The Baby Emergency

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘They told me to wait outside. I was getting upset…’ His voice trailed off but Shelly didn’t say anything to fill the silence, just sat starting vacantly ahead, waiting, willing, praying for some news.

  How many cups of tea went cold Shelly lost count, but the first rays of morning light were filtering through the curtains when the distinguished but weary face of Dr Khan finally sat in front of them. He nodded briefly to Ross before turning his full attention to Shelly.

  ‘Matthew is a very sick little boy.’ His words were measured, delivered slowly but surely, and he sat quietly for a moment to let them sink in. ‘We’re going to move him up to Intensive Care shortly. At the moment we’ve got him sedated and on a ventilator.’

  ‘Is it meningitis?’

  Dr Khan nodded. ‘All the signs at this stage point to bacterial meningitis. Now, I understand from Dr Bodey that Matthew, apart from his Down’s syndrome, is a well child, that he’s got no other relevant medical history.’

  ‘He’s fine.’ Ross’s arm was around her and Shelly allowed herself to sink into him for a moment. ‘Or at least he was. He’s been a bit grizzly. I should have known, I should have bought him up sooner, should have—’

  Dr Khan held up his hand. ‘This is no one’s fault. No one’s,’ he reiterated. ‘Meningitis can strike very quickly. The early symptoms are vague and mild. No one could have predicted this.’

  Shelly felt Ross’s arms stiffen around her, and as she sat up slightly she looked at the utter despair on his face, the pain embedded in his eyes, and she knew she should somehow comfort him, say she understood what Dr Khan was telling her, that this horrible situation wasn’t his fault. But she was too emotionally raw, too scared, too drained to worry about Ross’s feelings at that moment. All she wanted was to see Matthew.

  ‘Can I go to him?’

  ‘I’ll ask one of the nurses to come and fetch you.’ He stood up and briefly looked down at his notes. ‘Shelly…’ She heard him clear his throat, felt his discomfort. ‘As I said before, Matthew is very sick indeed. We’re doing everything we can for him…’

  ‘How long will it be?’ Shelly’s eyes looked up, pleading for a shred of comfort. ‘How long until he stabilises?’

  There was the longest pause, for an age the horrible sound of silence filled the room and Shelly willed Dr Khan to speak, to inject some measure of hope, some time-frame to cling to.

  ‘We’re taking things minute by minute at the moment. I know that you aren’t with Matthew’s father, but I think you should inform him that Matthew is here.’

  ‘He doesn’t see him,’ Shelly said quickly. ‘He just pays half the cre`che fees and gives the odd present here and there…’

  Dr Khan’s eyes were back on his notes and Shelly felt her heart sink, the realisation of the direness of the situation magnifying as he spoke.

  ‘He needs to know how sick his son is, Shelly. He needs to be given an opportunity to see him…’

  Dr Khan didn’t say anything else, his unfinished sentence hanging in the air as he slipped out of the small room, leaving a shell-shocked Shelly sitting there trying to absorb the hell behind his words. As Ross’s hand found hers she instinctively tightened her fingers around it, clinging on for dear life to the one comfort in this whole bleak wilderness, her eyes turning to him filled with despair. ‘Is he telling me Neil should be here…?’ Her words caught in her throat and struggled to speak, to articulate the hardest words of her life, mentally willing Ross to soothe her with a smile, to tell her she was overreacting. But instead he pulled her close, buried his face in her hair and wept alongside her as Shelly carried on talking. ‘That I should give him the opportunity to say goodbye?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘I WISH it was you looking after him.’ Shelly gave a weary smile to Melissa as she sat on the empty seat beside her. ‘They’ve told me to wait in here while they do some chest physio and take some X-rays, that’s as much as I’ve been told. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a nurse they assume I know all the answers, or that they’re worried they’ll upset me.’

  ‘Maybe they’re just busy looking after him,’ Melissa suggested gently, picking up the half-drunk cup of chocolate from the table and handing it to Shelly. ‘And I will be looking after him soon. Once he gets out of Intensive Care he’ll come to the children’s ward.’

  ‘If he comes out.’ Shelly’s voice was flat. The tears had stopped hours ago and she was operating on autopilot, her mind almost detached from the true horror of it all in some strange attempt at self-preservation.

  ‘He is going to come out.’ Melissa’s voice was confident, determined. ‘He’s going to pull through, Shelly, you have to have faith.

  ‘Where’s Ross?’ Melissa asked when Shelly didn’t respond, just stood up and moved to the glass window, her eyes staring helplessly to where her son lay, surrounded by doctors, nurses, tubes, machinery.

  ‘He’s gone to find the contact numbers for my parents. I was going to let them finish their holiday, they’ve only got another day…’

  Her dry eyes suddenly welled, the gripping fear she was so desperately trying to control suddenly gushing in from all sides with such force Shelly thought she might be knocked to the floor. Melissa rushed over, wrapping her arms around her friend, trying to somehow comfort her, despite knowing there was no comfort to be found.

  ‘Shelly.’

  The familiarity of the voice calling her gave Shelly no comfort. Looking up, her whole body seemed to tense as she saw Neil standing in the doorway of the intensive care waiting room, clean-shaven, dark-suited, his shirt crisp and white, a plain navy tie luxurious in its simplicity.

  Strange, the things one thought.

  Strange, how the tiniest, most insignificant detail could take on humungous proportions.

  ‘You look like you’re on your way to work.’

  He didn’t respond to her statement. Instead, he walked over to the window, nodding briefly to Melissa.

  ‘How are you, Neil?’ It wasn’t the friendliest of greetings but, then, Melissa had been the one pulling the tissues out of the box for the last couple of years, comforting her friend and colleague through the minefield of divorce, the roller-coaster ride of bringing up a special needs child. She gave Shelly’s shoulders a squeeze. ‘I’d better get back to the ward. I’ll come back up in my coffee-break.’

  ‘So how is he?’ Neil was looking through the glass now and Shelly watched with something bordering on compassion as she watched him start as he saw Matthew lying there.

  ‘The same as when I called. Apparently no news is good news for a while. Until the antibiotics take effect we just have to wait and see.’

  ‘But they’ll work?’

  Shelly gave a brief but painful shrug. ‘There are no guarantees.’

  They stood in mutual silence, staring through the window, watching as the radiographer pushed the machine forward to take a chest X-ray. A nurse, looking up, gave an apologetic smile then pulled the curtain on them, blocking their view, assuming perhaps it was less painful that way.

  ‘You’ll be able to see him soon.’ Vaguely, Shelly registered Neil’s discomfort, a slight shift as he moved his feet, taking breath in as if he was about to speak, but she was too wrapped up in Matthew to tread gently. ‘What, don’t you want to see him?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ Neil responded quickly, running an uncomfortable hand across his face. ‘Cecile just wanted me to check that it would be OK.’ He at least had the grace to blush as he continued, to attempt an apologetic shrug. ‘She’s pregnant, Shelly. Only just, you know how dangerous things can be during the first trimester.’

  ‘The first trimester!’ Shelly gave him a wide-eyed look, the biting sarcasm clear in her voice. ‘My, we are taking an interest!’

  ‘Shelly don’t,’ Neil shook his head. ‘You can’t blame Cecile for being concerned. Hell, I’m concerned. I don’t think I could go through it all again if something went wrong this tim
e.’

  His lack of sensitivity shocked even Shelly, who had truly thought Neil was beyond hurting her any more. ‘If I remember rightly,’ Shelly said, her voice wavering with emotion, ‘you didn’t go through it the first time.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to fight.’ He was looking through the glass. The curtain was being pulled back, the nurse gesturing they needed a couple more minutes. Shelly watched as he stared at his son, an expression she couldn’t read on his face. ‘I’m sorry, Shelly, I didn’t mean for it to be like this for the three of us.’

  ‘Do you think this is how I’d planned it?’

  ‘I just couldn’t cope when I found out he was handicapped. I thought that maybe once he was born I’d come round, but I didn’t, the whole thing terrified me. I couldn’t just accept it the way that you did.’ He was nearly crying now, but Shelly felt no sympathy. ‘You’re a better person than me.’

  ‘I’m his mother,’ Shelly said in a cool voice that defied the emotions coursing through her. ‘My love for him isn’t negotiable.’

  ‘You’re stronger than me…’

  ‘Don’t make excuses, Neil.’ There was a bitter note creeping into Shelly’s voice, coupled with an emerging resilience. ‘You wanted the perfect job, the perfect home, the perfect family.’ Her green eyes turned to meet his. ‘And I hope you get it with Cecile, I hope for her sake that she and the baby can live up to your expectations.’ She looked through the window at Matthew, so small and so innocent, struggling so hard just to stay alive. ‘All that little boy wants to do is love, that’s it. It’s as simple and as beautiful as that.’

  ‘Don’t make me the bad guy here,’ Neil was crying now, taking out a perfectly ironed handkerchief and blowing his nose loudly. ‘I know I’m not perfect. I just couldn’t cope. Not everyone’s like you, Shelly, not everyone’s perfect!’

  But Shelly refused to accept his excuses, her tired eyes turning to him. ‘He’s going to get through this, Neil, and when he does, you can forget about the crèche and the occasional present, you can forget about reluctant access visits. Matthew deserves better. You’re in or out of his life, not somewhere in between. His attention span’s too short for someone to just drift in and out. He needs constancy, he needs a secure world, and I won’t let you hurt him.’

  She was letting him off the hook, offering him an out, a chance to get on with his life, and the disappointment, the pain she felt when he nodded was all for Matthew.

  ‘Can I sit with him?’

  Shelly nodded as a nurse gestured for them to come around. ‘Do you want some time alone with him?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Shelly watched through the window, watched with a heart that felt it wasn’t beating any more as Matthew’s own father hovered tentatively by the bedside, an awkward hand patting his son’s, a helpless look on his face as he eyed the equipment, blowing his nose and wiping away tears.

  She certainly wasn’t perfect, Shelly thought ruefully. Perfect people were able to find forgiveness, and as she watched Neil pick up his briefcase and turn away there was certainly no forgiveness in her heart. She couldn’t even muster up the emotion to hate him. Instead, she made her way out of the waiting room, sat by Matthew’s bedside and laid her cheek on her little son’s hand.

  No one would ever hurt him again.

  ‘Why don’t you try and rest for a couple of hours?’ Julie, the ICU sister, offered gently. ‘Melissa said you’ve just finished a stint on nights, and you obviously didn’t get any sleep last night. You must be exhausted.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Shelly lied, her ashen face not even looking up at the kind voice. ‘I really don’t want to leave him.’

  ‘I know.’ Julie was perched on a high stool at the end of the bed, massive sheets of observation charts on the workbench in front of her, monitoring every tiny variance in Matthew, his observations, the drugs he was receiving, his fluid input and output, rows of red and blue lines all charting his progress. ‘But you need to sleep.’

  Shelly liked her. Liked the calm way she responded to the alarms that seemed to go off with alarming regularity, liked the way she spoke to Matthew as she nursed him, the way she let Shelly help wash him and comb his hair and do his mouth care. Julie was very young and very pretty, but the depth of her knowledge belied her youthful face and slowly Shelly was starting to trust her.

  Shelly had even accepted that the lack of information coming from Julie wasn’t an attempt to keep her in the dark. No one knew the outcome.

  ‘There’s a relatives’ room just along the corridor. I’ll send someone for you the second there’s a change, and if he stays the same I’ll come and get you myself when I go to lunch. Shelly, you know you’re going to be useless for Matthew if you make yourself ill. Hopefully in a few days he’ll be running you ragged, demanding drinks and sweets.’

  The line Julie was using was so familiar, one Shelly had used herself so many times before, and the exhaustion, emotional and physical, was starting to catch up. Every bell, every alarm seemed to be grating in her brain, everything making her jump, Neil’s departure playing over and over in her mind like some ghastly video she couldn’t turn off.

  ‘Julie’s right.’ Ross was back, looking refreshed in comparison to the pale shadow of Shelly. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, his tan so ridiculously healthy-looking it made Shelly feel like a corpse in comparison. ‘You have to sleep.’

  ‘Hi, Ross.’ Julie pulled her charts into line, moved over just an inch to let him see them. Try as she may, Shelly couldn’t fail to notice a certain warmth in Julie’s voice, a certain perkiness appearing, her pleasure in seeing Ross blatantly evident. ‘Did you want to take a look at Matthew?’

  Ross shook his head. ‘Sorry, Julie, I didn’t explain myself, did I? I’m actually here with Shelly and Matthew. I’m off duty today.’

  ‘Oh.’ Shelly saw the flicker of confusion on Julie’s pretty face, her eyes dart questioningly to Shelly, the tiniest, almost insignificant gesture but with the hugest ramifications.

  The impossibility of this couple so evident in her eyes.

  Julie hadn’t been flirting, at least, no more anyway than every other female in the building when Ross was about. After all, even the most happily married woman sucked in their stomachs in honour of Ross, he was that type of guy. The world brightened a touch when Ross was around, Shelly knew that better than anyone.

  ‘Come on.’ Ross pulled Shelly up from the chair where she sat and she hovered for a moment. ‘What about you?’ she argued, reluctant to leave. ‘You’ve been up, too.’

  ‘I’ll have a rest later. Go on. I’ll sit with him.’

  ‘How did you go with the travel agent?’

  ‘All taken care of. They’re going to tell the rep and check the flight availability before they tell your parents.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘Here.’ He handed Shelly her own overnight bag. ‘I’m not too sure if I’ve packed all the right things but I gave it a go. Go on,’ Ross said gently, ‘go and lie down.’

  She watched him tenderly stroke Matthew’s hair, and it was so, so different from Neil’s formal, uncomfortable gestures, so far removed from the wooden emotions of Matthew’s own father. But Ross wasn’t Matthew’s father, Ross didn’t need to be here…

  ‘When’s Neil coming?’

  ‘He’s been…’ She watched a frown mar his face, his mouth open to speak, and she carried on regardless. ‘And gone already.’

  For a second she didn’t say anything, just stared at the two people she loved most in the world, the two people who mattered.

  Two worlds so far removed.

  ‘Ross, can I speak to you a moment?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Back to the waiting room Shelly went, back to the coffee-machine, the magazines, the brown corduroy cushions with the button in the middle missing. She knew every inch of the room, every peeling piece of paint, and Ross stood there in the middle of it, his face full of concern as he waited for her to speak.
>
  ‘This isn’t going to work.’

  ‘What isn’t?’ He sounded genuinely bemused, as if he had no idea in the world what Shelly was about to say.

  And maybe he didn’t, Shelly reasoned. Perhaps he hadn’t given any real thought to what it was all about. He had just drifted into her life without question, just assumed it would work.

  ‘Us.’ She let the single word sink in before she continued. ‘Like I said, Neil’s just been and I’ve told him I don’t want him in our lives. I don’t want people drifting in and out. I want Matthew to have security…’

  ‘I can give him that,’ Ross argued, coming over, but Shelly put her hand up.

  ‘You can’t, Ross.’ Tears were coursing down her cheeks and she didn’t even bother to wipe them. ‘You’re twenty-seven years old, you could have any woman you want, and one day you’re going to look at me and Matthew and all the problems—’

  ‘Don’t even go there,’ Ross interrupted furiously. ‘Do you think I’m that weak, that some pretty little thing would just have to bat her eyes and I’d be off? Shelly, I adore you, I’d never betray you.’

  He sounded so utterly convinced, so sure of his feelings, Shelly almost believed him, but it wasn’t just Ross’s drop-dead gorgeous looks on the agenda and Shelly reminded herself of that as she stood her ground. ‘How long is your contract here, Ross—three months, six?

  ‘How long, Ross?’ Shelly pushed when Ross didn’t answer straight away.

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘And what then, Ross? The outback again, Asia or Africa perhaps? One day you’ll move on. You might not think it now, but one day you’ll look around you and realise just what you’ve taken on and I can’t blame you for that, can’t blame you for feeling the way any person would, but I can’t put myself through it, can’t set Matthew and me up for another fall. I don’t think we’d survive.’

  ‘Shelly, look at me,’ Ross urged. ‘Look at me and for once in your life listen! I don’t know where I’m going when this contract ends, that all depends on you. I came back because of you, I didn’t just drift in. You’re tired, you’re upset…’