Surprise Baby for Christmas

by Harmony Knight

  Aiden

  Valerie and I are still laughing about how unlikely our little triangle is, when the doctor pops her head into the waiting room. Catching my eye, she beckons me over. Valerie and I stand up together and walk a little ways down the corridor with the doctor before she guides us into a family room.

  I’ve been in this sort of room before. With Sophie. I know the sort of news that’s broken in these rooms. My heart is suddenly thrumming away, beating so hard I feel like I might keel over. My legs all but give way and I almost collapse into one of the seats.

  “Is she alright?” asks Valerie, and I’m suddenly grateful that she’s there to do the talking. I’m not certain my voice would work if I tried to talk right now. My tongue feels dry and rough, and I’m acutely, strangely aware of it taking up too much room in my mouth.

  “Yes. She’s a little shocked, but she’s alright,” says the doctor. Valerie and I exchange glances.

  “Shocked at what?” says Valerie.

  “Well. We did some investigation, and it turns out that she may be in labor,” says the doctor. Just like that.

  At first, I assume that this must be some strange figure of speech, or maybe a joke. There’s silence while Valerie and I stare at the doctor.

  “In… labor? Like… a baby?” says Valerie, mouth agape.

  “Yes. Like a baby,” nods the doctor. “Exactly.”

  “Oh my God,” Valerie says, quietly.

  I suddenly find myself on my feet - I don’t know how, or why. I’m just aware of the blood rushing to my head in an effort to catch up with it. The doctor gets to her feet, too, and Valerie follows.

  “We’re not certain that she’s in active labor right now. We’ll have her transferred to the maternity unit and they’ll take it from here.”

  “Woah. Woah, woah. Woah.” I can hear my own voice, but it feels so distant. I’m shaking my head and holding my hands up to the doctor to try to stop her talking. I just need a minute to breathe. A minute to understand. “Pippa’s having a baby?”

  “Yes. It’s very unusual that a woman would be this far along without knowing, but it’s not entirely unheard of. She’s going to need a birthing partner.”

  “Shit,” I hear myself say. My hand is raking through my hair and I’m pacing, and when I glance to Valerie she’s looking me up and down.

  “And a lot of moral support,” the doctor goes on. “She’s pretty shaken up. I can only let one of you in while we prep her for transfer, but once she’s settled in at the maternity unit, you’ll both be able to be with her until she moves to a birthing room. So which of you will go in?”

  I see Valerie turn to look at me in my peripheral vision. When I look back at her, she’s expectant, like she’s waiting for me to offer. But I can’t. I’m rooted to the spot, frozen in place. My mind can’t comprehend what I’ve just heard and I can’t figure out how the hell I fit into this picture. I want to jump to the rescue, rush to her side and be the hero, but my brain is overwhelmed with too many conflicting urges. The fear I felt when I saw Pippa doubled over like that in the snow. The memories of Sophie that have been dredged up by the clinical, chemical smells of the hospital. I can’t think straight.

  “Aiden?” Valerie says. I keep staring, silently, utterly dumbstruck.

  “Jesus,” Valerie says, and she makes the decision for me, shoving past me, shoulder first, and heading for the room that Pippa is in. I hear the doctor mutter something about taking all the time I need as she closes the door behind her.

  I don’t know how long I stand there for. At one point, I look down at my fingers and mutter “March, April, May,” as I lift them, one by one. And then I stop. I already know it’s my baby. I know it in my bones, with more certainty than I’ve ever known anything. And suddenly, through the fog of ancient anxiety and pain, through the beeps and whirrs of the hospital, through the cloying stench of the place, comes the urgent, sudden realisation that I need to be with her. Now. Forever. Always.

  I dash out of the little family room and run along the corridor, almost knocking a nurse over on the way. It seems endless. The strip lights pass overhead, long streaks of clinical white, and I skid my way around the corner into the treatment area she was in, over to the cubicle, tearing back the curtain.

  “Pippa, I—”

  She’s not there. Neither is Valerie.

  The bed sheets are still messed up and there’s a strange looking machine beside the bed that wasn’t there before. Just as it sinks in that it’s an ultrasound machine, one of the nurses who grilled Pippa earlier walks in.

  “Where is she?” I demand, pointing my finger at the bed. “Where’s Pippa?”

  “Oh,” says the nurse, so cheerily that I want to scream. I must look like a lunatic, because she smoothes out her voice and speaks to me in a soothing tone. “Nothing to panic about. She’s just being transferred. They left about… ooh. Ten minutes ago?”

  Ten minutes? My heart lurches. Shit. How long was I standing in that room, wallowing? When I should have been here, with Pippa? This is terrifying for me; I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like for her.

  “Where?” I ask, staring at the nurse, my voice urgent. It’s a demand, not a request, and her benign smile is really starting to piss me off.

  “Here,” she says, walking around the bed. She takes me by the arm and guides me back to one of the endless, cold corridors. “Down there, take a right. All the way at the end of the corridor, you’ll see the elevator. Up one floor, and when you get out, follow the signs. You can’t miss them,” she says. “The ones for the maternity unit are all multicolored.”

  “Down here,” I repeat, to make sure I’ve got it. “Right. Elevator. One floor. Multicolored signs.”

  “That’s right,” she says, with a nod.

  I’m already in the middle of my second long, half-run stride, when I hear the nurse again.

  “Sir?”

  I turn my head, still moving. The nurse is smiling at me. Smiling.

  “Congratulations!” she says.

  By the time I get to the elevator, I’m breathless. I stand there jabbing repeatedly at the button on the wall, cursing under my breath and drawing strange looks from the woman who’s standing beside me, holding a blue, helium-filled balloon that reads “It’s a boy!” in big, happy letters sprawled across the shiny foil.

  It feels like it takes an eternity for the elevator to arrive, but when it does I step inside, turn around and glare at the woman, my finger on the hold button while I wait for her to get in. I realize I must look like a crazy person, so I try to force a friendly smile onto my face. It does not seem to help.

  “I’ll get the next one,” she says, waving her hand for me to go on ahead. I jab at the button to take me up one floor and pace around the elevator like a caged animal. It only takes about twenty seconds, but when seconds are passing like hours, it feels like a lifetime.

  The nurse wasn’t wrong about the signs. I notice the first one immediately when the elevator doors open. It’s bright red and blue and yellow, and there are little balloons and teddy bears dotted around it. The big arrow points to my right, so I turn that way and speed down the corridor. Another two turns and I see the same color scheme on a big, curved sign above double doors that reads “MATERNITY UNIT”.

  I don’t even notice the desk beside the unit entrance until I slam shoulder-first into the unyielding doors and bounce back off them.

  “Shit,” I hiss, and take a step back, looking around frantically for some kind of button or intercom. Anything that will let me get inside.

  “Excuse me,” says a voice, sharply.

  I turn to my right and spot the desk, and the pointy-featured, too-thin woman who stands behind it, hands placed firmly on her hips, looking at me over the type of half-moon eyeglasses I didn’t even know existed anymore. The thin lines all around her lips look like they could only have been achieved through a lifetime of scowling.

  “I need to get in,” I blurt.

  “Well, th
at may be so,” she says, looking me up and down. I can already tell she’s going to be trouble, and I can feel a rage starting to build in the pit of my stomach. “But we can’t just let any old Tom, Dick or Harry into the birthing rooms, can we? What’s the name of the patient?”

  “Pippa,” I say, trying to get a hold of myself. “Uh. Phillippa Long.”

  The receptionist looks down at the screen in front of her, bends a little, and starts two-finger clacking something into the keyboard.

  “Please,” I say. I can hear the desperation in my voice, but the crone behind the desk is unmoved.

  “A moment,” she says, irritably. Clack… … clack.

  It takes all the restraint I have to stand there, attempting to look patient while she tries to get her bony old fingers to work the keyboard. I grind my teeth and take a couple of long breaths, but nothing dampens the rising irritation. I’m transported back to the hospice that Sophie was in towards the end, standing at the door, begging them to let me in while doctors and nurses, Sophie’s parents, and eventually the cops, drag me away time after time after time. I can feel rising anger, now, roiling behind my sternum.

  “”She already has someone with her,” the receptionist says, eventually.

  “Yes, I know,” I say, “bu—”

  “But nothing,” she says, pointedly. “Only one visitor until after assessment.”

  “Right, but I need t—”

  “Sir,” she says, with the practiced prickliness of a school marm. This woman might as well be a porcupine. “I understand that you’re frust—”

  “Jesus CHRIST!” I shout, slamming my hand down on the counter as my barriers collapse and all the rage and anxiety comes flooding out. I see her start and reach down beneath the desk, but I’ve already dealt with my fair share of obstinate, obstructive hospital staff in my lifetime, and right now, right here, I can’t deal with it any more.

  “Please open the door,” I say, much more aggressively than is productive.

  “Sir, I need you to calm down,” she says, her expression impassive.

  “I AM CALM!” I yell.

  Two security guards appear around the corner, and I guess it’s my less-than-convincing assertion that I’m calm that persuades them to immediately restrain me. I shrug away from the first hand that tries to grab my upper arm.

  “You’re leaving,” says the bigger one of them. He’s the same height as me, pudgy around the middle. I could probably take them both if I was quick enough. But the door would still be locked and the bony old gatekeeper would probably call the cops.

  “With us or with the cops,” says the smaller of the two, confirming my fear. They close in and try to take my arms again, but I shrug them off.

  “Alright,” I say. “Alright. I’m leaving.”

  I don’t know how I manage to persuade myself to go quietly, instead of doing something stupid; nor how I manage to convince myself not to cuss out the crone behind the desk as she stands there looking smug, watching me leave with her arms folded over her chest; but before I know it, I’m outside in the snow, blowing clouds of cold air and looking back at the hospital entrance while the guards stare me down.

  I’m banned from the hospital premises for twenty-four hours, they tell me. If I try to re-enter, they’ll call the cops and I’ll be arrested and spend a night in jail.

  Perfect.

  “Just fucking perfect,” I mutter as I stalk back to the car. Dev sees me coming and gets out to open the door.

  “How is she?” he asks, concern on his face.

  “Not now, Dev,” I say, shaking my head. I’ve never felt so dejected in my life, and I just can’t bear having to explain.

  “Yes, Boss,” says Dev, dutifully. “Home?”

  “Home,” I confirm, getting into the back of the car.

  Dev closes the door, and I flick a switch to turn off the intercom, and another to black out the glass between the front and back of the car. I’m despondent and dejected. If I’d only been a little faster. If I’d only put my own hatred of hospitals, my ancient anxieties and my shock aside to be there for Pippa, none of this would have happened.

  Pippa. What the hell is she going to think of me? I close my eyes and cringe at the thought. The first time she’s ever really needed me and I’ve failed. And now, with the threat of cops and a night in jail to keep me in check, there’s nothing I can do about it.

  As I stare out of the window, it begins to snow heavily. The cars slow down, and a thick blanket of fresh flakes begins to cover old footprints and tyre marks. I remember Pippa’s beaming, dimpled face as she stood outside the coffee house, her hand held up with that perfect, unique little snowflake sitting on the end of her finger. I’d give anything to see that dimple again, right now.

  Pippa

  Tick… Tock…

  I’ve never known a clock to be quite so infuriatingly loud as the one on the back wall of the hospital cubicle. Nor as infuriatingly slow. I sit there, in the cubicle, staring at a crease in the curtain and trying to come to terms with the news I’ve been given.

  There is a baby inside me. A fully grown baby that’s ready, or nearly ready, to come out. How exactly does someone come to terms with finding out like this? Most people get months to reconcile themselves with an unplanned pregnancy. I get hours. And then there’s the fact that it’s Aiden’s, that we’ve only just met again after months, and the baby was conceived during what was supposed to have been a week-long fling. And I love him. I think.

  “Crazy,” I whisper.

  While I’m still alone, waiting for Valerie to return and wondering if Aiden will, I take the opportunity to look down at my tummy. It doesn’t look much different than it ever has. There’s a bit more protrusion than there used to be, but I assumed that was just an effect of me losing a few pounds. Tentatively, slowly, I bring my hands up and place them over my tummy.

  I could have done this exact thing yesterday, even this morning, and felt nothing. Now, there’s a strange emotion attached to it as the knowledge that I’m pregnant begins to take root. My son or daughter is in there, hiding somewhere among all my insides, and in a very short while I’m going to meet them.

  “Phillippa Long?”

  I drop my hands quickly from my belly down onto the bed at my sides and snap my head up. A friendly looking woman in her forties has poked her head through the curtain. She’s holding a clipboard and looking at me expectantly.

  “Yes?” I say, half a question.

  “Ah, good, good. I’m Amanda Andrews,” she says, slipping quickly into the cubicle and extending her hand to me. “One of the counsellors here at the hospital.”

  I shake her hand and watch her warily, wondering what she’s doing here.

  “I’m just here,” she says, taking a seat beside my bed, “to introduce myself and make sure I have your details correct, for now. I’ll join you in the maternity unit when you’re settled in there, and we can talk more.”

  The way she says it makes me feel like I’m going to be spending the rest of my life in the maternity unit.

  “But if there’s anything you want to ask me right now, go ahead and I’ll do my best to answer.”

  “Do you have kids?” I ask her. I don’t even know where the question comes from, but it pops out of my mouth before I even know I’ve thought it.

  “I have four,” she says, nodding and smiling.

  Now that I have an answer, I don’t know what to do with it. I nod at her and glance away, back to the crease in the curtain. I notice that it’s changed shape a little, since Amanda disturbed it on her way into my surreal little world.

  “What’s happening to you is very unusual, though,” she says. “It’s called cryptic pregnancy, and you’re only the fifth I’ve seen in over twenty years in practice.”

  I look back to her and nod. She gives me another smile, this one more gentle, and her voice is a little quieter when she speaks again.

  “Most of them involve an element of mental health issues, or abuse,” s
he says.

  It dawns on me that she’s asking a question, and my brows lift.

  “Oh!” I say, shaking my head. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. I just had a vacation fling and… but… I was on the pill. And we used condoms. I didn’t even suspect…”

  She nods. “And then you had a pregnancy that didn’t give you any hint of its presence,” she says. “Phillippa—”

  “Pippa,” I say.

  “Sorry. Pippa” she says, jotting it down quickly on her notepad. “Whatever you’re feeling at the moment—shock, surprise, fear… even disgust—it’s all perfectly normal.”

  I know that she means well, and I understand what her job is here, but I’m just not ready to open up to a stranger right now. The clock tick-tocks away behind me, and I find myself wondering where Valerie is. Where Aiden is. How they’re taking the news.

  Amanda seems to take a hint I didn’t realize I was giving. After promising that we’ll talk more later, she starts reeling through my particulars so that I can confirm for the eighth time today that they’re right.

  “Pip!”

  Valerie is back in an instant, and I physically sigh with relief to see her. Amanda makes her excuses and leaves, and Valerie sits on the bed with me, holding my hand.

  “Wow,” she says, looking at me. She’s not smiling and trying to make light of the situation, but she’s not looking like she’s at a funeral, either. “A baby, huh?”

  I smile weakly and glance at the curtain behind her.

  “Yeah,” I reply, half-distracted. Maybe he’s outside making a call. Or maybe he’s in a cab on his way to the airport to catch a one-way flight to Timbuktu.

  “I’m pretty terrified, Val,” I admit. “I don’t even know how it’s possible to be about to give birth and not know you’re pregnant. This is the sort of shit you see on reality shows that makes you think they’re all made up.”

  “Not gonna lie,” she says. “It’s a bit crazy. But you’ll deal. You always deal. And I’m here for you all the way.”