by Bella James
‘They were fine,’ I mutter, hardly remembering the physical exam another doctor in neurology had carried out that morning. A nurse had taken blood and urine samples and I had been waiting for three hours for him to take off his glasses and tell me once again that I have cancer.
‘I have your results here …’ He begins slowly, but I cannot take any more.
‘I’ll save you the bother, Mr Raj, as this cannot be a part of your job you are particularly fond of.’ I say ‘job’ in a derisory manner just to be sure he knew how much I thought his chosen vocation sucked. ‘My brain tumour has returned with a vengeance, this time it is not possible to operate and instead of kindly allowing me to die with an ounce of dignity the first time round you have successfully prolonged my suffering and pain a further four months.’
I smile with satisfaction as Mr Raj does remove his glasses as predicted.
‘No, Miss Winters. Your cancer has not returned.’ He smiles in a friendly manner that I happen to find quite smug. ‘You’re pregnant.’
That wipes the smirk off my face.
***
I have never ever thought about having children. To me that is something for thirty-year-olds when they have exhausted every excuse not to. I look around at the stunned faces. Michael looks shocked but delighted; Mr Raj still looks a little smug like he has got one over on me, and Izzy and my mother look like they can barely contain themselves. I can tell they are beyond relieved that my cancer has not returned. Mother looks very anxious but somehow happy at the same time. As I watch them looking back at me expectantly, I wonder why it is that I do not feel the same. I sense a foreboding dark cloud returning.
Chapter Fourteen:
Little Seed
We spend the next hour with The Mad Hatter as he tells me I would appear to be around three weeks pregnant, which to me means I became pregnant on Boxing Day.
Michael cannot stop smiling and my mother and Izzy keep telling me I am delighted into shock. Mr Raj looks at me dubiously and goes on to tell me that it is usually better to wait between six months to a number of years before conceiving a child after cancer treatment.
My spirits lift as I hold on to the possibility he is telling me I should not continue with the pregnancy.
‘What do you mean? Is it dangerous to get pregnant after chemo?’
‘Weill, Miss Winters we will need to refer you to an obstetrician, but eggs damaged by chemotherapy are thought not to have left the body until six months after treatment cessation.’
Michael looks worried as I continue my enthusiastic line of interrogation. ‘So my eggs are still damaged, right? This baby could end up looking like a Chernobyl trout with three heads and webbed feet?’
‘Anna, no! My goodness, you do get carried away with yourself at times!’ Mr Raj gives a rare laugh and turns to Michael, hoping for a more reasonable response.
‘Your baby stands every chance to be happy and healthy, but seeing as you have both been ill I think it should be wise to refer you immediately for a check-up. I shall confer with your obstetrician regarding past and present medications. In the meantime, Anna, I am pleased to see you have gained a little weight.’
Despite the bombshell he has happily dropped on my wrought nerves, I am surprised that he has taken this opportunity to insult me. I pull myself up and suck my tummy in a little.
‘Do you think I’m fat now, doctor? How very kind of you. Wait till you see me in nine months’ time, then you can really have a pop at me.’
I leave them to arrange my next appointment as I storm out of the stifling office and along to the car ahead of them.
As I hasten down each corridor I feel more and more doomed. The mutant embryo inside me will grow bigger every day, and instead of never stepping a foot inside a hospital again, which I had been so determined to do, I would now be expected to attend further testing, ante-natal classes, and God only knows what else.
I didn’t have time to consider that I had been convinced my cancer was returning, and that perhaps this should have been a welcome reprieve from the thunderous black cloud. I step outside and find a bench outside the main entrance, taking in great gulps of air. A man is standing next to me in blue pyjamas, trying to smoke a cigarette while manoeuvring around his drip stand.
‘Can I have one, please?’ He turns to face me and I have to stop myself from recoiling in horror as I see that his skin is quite yellow and he has a Frankenstein scar of his own zigzagging across his throat. He eyes my own jagged wound and nods approvingly, handing me a cigarette and lighting it for me.
We smoke in companionable silence, two rebels disregarding Doctor’s orders: Frankenstein’s monster and his bride.
I feel a moment of grim calmness until I hear Lillian’s piercing screech as she sees the offending Silk Cut.
‘Anna!’ she hisses at me, swiping it from between my fingers then throwing it to her left as though it were an undisposed bomb. ‘What are doing, you stupid girl? You’re carrying a baby; if you smoke so do they!’
She looks so horrified that even my partner in crime gives me a disapproving look before shuffling away from the drama.
I’m about to shout something at her until she asks me, ‘What if Michael saw you? He is so happy, Anna. This is not just about you, please try to remember that.’
I open my mouth but then close it abruptly as I see his Jeep pulling into the lay-by, Izzy’s concerned face peering from the window beside him. I have just enough time to whisper angrily at my mother, ‘If it’s not just about me, Mother, then why do I have to carry the damn thing?’
Despite me asking everyone to say nothing of my current state, over the first trimester of pregnancy I receive visits from two very excited parties. The first little excursion to the freak show is partaken by Michael’s parents, and the second by my overjoyed grandparents.
‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Michael laughs at my cross face a few weeks later as Caroline and his father pull up outside Elm Tree. ‘They knew something was going on and I had to tell them!’ He leaves me to get changed as I sigh despondently.
I am beyond tired. My breasts are swollen and sore and I have mood swings Joan Collins would be proud of. New Year resolutions forgotten, I almost murdered my mother when she bought a baby book ‘to help to prepare me.’ They were all squashed together cooing over pictures, and unable to suppress my curiosity I walked casually past the chaise longue and peeked over their shoulders. The picture of a baby at eight weeks nearly floored me and my worst fears were confirmed that he or she would be an alien. My only ray of light at this point was that I could defer the rest of my A Level studies for at least another year. A nagging part of me ached for the days when those exams were all I had to worry about. When had I been so discontent?
I shake my head at the thought, reminding myself that had I not fallen ill, I would not have met Michael. This was his baby, and he was so happy I desperately tried to go along with their charade as best I could.
I resisted the urge to cause another scene and crept hastily back up to my room. I had already attended a health check with a specialist in maternal-foetal medicine, and had stubbornly refused to look at the screen after she pointed out his features and all I could see was a Space Invader. Michael’s eyes had never left the screen and when he finally met my eyes, he mistook my tears for ones of joy.
I was barely pretending to be in any way enthusiastic about a single aspect of my pregnancy, but they were all treating me with gloves and putting my depression down to ‘hormones.’ I called one expression they were all equally fond of the ‘hormone eye roll’, which came into play after one of my frequent outbursts.
I look at Michael’s family and feel utterly distraught that I need to confront them so miserably. I even decide not to wear my wig hoping it will wipe the smiles off their faces as I slowly descend the stairs.
It does not.
***
Michael tries to hold me in bed one night and I resist the urge to shrug him off me. ‘Anna, tell me wh
at is wrong. How can you be so unhappy when we are going to be so blessed? Are you really just scared or is there something you should tell me?’
I know that this is my chance to open up to him completely, as he has avoided this conversation at all costs so far. I want to tell him that I am not scared, I am terrified beyond recognition. The last time something was growing uninvited inside me it nearly killed me, and I had spent the worst days of my life inside that hospital. For almost twelve weeks I have had to return every fortnight, each time hating myself for hoping that during a scan my baby’s heartbeat would not echo around through the room as it always did. I want to tell Michael how my heart had lifted during my first appointment as a doctor had told me to be prepared that the pregnancy might not survive full term. That our illnesses and treatment may have prevented a healthy conception and a hospitable environment in which it may grow. She may have thought my eyes had widened in dismay rather than optimism.
‘Anna, did you hear me?’
Of course I can’t speak such atrocities, to a man who has brought me so much happiness and unconditional love. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep as he moves away from me.
I am sixteen weeks pregnant and the little seed determinedly and stubbornly grows within me.
Chapter Fifteen:
Remember Me
I am reaching the end of my third trimester and everyone tells me I am blossoming. It is the eleventh of September and the baby is due in two weeks.
I have tried to mask my worries and fears, and although Michael does not press me, we both feel an ever extending gulf between us. I never thought I would feel so separate from this man I loved so dearly and I could not help but blame the entity growing inside me.
I cannot bear to look at my body as I feel ridiculous, and when I was in a particularly self-deprecating mood one morning, I stripped down to my underwear to critique more closely the damage caused by pregnancy.
My arms and legs were still thin, but every finger and each ankle were puffed and swollen. I had breasts beyond recognition, filled to bursting with milk in a manner that repelled me, with dark brown, saucer-like circles around each nipple. From my protruding belly button to my groin, a dark-shaded line had formed and I looked as though I had swallowed a space hopper. The baby moved and kicked inside me, making me breathless and uncomfortable, and for the best part of nine months I felt I had had no energy at all.
Izzy walks into the room to find me sitting at the base of the bed in my dressing grown, crying into my hands.
‘Anna, what’s wrong?’ she asks me in exasperation, and I have no doubt she will have executed the hormone eye roll.
‘I just looked in a mirror.’ I spat at her, glad to have someone as an outlet for my rage.
‘But you’re beautiful! Your hair is growing back thick and fast, your skin is glowing, and you are still very slim. Once the baby is born you will have your figure back in no time.’
‘Beautiful?!’ I muster up as much contempt as I can. ‘I’m a fat mess, Izzy. I can hardly walk for the pain in my back; I just waddle around this house all day while you whisper behind my back. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.’
‘We’re all worried about you, Anna. We know how unprepared you were for this but even Mr Raj says you are thriving and pregnancy has suited you. I just wish you could be a little more pleased about this new baby, and stop worrying he won’t be OK. Just because you’ve been ill doesn’t mean it will affect you giving birth to a healthy child, and all the scans have confirmed this.’ She rubs my hand reassuringly but I swipe it away.
‘The baby? I’m not worried about the baby, Isabel! I’m worried about what it has done to my body, and why that during a time in my life I should have been recovering from cancer it is subjecting me to a further nine months of torture! I can’t sleep, I have a body like a beached whale, I am aching all over and have never felt less attractive in my life. Milk is seeping out of my nipples, I’m constantly needing to pee … Do you know Michael hasn’t been near me for weeks?’
I fail to mention that the last time Michael tried to make love to me I had kicked him in the shin.
‘Nobody asked me if I wanted this baby, I don’t even like children, and I have no clue how to be a mother. All I wanted was to recover from my illness and plan the wedding of my dreams, and now I don’t even have the energy to do that. We won’t be getting married at New Year, all I will be doing is changing nappies and getting puked on. This baby has ruined everything.’ I know I should stop but I can’t end my rant. All of my fear and anxiety is pouring out of me like an uninterrupted waterfall.
‘What chance does it stand? Both parents have had cancer and let’s face it, we don’t exactly have a promising gene pool. My father is a wife-beater, my mother is a bag of nerves, Michael’s brother was two cents short of a shilling, and his mother a neglectful abandoner! I should have had an abortion then everything would have stayed the same.’
I have shocked my sister into silence but we both look up, horrified to see Michael standing in the doorway. He turns on his heel, looking so hurt I feel I have been punched in the stomach.
I try to stand to go after him but Izzy pulls me back without difficulty, ‘Let him go, Anna. Give him a few moments.’
I am crying steadily and she puts her arm around me, holding me close.
‘I know this has been too much for you, but none of us ever considered you would choose not to continue with pregnancy. We saw it as such a blessing. I’m sorry for not listening to you but maybe a small part of you really does want this? You never do anything you don’t want to, so perhaps this is the right thing for you and you just can’t see it yet?’
I look up into her naïve face, certain that she is wrong, but I have caused enough anguish for one day.
‘Maybe,’ I tell her, and rise awkwardly to my feet to find Michael.
***
I find him in the meadow throwing a stick for Freedom, and his body visibly tenses as I breathlessly approach them.
‘Are you OK?’ he asks me as I breathe heavily, perhaps a little heavier than necessary as he may be less cross with me that way.
‘Michael, I am so sorry for what I said – About Benji and the baby. I don’t really want a termination; I am just so bloody tired I cannot think straight.’
He looks at me steadily and I know he does not accept my lie about not wanting to end the pregnancy.
‘I hardly know you these days, Anna. You won’t talk to me about anything. We’re supposed to be getting married and I feel like sometimes I have no idea what is going on inside your head. All of this has happened so quickly but I thought it would be our way of sticking our fingers up to cancer, turning something negative into good. Most people never have the opportunity to realise how precious life is until they face losing it. Every day now is a blessing and I presumed you felt the same.’
I shrug my shoulders and refrain from mentioning that perhaps if he had been the one waddling around like a disabled duck for three months he might not be feeling quite so blessed.
‘When Mr Raj told me you were pregnant I felt like the luckiest man in the world. I thought he was going to say you were ill again, that I might lose this veracious, beautiful girl I had planned to spend the rest of my life with.’ He shakes his head sadly. ‘It was beyond imagining that instead of losing life, we had created a new one together.’
I look up at Michael and hate myself once more, wishing I could see the world the way that he does.
‘I’m scared I’ll mess it up!’ I try to sound vulnerable so he will comfort me as he does so adeptly when I am afraid. ‘What if I’m like my father? What if I turn out to be cruel and heartless like he was?’
I surprise myself as I say these words for I had kept this fear buried for as long as possible, but Michael does not cajole me as I imagined he would and grabs my shoulders so I am forced to face him.
‘Then don’t let that happen, Anna,’ he tells me unlovingly. ‘For once in your life take some responsibilit
y for the way you are and stop blaming cancer or your upbringing. Be present in your own life and make a decision to be the best parent to this child that you can be, without question or compromise. This is no time to be selfish and self-indulgent. Those days have gone and in less than two weeks your only concern will be our baby. If you cannot put our child’s needs before your own then I will raise the baby without you. I love you, Anna, but you are pushing me too far. Please stop making this about you. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, Anna, and I’m going up to the ranch for a few days. I think we need some space.’
I’m not entirely sure whether or not this is the right time to tell him that I think my waters have just broken.
***
The next few hours of my life could only be described as complete pandemonium. Michael had been frozen to the spot since I told him my waters had broken, muttering that it was too soon, but I was certain that the moment I had been dreading for the best part of nine months had arrived. I shouted for my mother, who came running out to see me holding my dressing gown against my groin and knew in an instant we were ready to launch. She untied her apron, shouted something to Izzy about my bags, and jolted Michael into sudden action by telling him to bring the Jeep round. I looked to her with desperation as she ran over and helped me into the house, bolting the kitchen door behind us. Freedom looked concerned and to my annoyance, she took the time to bend down and stroke his ears softly, telling him to be a good boy and that we would not be long.
I didn’t have time to be angry with her because the dull ache in my womb that had been present all day suddenly intensified, making me cry out in pain. ‘Oh God, you’re having contractions,’ said Izzy breathlessly, a mixture of excitement and high anxiety in her voice.
I took a moment to shoot her an evil look, annoyed that she knew I was having a contraction before I had even realised what they were. I should not have been surprised, seeing that she had read every single one of the baby books I had tossed aside, and had already bought herself a ‘World’s Best Aunty’ T-shirt. She would not have dared tell me, but I had found the offending garment in her drawer when searching for a jumper.
