In her festive hoodie, Aoife lay needlessly dying in the ‘death trap’ of Limerick’s ED

SHE was wearing her Christmas hoodie. Of all the details that have emerged of Aoife Johnston’s pitiful and needless death, the hours of testimony to the inquest and the pages of coverage in the past week’s newspapers, it was the picture of the poor child in her Christmas hoodie that said far more than all those thousands of words – not just of a Christmas she would never see, but a whole stolen life.

They love those big fleecy hoodies, teenage girls do, especially the Christmas ones with the Santas and the reindeers and the dancing snowmen. In their Instagram posts they’re all big eyelashes and glossy lips, swishy highlights and shimmering cheekbones, this generation of gorgeous children that our Irish genes have miraculously produced.

But in their festive hoodies they’re allowed to be the kiddies they still are at heart: Excited about Christmas, their pocket-money presents all carefully wrapped and hidden, looking forward to the telly, the visitors, and to the precious and unchanging family rituals crafted over Christmases past.

They’re usually bought for the Late Late Toy Show, those hoodies, in anticipation of the lazy holidays ahead spent lounging on the sofa, watching old films and eating Quality Street. But four weeks to the day after that year’s Toy Show, on Friday, December 17, 2022, Aoife, right, was lying across two chairs on a makeshift bed in the emergency department of University Hospital Limerick.

There wasn’t even a trolley for the desperately ill girl, as she vomited repeatedly and cried out in pain over the 15 hours she waited to be treated. There wasn’t even a blanket. All she had to comfort and warm her was her cheery Christmas hoodie as she lay dying before her parents’ uncomprehending eyes.

They tried to reassure her that she was in the very best place, her mother Carol told Aoife’s inquest this week.

‘Aoife was doing her best,’ she said, to hang on for the care they were so sure was coming.

They were in a modern Irish hospital, after all, in one of the best-funded health services in Europe, and all she needed was a dose of antibiotics – a simple treatment that has been saving human lives for almost 100 years. They must have been worried sick, after the GP who had seen Aoife at around 5pm that Friday evening had told them he suspected she had sepsis and gave them a referral letter for UHL. They were in the emergency department within the hour, but instead of the urgent attention they expected, for their ill, frightened daughter, the Johnston family landed into chaos.

This was how the ED in Limerick was described by clinical nurse manager Katherine Skelly at the inquest: ‘Akin to a war zone, every area was overcrowded with patients. Trolleys were placed back-toback and lined either side of the corridors. Every available floor space was taken. Patients were lying and sitting in every nook and cranny.’

Emergency consultant Dr James Gray, another witness, called it ‘a death trap’.

Some patients, the inquest heard, gave up and went home but Aoife was too poorly to leave. When she’d been triaged, more than an hour-and-a-half after she arrived, she was moved into what seemed like a storeroom, her mother said. She was given a wheelchair but her parents found two chairs and pushed them together so she could lie down.

She’d vomited twice while waiting to be triaged, and continued vomiting violently, her father James recalled, as he begged and roared for help.

How terrified they must have been, as that night wore on, their girl vomiting ‘pure green liquid’ and screaming in pain, while busy staff chided them for trying to jump the queue: ‘I’m well aware she’s sick,’ they were told, ‘but I have 70 other patients to look after.’ She was in agony with a headache. A strange mark appeared on her left eye and her skin began to turn blotchy – the classic warning sign that all parents know to fear. But they were in a hospital, they kept reminding Aoife as much as themselves. They were in the best place.

The seriousness of her condition was obvious. She’d been triaged, X-rayed, given painkillers and ice packs for the pains in her legs, and even as she lapsed into unconsciousness, deep down her poor parents must still have believed it: she was in the best place.

Even other patients were asking staff, ‘Is nobody going into that poor girl?’, so help would surely come any moment. And then, when she was up and about again in time for Christmas, they’d show her the picture they took in the storeroom in the ED: Aoife, usually so glossy and poised in her photographs, curled up on two chairs in her red reindeer hoodie.

This week it was shown to the coroner, at her inquest.