by Claire Allan
Extending her arm, she winced as the doctor inserted the first of the needles, all the while maintaining her perfect French bedside manner.
“Connor willbe devastated,” Ava said to Hope who clearly didn’t know what to say. Ava felt sorry for her. What could she possibly say to make a difference? She was trying her best, making soothing sounds and of course holding her hand as if her life depended on it, but she couldn’t perform miracles. She couldn’t make the baby be okay and she couldn’ttake away Ava’s pain – or Connor’s for that matter.
“He loves you.He’ll just want to know you’re okay. Try to focus on that now. As long as you’re okay . . .”
“He doesn’t even know about this baby and now . . .”Ava stared into space again.
“Can we just have a little look?” the doctor asked as Ava wiped a tear away and Hope squeezed her hand a little tighter.
“I’d like to do a scan,” the doctor said.
Ava covered herself up. Her legs were trembling. “The baby is gone, isn’t it?”
“I’d like to do a scan,” the doctor repeated. “There is no doubt you have lost some blood – quite a lot – but I can’t find the source of the bleeding and your cervix appears to be closed.”
Ava looked ather, confused, and then at Hope.
“What does that mean?” Hope asked.
“I’m not sure,” the doctor replied. “If we do the ultrasound, we will know more. I will go and get the scanner. Try to relax, Ava. I know this is hard, but try to just breathe and relax as much as you can.”
The doctor left and Ava lay back in a sort of limbo – waiting for the arrival of the great scanner – and all she could think was that she didn’t want to look at the screen. She remembered the joy she had felt the first time she had been scanned when she was pregnant with Maisie. She had been blissfully naïve and it hadn’t crossed her mind for a second that anything would be wrong. She had practically skipped into the sonographer’s room with excitement and had grinned maniacally at Connor as a black-and-white fuzzy image of a very active little jellybean popped up on the screen. The sonographer had switched the speaker on the ultrasound on and they had listened to the rhythmic fast beat of their baby’s heart.
Ava pushed all thoughts of how Betty must have felt, a baby growing inside her that she would have to give away. No, she could only focus on one catastrophe at a time.
“Will you look? When she comes back? I don’t think I can.”
“Of course,” Hope said. “Ava, I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this. So very sorry.”
“I know,” Ava said, feeling as if someone else was speaking.
When the doctor pulled the curtain back and pushed in the ultrasound machine, she thought she might throw up. She tightened her grip on the overly starched bed-sheets below her and took a deep breath, biting back the panic in the pit of her stomach and staring straight at the ceiling. She would just keep doing that, she thought, stare at the ceiling and count the tiles and do anything that would distract her from what the doctor could or couldn’t see.
She could feel the cold jelly on her stomach and the pressure of the scanning wand as the doctor moved it across her stomach – a slow pull to the left, and a few taps on a keyboard, before a slow pull to the right and a dig into the very top of her pubic bone which made her gasp. There was another pull of the wand and the doctor sighed and pressed another few buttons. Ava closed her eyes. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at Hope – she just wanted to shut the whole experience out. If she could just switch herself off she would have done so. As the wand was dragged against her stomach again she couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Frig this. She was tired now of trying to keep it together and she let the pain and grief course through her body.
“It’s okay,” Hope soothed.
“No, no. It’s not okay. Would people please stop saying everything is okay or is going to be okay. It’s not okay.”
“Ava,” the doctor said, “there is your baby. There is a strong heartbeat.”
Ava stared at the doctor, still afraid to look at the screen, not quite able to believe what she had just been told.
“I think there is a clot behind the placenta. This could be causing the bleeding. I want to get an obstetrician to look at you. I must stress to you that I am not a specialist in this area of medicine, but for now your baby is still there. Will you look?”
Slowly, Ava turned her head to the screen and straight at a fuzzy image of a wriggling baby. There in the centre of his or her chest was a little heart, fluttering furiously as if to say “Hi, Mammy! I’m here. I’m still here. Stay with me now.”
“Oh God,” she said, “it’s a baby.”
“It’s your baby,” Hope said. “And it’s still there. That’s a good thing. Where there is life, there is hope. Sure didn’t Granny use to say that all the time, and it’s true.”
“Phone Connor,” Ava said. “Please, can you phone Connor? I need him. I need him to see our baby.”
“I’ll do it now,” Hope said, kissing her cousin on the top of the head.“Will you be okay here on your own?”
“I’m not on my own,” Ava said, entranced by the image on the screen of the baby doing somersaults.
Hope wished she smoked, but she didn’t. She tried it once, after a lengthy boozing session when she first turned eighteen and it made her want to puke. Actually it had made her properly puke, and look like an eejit as she coughed and spluttered her way to a fetching shade of green. But there were times when she wished she smoked – that she had a crutch she could turn to when she needed. Times such as that occasion when the bank machine had chewed her beloved gold credit card, leaving her broke and red-faced on a night out with friends when she had run up an impressive bar bill and had offered to pay for the tapas too. Times such as just after Dylan had brought her to the most intense orgasm of her entire life, and times such as when Dylan pretended nothing had ever happened the following morning. And of course, times such as now when a great big family secret had just been cracked open followed by a very real fear that she had been about to nurse her cousin – a woman she’d come to consider a friend in just a matter of days – through a miscarriage. She couldn’t believe it, she thought as she stood and gulped in huge, life-affirming gasps of fresh air. The baby was there. She didn’t know much about babies or pregnancies but she had been convinced, utterly convinced, that things were about to go horribly wrong and she hadn’t had a notion how she would deal with it all.
“A coffee,” she heard a gentle voice say behind her and she turned, tears pricking her eyes, to see Jean-Luc with two cups of coffee in his hands, proffering one to her.
He had waited. She hadn’t expected that. She didn’t know exactly what she had expected – perhaps that as soon as he had dropped them off he would haveturned on his heel and gone back to his life, away from the drama of the two madwomen from Northern Ireland. She was touched but equally determined not to burst into tears all over him, even though she had the strongest urge in the world to fall into his arms and have him tell her it would all be okay.
“It’s not the best coffee in the world, but I thought you could use it,” he said softly.
Hope nodded gratefully and took the cup, sipping from it, wincing at the bitter taste.
“You’re right,” she smiled. “Not the best, but thank you.”
“And Ava? Is she okay?” He looked awkward, his usual suave exterior wavering. Clearly women’s troubles were not in his usual conversation repertoire.
Hope felt sorry for him. Whatever he had promised Betty – however deeply he was involved in all this – he had clearly not bargained for this whole medical-emergency scenario. His vulnerability and awkwardness was endearing – so endearing that Hope had to remind herself of his cool demeanour just the day before on the phone.
“We don’t know yet – not really – but it looks much more positive than it did earlier. The baby is there and there is a heartbeat. That’s a good sign. They just wan
t to find the source of the bleeding. I’m just going to phone her husband now. When I get my breath.”
Jean-Luc smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes creasing, his shoulders visibly sagging with relief. “That is good news,” he said. “That is very good news.”
“Yes,” Hope said, looking deep into his eyes. “It is.”
She wanted to understand Jean-Luc. She wanted to make sense of why this all mattered so much to him where yesterday he had been professional – cold even. And today he had waited, for two hours, in a waiting room on his own just to make sure Ava was okay. Had he known the full story? Had Betty confided in him when she couldn’t confide in anyone else? She looked at him, trying to size him up and, if she hadn’t been so concerned about just what she was going to say to Connor, a man she vaguely remembered having met once before, when she phoned him to blow his world clean apart, she would have challenged him. But she figured she had enough challenges to be dealing with just now.
“I have to phone him,” she said. “Connor. I have to tell him. What do I say?”
“I’m sure you will find the right words,” Jean-Luc said softly before reaching out and pushing back a loose curl from her face. The touch of his hand made her want to weep – and not just because he was an exceptionally attractive man but because it was just nice to feel the warmth of his hand, the gentleness of his touch and the softness of his skin. It was all too brief a moment, however, before he stepped away and left her to the phonecall she had been dreading.
She lifted Ava’s phone, took as deep a breath as she could and scrawled through the address book until she came to Connor’s name. Pressing the call button she waited for the call to connect, secretly hoping it would go to answerphone and she could leave some garbled message and at least not have to answer questions outright when she wasn’t sure what to say or how he would react. He seemed like a nice man, from what Ava had said. She was clearly very much in love with him and even though they were under a certain amount of stress they seemed solid. Biting her lip as the call connected, she thought how she’d always dreamt that one day she would tell a man he was going to be a father – she just always thought she would be the pregnant one. Then again, having seen just how stressful pregnancy could be, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to go there. Ever. She could think of less scary things. Like swimming with sharks. Or being charged by a stampede of elephants.
“Hey, pet, sorry, I was to ring you back. You wouldn’t believe the state I got home in. Then again, you probably would. I was out with Pearse and you know what’s he like after a couple of pints of the black stuff. Ma nearly had a stroke when we got home!”
He sounded so cheerful, his voice so warm that Hope was almost tempted to hang up there and then and say nothing or try and do her best Ava impression and just tell him everything was grand. Even though it wasn’t.
“Connor,” she started, realising he had never heard her voice before. “It’s Hope. Please don’t panic. It’s okay.” Instantly she hated that she had told him not to panic. Her own reaction to anyone uttering those words to her would be to go into a Grade 8, full-blown, screaming and hyperventilating panic. She heard his intake of breath.
“Ava?What’s wrong with Ava?”
“Ava is fine. It’s . . . well. Oh crap. Connor, hang on.” She lifted the phone from her ear and took another deep breath. “Right,” she said, steadying herself. “Ava is pregnant. She found out a few days ago. She was waiting till she got home to tell you. Actually she was going to tell you last night.”
“But instead she got you to tell me?” Connor sounded bemused.
“No. Well, yes. Look, I’m sorry. She started to bleed this morning and we’ve taken her to hospital.”
“Oh my God,” his voice was slow and laden with emotion. Hope could tell he was trying to take it in and she didn’t know whether to allow him a moment to grasp what she was saying. “The baby? Ava? Are they okay? Is she okay? Jesus . . . a baby . . .”
“She is, she’s okay, Connor. And so is the baby up to now. There’s a heartbeat. She’s had a scan.”
She heard him sob.
“But they can’t find the source of the bleeding. They are doing more tests. Specialists are being called to see her.”
“She must be so scared.”
“She’s better than she was,” Hope said, honestly. She felt no need to tell how she had crumpled that morning. “Connor, there’s more,” she said, figuring she might as well get it all out in the open. Glancing around to make sure Jean-Luc was still out of earshot, she continued: “She got a letter – from Betty. There is no easy way to say this, but Betty is her mother. Betty was unmarried then, of course, and there was a whole identity-swap thing. The father was a British soldier. We only found out last night. She’s so mixed up, as you can imagine.”
There was silence.
Hope stood there, waiting for a response. It was a lot to take in, she knew. She had to give him time.
“Christ,” he said, eventually. “Jesus. And she knew this last night? When she called me? And I was down at the pub like a drunken eejit. Oh God. I can’t . . . I can’t believe it . . .”
“I’m sorry to break it to you so suddenly. It’s been a huge shock. For everyone. Not least Ava.”
“Has she spoken to her mum . . . to Cora?”
Hope shook her head before speaking. “She was too upset.”
“Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, determinedly. “Tell her I’ll be on the next flight. Tell her it will be okay. Everything will be okay. And tell her I love her.”
“I will,” Hope soothed, wondering if someone was there to offer him a hug, or a cup of hot sweet tea, or a brandy or whatever he needed in that situation. “Text your flight details when you have them. We’ll get you picked up from the airport. Try not to worry.”
She heard him steady his breath, just as she was trying to steady her own.
“Just look after her, please. She means the world to me.”
“I know,” Hope said, ringing off and staring at the phone for a few moments. She looked down the courtyard to where Jean-Luc was standing.
Noticing that she had finished her call, he walked back to her.
Her head was spinning“Do you mean the world to anyone?” she asked him.
The bemused look on his face didn’t leave. “What do you mean?”
“Do you mean the world to anyone? If something were to happen to you would there be someone who would jump on the next plane to be by your side before you could catch your next breath?”
Looking at her, his head cocked a little to one side, he gestured to her to sit down, proferring the bitter coffee once again. “No, Hope. I’m not sure there would be anyone. But I’ve not given up on the notion that one day there might be. And I’m a lot older, and more wrinkled than you.”
She didn’t dare look up at him because if she did she would kiss him, whether or not he wanted to be kissed. Which could make her look like a bit of a bunny-boiling psycho. But she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to tell him not to give up hope. Despite everything, she still believed that everyone had their other half, their missing link, the Cyndi to their Dylan.
Dropping her head to her hands, she took several deep breaths before sitting up and looking square at him. Nope. No. Definitely not. The deep breaths had not worked. They had not brought her to her senses. She was still going to kiss him and by the darkness in his eyes and the tilt of his head she could tell he was going to kiss her too. Slowly, shaking with emotion and trepidation and probably a fair dose of lust, she tilted her head towards his and allowed herself to be kissed – more deeply and more passionately than Dylan had ever kissed her.
Chapter 30
The room on the ward was peaceful – shades of cream and lilac on the wall, the window slightly ajar allowing the warm breeze to sweep through the room. She was alone, on a bed more comfortable than the one she had lain on in A&E. The doctor had given her pictures from the ultrasound and she couldn’t help
but look at them over and over again, tracing her fingers around the outline of the very tiny, shrimp-looking baby which was clinging on for dear life in her womb.
“Try to get some sleep,” the nurse with the squeaky shoes had told her as she accompanied her to the ward but even though she was absolutely exhausted she knew there was no chance of her drifting off.
Ava still couldn’t quite believe there had been a baby on the screen after all. She couldn’t quite believe anything about the last twenty-four hours. None of it made sense. None of it fitted in with her nice and in control plan for the rest of her life. She looked at the picture again and tried to focus on that. That was all she had the strength to focus on for now.
The doctor had warned her to be cautious still and she didn’t know if seeing that little heart beat had made her feel better or worse. It was reassuring in a way – of course it was – but, God, now this little baby was all the more real and she didn’t know just how she would cope if she did go on to miscarry. She shook her head and stared at the wall, trying not to think that Karma was teaching a very painful lesson indeed. There she had been freaking out for the first few days of her pregnancy – terrified of the pressure a new baby would put on her life, and on their finances – and it was only when she had actually dared to become excited about becoming a mother again that fate had decided it might just have another ending in mind for her. She wasn’t a bad person – and she knew, rationally, that miscarriages were not down to how good a person you were – but now she wanted this baby she couldn’t imagine letting it go. It wasn’t lost on her either that while she had worried the pregnancy would put pressure on her and Connor, the loss of their precious baby could do so much more damage.
“How was he? Was he annoyed I hadn’t told him?” she asked Hope who has resumed her handholding, brow-wiping position beside her friend.