A Nurse in Crisis

by Lilian Darcy

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘I’m beginning to suspect very strongly that whatever has gone wrong between Aimee and myself is very largely due to the fact that she’s sensitive about your hostility, and somehow I’m going to get you removed from the equation so that I have a fighting chance of winning what I want.’ He gave a jerky, forceful sigh. ‘Rebecca, I know you care about me. Can’t you accept that championing my cause the way you’ve been doing is only achieving the very thing you’ve been afraid of on my behalf?’

  ‘Do you really think that’s what it is, Dad?’ she argued, frowning. ‘If it was just that, then surely—’

  ‘I’m not interested in arguing about it, or in theorising about the possibilities, gypsy,’ he barked huskily. ‘Just go and apologise, and let’s at least see if we can get back to square one.’

  ‘If you—’

  ‘Just…do…it!’ Although he hadn’t raised his voice, its power was unmistakable.

  She nodded, accepting the strength of his will, and he almost laughed at the struggle she was having to keep back her flow of words. ‘Now?’ she squeaked at last.

  ‘Now,’ he confirmed briskly. ‘Harry will have dinner ready for when you get back. I’ll tell him what’s going on. Here’s her address. I’ve driven past it. It’s one of those featureless 1960s red-brick buildings that stick out like a sore thumb in that area. I almost thought I must have got the address wrong at first. But you can’t miss it. There should be parking in one of the side streets.’

  ‘You’re being very helpful all of a sudden.’

  ‘You’ve just seen the iron fist, now I’ve put on the velvet glove, but don’t be fooled.’

  There was a surprising exhilaration in taking control like this, he found, showing what he felt instead of manfully bottling it up as he’d been struggling to do for months. He suddenly felt as virile as a man of half his age, and as strong as the horse conjured up by his imagination.

  ‘Oh, there’s no danger of that!’ Rebecca said hastily.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, because this is a side to my nature that you may be seeing more of in the future!’ he threatened with grim emphasis.

  ‘I’ll…look forward to it,’ Rebecca replied faintly.

  They found Harry leaning on the black iron railing out the front, looking quite relaxed as he enjoyed the mild evening air.

  ‘All fixed up?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m being sent on an urgent mission to Aimee,’ Rebecca said, her colour still high. She had a rebellious cloud over her features, but when Harry raised his eyebrows she conceded in a jerky tone, ‘Dad’s right. I haven’t meant to, but I’ve made things worse. Hope I’ve got the tact to start undoing the damage now.’

  ‘I have every faith in you, dearest,’ Harry told her solemnly, then he and Marshall watched as Rebecca climbed into her car, parked in the street, and drove away.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Harry asked laconically after she’d gone.

  ‘Remember when I decided to take a helpful hand in your courtship?’ Marshall reminded his son-in-law.

  ‘Take it slowly, you told me,’ Harry agreed. ‘Not the best advice you’ve ever given, Marsh.’

  ‘No. Quite. I should have stayed well out of the whole thing. Now it’s Rebecca’s turn to prove that she can do likewise.’

  ‘I can see where my wife gets her spirit from at times like this,’ Harry mused, casting his eyes up and down Marshall’s form as if he could see the energy that radiated from it. ‘Coming in for a drink?’

  ‘Please!’ Marshall answered his son-in-law fervently.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN she put down the phone after her conversation with Marshall, Aimee went briskly to her small bedroom to change into a soft, summery knit skirt and T-shirt, and kicked off shoes and pantihose to leave her feet bare.

  She’d done the right thing, and she wasn’t going to spend the entire evening dwelling on the matter, playing their exchange over and over in her mind. There were other things on her agenda.

  The flat was starting to feel like home at last. She’d been here for over a month now, and everything was sorted out. The excess furniture had been disposed of, and all her boxes had been unpacked.

  She’d looked at her budget and decided she could afford to splash out a little, giving a lift to the place by adding a tub of flowering annuals to the tiny balcony and two new prints on the walls, both of them landscapes with far more appeal than the view from her windows.

  Spending so carefully, it had reminded her of the way she’d stretched her housekeeping money during her marriage, and she’d concluded, I can do this. I’m used to it. I’m doing it for a different reason now, and no one’s going to suddenly turn up with a necklace or a new dress or the announcement that we’re getting a new lounge suite. There’s no safety net, as there used to be, but it’s still something I’ve done before.

  She’d even painted the kitchen the previous weekend, with the landlord’s permission, choosing four different modern colours to pick out trim and cabinets and handles so that the room looked bright and pretty, with its boxy, cramped proportions somewhat disguised.

  William had visited a couple of times. At nineteen, he’d been too caught up in his own concerns to question her about her choice of living space. The name ‘Emily’ had come up several times, spoken with a sort of misty-eyed reverence, coupled with a gruff and artificial offhandedness that confirmed Aimee’s earlier suspicions. William was in love, had hopes of success, but wasn’t yet counting his emotional chickens. She felt for him. No wonder he didn’t have much time to think about his dear old mum!

  However, Aimee knew that Sarah, when she got there in a few minutes, would probably be more critical and questioning about her mother’s new home but, like any new parent about to leave her baby for the first time, she would be more concerned with Bonnie than anything else.

  And so it proved. Sarah and Jason arrived a little late and very flustered, in the midst of an argument about whose job it had been to feed the cat.

  ‘We forgot the nappy bag and had to go back,’ Sarah said. She held a sleeping Bonnie in her arms.

  ‘Where do you want the bassinet?’ Jason asked. He had it by the handles, and its wicker creaked as he swung it a little.

  ‘In the bedroom,’ Aimee decided.

  ‘Which…?’

  ‘There’s only one. The other door is just the linen cupboard,’ she told him. ‘Put the bassinette on the bed.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you’d chosen somewhere so small,’ Sarah said.

  ‘It’s all I need,’ Aimee pointed out crisply. ‘I’m planning on spending a fair bit of time at your place!’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t leave her. We won’t paint her room after all,’ Sarah suddenly decided.

  Aimee had been prepared for this, and had her arguments ready. First, she was a nurse. Second, she was a grandmother, and she’d had babies herself. They weren’t a different species. She and Bonnie would be fine, both of them! And help was only a phone call away. It wasn’t as if Sarah and Jason were leaving town.

  ‘Ring up on the mobile,’ Jason urged. ‘Don’t hesitate. The moment you need us.’

  ‘It’ll be fine!’

  At four weeks of age, Bonnie was still mainly on tube feeds of expressed breast milk, as well as the occasional bolus feed via a bottle. She was starting to understand what was required of her when confronted with an actual breast, but wasn’t yet taking nearly enough that way to gain weight through the natural approach alone.

  In addition, her doctors still felt that larger feeds made the danger of painful and damaging reflux much greater at a time when the site of her surgery had still only just healed. But since Bonnie wasn’t taking her milk directly from the breast, there was absolutely no reason why Aimee couldn’t manage the set programme of feeds, as well as changing a nappy or two as necessary.

  ‘Now, with the tube—’ Sarah began, as Bonnie stirred into semi-wakefulness.

  ‘I know about tubes,’ Aimee
promised, and after only ten minutes more of anxious parental questions and eager grandmotherly reassurances Sarah and Jason were persuaded on their way. Bonnie, in the bassinet on Aimee’s bed, was now happily asleep again.

  Three minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Aimee had been more than half expecting it, and she was so sure it would be Sarah and Jason, announcing that they couldn’t do it or they’d forgotten to tell her something vital, that she hauled the door open with an indulgent smile on her face and actually gasped at the sight of Rebecca, her cloud of dark hair framing an uneasy expression.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’ Rebecca asked eagerly at once, as if she was rather hoping it would be.

  ‘No,’ Aimee answered her carefully. ‘I was expecting my daughter and son-in-law, that’s all. They’ve left Bonnie with me for the first time, and they were very nervous. I thought they’d rushed back in a fit of remorse.’

  Rebecca laughed dutifully on cue, and Aimee thought to herself, Why do I bother? Why do I pretend everything’s fine? Why do I try to cajole her into liking me with lame humour? Why do I persist in fighting this losing battle?

  ‘Can I come in?’ Rebecca asked, with unusual diffidence.

  ‘Of course.’

  She stood aside, and Rebecca stepped into the flat.

  There was no entrance hall. The front door opened directly into the living room, where Rebecca looked stranded amidst the still slightly too crowded furnishings.

  ‘I’ve come to apologise,’ she said, before Aimee could come out with an offer of refreshment.

  ‘For what?’ she questioned cautiously.

  ‘For questioning your right to accept Dad’s invitation to Marianne Deutschkron’s wedding.’

  ‘Did he send you?’ Aimee asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Rebecca admitted at once. ‘But don’t think that I’m here reluctantly.’

  ‘You look reluctant.’

  ‘That’s rather in the nature of apologies, isn’t it?’ She laughed awkwardly, but there had been a quiet sincerity to her tone. ‘No matter how right it is, and how much you want to do it, it’s never fun.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Aimee answered slowly.

  ‘Can we perhaps talk about—?’Rebecca began, then there came an odd snorting, gagging sound and a cry from the bedroom.

  ‘Bonnie!’ Aimee exclaimed, and darted to open the door.

  ‘That didn’t sound quite right,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘No, it didn’t. She’s just woken up, obviously, but what was that sound?’

  Aimee soon discovered what had happened.

  Bonnie had somehow managed to pull out the nasogastric tube through which most of her nutrition now came. It had become untaped from her face and was clutched in her hand, a victim of the grasp reflex, and it was snaking back and forth across Bonnie’s tightly screwed-up face as she cried and flapped her tiny arms up and down.

  Sarah’s precious milk, which should have been trickling drop by drop through the tube and into Bonnie’s stomach, driven by a carefully calibrated pump, was covering her in a spray of tiny white droplets.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Aimee said blankly to Rebecca, trying not to panic.

  She picked up the crying baby and began to comfort her, feeling the rush of almost painful tenderness and love which had been a part of her response to Bonnie since her birth.

  The baby had filled out a little now, but was still tiny, and her black birth hair had almost disappeared. In the right light, you could just see, with the help of a little wishful thinking, the golden glints of newer, fairer hair growing through. She was utterly precious, and if anything at all went wrong…

  With the tube out of the way, however, her crying soon stopped and she was perfectly happy, but Aimee and Rebecca both knew that the problem wasn’t over.

  ‘Rebecca, could you get it back in?’ Aimee asked anxiously. ‘How much of an emergency is this?’

  ‘I could try,’ Rebecca said slowly. They’d both forgotten the subject of the interrupted conversation in the face of this more urgent issue. ‘But I wouldn’t really feel comfortable about it.’

  ‘Then should we take her to the hospital, and get it done there?’

  ‘Best, I think,’ Rebecca agreed. ‘If there was no other option, I’d do it and there’d probably be no problem, but it can be very tricky after the sort of surgery she’s had, and I’m not familiar with all the details of her case. Is she still on any drugs?’

  ‘Yes, a couple to try and deal with her reflux. Something that helps her muscles push the milk through more efficiently and a drug to lower the acidity of her stomach juices so they don’t damage the site of her surgery. She’s healing well, though, and Jason and Sarah are handling her care at home wonderfully.’

  ‘Do you want to phone them?’ Rebecca asked.

  Aimee thought for a moment, then decided aloud, ‘I won’t, I don’t think. I would if you weren’t here, but they so badly needed this evening. They’ve been under so much strain for the past few months. They had her room all prepared for painting, too, before heading out to dinner. They’d shifted the furniture and put down drop sheets and taped the trim. If they don’t get it done tonight…But that’s not really the issue, of course. I feel if I phone them in a panic now, they’ll decide that it’s wrong of them to try to get time to themselves, and with all the extra care that Bonnie needs…’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Rebecca soothed. ‘You don’t want any of the four of you to fall at the first hurdle. We’ll be fine. It really isn’t an emergency, just a nuisance. I’ll come with you and see you safely through it all, and I’m tempted to tell you not to even say anything about it to them, except that I know they wouldn’t thank you for that.’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t,’ Aimee agreed. ‘All right, we won’t ring them. I have a baby capsule fitted in my car. We’ll drive straight to Southshore. Thanks, Rebecca.’

  ‘I’ll just phone Harry and tell him not to expect me for a while.’

  Rebecca took a mobile phone out of her bag and made the call, not troubling to hide the teasing tenderness in her voice as she spoke to her husband. Putting the little instrument away a few moments later, she looked at Aimee. ‘Ready?’

  Bonnie was happy to be in the car and went straight back to sleep. Aimee had to talk herself out of an absurd fear that the weight would simply start falling off her fragile body during this enforced absence of feeding. What if the accident and emergency department was crowded? What if they had to wait for hours? Beside her in the passenger seat, Rebecca didn’t need her to explain her tension, and was alert to how distracted she was as well.

  ‘Watch out for that red car up ahead,’ she warned at one point. ‘It’s changed lanes twice now without indicating.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Aimee said for the second time in just a few minutes.

  ‘Please, don’t keep saying that,’ Rebecca answered, and they were both thinking about all the conflict between them over the past few months. There was a silence, in which Rebecca shifted several times. It could simply have been the increasing discomfort of her pregnancy—Aimee’s car was by no means roomy—but she knew it wasn’t.

  Finally, Rebecca said, ‘I’ve left you in no doubt how I feel about the problems between you and Dad, have I, Aimee?’

  ‘No, no doubt at all,’ she agreed, reluctant to break the strange peace that had grown between them because of their shared concern over Bonnie.

  ‘You don’t seem like the sort of person who’d deliberately use him, or trample over his feelings.’

  ‘I—Well, no, I’m not.’

  ‘Yet you know how hurt he is. I’m not accusing or attacking. I just don’t understand. I know I’m overprotective—’

  ‘Is that all it is? You seem to dislike me so very strongly.’

  ‘Not at all! But Dad has no one but me. Simon is on the other side of the world. Dad has friends, but they’re not people he confides in. He was brought up to be reserved about his personal life. Even to me. I’m not ashamed t
o say I’ll champion his cause to the point of coming across as a complete shrew—just talk to me, Aimee!’ she interrupted herself passionately. ‘Tell me why you threw my father’s care for you back in his face!’

  ‘Because it wouldn’t have been fair to do anything else,’ Aimee said.

  ‘To whom? To him?’

  ‘To him. To you and your brother. To myself.’

  She turned into the hospital entrance, relieved that they’d almost arrived. Another minute of Rebecca’s determined probing would have her dangerously close to telling the whole story of her changed circumstances, which she remained determined not to do.

  ‘I’ll pull into the bay beside the A and E entrance,’ she told Rebecca. ‘We’ll get Bonnie out of the car, then I’ll go and park while you take her in, if that’s all right.’

  ‘It’s fine. But I don’t—’

  ‘I have reasons, Rebecca, for what I’ve done,’ she said firmly. ‘I didn’t do it lightly. But it’s private. And it’s hurt me…been as hard for me as it’s been for your father. Please, can we say no more about it?’

  The accident and emergency department was fairly busy, but not yet filled with the inevitable Friday late night crew of cases related to alcohol and drug abuse. The triage nurse on duty placed Bonnie near the head of the queue, and she was soon taken into a cubicle where another nurse reinserted the tube.

  Although it took only a minute or two, it was painful to watch, and Aimee had tears in her eyes by the time the tube was in place. Bonnie struggled and gagged, brought up saliva and had to be suctioned—Rebecca stepped into assist with this—and she went on crying even once the job was done and the tape was in place.

  That tape! It was irritating her sensitive new skin, making it red and rough. It made her look like a child who’d been ill, and added to her aura of fragility.

  And the thing wasn’t over. Next, Bonnie had to be wheeled off to X-Ray to check that the tube was positioned correctly in order to avoid any risk of the end of it irritating the sites of her surgery.

  ‘Bad news,’ the nurse reported when she returned from X-ray. ‘Not quite right this time—I’m sorry.’