Fractured

by Barker, Dawn

  * * *

  The following days and nights rushed by in a confusion of catnapping and crying. The books said to sleep when the baby did, but if Anna had done that, she wouldn’t have had time to get out of her pyjamas. Jack seemed to know the minute she closed her eyes: that was when he would wail. There was so much else to do too: washing, tidying, shopping. The books said to leave the housework until things settled down, but then she was more agitated about the mess. The books also said to eat properly, but she was too tired to get out of bed and prepare some food. Jack seemed to be feeding so much; every two or three hours he’d cry, Anna would prepare herself for the pain as he started to feed, then she would change him and try to settle him, and an hour later it would start again. It was relentless.

  As she fed Jack, she trawled the internet on her phone, trying to find out what she was doing wrong, but everything she read told her that this was normal. She couldn’t see how it was possible: how could people survive this?

  On the third night at home, Anna gave up hoping that she would sleep. She sat on the edge of her bed holding Jack, using her legs to bounce him up and down as she didn’t have the energy to stand up any more. It was after 3 a.m.; Jack hadn’t slept for longer than twenty minutes since they went to bed at nine. She had written it all down in her diary. She had fed him four times, but he wouldn’t stop fussing. Her mind was racing. Was she making enough milk? Her breasts felt empty. He obviously needed something from her that she wasn’t able to give him.

  She started to cry. She needed some help. Couldn’t Tony hear him crying? Hear her?

  ‘Shh, Jack … Shh …’

  But she was only making it worse; Jack screamed louder. It was as if he was in a trance. Anna knew that she was too tired and too upset to help him now. ‘Stop crying, please!’ She put Jack on the bed, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  Tony heard that. He came through to the bedroom, rubbing his eyes and yawning. ‘What’s happening?’

  She glared at him. How dare he yawn and look tired when he’d been fast asleep for hours? ‘Can’t you hear him? I haven’t been to sleep yet, I’ve fed him again and again, I don’t know what’s wrong, he won’t stop crying …’

  Tony picked up Jack from the bed. ‘Why didn’t you come and get me?’

  ‘What’s the point? You can’t feed him. I’m just so tired. Even an hour’s sleep … It’s been days and days and I haven’t slept for more than an hour or two. I can’t do it – I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Oh, Anna. I’m sorry, babe. You get into bed, I’ll take him through to the living room and just watch TV.’

  ‘You can’t have the TV on, it’ll overstimulate him!’

  ‘I’ll keep it quiet.’

  ‘It won’t work, he needs to be fed!’

  Tony patted Jack on the back with his right hand as he rocked him. ‘Why don’t we do what Mum suggested then and give him a bottle? It’ll give you a break, help him sleep —’

  ‘No! I want to breastfeed him. I’m not giving up already. I don’t need a quick fix, Tony, I need …’ She stopped as she saw Tony start to yawn. Adrenalin surged through her and she gritted her teeth. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just go back to bed, you have to work tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  She saw the hurt in Tony’s face, took a deep breath and made herself speak more gently. ‘Look, thanks – thanks for trying. It’s just that I want to breastfeed him. Mothers have done this for thousands of years, I’m not the only one. I just have to toughen up.’

  Jack’s cries were slowing down now. She looked at Tony holding him, and pushed away a feeling that she knew was jealousy. And rejection. Of course Jack would settle for Tony, she thought, make it look like she – his own mother – didn’t know what she was doing. ‘Do you want to try and put him down again?’

  Tony nodded and laid him in the bassinette. Jack fussed a little, but didn’t cry.

  ‘I’ll sleep in here with you tonight,’ Tony said. ‘Come on, get in.’ He held back the covers while she crawled into bed. She put her head down on Tony’s chest and cried. She didn’t know if they were tears of relief or shame.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Four days after

  Friday, 18 September 2009

  Wendy looked at the spines of Emily’s cookbooks on the shelf above the fridge. She reached up and took down one by a chef she’d seen on TV, then carried it over to the suede couch and sank into the cushions. She looked out through the glass doors that opened onto a large balcony, facing south towards the city. Even though the sky was overcast, the harbour still sparkled. The bridge curved like a rainbow, and she could just make out the white sails of the Opera House. Toy ferries zipped across the water, and miniature boats bobbed about in their wake. She could see why Anna chose to live in Sydney. Wendy thought back to her own cramped house and for a moment felt ashamed, then admonished herself. She had tried her best; it wasn’t easy raising a child on your own.

  She kicked off her thongs and curled her legs under her, then started to flick through the cookbook. It was no wonder Anna wouldn’t eat the hospital food – Wendy had seen the tray of lukewarm mashed-up meat casserole that they had brought her for dinner. It was awful to think of Anna being hungry: Wendy wanted to take her some home-cooked food. What did Anna eat these days? It was a long time since she’d cooked for her, and she suspected that Anna would have outgrown her macaroni cheese, made with a sachet of powdered cheese sauce. She needed to find a recipe for something nutritious; with some food in her, Anna was bound to feel better.

  Wendy scanned the pages, then sighed. She could never make these fancy meals; she hadn’t even heard of half the ingredients. She looked at her watch; it was already lunchtime. She had to go to the shops, buy everything she needed, make the food, and then get to the hospital by visiting time at three o’clock. Her heart sped up and she felt the familiar flurry in her belly. She didn’t have time. Anna needed to eat something, she had to eat, otherwise … she closed her eyes and spread her fingers out wide. She could see Anna having her first proper meal as a baby, wearing a blue smock and a pink bib. She had pureed apples all over her face, and a gummy grin. Wendy’s hands shook; she raised them up to her face as she cried. She let herself sob, really sob, for the first time. It didn’t matter; there was no one here to hear her.

  Her mobile phone rang from the bedroom. She ran across the soft carpet to the spare room. The sound was muffled; the phone was under the blankets somewhere on the unmade bed. It was Tony ringing.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Wendy?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, I …’ Wendy knew she sounded terrible.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I just … Bit of a cold. Is everything OK?’

  Tony paused. ‘I’m at the hospital. I was in seeing Anna, and talking to the psychiatrist.’ Wendy held her breath. ‘They think she’s got an infection or something. She’s not well, she’s got a fever —’

  ‘A fever? My God, what kind of infection? Is it bad?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’re calling in a medical specialist to see her, and they’re doing some blood tests.’ Wendy heard Tony’s voice break. ‘It’s just one thing after another. I told them that there was something else wrong, but they said they’d checked and that she was OK.’

  ‘Is this why she’s like this? Have they missed something?’

  ‘Dr Morgan said she didn’t know.’

  ‘But they’ve started ECT – what if it’s something else?’

  ‘I know! It’s like they just jumped to conclusions. I told them this wasn’t her, she’s never been like this before.’

  Wendy screwed her eyes shut, then opened them. ‘I’ll come now. I was just going … to make her something to eat, but I realised I don’t know what she likes any more.’ The tears started again.

  Wendy hung up, then called a cab. She quickly washed her face and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Grabbing her bag, she put her thongs back on and w
ent downstairs to wait for the taxi.

  * * *

  Tony leaned on the wall outside Anna’s hospital room, next to the closed door. A doctor was in there looking at her. He’d noticed how the doctor had hesitated before going in, then hung back behind the nurse, as if he was frightened of Anna. Were medical staff scared of everyone in a psychiatric ward, or just his wife? Tony should have insisted on being in the room while Anna was examined, but he hadn’t. Was fear to blame for that too? Was he any better than this doctor?

  He heard Wendy’s voice at the nurses’ station and walked back along the corridor to meet her. Her face was swollen and blotchy. She saw him, then walked towards him and hugged him. He felt her tears drip onto his shirt. He pulled back.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asked.

  ‘The doctor’s in there now. Come on, we’ll wait up there.’

  Wendy nodded. ‘God, I must look a state. I just left straightaway … I can’t bear to think that on top of all this, she’s sick too.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Not that she’s not sick – I mean, clearly she’s not well – but something else. I just don’t know —’

  Anna’s door opened. ‘He’s finished. Come on.’ He started walking down the corridor as the doctor came out.

  ‘Doctor? I’m Anna’s husband,’ Tony said when he was a few metres away.

  ‘Oh, hi.’ The doctor shook Tony’s hand.

  ‘And I’m her mum, Wendy.’

  ‘Good to meet you both. I’m Dr Nguyen.’

  The nurse, Rachel, came out of Anna’s room and closed the door behind her, then joined them.

  ‘What’s wrong with her, doctor?’ Wendy asked shakily.

  ‘She’s got a high temperature, and she says she doesn’t feel well, but it’s hard to get a history from her.’ Dr Nguyen clutched Anna’s notes to his chest. ‘There’s a few things it could be. When someone has a high temperature after starting antipsychotic medication, we do have to rule out a serious reaction to them. But her blood tests don’t seem to fit with that – they suggest that she’s got an infection somewhere.’

  ‘What kind of infection? They did head scans in Emergency,’ Tony said.

  Dr Nguyen shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s her brain – there was no sign of infection when she was admitted.’ He dropped his gaze just a little. ‘Mr Patton, Anna was breastfeeding, wasn’t she?’

  Tony nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘She was.’

  ‘I think she has a condition called mastitis.’ Dr Nguyen cleared his throat. ‘Her left breast is red and quite engorged. When someone stops … breastfeeding suddenly, the ducts can get blocked and the breast can get infected.’

  Tony heard a buzzing in his ears. He leaned back against the wall.

  ‘How do you treat it?’ Wendy said.

  ‘She needs antibiotics, but the best thing to do is for her to express milk, to clear the blockage.’

  ‘Express milk? We can’t ask her to …’ Tony looked at Wendy.

  Dr Nguyen carried on as if Tony hadn’t spoken. ‘The risk is that this can turn into an abscess, and that’s much harder to treat. We can use ultrasound to break down the blockage, or drain it surgically.’

  Tony couldn’t believe what he was hearing; shouldn’t someone have thought of this already? ‘How the hell can we explain that to her?’

  Dr Nguyen’s face went red and he looked at his feet. ‘I’ll talk to Dr Morgan and recommend some treatment, and I’ll write it in the notes.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Any other questions?’

  Tony was stunned.

  Dr Nguyen darted off with the file. Rachel squeezed Tony’s arm. ‘I’ll just go and let Dr Morgan know.’

  Tony looked at Wendy, ‘We’re going to have to tell her,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t, we can’t.’ Wendy’s voice shook. ‘She’s too sick, it’s too soon …’

  ‘We’ll have to! How can we tell her that she has to have a pump on, or people prodding and draining her breast? She’ll ask why! She needs to know.’

  ‘We should ask Dr Morgan, see if —’

  ‘It’s not up to Dr Morgan! Jesus, Anna has to find out sometime; I want to get it over with. She keeps asking about Jack, and I don’t know whether she genuinely doesn’t know, or …’ He ran his fingers through his hair. Or what? Did he think she was lying, pretending that she didn’t remember? Or had she blocked it out? He needed to see her reaction; it might help him figure everything out.

  He looked straight at Wendy. ‘When Dr Morgan gets here, I’ll do it. I’ll tell Anna what happened to Jack.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Four days after

  Friday, 18 September 2009

  Anna watched Dr Morgan disconnect the tube attached to the cannula in the back of her hand, then reconnect a plastic syringe full of pale yellow liquid. It could be anything in that syringe, but she didn’t care. As Dr Morgan squeezed the solution into her veins she felt nothing; it was as if it was someone else’s arm. She shivered, even though she could feel sticky sweat under her arms.

  Then she did feel something: an icy chill creeping up her hand and crawling up her forearm. She wanted to scratch it, but didn’t move. Her arms were too heavy, and she could barely lift her head. She lay back on the pillows, and shivered again.

  ‘Anna? That’s the antibiotics in now – you’ll feel better soon. Are you all right?’

  She managed to nod.

  Dr Morgan put the blue plastic kidney dish on the bed, then sat on the arm of the chair by the window. ‘Anna, Tony and your mum are here and want to see you.’

  Anna managed a smile. ‘He came back …’

  ‘He was with me when Rachel called about your temperature. He’s been very worried.’

  Anna thought about this carefully. Tony had been so angry with her, but if he was here then maybe he did still care for her. If he was really upset, then he would have left, wouldn’t he? Did he understand after all?

  ‘Anna, they want to talk to you about something, and Rachel and I would like to be part of that conversation too.’

  Anna nodded, knowing she couldn’t refuse. She wanted to talk to her mother and Tony too, but she didn’t want an audience. She wanted it to just be her family, not these strangers. A wave of heat washed over her; she dabbed at her upper lip with her finger, then wiped it dry on the sheet. She had a sudden urge to jump out of the bed and run, far away from this conversation that everyone wanted to have. But there was nothing she could do. There had never been anything that she could have done, this whole time. She had never had a choice.

  Dr Morgan went to the door of her room and held it open. Tony, Wendy and Rachel filed in. They looked so serious. Anna drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Her mum sat on the end of the bed, and stroked Anna’s bare foot like she used to when she was a child. She was torn between kicking out at her and wriggling closer. Tony dragged a chair to the head of the bed. It creaked when he sat down on the vinyl cushion, a coarse noise followed by a puff of air. She had to stifle a laugh. Tony didn’t laugh: he looked like he’d been crying. Anna clasped her hands together to stop them shaking. Suddenly she didn’t want to hear what they had to say.

  She turned towards the sound of the door closing. Dr Morgan leaned against it; next to her, Rachel stood against the wall. This room was too small for them all. Anna couldn’t get her chest to expand properly; there wasn’t enough air in the room.

  No one said anything; they seeemed to be waiting for something. She looked around at everyone. Was she meant to start?

  She tried to make her voice sound bright. ‘Tony? Mum?’

  Wendy let out a sob and buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, darling.’

  What was going on? The throb of her headache quickened. Everything was so strange, like she was here but she wasn’t. ‘Mum, it’s OK.’ She knew that, somehow, she was the cause of all this: the crying, the anger, the upset. She had never wanted to drag anyone else into this.

 
‘I’m OK.’ Wendy squeezed Anna’s foot. ‘I’m OK, don’t worry about me.’

  She had heard that before, too many times. It had always been like this: her mum would cry, Anna would worry, her mum would reassure her, and Anna would worry even more.

  Tony cleared his throat. Anna stared at him, silently pleading with him; she didn’t want him to say anything.

  ‘Anna, you know you’ve had a fever and the doctors have been trying to find out what’s wrong. Well, they think you’ve got an infection …’

  She shook her head and let her tears drop. ‘It’s all right Tony, it’s not true, I know it. I’ve worked it out.’

  ‘What? It is true, what do you think —’

  ‘I know where I am.’

  ‘Where do you think you are?’

  Anna looked away. ‘You’ve locked me up. It’s OK. It’s the best place for me.’

  ‘Anna, no. Jesus …’ He sat forward and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Well, it is a psychiatric hospital, but you do have an infection. From breastfeeding.’

  Anna froze. She glanced down at her chest and an image of a tiny baby nursing flashed before her eyes. She refused to see it. ‘I’m not breastfeeding.’

  ‘But you were – you were breastfeeding Jack,’ Tony said softly.

  Anna clenched her jaw and looked at the wall straight in front of her. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Jack? Is that who you mean?’

  ‘What have you done with him?’

  Tony stood up. ‘What have I done with him? I haven’t done anything with him, Anna!’

  She stared at the wall in front of her and focused on a black smudge. Was it a squashed bug, a mosquito maybe? Her head shook, and she tried to keep her eyes still, fixed on that little black spot.

  ‘Anna!’ Tony took a step towards her, but Wendy held out her arm and he stopped.

  ‘Anna,’ Wendy said. ‘What Tony’s trying to say is, there has been a horrible, horrible tragedy. I’m so sorry … but Jack’s gone.’

  The black smudge was getting bigger in front of her eyes; it was blurry now, and Anna couldn’t keep her eyes on it. She looked away from the wall and stared at her mum. What had she said? Wendy looked pale, and thinner than ususal. Something wasn’t right. She turned to Tony. He didn’t look right either. Was it really them? He raised his face and Anna looked into his brown eyes; those were the eyes she knew. So what was going on? She felt so light that she thought she could almost float away off this bed, over all of them and out of the door. Tony was still staring. It was almost more than she could bear. What did he see when he looked at her?