The cannula in my hand is aching. I feel like a woman on death row, waiting for her injection. My vein is throbbing, impatient. There will be two injections for me, the second a muscle relaxant, to come after the anaesthesia. ‘To stop you from hurting yourself,’ the nurse had told me, with an apologetic downturn of her mouth.
But that’s what I do best.
The anaesthetist returns, accompanied by the consultant, both smiling down at me.
‘All ready, now,’ the consultant says.
Just another day at work, another poor lost soul to microwave.
‘Shall we start, then, Helena?’
The knot of fabric is still digging into my back. I am not afraid. I am suddenly thankful for that uncomfortable lump under my skin, something to focus on, a welcome distraction. I nod, give him a brief smile of acquiescence. And then the oxygen mask is placed over my face. He tells me to relax, and I start my countdown from ten, a countdown I won’t finish.
I get to seven before the world disappears.
This wasn’t how I imagined motherhood.
THEN
Helena
This wasn’t how I imagined motherhood.
I am barely conscious by the time my daughter rips her way out of my insides. As I lie there, one leg hoisted above the midwife’s shoulder, the other completely numb, a bulging catheter resting on the inside of my thigh, and I feel her slimy body finally, finally, finally exit mine, it strikes me that what I had feared would happen all day, was finally happening.
I am dying.
Something I have known all along, but something I have been denying myself. Something they don’t tell you. Something they hide, the darkest secret of all.
There can be only one outcome to this situation.
Her birth.
My death.
The second that my daughter gives her first howl – not a cry, not a delicate, fragile thing, but a visceral eruption of noise – I realize that Helena Brenton: wife, career woman, friend, daughter, girl-about-town has died. Gone. Never to be seen again.
They set her down on my chest. She is grey and sticky and angry with me and she hates the world already. She smells strange, something sweet, unfamiliar, other-worldly. I kiss her head, the slime from her skin coating my lips.
I love her.
She terrifies me.
*
They tell me to go for a shower. I can understand why; I’m covered in blood. Not just my legs, but somehow it’s all over my chest, too – even seeped into my bra strap, a dark smudge on the skin of my shoulder. Jack has the baby and is sitting on the plastic chair by my bed, his face bent over hers, mindless of me or the bossy midwife.
I just want to sleep.
The midwife starts rummaging through my hospital bag, awakening the memory of a different me two weeks ago, sitting on the floor of our bedroom packing it, naive with trust. Birthing playlist and portable speaker, artificial candles, aromatherapy spray, bags of sweets and cartons of apple juice to keep my strength up. As though that was all it would take.
‘Do you have any maternity pads?’ she barks, spilling the contents of my bag on to the stained blankets on the bed. ‘Here. Clean knickers, shower gel. I’ll get you some pads.’
‘They’re in there somewhere,’ I say, my voice so hoarse it doesn’t sound like me. I try to sit up, but can’t manage it.
‘Right, here you go,’ she says, handing me a pile. ‘We need your bed, I’m afraid. Shower is just across the hall. Once you’re done, we’ll wheel you up to the postnatal ward.’
I look over at Jack, willing him to rescue me, to fight my corner. But he’s oblivious, distracted by the new love of his life, barely aware I’m even in the room. Can’t I just stay here a little longer? They’ve only just finished putting me back together; an hour of intense pulling and threading and hushed conversation between my legs. And despite all the injections, I’m still sore from where the catheter was ripped out of me.
‘Come on,’ the midwife says, dragging me to my feet. ‘Up you get.’
I hobble after her, my body doubled over, my stomach not lighter, as I’d hoped, but weighty with the damaged muscles that can’t or won’t do what they’re meant to any more. She leaves me with two scratchy towels in a tile-lined room that brings to mind a cell. Just a showerhead, toilet and basin, and a small mildewed window hinting at the real world outside. The floor is still damp and grainy from its previous occupant and my toes, the only part of me that doesn’t hurt, curl with disgust.
A clear plastic jug stands in the basin, filled with cloudy pink liquid. I frown at it, and then I realize; it’s someone’s urine.
Taking a step forward, I turn on the shower and am stunned by its force; hot, aggressive shards immediately attack my already pounded flesh. Blood swirls around the plughole as I stand there watching it continue to fall from the newly created hollow inside me. Blood, blood and more blood. So much blood.
I reach for the shower gel, nausea overtaking me, and then I feel it coming. There’s a split second when I hope that actually, thank God, it’s all going to end. This is it, I’m dying – it’ll all be over soon – and the room goes black and I fall to the floor.
*
They won’t let us leave without the car seat. Apparently, I can’t be trusted to carry my own baby to the car, even though she only weighs six pounds. This rule seems nonsensical, given that once we are off the hospital premises, no one will see, know or presumably care what I will do with my baby.
Jack has gone to get it.
I touch the sore spot on my forehead, feeling the egg that formed when I crashed against the basin yesterday. Even after all it has been through, my body is still trying to fix itself, still refusing to give up.
It’s stronger than me.
I am sitting in the family area and the baby is barely even there, just a speck of pink human under all her layers of clothing. She’s content now, not wailing and vomiting as she did all night.
She is warm and small and comfortable, and happy with her life at this moment. We are opposites. She doesn’t want what I want.
I feel a buzz from the bag on the chair next to me and I reach forward to retrieve my phone, that tangible reminder of a different life. It’ll be another message from another distant friend, congratulating me on doing something that I had no choice in. I press the button and the screen lights up.
But it’s not a message this time. It’s an automated reminder of our weekly budget meeting, from a calendar I deleted from my phone more than a month ago, but which still persists despite this. Some glitch in my phone software that serves to haunt me, taunt me and remind me every week that life is going on without me.
My life is going on without me.
NOW
Helena
It’s 4 a.m. and I’m standing by the side of the road in the rain, soaked through. The woman in the car is dead, but I’m holding on to her hand through the shattered windscreen, anyway. As usual, there’s nothing much to see, just a line of blood coming from her nose. She has a locket around her neck, which has swung forward and is resting on the dashboard. I lean forward and open it. Inside, there are pictures of two tiny newborns; one on the left and one on the right. Rain drops on to their faces and I wipe it with my finger, trying to rub it off. Little bundles, faded and worn from stroking.
I look again at the woman. I can’t tell how old she is. Maybe forty, maybe fifty? It’s impossible to tell in this light. I reach for my phone to check the time. It’s only been five minutes since I called the ambulance, but it feels like much longer. I wonder where they are, when they are going to get here. It’s Monday night, they should be quiet, quick to attend. Perhaps they’re not coming straight away because I told them I thought she was dead already, although surely they shouldn’t take my word for it? It worries me when medical professionals listen to me. They should know better by now.
I look back at the house, still stroking the woman’s hand. Our house. The light is on downstairs in the kit
chen, where I’d left it when I came out. Our kitchen doesn’t have any blinds and it creeps me out to see that from here, from the side of the road, you can see everything. Anyone could watch us, going about our normal life in the kitchen – like their own personal television show. Jack didn’t hear the crash, of course. He was fast asleep, earplugs in, flat on his back, dreaming of . . . dreaming of what? I have no idea any more. I don’t even know where he was last night.
But I heard it, heard the all-too-familiar screech of brakes, then the impact. Almost a bounce against the low brick wall, hitting once, loudly, and then again, more gently. I could imagine the motion inside the car, everything thrown forwards, including her, smacking her head on the steering wheel, then bouncing back to hit it again on the seat. The jerking movement her neck would have made, the stress on her spine – I can see it all, I can feel it all, I’ve experienced it so many times before.
The rain gets heavier and my arm grows numb from reaching through the windscreen. But I can’t let go of this woman, whoever she is. No one deserves to die alone at 4 a.m., by the side of an empty road. I peer into the back of the car, using the torch on my phone to help me see. What was this woman doing, driving at this time of night? She’s not even wearing a coat – just a grey, long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans. With my free hand I push the phone into the belly of the car. On the back seat there’s a large holdall – the sort you might take to the gym if you were really dedicated and had a lot of stuff. I can’t reach it from here, but I don’t need to open it. I already know what this woman was doing. She was running away.
I look back at her and, mustering up the courage, hold the phone light right in her face. She’s staring straight ahead, her eyes already a strange grey, her skin mottled and unnatural. The blood that’s trickled from her nose and across her mouth and chin is the only colour on her face. Except for one other mark – a large bruise underneath her eye. I can’t know for sure whether this was caused by the accident or by the man she was running from, but somehow I do. I see it all: this man, their fight, his fist.
I pull the phone away from her face. I can’t look any more. I want to let go of her hand too, but I won’t. I feel a rush of love for this woman, this poor woman, racing to escape her tormentor, only to die in the process.
The ambulance still hasn’t arrived and my teeth begin to chatter as I stand by the car.
‘Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up,’ I say to myself, stepping from one foot to the other to try to keep myself warm. I look down and realize that I’m not wearing pyjama bottoms. I must have been hot in bed, and taken them off in my sleep. My pink sheepskin slippers are black with wetness, and my legs look grey in the light.
I hear a noise behind me, and I look up in surprise, dropping the woman’s hand in the process.
‘Shit!’ I say, looking back at her, but it’s too late, I’ve let her go now. I look back at the direction of the noise, and there he is.
Jack, in his dressing gown, with his wellington boots on, holding an umbrella and looking at me. There’s something folded over one of his arms – one of his hoodies.
‘Helena,’ he says, and his voice sounds far away and tired, as though he’s sleepwalking.
‘I’m waiting for the ambulance,’ I say, but he doesn’t seem to be listening. ‘They’ll be here any minute. She’s already dead, though, it’s too late.’ I look back at the woman, but all I can see now is the roof of the car, which has concertinaed during the impact.
‘Come inside,’ Jack says, sighing. ‘You’re soaking.’
‘I have to wait for them,’ I say. ‘I promised.’
‘You’ll get ill,’ he replies. ‘Please. Just come inside.’
My teeth have begun to chatter and I look longingly at our kitchen, so warm and inviting, a beacon in the darkness of the night.
‘But . . . I need to stay with her, until they come,’ I say, but my willpower is fading.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ Jack says. ‘Please. Just go inside and get yourself dry.’
He knows what’s best for me, he’s the only one I can trust.
‘OK,’ I say, walking towards him.
My slippers are so wet that it’s like walking through sand.
‘Thank you,’ I say, as I approach him. ‘She was escaping her abusive husband. That’s what I think, anyway. That explains why it’s so late, why she’s alone, why she has a bag on the back seat. She has a black eye, too. They’ll realize in the post mortem, they’ll work it out. But don’t you think it’s just heartbreaking?’
He looks down, then takes a deep breath and straightens himself up, as though drawing on some inner strength.
‘Here,’ he says, wrapping the hoodie around my shoulders. ‘Go back inside.’
I make my way back to the house, leaving him by the car.
Inside, I leave Jack’s hoodie on the hall bench and take my slippers off, standing in the kitchen in front of the Aga. Neither of us have quite got to grips with it for cooking, but it’s brilliant for drying clothes and warming your hands.
When my hands have defrosted, I climb the stairs to our bedroom, going through to the en suite. I see myself in the full-length mirror and I’m shocked. It takes a while before I even accept that this grey, skinny woman, standing in just her pants and pyjama top, is me. My thighs have nearly disappeared. They’re almost the same width as my calves now, and hang awkwardly from my hip bones, making me look like a puppet.
I decide to run a bath, and sit in it as it fills up. The warmth of the water on my ice-cold skin is a shock at first, but after a few minutes I realize my teeth have stopped chattering, and my skin is no longer grey.
It feels as though I’ve been in the bath for hours, but I can’t have been, because Jack pops his head around the door and tells me to come to bed, and the water is still warm. I reach for my towel and wrap myself in it, padding through to the bedroom. Jack has laid out a fresh pair of pyjamas for me on the bed. But there are no knickers. I look at him, wondering if it’s a sign that he wants something or if it’s just that he’s a man, and doesn’t remember that I wear knickers in bed. I slip the pyjamas on over my naked body.
‘Did they come?’ I ask, as I climb into bed next to him. ‘The ambulance?’ I try to read his expression. He doesn’t want sex, that can’t be it. He looks tired, fed up, beaten.
‘Yes, it’s all sorted,’ he says, kissing the top of my head. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just try to get some sleep.’
I smile as I lean my head against his arm. He switches off the bedside light and the room is dark. Dark but safe.
I feel a wetness on my forehead, just a trickle, that makes its way slowly but steadily across my eyelid, down my cheek and to my mouth. It settles on my lips and I taste it then, the sharp recognizable saltiness of a tear.
I put my arm around Jack and I realize I am crying, too.
NOW
Helena
The next morning I am sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea. I left the tea bag in for too long, so it’s stewed and makes me feel sick. But I drink it, anyway. I need the caffeine.
The kitchen door swings open and Jack comes in. He’s in his overalls. He looks handsome, but there are bags under his eyes, and I know they’re my fault.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ I say, but he waves my apology away with his hand as he walks towards the coffee machine. I watch as he pours himself a bowl of muesli and drowns it in milk.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘All right,’ I say. ‘I just can’t believe it happened again.’
‘The main thing is it’s happening less often. What are you doing today?’ he says, eating the cereal in great untidy gulps.
My eyes flick to the clock on the wall.
‘Just some research,’ I say, because it’s not a lie. ‘And I might go into the village, if you want anything from the shops. I could get us something for dinner?’
He laughs, but not unkindly.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I�
��ve got dinner sorted. Although I’ve got a six p.m. meeting in town, annoyingly. Will you be OK? You could always . . . give your mum a ring.’
I screw up my face at his suggestion. I don’t feel strong enough today.
‘Have you taken your medication?’ he says, cutting through my thoughts.
I look at the small bottle of pills on the kitchen counter, just casually hanging out next to the fruit bowl.
‘Uh-huh,’ I say, nodding slowly and taking a great gulp of tea. I look back up and beam at him.
Jack watches me, mistrustful.
He throws his bowl and mug into the sink and splashes water over them with the tap. This would normally annoy me but today I’m itchy, desperate for him to go. He looks at the bottle of pills and back over at me again, opens his mouth and then shuts it.
Before he leaves, he comes over and kisses me on the cheek. He smells of aftershave – too much aftershave. I can’t remember the last time he put aftershave on. He never usually remembers. I feel a surge of desire, and I stand up and press myself against him. There’s nothing sexy about me any more, nothing at all, but he’s a man and he loves me. I push my hips against him, hoping for some response, but instead he twitches and gives an embarrassed laugh.
‘Hey,’ he says, pulling away and holding my wrists. ‘What are you up to?’
I stare at him, straight in the eye.
‘Who’s your meeting with later?’ I ask. There’s no beat before he responds.
‘Brett Lowe,’ he says, ‘I told you before . . . he’s thinking of investing.’
I nod. He’s not lying. Not this time, anyway. But one thing I will say about the treatment is that it’s helped me see everything more clearly, recognize the strangeness of his behaviour lately. All these late nights, days when he hasn’t been in the workshop all day, times he’s ‘popped out’ somewhere without telling me where. There’s something going on, I know it.
The Rival Page 22