I looked at one another. There was something about his expression that told me he was mirroring my thoughts exactly. That he wished we’d shouted louder when I was in labour.
We’d been back down in the ward for several hours,
hardly moving from the bed and the chair beside it.
‘Knock, knock. It’s Grandpa Gordon.’
The curtain moved to one side and Peter’s dad
appeared.
I could feel the tears well up as I lay on the bed
watching Peter and his dad in a close embrace. It was good to feel Gordon’s dependable presence. With all his years of experience delivering babies, it felt as though he could make things alright. He came over to the bed and kissed and hugged me.
‘I’m so sorry about what’s happened. I can’t believe it.’
He sat down beside the bed. I’d never seen him look
so pale and drawn.
I had been given special status in my pregnancy, access to Gordon’s obstetric consultant colleague Lesley, who looked after me through the pregnancy. She had promised to be there at the birth.
‘I went up to ICU and saw your daughter,’ said
Gordon. ‘She is beautiful. What’s her name?’
‘Josephine Elizabeth,’ replied Peter. ‘We’re calling her after Grandpa Joe and Sheila’s Uncle Joe and Elizabeth after Sheila’s Auntie Essie.’
‘They are looking after her very well in SCBU,’ he
said. ‘She’s got a fight on her hands though.’
He looked at us both.
What do you mean, ‘a fight on her hands’?
I was numb. I couldn’t compute what was happening.
‘Sorry, what’s SCBU?’
‘The Special Care Baby Unit. I had a phone call from
Lesley. She left the hospital while you were in labour. She forgot about her promise to me to look after you.’
‘But she was there. She helped to deliver my placenta.’
I couldn’t understand what Gordon was talking about.
‘She came back later. Too bloody late.’
I looked at Peter, who stood up and touched his dad’s arm.
Gordon stared at him. ‘I just wish I’d been there with
you.’
At the beginning of the pregnancy, Gordon had offered to be with us during labour. My instant reaction had been
No way! I’m not lying there with my legs wide open in front of my father-in-law. What a nightmare.
Peter had explained that we wanted it to be just
the two of us, and Gordon offered to contact his fellow obstetrician, Lesley Noble, and Clara, the midwife with whom he’d delivered hundreds of babies in the GP unit.
‘Clara will look after you. She’ll be perfect’ had been
his words.
Gordon fiddled with the edge of the sheet. ‘Anyway,
Lesley wants to talk to you.’
It was Lesley’s fault that things had gone wrong.
Now Josephine was in danger. And Gordon wasn’t saying that it was going to be okay. There was no reassurance.
I looked down at my pregnancy bump and across at
the closed curtains around Mrs P’s bed. If I could just wind the clock back to last night. If only Gordon had been with us. None of these awful things would be happening if he’d been there during labour.
‘Where’s Raye?’ I asked him, wondering about my
mother-in-law.
‘She’s coming in tomorrow. She gave me this for you.’
He reached down and handed me a wrapped sandwich. ‘It’s chopped liver. She knows how much you’ve missed it for the last few months.’
‘Oh, thank you, that’s wonderful. Actually, I’m starving.’
He smiled at me as I began eating the sandwich. Peter and Gordon talked together in low voices for the few moments while I devoured the food.
‘You’d better go to see Lesley. She’s expecting you.’
Gordon stood up.

***

Can I Speak To Josephine Please? is available from Amazon.

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