Arthur

Arthur (not his real name, but he has got an old man's name) is a one-and-a-half year-old boy who has been given the rather hopeful label of 'global developmental delay'. He doesn't have a particular diagnosis (such as a genetic syndrome or a brain lesion) but he is clearly not progressing normally. He does little other than sit in his cot and stare into space. He is blond-haired and blue-eyed with chubby cheeks. Currently he has got an empyema secondary to an aspiration pneumonia.
I met his mother for the first time today. Unusually for this part of London, she was a slim, bespectabled, middle-aged lady, smartly dressed in a silk blouse, velvet skirt and flat leather boots. As she arrived she cooed to Arthur, and flung her arms around him. "Hello, Arthur daarling!" she said brightly. Arthur remained entirely indifferent. "It's Mummy, Arthur," she said, as if he had merely forgotten who she was in her overnight absence. It all seemed quite tragic. I could almost picture her, in another life, walking Arthur to the Montessori school, in a pressed shirt and trousers with his blond curls slicked back.
I returned later in the day to inject some urokinase into Arthur's chest drain. Now I try my hardest not to subscribe to stereotypes, but there on the bedside table was his mother's copy of today's Observer.