Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  “It’s quite simple, Neasa. I just want a judicial review of the decision to close.”

  Neasa laughed.

  “It’s just a matter of filing a motion,” Emily insisted.

  “Which you want me to do,” Neasa said.

  “Well, obviously, I can’t.”

  “Obviously.”

  Emily looked as though it were utterly reasonable that Neasa would take herself off to the High Court and lock horns with the Department of Health & Children.

  “Emily, I’m sorely tempted, but I don’t happen to have a spare fifty grand sitting in my bank account to pay the costs.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Emily sniffed. “We could do it for half that. Less if we’re not paying solicitors’ costs.”

  “No.”

  “Oh come on, Neasa! You know you’d love to go to the High Court.”

  “Of course I would! I’ve never been in the High Court! Well, only as an apprentice. But that’s not the point.”

  “Remember how we always wanted to sit at one of those tables at the front, behind the lads in the white wigs?”

  “Stop it, Emily.”

  “Leaning over to whisper instructions every now and then?”

  “Shut up!” Neasa clamped her hands over her ears. But Emily wouldn’t let up.

  “And then we’d walk out onto the steps of the Four Courts just in time for the six o’clock news, and say –”

  “My client has no comment at this time!” Neasa shouted. “I remember, okay!”

  “So will we do it?”

  “No! I don’t even care whether the hospital closes or not!”

  “That’s beside the point. I care enough for both of us.”

  Neasa looked at Emily as she reclined in bed, balancing a cup of tea on her big bump, her swollen ankles propped up on a pillow, and she wondered how it was possible for somebody in this condition to look dangerous. But Emily did. Not in a Gary kind of way – she could never hope to look like Jaws in a million years. It was more a quietly determined I-just-might-scratch-you kind of thing.

  Maggie waddled past, carrying her own roll of Kittensoft toilet paper.

  “Is it all right if I go to the loo?” she asked Emily anxiously. “I don’t want anyone to think I’ve left the sit-in.”

  “Absolutely, take all the time you need,” Emily assured her.

  “And can we break for lunch? It’s chicken chasseur and the girls are very excited.”

  “Eat away.”

  “Oh, and Tiernan will be in later to join the sit-in. He’ll have to leave, of course, when visiting hours are up, but every little helps.”

  “It does,” Emily said. She turned back to Neasa. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think,” Neasa said sarcastically, looking at Maggie’s retreating back, “that you need all the help you can get.”

  “If you don’t have anything positive to say, then just go,” Emily said shortly, surprising Neasa. How come Emily could get so fired up about hospitals closing when her relationship was in an even worse state than Neasa’s? After last night’s fiasco, Neasa had finally realised that there was something dreadfully wrong with her and Gary. Really, any sensible person would finish with him. But she did not want to admit defeat yet – she couldn’t. This time, it would be like finally conceding that she was a total failure when it came to men. They would time and again let her down and she might as well throw her hat at them all and dedicate herself to her career or something worthy like that. God knows she’d ignored it for long enough.

  “I’ll do it,” she told Emily grudgingly.

  “What?”

  “I said I’ll do it.”

  “You don’t have to, Neasa.”

  “I do. For my personal growth,” Neasa said rather piously.

  “Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly will have a fit.”

  “They’ll probably fire me.”

  “I don’t want that to happen,”

  “Why not? I do,” Neasa said cheerfully.

  “And Gary mightn’t like it – him being on the other side, so to speak.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Neasa said hastily. She had been too embarrassed to tell Emily about Gary’s name-change. It made him sound like such an eejit.

  “Just so long as you don’t fall out over it,” Emily said anxiously.

  Neasa gave a rather lean smile. “No danger of that at all.”

  “Maybe you should think about it.”

  “Jesus, Emily, I’ve just agreed! Are you trying to talk me out of it now?”

  Emily might look dangerous, but she still had a way to go yet, Neasa thought.

  “Does Conor know about this?”

  “Sorry?”

  “He doesn’t then.”

  “I don’t see what it has to do with him,” Emily said rather defensively.

  Neasa had no intention of defending Conor – that pig – but found herself doing it anyway. “He might feel he has a right to know. And you don’t want to make things between you any worse. Or maybe you do, I don’t know.”

  “I’ve already tried. His phone is switched off,” Emily protested. This was true, but it sounded very lame. “Oh, look, we had a huge fight yesterday.”

  Neasa nodded wisely, satisfied with this explanation.

  Emily did not tell her that they were on the brink this time. And that Emily had not yet decided what to do. Maybe this sit-in was her way of avoiding the issue. But it wasn’t going to go away. She knew that. Right now, though, she felt she had nothing to go back to the talks table with. Compromise wasn’t the issue. They would each have to offer new parts of themselves and Emily hadn’t found hers yet.

  The porter in Cork was not well paid. Or at least not well paid enough to listen to gossip. He knew nothing about any sit-in and informed Conor that, according to the computer, Emily Collins should be in Room 2b on the fourth floor.

  Conor took the stairs, weighed down by the two bags. He’d also bought a bunch of flowers. Nice ones this time – white roses, Emily’s favourite. She’d carried white roses the day they’d married. Oh Lord, would she think the flowers were some sledgehammer attempt on his part to remind her of what they’d once had? He stuffed them into a wastepaper bin on the first floor.

  No, words were needed now, not things, he thought, as he rounded the steps onto the second floor. He was going to come clean with her – totally clean. He would tell her about his love for her, that he would die if she left him. She must be left in no doubt about the depth of his feelings for her.

  He was running up the steps now, unaware of the bags banging painfully against his ankles. He would tell her about his feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, his fears and anxieties, the whole bloody lot!

  His new impulsiveness had come to him in the car, when he’d been rehearsing his logical arguments for them to stay together. And they had sounded so tight-arsed and pompous and dreary – anyone in their right minds would run a mile, screaming for a divorce. So he had thrown the lot out and decided that he would speak from the heart for once in his bloody life. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

  The third floor now. He barely slowed, taking the steps to the fourth floor two at a time. He felt that if he paused for breath he might get cold feet and say nothing useful at all. He had to take the risk. He just had to.

  Panting and excited, he threw open the door to Room 2b. And that was where the confusion kicked in. The woman in bed was quite insistent that she was not Emily Collins and, indeed, she didn’t look anything like her. Her husband strongly backed her up. Conor was ejected from the room, bag and baggage, and trailed down to the nurses’ station, deflating rapidly.

  In another startling twist, it was revealed to him there that his wife was actually part of a sit-in in Martha’s.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Conor said, as though he’d merely forgotten. His face felt very hot. He was as surprised as if they’d informed him that she’d just given birth to triplets. He wanted to ask whether they were sure the
y had the right Emily Collins, but was too embarrassed.

  “Right, well, good luck,” he said inanely, lifting the two bags and feeling more ridiculous than he ever had in his whole life.

  “Conor?”

  Jesus Christ, he wasn’t going to run into one of the neighbours, was he? He was not in the mood.

  It was Mr Chapman, looking very belligerent. He peered at Conor over the top of his bifocals.

  “This is most unorthodox. Most unorthodox.”

  “It is.” Conor looked belligerently back. Even bloody Chapman was in on this.

  “As her consultant, I have to strongly advise against this course of action,” Chapman boomed, taking a step forward.

  “Really,” Conor said, also taking a step forward. Sure enough, Chapman took a step back. One more step and they would be in a foxtrot.

  Chapman looked at Conor’s bags. “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “I came to see you,” Conor shot back.

  “Ah.” Mr Chapman looked relieved. “Maybe together we can sort this out.”

  Conor didn’t want to say anything in case he betrayed his ignorance of the entire situation. He just nodded.

  “Is she intending staying in St Martha’s until her baby is born, do you think?” Mr Chapman wanted to know.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Conor said honestly.

  “Frankly, I’m worried about her,” Mr Chapman said, looking his most serious. “The stress of this kind of activity isn’t ideal for a woman with pre-eclampsia.”

  “I don’t suppose it is,” Conor said.

  Mr Chapman was more relieved. Here at last was a voice of reason. Maybe this entire thing would be over today.

  “It’s rest she needs. And plenty of it.”

  Conor just listened.

  “She has to think of her baby,” Mr Chapman went on. “Your baby. And really, I can’t be responsible for her when that hospital closes,” he finished up, shaking his head regretfully.

  Conor looked at him. “So you want me to talk her out of it?”

  Of course Mr Chapman did, but it wasn’t nice to hear it put so blatantly. “Absolutely not. I’m simply urging you to assess the position responsibly.”

  Conor looked relieved. “Oh, that’s fine. I thought for a minute there you were washing your hands of her.”

  “What? I never said that. No, no, what I meant . . .”

  “You’ll still be coming up to see her then?”

  “Of course I will!”

  “That’s great,” Conor said sincerely. “I’ll be sure to tell her that.”

  Mr Chapman felt the situation had slipped entirely out of his control. Instead of nipping this thing in the bud, he had unwittingly become a party to her madness.

  “So when will I tell her you’ll be up?” Conor wanted to know.

  “I don’t know! Soon! I’ll ring.” Mr Chapman walked away rather quickly. He felt the nurses at the station looking at him, and imagined that they were laughing behind their hands. And there was Duggie Moran, giving him that falsely sympathetic look again. And he after giving Duggie Moran hundreds of referrals over the years, all the overspill from his packed appointments book! And on top of it all, he had the Board of Management watching his every move over this sit-in business, like he was a junior doctor again.

  He had no authority any more, no standing, not even with his own son.

  He had to get out of here. He turned on his pager and left.

  Conor wondered what to do now. Get his stuff from Billy Middlemiss’s flat and go home, he supposed. Cap in hand, all his fine words like ashes in his mouth. He felt angry now for having got so heated and emotional, ready to spill his guts. He felt he had made more of fool of himself than Emily had.

  But wait a minute. Emily! His wife! Staging sit-ins and protests? The most she’d ever done in that field was refuse to cross the picket-line when the Dunnes Stores staff had gone out on strike.

  Conor wondered wildly whether she had cleverly disguised an anarchic streak all these years. This wasn’t outside the realms of possibility. He had read a biography once of a woman who had been a secret service agent for twenty years and all the while her husband thought she took in ironing. Emily had bought it for him.

  But no, Emily was too much of a talker for that. They’d never trust her with sensitive information, knowing that she’d let it slip to the girls down in Milo’s after two gin and tonics. And Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly would never give her time off for secret missions.

  Conor shook his head, wondering why he was thinking these ludicrous things. It was just that the ground had been taken from under his feet by Emily’s latest move. He was strangely hurt too, if he admitted it. He had thought that, like himself, she would be obsessed with the state of their marriage. Instead she was off doing something entirely different, to put it mildly. It was like she was steering away in another direction and leaving him behind, like so much baggage. The reality was that he was superfluous to her life really, and had been for a long time. And he had done it to himself by drawing a line in the sand that he allowed neither of them to cross.

  He felt emotion rising in him again. He tried to rationalise it, to control it. But he couldn’t this time. He picked up the two bags and went outside and to his mortification he was crying.

  “Now, girls, watch carefully. This is how you change a nappy.”

  Angela, the midwife, carefully picked up a plastic doll from the table. “Remember, girls, you have to support the head. If you don’t, this is what happens.”

  And she let the doll’s head flop backwards violently.

  “Ooh,” all the women said, wincing painfully.

  Angela held up a Pampers and looked at one of the new mothers. “Now, Marie here has put her baby’s nappy on back to front. No, no, Marie, it’s all right. It’s a mistake many of us make the first time out.”

  And indeed Marie’s newborn daughter looked perfectly happy in her back-to-front nappy.

  “You’ll get so used to it that you’ll soon be changing nappies in your sleep.” Angela looked around at them leadenly. “And you think I’m joking.”

  Emily and Maggie tittered nervously. They were at the back of St Catherine’s Ward along with Dee, Laura and Mary and, strictly speaking, shouldn’t have been there at all. It was a class for the first-time mothers who had just given birth in the hospital. Vera had asked them whether they wanted to go along. Time seemed to pass very slowly on this sit-in. She’d assured them that their beds would still be there when they got back. After measured consideration, Emily had decided that they would go, even though they were the only ones there whose babies were still inside them.

  “Cotton wool and water, girls, that’s all you should use on newborns’ bottoms,” Angela lectured. “Any of those commercial wipes will take the skin off them.”

  “Ooooh.” The women all winced again. Angela wasn’t pulling any punches.

  “I’ll never be able to do that,” Maggie whispered, watching as Angela manoeuvred the doll around with speed, flinging its legs in the air, brandishing cotton wool, and finally holding up the doll to show everyone a perfectly applied nappy. It could have gone to a fashion show.

  “There was no poo on the doll. I’d like to see her deal with that,” Emily whispered back encouragingly. As if Emily herself had ever changed a pooey nappy.

  “Now, will we give her a bath?” Angela asked everyone.

  “Let’s!” the women squealed enthusiastically. Wasn’t it marvellous that someone was actually showing them what to do?

  While Angela filled a plastic baby bath with water – “Half-full will do, girls, no sense in drowning the child” – Emily felt some of the other women casting curious glances her way, like she was an oddity in their midst. Here they all were, participating in the most momentous occasion in any woman’s life, some would argue, and she was off organising sit-ins. Maybe some of them thought she wasn’t maternal, not like them.

  And a few of them were undoubtedly
thinking that she was using her baby as a bargaining chip with the management.

  Emily held her head high. She did not care what they thought of her. Well, of course she did. She was still Emily for heaven’s sake. She cared very much. But the important thing was not to cave in to it.

  Although she was wondering about the wisdom of the whole thing now. Still, most people who instigated a major High Court case would eventually see past the euphoria, she thought reasonably. Especially when they started questioning the cost of it all, the possibility of losing, the unwanted publicity, the wrath of the Health Board . . . Jesus Christ, she was mad!

  “It’s all right. It’ll pass in a minute,” Maggie said soothingly, seeing Emily’s face. Emily had had three panic attacks already about the court case, and Maggie had been very sweet about them. “Look, she’s taking the nappy off again!” she said, to take Emily’s mind off it all.