If my gut was telling me there was no chance, it might be different. But my mother’s instinct tells me my boy’s in there
Amid a week of emotional turmoil few of us could imagine, Archie Battersbee’s mum explains what’s fuelled her loving fight...
NO ONE could have fought harder. That much at least has been a comfort for Hollie Dance in these last desperate couple of days. ‘I know I did everything I could,’ she says. ‘Everything.’
Who could deny it? Week in, week out, as one legal battle has followed another, Hollie has tried everything to try to keep her beloved 12-year-old son Archie alive.
As she approached ‘the end’ as she called it, the stoicism she has maintained for four long months finally deserted her, and the tears fell steadily.
‘I know I’ve done a very good job being Archie’s mum,’ she says. ‘Based on my own childhood I was determined to be as good as a mother as I can possibly be and I feel like I have done that to the very best of my ability. It’s one of the reasons I am here.’
The Daily Mail has spoken to Hollie over the course of these last few agonising days, witnessing first-hand the tension and stress that has accompanied the to-the-wire legal submissions, the raised and dashed hopes. The pressure has been unrelenting for Hollie, 46, and Archie’s father, her 56-year-old former husband Paul Battersbee.
Yet she maintains she’s just doing what any mother would do. Protecting her child.
‘All I have ever asked is to get him to six months – where is the harm in that for them? They have spent a fortune on legal fees fighting me in court – money they could have spent on Archie’s care and others’.
There has been a lot of focus on Archie’s dignity, and I passionately believe that the most dignified death for him would be away from the machines and noise of a hospital ward,’ she told me. ‘At its heart this has been a case about a mother’s love, but also their rights. At what point did Archie’s dad and I lose our parental rights in terms of deciding what we want for our child?’ That question is one that set her once again against the wishes of doctors, who believed that Archie’s condition is too unstable to sustain a transfer and that moving him by ambulance to a different setting would hasten a premature deterioration.
Hollie disagrees, as she has with so much that doctors
have told her. The High Court’s decision yesterday morning came as yet another bitter blow when Mrs Justice Theis ruled that it was in Archie’s best interests to remain at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, east London, where he has resided since early April.
Few could fail to be moved by the words with which she chose to conclude her judgment, as she paid tribute to what she called the ‘unconditional love’ of Archie’s family. ‘I return to where I started, recognising the enormity of what ls ahead for Archie’s parents and the family. Their unconditional love and dedication to Archie is a golden thread that runs through this case.
‘I hope now Archie can be afforded the opportunity for him to die in peaceful circumstances, with the family who meant so much to him as he clearly does to them.’
Kindly meant though they were, they come as little comfort to Hollie, Paul and their legal team. With the support of the charity Christian Concern, they’ve frequently stayed up until the small hours to meet frantic court deadlines. ‘The pressure has been immense,’ says Hollie. ‘Time after time we have been told at the last minute that we have until 9am the following day to sort our submissions. It has been very difficult. All the way through I haven’t had a chance to process everything that has happened. All I have known is that I can’t let my guard down and break down emotionally because the second I do that I won’t have the strength to fight for my little boy.’
Nonetheless the stress is etched on her face, in the dark shadows under Hollie’s eyes and the pallor that even make-up cannot hide. ‘I do get some sleep,’ she says. ‘Some days are better than others. When one of my favourite nurses is in I find it easier to sleep, but when they’re not, I wake up every 40 minutes checking the machines.
‘Until a month ago his machines were constantly bleeping, which meant they were highlighting issues. They have calmed a lot in the last month which is another good sign showing progress. They are still the backdrop to my world though. Whatever happens I think I will hear those machines for the rest of my life.’
The tragic circumstances of Archie’s final months have been well rehearsed now. An aspiring Olympic gymnast, he was fit and healthy until April this year, when he was found unconscious at the home in Southend-on-Sea he shared with Hollie’s two older children from her first marriage, Tom, 22, and 20-year-old Lauren.
His mother believes he was taking part in an incredibly dangerous online ‘blackout’ challenge – also known as the ‘choking’ challenge. Starved of oxygen, he was left with a catastrophic brain injury and has been on a ventilator since arriving at the Royal London in the small hours of April 8.
Doctors believed him to be brain dead, and two-and-a-half weeks later sought a judicial review of his treatment. It proved to be the start of weeks of protracted and highly complex legal action as Hollie and her supporters — Paul, her extended family and the legions of supporters she came to call ‘Archie’s Army’ — fought to contest the doctors’ submissions that Archie had no chance of recovery. For Hollie it has always felt like a David and Goliath affair. ‘Pretty much every court case that has happened I have been given no time, it has been so rushed,’ she says. ‘Maybe that’s why I have never felt surprised by the outcomes.
‘Upset of course but not surprised, because it felt like the odds were stacked against us from the start. Most of the time it felt less like a hearing than a trial, like I was on trial.’
And not just a trial in the legal sense of the word either: Hollie has also had to deal with cruel social media trolls, who have relentlessly targeted her, accusing her of everything from being a liar to an unfit mother.
‘There has been constant bullying on the social media,’ she says. ‘I’ve never lied about a thing. I’ve been open and honest about everything that has happened but it’s not enough for people. I’ve been messaged to say Archie is “rotting” that he “should be six-feet under”. I’ve even had people say they will come to the hospital and take him off life support themselves.’
She goes on: ‘Others have published my address, which jeopardises my son and daughter’s safety. I try not to engage with it because for every one troll there are a thousand wonderful people out there and these nasty-minded souls are not important but it’s hard. ‘Anyone seen coming to court with me that been targeted too, sent vile messages on social media.’
There have also been offers of help: ‘We had offers from all over the world, but have not been allowed to even consider them as the hospital will not release him out of their care and nor will they treat him. It doesn’t make sense.’
Nonetheless some detractors acknowledge her deep love for her son but believe passionately that Hollie should place her trust in the experts. For this she has a robust answer. ‘Physicians get it wrong,’ she says. ‘Lewis Roberts is living proof of that.’ Struck by a van in the Staffordshire town of Leek in March last year, at one point the family of 19-year-old Lewis was told that he had suffered a brain-stem death — but hours before surgery to donate his organs, he began to breathe on his own. ‘Here is someone who was minutes away from organ donation, death certificate signed, failed the brain stem test and then
‘I can’t let my guard down... the second I do, I won’t have the strength to fight for my little boy’
‘The odds were stacked against us from the start’
‘He knows I am there... His expressions change’
15 months later rehabilitated he’s playing basketball.’
More than anything, she says, it comes down to a mother’s instinct. ‘As his mother, I have had to explore every option,’ she says. ‘If my gut was telling me there was no chance for my son it might have been different, but I’ve educated myself, and strongest of all is a mother’s instinct that my son is in there.’
She knows this, she insists, from the hours sitting at her son’s bedside with the rest of his family, talking to him, reading to him and playing him music.
‘I know he knows I am there,’ she repeated. ‘His facial expression changes, just as it does in other situations. When he has physio it’s quite invasive, it has to be to get the mucus from his lungs and he looks very stressed when he has that. Whereas when he has the reflexology in he looks very chilled and relaxed, his blood pressure drops. It goes up at bath time, the nurses know he doesn’t like the right or left side — so is this communication by dead people?
‘He’s gaining weight — it totally contradicts what doctors say which is that his vagus nerve is part of the brain that has been destroyed so therefore he is going to deteriorate to death. He actually looks well, like he’s asleep.’
It is a sleep from which he has not woken, and which Hollie has now accepted he never will.