Green (50 page)

The midwife stays. She tells me to scrub and put on a gown and some new gloves. She tells me—tells us—it's all going according to plan. And so it does.

‘Swab, and get your drapes up and get into position,' she says. ‘Quickly.'

Jeanne grips her thighs with the next contraction, turns her fingers white with a surge of effort and the head is out, properly out and never going back. All that waiting, and it's happening before I'd expected it to. The contraction seemed just like the others, but for some reason this was the one.

‘Now check for cord. Finger past the occiput and check for cord.'

No cord. Good. No cord, but the head of a baby, slick and mucousy, and then the rest, the shoulders and everything else, sliding out into my hands. The baby cries and writhes, but in a healthy way, and turns itself red.

‘What now?' the midwife says. ‘What now?'

And I remember. I've made a list (chapters forty-one and forty-two) and I remember most of it, or at least enough. Col cuts the cord, the baby is examined and I concentrate on the placenta.

When it's over, I'm the fourth wheel on the tricycle. Just like that. I'm at the end of my list of things to do and check, and Jeanne and Col are grateful but I suddenly feel superfluous, intrusive. Which is okay—I'm both those things. The midwife is already in another room. It's business as usual for her. And in here it's brand new for three of us, but the other two have suddenly got themselves a baby. It's 3 a.m.

When I leave the room, I walk out of Labour Ward through the big plastic doors and I put money in the vending machine for a Kit Kat, but it doesn't come out. What is it with vending machines in this place? When I hit it—and I don't hit it hard—Kit Kats tumble out like a jackpot from a poker machine. So I scoop them up in my arms and carry them back in, and hand them out to everyone I know who's over the age of nothing.

‘Beats cigars,' Col says, pretending to smoke one.

 

*

 

The garbage truck wakes me when it empties the bins outside the on-call rooms. Jesus and Mary loom from my walls. The digital clock beside the bed says six-eleven. I've slept for two hours.

Even when the truck's gone there are sounds. A slamming door, a rattling trolley, two male voices talking as they pass on their way up the hill, cars in the distance on the other side of the hospital buildings.

The air in the room is cold on my face, but the water in the showers is always hot. I can't believe I'm getting up now. I feel like I've only just gone to bed, as though I've started a messy dream and left it not half done.

It's a perfect winter dawn outside on the way to breakfast in the dining room. On my cheeks it's cool as a slap but it's bright, and soon that'll translate into warmth. Finally, I can cross delivery off the list of things I'm supposed to do this term. I'm supposed to have done two, but it's not compulsory and I did want to do at least one. I'm surprised how routine it was—how it followed the script—but each bit happened just as I was dealing with the last so, after all those hours of waiting, it was over quickly in the end.

I'm still not happy with my mother, springing her therapist friend on me on Saturday. Is being close to a birth supposed to fill me with some kind of positive, generous feelings and make that shit me less? Bad luck. Right at the moment I'm better off away from home and in the on-call rooms, even with all the statues. You'll never be alone in there, but you're alone enough. You've got Jesus and family in plaster and wood and, sure, they don't say a word and their eyes are just chipped paint, but they won't call their therapist friends over, bring out the butt shots.

In the dining room I get myself a bowl of Nutri-grain and a big plastic mug of tea. The coffee here is worse than the kiosk, just a vat of dark sour stain. I could sleep. I could sleep right now. I don't even like Nutri-grain, the plastic mugs annoy me and I'm not big on tea. This is a flagellant's breakfast, a breakfast chosen to turn a bad mood worse.

But there's no point in imagining that New York lives are immune to nights like Saturday, even though that was my first thought. Parents everywhere, I suppose, indoctrinate their children with the standard set of values, and then assume they've turned to pornography and prostitution when flimsy coincidences arise. I'm surprised drugs rated only a passing mention. Soon enough, my mother will forget she lectures about media, and will blame the media for putting all this in her head.

It's less of a Brisbane story, actually. I don't know if it's just Woody Allen and his characters, or if there really are millions of people on Manhattan entrenched in analysis, but the Attack of the Killer Therapist over fondue seems, if anything, more New York than Brisbane. I can see Woody Allen doing it: ‘And there I was, concentrating on the process of fonduing—they had me cooking my own meal as a distraction, I'm sure of it—and, out of nowhere, this therapist . . .'

Or maybe in second person, in a different voice:

 

You're out of there now, and you know it's for the best. You remember the moment the first photograph came out, the instant you realised they weren't thinking Tim Tam. You wonder if Baby Neil Armstrong has flown from this place, and you hope he has. Out to the suburbs, to an unnoticed childhood that belies its beginnings.

 

Concise, but not bad.

When Frank turns up for our eight-thirty lecture, I tell him I finally delivered one last night and I give him a Kit Kat.

‘They were handing these out.' It's easier to put it that way, and I'm sick of explanations that have to go beyond about ten words. ‘It was their first and the dad got pretty excited.'

I stay Tuesday night at the Mater. I can't concentrate at home. Or anywhere, in fact, so I might as well book myself more time in a cell with Jesus on the wall. Jesus demonstrating the worst of his misericordiae. Or should it be Mary's misericordiae, since these are the Mater Misericordiae hospitals? She looks much more as though she's come to terms with it.

I'm too annoyed with my mother to talk sensibly with her, so I call and tell her I'm staying here to do more work. Study work, not money-for-sex work, in case she's wondering.

I scam free dinner in the dining room by claiming to be rostered on, then it's back to my cell.

I figure screening will come up in either the written exam or the clinical so I flowchart how to proceed from the heelprick blood test, making sure not to rush to big investigations or unlikely diagnoses too early.

I wash my Monday clothes in the shower, I wring as much water out as I can and I hang them in the room, on the back of the chair and from Mary's thoughtful hand. They'll do for Wednesday.

 

*

 

I'm still annoyed with Sophie sometimes. I'd rather not be, but I'm not used to this. I'm used to a life that just ticks over, without this recent burst of wild allegations. I'm used to being irritated by Frank, in all kinds of inconsequential ways, and otherwise just taking things as they come. How could she think I would do something like that?

I also want to fix things with her. Weeks ago, we had something going that I'd like to retrieve.

But she's not at World of Chickens on Wednesday. She's studying. Did I know that? I don't think so. I knew she had exams, but I thought she'd be here. Smelling of toothpaste and fear perhaps, but here.

Instead, Barb is back as the fill-in chicken, standing kerbside doing a stiff, fearful kind of pointing when we walk up from the car park. Someone needs to tell her that strobes work even better if you don't stand as still as possible.

Ron's behind the counter, trying to make a burger but putting more effort into an excitable version of his boss-with-the-common-touch act. ‘Ron,' I want to say to him, ‘you're as common at they come, you don't have to do that.' But I don't.

‘Business is up,' he tells us, while Frank sorts out the burger. ‘I know it's early days, but business is up and three people have come in in the last hour talking about famous hotplate chicken. You were onto something there, Phil. They're starting to want us.'

‘Good. That's good news.'

‘So I'm bringing the mid-year party forward.'

‘There's a mid-year party?'

‘Yep, always. And this year it'll be bigger than ever. World of Chickens meets World of Mowers, this Saturday afternoon at my place.'

‘And the feathers'll fly.'

‘What? No, it shouldn't get to that.'

‘It was a joke. Chickens meeting mowers. Don't worry about it.'

‘Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's good. We could save that up for next time and get a cartoon done and put it on a flyer. You'll be there won't you? You guys?'

‘We've got exams next week, actually.'

Ron looks crestfallen, like a kid facing the prospect of a wrecked birthday party. ‘There'll be pizza. And a keg.'

‘We'll be there, mate,' Frank says. ‘Don't worry.' What is this? Guilt? Some attempt at a fresh start? Frank making good for the Zel affair by accepting pizza and beer as some kind of peace offering? ‘We just won't be able to make a big night of it. We'll have to leave and get back to the books at some point.'

‘It'll be good, you know. Actually, there's more news as well. Some of those things we were discussing, Phil. Come out the back and I'll show you something. We'll take a look at the figures. You don't mind holding the fort do you, Frank?'

‘Consider it held.'

Ron, a bad actor always, doesn't convince any of us it's to do with figures.

‘I've talked to Zel,' he says when we're in the storeroom. ‘I've talked to the doc, and I've talked to Zel, like you said I should. And things are looking up. Early days there too, but they're looking up. We haven't talked like that in ages. We started talking and then it was going so well we got a bottle of Mateus Rosé out of the fridge and fired up the jacuzzi.'

‘Ron, it's okay, I . . .'

‘No, no mate. It's all down to you. Credit where it's due, and all that. Just talking mind, but it's a lot better than not talking.' And he claps his hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Mate, if this gets any better, I could start getting erections again,' just as Barb waddles in to change.

‘Sorry,' her muffled voice says inside the chicken head as she turns awkwardly, thumps against the door frame and waddles straight back out.

‘Leave it to me,' I tell Ron, before he can even guess what the problem might be.

I catch her at the end of the corridor.

‘No. Not my business,' she says, and keeps going, straight to the toilet. Before I can stop her, she's in there with the door shut, and possibly locked. ‘Let's just get on with the job.'

‘But to get on with the job, the first thing we've got to do is straighten that out.'

‘Whatever,' she says through the toilet door. ‘You and Mr Todd, you know, whatever. Not my business.'

‘You don't understand.'

‘Listen, there's a lot of shit I don't understand. So what?' She opens the door to hand me the suit and, with a clear change-of-subject face, says, ‘Hey, does your mother do things at the Arts Theatre? I think my mother might know her.'

‘Right, that conversation with Mr Todd before, that was medical, okay? In confidence. It should have happened in a different environment, but it didn't and I'd be grateful if you could make sure it went no further.'

‘Oh, yeah, of course. Not that I heard it anyway. Everything sounds fuzzy in this head.'

‘Medical-in-confidence,' I tell her, rather too sternly. ‘So it wouldn't even matter if you did hear it.'

She backs off, and I don't care if she's treating me like a mad person. There was a message there that I needed to get across.

Ron stays around for the next half hour while I'm chickening, bothering Frank and Barb at the counter and telling customers he's the owner. I'm not even inside the building and his performance works as a long-range mime.

Barb's still wary when we go to change again. I'm sure I hear the toilet door lock each time she goes in there now, and she's never anything but fully dressed.

The door opens, she shuffles out, I zip her up. I ask her if she knows why Ron's still here and she says, ‘He was telling us he wants to talk to you about a video he watched last night.
Annie Hall
. I'm thinking man porn, some kind of trannie thing and—surprise—it's a penis in there under that skirt. But I don't want to know.'

‘It's Woody Allen.'

‘Knew it.'

‘You've got no idea. You've got no idea about Woody Allen, have you?'

‘Woody. That tells me all I need to know.'

‘You should watch it.'

‘Hey, I'm not part of that scene.'

‘There's no scene.'

‘Whatever.'

‘Stop saying that. Okay, let's pretend this never happened. Let's pretend I'm just turning up to work now, and we'll begin like normal people. How was your day, Barb?'

‘Fine.'

‘Good. Did I tell you I delivered a baby early yesterday morning?'

‘Look, I should probably be up front with you. I've got a boyfriend and we do it the regular way. I don't know what you're into with your woody and Ron's problems and who you were delivering that baby to, but let's keep it strictly business here.'

 

*

 

Frank agrees not to hurry at the end of the shift. I want my parents to be asleep when I get home.

My mother isn't. She's waiting, sitting in her usual seat and dressed for bed but with an airline carry bag beside her. My life so long ago slipped its moorings that for a second I genuinely wonder if she's up for a go at the
Star Trek
drinking game.

‘I shouldn't have talked to Celia,' she says, without even saying hello. ‘I shouldn't have got my head so stuck in that book she gave me. I should have talked to you. It all started backstage at
Pirates
. You know how things do?'