by Jane Shemilt
David had examined her behind the screen, his gloved fingers probing painfully, but he informed them afterwards that he’d found nothing amiss. Albie had squeezed her hand and she was unable to speak, she hadn’t allowed herself to hope. Her blood tests were normal too, but David advised a hysterosalpingogram to outline her uterus and fallopian tubes with dye, just to be sure. He shook Albie’s hand. She took the leaflet the receptionist gave her and on the pavement outside began to weep. Albie hugged her. Clasped and stumbling they made their way to an Italian restaurant on the corner where they drank a toast to the future and Albie wrote lists of baby names on a napkin.
Albie phoned from the hospital on the day of her test. ‘I’m so sorry, darling, it seems I can’t join you after all, but you should go ahead. We’ve waited a long time for this. Forgive me. There’s a neck to stabilise. An alcoholic; she smashed up her car and in the process—’
‘It’s okay, Albie.’ She didn’t want the details, she could imagine them: the smell of alcohol, broken glass in tangled hair, pools of blood on the tarmac, images that had haunted her for years. It would be better to be alone anyway, easier. Something could yet be revealed, a minor legacy of the pregnancy, enough to give her away. She was careful not to sound relieved.
The nurse draped towels over her bent knees to cover her pelvis and explained what would be done in a breathy whisper that smelt of coffee and biscuits. A series of increasingly thick probes would be inserted to stretch the cervix before a catheter was introduced, down which the radiopaque dye would be injected to outline the uterus and fallopian tubes along their length. David stood by silently during the explanation; he was offhand today as though without her husband she was less worthy of attention. She tightened her fists under the sheet. This would be over soon. In just a few minutes she would be able to leave, phone Albie; the future would begin.
The metal probe is cold; it slips easily, too easily, through the opening of the cervix. A stretched cervix means childbirth, biological evidence, the lie revealed. She hasn’t thought this through; David might inform Albie. Sweat gathers along her neck as she watches the radiopaque dye flow into the pear-shaped uterus on the screen by her side. David smiles down at her, a professional smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘The uterine cavity looks fine, Beth. No suggestion of fibroids or any other obstruction.’
He tilts the screen further towards her so she can see the smooth outline of dye filling her womb while he makes measurements of the lining and thickness of the wall.
‘All completely normal so far.’ Relieved, she raises her head to look more closely. ‘Keep still, please,’ he tells her sharply. ‘There may be a little discomfort as the dye spills out into the pelvic cavity.’
The nurse moves around the room behind her then settles her bulky frame on the seat close to Beth’s face; it’s as though Beth’s head and pelvis have become disconnected, each being separately attended to. David is talking about his summer holidays in Cornwall next week, but his words peter into silence. She waits for the discomfort; the dye is taking a while to spill out. After a few minutes, David leans forward abruptly. She cranes to see past his shoulders to the screen where the lines of dye stop abruptly a few millimetres out from the uterus. The image is different from the picture on the leaflet where delicate white arms had stretched out on either side of the womb; at their far ends the pale radiopaque liquid had feathered out into the darkness of the pelvis. Instead of fine limbs, the screen reveals balloons of distended tissue, the trapped dye inflating the truncated tubes.
The room is very quiet; the pain turns out not to be in her pelvis but in the centre of her chest, as if the fibres of her heart were breaking apart. The nurse puts a pudgy hand on Beth’s knee, but Beth moves her leg away sharply. David looks down at her, his face impassive.
‘When you are ready, come into my office on the third floor.’
She dresses in haste, pushing her feet clumsily into shoes and bundling her jacket under an arm. When she enters his office, David is leaning against the side of his desk staring at his shoes; brogues, the shiny leather laced so tightly that his pink socks bulge where the leather cuts into his flesh. His expression is impersonal, though moments earlier she had been half naked in front of him. She sits down, smoothing her skirt over her knees, and waits.
‘I’m sorry to report that the dye failed to penetrate the length of the fallopian tubes.’ He pauses to let her absorb what he is saying, but she knows already and she knows what it means; she knew the instant she saw the images on the screen.
‘The tubes are damaged, rather badly as it happens.’ His tone is bland; he could be discussing the weather. ‘Eggs can’t therefore pass from the ovaries down the tubes to the uterus and it follows they will be unavailable for fertilisation.’ He pauses again. He must have been taught to give the patient time but she wants this to end quickly. She keeps her face quite still. Doctors get the bad news out of the way first. She sits motionless; in a minute he will say that nevertheless a child is still possible by some new technique he is developing. She digs her fingers into her palms; she must wait for those words.
‘The usual cause of a blockage is previous infection leading to scarring.’ Another long pause. His cheeks are shiny and smoothly puffed, incongruous considering the white hair; perhaps he has had plastic surgery, done cheaply as a favour by a colleague. If she threw something at him, a cupful of dye for instance, it would slide off that stretched surface without leaving a mark. She closes her eyes.
She never knew what the nurses called her; a baby or a moving foetus. She had asked to be left alone. She held her nipple against the tiny mouth that seemed to open as if trying to suckle, but then, nothing. The mouth closed, she stopped moving after ten minutes. The colour changed, pink to blue. Afterwards Beth couldn’t remember how long they’d had together, half an hour, maybe less. When they took her baby away she dressed and walked out; she wasn’t supposed to go before being checked but she left anyway. The pain and temperature built over days. She made it to the funeral, just her and a priest, rain falling from a dark grey sky. She put snowdrops on the tiny coffin. A day later a fetid discharge developed, later still she crawled to the GP for antibiotics. She went back to work after two weeks, needing the money for rent. Sorrow sank below anger; she never contacted Ted again. Some months later he began to phone and when she didn’t answer he tracked her down and came knocking. She hid in the dark till he gave up; it was too late. The damage was done, though she had no idea then how much. She moved from neurosurgery theatres to orthopaedics. When she saw Ted in the distance down a corridor she chose another route. A year went by before she heard about the party.
‘… unlikely to yield a positive result. In my opinion, the scarring is too widespread for surgery; the infection must have persisted a while, the damage would be extensive.’
There will be no other child then, no other daughter. On David’s desk a great bunch of lilies are jammed into a glass vase; the heavy scent fills the room, obscenely sweet. The snowdrops had smelt simply of earth. She stares at the thick white petals as she holds back tears, wanting to smash the vase, trample the flowers into a juicy pulp on the carpet; the damage would be extensive.
‘… IVF, of course, with a thirty-two per cent chance of a viable pregnancy.’
David smiles. She doesn’t understand why; that percentage, far less than half, appals her. She doesn’t smile back. He walks around the desk, sits in the wide chair, wriggling a little to make himself comfortable. ‘You will want to discuss this with Albie, and then we should meet, all three of us, to work out the way forward.’ His plump hands pat the table gently.
Albie is happy, they both are. If she tells him the truth, his happiness will turn to anguish. He will blame her, though he wouldn’t admit that; he might turn away from her at meals, in the house, in bed. Silence would grow between them in the place where a child might have been. She links her hands tightly across her pelvis. She could undergo IVF in secret maybe, but the odds against
success are too high, failure would be unendurable. It would be like losing her baby all over again. If she tells Albie, he might want to try many times and the strain of that would pull their marriage apart. If she stays silent they still have a future, they have each other.
She stands. ‘This information is to be kept between us. If my husband ever hears about this, I will know where it has come from and I will sue you for breach of confidentiality.’
David’s pink face becomes deep red. For the first time he seems to be registering emotion, but whether anger or fear is hard to tell. He leans forward and clears his throat, but before he can say anything she walks out of the room.
‘That’s wonderful news; what a relief!’ Albie throws his bag in the corner of the bedroom and hugs her, wrapped as she is in a towel, still wet from her shower. ‘I knew it. It’s just a matter of focus and time, like everything else. God, how marvellous.’
‘I can’t breathe, Albie.’
‘Sorry.’ He unlocks his hold, still smiling. ‘So when are we seeing him again?’
She walks into the bathroom and presses a flannel to her eyes. After a while she calls out, ‘We’re not.’
‘It’s usual to have a follow-up.’ Albie’s puzzled voice floats through to her.
‘No point.’ She dumps the flannel in the laundry basket, turns on the bath taps and walks back into the bedroom. ‘There’s nothing more to do. I told him how busy you are.’ It’s not a lie. There is nothing more to do, or at least, nothing more she will agree to do.
‘If you’re sure.’ He watches her drop the towel, hook on her bra, slip on pants.
‘Hurry.’ She gives him a little push. ‘Ed’s party. Your bath is running. I’ll come and talk to you.’
‘Are you still up to going?’
‘This is the night Ted officially gives you the lab; of course I’m up to going.’
She sits on the side of the bath, looks down at him. The shining planes of his body are half submerged, the wide chest, flat stomach, broad shoulders. His large hands. The tired eyes. The whole of him, everything she has.
‘Thank God the tests worked out. Things are getting complicated with that Viromex deal.’ He slides under the surface of the water and re-emerges, his hair matted and streaming. She rubs shampoo into his scalp; he sighs and closes his eyes. ‘I didn’t want to tell you while you were waiting for the test, but there’s been a hold-up; the payout will be delayed. Money could be tight for a while yet.’
‘A hold-up?’
‘More work is needed, there have been problems. Viromex won’t pay us till we’re finished.’
‘What kind of problems?’
‘There’s some research out there, poor quality, admittedly, but the premise is similar to ours. Patients with malignant melanoma were treated with intravenous varicella virus to switch on their immunity. Two had a fatal reaction.’ He dips his head back under the water then pulls himself out of the bath; she hands him a towel and he wraps it round his waist. She takes another towel off the rack and he sits on the edge of the bath as she rubs his hair. ‘It seems their immunity was primed by a previous infection with the same virus. The patients who died had organ failure.’
‘Why wasn’t everyone affected?’
He pulls his head free. ‘Not everyone would have been infected previously; besides, these kind of reactions are very rare. Their research sounds faulty too; the patients who died received too much virus.’ He walks through to the bedroom and sits heavily on the bed. ‘In any case, Viromex would have repeated our studies on their own rats just to be sure. Drug companies don’t like risk. All the same, Ted says we should start all over again.’
‘Did any rats in your own experiments get an immune response when they were infused?’
He shakes his head. ‘They’d been brought up in a sterile environment. They hadn’t met the virus before, so there was no chance of a dangerous immune reaction.’
‘What now?’ She puts a hand on his knee; under the warm skin the bone feels wide and hard. Viking bone, fighting stock.
‘More work. Bruce has been instructed to inject virus into the abdomens of a new cohort of rats, then he’ll infuse their brains with the same virus after a couple of months.’
‘And if they die?’
‘Viromex would reject the deal.’ He gets up and walks to the wardrobe, yanking it open so the hangers jump and jangle. ‘The payout and the royalties would be cancelled. I’d have to start all over again.’
She moves to the window. Beyond their back garden she can see the rear of a Victorian house split into flats like theirs. A rectangle of light flares from the window of the top flat; a little boy in pyjamas runs into a bedroom and jumps on the bed. If Albie starts again, it will be a long time before children get the treatment. He could be in the lab for months, years maybe. Long hours and late nights. He could be tempted in ways that haven’t yet occurred to her. It hadn’t occurred to Jenny that her husband would be tempted, but if this is retribution, she has already paid her dues. It’s Ted’s turn now.
‘Given Viromex run through the same process again, does your trial need to be done exactly as you describe? Who’d know if you didn’t?’
He wrenches his shirt out of the wardrobe. ‘Everyone in the lab, though the irritating thing is the chances of a reaction are minute.’
‘What if there are no chances?’
‘What do you mean?’ He puts on the shirt and buttons it up. ‘We can’t eliminate the possibility of a reaction.’
She looks out of the window again. The child is still bouncing on the bed, his dark fringe rising and falling on his forehead; with each leap she winces as if he were jumping on her body.
The tubes are damaged, rather badly as it happens.
Her hand goes to her lower abdomen, fingers spread out. A tall woman enters the room opposite, hair scooped into a ponytail. She moves swiftly between Beth and the boy, the curtains are drawn, cutting her out. The child disappears from view.
Her new black dress is hanging on the door where she put it ready earlier; she slides it over her head and in that instant an idea develops fully, as if it has been hiding in the dark folds of silk. She pulls her head free and faces him across the room. ‘What if the chances of a reaction could be eliminated?’
‘Impossible. Bruce will follow the protocol, the vaccines have been ordered, it’s all set to go.’
She comes close, whispering, as though someone else were in the room, listening. ‘There might be things that can be altered …’ Her voice trails off, she studies his face.
‘You can’t alter a trial.’ He steps back. ‘It would be unethical, far too risky. What if a child died?’
A child has died already because of Ted, her child. Ted had power over her once. He has Albie in his grasp, but power can be wrested away.
‘Progress is always risky. People die in the process, but many, many more live.’
‘We need to go,’ he says, as if he hasn’t heard her.
She sprays lavender scent on her neck and arms, then switches off the light, turning to him as they leave the room. ‘Hundreds of children could benefit from your treatment, Albie. Thousands. This trial needs to be successful if the treatment is to reach them.’
‘The trial has to go ahead as planned,’ he says quietly. ‘But bless you for trying to help.’
She doesn’t answer. In the car he shivers as if cold or sickening with a virus. She takes his hand. There are so many kinds of heat: heat of the moment, heat of battle, hot-blooded courage. As he manoeuvres the car through the streets, she imagines her heat creeping from her hand and into his skin, then travelling along the veins to his heart.
12
London. Autumn 2017
Intermission.
An old man steps out in front of the curtains. He is wearing a bow tie and a waistcoat under his white coat. His voice is reassuring; a doctor, obviously, the old-fashioned type.
‘Surgeons know all about wounds.’ He smiles around at the members of
the audience; they stare back, startled, their mouths full of ice cream.
‘We inflict them daily.’ He produces a card from the pocket of his white coat with a flourish, then he gropes in his waistcoat for bifocals; thus equipped, he begins to read.
‘A wound is an injury to living tissue, caused by a cut, blow or any other impact. To inflict a wound means to injure, hurt, damage, harm. Scathe. Cause a scar.’ He twinkles round at the crowd. ‘Wounds can be open or closed. Clean or dirty. Superficial or deep. They can be life-changing.’
At the party they separate as if the weight of what they discussed is too heavy to carry between them. He watches her weave into the crowd, then he picks up a drink. The room looks more glamorous than he remembers; an interior designer has been at work. The walls are dark grey silk now, there are more paintings, large ones arranged in heavy frames to ceiling height. Enormous red sofas are crammed full of people, talking and drinking. Other guests are outside on a balcony where flames in iron boxes leap high against the black sky. There are colleagues from the hospital and other, unfamiliar faces – possibly from a moneyed art world; he’s heard Jenny is successful now. He tours the walls, sipping wine. He recognises her work: seascapes mostly, gunmetal waves and smoky skies, layered cliffs. A bleak sweep of grey pebbles, all the shades of grief. His mind touches on the lost daughter, the difficult teenager who didn’t return. Ted doesn’t speak of her; the tragedy is never discussed, but what compensations might it have allowed, still allow? Perhaps there’s a girlfriend in this very room, hidden in the crowd of guests. He wouldn’t put it past Ted.