With My Body

by Jo Briggs

  ~~~

  July 2004

  The next day passed in a drug-induced haze. As soon as the prescribed medicine brought the pre-eclampsia under control, her son was delivered, leaving the hostile environment of her uterus, in favour of the neonatal unit. Following an anxious phone call from Annette to Cate about what happened, her sister had shown up the second morning after the birth. Seeing her sister by her bedside, as she awoke from a short nap, Elle smiled weakly at her sister’s crumpled appearance. “Hi sis, you look almost as knackered as I feel.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Cate consciously brushed a hand over her hair and top. “I came to see my nephew straight from the airport!”

  “Ha, yes, he is melting hearts already. Have you been to see him?”

  Cate nodded, “Only through the window of the neonatal unit though, he is attached to more tubes and wires than I expected.”

  “They have a few concerns about his lungs and other things,” Elle explained.

  Cate touched her sister’s hand thoughtfully “Are these concerns going to affect him long term?”

  “To be honest, I actually do not know, just having to take each day as it comes, for the time being. He is four weeks premature, so he needs time to catch up to the level he should be at birth.”

  “Do you want me to get a message to William through Charlie about his son’s birth? Maybe he would want to see him, if he knew he was so sick,” Cate asked gently. She did not understand why he had ignored all of Elle’s messages, after coming to see her that day, Cate had felt sure he would come running to her side when he found out about the baby.

  Elle shook her head, “No. He has had his chance. I only want my son to have reliable people in his life.”

  “I know you are hurt by his silence, but what if he didn’t get the messages, and what if the baby takes a turn for the worst, and William never gets to say goodbye to him.” The silence did not sit well with her, and she sensed there was something amiss, but as Elle seemed determined to go it alone, she would not broach her suspicions for now.

  Elle turned her face away from Cate’s gaze “Can we talk about something else please?”

  Cate sighed at Elle’s stubbornness. “So, have you been out of bed yet?”

  Elle shook her head. “But, the nurse said that I could try to do a short walk today. I just want to be able to get approval from the doctor, to leave the ward and head down to the neonatal unit myself.”

  As the nurse came into the room to do her regular checks on Elle’s blood pressure, Elle yawned slightly.

  Noting Elle's yawn prompted Cate to stand up from her chair. “I think that is my cue to head out and freshen up. I am meeting with Annette and Lawrence for lunch, so I will see you after that.”

  ~~~

  Elle’s doctor cleared her as strong enough to leave the ward after completing several short walks with the nurse’s help over the next day or so, allowing Annette to wheel her down to the unit, to spend time with her baby.

  The neonatal unit offered the latest state of the art medical facilities that justified the hefty private insurance she paid for. Her son was among several others, who were under the care of a level 2a speciality care unit, as he had needed supplemental oxygen, until the mild respiratory problems of his premature birth were resolved. His paediatricians did not have time to give his underdeveloped lungs a steroid boost, due to the rushed C-section.

  After being buzzed through the security door to the unit, one of the nurses asked which baby she was coming to see. “Baby Benedict,” was her reply, as she was still deliberating what name to give him.

  “Ahh, he is over here.” The nurse said, leading them to the far corner of the room. “He is doing exceptionally well considering his prematurity, and we should be able to take him off the oxygen later today.”

  “Is there any way I could hold him?” Elle asked the nurse hopefully. She had only held her baby once since the birth, and that had been only fleetingly, in the first few minutes after he had been pulled through her abdominal incision, before they whisked him off into an incubator.

  “Of course. If you can give me a few minutes to rearrange his drips, I will be able to remove him from the incubator.”

  The nurse disappeared off to organise things, leaving Elle alone with her aunt. “Have you given any more thought to what you are going to name him? You honestly cannot keep referring to him as Baby Benedict indefinitely.” Annette suggested gently.

  “I know, but I have been worrying more about his health problems than a name.”

  “Well, as the nurse said, they are happy with his progress, so now you can just relax and think of one. I thought you had a short list of only a couple when we last discussed it?” Her aunt said, pushing her to make a decision. She had lost a child a couple of days after its birth herself, and she had felt rushed into naming him in the midst of all the grief. She wanted to protect her niece from that feeling, should the baby take a turn for the worst.

  “Yes, Christian or Matthew– although, still learning more towards the former.”

  Christian had been one of the names, she and William had discussed at length when they originally found out about the pregnancy. She felt, deep down, that she owed it to him to stick with a name, they both liked, in spite of the failure of their relationship.

  Finally, the nurse returned, ending their conversation as the attention of both of women was diverted to the small, squirming bundle being handed into to Elle’s open arms. Pushing the blanket away from his face, Elle stroked her fingertips gently on his cheek, familiar sapphire blue eyes staring up at her, as the baby yawned slightly. “Hello, little darling,” she cooed.

  “He certainly looks like you.” Annette spoke after several minutes of remaining silent, as Elle talked quietly to the baby.

  Elle nodded thoughtfully, her fingers lightly touching a small curl that could be seen escaping from beneath the knitted bonnet on his head. “Yes, but he has William’s eyes and hair.”

  After a few more minutes of quiet chatter to the baby, the nurse interrupted them, and encouraged Elle to try to breastfeed him, as it was nearing his feed time. As his stomach was still delicate, his feeds had up until then been made through a drip, or a formula bottle of her pump extracted breast milk. The doctor and Elle had discussed the importance of attempting to get him used to trying to suckle as soon as possible, to aid in the bonding process between herself and the baby after their awful start.

  With the baby satiated, and settled back into his incubator, Annette wheeled Elle back to the ward, before leaving her to go to sleep. As her aunt was leaving Elle turned to her and said, “I think he looks like a Christian, don’t you?”

  Annette smiled. “Yes, I think Christian would suit him.”

  ~~~

  The next four weeks between Christian’s actual birthday, and the one he would have had if the pregnancy went to the full term, was the most dramatic Elle had experienced. Despite the strong start, her son made, his little lungs still struggled to work by themselves, leading to repeated setbacks, during which he had to return to mechanically aided breathing.

  With the dismay of seeing her son’s health yo-yoing, combined with lack of sleep over the dread of what the longer term might bring him, Elle’s earlier depression and lack of appetite came back, with a vengeance. This, in turn, led to her own doctor questioning whether she could cope with tending to a frail child, if they discharged them too soon.

  Her doctor felt she was suffering from a form of postnatal depression and, after some inpatient therapy working through her guilt, she could accept the past and move on. Finally, four weeks after the birth, Elle was released from the hospital with Christian following two weeks later, giving her time to decorate of the nursery as she had originally planned to do in her final month of pregnancy in the intervening period.

  Hard decisions

  The only benefit Elle’s American mother ever gave her was to be classed as a dual citizen, enabling her to stay in New York indefinitely. />
  For Elle, the therapy, she received for her postnatal depression, during those first nine months, gradually helped her into a fresher outlook for single parent motherhood, and a new career. She was focussed solely on all the development lessons the doctors suggested to bring Christian’s learning up to as close to the standards of a child of a similar age. She never did go back to modelling, supporting herself and her child on the monthly allowance from her small trust fund, bestowed by her grandfather, and interest on her prior earnings. They certainly did not struggle, living in a spacious two-bedroom beach cottage in Hamptons part of the time, and a city condominium the rest of it.

  Once he had his first birthday, he was put up as a candidate for bilateral cochlear implants, with the surgery taking place months later. Employing the skills of a Listening and Spoken Language Educator for Christian, Elle decided she wanted to explore the Auditory-Verbal Education route, before he entered school. She was still undecided whether placing him in a more mainstream school would be best. A close friend of hers ran a small, private funded deaf school in Northern England that she would be interested in looking into, once he was four.

  Just after Christian’s second birthday, Elle started on a two year fashion design degree at FIT, which gave her one-year of study in New York, and another in Florence. Elle opted to take her first year in New York, so Christian could keep a regular childcare routine, with her aunt Annette helping whenever she could fit it around her own children, with any supplemental needs met by a part-time nanny, Beth.

  With Christian’s paediatrician having long been satisfied that he had recovered from all the problems his premature birth caused, and the later surgery to ease his profound hearing impairment, Elle moved to Florence for the second year of the course.

  Once the course was complete, she had the summer to move from Florence to Yorkshire before Christian started school in September. With her plans to set up in a series of boutiques in New York, Paris, Florence and London within the first two years of her ambitious business plan, Elle opted to have him be a full-time boarder, within her friend’s exclusive, private school in London. Christian had grown into a confident little boy, who had a wealth of mutual friends including her friend’s own son, so she knew he would be fine in that environment, away from her for long stretches of time. She only planned to keep it that way for the first year, or two, while her fashion label, established itself.

  She felt quite anxious about moving back to England, Yorkshire, in particular, due to its proximity to William’s Derbyshire home. She had only been to England once in all the years since she had left him. The topic of William had been taboo for any discussion, since his rejection of her during the pregnancy, especially since Cate had warned her that he had been heavily involved with an old friend of Elle’s, Charlotte, in the last year or so.

  The situation left Elle cold, she knew William was free to move on, but she felt her supposed friend owed her more loyalty. She was a believer in never dating someone whom had been with one of her friends, as a mark of respect to that friendship, a belief that Charlotte knew all too well that she followed.

  As far as Elle was now concerned, their friendship was terminated. Something that Elle made Charlotte all too aware of, when she placed a thunderous slap across her face, after Charlotte taunted her that William was interested in the baby she was carrying, but, not in Elle’s, when she had encountered her just a month earlier as she was out scouting office space in London.

  Now back in England full-time, as distant as her relationship remained with her other sister, she had been invited to the wedding between Jess and Charlie.

  She was only attending out of a sense of duty, prompted by pressure from Cate, and her aunt, after not being able to attend the engagement party six months before. Despite sharing the bond of being one of the triplets, she and Jess had never been as close as she was to Cate, and the end of her relationship with William, while Jess continued to date William’s best friend, had led to further strain during the intervening four years.

  She knew attending the wedding would unavoidably bring her into the company of William for the first time since he had followed her to Cate’s house that day. As uncomfortable as she imagined seeing him would be, since his rejection of being in their son’s life, it was nothing to the burning disdain that had been building since she heard that he had chosen to be in Charlotte’s child life, but not hers. What kind of a father chooses one child over another? He was certainly not the man she thought him once to be.

  She was intent on ignoring him for the entire event.

  July 2008

  The whole occasion was being held over three days. A less intimate party in London on the Friday for family and friends, as well as people who were not travelling to the main day in Derbyshire, followed by a more selective group moving up to Pemberley in Derbyshire for the ceremony and dance reception on the Saturday, and then a late wedding brunch on the Sunday. Pemberley was a large, stately home, situated right next to the smaller family estate that she and William had lived in during their relationship, so going there was going to bring many memories back. Even the first part, in London, was taking place in William’s house.

  William was the best man, and had offered them the venues after their first location had been double booked, and they could not find anywhere else at short notice.

  Christian was still up in Yorkshire, in School. She had thought about bringing him, but she was not ready to let William see him.

  Checking her appearance one final time in the full-length mirror, she was relieved, after a recent exercise regime, to see there was no trace of her residual pregnancy fat visible where the luxurious material skimmed over her waist and hips. She opted to wear a long evening dress that was part of her first collection. It was backless, with a one-shoulder style neckline, made of a rich silver satin accompanied by diamond and emerald jewellery, emerald green strappy heels and clutch bag.

  She had also given another dress from her collection for Cate to wear to the party, as the wedding was being exclusive publicised in a particular celebrity magazine, her designs would be mentioned. Much to her surprise, Jess asked her to design her wedding dress and going-away outfit, so they would be in the article also.

  Hearing a car horn, she glanced out into the street; she saw a cab stopped outside, with Cate leaning out of the cab window trying to attract her attention. Dashing outside, they were soon on the way, for the short journey from her house to Williams.

  She had only been to William’s Bayswater house a handful of times during their relationship. They had spent the majority of their time in Derbyshire, where they led a more carefree existence away from all the press intrusion.

  As the cab turned into William’s road, she could not help but think back to the first time she had been to the house, and the vivid memories of their first night together there.

  Shaking her head to bring herself back to reality, she cursed inwardly that the memory showed the caring side of the man she was trying to hate, to make it easier to remember the hurt he had caused, when he had disregarded their child from his life.

  “Are you ready to make an entrance?” Cate whispered, bringing her back to present, as they were driven through the iron gates, and down a short circular drive after being let through the specially laid on security.

  “As ready as I ever will be.” Elle’s face pulled into an uncomfortable expression.

  “Don’t worry, I will be at your side for support.” Cate added, as they exited the cab, and made their way into the large entrance hall, where the couple of the moment was greeting the long stream of guests.

  Squeezing Elle’s hand encouragingly, they moved forth to say their hellos to the Charlie and Jess.

  Wrapped up in the moment, Jess embraced both her sisters in unison, her usual icy exterior replaced by warmth. “Oh my god, I am so buzzed.” She gushed. “I am getting married tomorrow!”

  “The place looks stunning.” Elle returned the embrace awkwardly, as
she stared further into the house; the large, sweeping staircase had been transformed, with garlands of flowers wrapped around the bannisters, and white and silver streamers crisscrossing over the ceiling, from the hallway into the rooms beyond.

  “Yes, the party planning company has done an exceptional job.” Charlie joined in. “But, I think Jenny will be relieved when we are finished.”

  Both Cate and Elle chuckled as they caught sight of Jenny, William’s ever-dependable housekeeper, shaking her head at several of the waiters milling around the room that was already heaving with guests. As they noticed they were holding up further guests who had arrived waiting to talk to the couple, Cate and Elle moved onwards to find the rest of their family - Cate’s boyfriend, Zak, and his sidekick, Dylan, should be inside, along with Annette and Lawrence, and their oldest child, Rob and his partner Sara.

  Zak and Cate had been getting steadily serious, since they met at a photo shoot on which Cate had been lead photographer, and Zak had been part of the styling team, six months earlier. He was well versed in the merchandising side of fashion and was to be one of the first members of Elle’s launch team. Wherever Zak went, his partner in crime, Dylan could be found. Every time Elle met him, she enjoyed his company. He was fun, and a welcome distraction from the loneliness that sometimes came with being a single mother.

  Grabbing Cate’s hand, Elle rushed them off in the direction of the closest waiter, to grab two flutes of champagne that she had spied drifting through the throng of people. Not paying too much attention to the waiter as she chatted away to Cate, she was focused on taking two of the nearest flutes on a wandering by tray. It was only on hearing a familiar clearing of a throat that she looked up to see a sparkly sapphire pair of eyes, the same as her sons; swallowing hard, she realised her error of taking the glasses from a tray William was carrying personally.