The Way We Were

by Sinéad Moriarty

  ‘Damn, we’re going to have to do a C-section.’

  ‘Do we have enough anaesthetic?’ Declan asked.

  ‘Awate brought some yesterday. Apparently they raided the clinic in Asmara again.’

  ‘Are they planning another attack?’ Declan asked.

  Ben nodded. ‘He wanted to stock up because he knows there’ll be lots of injuries.’

  ‘What the hell is wrong with them?’ Declan fumed. ‘It’s a shitty piece of barren land and they’re causing mayhem over it.’

  ‘It’s not about the land. It’s about ownership and rights.’

  ‘I’m Irish, Ben. I grew up with people bombing each other over rights. I just don’t think this crappy land is worth it. Awate’d be better off packing up and taking his clan to a decent place where they could run a little farm, or down to Asmara and open a business or something. This is bullshit. We’re stuck here because of a stupid, pointless fight. We’ll never get away.’

  Segen groaned, and Yonas barked at them, ‘You help!’

  While Declan administered the anaesthetic, Ben tried to explain that they had to do a Caesarean. Yonas didn’t understand, but he placed a hand on Ben’s arm. ‘You good man, Ben. You good doctor.’

  Ben asked Yonas to stand outside, which he reluctantly agreed to do. Before he left, he kissed his wife and tried to soothe her fears. He stood outside, his back to the tent, praying.

  As soon as Segen was unconscious, Ben performed an internal examination. ‘Her cervix is only partially dilated, and look.’ He held up his bloodied glove. ‘We need to get this baby out now. I’m pretty sure there’s an anterior tear.’ He picked up the scalpel.

  ‘There’s no time for neat incisions, hurry,’ Declan urged.

  Ben cut Segen’s abdomen in a vertical midline incision below the umbilicus. Time was their enemy. The pregnant uterus bulged forward into the wound.

  They could see free blood in the abdomen. The baby was under Ben’s hands. He reached in and lifted it out. It was covered with a slippery mess of blood and meconium. He handed it to Declan, who wiped the baby’s face and the inside of his mouth with a towel while Ben clamped and cut the umbilical cord.

  ‘Shit, I think he’s inhaled the meconium. It’s like bloody tar.’ Declan bent down, placed his mouth over the baby’s and started breathing very gently into it. He pulled back. Nothing.

  He did it again and this time the baby’s chest rose. ‘Yes!’ He punched the air with his fist.

  Ben grinned and turned back to Segen. ‘I have to deliver the placenta or she’ll bleed out.’

  Thankfully, the placenta came away easily. ‘Christ.’ Ben cursed under his breath as dark blood filled the abdomen. He wiped sweat from his brow with the top of his sleeve.

  ‘Bad?’ Declan asked.

  ‘It’s like a bloody dam. We have to save her,’ Ben said. ‘Yonas is a decent man – he treats us with respect.’

  While Declan worked on the baby, Ben packed Segen’s abdomen with swabs to stem the bleeding. ‘I need your help, mate.’

  ‘Just give me another minute to stabilize this little fella’s breathing and I’ll be over to you.’

  Two minutes later, Yonas came back in, concerned for his wife. The soldier gasped when he saw all the blood. Trying to distract him from Segen, Declan called him over to the corner to see his son.

  ‘It’s a boy.’ Declan smiled. ‘He was having trouble breathing, but he’s okay now. Keep an eye on him and let me know if anything changes. I need to help Ben with Segen.’ Declan handed the infant to his father, who cradled him in his arms.

  ‘She is okay?’ Yonas asked, looking over to where his wife lay, blocked by Ben.

  ‘We’re doing everything we can.’ Declan patted him on the back and urged him to focus on his son.

  ‘I need you,’ Ben called to Declan, who rushed over.

  While Declan swabbed the blood from Segen’s abdomen, Ben whispered that they had to do a hysterectomy.

  ‘Are you going to do a subtotal one?’

  Ben nodded. ‘I have no choice. We have to save her.’

  ‘Do it and I’ll close her up,’ Declan said.

  Ben frowned in concentration as he began the surgery. When it was finally over, Declan checked Segen’s pulse for the umpteenth time. ‘It’s still very weak,’ he whispered.

  Ben handed him a hand pump. Declan placed it over her face and began to squeeze the bag rhythmically, willing her to live.

  Ben raised her feet into the air to help blood-flow, then hooked her up with intravenous fluids that contained vital antibiotics. Finally he went to check on the baby. His pulse was still very weak, but he was alive and breathing by himself. ‘Congratulations, Dad!’ he said to Yonas, who couldn’t stop smiling at his son.

  Yonas looked at Segen and his face clouded.

  ‘She’s okay,’ Ben said. ‘She’s still very weak, but we’re doing everything we can. Bring the baby to her.’

  Yonas followed Ben to where Segen was now lying. They had moved her to a mattress in the ‘recovery room’. Declan was kneeling beside her, taking her pulse.

  Yonas lay down beside his sleeping wife and placed the baby on her chest. The baby gurgled and began to breathe in rhythm with his mother. Yonas whispered to Segen and stroked her thin, drawn face.

  Ben and Declan stayed with them all night, taking it in turns to check on Segen and the baby while Yonas slept beside them, protecting them.

  As the sun rose, the two men stepped out for a cigarette.

  ‘We could take Yonas’s gun and go,’ Declan said.

  ‘It’s wedged under his arm – he’d wake up. Besides, how would we get past the two soldiers standing right over there?’ Ben pointed to the guards at the entrance to the camp.

  ‘We could threaten them with Yonas’s gun.’

  ‘They’d shoot us.’

  ‘Not if we shot them first.’

  ‘That would wake everyone up and they’d all shoot us.’

  ‘Fuck you, Ben, you always think of reasons for us to fail.’ Declan threw his cigarette on the dusty ground and stamped on it.

  Ben rounded on him. ‘I just don’t want to bloody die, okay? My need to survive is stronger. I will get out of here, but not in a body bag. I want to see my kids again. I fucked up by coming to this bloody country in the first place. I’m not going to get myself killed. I’m going to go home and be a good father, a good husband and a good man. A better man. A much better man.’ His voice cracked.

  Declan’s face softened. ‘You are a good man. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have been shot at least six times.’

  ‘Well, there’s no bloody way I could stick this on my own. We’ll get out of here, Declan, but we have to be patient. We can’t just run for it. We have no idea where we are, and even if we made it to the nearest village, they’d hand us straight back to Awate. Everyone’s terrified of him.’

  Ben reached his arms around his back to stretch it out. He was stiff and sore from sitting up all night with the patients. ‘We’ll never get out of here without someone local helping us or persuading Awate to let us go. We have to keep developing relationships and try to persuade them that holding us here is cruel and inhumane.’

  ‘Awate’s a heartless prick. All he cares about is his stupid patch of land. Maybe Yonas would help us now that we’ve saved his wife and kid,’ Declan suggested.

  ‘He’s Awate’s cousin, so I doubt it. Mind you, he’s by far the most decent of the soldiers, and if Segen and the baby don’t develop an infection and recover well, he’ll owe us. We should work on that.’

  ‘Let’s get in there and show him how dedicated we are,’ Declan said, turning to go back into the tent.

  Holly: May 2014

  Mummy’s gone to a dinner party. She was going to wear her navy dress, but Jools made her get changed. She said Mummy had to stop looking so dull all the time and ordered her to put on her lovely red dress. Jools wanted Mummy to wear red lipstick too, but Mummy put her foot down. She said it would
be ‘too much’. But she did look pretty.

  She was listening to music while she was getting ready. Not sad music, like she normally does, but happy music, like she used to when she and Daddy were getting ready to go to a party. She was listening to Madonna’s ‘Into The Groove’, which she always used to play before Daddy died. Daddy used to joke that it was a cheesy song, but he always smiled when Mummy danced around to it. They used to dance to it together and do silly moves to make me and Jools laugh.

  Jools says Madonna is ‘really lame’ and a ‘saddo’ because she tries to be cool when she’s just an old woman who should put some clothes on and stop trying to bend her legs over her head.

  Jools came into my room and sat beside me on my bed, listening to Mummy singing along to the song. She squeezed my hand. ‘She seems almost happy,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s lovely to hear her singing,’ I said, almost afraid to break the spell. ‘Well done for making her wear the red one.’

  ‘She needs to go out and have fun. I know we think she’s really old, but she isn’t. Chloë’s mum is fifty and she’s getting married again.’

  My stomach did a flip when Jools said that. I don’t want Mummy to get married to another man. That would be so weird and awful and … well … wrong.

  Jools looked at me. ‘Don’t get all freaked out. Mum’s not going to marry anyone, but she might meet someone else. She’s not bad-looking and she’s nice when she wants to be. Besides, it’s lonely for her, Holly. She’s always on her own.’

  ‘But she’s got us.’

  ‘We’ll be gone soon and she’ll be alone in the house.’

  ‘I won’t leave her. I’ll stay here and look after her.’

  ‘Holly, you’re going to get a scholarship to some amazing university full of geeks. You’ll fit right in and be so happy with all your nerd friends that you won’t want to come home. You’ll want to read boring books and discuss the meaning of poems until the sun comes up, while normal students are getting drunk and shagging. Anyway, Mum would never let you stay with her. She’ll want you to go and live your life.’

  ‘I just don’t want her to stop loving Daddy.’

  ‘She won’t. But it’s selfish of you to want her never to have a life or meet another man.’

  ‘I’m not selfish, Jools, I just don’t want anyone trying to replace Daddy. He’s irreplaceable.’

  ‘Nobody will ever replace him,’ Jools said fiercely. ‘No one. But I don’t want Mum to end up on her own for the rest of her life either.’

  Jools is right, but I can’t bear the idea of another man sleeping in Mummy’s bed where Daddy used to be. It makes me feel sick.

  After Mummy went out, Jools went into her bedroom to get ready. She was going to a party at Lance’s house. Kevin was coming to be with me and make sure Jools came home at midnight.

  I asked if I could sit in her room while she got ready. She was excited about the party and in a good mood, so she said yes. She took her clothes into her little bathroom to get changed but she didn’t close the door fully and I saw her in the mirror.

  I screamed. Her stomach was covered with cuts.

  Jools spun around. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Oh, my God, Jools, what are you doing? You told me you’d stopped.’

  Jools pulled a long-sleeved top over her head and came to sit beside me. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘Why are you doing it? You’re going to die,’ I said, and I started crying. I couldn’t help it. ‘You promised you’d stop.’

  Jools hugged her stomach. ‘I’m trying to. I really am. I had stopped, but then I just had a day where I really missed Dad and I cut again. I’ve had a bad few weeks. But I’m going to stop. I promise.’

  After the first time I’d found her cutting, I Googled it to try to understand. It’s called self-harming and the people who do it said that it made them feel better. They said it was like letting out all the bottled-up feelings: each time they cut their bodies, they felt like they were in control again.

  ‘I tried it,’ I said, showing her the small, faded scar on my arm.

  ‘What?’ Jools spun around to face me.

  ‘I wanted to see if it made me feel better, but it hurt and I still felt sad.’

  Jools’s face was bright red. ‘Don’t you ever do that again. You’re an idiot for trying it.’

  ‘What about you?’ I shouted. ‘You’re doing it all the time.’

  ‘I am an idiot. Remember? I’m the stupid one, the thick one. I do dumb things all the time.’

  ‘You’re not stupid, but cutting yourself is. Jools, if you don’t stop, I’m telling Mummy.’

  Jools put her face close to mine. ‘Don’t even think about it. I will kill you if you tell her. You’ll just upset her. I’m going to stop.’

  ‘You have to, Jools. You’re ruining yourself and your beautiful skin. What if you cut too deep and die? I can’t bear it.’ Now I was crying hard. Jools leant over, hugged me and promised over and over again to stop.

  I’m not sure if I believe her, but I’m going to keep a close watch.

  Jools put on a very short mini and sky-high heels. She looked so gorgeous. Everyone in school fancies Jools, except Lance. He’s totally in love with his girlfriend, Hayley. I know Jools likes Lance, but she pretends she doesn’t. Jools hates Hayley for two reasons: first, because she’s a do-gooder, and second, because she’s really smart.

  Kevin arrived and came upstairs to join us. He sat beside me on the bed. He knew about Lance and Hayley, but he didn’t know about the self-harm. ‘So, will Hayley be there tonight?’ he asked Jools, as he winked at me.

  ‘Yes, but she’s going to be late because she’s giving hot soup to the homeless or something. She’s such a pain.’

  ‘What a bitch! Imagine – feeding homeless people.’ Kevin grinned.

  Jools turned around, waving her mascara. ‘She’s trying to be some kind of modern-day saint. I mean, who’s she kidding? Those people do not want some crappy watery soup. They’d much rather a burger or a stew or something that’ll actually fill them up.’

  ‘They’d be happy with any food. They’re homeless, Jools,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I wouldn’t eat vegetable soup if you paid me. I’d rather starve. Besides, Hayley is such a Debbie Downer – she’s always talking about these homeless people and how they used to live in normal houses but then they lost their job or whatever and they ended up under a bridge. She loves making everyone feel really depressed.’

  ‘Lance obviously likes her charitable side.’ Kevin loved winding Jools up.

  Jools frowned. ‘Lance just has a big heart. He really wanted to have a fun party, but Hayley made him feel guilty so now we all have to give money tonight – there’s going to be a collection box for the homeless in the hall.’

  ‘I think that’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘You would!’ Jools said. ‘Why can’t she just go and be a do-gooder nun and join one of those convents where you can’t speak? She thinks she’s like Mother What’shername anyway. You know, the little wrinkly dwarf woman who went around India in a tea towel.’

  ‘Oh, my God, do you mean Mother Teresa?’ Mother Teresa is one of my absolute heroines. ‘She was a saint.’

  ‘Whatever. At least she didn’t hog the captain of the rugby team. At least she went off to India and did her holy stuff by herself. I wish Hayley would bugger off somewhere far away and feed those people her rotten soup.’

  ‘You’ve such a big heart,’ Kevin said, and he was laughing. It was funny.

  ‘Holy Joes should not go out with hot rugby guys. They should either be married to their job or married to another do-gooder who wears socks and sandals and wants to talk about misery and death and hunger all the time. Lance is far too cool for her.’

  ‘Maybe you should go with her on a soup run. You might actually like it. Giving back to people can be very fulfilling,’ Kevin suggested, and winked at me again.

  Jools stared at him. ‘What would you know? You’re not exactly savi
ng lives.’

  ‘Actually, I help your mother help sick people. So, in a way, I do charity work every day.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be harsh, Kevin, but it’s a bit different from going around feeding starving people,’ I pointed out.

  Kevin bristled. ‘Whose side are you on, Holly?’

  Jools clipped in her hair extensions. ‘The point is, Hayley is a bore and I’m fabulous, and I just don’t understand why Lance doesn’t see it.’

  Kevin sighed loudly. ‘Welcome to the world of unrequited love.’

  ‘Did you and Axel break up?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but David Gandy will never be mine.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  Jools groaned. ‘Seriously, Holly, stop reading boring books about the olden days. David Gandy is the hottest model ever.’

  Kevin nodded. ‘Soooooo very hot.’

  ‘Yes, but, Kevin, he’s out of your league and he’s straight. Lance is not out of my league. To be honest, he should be chasing me. I’m going to get to the party early while Mother Tessa –’

  ‘Mother Teresa,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever. I’m going to get there early so I can work on him while Hayley is feeding everyone who lives under a bridge.’

  I felt bad for Hayley. She was a good person and Jools wanted to steal her boyfriend.

  ‘Why don’t you go for someone who doesn’t have a girlfriend?’ I asked her.

  Kevin patted my hand. ‘Because we all want what we can’t have. Forbidden fruit and all that.’

  He had a point. I wanted Daddy back and that was never going to happen.

  Alice: May 2014

  Pippa came into the hall, then flung open her arms to embrace Alice. ‘Darling, I’m so glad you came. And you look gorgeous, like your old self. Getting out a bit more suits you.’

  ‘Thanks, I almost didn’t come.’ Alice smiled, trying to hide how nervous she still was. Since Ben had died, she’d only been out with Pippa and David on their own, not to a dinner party with other people.