by Kate Hewitt
And it strikes me as so odd, so unbearable, that I know who his daughter is and he doesn’t. And Milly hasn’t even seen her yet. Everything is the wrong way round, and yet something about it feels right, which is also jarring.
‘She’s on the left,’ I say softly. ‘With the striped hat.’
‘Oh…’ His breath comes out in a rush as he stares at his daughter. His daughter. I need to remember that, now more than ever, when my own emotions are so raw and exposed, when memories and longings keep resurfacing and grabbing me by the throat.
I watch as Matt places his palm flat on the glass, transfixed by the sight of his child. ‘Can I see her?’ he asks me, as if I am the authority. ‘Can I hold her?’
‘I don’t know.’ The nurse didn’t invite me to, and I don’t know what I would have done if she had.
‘I should wait for Milly,’ he murmurs. ‘It’s just so amazing… she’s right there.’ He lets out a laugh of pure joy.
‘Did the doctors tell you when Milly might wake up?’
‘They said soon, and that they’d get me… but I suppose I should go back.’ Reluctantly he turns away from the nursery window. ‘She’s going to be so excited.’ He grabs my arm, his face lit up like a firework. ‘Isn’t this amazing, Anna? That’s my daughter!’
I laugh, because I can’t help it, because his joy is so infectious. ‘It is amazing, Matt.’
His expression suddenly turns serious, his eyes bright with emotion. ‘This couldn’t have been possible without you, Anna…’
I can’t bear to hear his heartfelt thanks just now. So I merely smile and nod, gently removing my arm from his enthusiastic grip. ‘You should check on Milly, Matt.’
Sure enough, a nurse intercepts us on the way back to the visitors’ room to tell Matt that Milly is waking up and has been moved to a private room. He gives me an apologetic look and I wave him away.
‘Go. Go.’
‘I’m sure she’ll want to see you soon…’
‘You both need some time together. I’ll be fine. I could use something to eat, anyway.’
‘Okay.’ Matt reaches for my hand. ‘Thank you, Anna – for everything.’
I wait until he has disappeared around the corner before I head for the doors out of the ward, and the café downstairs. I feel lonely in an unsettling way, like something is missing even though I know nothing is. Nothing should be.
I order a coffee and sit at a table in the café by the hospital entrance, watching all the different people come and go – some in wheelchairs, some walking briskly, some holding each other up in their worry or grief, others filled with purpose or delight. So many different reasons to come or to leave a hospital, and I watch it all play out by a pair of automatic sliding doors.
An hour slips by as I sip my cooling coffee, my gaze still on the steady foot traffic, my mind thankfully empty, although it keeps pinging back to that tiny form in the bassinet, those dimples.
Then I see a familiar figure come through the doors, walking with his long-legged, easy stride, and I half-rise from my chair.
‘Jack…’
‘Anna!’ He gives me a quick hug before stepping back. ‘I got back last night, and Matt texted me this afternoon.’ He speaks quickly, an apology of sorts for not being in contact, and I decide to let it go.
‘Milly and Matt are upstairs. Alice is fine.’
‘That’s great news. Shall we go up to see them?’
‘Yes, okay.’ We head towards the bank of lifts, and Jack pauses by the gift shop with its schmaltzy tat, all glittery balloons and cheap teddy bears.
‘I should get something for them…’ I wait as he selects a big pink balloon and a matching teddy with a rictus grin, clutching a fabric heart. Milly would usually hate both, but perhaps she’ll love them now because of the occasion. I picture her upstairs, cradling her daughter, perhaps even trying to feed her. They encourage mothers to breastfeed right away, I remember Milly telling me.
‘I don’t actually know where Milly is,’ I say, heading for the nurses’ desk on the maternity ward, but Jack stops me.
‘Matt said room six.’
We head in that direction, passing several doors that are partially ajar, so we catch glimpses of parents and babies, snapshots of happiness. A mother nursing. A father taking a photo. A toddler trying to climb onto a bed.
Then we reach room six and the door is firmly closed. We both hesitate, and then Jack raps on it softly. A moment passes and we glance at each other uncertainly.
Then Matt opens the door, his expression a bit dazed, his hair mussed as if he’s raked his fingers through it more than once.
‘Hey, mate.’ Jack claps a hand on his shoulder. ‘Congratulations—’
‘Thanks.’ He steps out of the room, closing the door behind him. ‘Sorry. I just want Milly to have a bit of space.’
‘Space?’ I echo. What’s going on? What’s wrong?
‘She’s… she’s having a bit of trouble adjusting. It all happened so fast, I suppose… and she’s groggy still from the anaesthetic.’ He sounds as if he is trying to convince himself of something.
‘What do you mean, Matt?’
His voice drops to a whisper, a confession. ‘She doesn’t want to hold Alice,’ he explains, sounding wretched. ‘She doesn’t even want to see her.’
Seventeen
Milly
I wake aching, the world a muted blur. One hand creeps to my bump, but it isn’t there. I am empty and sagging, with a deflated balloon of a belly. Panic takes over, a metallic taste in my mouth.
‘What… where…’ I am struggling to a sitting position, despite the fiery pain spreading through my middle. I can barely get my head off the pillow, in any case, no matter how hard I try.
‘Milly. Milly.’ Matt puts his hands on my shoulders, anchoring me to this bed. ‘It’s okay. You’re in hospital. You had an emergency caesarean. Our daughter is fine. She’s beautiful, Milly. Just beautiful.’
I stare at him, blinking slowly, trying to take in the words. Everything happened so fast. I try to put the memories together, but they’re like broken puzzle pieces that won’t fit no matter how hard I try to jam them together. My waters broke, and Anna was here, and my daughter’s heart rate was too high. The consultant looked scared. I remember her saying something about not enough time before fitting a mask over my face. And then… nothing.
‘Milly?’ Matt looks at me hopefully. ‘Do you want to see her?’
Her? I blink. My mind is still fuzzy, and my mouth is horribly dry. My empty belly is blazing with pain.
‘I…’ I can’t manage much more. My eyes flutter closed. The world feels too much. I fall asleep.
When I wake up again, I feel more focused, the memories that felt so disparate and strange starting to come together into an unsettling whole. I missed it all – everything I had looked forward to and longed for – the labour, the delivery, my darling, squalling newborn placed on my chest, that important skin-to-skin contact I’ve read about, how you need to breastfeed right away… How long has it even been? I turn my head and see that it’s dark outside.
‘Milly, you’re awake.’ I open my mouth to speak, but only a croak comes out. ‘Here, let me get you some water.’
Matt hurries to fill a glass from the pitcher by my bed and then holds it to my lips. I try to swallow, but most of it dribbles down my chin. I feel utterly helpless.
‘How are you feeling?’ Matt’s eyes are shining and he looks so excited. I can’t muster a millionth of his emotion, and I barely manage to shake my head. ‘Do you want to see her, Milly? Alice. Our daughter. She’s beautiful.’
Alice. The name we chose, but for some reason it feels unfamiliar now. Everything does. I feel so disorientated, as if my brain has separated from my body. I don’t know who I am anymore. I certainly don’t know who Alice is.
‘What… time is it?’ I finally manage. I don’t know why I ask that first. Perhaps I just need something to ground me in this present reality.
Matt looks surprised, and then a little disappointed. He checks his watch. ‘It’s almost seven o’clock.’
Seven o’clock. Eight hours since I was awake with Anna, cradling my bump, bracing myself for what was ahead. It feels like forever. ‘Where’s Anna?’
Matt looks even more discomfited, as if he can’t understand my questions, how I need to remind myself of these facts. ‘I… I don’t know. She went for a coffee a couple of hours ago. She wanted to give us some time alone.’ I nod slowly. ‘I texted Jack too, he’s back from France, and all our parents, of course. He wants to stop by later tonight and your mum and dad are hoping to visit tomorrow morning…’
I stare at him, numb to everything, even the pain blazing through me. Everything has happened and I haven’t been a part of any of it, not even my baby’s birth. My baby. The words roll around like marbles inside my head. Do I really have a baby?
‘Milly…’ A touch of impatience to his voice now. ‘Don’t you want to see Alice?’
I’m not sure I can make any other response, and so I nod. Of course I want to see her, and yet I’m terrified. Nothing feels the way I expected to, least of all myself.
‘I’ll ask the nurse to bring her here,’ Matt says.
I must have drifted off, because when Matt returns with a nurse and plastic bassinet on wheels, I startle awake.
‘It’s good to see you awake, Milly,’ the nurse says, although I don’t recognise her. How does she know my name? I feel as if I’ve entered some alternate dystopian reality, and while I can remember most of the day before they put me under, it still feels distant, separate from myself, from my present.
‘Here she is,’ the nurse says cheerfully, and wheels the bassinet close to me. There is a baby inside of it.
‘Isn’t she gorgeous, Mills?’ Matt whispers, enthralled by the sight of the tiny creature wrapped in white, looking wizened and red and strange.
I blink and stare, knowing I should feel something. Wanting to feel something. Joy, or at least relief. But I feel numb, and underneath that, like freezing water beneath black ice, something dark is swirling around – fear, or something worse?
‘I’ll just leave you two alone for a few minutes,’ the nurse says. ‘Have some bonding time.’
She tiptoes away while we both stare at the baby. What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to feel? I know, in a distant, abstract way, what emotions I should feel, what words I should say, but they feel so far away. I can’t even pretend.
‘Milly,’ Matt asks gently. ‘Do you want to hold her?’
‘I don’t know if I can.’ I gesture to my stitches. ‘I can’t do anything, Matt.’
‘Let me hold her to you,’ Matt says, and inexpertly but carefully he picks up the baby from the bassinet. I can tell by the way he cradles her head he’s done it before. How many times has he held her? Has Anna held her? And even Jack? I am the last to this party; I feel like a fake. Look at you. You’re not a real mother. No matter how hard you tried.
Matt inches over to my bed, Alice suspended over me. She is asleep, but she stirs as he moves her. It’s an awkward angle, and after a second she lets out a tiny, mewling cry of protest. Matt quickly puts her back in the bassinet.
‘Sorry, that wasn’t great,’ he mutters. ‘But you can hold her soon, I’m sure. The nurse said you could, anyway…’
‘It’s okay.’ I turn my head a little bit away. ‘I don’t want to.’ As soon as the words are out, I know I shouldn’t have said them. I shouldn’t have thought them. ‘I’m just feeling a bit out of it still,’ I say, and I close my eyes, because maybe then Matt won’t ask me any questions.
I must fall asleep again, because a little while later I wake up, and I am alone in the room. No Matt. No baby. Outside, the sky is black and starless, and the hospital ward seems quiet. Silent, in fact. I can’t hear anything, not even murmuring voices in the distance, and I am suddenly filled with a wild panic. Has Matt left me here? Has he taken Alice and gone?
I struggle to a sitting position, even though it makes my midsection burn. I don’t think I can walk, not without assistance, but I still try, swinging my legs out of the bed, my feet hitting the cold tile floor. I let out a gasp, icy sweat prickling on my brow and between my shoulder blades. I can do this…
Except, of course, I can’t. When I try to rise from the bed, I stagger and fall back, letting out a cry as pain rips through me. The door opens, and Matt rushes towards me.
‘Milly, Milly. What are you doing?’
‘Where were you?’ I cry, my voice sounding broken.
Matt blinks, his hand on my arm as he guides me back to a lying position. ‘I was with Alice.’
Alice, Alice. The way he says her name as if he knows her, and I don’t. I don’t know her at all. I jerk away from him, and he blinks.
‘Milly…’
‘I don’t want to lie down. I want to sit up.’
‘Okay, let me help you.’
I don’t want to be helped either, but I need it. I suffer silently as he moves me around, adjusting my limbs as if I am a marionette. He steps back, his forehead crinkled with concern as he looks at me.
‘Milly, I know this is challenging,’ he begins hesitantly. ‘It’s not the way either of us would have wanted things to happen, but we’ve made it through and you’re healthy and so is our daughter.’ I’m not sure where he is going with this, so I just stare at him silently. ‘The nurse said you might find things… difficult… at first, because of the emergency caesarean, not being awake for the delivery, needing to recover, that sort of thing…’
‘So now you’re talking about me?’
‘Not like that,’ Matt protests. ‘Milly, for heaven’s sake…’ He lapses into silence, seeming to realise there is no point in berating me.
‘I know.’ Everything in me crumples. ‘I’m sorry,’ I gasp out. ‘I just feel so…’ I can’t explain how I feel, as if I am suffocating. As if this reality that I longed for is now unbearable, and I don’t even understand why. ‘Matt, will you bring her to me? I want to hold her.’
‘Are you sure?’
His doubt hurts, but I force myself past it. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
He leaves the room, returning a few minutes later with the plastic bassinet on wheels, Alice swaddled inside. Matt lifts her out almost reverently, and I hold out my arms, the effort making them tremble.
‘Here she is.’ Matt places Alice gently in my arms.
She is beautiful, her golden lashes fanning her cheeks, her tiny rosebud mouth puckered, little mittened fists up by her face. She is perfect. And yet I feel as if I could be holding anyone’s baby, even a doll. She doesn’t feel like my daughter. The groundswell of maternal love that I expected in this moment, that I’d been building all along, is entirely absent, and that terrifies me. I don’t want Matt, or anyone else, to know, and yet I’m afraid it must be evident on my face, in the way I hold her, like a bulky parcel.
‘Milly…’
‘She’s lovely.’ The words sound wooden. ‘Lovely.’
‘Do you want to try breastfeeding her?’
The thought of doing that right now nearly makes me flinch. ‘Tomorrow,’ I say, and gesture for him to take her. ‘I’m still so tired.’
‘Okay.’ Matt looks worried and I know I’m not handling this right. The trouble is, the right words, the right feelings, seem utterly foreign and impossible.
I turn on my side, away from him, afraid of what he can see in my face. I have to hide how I feel, how I don’t feel, and I’m not sure I can.
What is wrong with me? Or is nothing wrong with me, and it’s just I’m finally realising what I’ve known all along – that Alice isn’t really my child?
* * *
The next morning, I wake up, half-hoping I’ll feel different, better, but I don’t. I feel exactly the same, only worse, because I was hoping this dark cloud would have dispersed in the night, and it hasn’t. It’s thick and black and covering every part of me. And I don’t want to adm
it it to Matt, or to anyone.
At least I am feeling a bit better physically; I manage to shuffle along the corridor like an old woman, my hospital gown flapping around me, Matt holding my elbow.
When I’ve showered and managed to change into my own comfy clothes, Matt asks me, his voice full of hesitation, if I’d like to see Alice again, and perhaps try breastfeeding.
‘Yes, all right,’ I say, offering him a small smile. I am play-acting, but perhaps if I stay in the role, I will start to feel something. The instinct I am missing will finally kick in.
Matt goes to get Alice, and I perch on the edge of the bed, my heart flip-flopping in my chest. I can do this. I need to do this. I want to want to do this, and yet I know I don’t.
A few minutes later, Matt comes in, wheeling that plastic bassinet. ‘Here she is,’ he says, his voice pitched just a bit too jolly.
I try to smile as he lifts Alice out of the bassinet. Alice. I say her name again and again silently, trying to get used to it. We picked it out months ago; we always called her by her name as soon as we knew we were having a girl. Why does the name seem strange now, almost as if I never chose it?
I hold out my arms and Matt places her in them gently, and I hold my breath, waiting again for the rush of maternal love, the feeling that things finally fit. I am so hopeful, so desperate to believe that in this moment it’s going to happen.
But again, nothing does. And when Matt suggests breastfeeding, I steel myself for an attempt, which is awkward and unbearable, and ends up with Alice mewling plaintively and me thrusting her away from me, back at Matt.
‘Take her,’ I say, a desperate plea. Matt scoops her up, already an expert, while I am floundering.
‘Milly, it will get better.’
I nod, because it has to get better. I can’t bear to think about what will happen if it doesn’t.
Eighteen
Anna