I’m on my own.

Thirty-Five

The decision is made for me. The pains subside long enough for me to drive myself to the nearest hospital twenty miles away. Stuart was right to be concerned, for once. I can’t take any risks with my baby’s health, not after all I’ve been through. Camilla will be all right. Worst-case scenario, she’ll have to pay an expensive cab fare back to the property. Greg will be with her by lunchtime.

Fresh pain hits and distracts as I leave the car in the hospital parking lot. I follow the signs to the maternity unit as I try to call Stuart again. Thank God he answers, albeit in a sleepy, hoarse voice.

My plight spills out in a torrent of jumbled words.

“What? Slow down, Marie. Where are you?”

I name the hospital. “Please, call Deborah to look after Felix and Em. Get here quickly. Just in case.”

As I walk through the automatic doors, sickness swamps. I’m terrified. I thought I was a strong person, could take anything. I’m not. Everything I thought I’d learned or prepared for doesn’t happen. There is no order, only sickness, pain and desperately busy staff. I want to die.

My baby is putting in an early appearance.

Time passes in changes of medical staff. I take every drug I’m offered and give in to the surreality. I didn’t think I’d be able to stay still long enough to have an injection in my spine, but I can’t wait for it to work its magic powers once the anesthesiologist has been located. I think I see my dead grandmother. I even see Nina at one point.

I drift in and out of reality. I’m told to push. To not push. I’m sick. I’m hot, I’m cold. I’m terrified yet resigned simultaneously. The baby is back-to-back, meaning that he is pressing against my spine. There is talk of forceps, of a cesarean. I don’t care as long as my baby comes out alive and all this is over. Time is suspended and distorted, yet the end comes in sight swiftly.

“Your baby’s heart is in distress,” I’m told. “We need to take you into the operating room and deliver the baby quickly.”

I sign a consent form while the risks are read out loud to me.

“Is my husband here yet?”

A midwife squeezes my hand. “He’s on his way. He won’t be long.”

She has no way of knowing, but I’m grateful for the lie, nonetheless. I stare at the ceiling as I’m wheeled to the operating room. I look up at the largest round lights I’ve ever seen, like UFOs. I hold out my right arm to be injected. Then, nothing.

I open my eyes.

Ice-cold fear floods.

“Where is my baby?”

Stuart is sleeping in a plastic chair in the corner. I try to sit up, but there is a burning pain, like fire, where my bump used to be.

I am not pregnant any more.

“You’ve had a beautiful, healthy boy,” says a midwife.