by Lauren Sams
Meredith insisted on having three different covers mocked each week, with three different celebrities, sets of cover lines and designs. One was a decoy, one would be totally wrong, and then there was the one she would actually choose. I always knew which one it would be, but she still made me do it. Getting out one cover every week was back-breaking. Getting out three was close to impossible.
And finally: Avoid Neil
I’d half-expected him to message or call over the weekend, apologising for overreacting. I’d wondered if he might show up on my doorstep, Love Actually–style, with handwritten placards explaining that he’d thought about what I’d said and now fully understood, and would happily resign so the two of us could continue sexing each other. But he didn’t. I stalked his Instagram all day Sunday and saw that he was out at the pub with friends, eating chips and feeding a seagull and drinking beer, the sunlight catching bits of his hair. My heart sank.
I was rinsing the conditioner out of my hair when I looked down and realised that while I’d been mentally tallying my to-do list, and hosting my own personal pity party, Pip had been occupying herself by chewing on the bottle’s lid.
I snapped out of the fog and snatched it from her, losing my footing in the process and landing clean on my elbow.
Fuuuuuuuuuck.
Pip burst into tears at the exact moment I did. I looked down at the porcelain, sure there’d be a steady stream of blood. But there wasn’t. My legs were splayed in a sort of forced yoga pose (truthfully, any yoga pose was a forced yoga pose for me), my elbow hot with pain. But no blood. OK. OK.
Pip’s face was red with rage – how dare I try to prevent her from choking? What a nerve.
The shower rained down on us for a while until I mustered the courage and wherewithal to move. Fuuuuuuuck 2.0. It wasn’t so much the pain – although that was pretty bloody bad – but the realisation that somewhere, in the midst of my very busy day, I would now have to find time to go and see a doctor. Exactly how would that be possible?
Somehow I managed to hook my good arm around Pip and lift her out of the shower. I got her dry, then gingerly dried myself, trying to work out if I’d broken anything. Owing to never having broken a bone before, and also not being a doctor, I had no idea what I was looking for. I assumed it would feel like that one broken biscuit in the packet.
I chose a dress for Pip that I could slip over her head and arms, thankful that it was the warmest April in years, because there was no way I’d be able to get tights on her. There are upsides to climate change after all! My elbow pulsed with pain as I pushed the pram, but I shoved it from my mind the same way I swept magazines I hadn’t had time to read off my desk. Whoosh. Gone. No more pain.
Ahahahaha.
By the time I made it into work – 8.57 (I was getting better at this whole working mother caper) – I could no longer move my arm. Something was really wrong. I would just have to get through the upfronts and then nip out to the doctor. I began to think it might actually be quite relaxing to have an hour to myself, even if it was in the waiting room of a medical centre in the CBD. The thought bordered on arousing. Yes, something was definitely wrong.
I smiled and subtly flirted my way through the upfronts. Twenty middle-aged men, barely distinguishable from each other, nodded, apparently captivated, as I walked them through our new plan for The Weekend, using all the ‘buzzwords’ Meredith had coached me on. We were taking a ‘bold new direction’. It was a ‘360-degree brand experience’. We had ‘learnt from our learnings’. Our readers were ‘time-poor’ but ‘hungry for content’.
At 10.59, after weeks of careful planning and the whole of Saturday spent in the office, going over the minutiae of the presentation as if we were giving the State of the Union address, Meredith suddenly reared up from her chair and announced it was lunchtime, which really meant drinking time. I felt my jaw drop. Weeks and weeks of work for two hours of my time? Nobody noticed the look on my face, though, because the ad execs were all focused on Bea, rolling in a case of Mumm. They thought all their Christmases had come at once, no doubt. What they didn’t realise was that, over the course of the afternoon, all their New Years, birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvahs would come too.
I was done. I seized the moment to excuse myself.
‘Meredith,’ I said, tapping her on the shoulder with my good hand. ‘I have to go.’
She handed me a glass of champagne, grinning. She was already onto her second.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘What did you say? Never mind – well done, Gigi! That was amazing. You did a great job. Look how happy everyone is!’ She slapped me between the shoulder blades. I winced and tried not to cry as tears sprang to my eyes.
She grimaced, her mouth puckering in distaste. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I, uh, I slipped in the shower this morning. I hurt my arm. I think it might be broken, actually.’
Meredith raised her eyebrows in a ‘You don’t say?’ sort of way, and said nothing.
‘So, um, I just need to nip off to the doctor to get it checked out. Might as well do it now while everyone’s . . . having a break.’
Behind me, I heard the pop, pop, pop of three bottles of champagne being uncorked at once. It was twelve past eleven.
Meredith swatted my good arm. ‘I’m sure it’s not broken,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Maybe it’s sprained.’
‘Well, yeah, but even so, I should get it checked out.’
‘Gary!’ she yelled, looking over at one of the identical, balding, 45-year-old men. His eyes lit up as he realised Meredith ‘Built Like A Supermodel’ Parker was talking to him. He may have foamed at the mouth. But frankly, with the persistent blinding ache of my arm, I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t done the same. ‘Gary, get over here!’ Meredith waved at him.
Gary, glass in hand, toddled over. ‘Hello, ladies. Brilliant presentation, Georgie, just brilliant. I’ll take it back to the bosses, but no doubt P&G will be spending with you. And we’d love you to join us at the rugby on Saturday night if you can make it?’
I opened my mouth to say no, but Meredith got there first. ‘Absolutely, we would love to. Thank you so much. Anyway, since you work at P&G, can you tell us – is George’s arm broken?’
Gary raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’ He looked me up and down.
Meredith rolled her eyes. ‘George slipped in the shower this morning and now she thinks she needs to see a doctor. But it looks fine to me. Anyway, you’re the expert – what do you think?’
‘Well . . . I work in sales. I’m not a doctor.’ Gary looked hesitant about this turn of events. That was the thing about Meredith. When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she’d had more than two glasses of champagne, she was horrid.
‘Yes, but you know about this sort of thing. What do you think?’ Meredith grinned wildly at him, an unleashed beast.
Gary cocked his head. ‘I think you’d better go see a doctor,’ he said, steering Meredith towards the open bottles of Mumm. I breathed a silent sigh of relief and made a run for it.
*
‘It’s broken, alright. But it’s a clean break. You’ll be back to normal in . . . oh, six weeks or so.’
‘Six weeks?’
The doctor nodded. ‘I’ll pop it in a sling for you now and then we can get it cast. You’ll have to make a long appointment for this afternoon. Ask the receptionist to fit you in; tell her it came from me.’
I shook my head. ‘No, no. I don’t have time for that. I need to go back to work. Can you just do it now, please? It’s really urgent.’
I had accomplished exactly nothing on my to-do list. In fact, I had added to it: Get cast on broken arm. Figure out how to function with broken arm.
The doctor frowned and answered slowly. ‘I have a waiting room full of people who need medical attention. I understand you’re in a lot of pain, and I’m going to help with that. But I need some time – and the help of a nurse, who is currently on her lunch break – to put your arm in a cast. So yo
u will have to wait, Ms Henderson.’
‘Fine.’
He carefully placed my arm in a sling and asked me if I wanted some painkillers. I nodded eagerly.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Of course. Let’s get you some Endone. But be careful with it, OK? It’s pretty strong stuff, and highly addictive.’
I nodded, practically holding out my hand like a kid waiting for a lolly. Please sir, can I have some more?
‘You’re not still breastfeeding, are you?’ he asked, scribbling on the prescription note.
‘Um. Yes.’
He looked up. ‘Oh. Well, no Endone for you, then.’ He balled up the note and slam-dunked it into the bin.
‘What? What do you mean?’
He shook his head. ‘It could be fatal to your baby. We just don’t have enough data on it. Best to avoid, if you can. And there are other perfectly good painkillers out there. Panadol, hot compresses, that sort of thing.’
‘Are you suggesting that a heat pack will be “just as good” as Endone for my broken arm?’
He hesitated. ‘Well, no. Not exactly. It will relieve some of the pain, though. And Panadol is excellent.’
I stared at him. ‘No it’s not. I may as well have a Tic-Tac. Is there really nothing else?’
The doctor shot me a pitying smile. ‘Well, you could have the Endone, but you’d have to wean your baby. Even then, I could only prescribe a very mild dose.’
‘No.’
‘OK,’ he said, nodding. ‘If you don’t mind my asking . . . how old is your little one?’
‘She’s eleven months.’
He nodded again. ‘Well, if you did want to give up, it would be perfectly fine. Your baby would be very healthy. The World Health Organization recommends mothers nurse for six months, so you’re well past that window. Your baby really would be absolutely –’
‘No. Panadol will be fine.’
The doctor nodded, slowly this time. ‘Alright. I understand it’s a sensitive area.’
It was, I thought, as I left the room, especially when doctors used phrases like ‘give up’. Why couldn’t they be more positive about it? Why couldn’t they call it ‘reaching the finish line’? Giving up sounded like failure. Giving up was failure. I was already failing at everything else; I couldn’t fail at this.
Six weeks. How would I last six weeks with my arm in a cast? How would I pick Pip up? What about her birthday party? How would I make all those sodding sausage rolls like this? How would I fill lolly bags one-handed? How would I manage? Nina was with Jed. Jase was with Saskia. Neil hated me. Ellie had her own life. Mum – well, it would have to be Mum.
I picked up the phone and dialled her number.
‘I’ll be there in a jiffy, love. Just let me get my hair out of these rollers and pop on a pair of slacks.’
Chapter 19
With the help of her extremely patient daycare teacher, I managed to wrangle Pip into the pram to head home. But walking home one-armed was a struggle. We shuffled along Redfern Street at a glacial pace, the sun setting behind us. My phone kept lighting up with messages from Meredith, photos of her and the ad execs at various bars around the city.
When are you coming back?
Having so much fun! Heading
to Ivy Pool soon K? MP xxx
I counted down the minutes til I could have another Tic-Tac.
Mum met me at the door, looking slightly crazed.
‘Darling, what happened? Come in, come in.’
I pushed Pip’s pram through the door. ‘I broke my arm.’
Mum’s hand flew to her mouth as if I’d said, ‘I have terminal cancer’. Perhaps she wasn’t the best person to call. My mum had a tendency to dramatise. She’d once made me stay up for twenty-four hours to make sure I didn’t have concussion after I tripped at netball.
‘Oh, darling.’ Mum unbuckled Pip and set her down on the floor, where she promptly found a crayon and began to scrawl on the hardwood. I added Clean floor to my to-do list. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yeah, it hurts like a –’ I stopped, remembering that good mothers didn’t swear. ‘Yeah, it really hurts.’
‘Darling, I can only imagine. Sit down, sit down.’
I did. Mum picked Pip up and went into the kitchen, where I heard her muttering about dinner and where were the vegetables, and would it kill me to throw out the sugar? I closed my eyes and decided to let Mum take care of me. I was done.
‘Darling, where’s your julienne peeler?’ I heard her call out.
‘My what?’
Mum stuck her head around the door, Pip still in her arms. ‘Your julienne peeler. I’m making coleslaw.’
‘I don’t know what that is, Mum. I’m sure I don’t have one.’
Mum tut-tutted and retreated to the kitchen. I sank back against the couch and felt the hot pain course through me.
George, where are you? MP xxx
I picked up my phone and replied.
Arm is definitely broken. Dr
set it this afternoon, said I
should take tomorrow off.
Hurts like crazy! GH x
My phone rang. Shit. Mum poked her head around the corner, eyes narrowed. ‘Who’s that?’ she mouthed. I waved her away.
‘Hi, Meredith,’ I said.
‘Where are you?’
‘Uh . . . at home. Did you get my text?’
‘Yes, of course I got your text. I want to know why you’re not here. Don’t you know how important this is?’
Mum was still staring at me, Pip in her arms, a puréed-carrot smile on her face. ‘I have a broken arm, Meredith. I’m on serious painkillers,’ I lied. Technically, I could be on serious painkillers. ‘I can’t be out drinking right now.’
‘George,’ she said, over whoops of delight in the background, ‘you don’t have to drink, but you need to be here. You are the face of the brand. I can’t keep making excuses for you – you’re on thin ice. You’ve already had one day off this year. Why does this keep happening?’
Something in me finally snapped. ‘Why does what keep happening? Life?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you mean why does life keep happening? Why have I got a broken bone and why did my daughter get sick? Why do I have to leave early sometimes and why am I late occasionally?’ OK, more like frequently, but still. ‘Because that’s life, Meredith. Shit like this happens sometimes. It just does.’
I heard her tut-tut on the other end. ‘Well, it certainly needs to happen a lot less. Do you understand? This is not a job, George. This is a lifestyle. You need to be here.’
I sighed. ‘I can’t this time, Meredith. I really can’t.’
I don’t know if it was the lack of Endone or the grateful look on Mum’s face that made me do it, but I hung up the phone before she could answer.
*
‘We remember and celebrate the life of Janice Doherty, loving mother of Nina and Jillian, wife of Greg, sister of Nancy and Donna. We honour her presence in our lives and are thankful for her. Janice, you’re no longer here with us, but you are not forgotten. We love you.’
I wiped the tears away as Matt let go of his balloon. Ellie told me that Nina had asked him to come, but I hadn’t expected him to do a reading, too. Jan died when Nina was fifteen; Matt had never even met her. But I saw that he, too, had tears in his eyes, for the mother Nina had lost.
Nina stood alone, a yellow balloon in her hand, looking down at the sand. Mum held Pip, who was staring, fascinated, at the balloon I held in my good hand.
‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ I said to Mum. I made my way past Ellie and Simon, who held a sleepy Lucas in his arms, and stood next to Nina, wanting to hold her hand. I motioned to the balloon and Nina nodded. I let it go and we watched it drift higher and higher, until we could only make out a speck of canary yellow up above. I squeezed Nina’s hand.
She looked over at me, her face stained with tears.
‘Hi,’ she whispered.
‘Hey.’
&
nbsp; ‘What happened to your arm?’
‘Broke it. Shower. Slipped.’
‘Oh shit.’
I nodded. I watched Ellie let go of her balloon, and Simon let go of his. They gave each other a hug, swallowing back tears, then Simon waved Matt over, patting him on the back and offering a grateful smile. As Matt nodded in Nina’s direction, I realised Jed wasn’t here.
‘Do you want to . . .?’ I looked at Nina’s balloon.
‘Just give me a minute,’ she said, and closed her eyes.
I squeezed her hand again and felt all my anger melt away. None of it mattered, not compared to this.
‘OK,’ she said, and opened her eyes. ‘Ready.’ Lifting her head and blinking back tears, she held her hand up and gently unfurled her fist. The balloon floated away. We all watched it go.
*
‘I bought something for you,’ said Nina, at the pub afterwards. She set her glass of wine down on the table – the same one she’d been nursing all night – and pulled something out of her bag. A gift, wrapped in kraft paper and tied with a neat grosgrain ribbon.
‘So . . . I’ve been an idiot,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
I smiled. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m sorry, too.’
She pushed the present across the table. ‘Here. Peace offering. Please be my friend again.’
I nodded. ‘Done. But you didn’t need to buy me a present.’ I smiled. ‘It’s not a breast pump, is it? Or lactation tea?’
Nina rolled her eyes. ‘Just open it,’ she said, gesturing to the gift.
I nodded and unwrapped the paper.
‘Sophie B Hawkins’s Greatest Hits?’
‘It’s an olive branch. Plus, we don’t have it.’
‘How many songs does she even have? I can only think of two.’
Nina rolled her eyes and took another measured sip. ‘Not the point, George. The point is, I’m sorry. I’ve been such a dick. I . . . Jed broke up with me. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that, but . . . yeah. It’s over.’