Michal and I approached the desk and the receptionist asked Michal questions.

‘Cannula? Piercings? Tattoos? Implants? She pregnant? Sure? How so sure?’ asked the receptionist. Michal watched me as I shook my head back and over. No. Yes. No. Yes. Point to teeth. No. She kept bobbing her own head up and down to catch Michal’s gesture. ‘Lost your voice, love?’ We both nodded. Yes. Yes.

‘OK, well, we need you to do a test first.’ She handed Michal a small clear bottle for urine. She pointed to the loo. We both stared at her. ‘Pregnancy …’ she said, looking up, exasperated by my translator and me, and then caressed her wedding ring, twisting it in a clockwise direction. Perhaps she still made wishes with it, fresh wedding rings, troublesome. Then she stopped pulling the ring and recoiled behind a large old printer, which banged, managing to put ink on a page.

Michal sat down, picked up a magazine and stuck his head into it. VIP magazine. Some rotund celebrity chef was trapped on the front with a hipster beard.

‘How I Learned to Forgive my Tubby Hubby for his Flings and Make him Accept me for Who I Am.’

‘Sinéad Hynes?’

The queue was large and grew unsettled and noisy. Still no sounds arrived. I tried to get up.

‘It’s OK,’ Michal said, ‘… I come with you.’

I was so grateful.

‘This way, please.’

Inside the scanning room, everything was blue and it made a change from the orange hues. They instructed me on length of time and consent and so on, asked the same questions as Michal answered the same answers. I wasn’t pregnant. No one really knew how to react to this. I would have said, I told you so, if I had a voice. I lay back on a long tray as one of the radiographers placed my head in a cage, bright topaz Nikes on her feet, loose yellow laces. ‘Here, press this if you need us,’ she said, placing a cold plastic buzzer into the palm of my hand. ‘Thumb into the red button if you need assistance, OK?’ The plate chucked backwards, stalled, and tuttedtuttedtutted backwards again.

‘You OK, Sinéad? Remember press buzzer, once for OK, twice for not OK? Test it now.’

I pressed my thumb in. It was a leap of faith to imagine the button was red.

‘OK, great. It’ll be noisy. Try to concentrate on your favourite thing. Quite noisy. OK?’

Fuck. My favourite thing. Shit.

The kids. Anxiety.

Wine. No. Pukey.

Husband. Guilt. Shit. Shit. Visualise something. Not water.

Michal reassured me while Norah Jones sang out.

I settled on the Whooper swan, Molly’s lips, Newman’s eyes and finally the whirr of Margaret Rose’s hairdryer.

Michal Piwaski called out, ‘You OK K K K K K K K K K K K K. SinAID, you KKKKKKKKKK. Press once.’

I pressed once.

*

‘She’s not supposed to be out of that chair, Michal, ya naw this, darl … Jeez, what are you trying to do?’ Molly said, sitting on Shane’s empty bed mattress with her legs crossed, fixing her bandana back in place on her forehead. Michal helped me back to bed and then sat beside Molly, gently moving a few stray blonde hairs back under the bandana, flicking his finger gently on her jawline, teasing her.