Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  She wasn’t fooling him. She knew by the twitch of his left eyebrow, a dead giveaway.

  “Ring me anyway,” he asked.

  “Of course I will!”

  He stood and bent to kiss her. She turned her head slightly so that he kissed her cheek.

  “Take care,” he said.

  “You too.”

  It was all a bit awkward and formal. Part of Emily hated sending him away like this; it seemed very heartless when he was probably as worried as she. But she was afraid of what she might say if he stayed any longer.

  She gave a little wave as he went out into the corridor, but he didn’t look back and she let her hand fall.

  Her stomach rumbled, surprising her. She’d had no dinner last night, she remembered. The thought of Weetabix revolted her, but the baby would start eating itself if she didn’t feed it soon.

  For the first time since she’d arrived, she pulled back the curtain around her bed all the way to the wall. The breakfasting women looked up in surprise; they’d been having a whispered argument as to whether Emily was very sick or just plain rude. Only Maggie smiled.

  Emily was weary. She would have to be civilised because they would all turn out to be related in some distant way to her neighbours in Paulstown, don’t you know, and she wouldn’t give any of them another excuse to think that she was getting above herself.

  Neasa didn’t like hospitals. It was to do with her grandmother dying three years before. Mrs Martin had been in and out of hospitals for eighteen months before somebody had finally said the word ‘terminal’ to her. She had looked at them, upset. “What do you mean, terminate?” For weeks afterwards, in her drugged haze, she had been convinced that there was some plot afoot to carry out euthanasia on her, and wasn’t happy unless Neasa was there to protect her. “She’s a solicitor,” she would ominously remind the doctors every now and then.

  Towards the end, Neasa had taken a week’s compassionate leave from work and had spent it by her grandmother’s bedside, leaving it only for a quick shower and a change of clothes. It had been a slow, miserable, painful death. Neasa had gone on a bender for three days. If there was one lesson to be learned from it all, it was to enjoy life while one could, because the odds were that there was no happy ending in store.

  And so she strode down the corridors of Martha’s carrying a big red helium balloon and a six-pack of Guinness. Emily wasn’t sick, thank God, and there was no point in pretending she was.

  Neasa found her chatting with three other women as though they had known each other all their lives.

  “Oh, hi, Neasa! This is Trish. She’s overdue by two weeks. They might have to induce. And this is Siobhan, a false alarm. She’ll be out today. And Maggie, of course. Maggie was going to try for a water birth, but they don’t do it here, apparently.”

  “I’m going to ask for a birthing chair instead,” Maggie told Neasa earnestly.

  “Oh, yeh, I saw one of those in Habitat,” Neasa said, and roared laughing.

  Maggie and the rest looked at her blankly. Shit. They were serious.

  Neasa looked around for a window to open. She wished now that she wasn’t so hungover.

  “You’ve had your roots done,” Emily observed.

  Neasa was embarrassed. Nobody in the world knew that her hair wasn’t naturally black except for Emily, and that was only because a pack of Clairol Midnight Black had fallen out of Neasa’s bag one day.

  “It’s all right. We’re all women here,” Emily said, seeing her face.

  All pregnant women who didn’t have to worry about their appearance. Neasa wasn’t part of their club, thank you very much.

  “This your bed?” Neasa asked. It was dressed differently to all the others: the covers were brought right up to the pillow and folded under neatly. She dumped the Guinness on the end of it and sat down.

  “See you later,” Emily said cheerily to the others, and pulled the curtain around herself and Neasa. A bit unnecessary, Neasa thought.

  “So,” she demanded, “what’s the diagnosis? They’re not going to do a caesarean section or anything like that, are they?”

  “No, no,” Emily said vaguely. “I’m not even being moved to Cork. No beds available, apparently. I’ll probably be out tomorrow.”

  “Great! They were all asking for you in work, you know. Gary rang. And Creepy Crawley is mooching around the place looking sick as a parrot. He told the cleaner this morning that he thinks he might have brought it all on you. When I go in this afternoon, I’m going to tell him that his name is down on your chart as a possible cause.”

  She had expected Emily to laugh. Come on. It was a little bit funny, wasn’t it?

  “I want you to do something for me,” Emily said. She looked very intense.

  “What?” Neasa asked warily. She hoped that this wasn’t something to do with delivery wards and birthing partners and all that. Maybe Conor had bottled out. Neasa would just die.

  “I want you to ring a hotel in Germany. You’ll have to look up the number in directory enquiries. That’s the name of it.” She pressed a piece of paper into Neasa’s hand. Or, rather, a square of hospital toilet roll, the stuff that looked like greaseproof paper. The pen had run out halfway, before starting again with a big blob of blue.

  “You’re not thinking of taking a holiday, surely?” Neasa asked, confused.

  “I’m not.”

  Neasa looked from the piece of paper to Emily’s too-bright eyes. “What then?”

  “Well, you see, it’s all very silly, really,” Emily said lightly, and stopped.

  “How silly?” Neasa enquired.

  “Probably extremely silly.” Emily bit her lip. “But I need you to check some dates for me.”

  “I see.”

  “I need to know when the orchestra stayed there last year when they were on tour. What nights.”

  Neasa looked at the piece of paper again.

  “The entire orchestra?” she asked eventually. “The whole thirty-one of them?”

  “Thirty-two,” Emily corrected. “You see, I think most of them might have left at the one time. But some of them might have stayed on. Two of them.”

  Neasa nodded slowly. “Wouldn’t that kind of information be . . . privileged, so to speak?”

  “You might have to be clever about it,” Emily agreed.

  Neasa said nothing for a little while, then, “Is this urgent?”

  “Not urgent, no.”

  “Maybe you should wait until you’re out of hospital.”

  “Maybe. But I can’t.”

  “Emily,” Neasa said, “of course I’ll do it for you if you really want me to. And I’m a great one for rushing on in there myself.” As her last nine boyfriends would testify. “But you’ve got a baby to think about. And your own health. You’ve only two months to go, you know. Maybe you should just concentrate on that and tackle everything else afterwards.”

  Emily looked at her, closed. “Will you do this for me or not?”

  Neasa folded the piece of toilet paper and put it efficiently into her bag.

  “So, how’s Gary getting on as a new partner?” Emily enquired, as though Germany had never been mentioned at all.

  “Oh, terrible,” Neasa said cheerfully. “Already he’s been put in charge of the timesheets for everyone – you know, making sure people are there when they say they are. Which means, of course, that Gary has to be there himself, which is an awful pain.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t have much sympathy.”

  “Neither do I,” Neasa agreed. “And listen to this – Daphne Dunne has announced a crackdown on people fiddling expenses and has asked Gary to root out the perpetrators.”

  “Which is himself.”

  “And Phil,” Neasa felt she had to point out. “He taught Gary how to do it in the first place. Gary’s told me that I’m not allowed to put in a claim for make-up any more either. Imagine!”

  “Terrible,” Emily said.

  “If they expect us to wear make-up in t
o the office then they should pay for it,” Neasa complained. “But Gary’s said no. He doesn’t want to show favouritism in case anyone suspects.”

  “Why don’t you just tell people you’re an item?” Emily said impatiently. They all knew anyway.

  “Because we have to keep it more of a secret now than ever! He’s a partner – he can’t be seen to be humping the staff!”

  “I don’t see why not,” Emily said. “Unless he’s going to stop humping you, is he?”

  “Well, no.” Emily was being a bit difficult today, which was very unlike her. Still, you couldn’t expect too much of her, given the circumstances. “Listen, Gary said that this isn’t common knowledge, but Creepy Crawley and the rest are writing you a letter officially informing you that you didn’t get the partnership. Apparently it’s a very nice letter, full of praise for you and all that, and saying that they value you very much in the company. Plus giving you a big pay rise. Can you believe that?”

  “I can,” Emily said, grimly.

  “I’d write a letter straight back telling them they’re right fuckers. And I’d threaten to go to the Revenue Commissioners on them too. Gary said that from what he saw of the accounts this morning, they’re fiddling tax right left and centre. I’m sure I could get you details if you want.”

  Emily just gave a tired shrug.

  Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be going on too much about Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly in the present circumstances, Neasa thought. Certainly she wouldn’t be telling her now or ever what Crawley had told Gary about Emily this morning in his office. The partners had considered Emily to be too soft for the top job, too malleable and eager to please. Didn’t have that necessary aggression and elusive go-get-’em mentality. A fine, fine worker though. In fact, Crawley had confided, the best they’d ever had.

  “How are you feeling? Really?” Neasa asked quietly.

  “How do I look?”

  “Like shite.”

  “I don’t know, Neasa. It’s all a bit strange. Like everything is happening to someone else. Do you ever get that feeling?”

  “No,” Neasa admitted. She had never understood this thing of being ‘outside’ yourself, looking in. Except when she had smoked cannabis for the first time at college. That had been very odd, and she had stuck to drink ever since. At least you knew where you were with alcohol.

  “But the doctors say there’s no cause for alarm.” Emily seemed determined to stick to the practical. “They just don’t want it developing into eclampsia. That’s when your placenta starts packing up.”

  “How exactly?”

  “Clots start forming and that kind of thing.”

  “Oooh. Sounds nasty.” Neasa was all interest.

  “The baby doesn’t get vital nutrients and stuff, and maybe even oxygen.”

  “Does it make a break for freedom?”

  “Sometimes. Other times they do a section.” A caesarean section was now a ‘section’. Emily was talking the talk after only twelve hours in hospital.

  “But the baby’s not ready for that yet,” Neasa said. “It might still only have one ear or something.”

  “No, no, the baby has been fully formed since it was twelve weeks, Neasa. Remember I showed you the picture of the scan?”

  “You couldn’t tell anything from that,” Neasa declared. “It looked like a tadpole. And I certainly didn’t see any ears.”

  “Anyway, the point is, it’s the lungs they’d be worried about. They’re the last to mature.”

  “Well, Conor’s a smoker,” Neasa said, more to test the waters than anything.

  But Emily didn’t react. “He doesn’t smoke in the house, Neasa. And it’s nothing to do with cigarettes. Every baby’s lungs are the same.”

  “The poor blighters,” Neasa said. “If I were to be born prematurely, I’d rather have only one ear than one lung.”

  “They’re not actually missing a lung . . . oh, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, it’s not going to happen. Everything seems to be all right.”

  “Apart from the high blood pressure, the water retention and the presence of uric acid in your wee,” Neasa said helpfully.

  “Well, yes.”

  “And what has Mr Chapman to say about any of it?”

  “I haven’t seen him. I would have if I were in Cork. Still, they’re taking good care of me here.”

  “But you’re paying him.”

  “He delivered four babies this morning in Cork, Neasa. I can pay him all I want but he can’t be in two places at the one time.”

  Neasa just shrugged. She had dragged a doctor from his holidays in Kerry to come look at her grandmother. And she hadn’t even been paying him.

  “I wish I’d paid more attention in antenatal classes when they were going on about this,” Emily said. “But I suppose I always thought these things happened to someone else.”

  “We always do.” Neasa paused slightly. “I suppose Conor’s been in?”

  Emily nodded. “Oh yes. This morning. Brought me flowers and all.”

  “Good, good.”

  Neasa was confused. From Emily’s expression, there didn’t seem anything too wrong in that department. What was with all this Germany business so? Neasa had a very strong urge to wrestle Emily to the bed and drag the information out of her. But Emily seemed too fragile this morning, everything about her too tenuous. Neasa was forced to go for the subtler approach instead, which she had no confidence in. She always ended up sounding like some tit from a B movie.

  “Emily,” she said awkwardly, “you would tell me if anything was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course I would.”

  “Because, you know, a problem halved and all that?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And I always tell you when things are going wrong for me, don’t I? Remember when I caught Gary going through my underwear drawer a couple of months ago?”

  “I do,” said Emily, quickly.

  “And I was upset because I thought, oh fuck, here’s another cross-dresser – I mean, what is it about me? But you said no, calm down, that you bet he was just checking for my size. And, hey presto, he comes home with a dinky little number from one of those basement shops in Cork and everything was fine!”

  “Glad to be of service,” Emily murmured.

  “So, like . . . I’m here, just so you know that.”

  “Thanks, Neasa.” But she wasn’t going to say anything more, that much was clear. Neasa, in a bit of a huff, collected her bits and pieces.

  “I’d better get in to work. Gary’s told me that my timesheets are particularly bad. I hope he’s not going to be a pain in the arse about this.”

  “Thanks for the Guinness.”

  “No problem. And that Maggie woman has blackcurrant cordial on her locker – you might be able to score some if you give her a can.”

  When Neasa’s grandmother had been in hospital, the patients had swapped all kinds of things. The items most hotly coveted had been alcohol and cigarettes and Neasa had been able to procure for her grandmother the TV remote control in exchange for a hundred Major and a bottle of vodka.

  Emily walked with her to the corridor. “Neasa – let me know, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  At Emily’s pointed, anxious face, Neasa felt so moved that she gave her a quick, hard hug. It felt awkward. They weren’t kissy-kissy friends.

  “You’ll be grand, girl.”

  “Oh, I know. Out tomorrow.”

  “Out tomorrow!”

  Neasa went off down the corridor, the piece of toilet paper lying in her bag like a stick of dynamite. It must be big, she thought grimly, if Emily hadn’t told her.

  Mr Gerald Chapman was at that moment delivering his fifth baby of the morning.

  “I can see the head, Maeve – why don’t you give one more push,” he told the mother.

  “I can’t,” she sobbed. “I’m dying.”

  Mr Chapman smiled sympathetically. Out of the side of his mouth, he said to the midw
ife, “Pain relief?”

  “Insisted on a natural birth,” she murmured back. “Until it was too late.”

  Epidurals were not usually given once labour had passed a certain stage. It slowed things up.

  Mr Chapman sighed inwardly. He had no truck with the way natural childbirth had become a sort of a badge with some women, something to boast about to their weaker sisters who had epidurals. “I was in labour twenty-seven hours without so much as gas!” And the bloody hospitals were worse, promoting pain like it was some kind of lifestyle choice. Tell that to this poor young one here who was beside herself with anguish.