Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  Jessica laughed heartily. She seemed to find everything hugely amusing. “Not at all. It’s just to keep an eye on the baby – which is doing fine, by the way.”

  Conor seemed greatly relieved. “So you might be able to unhook it? If we were to go for a walk?” He seemed very keen on this walk.

  “Of course – we encourage patients to move around during labour,” Jessica chirped. “Nothing worse than lying on the flat of your back waiting!”

  “Absolutely,” Conor agreed heartily.

  Emily looked from one to the other and at this moment she was hard pushed to decide whom she hated more.

  “I want an epidural,” she informed Jessica.

  “Yes, I think we need to look at some form of pain relief,” Jessica agreed. “I’ll tell the anaesthetist. He’s down with Laura at the moment.”

  “Laura?” Emily was floored. But it was twins: Laura had expected that she wouldn’t go to full-term.

  “And they’ve just brought Dee in as well.”

  “Dee?” Emily was even more shocked. But Dee was a week overdue. Still, it was a bit disconcerting that the whole campaign appeared to have spontaneously gone into labour.

  “And Maggie?” she asked.

  “Oh, Maggie’s still hanging in there.”

  She would be hopping mad.

  “Off you go,” Jessica said, throwing open the door to the corridor.

  Emily wasn’t that happy at being forced off her warm bed. But pride made her climb down all by herself, and take a few cautious steps across the floor. To her relief, she didn’t faint and nothing fell out of her.

  “Okay?” Conor asked, as she paused for a moment in the corridor to get her bearings. He himself looked a lot better now that he was out of that room.

  “Let’s go then,” he said briskly. He was definitely back to himself – ordering her about, acting like she needed him to wind her up and point her in the right direction!

  “I want to be alone,” she said loftily, walking off ahead of him at a brisk pace.

  She passed vases of flowers and dusty religious statues and a photo of a baby with a smiling face. The baby was lovely, and Emily realised with a start that this was what it was all about: the pain, the nausea, the foetal belt, the hormonal madness. It was all just part of the process of her baby being born. It was easy to lose sight of it.

  She lost sight of it a moment later as another contraction descended. At its height, she didn’t give a hoot whether she gave birth to a monkey; she just wanted it all to be over. Behind her, she thought she saw Conor put out his hand to support her, but she gathered her energy and set off again, leaving him behind.

  Time ceased to have any meaning. She measured it by the number of times she passed the photo of the baby . . . twenty, thirty, then she lost count. Doctors and midwives swished by, looking over curiously – her huffing up and down the corridor with Conor trailing three feet behind holding Maggie’s damp facecloth. She did not have the energy to care as contraction after contraction overtook her, each one worse than the last. In the middle of one, she thought she heard Dee cry out from a nearby labour room. She didn’t have the energy to care about her either. It was every woman for herself in here.

  At one point, she registered that the clock over the nurses’ station said it was eight am. Eight? Could she really have been here nearly four hours? The clock must be wrong.

  There was no respite at all between contractions now. Eventually she stopped walking altogether and leaned against a wall, red-faced. She felt like her body was defeating her. She could not see any end in sight; only more and more pain and she wanted to cry again.

  Conor was waiting with a glass of iced water. “Jessica said you could have this.”

  “I don’t want it,” she said, even though she did.

  He put it down without comment. “Would you like to have a shower? It might pass some time.”

  “No.”

  “Look, you can try all you like, Emily, but I’m not leaving.”

  “What?”

  “I am not leaving this place until my baby is born. You can like it or lump it.”

  Emily’s eyes popped. “Just a second here, Conor. I’m the one in labour!”

  “I think we’re all well aware of that at this point. But that doesn’t mean that I have absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  “Your bit is done,” she said childishly.

  “So I should bugger off and leave you alone?”

  “If you like! If you want to know the truth, you’re not much bloody use to me!”

  He gritted his teeth defensively. “You’re never happy, are you? On the one hand, I’m supposed to be spilling my guts at every opportunity, confiding every last thought, hope and dream in you. But on the other hand, we don’t want me getting too emotional, do we? Because I only exist in a supporting role, right? We wouldn’t want me robbing you of your moments in the sun!”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have a monopoly on feelings, you know. Just because people don’t show them doesn’t mean they don’t have them.”

  Emily opened her mouth to retaliate but ended up collapsing against the wall, huffing through a contraction instead. It was another brutal one. Through the mist of pain, she was aware of Conor hovering, his hands half-cupped in case she might topple over and fall. She would love to, and break his leg maybe.

  Panting, she flung herself away from the wall and glared at him.

  “You’re doing it again! I can’t believe you’re doing it again!”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Coming up with reasons why you had the affair! First I’m a power freak, and now I don’t take account of your hidden emotions!”

  “Oh stop it, Emily.”

  “No I will not stop it. You’re blaming me!”

  “I am not blaming you.”

  “So why did you do it then, Conor?”

  He threw up his hands in exasperation. “What is the point in going over all this again?”

  “Again? We’ve never gone over it! Not once!”

  “Because it’s history, Emily.”

  “History? Like the miscarriage was history?” She ignored his face. “Things don’t become history just because you refuse to deal with them!”

  “Fine! So what do you want to know then? Where? When? How many times? Was she any good?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “No! Just tell me what you want to know! If it means so much to you, I’ll tell you the whole sorry saga from the beginning to the end! Right here in the middle of the corridor while you’re in labour!”

  “I just want to know why!” Emily shouted back. “Why!”

  Jessica was hurrying up the corridor now, looking from Emily to Conor warily.

  “Emily? The anaesthetist is waiting to give you your epidural.”

  Thank Christ. She could not bear the agony much longer. She turned her back on Conor and hobbled off.

  Back in the labour room, the anaesthetist was shifting from foot to foot rather impatiently. He wanted to go home.

  They all had to wait while Emily had another contraction. Then Jessica said, “I’ll just do a quick exam first, Emily. If you’ll let your knees fall apart again . . .”

  The anaesthetist and Conor both looked studiously at the floor. But Emily did not care if she were on MTV.

  When Jessica eventually looked up, her face was even more cheerful than usual.

  “Eight!” she sang.

  “Eight?”

  “You’re eight centimetres dilated! It must have been all that walking! Isn’t it marvellous?” She looked as pleased as if it had all been her own doing.

  The anaesthetist deflated totally. Eight centimetres! Someone might have let him know. Without further ado, he turned and left.

  “Where’s he going?” Emily cried.

  “It’s too late for the epidural, Emily,” Jessica said.

  “It’s not. It’s not. I want one!”

  “It will make things hard
er and longer for you. Come on, you’re doing so well on your own. You’re nearly there,” Jessica argued.

  “I can’t do it . . .”

  “You can. We’ll help you every step of the way.” She looked at Conor expectantly. “Won’t we?”

  Belatedly he nodded. “Of course.”

  “I want Mr Chapman!” Emily wailed. He would get this baby out of her – she had paid him a thousand pounds. He would do what he was told!

  “He should be here any minute,” Jessica soothed. “But I’ll give him a buzz on his mobile. In the meantime, let’s try some gas again.”

  “It doesn’t work,” Emily said, rather self-pityingly. She’d already tried it and it had only made her want to vomit.

  “Let’s try again,” Jessica said firmly, helping Emily into a sitting position, and unhooking the gas mask. “Actually, Conor, maybe you could help here?”

  She held out the gas mask.

  He was shocked. “But I wouldn’t know what to do . . .”

  “It’s quite simple,” Jessica said briskly. “You’re just going to help Emily to breathe through the mask, that’s all, when you see a contraction coming. You’ll see it on the monitor – the little green line, see?”

  He looked at the monitor as though it might self-combust. “Um, right.”

  “Oh, look! Here’s one coming now!” Jessica said with a jolly smile, and walked out the door.

  There was a nasty little silence in the labour room except for the slight hiss of gas. And on the monitor between Emily and Conor, that little green line started its climb.

  Conor couldn’t take his eyes off it. Emily saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down a few times violently. She saw panic in his face, and . . . fear?

  “I’m sorry, Emily,” he blurted suddenly. “You’re right. I’m no use to you here at all.”

  “Conor . . .”

  “No, no, don’t try to make me feel better. This is the moment when you need someone the most, and I’m just not up to it.”

  “Conor, please . . .”

  “Will I ring Liz? She’d come in.”

  “Conor, just give me the bloody mask!”

  “Oh, right, sorry.”

  The green line on the monitor was nearing its peak now and Emily was engulfed again. Vaguely, she felt the mask press firmly over her nose and mouth, Conor finally springing into action. Then the pain obliterated any other thought. She thought she might have mentally said a Hail Mary at one point – she must remember to tell Pauline that. She would be delighted. But just when she thought it should have been over, it got worse. She had never known anything like it. Cathy, she screeched silently, I believe you.

  At last it subsided. Slowly. She felt her dry lips fall away from her teeth again and she opened her eyes with an effort. The mask lifted from her face.

  Beside her, Conor was terrified. His eyes were wide and wet and his face parchment white. Emily had never seen him like this before. She was worried.

  “Conor? Are you all right? Are the tubes and things upsetting you?” Her pregnancy books had warned her to be prepared for all kinds of squeamishness and fainting from menfolk at this point. It was not a myth.

  But Conor just kept staring. “You’re not going to die, are you?”

  Emily knew that this was too serious to give in to any impulse she might have to laugh. “I don’t think so. I hope not. I think it’s just labour, Conor.”

  “You look so sick.”

  “I feel sick. But they wouldn’t have left us in here with just a gas mask if they thought I was in any danger.” She tried to lighten the mood, to take the strange look off his face.

  “I’m afraid,” he blurted. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t need to hear this right now . . . I just wouldn’t be able to cope without you, Emily.”

  “Conor, I am not going to die. Can we please stop talking about me dying?”

  But Conor kept looking at her as though she were on her last breath. “It’s different for you. You’d be able to cope without me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You always have. You’ve never really needed me as much as I need you. You’ve never loved me as much as I love you.”

  “Conor, that’s ridiculous!”

  He seemed to think she was being facetious. “Oh come on, Emily. It’s always been like that! From the very first time we met, when you took pity on me –”

  “What?”

  He spoke very fast as though he were afraid he wouldn’t get it out before she expired. “It’s true. And I was so grateful that I pretended to be what you wanted me to be, or what I thought you wanted me to be. But it was never equal between us, the love. Somehow I thought you would catch up with me. But you never did.”

  “Gas!” she shouted, as another contraction snuck up on her. It was nasty one, but she fought back as best she could, anxious for it to be over. She had barely drawn breath again before she turned back to Conor. “How was I ever supposed to ‘catch up’ when you always run away on me? A relationship isn’t going to deepen if you always pull back!”

  “I was trying to protect myself, Emily,” he said quietly. “Hold a bit back. For the day when you finally realised that I wasn’t really enough, and you left me.”

  Emily’s eyes could not get any wider at this point. And she had thought he possessed no imagination? And all this time he had been indulging in conjecture and speculation and wild fantasies about her leaving him!

  “And just in case I didn’t get up the gumption to leave by myself, you’d thought you’d help me along by having an affair?” she asked incredulously.

  “I was stupid.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  He looked at her directly. “All right. I was lonely.”

  Emily felt a tightness in her chest. “I think that’s probably your own fault.”

  “I know it was,” he said.

  “Go on,” she forced herself to say. Well, she had wanted to know why, hadn’t she?

  “All right. I could talk to Mary like I couldn’t talk to you because I didn’t love her and it didn’t matter.”

  There wasn’t a sound out in the corridor now. Even Dee had stopped her screeching.

  “What did you talk to her about?” Emily asked.

  “Not you. Not us. The miscarriage, a bit.”

  “The miscarriage?” This hurt terribly.

  “With us . . . you talk and I listen. I always feel you’re the more important person in our relationship, so when something does happen, you get first dibs on attention.”

  Emily felt terribly defensive. “It’s up to you to open your mouth a bit more!”

  “I know that! I’m admitting that! But it’s on your side too, Emily! You push and prod all right, but only when it’s to do with you! Most of the time I feel I can’t say anything because I’m supposed to be there for you to fall back on!”

  “Rubbish!” Emily hissed.

  But he was her plain-clothes garda, wasn’t he? The voice of reason when she wanted him to be? And then she expected him to turn around and share with her, but only to a point that suited her. She certainly didn’t want a man who went around the house gnashing his teeth, a man with emotional diarrhoea. It was a very fine line to ask anybody to tread.

  Naturally, she didn’t admit to this immediately. “So while you were off talking to Mary, I had nobody to talk to!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  She felt another contraction come to life. Well, she would have her say first. “If you think you’re afraid, Conor, I’m terrified! Terrified to ask for the slightest bit of support, frightened to look for anything at all for myself because you’ll look at me like I should be on Prozac! It’s no bloody wonder I’ve never been able to stand up for myself!”

  Conor did not interrupt.

  “I mean, look at you tonight! The very time I need you most, you’re faffing around with damp facecloths and gas masks and you’re just not going to muck in at all, are you? You’re going to
stand back and ‘protect’ yourself, because you’ve got this ridiculous notion in your head about who loves who more!”

  It did sound ridiculous, and Conor smiled a bit. Emily would have too, only that out of the corner of her eye, she saw the green line on the monitor rise and rise, and the pain became bad. She hurried on.

  “So the upshot is that you’re afraid and I’m terrified, is that it?”

  “Yes,” he agreed.