Your Guilty Lies (ARC)

by Ruth Heald

  Sitting in the back of the taxi, another contraction washes over me and I rock forward and then back as I count it out, the seat belt straining against me. The pain is manageable, I tell myself. I can do this.

  I feel more relaxed than I imagined I would. I wish Ian was here with me now, going through this with me, but I know I’m lucky to have Paula. She knows exactly what she’s doing. Before we left for the hospital she made me take a lukewarm bath to help with the pain. She examined me again just before we got into the taxi, and reassured me that everything is going smoothly. I’m in safe hands.

  In between contractions, I reach into my pocket for my phone. I try to call Ian, but it goes straight to voicemail. I hang up as another contraction seizes me and I double over in the back seat.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Paula asks.

  ‘I’m coping,’ I say, when I get my breath back.

  Paula rubs my leg. ‘You can do this. This is what your body was made for. Do you want me to call anyone for you?’ She indicates the phone in my hand.

  ‘No,’ I say. Amy’s still housebound, and it would be too stressful to have my mother there.

  So it’s just me and Paula. And I’m actually pleased about that. I can just focus on myself and my babies.

  * * *

  In my room on the labour ward, the midwife turns to Paula. ‘Are you a relative?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I’m a doula.’

  The midwife frowns at her and then turns to me. ‘Anything you’re concerned about?’

  I glance at Paula, remembering her examining me. ‘I’ve had a bit of bleeding.’

  ‘Probably nothing to worry about. I’ll check you over anyway.’

  I nod, unable to speak as another contraction rocks through me, taking my breath away.

  Paula reaches out and touches my arm. ‘I know it’s scary, but it will be alright. I’ve done this lots of times before.’

  I think of Ian in Thailand. By the time he’s back, the babies will be here. I reach into my pocket for my phone to try and call him again, but then the midwife starts hooking me up to the monitor. I’m afraid and excited. The pains are getting stronger now. Can I really do this?

  ‘Is that completely necessary?’ Paula asks the woman attaching the monitor.

  ‘Sorry?’ she says distractedly, as she fiddles with the buttons and the machine and then repositions the monitoring pads on my belly.

  ‘Does she really need to be monitored? It’s very restrictive. And it increases the chance of interventions.’

  ‘It’s a twin pregnancy. It’s standard.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘I can cope.’ But then I have to grit my teeth and try not to shout out as another contraction comes, even stronger.

  The midwife leaves the room and Paula turns to me. ‘I can’t believe she hasn’t even looked at your birth plan. They just don’t have enough time to do everything.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say, struggling to concentrate.

  The midwife drifts in and out. A couple of hours later, when she’s out of the room, Paula removes the pads from my stomach and lets me walk around, unplugging the monitor to stop it beeping.

  The midwife reappears almost instantly and berates Paula as she reattaches me. Four hours pass by in a haze. I focus on my breathing but I’m getting exhausted. My contractions are coming so thick and fast and I can hardly bear it. I can feel the babies moving inside me, my body forcing them downwards.

  ‘Keep breathing,’ Paula says, stroking my back. ‘Keep breathing. You’re doing a great job.’

  The hours merge into each other until the midwife checks my dilation once more and tells me we’re ready to push.

  I grip Paula’s hand so tight as I push and push and push. My body burns as it opens up. And then, there she is. A tiny, perfectly formed baby girl.

  * * *

  My baby screams, and it’s the best noise I’ve ever heard. My baby. I stare down the end of the bed at the red blotchy mess in the midwife’s arms. I can’t believe she’s mine. I long to reach for her, to hold her against my chest, to put her on my breast. I just want to touch her, to stare into her eyes, to love her.

  The midwives perform their checks and declare she’s passed with flying colours.

  ‘Six pounds,’ the midwife says. ‘She’s perfect.’

  The bigger of the two of them. Alice.

  They pass her to me, but I only get to hold her for a second. Because then they look at the heart rate monitor for the other twin and see nothing on the trace.

  A midwife rushes to my side and stands over the monitor, moving it around on my stomach to find the other baby. Alice tries to latch onto my breast, but the midwife moves her away to search for her twin’s heartbeat.

  She whisks Alice away from me and hands her to Paula. ‘You can hold her later. We need to get her sister out of you. She’s in distress.’

  Alice screams, but when Paula holds her close to her bosom she calms and starts rooting. Paula wraps her blood-covered body in a shawl and rocks her from side to side, staring into her eyes. I feel a flash of jealousy at their first moments together.

  But there’s another baby inside me. Frances. And the midwife is still trying to find the heartbeat. Fear builds into a crescendo inside me. And then she finds it. It’s only taken her a few minutes, but they felt like hours.

  There are more people in the room now. Doctors. Midwives. I’m not sure who they all are. ‘How are your contractions?’ one asks me. I can’t feel anything anymore, except an overwhelming sense of love for the baby that’s just been born.

  I can’t even feel Frances moving inside me. My body is numb. I’m not contracting. My body’s given up. Panic sears through me.

  ‘I’m not getting any,’ I say.

  ‘Right, we’re going to induce you, bring your contractions back on and get this baby out of you. If nothing happens quickly, we’ll do an emergency C-section.’

  A midwife comes in wheeling a drip, searches for a vein in my arm, then inserts the cannula and attaches it.

  ‘She didn’t want any interventions,’ Paula says firmly.

  ‘We need to get this baby out. There’s no choice.’

  Paula stands in front of the drip, blocking a doctor.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the doctor says. ‘Let me do my job. Or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’

  Paula steps aside reluctantly.

  ‘I don’t want the drip,’ I say.

  ‘We need to restart your contractions,’ the doctor says, cutting me down. ‘Your baby’s at risk.’

  They start the drip. At first the period pains start up again, and they hardly hurt.

  They present me with gas and air and I refuse it.

  ‘Do you want any pain relief?’ they ask.

  ‘No.’ Why haven’t they read the birth plan?

  But as the midwives go over to the drip and increase the dosage, everything blurs. I don’t know where I end and the bed begins. My body convulses and contracts and there’s no space, no air, no time to draw breath. I’m being torn apart from the inside. Two midwives stand over me and tell me to breathe. But I can’t even think straight. All I know is that the pain is too much. I scream and scream and scream, my lungs raw.

  But no one helps me.

  ‘Paula!’ I manage to shout her name when the pain eases slightly.

  When the doctors’ backs are turned, I see her go over to the drip and fiddle with it. She must be reducing the dose.

  But it doesn’t help.

  I can barely hear their murmurs as I fade in and out of my body. They are saying I must stay still so they can find the heartbeat. That I must stop moving. But I can’t. My body is moving on its own, shaking on the bed. I can no longer speak.

  And they don’t care. I can see their fuzzy images, in blue and white uniforms, going diligently over to the bag of fluid in the drip and increasing the dose of the hormone. I want them to stop. I need them to stop. I look at Paula as I scream, my eyes wide with panic. She holds my hand a
nd I squeeze so tight I think I might break her fingers. I writhe away from her, my head jerking back and forth.

  The room gets bigger and then smaller again around me and I feel like I’m not even there. Time loses all meaning. I’m not human; not even a body. In the room around me, the medical staff are going about their business as normal. They’re ignoring me, they just want the baby. Frances. The baby that’s trying to kill me.

  The midwives hover at the edge of the bed, staring at me. I can feel the baby sliding down through my birth canal, my pelvis expanding to an unnatural width, my body expelling it as the baby stretches my body, ripping me in half.

  They shout at me to push, to push, to push. And I do, pushing so hard that I feel like I’ll break, that this will break me, destroy my body and my mind. The baby seems stuck, but I keep pushing. A doctor appears, frowning at the end of the bed.

  Paula wipes back my sweaty hair from my head and I scream louder than I knew was possible.

  I keep pushing, keep pushing.

  The midwife is speaking. ‘We’re going to cut you now, widen the path.’

  I’m hardly aware of what they’re saying.

  Then I feel the scalpel, cutting through my flesh. They put the forceps inside me and twist the baby out of me. Everything hurts. Every piece of my body. I’m completely broken.

  I scream in agony and Alice screams with me.

  And then her sister is dragged out of me. Frances.

  6

  In the evenings, when Dad has gone out to the pub, we sit down with Mum and she plays the piano. It’s the only time we can really relax, the three of us together. I sit on the floor, cross my legs and close my eyes, letting the music take me over. I feel truly free, without fear. Dad won’t be home for hours. There will be no violence and pain, only noise and laughter. Even Mum laughs when he’s out. She looks younger when she laughs.

  I know every note of the song Mum is playing. She’s been playing the same tune to us since we were babies. A gentle lullaby before we go upstairs for our baths and she reads to us in bed.

  I look at her now, her eyes closed, long hair flowing down over her shoulders, completely lost in the music. I come up behind her and wrap my arms round her, breathing in the lavender scent of her shampoo, feeling her cosy woollen jumper against my cheeks. She doesn’t even wince when I touch her. Not like when Dad’s in the house. Then she jumps when anyone touches her.

  Her fingers keep dancing over the piano keys, as she tilts her head so her face is against mine and our hair tangles together. I smile at the warmth of her skin. I feel safe.

  My sister reaches out her hand and I take it. We start to dance together, wildly, swinging each other round and laughing. Mum switches the tune and starts to sing, her voice clear and strong. I’m hand in hand with my sister, two peas in a pod. Dancing, jumping, joyful.

  We cling to these moments. The moments when our mother loves us.

  Because when Dad comes home, we will listen to him hit her. And tomorrow she will stand by and do the dishes, turning her face away as he hits us.

  Thirteen

  ‘Five pounds two,’ the midwife announces, holding up Frances. ‘Two perfect babies.’

  ‘You did an amazing job,’ Paula says to me.

  I’m shaking on the bed. I just want to curl up and go to sleep. They pass Frances over to me and I stare at her tiny form. I feel nothing at all.

  She starts to scream and I look across at Paula, still holding Alice, looking lovingly into her eyes.

  I don’t know what to do with the baby. At my feet, the doctors are peering at me.

  ‘We need to stitch you up. Do you want to hold the babies while we do it? We’ll give you a local anaesthetic.’

  ‘No,’ I say, and I try to pass the baby over. I don’t want to hold any babies. I just want to rest. To recover. I can’t process what’s just happened.

  Paula reaches out and takes Frances. She sits in the chair holding both babies, cooing at them. I turn away from her and start to cry, as I feel the needle piece my skin and the doctor starts stitching.

  * * *

  An hour later, I’m directed to the shower and I wash the blood off me. I let the tears flow out of me with the water. I’m still shaking, completely overwhelmed by Frances’s birth. I’ve sat with the babies on my chest for the last half hour, but my feelings have numbed and I can’t seem to connect with them. The rush of love I’d felt when I first held Alice in my arms has been taken over by a huge emptiness inside me.

  The midwives have tried to help me with breastfeeding, but neither of the twins seem interested. Alice just cries, her face red and angry, and Frances just falls asleep.

  When we get up to the postnatal ward, the midwife asks Paula to leave. ‘Only partners are allowed to stay. No other visitors until the morning,’ she says firmly.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I say, reaching out to grab Paula’s arm. I have no idea how I’m going to cope on my own. But after the midwife has put the babies in their cots beside the bed, she leaves, escorting Paula out with her.

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I’ve been told how important it is for newborns to have milk in their first hours, but neither of the babies have fed. I look at them both, fast asleep. Should I wake them and try and feed them again? I wish Paula was here to help me.

  I need to contact Ian. Tell him about the babies.

  My phone is in my bag next to the bed. I sit up slowly, stomach muscles straining and start to ease myself out of the bed. I’m not sure if my legs will support me, or if they’ll give way.

  Beside me Frances starts to scream, a mewling sound that rips at my heart. I stare at her, completely overwhelmed. It hits me that I’m responsible for her now. Her and Alice. I have to look after them forever.

  I lift Frances out of the cot and rock her back and forth. She keeps screaming. I should try and feed her. I sit on the edge of the bed, lift up my top and put her to my breast. She doesn’t respond. Alice joins in the screams. I stare at her too. How am I supposed to hold both of them? I feel sick. What am I doing? I can’t be a mother.

  I put Frances down and lift Alice up. When I put her to my breast she starts to suckle, and I flush with a sense of achievement. I’ve done something right. I think about how easy her birth was compared to Frances’s. I wonder if she’ll be an easier baby too.

  When both babies are calm and back in their cots, I ease myself out of bed, wincing as I feel my stitches tugging, and go over to my bag and pull out my phone. My heart sinks when I check it. Ian hasn’t returned my calls. I try once more, and when he doesn’t answer, I send him the briefest text message to say the twins have been born and then lie back down on the bed, hoping to get some rest.

  But I can’t sleep. Babies scream, midwives chat and new parents coo over their babies. I keep checking my phone, but Ian hasn’t replied to any of my calls or messages. I wish I’d taken another contact number for him in Thailand. I don’t even know which hotel he’s staying at. His office will know, but it’s too late to call them. I just wish he was with me now, supporting me through all the stress, telling me he loves me. Instead I’m all alone.

  I stay up watching the twins sleep in the cots beside me and waiting for Ian to call me back. As I stare down at my babies, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by intense, crippling love. They’re perfect. My love for them clamps round my heart and I reach out and hold my finger to Alice. She clasps her tiny hand around it and I marvel at how perfect each finger is, each tiny fingernail.

  But I can’t help feeling on edge, because a part of the picture’s missing. In the bay across from mine, a father sits in the chair next to the bed, rocking his screaming baby while its mother sleeps. Without Ian, our family isn’t complete. My heart thumps loudly in my chest as I watch my babies sleep and look at the empty chair by the hospital bed where he should be.

  * * *

  Paula arrives on the dot of 8 a.m. the next morning, the start of visiting hours. She helps me to breastfeed Alice and then turns
to Frances and changes her nappy.

  At the beds around us more relatives are arriving, clutching flowers. I feel a pang of jealousy.

  ‘Alice looks just like you,’ Paula says. I smile. While Alice has my features, Frances looks like a tiny version of Ian, with her broad forehead, high cheekbones and intense eyes.

  ‘Can you pass me my phone?’ I ask Paula. ‘I need to call Ian.’

  She hands it over.

  The call goes to answerphone again and I feel a wave of disappointment. I leave a garbled message about the births and how beautiful our girls are and how Frances looks just like him.

  ‘What time is it in Thailand?’ Paula says.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ It could be the middle of the night for all I know. But I’ve called him so many times, he should know it’s important.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll call back when he gets your message.’

  In the bed opposite, the husband is taking photo after photo of his wife and new baby.

  ‘Can you take a photo of me and the twins?’ I ask Paula.

  I hand her my phone and she clicks away.

  ‘Can I have one with them too?’ she asks after she finishes.

  I place a twin in each of her arms and then take a photo and show it to her. She could easily be mistaken for a proud relative. I wonder if she has children of her own. If she does, they must be grown up by now. She’s never mentioned any.

  ‘Have you let everyone know the twins have arrived?’ Paula asks.

  ‘No.’ I’ve thought about telling my mother and Melissa, but I really wanted Ian to be the first to know. ‘I should tell them, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Are you ready for visitors?’

  ‘Umm… I don’t know.’ I feel like my body’s been torn apart. I have no idea how to look after my twins. And Ian’s abroad. ‘I think I’d like to adjust to everything first. Before I see anyone. And I want Ian to come back and meet the babies before anyone else.’