The Girl Next Door (36 page)

Poor old Polly had just had her appendix out. Cath had called that morning. She’d woken them all up in the middle of the night, howling with pain and throwing up all over the place. It was about to rupture, Cath said – the doctors didn’t know why she hadn’t been in agony for hours earlier. Cath had sounded drained and exhausted, and almost weepy, which was unusual for her. Geoff was looking after George, she said, and she was sleeping on a mattress‐type arrangement in the children’s ward. ‘Backache, heartache and tummy ache’ was how she described herself.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Eve had reassured her.

‘Of course she’ll be fine. This is regular kid stuff. I know that. Unless she gets eaten alive by MRSA or something horrid like that. It’s just that she looks so small and bloody vulnerable lying in that big bed, with a dirty great drip hanging out of her arm. It makes you realize, that’s all. How lucky you are, and how bad things could get.’

‘You sound like me, not like you.’

‘God forbid. I’m all right. I just need to get her home, and a bloody big whisky and a bear hug from Geoff.’

The plan was to release Polly the day after Thanksgiving, providing everything was going well. Eve had gone straight down Fifth Avenue, buying a card that played a Hannah Montana song, and a bear she’d ‘built’ at the Build‐A‐Bear workshop, recording her own voice singing get well wishes on to a small machine that had been sewn into her bear along with a heart and 2lbs of fibre stuffing. By Christmas, Polly would be back to her old self, appendix‐less, but otherwise relatively unchanged, except for the dramatic story she would have to share. Eve had had appendicitis when she was fifteen. She still remembered how much it had hurt.

Once they were back, in January, after her picture‐perfect Christmas, she planned to seriously nest. The spare bedroom needed babyfying. Currently painted a green that definitely erred on the side of sludgy, she had something far brighter in mind. Custard, maybe. She couldn’t decide whether to go with the bright primaries they had at this great baby store on Madison, or with soft pink and lace. The book said babies responded to strong colours. But she wanted it to be pretty, too. She wanted a rocking chair, with a soft, downy cushion to lean your head against while you rocked. And a mobile that played ‘Clair de Lune’.

Not so long ago, the months had loomed ahead of her, empty and lonely. Now she was afraid there wouldn’t be enough time.

The supermarket was horribly crowded. And no one here seemed especially thankful. Wasn’t that always the way? Tempers were short, and lines were long at the meat counter and the till points. Some poor sod had the job of marshalling the battalions, standing way back past the soup and salad section with a sandwich board on, advertising himself as the end of the line, so that optimistic fools who had made their way to the cash registers had to retrace their steps, moaning and griping, past the thirty or forty people already in front of them. A Seinfeld‐like voice came over the tannoy every five minutes, apologizing for the fact that deliveries were not guaranteed at four hours today, occasioning more tutting and muttered swearing. The Pilgrim Fathers would not have approved. Eve found the end of the line, and took her place, leaning forward on the handle of her trolley, and rubbing the small of her back with the other hand. People glanced at her nervously, and she smiled at them reassuringly. This damn bump was too big. People routinely thought she was more pregnant than she actually was. And right now they were clearly anxious that a full‐term woman’s waters going in the checkout line two days before Thanksgiving might slow down their own progress.

The regular nature of the pains she was experiencing had occurred to Eve only as she neared the end of her journey up and down the aisles. She had been spooning olives into a plastic tub. Funny, she hadn’t liked olives much, before she got pregnant. Must be something to do with the salt, she figured, this craving she had now. Better than coal. She had looked at her watch, trying to remember how long they’d been happening.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
said they were Braxton Hicks, practice contractions, and that they were perfectly normal. She didn’t remember hearing that they happened this early, but then she hadn’t committed the whole book to memory. There were whole chapters she hadn’t quite been brave enough to read yet. At first, she didn’t worry. She’d grown accustomed, over the last few months, to her body doing weird things it didn’t used to do. The heartburn, the sudden bursts of energy, or exhaustion. Since the baby started moving, she’d felt even stranger. It was wonderful, yes, but it was kooky, too. She tried to imagine the faint flutterings and pulsings as tiny feet and hands, but it still didn’t seem real.

She still felt okay when she got to the front of the line, and paid for her shopping, thanking the gods once again for the $5.95 home delivery, four‐hour window or not, and went upstairs to one of her favourite places – the Bouchon Bakery – on the third floor, for a cool drink and a sit down. It was there that the pains got just a little stronger – so that she had to stand still, by the milk and sugar station, and steady herself with her hand – just while they lasted, and just a little closer together (twice between ordering her lemonade and paying for it, although they were always a little slow), and she began to worry seriously. Sitting down without the distractions of the supermarket forced her to concentrate, and she instinctively felt this was not right.

Eve made three calls on her cellphone, taking deep breaths and willing herself to stay calm. She called the ob/gyn, she called Ed and she called Violet. The receptionist at the ob/gyn put her through straight away. They told her to come straight in. She didn’t realize until they said it how much she had hoped they would sound relaxed – say it was nothing to worry about – overexertion, perfectly normal. Send her home to watch Ellen DeGeneres. She’d heard no smile in the voice that told her to take a cab. At Ed’s office, one of the secretaries who all sounded the same answered his direct line, and said he was in a meeting, and did Eve want her to interrupt him? She sounded as though this would be, in her opinion, unreasonable. Eve said no, she’d call back. Not to worry. Violet answered on the second ring. She must have been sitting in her armchair, next to the table where she kept the only phone in the apartment.

‘I think something’s wrong, Violet. I think I’m in labour.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at Columbus Circle. The doctor said to come in.’

‘Give me the address.’

Eve did.

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Unless you want me to come and get you first?’

‘No. I’ll get a cab. There are always loads outside. That’ll be quicker.’

‘All right then. I’ll see you very soon, Eve. Hold on. It’s all going to be fine.’

‘Thank you. Thank you, Violet.’

Outside, the sun shone bright, but the air was very cold, and it stung Eve’s face as she rushed to where the cabs usually pulled in. Five or six groups huddled on the pavement, arms out, waiting for cabs to swing around from Broadway. Eve wanted to scream. She pushed against the heavy revolving glass door, and as she did, fluid began to trickle down her leg, and her tights were wet. A sob rose in her throat. She half ran, ungainly and slow, to the edge of the road, where a woman in a turquoise tailored overcoat and high‐heeled boots was waiting, one arm outstretched, the other cradling her cellphone to her ear.

‘Please. I need to take a cab. Your cab.’

The woman looked her up and down, then lowered her hand, and turned away without a break in her conversation, giving up the cab, but not one ounce of human kindness.

In the end they couldn’t stop it. In the twenty‐first century, in the Western world, in a city known for its medical expertise, in a hospital better equipped than almost any other, with all the drugs, and all the knowledge, they couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t stop the contractions. Eve was in full‐blown labour, at twenty‐seven weeks, and they couldn’t do anything at all about it.

Violet called Ed. Eve told her the number, and Violet went out into the hall and used a pay phone. This time his secretary put the call straight through, and Violet heard mild panic in his voice.

‘Violet?’

There was no time for preamble. ‘Ed, you need to come down to the hospital. As quickly as you can. Eve’s gone into labour.’

‘But it’s too soon.’

‘I know it is. The doctors are trying to stop it. I’m sure they can – I’m sure they’ll help her.’ She wasn’t – she’d seen glances exchanged between the doctors and nurses, glances she knew and was grateful that Eve had missed, focused on her pain and her fear, but it was what he needed to hear. ‘But she needs you. I’ll stay until you get here.’

He barely even said goodbye. Or thank you. The line went dead.

When he arrived, they told them there was nothing that they could do. Eve was going to deliver their child today. Far, far too early. She refused an epidural. She wanted to feel every single thing. There wasn’t really time anyway. The baby came fast, once the futile efforts to stop her from coming failed. A different team of doctors. A different room. They wheeled her to delivery. She thought how excited she should be now.

The long, long wait would have been over. First babies were often late, weren’t they? The baby might have been a day or two, even a week late. She might have been pacing the floors at home, taking long afternoon walks in the weak March sunshine, trying to get things started. Ed might have made his chicken curry – the famously vile and pungent one he’d existed on at college – made her eat it, hoping the curry powder would work its magic on her. When something worked – even if it was just the passage of time, and nothing to do with the walks or the curry – and things started, they’d have checked her packed bag. Called Cath, to put her on standby. Debated when labour was established enough to take a cab the few blocks to the hospital. Ed would have wanted to go early. She’d have wanted to stay at home longer. Cath had been sent home, with her first baby – told that she was only half a centimetre dilated, and that there was no bed for her. She’d felt humiliated and embarrassed. Eve wouldn’t have wanted to risk that. The doorman would have wished them luck, as he hailed them a cab. The cabbie would have driven slowly and carefully, telling them in broken English the story of his own wife, and his own first child’s arrival.

This was all wrong. She felt only pain and terror. They wanted to help with the pain, but Eve would take nothing more than gas and air. Twice she threw up, retching violently into the kidney dishes they handed her. It hurt, but she wanted to feel all of it. They had nothing to help with the terror. Ed was ashen, and quiet. Shocked. He was supposed to be making jokes and taking photographs.

Violet had slipped away when Ed arrived, kissing her once on the forehead, and squeezing her hand. Eve wished she hadn’t gone. Violet might have been able to calm her down, she might have been able to keep talking. Ed wasn’t any good at this. She remembered him joking about how great he’d be.

They didn’t need to tell Eve when she was fully dilated, and ready to push. Her body knew. She had never felt a physical sensation as intense as the desire to propel her baby out, but at the same time her mind screamed and railed against the waves.

This last part didn’t hurt, not really. The baby wasn’t big enough, she realized, missing the pain she had read about. She slithered out in a last rush of fluid, and Eve fell back against the gurney, her body shuddering in shock. There was no cry, and the staff converging between her legs worked quietly and rapidly. The baby was lifted away, held not like a baby but like a thing. She could only see the top of its head, blue and mottled. There’d been a heartbeat, all through the short labour. They’d put a monitor around her stomach, and she’d watched the screen beside the bed. There’d been a heartbeat. The baby was born alive, she was almost sure of it. Ed’s head hung down – she couldn’t see his eyes. He was holding her hand, but it felt at that moment as though she was entirely alone, and everything was happening very slowly, and very far away.

‘Is it… is she alive?’

For a moment no one answered her, and she wondered if they had heard. Then a nurse bent over so their faces were close. Her eyebrows were drawn on, thick and unnaturally dark.

‘Yes. She’s alive. They’re working on her now, Eve. They’re good doctors. The best. You’ve got to trust them now.’ Why wasn’t Ed asking? Why wasn’t he checking? Why wasn’t he fighting…?

No euphoria. No laughter. No husband’s triumphant kiss, wet with tears of relief and joy.

And then she was gone, wheeled through the double doors by a team of white‐coated doctors.

‘We’re taking the baby to the NICU, Eve. Okay?’

No. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay at all. Eve wanted her baby. ‘Go with her, Ed.’

‘I should stay with you.’

‘I want you to go with her. Please. Go with her. She shouldn’t be alone.’ She shouldn’t die alone, she thought.

Ed wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and stood up. He couldn’t let go of her hand, and he pulled her arm out to its full length before he released her fingers. She didn’t watch him as he left. In the time after he went, as her placenta was delivered, and she was tidied up before they took her back to a room somewhere else, she never took her eyes off the clock on the wall behind the nurse’s head. Counting the minutes without news, and wondering what was happening to her little girl.

The baby was born at 5.37 p.m. two days before Thanksgiving. She weighed 1lb 2ozs. Before either of her parents touched or held her, she was laid, spread‐eagled, in an incubator, naked but for a nappy so small it wouldn’t fit a doll. It looked as though she should be cold – it went against the instincts of everyone except the NICU nurses to see a baby so vulnerable and uncovered. But she lay on a radiant heat pad that warmed her from beneath. She was mottled and pale and her veins looked like a blue cobweb spun across her. Her breathing was controlled by a ventilator, because her lungs weren’t developed enough to breathe on their own, and, although they assured her parents that the machine was gentle – especially designed for infants this small and weak – it still looked medieval to them, forcing her tiny chest to heave up and down, so fast it made you want to pant just watching her. She was jaundiced, so a light shone on her translucent skin all the time, and she wore a minuscule mask to protect her eyes. Ed might have nicknamed her Zorro. If he wasn’t made so utterly sad and broken by watching her lying there.