by Lea Darragh
It was obvious the doctor felt for us. ‘Let me make a call.’
When he hung up the phone Dr Crawford had perked a little and it spread to Nick as he squeezed my hand again.
‘A colleague of mine owes me a favour. He’s booked you in for an ultra-sound this afternoon.’
‘That’s fantastic!’ Nick almost jumped from his chair, but instead he controlled himself and sat on the edge of it. ‘And then we’ll know for sure?’
‘Without a doubt.’
‘Thank you, Dr Crawford. You have no idea how much we appreciate this.’
‘My pleasure, Nicholas. Now, Catherine, this ultra-sound, if you are pregnant, the embryo will be very, very small, so an internal examination is required.’
Nick was confused as he eyed me and noticed that I’d sunken slightly into my chair.
‘Are you ok with that?’ Dr Crawford continued.
I looked at Nick. ‘Yes,’ I said, even though I wasn’t.
‘Ok, then. Just give Dr Reilly this slip,’ he handed me the referral note. ‘Your appointment is at three o’clock at the consulting rooms at Mount Morgan. Do you know where to find them?’
‘No,’ I said.
He gestured for me to hand him back the referral and he pencilled a map on the back of it.
‘Thanks, Dr Crawford. We really do appreciate all that you’re doing for us.’
‘My pleasure and good luck. Make an appointment with the girls out the front on your way out. I want to see the two of you next week, whether you are pregnant or not.’
‘It’s twelve o’clock now. Should we get some lunch somewhere?’ Nick asked as we climbed into the Jeep.
‘Sure.’
‘Anywhere in particular?’
I shook my head.
‘What is it, angel?’
I turned in my seat to face him. ‘I love you.’
He laughed. ‘I know that. I thought we had so thoroughly covered this earlier.’
I leaned in and kissed him. ‘Just making sure.’
It was as if time had stood still as the seconds barely ticked between twelve o’clock and three, and the actions of lunch were played out in slow motion, or so it seemed. Even the forty-five minute drive to Mount Morgan travelled in long play. But, at almost two o’clock we sat — not all patiently — as we waited for Dr Reilly to call our names, and with one minute till the top of the hour, he did.
Dr Reilly was a young man — perhaps in his mid-thirties, with cropped blonde hair and green eyes — and had no remarkable features, none, in-fact, that would warrant such a long stare that Nick was giving him as they shook hands and sat on opposite sides of the mahogany desk. And the look Nick gave me was panicked if I’d ever seen one. I mouthed what? But he didn’t answer. It was then that I noted the expression on Dr Reilly’s face. Was it confusion? Was it displeasure at being somewhat bullied into seeing us at such short notice? Then, as he shuffled papers and eyed Nick with a disapproving frown, it occurred to me.
‘Do you two know each other?’ I dared to ask. Dr Reilly said nothing, but Nick shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Clearly this is where he’d brought Lucy only a couple of days ago. What a dishonourable man Dr Reilly must think of my husband.
‘So,’ Dr Reilly finished reading over my file that Dr Crawford had forwarded to him via email. ‘You’ve been trying to get pregnant for a while, I see. Let’s see if I can give you some good news. Do you have an empty bladder?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Let’s get ready for the ultra-sound. I’ll give you a moment while you organise yourself on the bed there; underwear off, please.’ Instinctively, Nick threw him a look, but then realised the question was one of profession and not attraction. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
Once we were alone, I took the opportunity to press Nick to see if he could confirm my presumptions.
‘You’ve been here before?’ I asked in a quiet voice.
‘Not now, Cate.’
That was answer enough, and honestly, all that I wanted to know. I was grateful that the ultra-sound was being performed in the comfort of Dr Reilly’s office and not one of the procedure rooms that we’d passed. I wanted good news from this place, not for this moment to be tainted by something much, much less exciting.
I was propped up on the bed and covered with a white sheet. Nick sat on my left side, leaving room on my right side for Dr Reilly and his equipment to do their work.
‘Ok,’ the doctor said, ‘let’s see what we have here.’
It took too long for him to say something, anything. The monitor was facing our way, and in clear view, but I couldn’t see anything that meant that a baby was growing inside me; not that I’d know what I was looking at anyway.
‘Well?’ Nick said impatiently and Dr Reilly gave him a petulant look.
‘Cate,’ he addressed only me when he spoke. ‘I’m not seeing any sign of pregnancy. Look,’ he pointed at the monitor, circling a small area of the screen, ‘this is your uterus. If you were four or five weeks pregnant, as predicted by Dr Crawford, we should be able to see a sac here.’ I leaned forward slightly even though the ultra-sound apparatus felt uncomfortable to do so.
‘But there isn’t one?’ I said but hoped that I was wrong. I gripped Nick’s hand.
‘I’m sorry, no.’
‘Are you sure?’ Nick asked as he looked closer at the monitor.
‘Yes, Mr Mathieson. I’m sure. Now,’ he addressed me again, ‘while we’re doing this ultra-sound, I thought I could investigate any issues that may explain your infertility. Is that ok?’
I nodded.
‘Well,’ he said after a few quiet moments and he finished up, ‘everything looks perfectly normal; nothing to assume that you can’t have children.’
A guilty tear fell down my cheek and he plucked a tissue from the box beside him and handed it to me. ‘That’s good news at least.’
‘Sometimes it can take a while,’ he flashed Nick with a not-so-subtle glance, ‘sometimes it happens without even trying.’
‘We know that. We have faith.’
‘Good. Good. Well, I’ll give you another moment of privacy.’
Alone again in the office, Nick let out a deep breath and I began pacing.
‘That was brutal,’ I said as I shook my head irritably.
‘I’m sorry, Cate.’
‘Why are you sorry?’
He shrugged because he didn’t want to say the words.
‘Oh, Nick,’ I wrapped my arms around his waist, ‘I can’t believe he treated you like that. So unprofessional.’
‘That’s what was brutal?’ He pulled back. ‘Not the fact that you’re not pregnant?’
‘You don’t take offence to him being all judgy?’
‘I only care for his medical expertise. Everything else means nothing to me.’
‘Come on, Nick—’
‘I don’t care, honestly, I don’t.’
‘I’m furious!’
He eyed me curiously. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What?’
‘Tell me what you’re trying to do,’ he dared me.
‘Nothing.’
‘You haven’t distracted me.’
I opened my mouth to argue, but instead I gave in. ‘It was worth a try.’
‘Now that’s offensive.’
‘What?’
‘That you think that I can be side tracked by a senseless doctor that knows nothing of our lives instead of thinking about what just happened.’ I swallowed hard as he let me go and sat on the chair. He ran his fingers through his hair.
‘I just want to get out of here,’ he said, and, as if on cue, Dr Reilly entered the office.
‘Please,’ he gestured to my empty chair, ‘sit.’
I did. He sat on his leather chair behind the desk.
‘Ok. I am sending my results through to Dr Crawford. They’ll be available before your next appointment. You’re in good hands with him,’ he smiled fondly, ‘but I’m sure you know that.’
He finished updating my file on his computer.
‘Do you have any questions?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Mr Mathieson?’
He shook his head.
‘Ok, well then, I think we are done here.’
Nick stood and shook the doctor’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said, in my opinion a generous sentiment that Dr Reilly did not deserve.
‘Cate,’ he held his hand out to me and I shook it, but without the thank you.
We’d walked a few steps down the wide hall but before Dr Reilly closed his door, I turned back and asked him for a private word. He obliged.
I didn’t sit like he’d offered for me to; instead I stood in the middle of the room as he hovered behind his desk in confusion.
‘What can I help you with, Cate?’
‘I just wanted you to know that I’m well aware that my husband was here a few days ago.’
His eyes grew noticeably wide, but kept his lips tightly, dutifully closed.
‘Lucy is a close friend of his who was alone in a situation that a person shouldn’t be alone in. Nick stepped up and made sure that she was taken care of. He wasn’t the father; he was the best friend a person could have. I just wanted to tell you that so that we don’t walk out of here leaving you to assume that he’s some kind of, and excuse my language when I say this, cheating bastard.’
‘Thank-you for clearing that up,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to, you know.’
I turned to leave. ‘Yes. I did.’
‘What was that all about?’ Nick asked as we pulled out of the shaded car park that was dripping with rain due to a downpour while we were inside.
I reached over to Nick’s hand as it sat in his lap and he pulled it slightly away. I squeezed it. ‘Just protecting what’s mine.’
Nick pressed the CD changer function on the steering wheel and in a second Kings was exchanged for The Heavy. Nick turned the sound system up and the beat vibrated through us. I turned it down again.
‘I love you anyway,’ I told him.
He turned the volume up once more, enjoying the beautiful song; or just completely shutting my words out more than likely. I cried, but I hid it by staring at the trees flying past my window as Nick drove the forty-five minutes home. I had a fight on my hands with him and I knew it. I also knew that I was up for it.
Chapter 20
A few months later spring arrived and finally the sun shone down on the Shady Valley vineyard; the warmth defrosted the grass and trees and homes that long yearned for something to replace the dreary, leaden clouds and the tedious rain.
I smiled each morning as the sunrise brightened our bedroom in the hope that Nick’s perfunctory mood that he’d worn since the ultra-sound had also thawed. Each morning I’d reach for him — some mornings he’d be there — and on others he’d be up already, and without a kiss good-bye, he’d begin his work on the new restaurant. He practically came to bed after me and then got up before the sun.
The summer of our third year of marriage brought with it no improvement. Nick’s head hung as low as it had six months ago, and his communicative skills were seemingly stunted as he limited himself to single word answers, if any answers at all. I allowed him his grieving; the blow he had been dealt would be enough to bring even Goliath to his knees. I spent many nights alone because Nick worked later than he ever had in the past. I sat thinking, devising a plan to coax him out of the hole that he’d climbed into, and it was on one of these nights that I realised that he actually was the most robust of men that I’d ever known; for Nick to be brought so low by something so uncontrollable must have devastated him beyond anything that I could imagine. But I refused to believe that he couldn’t be saved. It could be done. I’d been in a low place once and he’d saved me; it was my duty as his wife to repay him his dedication and benevolence.
In the later days of January, I managed to lure a smile out of him when I’d taken him a midnight snack of cool iced-tea and a platter of cheese and crackers. He was sitting behind the bar in the new restaurant as he thumbed through menus and resumes from potential chefs. He didn’t lift his head when I sashayed through the open double French doors as they let in a cool summer breeze, but he did when I placed the tray on the bar and turned to leave, silently praying that he’d ask me to stay. The night was still and quiet, which was why I easily heard his sudden intake of breath. I was wearing a sheer white shirt that was open at the front, and not a stitch more. The dance floor was polished jarrah and was a virgin — until I began dancing to the slow music that played only in my head. As I moved I could feel his eyes on me and I remembered the last time that we’d danced; when “Syrup and Honey” played and we couldn’t keep our wandering hands off one another. I wanted that again. I wanted him again: his touch, his breath on my neck, his murmuring sweetness in my ear.
I hoped that he would come to me. I hoped that giving myself openly, exposed and vulnerable, that I could remind him that he knew me and that nothing mattered to me but him. But he remained seated behind the bar, watching.
‘Now I just feel like an idiot,’ I said as I stopped dancing and stood bare foot and half-naked as the low moon hovered in the sky behind me. His pained expression made me cry. But still he sat, in place behind the bar as he maintained the distance between us. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ I sobbed, ‘and you can push and push as much as you like, but I’m not going anywhere.’ He held my searching gaze but said nothing. I grabbed the picnic blanket that was folded on a table beside the door and ran.
Sheltered by the blossoms until the sun raised itself above the mountain peaks, illuminating the silver linings of the clouds, the memories of our past, of every beautiful moment we shared, of our wedding day, of his touch, of his words that always brought me back from the brink of giving up on everything, all spurred me on.
But despite my efforts, the next winter seemed to freeze him further.
The restaurant was in full swing and he managed it like the professional that he was. He’d attended night courses and had received high distinctions when he’d completed them, of course; because he’d done nothing but study, work and sleep.
I planned and plotted schemes to at least have him acknowledge me with a smile or a kiss; he still hadn’t touched me since the Dr Reilly visit when the earth swallowed him up. My body screamed for him. My heart ached for him. Just a touch, just one, would have been absolute heaven compared to the burning hell that I was living.
I made sure I did everything that needed doing before it needed to be done, but after a while I slowed my duties with the thought that Nick may tell me off; I’d take any communication, negative or positive; I would sit there while he screamed at me if it meant hearing a spoken word coming my way.
I deliberately got in his way. I told his mother that things were not going well because I knew that she would interfere. But Nick brushed Beth off and ignored her efforts.
I even became a VIP customer to the Victoria’s Secret website, but I could have been naked straddled on his lap and he still wouldn’t have acknowledged me.
He stopped playing music and it was eerie the way the silence echoed around our home and around the trees and mountains that surrounded us.
He stopped overprotecting me, and Blake had obviously noticed his complaisance and tested his boundaries during the following spring when he told me that, “Cate, you look stunning today.” I’d braced myself for the wrath of my jealous husband, but instead Nick clenched his jaw and glared a deathly glare and in the end he just walked away. He was buried deep, and as the months marched on and overtook him, he fell miserably and dejectedly away.
The blow that finished him off came in the summer of our fourth year. Nick’s eldest brother, Angus, his wife Josie and their brood of three busy children, announced that they were moving back to Shady Valley — apparently the twin boys that were born a couple of years earlier were a handful, especially now that Josie was pregnant with their fourth child and due a
ny day now. I didn’t think that Nick could descend any further into the sinkhole that he was in, but that he did, and if I didn’t cry myself to sleep alone our bed every night then it was a miracle.
‘I just want him back,’ I cried to Dad time and time again, ‘I miss him so much.’
But it was difficult for him to ease my pain because he didn’t know the facts of the situation. Nobody knew. As much as I begged him to come to terms with it, Nick had refused to tell a soul. I didn’t want him to walk around with a placard against his chest reading; I AM DEFECTIVE; I just wanted to tell the people close to us so that they could let him know that it really was ok. With support he could perhaps absolve himself. Sometimes reassurance helps when it comes from more than one source alone. But still, nobody knew.
Solutions were becoming less and less attainable and I was slowly beginning to give up. I’d fought a hard fight, but flogging a dead horse gets you nowhere. That is, until Nick had hired Lucy as a waitress. It didn’t overly bother me; I had her measure, but while I’d given Lucy her induction to the winery — giving her a tour of the vineyard, teaching her about the varieties of wine and how to match them up with cuisines, as well as elaborately explaining the objective of the business, which was to give visitors a proficient, unforgettable experience of the winery — it didn’t go unnoticed that Lucy quite openly talked more about Nick rather than her job description.
I’d never given merit to whatever it was that Lucy felt for Nick; he’d never given me reason to doubt him, but the way Lucy smiled at him, and at times the way he smiled back, made my insides cringe with jealousy. She wasn’t just a friend at a distance from us, she was now quite literally in my back yard, and not at all cagey about what she wanted. My fight was resumed; I’d make the dead horse gallop again, even if it killed me.
But how?
For the first time I felt legitimately threatened by Lucy; she made me feel things that I hadn’t felt before, so perhaps making Nick jealous would open his eyes to what he was missing. It would need to be something more persuasive than a flirt about a pretty dress; it would need to be something of substance…but what? I thought about it and then it struck me. Just the thought of doing such a thing nauseated me to my core. But if it made me feel this awful, then it was worth a try to see if it affected Nick in the same way. Any reaction would do, even if it was disgust; I could work with that, he just had to give me something.