Guilt

The pain of watching your own daughter lying in a bed behind a sheet of glass is unimaginable. They wouldn’t let me in to her room even with a mask on. Her symptoms have progressed rapidly to the point where she’s struggling for breath. Kirsty is asthmatic so her breathing isn’t great at the best of times. Why her?

I stood with my head against the window for what seemed like hours until Graham pulled me away. It was on our way out that I noticed the hospital starting to fill up. There seemed to be lots of people at reception and there were a few lying around on trolleys. Everyone’s eye’s seemed to be out on stalks and part of me was glad to be out of the place until I remembered Kirsty lying upstairs.

We took a short drive, leaving the hospital passing Craigmillar Castle and on to Arthur’s Seat. Graham had bought a paper and we sat silently in the car park staring at our thoughts. I scanned the paper and noticed many complaints from parents about the closure of the schools. They all thought it was an over reaction and the lack of childcare was placing too much of a burden upon them.

If they had only been in that hospital few minutes ago they wouldn’t be complaining. I’d read on the web last night that closing schools early was key to limiting the speed of infection. I was just glad the authorities had acted quickly here.

After a walk up to the summit in silence we drove back to the hospital and Graham left to go back to work. The health board had lifted their isolation order on us yesterday morning as there are so many other cases coming to the surface.

Eventually the hospital said I had to go home as they didn’t have the space for visitors. For that instant Kirsty was no longer a 17 year old but my baby and they were asking me to leave her. I tried to put up some resistance but I knew they were right but it didn’t make it any easier.
I’ve been living on my mobile phone over the last 48 hours and it’s great to have friends to speak to – I don’t know what I do without them. One of them – who works in my school – was telling me that the Headteacher has fallen ill along with five other members of staff. Apparently there are other teachers whose children have developed the infection and they are also off school. The authority is trying to set up an on-line learning service but the government’s plans to use BBC Jam have been shown up as the service closed in March 2007 without the plans being updated.

I’m going to go into school tomorrow for a couple of hours to gather some work and some addresses of some of my pupils. There's something strange going on - usually you face tragedy by yourselves but everybody seems to going through the same thing. I think it's guilt that I'm not in school and others are, who are experiencing similar things - that's making me even consider going in.

Our own kids are getting bored and spend their days on Bebo speaking to their friends. At first I worried that all they were doing was feeding the rumour mill but it seems they are genuinely helping each other. They are also making links with kids from other countries – they all seem to be in it together.