Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘So how did you end up so nice?’ I asked.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes. And it doesn’t really seem like you had much encouragement, growing up.’

  Mark cut himself a thick slice of cheese. ‘I was bloody lucky,’ he said soberly. ‘Jack Thornton – he was the Blues’ forwards coach when I started playing; he’s in Scotland now – took me under his wing a bit. He used to have me round for tea and talk to me about what I was going to do with my life. And then I had Alan as a flatmate.’ He broke off a corner of his cheese and tossed it to Murray, who was watching him hopefully from the floor. ‘I read somewhere that someone interviewed a whole lot of young blokes who’d done time. They asked them what might have stopped them from going off the rails, and every one of them said, “Someone who gave a shit about what I did.”’ He smiled at me crookedly. ‘It’s true.’

  39

  IN JUNE THE BLUES HAD TWO CONSECUTIVE GAMES IN Australia. I went home to Broadview for a few days while Mark was away, returning with five rubbish bags full of small pink clothes. Em had had them piled ready for me in the hall when I arrived, unwilling to take the risk that I might have a boy and thwart her garage-decluttering schemes. My grandmother gave me a pair of hand-knitted bootees, one a good inch longer than the other, told me I was retaining a lot of fluid and said she supposed rugby players were like sailors, with a girl in every port.

  I lunched with Alison and called in to work to catch up on the gossip, where I spent a pleasant hour ventilating a cat for Keri while she sewed up its diaphragmatic hernia. This freed up Zoe to lurk around the corner texting her new man, so everyone was happy.

  It’s a dreadful thing for a rugby player’s girlfriend to admit, but I was secretly hoping that the Blues wouldn’t make the Super Rugby play-offs that year. They did, which meant that Mark spent the last weekend in June in Pretoria and the first weekend in July in Christchurch. And having won both games, the Blues had a home final at Eden Park against the Queensland Reds.

  At around seven on the morning of the final, which also happened to be my due date, I woke up, wriggled laboriously to the edge of the mattress and rolled off because it was easier than sitting up.

  I was completely over pregnancy. My back hurt, my ankles had vanished and I needed to get up at least three times a night to pee. I felt as attractive as a sea cow, and about the same size. Em had been right: there’s nothing like the discomfort of late pregnancy for reconciling you to the thought of childbirth.

  Getting to my feet I collected my cell phone from the bedside table and lumbered off to the bathroom.

  Mark wasn’t home – the team always stayed together in a hotel on the night before a game, even when they were playing in Auckland. I was in the shower when he rang, and as I stepped out to answer the phone I caught my toe and staggered forward against the bathroom vanity. I didn’t hurt myself, but I did manage to knock my phone off the sink bench and into the toilet.

  I had fished it out and was drying it sadly on a towel when the landline rang. ‘We’re not home, leave us a message and we’ll get back to you,’ said Mark’s voice as the answer phone picked up. Then, ‘McNeil, where are you? You’re not in labour, are you?’ I was only halfway down the stairs when he hung up.

  Better call him back straight away, I thought, before he had time to worry. And then I realised I couldn’t, because I didn’t know his number. I never dialled it – I always called him from my cell phone.

  I looked up the hotel where the Blues were staying and rang reception, and they wouldn’t put me through.

  ‘I’m his girlfriend,’ I assured the man at the other end of the line. ‘I promise I’m not a stalker.’

  ‘Then might I suggest you try his mobile, madam?’

  ‘I haven’t got the number – I mean, it’s on my phone, and my phone’s broken – look, could you just call his room and ask him to ring ho–’ At which point I realised the supercilious prat had hung up.

  I did a brief ungainly dance of rage, then called Saskia, whose number was written on the back of the phone book, and woke her up. When at length I got hold of Mark he had reached the hotel lobby on his way home to look for me. He was somewhat curt, as worried people often are.

  After this inauspicious start the day passed peacefully enough. Mark came home for a few hours at midday and then left again to do serious match-preparation things, and I took myself out for a long walk with one foot on the pavement and the other in the gutter. (Aunty Deb’s tip for bringing on labour – she had also advised me to eat a whole pineapple, but I could picture the potential side effects far too clearly to be tempted to try it.)

  At five thirty I was standing at the stove, poaching chicken thighs in ginger broth and wishing I’d chosen a dish that could have been put in the oven and left to do its thing, when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Sam, looking me up and down as I opened the door.

  ‘Be quiet, or I’ll sit on you and crush you like a bug,’ I said. ‘It’s great to see you guys.’

  ‘You too,’ said Alison, hugging me. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good. Fat and cranky, but otherwise good. Come up and have a drink.’

  ‘Lovely place,’ she said as she reached the top of the stairs.

  ‘Is that your bedroom up there?’

  ‘Yep. Go up and have a look round, if you like. We finished setting up all the baby’s stuff last week.’ The cot was made up ready and the canvas drawers were filled with tiny clothes. My hospital bag was packed, waiting with the baby’s car seat on the changing table, and Mark had hung an animal mobile from the ceiling. I was inordinately proud of it all.

  ‘What’s happening at home?’ I asked Sam, prodding a chicken thigh with a fork.

  ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘Oh, Jeff Burton drove his tractor off a cliff the other day.’

  I twisted experimentally to see if it would make my back feel any better, and found that it didn’t. ‘Is he alright?’

  ‘He wasn’t in it – he got out and forgot to put the handbrake on. Are you okay there, Hel?’

  ‘Sore back,’ I said. ‘No biggie.’

  ‘You’re not going to have this baby in the stands, are you?’

  ‘Sadly, I doubt it.’

  ‘Well, please don’t.’

  ‘I went to see the midwife yesterday, and apparently the baby’s not even engaged properly yet,’ I said. ‘I think we’re pretty safe.’

  Alison leant over the half-wall upstairs. ‘Helen, this is great,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you!’ I said. ‘You make such a nice contrast to Dad. He says having the baby in with us will turn us into nervous wrecks.’ Such an unhelpful comment, when there was nowhere else to put the cot.

  ‘Why?’ Alison asked.

  ‘He says it will either snuffle and snort and keep us awake, or go suddenly quiet so we have to leap out of bed and check it’s still breathing.’

  ‘Or it’ll yell,’ said Sam. ‘They do that quite a lot, I hear.’

  ‘Thanks, Sammy.’

  He smiled. ‘Any time.’

  We had dinner, and left the house at quarter to seven to walk to Eden Park. ‘How about I drop you off in the car?’ Sam asked, watching me make my way slowly downstairs.

  ‘It’s only the stairs. I’ll be fine on the flat.’ In fact my back was now aching savagely and the prospect of a couple of hours on a hard plastic chair had all the appeal of a fish milkshake, but there was no point in admitting it.

  The closer we got to Eden Park the thicker the crowds grew. Over forty thousand tickets had been sold and the pre-game fireworks display completely obscured the field with smoke. The poor cheerleaders must have been nearly asphyxiated, although their smiles, from what little we could see of them, never wavered.

  It was a breathlessly exciting game. The Reds kicked two penalties very early on, and led until the twenty-seventh minute, when the Blues scored a brilliant, length-of-the-field try that began with Mark winning a Red lineout ball. There was a great roar from the
crowd.

  Pain stabbed at the base of my spine and I shifted in my seat, trying and failing to ease it.

  The crowd erupted again as the try was converted, and gripping the edge of my seat with both hands I pushed myself up to stand. Then I doubled over and collapsed back again, as every muscle in my abdomen went into spasm. A great hot gush of fluid poured down my legs.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said. There are times when no other word will do. ‘Ali –’

  She turned towards me. ‘Mm?’

  ‘I – I think my waters just broke.’

  A lesser woman might have wasted time in exclamations of dismay. Alison merely glanced at the puddle around my feet and turned to Sam on her other side. ‘Helen’s waters have broken.’

  Sam whipped around in his seat. ‘You’re joking,’ he said, with such patent horror that at any other moment I would have laughed.

  ‘We’d better find an ambulance,’ Alison said. ‘St John’s will be here somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Sam, getting hastily to his feet. ‘You get her to the gate.’ And he turned and dashed along the row with total disregard for the knees of his fellow spectators.

  Alison stood up too and held out her hands to me. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  I took one agonised look along the long row of occupied seats I would have to edge past, soaked from the waist down.

  ‘Just get up, and I’ll put my jersey round your waist,’ she said.

  Touching though this offer was, trying to hide a pair of sopping wet jeans beneath a small beige cardigan seemed a fairly futile exercise. But I certainly couldn’t stay where I was, so I staggered to my feet.

  Another contraction hit, and I clutched at the back of the seat in front of me. It was an intense, dragging sensation – it didn’t hurt as badly as I had expected, but it was as relentless as being compressed in a giant vice.

  By now the occupants of all the surrounding seats had entirely lost interest in the game. Everyone between us and the aisle was on their feet, making way for me to get past, and a kindly-looking woman caught my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  ‘Good luck!’ someone called.

  There was another shout from the crowd, and as I turned to look out at the field the blue side of the scrum crumpled and collapsed. Mark was somewhere in that heap of men, less than a hundred metres away. He might as well have been on the moon.

  ‘Helen, could we focus here?’ Alison said.

  ‘Hang on . . .’ They were getting up, resetting the scrum – there was a man still down . . . No, he had blond hair.

  ‘I’m sure you can watch a replay.’

  I glimpsed Mark crouching to get back into position and turned back towards the steps. ‘I was just checking he’s okay.’

  The next contraction hit as we reached the top of the stairs. This one was a lot stronger than the last. ‘How – long – between?’ I gasped.

  ‘Not very long. A minute or two.’

  The spasm passed, and I straightened up. ‘The midwife said I’d have a really slow labour because the baby was facing the wrong way.’

  ‘You can sue her if you have it in the stairwell,’ said Alison, putting an arm around me to help me along the concrete passage.

  ‘I am not having a baby in a stairwell.’

  ‘To be honest I’d rather you didn’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t feel like you need to push or anything, do you?’

  ‘No, it’s like being squeezed, or – or wrung out.’

  We reached the head of the steps leading down towards the exit. ‘Want to stop and wait for the next one to pass?’ Alison asked.

  I shook my head and started down, clinging to the handrail. ‘We’ve got to get out before half-time. Shit.’ This one really did hurt, a wave of pain that gripped, built mercilessly and slowly receded.

  ‘Helen!’ Saskia called, dashing up the stairs towards us.

  ‘How –?’ I started.

  ‘Saw you on the big screen, hon.’

  I stopped dead and stared at her in appalled disbelief. On the big screen at the Super Rugby final, live in front of the entire rugby-watching public of New Zealand and Australia.

  Oh, good God.

  ‘Come on,’ said Alison, dragging me on down the stairs. Saskia slipped an arm around me on my other side.

  ‘On the big screen!’ I wailed.

  My escorts giggled, which seemed unfeeling.

  ‘It’s not funny!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Alison said. ‘Sorry, but honestly, Hel, these things could only ever happen to you.’

  Leaving a trail of wet footprints, we made our way through the foyer and across the concrete, where we were met by a pair of security guards. They radioed for an ambulance, but I missed the finer points of the conversation due to another contraction. It was just going off again when the ambulance swept around the corner with Sam running behind.

  A plump middle-aged paramedic got out of the passenger side and opened the back door. ‘Evening, all,’ he said jovially. ‘Alright, my dear, in you get. Let’s get you to hospital.’

  ‘Do you want me to get Mark?’ Saskia asked me.

  ‘I don’t – no, not now. Just as soon as the game’s over.’

  ‘You sure? I can get Bob to pull him off.’

  I shook my head. ‘He can’t do anything, anyway.’

  ‘I’ll grab him the second it’s over,’ said Saskia. ‘Ring me if you need him earlier. National Women’s, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the paramedic. ‘Up you hop.’

  I didn’t, because it’s just not possible to climb into an ambulance when your uterus is tying itself in knots. He and Alison helped me up when the next contraction passed, and I sank gratefully onto the narrow stretcher.

  ‘Can you come with me?’ I asked Alison.

  She looked at the paramedic. ‘Is that alright?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

  I always thought travelling by ambulance would be, if not fun, at least exciting. It wasn’t – it was only horrible. I clung desperately to Alison’s hand as we crossed the city, the contractions growing more and more vicious.

  At the emergency drop-off zone, the paramedics manoeuvred both me and the stretcher out of the back of the ambulance onto a trolley.

  ‘What’s your name, love?’ asked a woman in dark blue scrubs, appearing at my elbow.

  ‘H-Helen McNeil.’

  ‘Hi, Helen, I’m Suzie. First baby?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And when did your waters break?’

  Another contraction gripped, and I curled helplessly around my stomach.

  ‘Half an hour ago,’ said Alison. ‘Just before eight. She’s only getting thirty seconds’ break between contractions.’

  ‘Well, you’re not messing around, are you, Helen? Breathe through it, love. Just keep breathing, and count until it passes . . . Good girl. Relax. Have you got your pregnancy diary?’

  ‘N-no – I left my bag behind –’

  ‘Never mind. Have you had any health problems during your pregnancy?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll be on your system – my midwife is Grace Ko.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll take you up to delivery and look up the details.’

  After what felt like miles of brightly lit corridor we ended up in a largish room filled with monitors and bits of technical-looking equipment, like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. It entirely lacked the mood lighting and cosy feel endorsed by pregnancy and birth magazines, but by that stage I don’t think I’d have noticed if the orderly pushing my bed had wheeled me out onto a stage and brought in the TV crew from Eden Park to keep filming. And if I had noticed I wouldn’t have cared. There was only this all-encompassing pain that grabbed and twisted and receded, only to grab again. And again. And again.

  Suzie and the orderly lifted me between them from one mattress to another, and she took a length of elastic band from a drawer at the head of the bed.

  ‘You’re doing really well, Helen,�
�� she said, leaning over me to push the call button on the other side of the bed. ‘Now, this is to measure baby’s heart rate, so we know how he’s going in there.’ She beckoned Alison forward. ‘Can you please help Helen up so I can get it under her? . . . Lovely. Well done. We’ll just get this set up, and then we’ll see how far along you are.’

  Another nurse appeared and pulled off my wet shoes, jeans and knickers.

  ‘Lovely,’ Suzie said again, snapping on a pair of latex gloves and peering at the printout from the foetal monitor. ‘Baby’s doing just fine.’

  I curled forward with something between a groan and a whimper as the next contraction gripped.

  ‘Nothing bad is happening to you,’ nurse number two told me.

  ‘Yes – it – is,’ I gasped. What a bloody ridiculous thing to say. She’d want to try it from this end.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Hold on to your friend’s hand. Keep breathing.’

  ‘Helen,’ said Suzie, ‘I need you to pull your heels up to your bottom so I can check your cervix – it will feel a little bit cold . . .’

  It didn’t feel a little bit cold. As soon as she touched me, every muscle fibre in my uterus went into spasm, and I thought I was going to die. Through the haze of pain I saw a young man in a white coat put his head around the door and say, ‘Nice painful contractions, that’s what does it. Just what we like to see,’ and if I could have moved I would have leapt off that bed and gone for his throat.

  ‘You’re eight centimetres dilated,’ said Suzie from the foot of the bed. ‘That’s wonderful, you’re nearly there, you lucky girl. Now would you like the gas?’

  ‘Yes!’

  The doctor, if that’s what he was, came up behind her and peered between my legs. ‘Half an hour at least,’ he said, and wandered over to look at the foetal monitor. ‘Call me when it gets interesting.’

  Nurse Two wheeled over a gas bottle with a mouthpiece and a hose. ‘Bite down on the mouthpiece and breathe in as your next contraction starts,’ she said. ‘It will help.’ And she followed the doctor out of the room.