Mine

by Susi Fox

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘She insisted. Look, if you don’t go to the appointment, there’s the risk she’ll readmit you. Involuntarily this time.’

  A sparrow flutters away from the birdbath in the yard.

  ‘And Toby? Any word on how he is?’

  ‘I haven’t heard from Dr Green.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just give her a call?’

  ‘I don’t want to hassle her, Sash. She’s busy. I’m sure she’ll be in touch as soon as she can.’

  ‘Maybe we can go and see Toby after I see Dr Niles.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Sash. We need to wait for the paediatrician’s okay.’

  There’s something he’s not telling me.

  ‘Why does Dr Niles want to see me? What did you say to her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Mark says. ‘She sounded worried about you.’

  Shit. She’s heard about my interest in Jeremy. I’m going to have to convince her all over again that I believe Toby is my son.

  ‘You must have said something.’

  ‘I’m trying to help you, Sash, I promise. The last thing I want is for you to be readmitted.’

  Sitting around the table with the quiet women munching on their soggy hospital meals like a prisoner. Sobbing in the bathroom, with the lukewarm water dribbling down my back. Pinching my eyes shut in meditation, the women around me shuffling and sniffing.

  Mark drains the gnocchi into the colander in the sink. Steam rises, fogging the kitchen window. I picture Toby, all alone in his humidicrib, and bury my face in my hands.

  ‘I’m not up for lunch,’ I mumble.

  ‘Let me know when you’re hungry. I’ll heat some up for you.’

  In our bedroom, Toby’s dirty clothes lie in a plastic bag on the bed beside my suitcase, ready for me to wash and fold. I press one of his jumpsuits to my face. It smells faintly of soil, like the downy tan and white bird feathers I used to collect on my bushwalks back when we couldn’t get pregnant. I would press them into my pocket and hold them tight as though I was clasping magic in the palm of my hand.

  I try to picture how our room will look when we get Toby home. I’ll keep the new breastfeeding chair by our bed. The change table should fit under the window. And we can move his cot in here. He’ll be able to sleep beside us, on my side of the bed.

  Clothes spring out at me as I unzip my suitcase. As for my cupboard, it’s a mess: tops and pants tangled in clumps and spilling from the open drawers. Wire clothes hangers are scattered on the ground.

  ‘Couldn’t you have tried to keep my stuff in order?’ I call out to Mark. Hidden at the back of the top shelf, I find my mother’s quilt. Mark has already removed it from the couch.

  I retrieve the zip-lock from the front pocket of my suitcase. The umbilical cord is even more blackened and shrunken than when I last examined it. I prise open the plastic bag. The shrivelled black lump of cells no longer has a smell. I carry it into the ensuite and toss it in the bin. There’s a creak behind me.

  Mark is in the doorway, brandishing his jacket and a letter, DNA Easy on the header, in his shaking hands. A vein throbs on his forehead.

  Shit. The results have arrived earlier than I expected. And I’d forgotten that, hoping I’d be discharged early, I’d asked for them to be sent to my home address.

  ‘That’s addressed to me.’

  I reach for the paper, but he snatches it away.

  ‘You did the tests. You went behind my back. You weren’t even going to tell me. How could you?’

  My knees tremble.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem complicated to me. No wonder you’re so sure Toby is our son. I don’t even need to read these to know the answer.’

  He crumples the letter in his palm.

  So he hasn’t read it. I feel no need to read it either. I already know what it will say, the results in bold black type accusing me of yet another mistake. Now I can only hope that Toby will recover.

  Mark stuffs the letter in the pocket of his jacket. ‘And me? Did you take a sample from me?’

  The floor tiles are a monotonous pattern, white-and-black squares like a chequerboard, endlessly repeating. The pattern was Mark’s choice. I never told him I couldn’t stand the design.

  He curses under his breath.

  ‘If Dr Niles hadn’t insisted I keep things calm for you at home …’ He draws in a breath, tightens his hands into fists. I can smell his breath, sweet and sickly, from beside me.

  ‘You hid my quilt earlier.’

  Mark eyes me. ‘It’s a child’s quilt, Sasha.’

  My heart sinks in my chest, my stomach rising to meet it. ‘Mark.’ My whole body shakes until I’m almost rocking. ‘We need to talk.’

  Mark stuffs his hands into his pockets. I could hold back, say nothing and live the life we’ve made for ourselves in our house secreted in the bush like a fire bunker. It would be safe. Comfortable. Adequate.

  I see people gathering in front of us, like in the genial photographs adorning the walls of the living room: my father, friends, work colleagues, extended family, all of them clustered, their eyes drawn into thin lines. How can I disappoint them all like this?

  I never allowed myself to imagine life without Mark, not even in the weeks before the wedding when the pressure of a husband living life for his dead twin began to weigh heavy on me.

  ‘Don’t back out now,’ Bec said as I wallowed in martinis at my hens’ night. ‘You’ll regret it.’

  No relationship is perfect. Bec had been right about that. Marriage keeps you together through the bad times. Like now, I suppose. It’s just that we haven’t been happy together for so long.

  ‘I …’

  Mark holds up his palm to me, shaking his head.

  ‘I wanted to …’

  There’s so much I want to say about the ways in which we have failed each other, but it almost feels like too much to discuss. He doesn’t open his mouth so I continue.

  ‘We haven’t been honest with each other.’

  Mark’s cheeks are sunken into his skull, his eyeballs into their sockets.

  ‘This isn’t you, Sash. It’s your hormones speaking. Or your illness.’

  My hands quake on the bathroom sink.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this for the longest time, Mark. It seemed easier to keep going, see if things got better between us once you were happier, once we had a baby. I’ve been pretending for so long that everything is fine, that I’m okay. You have, too. Surely you can see both of us aren’t happy the way things are. I can’t do this anymore. I hope one day you’ll understand.’

  I stop, nothing left to say.

  ‘I’ve been trying so hard to be the husband you wanted.’

  ‘I can’t be the wife you need.’

  He turns to me. He looks devastated.

  ‘You can’t save us,’ I say, ‘any more than you could save Simon.’

  His face tightens.

  ‘Simon shouldn’t have given up. He shouldn’t have let go. I told him that on the night he died.’

  In that moment, with his eyes on fire, his mouth set in fear, I no longer recognise my husband. I wonder who he has loved and whether he has ever loved me at all.

  ‘Fuck this,’ he says. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car.’ His feet thump down the hallway runner to the front door.

  He’s right. This is fucked. All of it. I want to be with my baby. I want to hold Toby. Above all, I should have the right to see my son.

  Toby. He’s a good baby; better than I deserve. We will have a bond, finally, that feels real and true. He’ll get better every day. He simply has to; he’s already suffered so much, and I can’t bear to even contemplate losing him now.

  A rush of bile slides up my throat. I need to hold him. Then I’ll be absolutely certain he’s mine. I only wish there was another way to find out.

  Day 7, Friday Afternoon

  ‘How are you, Sasha?’

  Brigitte is behind me in the hospita
l foyer, clutching her handbag in one hand, her plastic bag full of knitting paraphernalia – red wool, needles, knitted squares – in the other. ‘The sooner we all get home, the better, huh?’

  Why is she happy to speak to me now? She must not have been told I was found again beside Jeremy’s cot. And after what’s happened with Mark, I’m not too sure home is where I want to be right now. Mark and I barely exchanged a word on the drive here. When I left him waiting in the car, he looked ashen. I wonder if he even trusts me to attend my appointment with Dr Niles.

  I push Mark out of my mind and try to be generous to Brigitte.

  ‘I’m sure Jeremy will be going home soon.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She bites her top lip. ‘How’s Toby today?’

  ‘He’s having some antibiotics. I hope he’s going to be okay.’ I’m due at the mother–baby unit, where I’ll attempt to placate Dr Niles before heading to the nursery. I’m desperate to check on Toby’s condition. If they still deny me access, I’ll have to work out another plan to see him. So the last thing I want is to keep talking to Brigitte. She was right to be fearful and suspicious of me; there’s no point in trying to rekindle any connection we might have made early on.

  Before I can slip away, Brigitte gives a wide smile. ‘Ursula just told me everything. I’m so sorry. I had no idea what you were going through. If I’d known you thought my baby was yours …’ She keeps smiling. ‘It must have been horrific for you. I’m so glad you’ve come around.’ She appears genuine in her concern. ‘By the way, I noticed your quilt is a little threadbare. I’d still love to help fix it up, if you’d like.’

  I hesitate, and Brigitte sidles closer.

  ‘Look, I’ve been thinking about everything that’s been going on for you. I’ve been doing some research. Did you know the very first humidicribs were made from metal?’

  I pull Mark’s jacket tighter around me, the one he insisted I put on when I began shivering in the car on the way to the hospital.

  Brigitte babbles on. ‘Apparently back when they first started putting babies in humidicribs, mothers kept abandoning them. They’d leave their babies in the nursery and never come back. So they started making humidicribs out of glass. The mothers visited every day. The doctors put it down to mothers being able to bond with their babies because they could see them better.’ She drops her voice. ‘Maybe they were wrong? Maybe it was the glass itself that helped? It’s a natural material, not like perspex, or metal. Maybe you should ask for a glass humidicrib?’

  There’s not even the hint of a smile on her lips.

  ‘I mean, you can see your baby much more clearly through glass than through perspex, right? Who they are. Who you want them to be.’

  I wonder how her mental health is, and whether naturopathy and chiropracty are really keeping postnatal depression at bay.

  ‘Thanks, Brigitte, but I’m okay now. Everything is okay. But I’ve got to go.’

  She takes a step back.

  ‘I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better. I’ve been meaning to tell you, by the way. I love the name Toby. Names are funny, aren’t they? I’ve always thought people grow into them until there’s no way they could have ever been called anything else.’ She stares at me with curious eyes.

  I feel a flush of heat and loosen my shirt at the neck. If the situation were reversed – if she’d touched my baby without my knowledge – I’d want her to tell me. I take a deep breath.

  ‘I’m sorry, I –’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she interrupts. ‘You don’t need to say another word. I know what you’re going to say. And I know what it’s like. It’s so easy to do the wrong thing sometimes. When you wish things were different. When you want to start over. When you feel like you have no other choice.’ She scrabbles in her pocket. ‘I’ve been meaning to give you my number. It would be great to catch up when we get our babies home. Jeremy’s being discharged any day now. I was concerned I might not get to see you before I left, so I got your number from your notes. I was sure you wouldn’t mind.’ She passes me a scrap of paper. ‘I’d love to stay in touch. Maybe our sons can be friends.’

  ‘My medical notes? How did you get them?’ Alarm bells are sounding in my head.

  She purses her lips. ‘I only got your phone number. They keep the medical records of women like us, the mothers whose babies are in the nursery, on the postnatal ward. Nurses’ station, top drawer on the right. Easily accessible when the nurses are busy. You know what it’s like.’ She winks.

  Her handwriting on the scrap of paper is familiar somehow. Then I remember: it’s the same large, clear lettering that was filling each of the cards beside Jeremy’s cot. Why would she have written letters of congratulations to herself?

  ‘I’ve really got to go,’ I mumble.

  Brigitte is still rummaging through her handbag.

  ‘The books said they used to call premature babies weaklings in the olden days, back before humidicribs. I guess it let everyone justify the way they would leave them to die. Can you believe it? Thank God it’s not like that now. Our babies couldn’t be luckier. And neither could we.’ She pulls a tiny red knitted jumper from the depths of her handbag and places it in my hands. ‘I made it for Jeremy,’ she says, ‘but I think Toby should have it.’

  I run the pads of my fingers over the braided neck, the woven wrists. It’s merino, softer than it looked from a distance. It’s too big for Toby’s minute torso, but I’m sure he’ll grow into it soon enough.

  ‘That’s very kind,’ I say. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Brigitte says, flashing her friendly smile again. ‘And be sure to stay in touch.’

  I pause in front of the wall of monitors in the mother–baby unit where a dozen speakers screwed to plasterboard emit the sounds of babies in a separate room. The speakers are used for sleep-training. The mothers stand outside the door, listening to their child’s cries, attempting to recognise signs of distress. I never paid much heed to the speakers when I was admitted. Now I press my ear to the closest one. Snuffles. A wail. Silence. Then a piercing cry that echoes through my chest. I would never want my child in a place like this.

  ‘Sasha, hello.’ Dr Niles’ coffee breath wafts towards me when I turn to find her standing at my side. ‘Thank you for coming in at my request.’

  She herds me into the interview room beside the nurses’ station, where the air is once again hot and thick. I shrug off Mark’s jacket and perch on the plastic seat with my spine erect. The downlights are interrogation spotlights on my face.

  Dr Niles sits in the chair opposite me. She lifts her pen above my file, the nib as sharp as a barb. I wonder how much she knows about my now-resolved obsession with Jeremy. We are here for you, the sign above her head reminds me in bold, black type.

  ‘You haven’t been taking your medication.’ A statement, not a question.

  ‘Mostly I have,’ I lie. ‘When I remember.’

  She glares at me.

  ‘You must take your tablets regularly. Otherwise we may have to consider readmitting you.’

  ‘No problem,’ I say, rising to my feet. Her fingernails are sharp against my skin as she takes hold of my arm and gestures to the chair. All I want is to hold Toby in my arms to know that he’s okay; yet it appears I have no choice but to sit back down.

  ‘There’s something else we need to discuss,’ Dr Niles says. ‘You showed particular interest in another baby in the nursery. You asked to hold him.’ This isn’t a question, either.

  I frown.

  ‘You deny it?’

  ‘I just wanted to see what it was like to hold a baby that was a bit bigger than Toby,’ I say carefully, not entirely sure if this is an adequate answer, but it’s the best I can do right now.

  ‘You wanted to hold a bigger baby.’ The sharp nib of her pen is poised above unmarked paper on the desk.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, spotting my chance. ‘I didn’t expect Toby to be so small. He’s very delicate. And frail. I feel like I could crus
h him with my touch.’

  ‘Crush him with your touch.’ Dr Niles squeezes her fingers into the shaft of the pen so the skin under her nails turns white.

  Oh, shit.

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘that’s not what I meant. I mean that I don’t want to hurt Toby. You see, I only want the very best of everything for him.’ I cast my eyes to a poster tacked to the wall, a serene mother breastfeeding her baby, a placid smile on her face. ‘Like my milk, for example.’

  ‘You were planning on breastfeeding Jeremy?’

  The walls of the tiny room feel as if they’re closing in. My top is soaked with sweat, clinging to my back. I feel like a caged animal in an experiment, observed through one-way glass, a single spotlight trained on me. Perhaps I’m like those rhesus monkeys that clung to constructed mothers in the experiments. The monkeys favoured cloth mothers over wire ones, I recall.

  ‘I would never breastfeed Jeremy. He’s not my baby. I don’t know what else I can say to make you believe me.’ A line of sweat trickles from my temple. ‘I’ve known ever since you admitted me that Toby is my baby. You can ask anyone. They’ll tell you. I’ve visited his humidicrib every day. I’ve expressed milk for him even when you said I couldn’t. I’ve bought him presents …’ I realise there isn’t much more to say. My voice fades until it’s almost choking. ‘I do love him.’

  Dr Niles observes me as a scientist would have observed those monkeys. She envisages me as a wire mother, I’m sure of it.

  ‘Is Toby okay?’

  ‘I’m not aware of all the details. You’ll have to speak to the paediatricians.’

  That’s what I’ll do as soon as I possibly can. None of this should have happened, this hospital horror show. My chest constricts.

  ‘Mark is responsible for all of this, isn’t he? Me being admitted in the first place, and telling you all about my past.’

  Dr Niles blinks. ‘Mark has been your most ardent supporter.’

  ‘But he’s been lying to me the whole time.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Mark’s face forms in front of me. His guilt-ridden frown as he crouched on the floor of my room, searching through my belongings. His desperate stare as he tried to keep me from being admitted by encouraging me to pretend nothing was wrong. His wide-eyed horror as he discovered the depths of my obsession with Jeremy. The roses, the home-cooked gnocchi, the apricot slice. Finally, his face as it was on our wedding day: shining eyes, flushed cheeks, lips crinkled into a smile. Is it possible he’s been fighting for me this whole time?