Mine

by Susi Fox

  ‘I’m feeling good,’ I say. ‘Great, in fact.’

  ‘No side effects or other concerns?’

  ‘Nope.’ I don’t mention the dry mouth, the headaches, the blurred vision I got after the first batch of tablets. I don’t mention that last night I hid them in my cheek and spat them down the sink. The nurses weren’t as vigilant as her. I decide to spare Dr Niles the effort of having to feign interest. Instead, I follow Bec’s plan. I paste a smile on my face as I say, ‘I know now Toby is mine.’

  Dr Niles frowns and jots down some notes. Squirming inside, I smile harder and squeeze my fingers into my palms. Is it possible I’ve said the wrong thing? Dr Niles looks up to the window high in the wall, her eyes glinting like gemstones as she remembers something.

  ‘The narcissi are blossoming,’ she says.

  I inhale the morning air.

  ‘Jonquils, you mean.’

  ‘They’re narcissi.’

  ‘Mark’s the gardener,’ I say, wondering if this is some sort of a test, ‘but I’m pretty sure they’re jonquils outside the window.’

  Dr Niles glances around the room. I’ve hung my clothes neatly in the cupboard, stacked my toiletries in the ensuite. There’s no evidence of my presence in the room besides myself. Her gaze lingers on the shiny bedside table.

  ‘Are you reading anything at present?’

  ‘I’m not a big reader.’ It’s not true, but I’m reluctant to discuss my literary tastes with her. I have no idea what the right answers – the ones that will render me sane in her eyes – should be.

  ‘I believe there’s much to be learned from reading. Empathy. An appreciation of differing perspectives. And engrossed in a book, we can feel less lonely, if only for a short while.’

  I give what I hope is an appreciative smile. Her gold-flecked eyes pull into focus, drilling in on mine.

  ‘Sasha, is there anything you should be telling me?’

  I press my lips together.

  ‘You requested DNA tests?’

  Oh, no. Surely she didn’t overhear me. I inhale deeply.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the nursery. And on the maternity ward.’

  Dr Green. And Dr Solomon. I sigh in relief.

  ‘Do you still wish to pursue this testing?’ Dr Niles asks.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ I say it in my strongest voice and she seems to believe me, writing it all down with her steady hand, her fingernails buffed to perfection. I curl my own nails deeper into my palms so she can’t see they’re bitten to the quick.

  When she finally looks up, her eyes are hard.

  ‘And I sincerely hope you would never consider pursuing independent DNA testing yourself?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She looks dubious, so I continue. ‘After all, Dr Green and Dr Solomon refused. And it would be against hospital policy.’ The floral curtains billow in the slight breeze. ‘And, of course, there’s no need. Toby is my son.’

  Her head tilts to one side. It’s the way women always seem to examine me, with their eyes trained on the smallest movement of my lips, my fingers, my feet. They can’t seem to place me, figure me out; and that’s when I’m being my honest self. I must be confounding her now. I keep my hands clasped in my lap, my gaze turned to the sky.

  When the silence extends into minutes, I can’t stop myself. ‘Is there any chance I can go home before next Monday?’ The sooner, the better. The DNA results will be back then. They’ll be more likely to believe me, to take the DNA results I’ve performed seriously, if I’m back home rather than still an inpatient in a psychiatric ward. Surely there’s no reason to keep me in here?

  Dr Niles shuffles through her papers with her careful hands. ‘Let’s talk about your husband. What can you tell me about your relationship?’

  Why on earth is she asking me about this? Is it because she has issues of her own? ‘He’s had a chat with you, he said.’

  Her fingernails trace the lines on the page.

  ‘Do you believe he’s happy?’

  ‘He seems happy enough. We’re both excited to be parents.’

  There’s no sense in telling her how things have cracked apart over recent years, how this baby mix-up seems to have driven a wedge even deeper between us.

  ‘I suppose we got together because we shared the same values,’ I add as Dr Niles’ pen slides across the page.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Honesty.’ I scan my brain for our marriage vows. ‘Kindness. Persistence in the face of adversity.’ And the one I almost forgot. ‘Love.’

  ‘The basis of a solid marriage,’ she says, her voice smooth behind her thin lips. ‘Although I imagine enduring infertility would have put all that to the test.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ I’m reluctant to disclose anything else. There’s only so much she could have learned from a textbook, only so much she could know about my grief. The question, still unanswered by Dr Niles, thuds through my brain.

  ‘So, do you know when I’ll be allowed to go home?’

  She snaps the file shut.

  ‘Soon. Perhaps when the narcissi finish blooming.’ Her orange hair glints in the morning sun as she steps towards the door. ‘I have more questions for you, Sasha. But as group therapy is in thirty minutes, we’ll have to end the session here, I’m afraid. Be certain you’re not running late.’

  A waft of hot, moist air blasts my face as I push open the recreation-room door. Large panes of glass run along one side of the dark room, framing the mesh-covered fernery of the courtyard. Abstract paintings line the opposite wall. At the far end is a makeshift library: a few couches and beanbags, and a cluster of bookshelves lined with hardbacks.

  ‘There’s an issue with the thermostat,’ Dr Niles says, fiddling with a fuse box in the corner of the room. ‘If I can’t get it working, I’m afraid we’ll have to reschedule.’

  Only one other woman is present, already seated in a small circle of chairs: Ondine, the slim, silent woman from my first night here. Her curls are lanky, her skin as pale as cloud. Behind a pair of dark-framed glasses her eyes are rimmed with red. I take a seat beside her.

  ‘Small group today,’ I say.

  Ondine nods.

  ‘We should start our own mother’s group,’ another woman says, taking the chair on my other side. I recognise her from the kitchen the night of my admission. ‘We can call ourselves the Mentally Ill Mothers.’

  Ondine shudders.

  ‘I, for one, am not mentally unwell,’ I say. Perhaps this group will be another chance to assert my sanity.

  ‘Maybe not,’ the other woman says. ‘But if we are, it’s our mothers who made us this way.’

  I’m not sure that’s the case with me. I can’t blame my mother’s departure for all my failings. When I was an adolescent, Lucia tried to instil in me that my mother gave me the gift of a blank canvas. She insisted that, as the artist of my life, I was responsible for the final painting. And for every mistake.

  ‘How have you been, Ondine?’ Dr Niles calls from the far wall. ‘You’ve missed our other group sessions.’

  Ondine slides her hands beneath her thighs, her palms flat against the plastic seat.

  ‘I haven’t been well.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re in hospital. To start working through some of your issues.’

  Ondine has started to cry.

  In the coroner’s court, during the prolonged interrogations about Damien, the coroner’s assistant, then the family’s lawyers, each had their own questions of me, their own ways of attempting to squeeze me like a sponge as I sat before them, trembling. I remember staring up at the courtroom ceiling, trying to hold back the flood. Lucia had taught me the trick years before as I’d sat on her lap at the end of her bed. ‘If you feel tears coming on, look upwards, my darling. You look up, your tears dry up too.’

  Back then, I couldn’t imagine a time when Lucia might have cried. Me, I cried almost every night of my childhood. It was only ever under cover of darkness, when I knew my father in
the next room had fallen into sleep, and I’d wonder what had become of my mother, and whether I would ever see her again. Asking myself what I must have done for her to leave me.

  The other woman leans forward in her chair.

  ‘I hope you’ll get to see your son again soon, Ondine.’

  Ondine’s head tips back towards the beams lining the roof, her mouth falling open like a corpse. The tear trails across her cheek.

  I bring my hand to rest on Ondine’s shoulder, but she stiffens. I remove my hand and replace it in my lap.

  From the corner of the room, Dr Niles drops the fuse box door shut.

  ‘Seems broken. We’ll have to formally reschedule, I’m afraid.’ She approaches the circle and settles herself into a chair. ‘We’ll make sure to arrange a replacement session.’

  Ondine stands from her chair and gives a grim smile, then glides out the door.

  ‘Her husband is refusing to let her see her son, Henry,’ the other woman whispers to me. The bush telegraph of the hospital in action.

  I can’t imagine what on earth Ondine could have done. How bad would a mother have to be for her husband to forbid her from seeing their son?

  Along the wall, light shifts and curls on the faded abstract prints, splodges and blotches of colour on canvas captured behind glass frames. All at once the sun disappears behind a cloud. The paintings darken, falling into dull, lifeless greys and navies and blacks.

  ‘We’ll have to work harder to get a group together next week,’ Dr Niles says, coming to my side. We’re alone now in the recreation room. The other woman’s chair is empty – she has disappeared.

  From the ceiling vent, cold air shunts against the top of my head.

  ‘Looks like the air-conditioning has fixed itself. Have you got time to continue our discussion now?’ Dr Niles leans forward over her crossed legs.

  I’m not in the right headspace for talking to her again, so soon. Disturbing images from my nightmare are still flashing before my eyes. The dead babies settled in my vision the day of my coroner’s court appearance as I was verbally prodded and poked. The same dead babies have haunted my dreams ever since. I need to make a believable excuse.

  ‘I want to visit the nursery and check how my son is doing. Can we maybe catch up another time?’

  ‘Of course,’ Dr Niles says with a smile. ‘And if you’re not finding group useful, we can set up more one-on-one sessions instead. Let me know what you prefer.’

  I would never tell Dr Niles, but maybe I would have benefitted from group therapy after Damien, all those years ago. But, for now, the Mentally Ill Mothers’ Group is the last place I need to be.

  Day 3, Monday Afternoon

  Toby’s face is the colour of embers, his eyes clenched, as he shuffles his back against the mattress, startling himself awake. It’s important to be here, beside his cot. That’s what a good mother would do. Maybe they’ll trust me next time I say I believe he’s mine.

  ‘Your baby is gorgeous.’

  Brigitte is leaning over me, a hint of sweet perspiration emanating from her. Her hair is tied back into such a tight plait that the tiny lines around her eyes are smoothed out. With her moist lips and shiny cheeks, it’s hard to believe she’s given birth so recently. My own face must appear dreary in comparison.

  ‘I never expected it to be like this with a baby,’ she says, crossing the walkway back to her son and tugging back the baby-blue quilt from his humidicrib.

  Mark finally informed me in an offhand manner that each of the quilts was sewn by the Hospital Women’s Auxiliary, one donated to each premature baby as a gift. I think the elderly knitters imagined them being used to keep the babies warm, not to hide the babies from prying mothers.

  I give Brigitte a stilted smile. Toby stares at me through the plastic, his eyes seeking out my own. He is beautiful, really, with his wholesome gaze and untamed hair. It would be so much easier if I could believe he was mine. I tug his lurid orange quilt back over the humidicrib.

  ‘As soon as I held him for the first time, I fell in love,’ Brigitte says, plunging her hands into the portholes and stroking Jeremy’s back. I clutch at the plastic armrests, wishing I could say the same.

  ‘It’s better than I could ever have anticipated,’ she continues. ‘You have no idea how it’s going to go when you’re pregnant, do you? You hope for a healthy child. Anything could happen. There are no guarantees.’ She shimmies her hands out of the portholes and eases the doors closed. ‘I always wanted to have children. It’s everything I dreamed of. How about you?’

  During our years of attempted conception, Mark and I made naive plans for me to try being a stay-at-home mother. I would breastfeed, take a year or two off work. He would work overtime, double shifts, if needed. I’d pictured soft hugs, first smiles, contented naps with my baby by my side, strains of the nappy commercial must be love, love, love playing in the background.

  ‘It’s a little different to how I imagined.’ It’s not quite the right answer – not the one new mothers are supposed to give, anyway – but it’s honest, at least.

  Brigitte pulls a bundle of red wool from her bag and unfurls a knitted sleeve, almost complete. ‘You seem like an attachment parent.’

  I can’t fudge this answer. I clasp the rail of Toby’s humidicrib and squeeze the metal tight.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, you know … baby wearing, co-sleeping, baby-led weaning …’

  I shake my head slowly.

  ‘So, what’s your parenting philosophy? Are you a helicopter parent? Free-range parent? Authoritative? Slow?’

  Authoritative? Slow? Clearly I haven’t done enough research into parenting theories. They didn’t teach those things in medical school, or in pathology training. Stupidly, I’d thought getting pregnant was enough to join the generic mothers club.

  ‘I’ve honestly never thought about it.’ Maybe if I’d had my mother around, it would’ve been something we discussed.

  Her hand covers her mouth as she giggles. ‘You’re so refreshing, Sasha.’

  ‘I guess I’m passionate about breastfeeding,’ I say. ‘I’ve been expressing every day, so when he’s well enough to suck, we’ll start trying.’

  I’m glad to be able to say something that doesn’t make me look like such an incompetent mother. Of course I don’t mention the jars of my expressed breastmilk already accumulating in my mother–baby unit freezer.

  ‘I see,’ Brigitte says, turning to her knitting.

  ‘Are you going to breastfeed?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘Medical reasons.’ She winds the thread around the needle and pauses. ‘I’d always planned to have a homebirth. There were complications, so we couldn’t in the end. The next one will be a homebirth, though.’ Her smile is tight-lipped. It seems her validity as an attachment parent has been bolstered by the prospect of a homebirth. ‘So, are you planning more children?’

  There’s nowhere to hide.

  ‘Not at this stage.’

  ‘So, he’ll be an only child?’ Her eyes settle, like a falcon’s, on my face.

  ‘I’m an only child. It wasn’t so bad.’

  I can’t imagine having more children. Maybe my mother felt the same after my birth. For her, it seems that even one child was too much.

  The creases in Brigitte’s forehead disappear.

  ‘I’m an only child, too. So is my husband. We’ve survived – no, thrived. I’m sure Toby will too.’

  We exchange genuine smiles. Perhaps her superior tone has been covering a level of insecurity even deeper than mine. Brigitte counts the stitches in her row, then picks up the next thread.

  ‘We have to put Jeremy in full-time childcare at three months when I go back to work,’ she says. ‘There’s no choice, I’m afraid.’ Her grip on the knitting needles loosens when I don’t proffer judgement. ‘And you?’

  ‘We’re going to wait and see how it all goes.’

  I remove my sweaty palms from the humidicrib rail as Dr Green ap
proaches Brigitte’s side and switches Jeremy’s ultraviolet lights back on.

  ‘His blood tests show his jaundice levels are still elevated, Brigitte. We’ll pop these back on for now and do some more tests to try to ascertain the cause.’ Dr Green glances at me, the plastic unicorn clipped to her stethoscope swaying like a metronome. ‘You two have a lot in common. It’s lucky you have each other to compare notes. Someone who can understand.’

  The walls glow aqua. We could be sea creatures, Brigitte and I, lurking together in the depths of the sea. When Dr Green is far enough away, Brigitte skewers her skein of wool with a needle and sets the bundle on her lap.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, the doctors and nurses here have been great. Dr Green’s good. Ursula has been especially helpful. You know she used to be in charge until a few years ago? But I don’t think even she can appreciate how hard this is.’ She startles as an alarm sounds from the opposite corner of the nursery. ‘So much has happened. I was hoping to have him home already. But with the jaundice, needing the lights …’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘You won’t say anything about me finding it hard, will you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She sniffs. ‘I wouldn’t want the staff to think I’ve got postnatal depression. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with having that.’ One of her knitting needles tumbles to the ground, rolling across the floor. I bend down to reach for it.

  ‘Postnatal depression would definitely be bad …’ I hear myself murmur.

  But then the lights appear to dim, a brown haze rising at the corners of the room, as if I’m a mermaid flailing on dry land. I collapse back on the chair and drop my head between my knees, blood coursing through my thudding brain.

  ‘Deep breaths, Sasha,’ Brigitte says, her face insipid in the aquamarine light when I finally lift my head again. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I reply as my vision returns to normal. It’s the blood loss, the fatigue, the stress causing me to feel faint.

  ‘So, do you mind if I ask you something? You’re a doctor, right?’ Her fingers yank at a kink in the red wool. She’s pulling the knot tighter by mistake. ‘Jeremy will be okay, won’t he? I couldn’t bear anything to happen to him.’