by Tony Parsons
They didn’t discuss maternity leave, or how the baby would affect Megan’s summative assessment, or how her new life could possibly work. Could she really become a doctor and a mother in the same year? Nobody knew. But with the baby on the way, Megan didn’t see how she could afford to not become a doctor.
She was sick of being a glorified student, and she would never ask her father or her sisters for money. Megan had been the brilliant youngest child for so long, a role that she loved, and she refused to admit that life had beaten her down now.
So this was Megan’s holiday, these daily visits to the hospital for blood tests, urine samples, and constant monitoring of the baby’s heartbeat and Megan’s boiling, pre-eclamptic blood.
She tried but she couldn’t imagine what her working life would look like after the baby had come. How long after the birth could she go back to the surgery? Would she really be writing submissions of practical work while the baby slept peacefully in her cot? Would she be breast-feeding during her multiple choice question paper? Would it all be too much, and would she fall at the final hurdle? Megan couldn’t imagine any of these things.
She couldn’t even imagine her baby.
There were the same questions from midwives and Mr Stewart to be answered again and again. How was her vision? Was it blurred? Did she see flashing lights? Any blinding headaches? Which were all really the same question – is this thing, your pre-eclampsia, turning into something far worse?
She had not cared much for Mr Stewart at first. She had found him too much the showman, too happy to have smitten nurses and midwives gazing longingly at his grinning, golden head. But now she saw that she was lucky to have Stewart as her obstetrician, and behind that Robert Redford demeanour was a brilliant doctor with a profound conscience. As the birth came closer, Megan saw that the humour and charm were merely the bedside manner, and not the man.
As Stewart examined every ultrasound, blood test and urine sample, as he assessed the readings for Megan’s blood pressure and the monitoring of Poppy’s tiny heartbeat, he was buying as much time as he could for mother and child, fighting for every extra day, giving the baby’s lungs time to grow, and all the while dealing with the knowledge that Megan’s blood could boil over at any moment and then mother and baby would both be fighting for their lives. He would not let it get that far. Megan was worried about her baby’s life. It was left to Stewart to worry about both of them.
Her blood pressure was still high, 150 over 95, chubby-arsed middle-aged executive level, but remaining steady. Every scan showed that the baby appeared happy, although she only weighed a shade under four pounds. She – Poppy – had this habit of crossing her little legs, as if patiently waiting for the big day, like a commuter waiting for the 8.15 to town, and that simple gesture unlocked a love inside Megan that she had never known existed.
There was nothing wrong with Poppy. Megan was acutely aware that she, Megan, the mother, was the problem. She lay on the hospital bed, Jessica by her side, listening to Poppy’s amplified heartbeat on the Sonicaid. The little life growing inside her.
‘Sure and steady,’ smiled the midwife. ‘I’ll leave you together for a while.’ She squeezed Megan’s arm. ‘Don’t worry. She’s a beautiful baby.’
When the midwife was gone, Megan turned to her sister.
‘Sometimes I feel like I’ve let her down before she’s even been born,’ she said.
‘That’s just silly,’ Jessica said. ‘You’re both doing fine.’
There was a polite knock on the door.
‘It’s him again,’ Megan said. ‘Nobody else bothers knocking.’
‘Come in,’ Jessica called.
‘Anything happen yet?’ Kirk said, shyly sticking his head around the door.
‘It’s not going to be cinematic,’ Megan said. ‘I’m not going to clutch my stomach and scream, “It’s time!”’
Kirk grinned with embarrassment. Jessica smiled at him with sympathy. This was a good guy, wasn’t it? Wasn’t this how we wanted a man to be? Attentive, concerned, there by your side? Why was her sister so hard on him?
‘Mr Stewart will look at my tests and decide that my blood pressure is too high,’ Megan continued. ‘Then he will ask the anaesthetist to look for a window in his diary between his golf game and the next poor cow on the assembly line. So don’t expect hospital drama, okay? Don’t expect George Clooney and white coats.’
He hovered in the doorway, still smiling uncertainly. ‘Okay,’ he said.
‘She’s fine,’ said Jessica. ‘And the baby’s fine.’
‘I’ll get some coffee then for us, shall I?’
‘That would be lovely,’ beamed Jessica.
‘Or if you give me the keys,’ Kirk said, ‘I could go to your flat and start painting that wardrobe?’
She thought about her little home, and how the baby had already changed it. Megan and her sisters had cleared most of the solitary bedroom for the baby. They had brought in a beautiful Mamas and Papas cot (a gift from Jessica and Paulo) with a Jenny Giraffe mobile (Kirk’s contribution), a herd of stuffed toys (from sentimental old women on the reception desk at the surgery), all these stupendously useless bears, dogs and frogs, although they did make the room seem more welcoming, more like a nursery and less like a miserable little rented flat, and a new chest of drawers (from her father) full of clothes (from Cat).
It was the clothes that tugged at Megan’s heart. They would be perfect for a newborn baby, but far too big for premature Poppy.
‘Megan?’ Kirk said. ‘Coffee and keys?’
‘Just the coffee,’ Megan said. ‘To be honest, I don’t really want you in my flat when I’m not there.’
‘That’s cool. That’s absolutely cool. I’ll just get the coffee then.’
She had allowed him in there once – when he had turned up on the doorstep with the Jenny Giraffe mobile – and didn’t like the way his eyes wandered all over her home. As though he was disappointed that his daughter was starting her life in this poky flat. As though she was an unfit mother. What was he expecting? Kensington Palace? She was going to be a single mother.
‘Why are you so nasty to him?’ Jessica said. ‘When this baby comes along, you’re going to be joined for life.’
Megan stared at her sister. ‘Perhaps that’s why I’m nasty to him.’
The door opened and Mr Stewart came in with a sheaf of papers. He gave Jessica the full blast of his smile and then sat on the bed, taking Megan’s hand.
‘Where are we now?’ he said.
‘Thirty-four weeks,’ Megan said. ‘That’s still too early. She’s still too small. Just four pounds. I want to try to make it to thirty-six weeks. Please. Can’t we try for thirty-six weeks?’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Look at this,’ he said.
It was just a line on a chart. The line ascended swiftly, then slowly evened off and finally seemed ready to fall. It looked like the flight of an arrow that was just about to drift back to earth.
‘The baby’s growth rate,’ Megan said. ‘It’s slowing down.’
‘Had to happen. Pre-eclampsia affects the blood supply to the placenta. Sooner or later, the baby stops growing. But of course you know that already.’
Jessica anxiously peered at the chart over the obstetrician’s shoulder. ‘But what does it mean?’
For a few seconds the only sound in the room was the baby’s amplified heartbeat. And then Megan spoke.
‘It means it’s time,’ she said.
Then there was the waiting. And it went on and on, as the anaesthetist’s busy schedule and London traffic combined to delay the birth of Megan’s daughter. Midwives and nurses came and went, taking blood pressure and murmuring small talk, as if Megan was waiting for a bus, not a baby.
All this waiting. How could anyone be bored on the edge of something so momentous? Megan felt that her life had stopped. That all time was dead time until the anaesthetist had struggled past the Angel in Islington. Cat arrived with premature flowers. Jessica st
roked Megan’s feet. Jack called and didn’t know what to say. Kirk hovered by the window, trying not to get in the way.
Then they were ready for her, and to Jessica it seemed that things moved alarmingly fast. Like those movies you see about death row – the sudden mad rush to get the act done and behind them.
With Cat and Jessica on either side of Megan, holding her hand, two hefty young porters lifted her onto a trolley and wheeled her out of the room and into harshly lit corridors smelling of hospital food and flowers. Into a huge lift and down into the basement of the building, where Mr Stewart was waiting, as beautiful in his blue hospital smock as Robert Redford in his Navy whites in The Way We Were.
And then into the holding room, where the anaesthetist was waiting, his voice as soothing as a lover’s as he slipped in the needle.
There was a room beyond the holding room, full of happy, chatting people, all wearing the blue uniforms and shower caps. They surrounded a flat table. Under the lights of the operating theatre, it shone like an altar. All the while, her sisters never stopped holding Megan’s hand.
The expectant father followed in their wake. They gave him a blue coat, a plastic shower cap for his hair, and a surgical mask. His heart raced. A girl, a girl, it was going to be a girl. This unimaginable child. Soon she would be here. There was nothing he could do. Except prepare to be a good father. And he wondered, what would he tell his daughter about men?
How could he prepare her for their lies, their tricks, and their black hearts? Our black hearts? Her childhood years would fly by, and soon the boys would look at her, his precious baby, in that same calculating way that he had looked at a million girls in thirty countries.
He loved her so much, and yet already this was his greatest fear – that she would one day meet someone just like him. This was the womaniser’s bitterly ironic fate – to be the father of an adored, beautiful baby girl.
They wheeled Megan into the brightly lit operating room where there were more people than he had expected. They were young, smiling, all wearing the same blue coats as him.
‘Any requests?’ one of them said, as if this was a radio show rather than an emergency Caesarean. Kirk remembered the CD in his pocket. He handed it over and someone stuffed it in the operating theatre’s ghetto blaster. They busied themselves around Megan – pulling some strangely sexy stockings onto her thin, pale legs, putting an IV drip into her arm, murmuring sweet nothings.
As the anaesthetist leant over Megan, a tiny screen was put across her belly. Kirk stared at it in amazement. He had heard that it was a tent. They put a tent on the woman’s belly for a Caesarean. That’s what he had heard, that’s what he was expecting. Some huge expanse of canvas that could house a family of Bedouin tribesmen. This was more of a handkerchief. If he lifted his head, he would be able to see everything.
Megan’s bulging belly was swabbed with antiseptic and then Mr Stewart bent over her, a thin blade in his hands. Kirk pressed his face close to Megan’s face, fighting for breath. It was meant to be a tent. What happened to the fucking tent?
What would happen if he caught a glimpse of Megan’s sliced open belly and he couldn’t take it? What if the first thing his daughter ever saw was her daddy, flat out on the floor, fainted clean away? How would that look?
Megan took his hand.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, mumbling a little through the mist of drugs. ‘You’ll be fine.’
She heard a song begin to play. That seemed strange, that there was music in here. And the faces swam around her – the faces she knew, and the faces she had never seen in her life – all of them strangely interchangeable, not because they all wore that blue nylon uniform with the mask and the little hat, but because they all looked at her with the same expression. A kind of concerned love, as though she was a virgin bride on her wedding night. It was as if she had suddenly become the most important person on the planet. Or maybe it was the baby. Maybe the baby was the most important person on the planet. Yes, that seemed right.
‘Well, I never met a girl like you before.’
Like someone doing the washing up in her stomach. That’s what it felt like. Intimate – more intimate than anything she had ever felt – and yet strangely, mercifully distant. The guy – Kirk, his name was definitely Kirk – had his face pressed close to her. Bracing himself for something. He was holding her hand. She suddenly wanted to tell him, better start painting that wardrobe.
But they were inside her now, the song not even half over – ‘This old town’s changed so much’ – and even through the sweet fog of anaesthetic she was aware of something being pulled from her, something that was her and yet independent of her, and all attention was suddenly elsewhere, on this thing that was her and yet not her.
‘Is everything all right?’ she said, or maybe she only thought it – but the focus was on this little thing now, and for a few seconds she felt ignored, forgotten, like a bride abandoned at the altar.
Then there was laughter – shocked, delighted laughter – and movement, and her sisters and Kirk were smiling down at her, their heads batting back and forth between her and the little living thing that was being fished from her body – their heads torn between the two of them, back and forth, back and forth, like a cartoon tennis crowd following the action and – how can it be so fast? – then it – she – was finally free, the song still not over, as it – she – was immediately whisked away from Megan by the midwives to be cleaned and tested and wrapped in swaddling clothes. But the weak little cries reached Megan.
And then there she was, not being held by Jessica or Cat, which Megan would really have preferred but, in accordance with some tribal ritual, by the father.
The baby was tiny – heartbreakingly tiny. More like a sleepy foetus than a bouncing baby. Megan stared at her, too stoned and exhausted to do what she wanted to do, which was take her baby and hold her and love her.
It – she – had a little bashed-in face, like an apple that had fallen too soon, and even after being washed her face was still covered in a sticky film of yellow goo. She looked like the oldest thing in the world, and also the youngest.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Kirk said, laughing and crying all at once. ‘She’s the most beautiful thing in the world.’
And he was right.
Poppy Jewell’s life had begun.
Sixteen
It wasn’t meant to be this way, thought Jessica.
In all her images of new motherhood, the mother and baby were inseparable – the sleeping tot at rest on her mother’s breast, the mother exhausted but quietly ecstatic. An almost Biblical union of mother and child – that’s what Jessica was expecting, a bond so close that you could hardly tell where the mother ended and the baby began, as indivisible as they had been when the child was in the womb.
But little Poppy was in the Intensive Care Unit, lying on her belly in an incubator, wrapped up for a winter that only she could feel, and Megan was three floors below – sliced up and spent, inexplicably silent.
One of the nurses had placed a stuffed monkey in the incubator, and it smiled down on Poppy, twice her size. Jessica thought her niece looked like the most vulnerable thing she had ever seen – not yet ready for the world.
‘She’s about the size of a roast chicken,’ said Jessica. ‘Poor little mite.’
‘Don’t worry about our Poppy,’ said a cheerful Jamaican nurse. ‘She might be a little uncooked, but she’s doing fine. Babies with pre-eclamptic mums tend to be tough little buggers.’
‘She doesn’t look like a tough little bugger,’ said Jessica.
But she was grateful for the reassurance.
It was true that little Poppy had done well in her first three days of life. She was breathing unaided, drinking tiny quantities of milk – expressed by Megan, but administered by one of the ICU’s nurses – and she was putting on some weight.
And there was something else. Even after just a few days, it was clear that there were far harder luck stories than a baby born
at thirty-four weeks and weighing just under four pounds.
Jessica hadn’t seen any babies smaller than Poppy in the Intensive Care Unit – although she was assured they arrived all the time. But on her first day in the ICU there was also, briefly, a baby boy born with a hole in his heart. And on the second day there had been another baby boy – a fat, healthy eight-pounder – who was born with Down’s syndrome.
As the nurses and doctors did what they could for these babies – and Jessica wondered what could they do? – the parents stood stunned or quietly sobbing by their newborn. The mother and father of the baby boy with Down’s syndrome had a girl of about five years old with them. When you have done it once, Jessica thought, you must relax. You must believe the bad things all happen to other families. And then your world falls apart. And then it happens to you.
Jessica thought she could say a few supportive words to other families with premature babies. She could tell them that their tiny baby boy was a handsome fellow – even as he lay there with his woolly hat falling over his eyes – or that their undersized baby girl was a beauty – even as she lay there like a little pale fillet in the frozen meat department.
But Jessica didn’t have any words for the families who had harder things to deal with.
She could not tell the mothers and fathers of the Down’s syndrome baby, or the boy with a hole in his heart, that everything was going to be all right. She had no right to say those words, she had no right to offer them cheap, unearned comfort.
Because that’s what you learned in the Intensive Care Unit – not everybody who has a baby gets a happy ending.
Jessica watched her niece sleeping. She was getting used to it now – that fretful panting, desperate for life. Like a puppy, or a kitten, the face all mashed up yet somehow heartbreakingly beautiful.
Poppy was going to be fine.