Angel of Death (6 page)

They didn’t wait for the ambulance to arrive. They raced instead to their car and drove to the hospital, half a mile away, dashing straight up to the doors of the Accident and Emergency Department where they pressed the emergency doorbell, virtually kicking the door down. In the middle of the night the door was locked for security reasons. A nurse quickly opened it and Sue, who had been holding Becky, thrust the limp, lifeless body into her arms.

The nurse ran off shouting: ‘Resus. Resus.’

But it was too late. Becky was already dead. She had died at home as she lay in their bed after her last outburst of screams. The hospital did what it could but Becky was pronounced dead at 3.55am on 5 April 1991.

Sue remembers that every nurse at the hospital seemed to be in tears and doctors couldn’t explain what had happened. Genuine words of love and comfort poured out from the staff.

But why had she died so soon after being discharged from hospital? Becky had been in hospital for two days and been home less than twelve hours. Now she was dead, without any apparent reason. Sue’s thoughts flashed back to the moment when Nurse Allitt had said she should not take her daughter home.

Now she turned to the doctor on duty and
demanded: ‘I want to know what has killed Becky.’ But he couldn’t tell her.

He feared it could be meningitis. And Sue was sent hurrying back home to bring in Katie for urgent checks. Whatever it was that had tragically killed Becky might strike down her twin sister too. Katie was taken back to Ward Four for observation.

It was to be her turn next. Later that same day Katie was fighting for her own little life.

It was 7.30am when Nurse Bev Allitt arrived to start the day shift on Ward Four. Becky had been dead less than five hours and now she was told to monitor her tiny twin sister, Katie.

Sue Phillips remembers that, from the start of that day, the nurse was a different person. For the first time she spoke to Sue. Her words, warm and comforting, still stick clear in Sue’s memory. Nurse Allitt whispered: ‘I am ever so sorry, Sue, that Becky died. But don’t worry about Katie. She will be fine.’

She hadn’t spoken to Sue for three years and now she was genuinely concerned. It was the first indication to Sue that Nurse Allitt even remembered her.

Sue couldn’t control her anger at the hospital and snapped back: ‘I find it very strange how the staff on this ward have treated me while I have been bringing my babies in here, and now that Becky has died it’s all so different.’

It was the forgivable outburst of an angry mother whose little baby had just died. Calmly defusing the
confrontation, the nurse told her softly: ‘That sometimes happens when someone dies, Sue.’

The police arrived – called by the hospital as a matter of routine to make enquiries into Becky’s ‘sudden death’. Peter, who had broken down, crying uncontrollably when he was told Becky was dead, still couldn’t bring himself to identify Becky’s body, and the job was left to Sue. She was led quietly into a room where she identified the body of Becky Grace Phillips to the waiting police officer. Her baby, born just nine weeks earlier, was at peace, looking as though she was fast asleep.

For strength, she returned to Ward Four where Katie was perfectly healthy. She was in the hospital just as a precaution, to be monitored, they said, after the death of Becky.

Desperately tired, they wanted to go home for a break at lunchtime. It had been an awful night and Katie was asleep. Sue remembers Nurse Allitt saying: ‘You go. I will look after her. She will be all right with me.’ They had been home just half an hour when the phone rang. A man’s voice from the hospital told Peter that Katie was having trouble breathing – and they wanted one of them to go back to the hospital.

It didn’t sound like an emergency. Sue and her father had already steeled themselves emotionally to go to the undertakers that afternoon to begin arranging Becky’s funeral, a job they were dreading but one that had to be done. Peter decided to return to the hospital alone to see Katie. When he arrived he realised it was more serious than he’d
expected. Katie had been placed on a resuscitaire, to help her breathing, and Sister Jean Saville was caring for her.

Sister Saville, who was forty-nine and one of the most experienced nurses in the hospital, had brought up two children herself and had a reputation for dedication and skill. She stayed until 10pm looking after Katie.

As Peter waited the hospital’s chaplain, the Rev. Ian Shelton, approached him. He suggested to Peter that, in the circumstances, it might be advisable for Katie to be baptised. He thought it should be done there and then, where she lay in the cubicle on Ward Four. When Peter agreed, he went off to the chapel to change into his robes and returned to baptise Katie. By the time Sue arrived, unaware of the scare, the short service was already over.

All the next day Katie recovered, still linked to the resuscitaire. She also had a special Apnia Alarm, fitted to her chest, that would sound if she stopped breathing. It went off several times on false alarms, triggered because Katie was sleeping so quietly it couldn’t detect the minute movements of her breathing. It terrified Sue and the nurses although, deep down, Sue was comforted by the thought that the hospital was taking no chances.

Nurse Bev Allitt was on duty that Saturday and again nursed Katie all day on a one-to-one basis. Katie seemed to be ‘her baby’.

Relieved, Sue and Peter popped upstairs for a snack with the chaplain, leaving Nurse Allitt and another young nurse to look after her.

They were just returning to the ward when they heard the sound of a woman’s voice shouting: ‘Resus. Resus.’ It was Nurse Allitt calling for help because Katie had stopped breathing.

Peter said: ‘When we got down to the ward we saw a nurse running across the end of the corridor, clutching Katie to her chest, shouting. We hadn’t been gone that long and I couldn’t believe it was happening again.’

Doctors and nurses poured into the treatment room and began the battle to save her little life. Their efforts were rewarded when finally, after just a few minutes, they managed to bring Katie round.

Peter said: ‘We were just so thankful that she made it. Neither of us could have taken losing her too. When we knew she was all right we were just grateful to Bev. She’d acted so quickly that she had saved Katie’s life.’

Sue asked Nurse Allitt what had happened and she told her she had seen nothing like it before.

Nurse Allitt went home at the end of her shift, leaving Sue and Peter to battle with a mixture of emotions, partly grief over Becky and partly worry over Katie.

The Rev. Shelton, who arrived to comfort them, took the brunt of Peter’s anger and grief. ‘Some God you’ve got,’ snapped Peter. ‘I don’t think your God’s very fair, do you?’

The Rev. Shelton replied: ‘Not very fair at all, Peter.’

Peter said: ‘Isn’t He satisfied with all He’s got?
He’s got Becky and now He’s taking Katie, too.’

Later, bound by a bond forged amongst the heartbreak of Ward Four, the Rev. Shelton was to become a trusted friend and Katie’s godfather.

Still battered by events, Sue found comfort in the reassuring presence of her new friend; Nurse Allitt was, by now, always referred to as ‘Bev’. She was always there, assigned almost like a fixture to Katie’s bedside. She was hard to talk to, said Sue, not one who gushed with words or feelings but, during her eight-hour shifts, they talked a lot.

Worried Sue was anxious when doctors took away Katie for a lumbar puncture, to test for meningitis, and Bev told her: ‘Don’t worry, I will be with her all the time.’

During the night Katie was ‘perking up wonderfully’.

But, three days later, Katie took a sudden and massive turn for the worse. She’d seemed to be fine but then, suddenly, she stopped breathing. The hospital’s ‘crash team’ rushed again to help. Dr Nanayakkara and Sister Saville jointly led the battle to save her life. The Rev. Shelton, who was on the ward, joined in too by running for extra equipment.

Peter remembers Nurse Allitt telling him Katie was in a bad way. He saw Dr Nanayakkara, who had put on green overalls, with Katie’s head in his hands, cradling her face. He told them he couldn’t understand what had happened because he said he had never seen anything like it. This time, he said, Katie was so poorly that he warned them he
might have to call for the flying squad to rush her to Nottingham City Hospital.

As they waited Sue and Peter were told that the doctors and nurses were trying to bring her back. She was ‘dead’ but they were using every piece of equipment – oxygen bags, electric paddles – desperately willing her back to life.

Sister Saville stayed at the machine, refusing to give in, just hoping, trying for that little bit longer, waiting for a miracle. Sue believes that Katie was dead for an incredible thirty-two minutes. Certainly, long, long after Katie ‘died’, Sister Saville spotted a flicker of life. Then another one, and another. Her shouts signalled that Katie, incredibly, was coming back to life.

Out of heartbreak there was sudden joy. Peter and Sue hugged each other, tears rolling down their cheeks. Perhaps God had a heart after all, thought Peter.

‘We’re not religious but we went to the hospital chapel to ask God to give her strength to see her through,’ he said.

The flying squad, with police escort, raced to Nottingham with Katie, her parents trying to keep up behind them in their own car.

Sue and Peter stayed with Katie, maintaining a vigil of love and hope at her bedside, refusing to leave her. The only break they were forced to make was to return to Grantham for Becky’s funeral.

Life or, rather, death had to go on.

The whole community was overwhelmed with
compassion for Sue and Peter as Becky was buried at St John’s Church, Manthorpe, on Wednesday, 10 April. The church was packed with relatives and friends, and nurses from the hospital. Lovingly, Sue said her farewells in the chapel of rest where she gently placed two of Becky’s little teddy bears and a rose in the coffin.

They were told they couldn’t have a hearse because Becky’s tiny white coffin was too small to rest in the back of a vehicle which had been designed for much bigger coffins. Instead, they had a huge black limousine in which Sue and Peter could sit in the back; Becky’s white coffin was placed in front of them on a seat.

They chose a wreath in the shape of a heart, with white and pink carnations and red roses. Their card read: ‘In loving memory of our beautiful baby, Becky. We will love you for ever.’ It was signed: ‘Mum, Dad, James, Katie, Nicola and Emma’.

There were about thirty people in the quiet village church on the outskirts of Grantham. Mourners included some of the nurses from the hospital’s Accident and Emergency department who had shared their moment of horror as they had burst in, in the middle of the night, with Becky’s body in their arms. Sue’s new-found friend Bev Allitt was not amongst them.

Sue and Peter were told that Becky had officially died from Infant Death Syndrome – a ‘cot death’ – and Sue couldn’t hide her feelings of amazement. How could they say that Becky had died of cot
death when she had watched her eyes rolling round in her head and heard her screams? Surely, ‘cot death’ babies died without warning in their sleep?

But there wasn’t time to question, or challenge, the findings of the doctors because they had to drive straight from the funeral back to Katie’s bedside. It was Katie who needed them now. At the hospital, nurses and doctors couldn’t have been kinder, providing them with a family room with all facilities, including a TV, so they could be near Katie.

She was still very poorly and continued to have fits. Peter and Sue almost feared she might be ill because of a psychological bonding that exists between twins; in some strange way, could Becky be calling Katie to follow her to the grave?

But Katie was a battler and, slowly, she began showing signs of recovery. She was gurgling, feeding, occasionally smiling. At last they really could start thinking of a future for their little girl. Becky had died but Katie was alive and kicking.

Twelve days after Becky had died Katie was well enough to leave Nottingham where she had recovered so wonderfully well. She wasn’t strong enough to go home, however. Instead, Sue and Peter were told she would be returned to Ward Four at the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital.

Ward Four had always been a happy place; morale had been high and nurses had enjoyed working there. This was a ward where the real reward was seeing sick children get better and then go home. The worst of the emergency cases were transferred to bigger hospitals in Nottingham, thirty miles to the west, and in Grantham nurses would tell new members of staff that ‘nothing much happens on the children’s ward’.

It was a friendly hospital where people knew each other, where patients knew nurses because they’d probably gone to school together, or knew their families.

But now, after the deaths of Liam Taylor, Timothy Hardwick, then Becky Phillips, some of the younger nurses were finding it hard to cope with the increasing number of emergencies. More and more children suffered cardiac arrests, respiratory failures and fits. To them, it was still a run of ‘bad luck’ and there remained no real suspicion, no nagging question that anything untoward was happening.

Five-year-old Bradley Gibson was the next victim of Ward Four.

Blonde-haired Bradley, who had gone into hospital suffering from pneumonia, suffered a massive, unexplained heart attack. His heart stopped beating for thirty-two minutes as ‘crash team’ nurses and doctors battled for his little life, refusing to give up as the minutes ticked away. Then, quite miraculously, there was a flicker of hope, the sign of a heartbeat and Bradley was brought back to life.

His parents, self-employed builder Stephen and wife Judith, were so overjoyed that their son had been saved that they went to their local newspaper publicly to praise the hospital, doctors and nurses. The story of how he survived made the front page of the local
Grantham Journal
with the headline: Our Miracle.’ Three national newspapers followed up the story of Bradley’s great escape and it featured also on four television stations.