The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 12

I was forgotten when I was sixteen.

Why then?

My parents loved me, there was no doubt. But when my sister was born, she needed almost constant attention. Little Gracie, who at four years old caught measles off a kid in nursery whose mother thought the MMR jab was poison.

“See?” she hollered, as my sister was rushed to A&E with a fever of 41 °C. “She had the jab and what good has it done her?”

I thought Mum was going to slap her, and when Dad drove me home, Mum still sat in the ICU, he almost hit a cyclist, and we had to wait in the bus lane for ten minutes while he got his breath back.

Doctors are taught the three Cs for diagnosing measles: cough, conjunctivitis and coryza (blocked nose to you and me). You could also add a K — Koplik’s spots. Clustered white lesions on the buccal mucosa. They appear as little white marks, like grains of salt, around the inner lining of the cheek where it joins with the molars. Early detection can lead to a quick diagnosis before full infectiousness is achieved. We did not detect them early; we didn’t know to look.

At 42 °C organs start taking damage. I was allowed to miss school, and wished for the first time that I wasn’t, as the rash spread across Gracie’s body.

It was fifteen days before my sister was allowed home. After nine months, it was obvious that she had suffered brain damage. The mother of the unvaccinated child came over three days after we took Grace out of nursery. She stood in the door, a small woman with a rainbow scarf, and talked low to my mum, and at the end she was crying, and so was Mum, though neither raised their voices, and I never saw her again.

I think it began then, in the months and years that followed the measles.

Slowly, a piece at a time, I began to diminish, and the world began to forget.