by Claire Allan
“She can’t really be here,” she said, with disdain.
I tried to fight back but I couldn’t, so Anna stepped in for me once again. “My niece has just arrived on the plane from London. This is Mrs McLaughlin’s grandchild and we are going to see her. I’ll take the baby then, but she has a right to see her granny in the circumstances.”
For the briefest of moments it looked as though the nurse might continue with her protest, but I guess she knew better than to argue with Anna and she waved us on. We walked up the corridor. I looked in every door, at old-looking people lying attached to wires and machines. Tired-looking relatives sat by their sides, not even aware that a complete stranger was looking in at their grief and worry. As we walked closer I saw a small, pregnant figure walk out of a door towards me. Her hair was tied back and in need of a wash, her face was pale and her linen trousers were a wrinkled mess. She put her hand to her face, streaking her make-up, but even though she looked as unlike herself as she had ever done, I knew that I was looking at Jacqueline.
“Aoife!” she wailed, running to me. “Thank God you’re here. We’ve all just been falling apart. Come in!”
I don’t think I had ever seen Jacqueline show emotion. Even on her wedding day she remained as cool as a cucumber as if an unplanned smile or stray tear would crack her perfectly made-up face. I put my arms awkwardly around her, Maggie squirming as Jacqueline pulled me close.
“Come on, Aoife, we should go in,” Anna said gently.
I’m not sure which sight shocked me more. It may have been the small, deathly white woman lying in the hospital bed or it may have been the sight of my brother – the perfect atheist – on his knees with a pair of Rosary beads in his hand, or it could have been my father, crying as if it was his heart that was broken and not my mother’s.
What do you say in such a situation, I wondered. “Hello,” seemed too glib, and wailing wouldn’t help anyone. I didn’t think anything I could have said would have helped so I walked towards the bed, squeezing Joe’s shoulder as I walked past.
Daddy looked up at me, his face almost as gaunt as my mother’s. His expression only changed when he caught sight of his granddaughter cradled into me.
“Oh Aoife, I’m so glad you’re here!”
I grasped my mother’s hand. Her fingers felt cold and bony. Her skin seemed paper thin. If the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor by her bed had not been telling me otherwise, I would have sworn she was already dead.
Dad stood up and I fell into a hug with him. It was strange – the role of parent and child strangely reversed. I was comforting him. I was the strong one for now, and believe me I was weakening by the minute.
I’m not sure I’ve ever really understood the relationship between my parents. At times I wondered if they were together simply because my mother wouldn’t have the shame of a marriage break-up over her. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with their relationship, but there was never any sign of passion.
Then again, I don’t think I would want to see any passion between my mother and father.
Hugging my father now though, it dawned on me that he loved her. He really loved her. The thought of our conversation in the park, when he told me how she had suffered when I was little, flitted through my mind. He was fiercely protective of her. He had helped her and encouraged her every step of the way to love me. She might have been a complete cow to me, but to him she was his life. And to Joe, and yes, even to Perfect Jacqueline, she was the centre of the family. If anything it was strange that I was here – my eyes puffy with tears – when all I’d ever done was tell everyone just how much she drove me to distraction.
When he released me from his hug, I asked the one question I knew that I had to.
“Is she going to be okay?”
Joe looked up. “She needs an operation, a triple bypass. They’re concerned about whether or not she will survive the procedure but it’s her only chance.”
I nodded. Her only chance. It was then the room started to swirl and I felt a tingling creep up the back of my neck, over my head and over my eyes until all I could see was black and all I could feel was my leaden body falling towards the floor.
******
I woke in a hospital bed. For a moment I thought I was doing a Dallas and the last two months had all been a dream. Instinctively I reached down to my stomach – no, no bump. Maybe it had all been a dream. Suddenly I felt bereft that my daughter might have been nothing more than a figment of my imagination.
But that, of course, didn’t explain why I was in hospital. I lifted my head from the pillow and felt dizzy at once so I slumped back down. I rubbed my eyes, aware now of the drip in my hand and of the person sitting beside my bed reading a magazine.
What was Anna doing in London? This was all getting a bit too Twilight Zone for my liking.
“Anna?” I said.
“You’re awake then?” she said, looking up. “As if it wasn’t enough your mother being in hospital without you fainting on us too. The doctor says you’re low on iron and a wee bit dehydrated.”
It was starting to come back to me now. My mother, my fainting, my daddy . . . oh God, my baby . . . hadn’t she been in her sling when I fell?
“Maggie?” I gasped.
“She’s fine. You fell backwards so she wasn’t affected at all. She’s with Jacqueline. To be honest, I think Jacqueline is glad of the distraction.”
“My head . . .?”
“You hit it as you fell.”
At least that explained the headache.
“And Mum?”
“They’re taking her down to theatre soon. The doctor says half an hour on that drip and some iron tablets will have you right as rain so just rest now. You’ve had a bad shock, darling.” Anna reached over and kissed me on the forehead and I grabbed her hand.
“I know I’m always giving out stink about her,” I said, “but I do love her even if she is a bitch. I want her, need her, to be okay.”
“I know, darling. I feel the same.”
****
Perfect Jacqueline behaved perfectly with Maggie. To my shock and surprise she even managed to call her Maggie and not Margaret. She fed her for me, winded her, changed her nappy and got her off to sleep without so much as a whimper and then she took her home to look after because she “knew more about babies than Maeve anyway”.
Although Anna had to pretend to be outwardly offended at that, she admitted later it was true. Given half a chance Maeve would have taken my child to the pub with her to show her off as the latest must-have fashion accessory.
That left just me, my dad, Joe and Anna in the waiting-room. We paced up and down, drank too much coffee and said very little. I couldn’t really handle thinking or talking at all. My mind was whirring. In an operating theatre not far from where I stood someone was cutting into my mother’s chest, spreading her ribs and trying to save her life. Perhaps she was already gone and they were arguing amongst themselves as to who would be the unlucky doctor to break the news. I didn’t envy that job. I think I would be rubbish at it. I’d start crying with the family no doubt.
And then we would have to plan her funeral. Should I bring Maggie? Was she too young? Would it be appropriate to breast-feed in a chapel? My mother would turn in her grave at the thought.
If she was dead, that is. Which she wasn’t, I reminded myself. Not that I knew anyway. Bizarrely I had an urge for a cigarette. Ironic really, given that I’d spent the morning in cardiac intensive care. Leaving my family to it, I walked downstairs, stopping at the shop to buy some cigarettes, before going out of the door away from the prying eyes of disapproving nurses and doctors and lighting up.
I hadn’t smoked in a year. And even then it had only been on very drunken nights. I hadn’t smoked properly since I left college ten years ago. I supposed though it would be a bit like riding a bike: you never forget. Lighting up, I watched the smoke swirl over into the afternoon air and breathed deeply, the hot smoke catching the back of my throat and m
aking me cough before the hit of the nicotine took hold and I felt myself relax.
This had been a weird day to say the least. I thought of the drip that had been in my arm and felt a dull ache start. I wondered for a moment if it had hurt before the thought of it crossed my mind or if I was being a complete hypochondriac, feeling pain simply because I knew I had been in the wars.
As I smoked, breathing in deeply, I thought of my mother fighting for her life. Why was nothing ever simple? I knew that was a selfish thought but just when I had finally realised that Jake Gibson was not my knight in shining armour my mother had to go and nearly die on us. Selfish bitch.
I chided myself. Right now she could be dying, her soul hovering over me watching me smoke my sneaky cig and hearing my inner most “selfish bitch” thoughts. I shuddered, throwing my butt to the ground and stubbing it out. It was time to go back in, but just as I headed to the doors again I remembered that today was the day Beth was due to have her dye test. Regardless of what was happening to me and my mother now, I couldn’t let my best friend down again. I hadn’t been there for her before, so I was damn sure I was going to be there for her now.
I switched on my mobile and dialled her number.
“Hey, Bethy,” I said, a strange monotone emotionless voice coming from my mouth. I wasn’t sure how to play this. Too upbeat and I risked offending her if it had all gone wrong, too downbeat and she would be worrying about me and not herself. And she needed to put herself first for once.
“Hey, Aoife, how are you? We’ve been worried sick. How is your mum? Are you okay?”
“Never mind me, how are you? How did the test go?”
“Well . . .” she started.
Chapter 45
Beth
If I’m honest, I didn’t quite know how I felt or how I was supposed to feel. We knew that hundreds of couples, hundreds of women, had heard the same diagnosis and faced the same uncertain future.
I wasn’t sure if I felt relieved or annoyed to learn that my tubes were clear. If they were damaged we would know what we were facing. But they weren’t and in a strange way I felt we were no further forward. There was no one to blame – no clear road to follow. The doctor had smiled when he told us that they were clear but we had left in silence.
“It’s good news, isn’t it?” Dan said as we drove off.
“I suppose.”
“What do you mean, you suppose? The tests are clear. You are ovulating. Your insides are healthy, my sperm is top notch apparently – so it’s good, right?”
“I suppose,” I said again.
I knew Dan wanted a baby – our baby – but he was tiring of this roundabout of emotions and trying and cycle days. Would he lose all sense of urgency over it now that there was officially “nothing wrong”?
Sensing him tense beside me, I forced myself to take a deep breath. “Of course it’s good news. There’s nothing stopping us now.”
When we arrived home I changed into my gingham PJs and curled on the sofa. Dan brought me a glass of wine “to celebrate”, when all I really wanted was a cup of tea and a hot water bottle for the cramping.
I lifted the laptop and went online. The girls on my forum would understand the mixture of relief and disappointment that was coursing through me now. I should have felt delighted, but I felt strangely numb. Why, if everything inside me was clear and blockage-free, was I not pushing a Bugaboo down the High Street already?
As I typed my message, pouring out my thoughts and feelings in a way I never could to Dan, Aoife, my mother or any other living soul, the phone rang.
“Hey, Aoife,” I said, “how are you? How is your mum?”
But she didn’t answer, instead turning the topic of conversation away from her and her mother and onto me. Even in this crisis, she didn’t want to talk about her mother and normally I’d have shooed away her concern for me but I needed to talk about it.
“The tests are clear,” I said. “So we’re back to waiting a few months to see what happens and then considering some interventions.”
“Are you okay with that?” Aoife asked, her voice laced with concern.
“I don’t know, Aoife, to be honest. I don’t know what I was hoping for. Maybe I wanted them to find a problem, maybe I wanted them to find a baby. Gosh, I don’t know.”
“You poor pet,” Aoife soothed and I felt a surge of guilt.
Her mother could be dead for all I knew.
“And your mother?” I asked.
“Fighting.” Aoife sighed. “She’s in surgery now. She’s very sick, Beth. They aren’t sure her heart will survive the strain of the operation. Jesus, Beth, she might die. And no doubt it will be my fault for causing her all this bloody stress.”
*****
I found it hard to sleep that night. I tossed and turned, drifting off occasionally to a variety of weird dreams. As I got up to pee for the one hundredth time, Dan pulled me close to him.
“Hey, fidget bum,” he said sleepily, spooning me against him.
“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“Only a couple of times,” he teased. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t switch my brain off.”
He laughed. “I didn’t know you’d switched it on.”
Digging him in the ribs, earning a loud “Ouch” from him, I smiled in the dark.
“Watch it, Jones,” I said. “I have friends in high places.”
He kissed my hair. “You wouldn’t do anything to get rid of me, would you?”
Turning towards him, curling my leg over his, I stroked his jaw-line. “Not a chance, mister.”
“Irish will be fine, you know,” he said, folding his hand over mine. “She’s tougher than you think.”
“I know.”
“And you’re tougher too,” he said, kissing me, softly at first, and then deeper.
Somehow, in that dark room, I started to believe again I would be fine too.
*****
It felt odd opening up the shop knowing that Aoife and Maggie weren’t upstairs. I wasn’t going to hear her thumping about, or Maggie’s lusty cry beckoning her mummy to feed her.
Heather arrived shortly after and started tidying around. We were due new stock later and Tom was planning to start work on the yard. It was going to be busy.
I checked my mobile for any signs of a text from Aoife – any word on how her mother was doing – but it remained silent. I looked at Matilda, the same Mona Lisa smile on her face as always, and I offered up a prayer for the cold and aloof Sheila and her beautiful, loving daughter.
The bell above the door pinged and Tom walked in.
“Morning, ladies,” he said, and Heather descended into a fit of girlish giggles.
Rolling my eyes, I offered Tom a cup of coffee before he started work.
“Sure,” he said, looking over my shoulder at the stairs which led to Aoife’s flat.
“Is she not about then?” he asked.
“Didn’t she let you know? She’s gone back to Derry, Tom. Her mum took sick a couple of days ago and she left yesterday morning.”
“Will she be okay?”
For a moment I wondered if he was asking about Aoife or her mum, but deciding it must be the second I shrugged my shoulders. “From what I can gather, it’s pretty touch and go. I’m waiting to hear from her any time now.”
“Poor thing,” he said, lifting his tools and walking towards the yard.
It seemed he didn’t want a cup of coffee after all.
“He’s okay, isn’t he?” Heather asked, staring after him with a lustful look in her eyes. “Do you know if he is single?”
I knew he was technically single, but something told me he wasn’t available.
Chapter 46
Aoife
“The next twenty-four hours are critical.”
I was a bit of an ER addict and I was well used to hearing those words. But I never thought I would hear them in relation to my mother.
She
had survived the operation, but she needed life support to allow her body to recover, and even then, we were warned, she could crash at any time.
At any time doctors could flood into her room and stick paddles on her chest, shout “Clear!” and shock her back to life. It would be kind of exciting if it wasn’t so serious.
I sat up and rubbed the small of my back. My boobs were the size of watermelons, aching from not feeding my daughter in twelve hours. Dad and Joe were sitting staring at their shoes. Anna was looking out the window. I felt a bit like a spare piece – an extra in the scene. Sipping from the bottle of water Joe had brought up from the staff canteen for me, I looked at my watch – it was 2 a.m. I wondered how Maggie was. I felt an urge to be with her, to hold her. This was strange: on one hand there was my mother who needed me and on the other a defenceless little baby.
“I think I need to go to Maggie,” I said, standing up.
“She’ll be settled for the night now with Jacqueline,” Anna said, “but in any case you should be taking it easy. How about we get you home for some sleep? It’s been a long day.”
My father nodded, as did Joe, and I felt I couldn’t resist. I was tired and all I wanted was the comfort of Anna’s uber-floral bedroom.
“I’ll leave my mobile on,” I said. “Let me know if there’s any change.”
When we got home I had a shower, expressed some milk for Maggie and fell into bed. I didn’t sleep the best though, if I’m honest. I had weird dreams where Beth gave birth to my mother while Tom Austin looked on with a broad smile across his face.
In the morning I woke early and went to the kitchen. Anna was already up, drinking tea and saying the Rosary.
“It’s not like you to pray,” I said, rubbing her shoulders as I walked past.
“I figure it can’t hurt,” she said. “Every little is bound to help.”
“Just like Tesco,” I said, absently dropping two slices of plain bread into the toaster for breakfast.