Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  The phone by the bed rang. Ten past seven – Conor, checking to see how she was before he went on stage. He wouldn’t expect her to put on a front for him. She snatched up the phone, already crying a bit in anticipation.

  “I didn’t get the fucking partnership!”

  It was Mr Chapman.

  “Oh! Sorry, I thought you were . . .” Just move on. “You certainly work late!”

  Mr Chapman hadn’t time for chitchat. He’d been given two tickets to a performance of The Nutcracker Suite in the Cork Opera House that night by a grateful patient whose triplets he had delivered, and he was greatly looking forward to it. He informed Emily that he’d had her urine sample double-checked in the lab and that there were indications of uric acid in it. Protein, in other words. It was a cause for concern.

  “How, exactly?”

  He went on a bit about her raised blood pressure again, and her water retention and then he said the word ‘pre-eclampsia’. Now, pre-eclampsia was a condition –

  “I know what pre-eclampsia is,” Emily said, who wasn’t all that sure. “But I feel absolutely fine.”

  Yes, par for the course, usually the sufferers didn’t experience any physical discomfort –

  “No, really, I’m about to start ironing.”

  Mr Chapman advised her not to do that. Instead she was to pack a small overnight bag and go to the hospital. No panic, just for observation. He would see her in the morning.

  Emily could think of nothing except the obvious. “I don’t have any car. It was towed, you see.”

  A small silence. Mr Chapman wasn’t used to dealing with patients’ travel problems.

  Could she prevail upon a friend? A relative?

  Neasa was probably under Gary at this very moment. And to ask Liz to come over with the five boys? Deirdre and Jackie lived in Cork. Michael and Brian, Emily’s two brothers, lived in Australia.

  Into the lengthening silence, Mr Chapman suggested a taxi.

  “They’ll never take me to Cork,” Emily said. “They don’t even like going too far out the Cork Road.”

  Mr Chapman was nonplussed now. Short of coming to get her himself, the only thing he could suggest was an ambulance.

  “An ambulance?” Emily had visions of being borne down the High Street of Paulstown, sirens wailing and lights flashing, drinkers in Milo’s pub coming to the door to see what was happening. She would die of mortification.

  Mr Chapman told her he would organise the ambulance and got off the phone before she complicated matters further.

  Emily’s brain went into a peculiar, very practical mode. Should she ring Conor? No, what was the point? He was about to go on stage. It would only worry him. Best to pack and get there and ring him later. He would be in the same city anyway; he could just nip by when the performance was over.

  Emily’s hospital bag and the bag for the baby were already packed in readiness for the big day. It would be easiest to just take those. But she wouldn’t. It would be like admitting that everything was going wrong. And it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Chapman had said just to pack for overnight. She would do that.

  Two nightdresses and a pair of pyjamas just in case. Her huge old bunny slippers, because the new ones were already packed away. Underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste. A towel. Even her anti-wrinkle cream.

  The suitcase on top of the wardrobe was much too big. It would look like she was going on holidays. Should she just empty her hospital bag? Too much hassle. She dragged Conor’s bag from under the bed and shook off the dust.

  Unfortunately it had Manchester United emblazoned across it. It had been a freebie. Stickers for Germany, Italy and France were plastered on the sides, relics from his tour with the orchestra last year. They would probably think in the hospital that Emily was a football hooligan who followed the team all over the world.

  She began to pack, removing a pair of Conor’s forgotten socks first. Rancid. She threw them in the laundry bin. When she was finished, she zipped up the bag and went downstairs. She switched off the TV and all the lights, and took her house keys. Then she sat on the chair by the front door, the bag on her knees. It all seemed very unreal.

  The doorbell rang, startling her. There had been no lights or sirens or anything. In the darkness, Emily felt her way up the door towards the latch. She had to put the bag down first. It took a while. The doorbell rang again.

  “Could have a stiff in here, Joe,” one the ambulance men said outside.

  “Easier really,” Joe said.

  Emily flung open the door and loomed out of the darkness, giving them a fright.

  “Emily Collins?” Joe asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Hop in.”

  Joe was very kind as it turned out.

  “All right, love?”

  “Great, thank you,” Emily said. She was perched on the little bench at the side. Far from screaming down the town, the ambulance chugged along at a leisurely thirty miles an hour. The driver was called Liam, she learned, and he was eating egg sandwiches in the front. She could smell them. Occasionally the radio crackled and she heard him mumble incomprehensibly into it.

  “And how’s the babby?” Joe wanted to know.

  “Oh, kicking away.”

  “Good, good,” Joe said, his brown eyes crinkling. “That’s the way to have him.”

  “They think I have pre-eclampsia,” Emily found herself saying.

  Joe clucked and shook his head. “Do they now?”

  “But I feel fine,” she insisted to him.

  “Most people we pick up do,” Joe said sagely. “They ring 999, all hysterical, saying they’re having a heart attack or a brain haemorrhage or they can’t breathe or they’re unconscious. We rush to the scene and find them sitting up having a cup of tea, telling you that it was only wind. But we have to bring them in all the same.”

  “I didn’t ring,” Emily quickly clarified.

  “Oh I know. Some consultant did. They think we’re a taxi service.” He banged on the partition. “Don’t they, Liam?”

  “What?”

  “Taxi service.”

  “Oh, yeh.”

  Emily looked at the wires and tubes and masks hanging from the ambulance ceiling. It all looked very clinical and menacing and she felt frightened now.

  “Don’t mind that stuff, love,” Joe told her. “That’s only for the serious cases.”

  “What’ll they do to me down there?” she blurted.

  Joe scratched his head. “I don’t honestly know. Our job stops at the front door.”

  “Of course, sorry,” Emily said. She thought that this was a shame. Joe seemed much more human that Mr Chapman.

  “But the girls are very nice down there,” Joe assured her. “Fiona, she’s the Head Nurse in Maternity, she’s a real cracker – isn’t she, Liam?”

  “Smashing,” Liam shouted.

  “They’re all very nice,” Joe repeated. “Most of them have babbies themselves. They’ll take good care of you. And the food’s great, for a hospital. Chips and everything.”

  Emily nodded vigorously. She fixed her gaze on a plastic mask dangling near her nose.

  “My wife had one four weeks ago,” Joe said shyly.

  “Sorry?”

  “A baby.”

  “Did she?”

  “A girl. Eight pounds four ounces.”

  “Oh! That’s a great weight.”

  “It is,” Joe said proudly. “We named her Tamzin.”

  “Tamzin?”

  “I know, I wasn’t that keen on it to be honest, but the wife is a terrible Eastenders fan. That blondie one in it, she’s called Tamzin. In real life, mind – I can’t remember what’s she’s called on the telly.”

  “Melanie,” Emily said faintly, vowing never to watch it again.

  “That’s it! Anyway, I couldn’t get me tongue around this Tamzin business at all in the beginning, but funny, the baby, she seems to have grown into it.” He pondered this for a moment. “But the point is that the wife had her in the
same place you’re going to now.”

  “I’m not having it now, though,” Emily clarified quickly. “I’m only in for observation. It’s not due for weeks and weeks yet.”

  “Sure,” Joe said easily. “This your first?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, eventually.

  They sat in silence for a while. Emily thought of Conor who was probably ringing the house at this very minute before he went on stage. Would he be worried when he got no reply? Probably not, sensibly assuming that she had gone out to the dogs or something. Emily herself always got slightly panicked when Conor was unreachable by phone for any length of time. She always imagined that something nasty had happened or, if he was driving, that he’d been in a crash. Conor, home safe and sound, would listen to these fantasies with a faint amusement. He would ruffle her hair and tell her she was a dreadful worrier. Once, she told herself, just once, she would like to see him harried and hassled. It wasn’t that she wished him discomfort; she would just like to share with him occasionally, that was all.

  She jumped as the black glass partition separating the driver flew back. She was presented with the back of Liam’s head. He was replacing the radio mike. He spoke over his shoulder.

  “Car crash down by Finnerty’s Cross. Three vehicles, one a truck.” He cast a look at Emily, and said carefully, “Fairly bad. They’re sending two units up from Cork, but they’ll be at least forty minutes. We have to divert.”

  Emily swallowed hard. She didn’t know if she was up to a bad car crash at the moment. And what if there wasn’t room enough in the ambulance for everybody? Emily’s problems might look fairly tame compared to some poor soul who had lost limbs, or worse. Would she have to get out and walk? But what about her baby? If it were just Emily, she wouldn’t mind. She was going to say something to Joe about it when he jumped to his feet.

  “Are you strapped in properly there?” he said.

  “I think so. Why?”

  The siren exploded on the top of the ambulance. Strobe lighting flashed on the tinted windows. The ambulance shot off at speed and Emily bounced from side to side.

  Joe – nice, slow Joe – mutated into a person of extreme efficiency. Balancing expertly in the careering ambulance, he checked tubes and wires and opened little cupboards that Emily hadn’t noticed before. He took out big pouches of clear-coloured liquid, rolls of white gauze, syringes, more tubes. Things must be very bad down at Finnerty’s Cross.

  “Do you want me to do anything?” Emily asked loudly over the roar of the ambulance.

  “What?”

  “If it’s bad. I did a first-aid course last year.”

  Joe looked at her.

  “It was quite advanced,” she added.

  “Thanks, anyway, but sure you’ll be getting out.”

  “What?”

  “We’re here.”

  Emily looked out and saw lights – shops, a petrol station. They were coming into Mitchelstown, just five miles from home. And now here was St Martha’s coming up on the left. Joe was apologetic.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll transfer you to Cork in the morning.”

  The ambulance screeched to a halt, lights still flashing. Joe flung the doors open and held out a hand to Emily. She stepped out to see a porter and a nurse rushing out the front door at all the commotion. The nurse was pulling on plastic gloves.

  The pair stopped just short of Emily, taken aback to find her on her feet and clutching a Manchester United bag. Suspiciously, they looked around her person for signs of blood or broken limbs or indeed any injury at all which would merit such a noisy and dramatic entrance.

  “Diversion,” Joe explained. “She was due to go to Cork. Pre-eclampsia.”

  “Oh,” the nurse said, deflating. The porter sighed and went back in.

  Emily looked around for Joe but he was springing back into the ambulance.

  “Good luck,” he said to her, and the doors closed. The ambulance screeched off, leaving Emily feeling bereft.

  The nurse looked at Emily. Her badge said V Mooney. “Pre-eclampsia then?”

  “I don’t know,” Emily said unhappily. “That’s just what Mr Chapman thinks.”

  “Mr Chapman. I see.” Her mouth went a bit tight. She reached over and took Emily’s bag, her last object of safety and comfort in a world gone insane. “Right, let’s get you inside then.”

  She was put in a ward with three other pregnant women. A television blared high in a corner. Despite this, one patient appeared to be soundly asleep, her hair all over her face. The woman in the bed next to Emily had so many visitors that they were perched on any available piece of furniture, including Emily’s bed.

  Nurse V Mooney shooed them off. “Don’t tire Maggie out now,” she said mildly. Maggie, the patient, was sitting up in the bed like a queen and eating oranges.

  Emily nodded politely at her and got a big beam back but Nurse V Mooney whipped around the curtain, cutting Maggie off.

  “You can get undressed and into bed,” she told Emily. “I’ll be back to take your blood pressure and all that.”

  “This pre-eclampsia –”

  “We don’t know if it’s that yet. I’ll have to find out what instructions Mr Chapman left, which means I’ll have to phone Cork.” She sighed as though she personally shouldered the phone bill.

  Emily was left alone. She unzipped her bag and neatly stowed her belongings in the battered metal locker. The catch on it wouldn’t close properly and the door kept swinging open to reveal her knickers and socks to anyone who cared to look. In the end she unfolded her towel and tucked it in around her things. Now it just looked as though she were hiding a stash of vodka.

  She had forgotten to bring a book, of course, or a magazine. It hadn’t been high on her list of priorities. But she couldn’t face an evening of making small talk with the other women. She was too upset. And the thing on the telly was in Irish, of all languages. At the bottom of the Manchester United bag was a copy of Conor’s concert programme from his tour last year. It was better than nothing.

  It felt silly to be getting into her nightie at a quarter past eight in the evening. The bed was old-fashioned and high and she had to give a little hop to get into it. She tried to pull up the stiff sheets but, as in all hospitals, they seemed to be welded to the bed somewhere around hip region. Short of stripping the bed and re-making it properly, which she suspected wouldn’t go down too well with that nurse, she would just have to put up with it. Also she didn’t want the other women to think she had some kind of fetish. When the lights went out later she would sort it out.

  The din from the visitors in the next cubicle was deafening as more people arrived – Maggie’s husband Tiernan, his two sisters and a brother, a couple of second cousins and someone from Boston. It was unclear whether they’d flown over especially to see Maggie. Emily’s curtain bulged as they squeezed in. It must be a special occasion. Probably Maggie’s birthday or something.

  “Okay.” Nurse V Mooney was back, carrying all kinds of equipment and a chart. She proceeded to fill in details with a pen that she had to give a good shake to every now and again.

  “Everything in this blasted place is falling apart,” she said, to herself more than Emily. “Now. If you could hold out your arm.”

  Emily did so obediently and a pressure cuff was put on it. She felt it tighten unpleasantly. Nurse V Mooney didn’t meet her eyes.

  “Well,” she said, looking at the pressure gauge.

  “Is it bad?”

  “One eighty over one ten.” She glanced up. “It’s high but I’ve seen worse.”

  Emily bet she had. Nurse V Mooney now sat down on the bed. Emily had to move her feet.

  “Any nausea?”

  “No.”

  “Vomiting?”

  “No.”

  “Flashing lights?”

  “Apart from the ambulance.” Joke, woman, joke!

  The nurse didn’t smile. “Any pain in the abdomen?”

  “No.”

  “Any b
leeding, irregular discharge, discomfort?”

  “No, no, no.”

  The nurse shot Emily a look as though she were making fun of her.

  “Any headache?”

  “Yes. Well, not now. But earlier. I took an aspirin.”

  The nurse hadn’t much interest in this. “Right, good.” She flipped a page in the chart. “Well, we’ve certainly caught it in time.”

  “The pre-eclampsia?”

  “We don’t know if it’s that yet,” the nurse insisted, as though it were all a fuss about nothing. “But if it is, it hasn’t developed into eclampsia.”