The SECRET TO NOT DROWNING

by Colette Snowden

  I can’t sit here and watch Him pretend not to be upset and I can’t deal with Him being upset either.

  “No,” I say. “You get off. I’ll be fine. I’ll give you a ring later.”

  And He kisses me on the forehead and goes.

  5

  Sometimes I have dreams that start off as dreams and end up as nightmares. But it never ever happens the other way round.

  I’m walking this dog in the park. We haven’t even got a dog, but in the dream it’s my dog and walking it is a normal thing to do. I don’t know the park in real life, which is odd because we live round the corner from a park and if we did have a dog I’d walk it there, obviously. It does have bits of places I know but it’s not an actual park that I could name and it has this weird mini fun fair in it and there are people queuing all over the place to get on the rides. But in the dream I don’t care about the fun fair, I’m just walking the dog and enjoying the sunshine and kicking acorns off the path as I walk. The dog is small and cute and people keep smiling at me and the cute little dog running like fury to keep up with my walking pace. It’s not even on a lead, it’s just scurrying along beside me like we’re some kind of Crufts champions putting on an obedience display for the judges.

  And then as we’re walking along, without warning the dog jumps up at me. It starts to bite me and it’s suddenly much bigger than it was before. It looks like a wolf now and it’s biting me and snarling and pushing me to the ground. And a crowd gathers. All the people who were out walking their dogs and all the people who were queuing for the fun fair gather round to watch me being savaged by this big, wild dog. But not one of them comes to help me, they just watch. They don’t look at all horrified or concerned. They just watch.

  I wake up to find I’m bleeding all over the bed. The clock on the wall says it’s twenty past eleven. That means I’ve been here for six hours.

  I call for the nurse.

  “I’ll help you get yourself sorted out,” she says. And she takes charge and I feel like a kid that’s been sick in the playground being looked after by the teacher.

  “D’you need the loo?” she says and hands me something that looks like a bowler hat made of recycled cardboard. “Just wee into that for me love,” she says, “then we can make sure we know when you’ve passed everything.”

  She gives me one of those smiles and I just hold onto the cardboard bowler hat and watch her while she strips the bed.

  “It’s OK, love. I’ll sort this out. You just get yourself to the bathroom.”

  So now I’m like some weird phobic in the bathroom. I steel myself to sit on the toilet with the bowler hat underneath me and when I’ve finished I reach forward and take a handful of paper towels to drape over the bowl. I don’t want to see what’s in there. I know what’s in there, if not now, then next time I go, or the time after that.

  I carry the bowler hat back into the bedroom and the nurse has made the bed for me and brought me a fresh jug of water

  “I’ll take that,” she says, holding her hand out for the bowler hat, “you get yourself back into bed. You look pale. Are you OK? D’you you need any pain relief?”

  “Got any Rohypnol?” She forces a smile and so do I.

  “I can offer you an injection that will help relax your muscles and reduce the pain,” she says. “It might help you sleep.”

  But I don’t want to sleep. I can’t just sleep while my baby leaves me, what kind of mother would that make me?

  “I’ll leave you then,” she says once I’m back in bed. “But don’t forget, if you need anything, just buzz.”

  She gives me another one of those smiles and reaches over to turn the lamp off but I ask her not to.

  “OK then love,” she says, “but you try to get some sleep.” And she opens the door silently and slips out.

  In the quiet I can hear the sound of my own breathing. How many breaths will it take until morning? If I hold my breath can I stop time passing? Can I stop this baby, dead as it is, from leaving me? I look at the clock. It’s hardly moved since the last time I looked at it.

  This room is stuck in time. It looks like it’s been 1983 in here ever since about 1987 when it was decorated to look like the living room of a suburban semi. If I turn on the TV there’ll probably be an episode of Dynasty or Knight Rider. It’s all calm and matching with pastel scrolls that repeat around the room. If I squint my eyes they turn into dragons chasing each other around the walls and I swear I can see them moving, nose to tail, in an endless circuit. It takes me back to the curtains in the bedroom I had as a kid. Dark green and brown and navy with a big, repeating floral pattern. In the daytime they just had big flowers on, but at night they were covered in witches and ugly bogeymen and all kinds of monsters.

  There’s nothing scary like that in this room, unless you count the reminders of the decade that taste forgot. But I’m scared. I’m scared of being alone here and I’m scared of leaving here and having to just go back to normal.

  I close my eyes. Those dragons are driving me nuts. I need the loo but I don’t want to go. How long can I lie here, needing the loo but not going? If I were on a bus I could hang on. Pretend you’re on a bus. Pretend you’ve only just got on and it’s half an hour until the bus gets where it’s going. Now stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it. Think about something else.

  I pick up one of the books that I brought with me but I can’t concentrate. Maybe it’s a slow burner. I skip to chapter two but I still have no idea what the story is. Chapter three. Last page. I need the loo. I’m going to have to go to the loo.

  So I pick up another bowler hat and go into my little en-suite where the fluorescent light fitting flickers and hums. I quickly switch it off again. I can see as much as I need to from the light in the main room. In fact that’s better. I can only just see well enough so the chances of seeing something I don’t want to are slim to nil. I feel odd. Woozy. I love that word. I wonder if it’s a real word. Who invents the words that aren’t real words?

  Woooooozy. That’s more like it. My belly is aching and my legs are all heavy and prickly so I end up sitting there on the loo for a good few minutes just in case I stumble when I get up and make a mess. I sit there with a huge handful of paper towels in my hand ready to cover the bowl as soon as I stand up. Then I finally place the bowl carefully on the floor while I wash my hands and congratulate myself for being so brave. I am doing this on my own. He can’t touch it.

  I press the button by the bed and Denise the nurse, a different one, comes to take the bowler hat from me. She asks me if I need anything and smiles before slipping off to perform the thankless task of looking at what’s in the bowl. I’m glad I’m not her. Fancy having to look through other people’s business like that. Fancy having to come to work and find the right thing to say to a bunch of women who are totally miserable and don’t want to talk to anybody. I’m rubbish at things like that. I can never say the right thing. I’m lucky if I manage to get through a day without saying completely the wrong thing.

  I lie back in the bed again but I can’t get comfortable sitting up, the pillows are too thin and the bedstead is metal and digs in to my shoulders. So I lie down and decide to give myself a break from the book for a while. I can just have a think while I lie here. It’s good to have time for a bit of a think. But I find I haven’t a thought in my head apart from the baby.

  It’s the ceiling tiles that come to my rescue. They surely can’t be polystyrene but they look like it. Big white squares all across the ceiling, each with lots of little holes in. I start trying to count how many tiny holes there are in each tile but the dots play tricks on my eyes and I keep losing count. I try again. Maybe if I just count the number of dots going across the tile and multiply that by the number of dots going downwards, then I’ll be able to work out the number of dots per tile and then I’ll be able to count the number of tiles and work out the number of dots in the whole
room.

  Maths never was my strong point and I never do get to the answer because suddenly I can hear the sound of a phone ringing and apparently it’s morning.

  A nurse pops her head round the door.

  “Hiya”, she smiles, “I’m Jess, “I’ll be looking after you today. Though we should be able to let you go home pretty soon,” she adds. I’m not sure whether to feel relieved or bereft.

  She comes and perches on the side of my bed and tells me that I’ve passed everything they need to see during the night and it reminds me of passing my driving test. “I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve passed…” For a minute I think she’s going to be like the driving examiner and pull out a clip chart and run me through everything bullet point by bullet point but she just starts asking me about arrangements for being picked up and whether I’d like to use the phone in reception.

  And suddenly I find myself crying. How stupid is that? I’ve managed to get through the whole night on my own without crying and then I blub in front of a complete stranger. She looks round for tissues but the box is empty so she raids my en-suite for toilet paper.

  The toilet paper sort of disintegrates and I sniff and force a smile which she takes as her cue to let go of my hand again and get on with the business of getting me out of here.

  “I’ve got a few leaflets to give you,” she says. “Is there someone at home to take care of you?”

  “My husband will be working but I think He’ll be home in the evenings,” I say. “And I think He was going to ask my mum if she would come and stay for a couple of days.”

  “Perfect,” says Jess, smiling again. “And if you need to talk to someone outside the family there’s a helpline number on here. They’re very good.”

  She takes a pen out of her pocket and puts a big asterisk next to the helpline number on a leaflet before she hands it to me. “You know, lots of women find they fall pregnant straight away after miscarrying. It’s like nature putting things back the way they were supposed to be.”

  I muster a smile.

  “Now there’s no rush,” she says. “When you’re ready you can come and use the phone on reception to ring your husband about picking you up and then we’ll take it from there. OK?”

  “Thanks,” I mumble.

  6

  When He gets to the hospital I’m in the shower and He’s cross because I’m not ready to go. I couldn’t help it. Once I was under the water I just didn’t want to get out. The water is warm – on the hot side of warm – and I stand with my back to the flow of it with my head dipped forward, letting it splash off the back of my neck and trickle down my back. It’s a tiny little cubicle and the shower head isn’t very big but the water pressure makes it belt out like a torrential downpour; the noise of my shower rain against the hard floor and Perspex door is like the sound rain makes in my mum’s conservatory. I turn round and open my mouth and let the water gush in and trickle out again.

  I wasn’t going to wash my hair but there was a bottle of shampoo already in there. Someone else must have left it behind – perhaps they were being chivvied along by an impatient husband and just left it by accident. It’s posh stuff and it smells so lovely that I decide to use it. It’s nice to smell the unfamiliar and step out of the shower smelling like somebody else so I do take my time, just like Jess said, and I think ‘sod Him’.

  “I thought you said you’d be ready to go when I got here,” He snaps at me as soon as I walk back into the bedroom.

  I think about saying, “I didn’t expect you to get here so quickly,” but instead I just say “Sorry, I won’t be long.”

  “Well, just get a move on,” He sighs. “We’ve got about another fifteen minutes free parking, then we have to pay for two hours.”

  I wonder if expensive shampoo woman had to pack up her things and throw her clothes on in record time to avoid shelling out £2 on the car park. Probably not, I’m guessing. If she can spend a tenner on a bottle of shampoo, two quid on a car park is neither here nor there for her. It’s no big deal to Him either, it’s just an excuse to hurry me out of here because He hates being in the hospital. He’d rather whinge about the cost of parking than trot out the old cliché about how the smell of hospitals turns his stomach. Not that this place smells like a hospital at all. All I can smell now is the perfume from the shampoo, but even before that it smelt mostly like school dinners.

  I wonder if shampoo woman’s husband asked her how it went. Perhaps he even stayed the night with her on the put-you-up bed in the corner. They offered the bed to Him but He said it was best if He went home. My mother’s coming today so He thought He’d better make sure the place was presentable for her. There’s no way He’s so much as plumped a cushion, I know that. And He knows that I know it was just an excuse. But He won’t say anything and neither will I. And anyway, I only wanted Him to offer to stay. I didn’t want Him to actually be here. What would have been the point of that?

  I get dressed quickly and start shoving things into my bag. He starts putting things in too, trying to be helpful, but it’s just annoying. He puts my wet towel on top of my pyjamas so the whole lot will be damp by the time we get home. But I don’t say anything. I decide to give Him the benefit of the doubt: He’s just trying to be kind.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “It’s all over now,” He says. And that’s it.

  “Let’s go then,” He says. But I need to check that I have everything, so I ask Him to wait while I check in the bathroom and He offers to have a quick scout around in the bedroom for me. Anyone would think I’d been here for a fortnight the way we’re hunting for things we might accidentally leave behind, but I can’t quite think what I brought with me so it’s not easy to do that quick mental checklist of everything I should have packed. And I feel like I’m leaving something behind. I’ve got that I’ve-forgotten-something feeling. I want to be home but I don’t really want to leave.

  In the bathroom I collect my toothpaste and toothbrush and the make-up bag I haven’t even opened. I quickly run the hairbrush through my hair then tuck it under my arm while I have a last look round. In the shower cubicle the borrowed shampoo is still sitting there. I should leave it for the next person to find, a bonus little treat on a bad day. But I want to take it home. I really want to take it home. The smell of it will remind me of here. I want to be able to open that bottle and remember the baby I had that will never be born. I want to smell something that takes me back here and reminds me that I have spent this night all by myself and I’m OK. I wrap it in a paper towel, take it back into the bedroom and tuck it in the top of my bag. Ready.

  On the way out I pop my head round the door of the nurses’ office to say goodbye to Jess and let them know we’re leaving but she’s not there. Just in with one of the patients, apparently. I can wait if I want. Clearly, I can’t wait: the car park beckons.

  “I’ll just get off,” I say, “but if you could let Jess know that I’ve gone and tell her thanks for everything.”

  “OK, love,” says the nurse, “I’ll tell her.”

  He carries my bag back to the car and we get back there just in time to avoid paying for the car park. He puts the key in the ignition and then stops to squeeze my hand. I give his a faint squeeze back and He gives me a nurse’s smile. “OK?” he whispers.

  I nod. What else can I say?

  There are flowers in a vase in the hall when we get home, and it’s not even Tuesday.

  “Lovely flowers,” I say and He’s pleased that I’ve noticed. He dumps my bag in the hall and tells me He’s just got time for a cup of tea before He goes back to work. I thought He might have taken the day off. I’m sure they would have offered to let Him take the day off. But He needs to get back, He says. He’s waiting for someone to return his call this afternoon and He’s already missed them once, He mustn’t miss them again.

  Fair enough.

  So He sits down and ch
ecks his watch again while I put the kettle on and take my bag upstairs. The pyjamas are wet from the towel, so I take everything out and unpack it there and then and take the damp towel and pyjamas downstairs to put them straight in the washing machine. He’s made us both a cup of tea by the time I get down there. In fact He’s already drunk most of his.

  “I just don’t know how I should feel,” He says. And I think He’s talking to me but He’s not, He’s talking to someone on his phone with that silly earpiece thing that makes Him look like He belongs on the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise.

  He jumps when He sees me as though I’ve caught Him genuinely talking to Himself, not just looking like He’s talking to Himself.

  “Who was that?”

  “It was Jimmy. He just rang to see how we’re doing. How you’re doing, you know.”

  Jimmy is our friend. His friend, to be honest. He’s around all the time and I know exactly how he likes his tea and which are his favourite biscuits – dark chocolate digestives – but I never really have a conversation with him.

  “Nice of him to ring.”

  “Will you be all right while I’m out?” He says. And I wonder what He would do if I said ‘no’. Should I try it? Should I say ‘no’ and see if He stays home with me and just lets someone else take his stupid fucking precious phone call? But even if I say no He might just go back to work anyway and then where would I be? Still on my own with a very pissed-off husband, that’s where. I know it’s a rhetorical question so I just give Him his rhetorical answer and He glugs the last of his tea.

  “I’ll be off then,” He says. And He gives me a kiss on the cheek and squeezes my hand again. “You will be OK, you know,” He says. He sounds like a hypnotist giving me an instruction while I’m in my trance. When He clicks his fingers, then I will be OK. Perhaps I’ll do a chicken walk every time I hear Kylie Minogue on the radio or curtsy every time I see a picture of the queen, but when the music stops I will not pass go, I will not be forced to go on the run for a crime I didn’t commit and I will not in any way fall to pieces. I will be fine. I’m waiting for Him to click his fingers but He just picks up his keys, grabs his coat off the banister and goes.