Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  Mr Chapman quickly poured cold water on most of the conjecture by going straight over to Trish and saying, “Hello, Emily.”

  “I’m over here,” Emily said.

  Emily knew of white people who thought that all black people looked the same, and vice versa. It seemed that this could be extended to pregnant women. But then she saw that Trish was asleep with her hair all over her face and gave Mr Chapman the benefit of the doubt.

  Also, she was secretly glad of the extra few seconds to prepare herself after her sprint down the corridor. She smoothed down her hair and wiped her nose with a tissue. She hoped that he wouldn’t be able to tell that she had been crying.

  But he didn’t really look at her as he crossed the ward and stood at the foot of her bed. Two nurses, a doctor and an intern trooped after him like a gaggle of geishas. One of them reverently pressed Emily’s chart into his hands like she was giving him Holy Communion.

  “So! How are we this morning?” he asked the chart.

  Nobody was looking at Emily. Not the nurses, the doctor or the intern. Emily knew that the world roughly divided into two kinds of people: those who looked, and those who were looked at. Emily had always fitted firmly into the first camp. She had never been the kind of person other people looked at. It was a charisma thing and she believed that there was nothing that could be done about it. But, bloody hell, did courtesy have to go out the window for her kind too? And respect?

  “Why don’t you tell me how I am?” she said, quite loudly.

  Mr Chapman looked up, surprised. The nurses, doctor and intern stiffened a bit. Was she giving lip to Mr Chapman? Still, everyone knew that she was a bit off her rocker. Look at those eyes! Kind of sunken and burning, like something you’d read about in a Stephen King novel.

  “Your blood pressure is still up,” Mr Chapman said, straight to her face this time.

  “I know,” she agreed.

  “Nothing too alarming, but we really do have to keep an eye on it.”

  He looked again at her chart, peering over his bifocals. He never seemed to actually look through them. Was it possible that they were just for effect?

  The thought made her braver still and she struggled to sit up a bit more in the bed. No one could sound forceful on the flat of their backs.

  “Is it pre-eclampsia or not?” she enquired politely. “Because nobody seems to know.”

  Another small silence fell at the implied criticism. But thankfully Mr Chapman was used to dealing with all sorts and took this one on the chin.

  “It can be difficult to identify,” he intoned pleasantly. “A woman with high blood pressure alone may not have pre-eclampsia. Or, indeed, with fluid retention alone. It’s the combination of factors that lead one to believe that the condition may be present.”

  His voice was hypnotically boring and one of the nurses behind started to sway on her feet. Emily fought down her natural urge to smile and nod, her body and face contorted into an apology. Where had nodding and smiling ever got her?

  “So it is pre-eclampsia then?”

  Mr Chapman found himself forced into that position which every doctor tries to avoid – actually having to commit himself.

  “Possibly,” he said, trying to work around it.

  Emily was back in the car with Conor again, using all her wiles to extract information from him. Did people see her as some kind of fool who shouldn’t be told things for her own good?

  “When will you know for sure?” she asked, her voice distinctly frosty.

  “That depends,” he said, again trying to shake her off.

  “On what?”

  Mr Chapman was very aware of the nurses, the doctor and the intern behind him, breathing down his neck.

  “On four-hour monitoring of your blood pressure, daily urine checks, and the presence of swelling,” he said, sounding much less bored than usual. “But from what we’ve seen so far, I believe it is pre-eclampsia.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said quietly. “I just wanted to know.”

  The nurses, doctor and intern relaxed a bit. Mr Chapman took a moment to regroup behind Emily Collins’ chart, rattled. The Emily Collins he remembered from the weekly visits at his clinic had been quiet and polite, sometimes forgot to bring in her sample but that was about the size of it. Nothing like this one in the bed here. Was it possible he was mixing her up with someone else? Still, he saw so many women – surely it was only natural that he got confused every now and then?

  A small sliver of dread stabbed at Mr Chapman’s insides. He was forty-eight next week. But his hands were rock steady still, he reassured himself fiercely. He had years in him yet. Years and years.

  Emily was wondering whether it was wise to have ruffled Mr Chapman’s feathers. He was looking after her baby, she didn’t want to go annoying him. It could all backfire horribly at delivery. Did he have the power to deny her an epidural?

  When Mr Chapman and Emily eventually looked at each other again, it was with guarded eyes.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep you in.”

  “Keep me in?”

  “Yes. For observation. I can’t take any chances until your blood pressure is down. Also, I’d like to prescribe some diuretics, see if we can get rid of some of the fluid retention. Just a mild dose.”

  The doctor behind furiously made a note of this.

  “I’m going to hold off prescribing anything for the blood pressure. We’ll see if it’ll sort itself out.”

  “Right,” Emily said carefully. “And how long do you think I’ll be kept in?”

  Mr Chapman sighed inwardly. She would be difficult about this as well. Where were all the nice patients these days? “Indefinitely, I’m afraid.”

  Emily was relieved. At least one decision had been taken from her. She could stay in here safe and sound for the moment, away from Conor until she had sorted some things out.

  “Great,” she said with feeling.

  Mr Chapman looked at her even more warily. “We could be talking a couple of weeks,” he said slowly, sure that she hadn’t understood.

  “Lovely,” Emily said, beaming at him.

  Mr Chapman stopped worrying about his memory loss and started fretting about his ability to interpret patient-doctor situations. Suddenly he felt vulnerable and old and he wanted to leave Martha’s very quickly.

  “Right,” he said, thrusting the chart into the intern’s hand. “I’ll see you again in a couple of days.”

  “But I’ll be transferred to Cork, won’t I?” Emily enquired.

  Cork would be even better. She felt a huge need to put as much space between herself and Conor as possible.

  “Yes,” Mr Chapman said gravely. “I’m sorry.”

  He waited for her disappointment.

  “Great!” Emily said again.

  Mr Chapman was astounded when she threw back the covers energetically, grabbed a Manchester United bag and started to pack. He had never seen a pregnant woman move so fast.

  “Um, not right now,” he said, rattled.

  “Oh. When then?”

  Mr Chapman thought he saw one of the nurses smile. Things were getting out of hand.

  “Soon,” he said loudly. “You’re fine here for the moment.”

  Emily Collins was not good for his health, he decided. Best to keep her in Martha’s for the moment – he could probably discharge her next week anyway. Besides, he had quite enjoyed the drive up here this morning. It had been a refreshing break from the bureaucracy in which he was currently mired.

  “Right. Good.” He turned to leave, the nurses, the doctor and the intern trooping after him.

  “Mr Chapman?”

  He swung back suspiciously. “Yes?”

  “Just thanks for coming all the way up to see me,” Emily said earnestly. “I appreciate it.”

  Mr Chapman felt colour flood his cheeks. Somehow this was shifting from the impersonal to the personal.

  “Um, you’re welcome,” he stuttered and strode out of the ward so fast
that his entourage were hard-pressed to keep up.

  “You were great with him,” Maggie said through the curtain. She’d been listening to every word. “Mr Dunphy frightens the life out of me. I’ve put down on my birth plan, quite nicely, that I don’t want him to intimidate me during labour if he can help it at all.”

  “Oh, you just have to know how to handle them,” Emily bluffed.

  Old Chapman wasn’t so bad really, she thought. It was funny how she had been so put off by him. Why? Because he wore a suit and accessorised bifocals? But it was difficult to be bolshy with someone who held your health in his hands. And she just wasn’t a confrontational person. Emily wondered whether it was a gene thing or the fact that she had been raised in a house where fear had its own place at the table.

  She remembered her father now, who had had pains in his chest for weeks before his heart attack. Dr Leahy had prescribed large doses of Milk of Magnesia and told him to stop eating big meals at night. The poor man had watched everyone else tucking into egg and chips at teatime, and would then spend most of his evenings on the toilet. Emily had suggested going back to Dr Leahy. But there was no question of that. A man of medicine! He knew indigestion when he saw it.

  After the funeral, Dr Leahy had tucked into ham sandwiches back at the house. Their mother had plied him with whiskey. She should have thrown him out into the rain and filed a lawsuit. The man shouldn’t have been practising medicine at all. Emily had felt angry about it for years.

  She was angry with her father now. For nodding and smiling, and for taking no responsibility for his own health. And at herself for not insisting at the time. But there was safety in numbers and she had let her dissent be swallowed up.

  She was on her own now and it hit her like a slap. For six years she had enjoyed the security of being in a couple. There was always someone there to make the decisions with or, indeed, to take no action at all. Almost every aspect of life was approached with someone else in mind. There was, of course, the odd defiant strike at independence. Going to London on the piss with Neasa, and let Conor cook for himself! Choosing a new car purely on the basis of its nice blue colour, and let Conor laugh! But these were feeble things, and always indulged by the other. No real difference of opinion had existed.

  Everything had changed now. She felt the aloneness wrap itself around her like cold fingers, and found that she was shaking. It was like half of her had been brutally hacked off.

  She curled up tightly on the bed and wondered how Conor could have done this to her. How could he tell her he loved her and still do this to her? She thought of his square, handsome face, and she very badly wanted to damage him, to hurt him as much he had hurt her. The dogs he had nurtured since they were puppies, she wanted to boil them in a pot on the cooker. She wanted to tamper with his car brakes so that he would have an horrific accident that would leave him wheelchair-bound, and she would enjoy the look on his face when she waltzed in on her own two legs with their child for his visitation rights. Or his fingers – she wanted to break them one by one so that he never played the piano again, unless he learned to play with his elbows.

  She lay there and fiercely wished that the baby inside her would die. That would hurt him the most. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she told the baby, weeping now.

  The catering girls were very nice in Martha’s. Maureen especially, who firmly believed that half the drugs the doctors prescribed to these women were totally unnecessary. In her experience, a nice cup of sweet tea usually did the trick.

  “I don’t want it,” Emily said thickly.

  “Nonsense, of course you do,” Maureen said, expertly balancing the cup and saucer in one hand and fixing pillows, covers and the sliding tray with the other. “Up you sit,” she said.

  Emily had no choice but to do so.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking a small sip of the tea. It was sickeningly sweet but strangely nice.

  “No problem,” Maureen said, watching as the colour came back into Emily’s face. Maybe this one would remember the kitchen staff when it came time to leave. It was always the blasted nurses and midwives who got all the Roses. It wasn’t fair.

  “Do you want to have sex?” Gary grudgingly asked. He was still in a bit of a snit from earlier but hadn’t the energy to go around with a puss on him all night. He was exhausted after all his work today. And Creepy Crawley wanted him in for a meeting at nine in the morning. Nine! Gary had quickly reverted to ‘Creepy’ as the afternoon had progressed.

  Neasa looked at him vaguely. “No, but thanks anyway. I think I might go to the hospital.”

  But she made no move to get her coat. How did you break this kind of news to your best friend? And she banged up in hospital? What Neasa really wanted to do was get tanked up and go over to Conor’s. Alcohol would give her the verbosity to sort him out. She would buy two pork chops on the way. That bastard would leave the dogs out. They were well known for their propensity to attack anything that came through the front gate.

  “Dinner, then,” Gary offered. He was anxious now to get things back on an even keel. Neasa wasn’t paying any attention to his sulking and he was getting rattled.

  “No, but you go ahead.” Neasa considered lying to Emily. This went against every fibre of her being, but she was trying to do the best thing. The fax in her pocket would send Emily’s blood pressure through the ceiling. It could even bring on labour! Neasa did not want to spend the rest of her life apologising to a child who was born with only one lung.

  “A drink? Wine? Gin & tonic?” Gary was getting desperate now.

  “No,” Neasa said again, shocking him. Neasa never refused drink. There must be something awfully big bothering her. The blond hair on the back of Gary’s thick neck rose slightly. Was it possible that she was going off him?

  “Is it me?” he blurted.

  “What?”

  “Whatever’s upsetting you.”

  Neasa looked at his big, meaty, open face and felt terribly tender. “Of course not, sweetness – sure don’t I love you?”

  Gary beamed back. “Great.”

  She went back to looking terribly vague. Now that he wasn’t the problem, Gary’s mind travelled in a different direction.

  “Will I put the kettle on for a cup of tea?” he asked rather quietly.

  “Yes, yes,” she murmured.

  “And a biscuit?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “Will we tell people in the office that we’re seeing each other?”

  “Yes, sure, whatever.”

  “Great!”

  Neasa shook herself. “What?”

  “Now that I’m a partner, it’s unseemly to be sneaking around behind people’s backs,” Gary said piously.

  “No. It’s none of their business.”

  “But you just said yes.”

  “I wasn’t listening.”

  “Doesn’t matter. A verbal agreement is binding.”

  “You’re such a fucking solicitor,” Neasa said. This was the most vicious insult anybody at Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly could throw at each other.

  “We could take a few of them out for a pint and break the news. I’ll pay,” Gary offered. He still had some fiddled expenses in his post-office account. It was the same post-office account he had opened when he’d made his First Communion. Neasa didn’t know about it. There were some savings accounts Gary didn’t tell her about.

  “No,” Neasa said.

  Gary was annoyed now. What was her problem? Was it because they wouldn’t get to have sex in empty offices any more? Secretly Gary wished they could do it in the bed once in a while. It mightn’t be as exciting, but it would be a hell of a lot more comfortable – and safe. The last time they’d had sex in Crawley’s office Gary had impaled himself on a thumb tack.

  “Conor is having an affair,” Neasa said very fast. She hadn’t wanted to tell Gary – it seemed disloyal to Emily somehow – but she needed to talk to him about what to do.

  Gary laughed. “You’re a gas woman.”
>
  “I wouldn’t joke about something like this. He’s shagging someone else.”

  “What?” Gary’s pale eyes popped.

  “And I have to tell Emily,” Neasa wailed.

  “Well, well,” Gary said slowly, his mind still on Conor shagging. Who would have thought it? Mr Superior, Mr Cultural, getting down and dirty with the best of them.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Who is Conor having the affair with?”

  Neasa didn’t know why this mattered. “Ffion Rivera. The first violinist.”

  “Well, well,” Gary said again. Mary Murphy with the long legs and the short, shiny hair. Trust Conor to go for a classy bird. It would be beneath him to go for the barmaid in Milo’s. Gary wondered where they had done it.