by Peter James
She patted her stomach. Wanting to give Bump some reassurance. But all she felt was guilt.
Her baby was in there. What did you say to a baby you were about to abort? The baby she was going to kill so that she might have a chance of living – however good or meagre that chance was?
When she returned to her car, there would be nothing.
Already, she felt empty. Hollowed out.
Would Roger forgive her?
God, Roger, we need you so much.
Would she ever be able to forgive herself? To live with this?
She sat for some moments. A Billy Joel song was playing faintly in the background, on Radio Jersey.
For the longest time . . .
Roger loved Billy Joel. He wanted his music at their wedding. She loved him, too. Normally.
But not now. She turned the ignition off and the music died. She took the printout of the scan from her handbag and just sat staring at it, crying again. Finally, reluctantly, she replaced it and closed her bag.
As she climbed out of the car, paid for the parking on her app, then carried her overnight bag with slow, heavy steps towards the hospital, it felt that everything she loved had died.
94
Tuesday 22 January
With only a short amount of time to spare, Georgie went up to the ICU, to find out how Roger had been overnight, and was pleased that the duty critical care manager was Kiera Dale. Popping her head around the ward door, Kiera asked her to wait in the Relatives’ Room and told her she’d be with her in a moment.
Five minutes later she came in, looking rushed. ‘Sorry, we’ve got a couple of crises simultaneously. You’re earlier than usual!’
‘I’m going to be tied up all day – I just wanted to see how Roger’s doing. Any change?’
To her dismay, the nurse was able to offer little to dispel her deepening despondency. ‘Stable,’ she said, nodding and slightly distant. ‘Stable, which is good.’
‘Stable?’ Whenever Georgie had talked to her last week, the nurse had always looked and sounded positive. But her body language worried Georgie now. ‘Stable and improving or stable and—?’
‘Roger’s still not improving – yet – but it’s early days with his new meds.’
‘Are there any positive signs at all, Kiera, or is he getting worse?’
Her pause gave Georgie the answer before she even spoke. ‘He’s still not progressing as we would hope,’ she said, finally. ‘Believe me, Georgie, I so want to be able to give you good news – the whole team does – and I’m sure that will be very soon now.’
Georgie locked eyes with her for an instant, before the nurse looked away, uncomfortable. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I have to get back into the ward. But yes, I am sure. So, what are your plans for the day, anything interesting?’
‘No,’ she said, unable to hide the bitterness in her voice. ‘Not exactly. I’m having an abortion.’
‘What?’ The nurse looked at her, truly shocked. ‘An abortion?’
She nodded, wanly.
‘Oh God, poor you, what’s happened?’
‘I have stage-2 cervical cancer, a particularly aggressive tumour, apparently.’
‘When was that diagnosed? How long have you known?’
‘Since yesterday.’
‘Diagnosed yesterday? Oh no, Georgie, I’m so, so sorry. Did you have any inkling? Symptoms?’
‘I had some stage-1 pre-cancerous tissue about eighteen months ago. That was removed and Kath Clow was pretty sure I was clear. It seems not. She wants me to start chemo-radiation at the Royal Marsden next week.’ She folded her arms, protectively, across her midriff, then shrugged. ‘I don’t have much option about my baby.’
Kiera was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘You poor thing. You have Roger in here and now this?’
‘Yep, well, at least I’ll be getting plenty of hospital loyalty card points,’ she joked, thinly.
The nurse grimaced. ‘I’m really sorry for you. Look – if there’s anything – anything at all I can do, please tell me.’
‘Maybe you could find a magic wand and wave it and make Roger and me both back to how we were.’
‘I wish I could.’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘I’ll have to go – if Roger comes round, I presume you don’t want me to say anything to him?’
Georgie shook her head. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
After the nurse had left, Georgie had a few minutes before she was due to report at the ward. She sat down on a chair, thinking again as she had done a thousand times. Why wasn’t Roger improving? He was a fit man and from all she knew about his past, he’d always been healthy. Sepsis was a word she’d never heard of until a few years ago, and now it seemed to be constantly in the news. But if his blood was being poisoned by something, how come all these damned experts weren’t able to figure it out?
She glanced at her watch. It was time.
She stood up, sick with nerves, and clasped her hands around her stomach again. Whispering, she said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry.’
As she made her way to Gynaecology, feeling like a condemned prisoner, her pace became slower the nearer she approached. She was almost shuffling as she reached the entrance to the section and approached the reception desk. A woman in large glasses and a brisk, friendly manner greeted her. ‘Hello, can I help you?’
Georgie struggled to get any words out, as if her voice was refusing to work. Finally, barely above a whisper, she croaked out her name.
The clerk checked down a list, frowned for an instant then looked up, smiling. ‘Georgina Maclean?’
She nodded.
‘OK, I need you to fill in this medical history form.’ She pointed at a couple of chairs. ‘If you take a seat, a nurse will be along to take you into your room – you are in 216. Then Dr Clow will come and see you in a while and have a chat with you about what’s going to happen and get you to sign a consent form.’
Georgie thanked her, took the form and a pen, went over and sat down, then stared at the words on it. They were blurred in her shaking hands and she couldn’t read them. She was cold, so cold.
‘Georgina Maclean?’ A warm Irish accent.
She looked up bleakly and saw a short, grey-haired woman in her early fifties standing in front of her. Her name badge read LAURA O’KEEFE, STAFF NURSE.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be looking after you until you go into theatre, and I’ll be in the recovery room when you come round.’ She smiled and a tiny amount of the edge came off Georgie’s nerves.
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll take you to your room – you can fill the forms in there and afterwards get changed.’
They walked a short distance along a corridor, then the nurse opened a door and Georgie followed her in.
‘I’m afraid I can’t get you anything at all now to eat or drink, but you can make up for it after.’
‘Perhaps a large whisky?’
‘Only one?’
Georgie managed a weak smile.
95
Tuesday 22 January
Ten minutes later, Georgie sat alone on the edge of the hospital bed in the small, bland room. There was a clock on the wall, showing 11.15 a.m., a television on an extender arm, an array of equipment and different-shaped electrical sockets, and a single hard chair, on which she had put her overnight holdall. To her left was a door to an en-suite bathroom, and to her right a window giving a view of an ugly cluster of buildings and the hospital’s incinerator chimney stack. There was a cold draught and, in keeping with her mood, the sky was clouding over.
She concentrated on the forms, ticking questions about her medical history and filling in some details where requested. Nurse O’Keefe reappeared just as she finished, with a gown and slippers. She took her blood pressure and temperature, and put a band on her wrist. Dr Clow would be along soon, she told Georgie, and the anaesthetist would be coming in as well to offer her a pre-med to relax her. The nurse asked her to go into th
e bathroom to change and she would wait to settle her in the bed.
A few minutes later, changed into the flimsy gown, Georgie lay on the bed and Nurse O’Keefe cranked it until she was lying semi-recumbent. Would she like anything to read, she asked – any magazines? Georgie thanked her and shook her head. ‘I just can’t believe this is happening,’ she said.
The nurse put a hand on her shoulder and smiled, sympathetically. ‘You’re in the best hands here. We all understand and we’re looking after you.’
She thanked her again, softly.
The nurse picked up the forms, glanced through them and left, saying she would pop back in a little while. She closed the door.
Georgie was alone. Alone with her thoughts. So weird that she and Roger were both in this building. Maybe one day they would laugh about it. Maybe. She doubted it. At this moment, she could not see herself ever laughing again.
Her phone made a sharp ting and she saw there was a WhatsApp message from Lucy.
Hey my lovely, hope it’s all going OK. Thinking of you and sending love and hugs and thoughts. Call me later when you can. In a nightmare of a queue in town, oh I love the post office. xxxxxx
She smiled, then tried to compose a reply. But she couldn’t get her brain enough into gear to come up with anything witty. Instead she just replied:
In a room with a lovely view – of the hospital incinerator chimney. Would rather be in your queue! xxx
She opened the Podcasts app on her phone, but there was nothing in her library she was in any mood to listen to. Half an hour passed. An hour. No Kath Clow, no anaesthetist, no Nurse O’Keefe. Had they forgotten about her, she wondered? She had never, in all her life, felt so alone. And scared.
Her nerves were as tight as violin strings. Taking the scanned image from her bag again, she laid it in front of her. Clasping her hands around her stomach, she whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Bump. I’m so, so sorry. I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about you and what you would have done with your life. I know you’d have been a good person. Your father and I would have loved you, we’d have been the best parents ever.’
A short while later there was a knock on the door and an energetic, purposeful-looking man in scrubs, whose face reminded Georgie of the actor Ralph Fiennes, came in, holding a paper cup in his hand. He looked hesitant. ‘Hello, Georgina Maclean, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Tony Le Moignan, your anaesthetist. How are you feeling?’ He sounded as if he really did care how she was feeling.
‘Pretty shit, actually. Nervous as hell. I’ve signed up to kill my baby to save myself. I keep thinking how selfish this is.’
‘Understandably. Poor you – not a great thing to have to go through.’
‘Nope.’
‘I’ve read through your notes and see you have no other medical problems or allergies, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to anaesthetize you and look after you during your surgery today. You’re not on any other medications and you don’t smoke, nothing to eat or drink today?’
She shook her head.
‘Would you like something that will help relax you? It’s a very mild sedative – OK?’
‘OK, I guess,’ she said forlornly. ‘Sure.’
He wrote on her medication chart to have a sedative immediately.
‘If you hold out your hand.’
Georgie complied and he tipped a tiny pill into her cupped palm. ‘Just swallow this.’
Putting it in her mouth, she picked up the cup, which contained a small amount of water, and downed it as he watched.
‘All done?’
She nodded.
‘Good! I’ll see you again in a little while.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Then she was alone again.
An hour later, at ten past two, she was feeling drowsy and much calmer – and her hangover had gone. She barely heard the knock on the door. Then Kath Clow, in a smart two-piece, was standing in front of her, all smiles.
‘How’re you doing, Georgie?’
‘All right, I guess.’ She was glad to see her.
‘I’m just off to gown up. They’ll be taking you through into the anaesthetics room in a short while. You’re still OK to go through with this?’
‘Do I have any choice?’
‘It’s for the best, it really is.’
‘Yup.’
‘I’ll come and see you again in the recovery room in a while and let you know how it’s all gone.’
Georgie held out a hand and the obstetrician took it, squeezing gently.
‘You’re a brave person.’
She shook her head. ‘If I was really brave, I’d tell you to go to hell and tough it out.’
Clow smiled. ‘No. What you are doing is brave. Trust me.’
96
Tuesday 22 January
At a quarter to three, Georgie was woken from a muzzy haze by two people coming into the room, Nurse O’Keefe and a lean man in his thirties in blue pyjamas.
She looked at them, drowsily.
‘All set, Georgie?’ the nurse said.
‘Rock and roll.’
She felt nicely woozy as she was lifted out of the bed and onto a trolley of some kind. The ceiling above her began to move. She saw a door frame, felt the vibration of motion. Travelling along a corridor, a row of chairs slid past, a noticeboard, a hand sanitizer fixed to a wall, a caged trolley, then a yellow lift sign.
It was all quite pleasant, really. Quite jolly.
They were going up in a lift. Or was it down?
Steel doors opened and they were trundling again. Into a room filled with apparatus. Tubes, wires, monitors. The motion stopped. She saw a face peering down at her. A familiar face. Ralph Fiennes.
‘Hello, Georgina,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling? Relaxed?’
‘A bit smashed!’
He smiled.
She felt something on her wrist. Saw another face, a woman in scrubs she’d not seen before, who was looking serious, too serious. Georgie wanted to tell her to chill. Relax. Take a pill. Take one like she had!
‘I’m going to send you to sleep, Georgie,’ Ralph Fiennes said. ‘When you wake up, it will all be over and you’ll be fine!’
‘I’ll be fine.’
She felt something in her left hand; it stung a bit. Her arm felt as if it was filling with fluid. An oxygen mask was placed over her nose and mouth.
Then, seconds before she fell asleep, she saw another face. It sucked all the light from the room. Leaning down over her, smiling.
‘Hello, Georgie,’ Marcus Valentine said. ‘I just popped in to reassure you, you’re in the best possible hands.’
97
Tuesday 22 January
As Kath Clow, followed by a new registrar, an immensely courteous medic, Neil Wakeling, entered the Anaesthetics room, Marcus Valentine, also in scrubs, emerged.
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Hello, Marcus – I thought you weren’t operating today?’
‘I wasn’t, Kath, but I had an emergency.’
‘OK, right.’
‘You’re doing the termination on Georgina Maclean?’
‘I am, yes.’
‘So sad, terrible. Unbelievable, really – talk about a jinxed couple.’
‘How’s her other half doing?’
He shook his head, with a sad expression. ‘Not good, really not good at all. As you well know, sometimes, when sepsis gets its grip, it doesn’t matter what we do. But the whole team’s trying its hardest to pull Roger round – and I’m on it.’
Clow and her registrar walked through into the operating theatre. Tony Le Moignan, the anaesthetist, in his scrubs and bright-red shoes, along with two nurses and an operating department practitioner, were standing by Georgie Maclean, who was unconscious and swathed up to her neck in green cloth, brightly lit by the overhead theatre lights.
They went across to the scrub recess and in turn washed and dried their hands
, then held them out for gloving-up, before walking over to the table.
Kath Clow still had a feeling of deep unease that would not go away. She was about to terminate Georgie Maclean’s baby, and knew the emotional devastation to the woman it would cause. But all the medical evidence pointed to this being the right decision, Georgie’s only option.
‘Neil,’ she said, ‘we need to catheterize her. I’d like you to do it, but also do a vaginal examination with your fingers. I want you to tell me what you think – if you can feel any traces of the cancer.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Kath stood whilst Neil, studious, carried out his examination. When he had finished, he turned to her and she could see the surprise in his eyes above his mask. He shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, Dr Clow, but it seems to me she has a perfectly normal cervix. It’s really odd because it’s showing on the MRI scan report, but I can’t feel anything that might be cancer.’
‘No?’
‘I can’t feel anything abnormal at all.’
She stepped forward. ‘I’ll take a look myself.’
At that moment a scrub nurse called her name. She turned.
‘Dr Clow, someone needs to speak to you urgently.’
Wakeling pointed and she turned and recognized one of the hospital receptionists, Madge, standing in the doorway.
She hurried over.
‘Dr Clow, I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I’ve just had a phone call from your son’s school.’
‘What?’
‘There’s been an incident. The school said they need to see you or your husband immediately, otherwise they’re going to be obliged to call the police.’
‘What incident? I – I mean – what did they say?’
‘That’s all. It sounded really quite serious.’
‘Is Charlie all right, Madge, did they say? Is he hurt?’
‘It didn’t sound as if he was hurt, Dr Clow. But they need you or your husband there very urgently. They didn’t say much, just that they’d explain it all once either of you got there.’
Kath’s mind was in free-fall. An incident? What kind of incident? She thought, terrified, about all the school shootings that had happened around the world – that kind of incident? Or something totally different?