Pregnant With His Child

by Lilian Darcy

  He shouldn’t rub her up the wrong way just because of a few irritating mannerisms, which were no doubt designed to disguise a level of insecurity and unhappiness in his personal life that she should feel an extra dose of empathy for today.

  In a warmer tone, she added, ‘What are you still doing here at this time in the evening? You can’t be doing emergency surgery on a file folder.’

  ‘You see, that’s what everyone thinks—that because it’s not immediately about saving lives, my job fits neatly into nine till five,’ he said seriously. ‘But Jill and I have been sweating over staffing and budget issues for the past two hours.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Bit of TLC, too, to be honest, but don’t let that go any further, will you? Jill hates to have her private life splashed around.’

  ‘Of course, Brian.’

  Over his shoulder, Christina could see the director of nursing seated at the desk. The light from the lamp there struck the far side of her face, while the near side, in shadow, was tear-stained. She had a mature, maternal kind of beauty in the uneven lighting, but she didn’t look happy.

  Brian followed the direction of Christina’s gaze, but didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘I’m glad I can count on you,’ he finally replied quietly. ‘Her ex-husband should be shot and dumped in the concrete for the new bridge, I’m telling you.’

  He almost looked ready to do the deed himself.

  Was something going on between the two of them? Christina had always found Jill Shaw uncomfortably frosty and rigid, but if Brian, of all people, had seen something else—something sadder—beneath the surface of her personality, something that reflected a dark truth about the marriage she’d ended last year…

  He was a kind person in his way. Observant. There was more to him than the awkward, pompous bean-counter that first met the eye.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Christina said, and actually found herself patting him on the arm.

  Her emotions were on a hair trigger today. She knew Brian’s wife had left him several years ago. It must have hurt a lot. She understood the hurt now, in a raw, physical way she wouldn’t have quite known about before.

  ‘No, it’s fine, we’re done. Jill?’ he called back into the office. ‘You’re not still pushing those numbers around, I hope. I told you to go. Come in for a minute, Christina,’ he invited her. ‘Give me an update on tonight’s admission.’

  But when Jill had picked up her bag, acknowledged Christina in her usual distant way and hurried off, Brian didn’t seem all that interested in Jim Cooper after all.

  ‘Look, I know you must be having a tough week,’ he said. ‘I’ve been through it myself and, believe me, I know. The emptiness. Thoughts going round and round. Wrong-headed solutions. You shouldn’t sit at home. Can I twist your arm and march you out of the house on, say, Wednesday or Thursday night for a meal?’

  ‘Oh, Brian, I don’t—’

  ‘Very low-key and casual. Just between friends. Work colleagues who have more in common than they did a week ago. That’s all.’

  She didn’t want to go. Not with Brian. Not with anyone, really. He was right. She dreaded going home tonight, but once she got there she knew she’d just want to sit and let her thoughts circle in her head, not make the effort to go out again. She wasn’t so sure about the ‘wrong-headed solutions’.

  Sitting at home all week would be wrong-headed, though, wouldn’t it? Knowing Joe was in town, but that they weren’t together even in the hours he wasn’t working? Just thinking about it, about him, with nothing new to conclude?

  Lord, she felt as if she was getting flu. Her whole body ached with the effort of holding everything together.

  And Brian had been through it, too.

  ‘As long as it’s low-key,’ she said. ‘Pizza or burgers in town. That’d be good. But I’m not up for a big evening.’

  ‘Did I mention a big evening? Let’s rewind the tape.’ He pretended to listen. ‘Nope. Definitely no mention of a big evening.’

  She had to laugh. ‘All right, then. Thursday?’

  Because that would give Joe three whole days to realise how blind he was, and if she and Joe were doing something together, of course Brian would understand if she cancelled their—

  Stop it, Christina!

  ‘Thursday. Great. It’s in the diary. Pick you up at seven?’

  ‘Sounds good.’ She heard sounds coming through the rather thin wall between this office and that of Charles Wetherby, next door. ‘Charles is still around?’ she asked.

  ‘Is he ever not?’

  ‘Well, true. I’m going to grab him while I can, anyhow.’

  ‘Always happy to be grabbed,’ the medical administrator said a minute later, when Christina had apologised for doing it.

  She apologised again when she tried to outline Honey Cooper’s request, made at a desperate gabble just before Christina had left the ED. ‘I’m sorry, it sounds unnecessarily complicated, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Contact Mrs Considine-at-the-Gunyamurra-store’s nephew’s brother-in-law, because the nephew himself is away, but Mrs Considine has to phone the brother-in-law because Honey doesn’t have the number, and Mrs Considine has cards at Fiona Donnelly’s on Monday nights so you’d have to chase her up there, and Honey does have the number for the Donnellys,’ Charles parroted, propelling his wheelchair towards a file cabinet. ‘Just a little bit complicated, if I’ve even got it right.’

  ‘Which is why I thought it might be a lot easier if you could phone Wetherby Downs and ask someone from there to go over.’

  ‘Right,’ Charles said, with his back to her.

  His back communicated a lot.

  A deep-seated reluctance, for one thing.

  Christina apologised again. She’d known there were long-standing family tensions, but she also knew that Wetherby Downs was a huge property. There’d be a manager. She could make the call herself and speak to him, if Charles could give her the number. He would suggest this himself, surely, if he didn’t want to speak to his brother in person.

  ‘Honey isn’t in good shape,’ she said, pleading her case, wishing she’d just gone with the nephew’s brother-in-law’s et cetera. ‘Aside from the anxiety, she was dehydrated, low blood sugar, underlying high blood pressure. Just exhausted, basically. She’s fretting because she doesn’t know if Jim let the cow and calf out or if they’re stuck in the shed with no water and feed, and then there are the dogs. I promised I’d make sure that someone—’

  ‘The Considine brother-in-law whose phone number we don’t have.’

  ‘Yes, or whoever I could get—would go over to the Coopers’ and check that everything was OK.’

  Charles spun around silently in the wheelchair. He was good at that, athletic and adept. Once his lower body strength would have matched the powerful build of his arms and torso, and he’d probably ridden a horse as if he’d been born on a saddle.

  ‘No, it’s about time I talked to Philip, actually,’ he said, on a controlled sigh. ‘Let’s not go on this wild-goose chase with the Considine brother-in-law’s whoever. I’ll phone my brother and he’ll send someone. You can tell Honey and Jim it’s taken care of.’

  ‘Thanks, Charles, I know it’s probably an errand you don’t need.’

  ‘Might be an errand a few people do need,’ he murmured, adding, ‘Get yourself off home, if you’re doing clinic hops again tomorrow.’

  ‘Is he going to die, Dr Barrett?’ Honey reached up from the hospital bed and clutched Joe’s arm, her voice an agonised whisper. Jim lay just metres away beyond the door into the resus area.

  ‘No, he’s not going to die, Mrs Cooper.’ He felt much more confident in saying it now.

  The first lot of bloods had come back—more would be taken at intervals during the night—and they looked good, as did his ECG tracing. It apparently hadn’t been the massive infarct that it could have been, given the drama. He was on a barrage of medication, and it was working.

  ‘What’s going to happen, then?’

  J
oe outlined the best-case scenario. ‘We’ll keep him in here for a few days, on continuous monitoring and treatment. If everything has resolved well, he can go home and he can even build his activity levels back up pretty much to where they were, as long as he feels comfortable. But he’ll need more treatment. A scheduled procedure—a bypass or angioplasty—will give you both a chance to make preparations. You’ve been told about that in the past, I understand.’

  ‘We just haven’t been able to manage it,’ Honey answered.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to manage it soon. There’s still a chance he may need the surgery on a more urgent basis but, from what I’m seeing so far, I’m cautiously optimistic that he won’t.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, that’s wonderful!’ She blinked back tears. ‘Is he sleeping?’

  ‘Dozing.’

  ‘I want to see my daughter. I don’t know where she’d be. Which ward, I mean.’

  ‘Want me to check for you?’ Joe asked.

  He knew quite well that Megan was in the obstetrics and gynaecology unit with her baby. He also knew that she didn’t want to see her parents. He got the impression that no one would be too upset if Honey somehow managed to get up there on her own and thus forced the issue. But he wanted to make sure.

  He went to the phone at the nurses’ station and dialed the extension for O and G.

  Got Christina.

  ‘Tink?’ he said automatically, and felt his stomach lurch sideways. ‘What are you doing on this phone?’

  ‘Joe? What’s happened? I’m just, you know, hovering. Are you still in the ED?’

  ‘Yes. Everything’s fine. ECG tracing has improved a bit more. Bloods came back and look good.’ He reported the figures. ‘But Mrs Cooper wants to see her daughter. How are we handling that?’

  Silence.

  ‘I think we’re not,’ she finally said. ‘I think it’s going to be an “oops”. Is that playing God?’

  ‘Probably. But, hey, I was born for the role.’

  She laughed, then said, ‘Don’t, Joe.’

  And he knew what she meant.

  Don’t remind me how much we always laugh when we talk.

  ‘Actually, Megan’s having a rest now and Lucky’s in the nursery,’ she said. ‘That might be a good thing. The two of them can talk, and—Yes, tell Honey that Megan’s in Room Four.’

  Grace raised her eyebrows when Christina put down the phone. ‘We’re letting it happen?’

  ‘How are we going to stop it? Honey’s not the type to nod politely and do nothing if she’s told, “I’m sorry, your daughter has asked us not to let you see her.” We’re not a prison, and she’s not a danger to the patient.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Grace said, in a voice of doom.

  ‘I do know that! They’re going to kill themselves in that family, not each other!’ Deliberately, she went over to Megan’s bed and touched her shoulder, knowing that Grace would be watching her every move. ‘You’ve got a visitor coming, love,’ she said.

  Megan’s eyes opened sleepily, then went wide. ‘Is it—?’ She stopped. ‘Who?’

  ‘Your mum.’

  ‘Mum? Mum? She—’

  ‘Talk to her. She’s had a rough day.’ Briefly, Christina outlined what had happened to Megan’s dad, stressing that his condition looked as if it would resolve well. ‘Jackson’s in the nursery, and we’ll keep him there for now,’ she finished. ‘How you handle it is up to you.’

  ‘Oh, he’s beautiful, Megan! Just beautiful!’

  After a tearful ten minutes of talking between mother and daughter, Honey held her new, sleeping grandson in her arms. He still looked frail and small following the heart surgery he’d needed shortly after birth. He’d had a spike of fever that morning—Christina and Grace were glad they hadn’t heard about it until a short while ago—but this had resolved with IV fluids and medication.

  ‘You’re not angry?’ Megan said.

  Honey made a helpless sound. ‘How could I be angry?’

  ‘Dad was, six months ago. I thought he was going to kill Jack, and he didn’t even know about the baby.’

  ‘Does Jack know about the baby, love?’

  ‘No. He’s gone. I thought he might write, but—

  I guess he took Dad pretty seriously, and then when they sacked him over at Wetherby Downs…I hate Philip Wetherby! We’re not going to tell Dad about the baby, OK?’

  ‘Oh, love…’

  Seated at the nearby nurses’ station, Grace and Christina looked at each other. It was impossible not to overhear. Mother and daughter’s voices rose as their conversation grew more heated, and there was no other noise in the unit. The second mother and baby who’d been in Megan’s room today had gone home, and a couple of Georgie Turner’s gynae patients across the corridor had their TV sound systems pressed close to their ears.

  ‘Don’t sound like that,’ Megan said. ‘Don’t talk as if I’m being unreasonable. Mum, you are the one who’s said all along that we can’t upset Dad, and what could possibly upset him more than this?’

  ‘The baby’s so beautiful…’

  ‘But that doesn’t solve anything!’ she burst out. The baby in Honey’s arms didn’t stir. ‘You can’t act as if we’re all happy families now. People keep treating me as if I’m dumb. I’m not. We’re going to lose the farm because I’m not bringing Jackson back out there, hours from a doctor when he’s had all this trouble, when he so nearly died, and you and Dad can’t manage the place without me. Unless we get a hundred millimetres of rain, like, tomorrow, he’s the last straw.’

  ‘Megan—’

  ‘Yes! My baby is breaking the camel’s back right now, today, this week. I could have given him up. I thought about it. But I made the choice. And I knew what I was doing. I’ve chosen my baby over the farm. We can’t have both, in this drought. And I don’t think Dad will ever forgive me for that.’

  ‘He’ll have to be told—’

  ‘Yes!’ Megan agreed fiercely. ‘Of course he’ll have to know eventually! But let me get out of this hospital and settled here in town first before we talk to Dad. Let his heart get better before I break it again.’

  She glared at her mother, ready for a counterattack. None came. Honey’s head was bent over the little bundle in her arms. Their drip bags and drip stands—one adult-sized, one for an infant—stood behind them like sentinels.

  ‘She’s upset,’ Grace murmured, frowning at Honey. ‘She doesn’t need this. She’s supposed to be a patient herself tonight.’

  ‘I’ll take her back to the ED.’

  ‘Are they going to try and find a ward bed for her?’

  ‘She doesn’t want one. They’re keeping Jim in Resus overnight, and she wants to stay close. No one’s arguing.’ Against Honey’s desire to stay with Jim, Christina meant.

  ‘Except these two,’ Grace answered, meaning something different.

  ‘Yes, and you’re right, they’ve done enough of it tonight.’ She stood up and went to Honey. ‘Let’s get you some rest now, Mrs Cooper.’

  Honey looked up and nodded, her cheeks wet with tears.

  ‘Megan, can I give Jackson to you?’ Christina asked, and Megan held out her arms at once. They transferred the delicate baby carefully, and he didn’t waken.

  Honey got to her feet and Christina helped her twitch the IV tubing out of the way. ‘We’ll sort this out,’ she promised her daughter, but it was obvious that she didn’t have any answers. ‘Twenty-six years!’ she said as they walked along the corridor in the direction of the ED. ‘Twenty-six years ago this mess started, Dr Farrelly. Who would have thought it would end up this way?’

  ‘I don’t know the story,’ Christina told her.

  ‘No, of course you don’t. It was all kept pretty quiet. It’s wrong when that happens. After all, it was an accident. All three of them agreed on that. You still don’t know what I’m talking about, of course.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t.’

  ‘Charles and Philip and my Jim. It happened just after he
and I started seeing each other, but he wouldn’t listen to any advice of mine about how to handle what went on. The three of them were out pig-shooting. Jim and Charles were eighteen, but Philip was five years younger, only a kid. And Jim made a mistake and shot Charles, and old man Wetherby never forgave him for it. Wouldn’t even believe it was an accident at first, because at one stage Jim and Charles were after the same girl. Wetherby cut off our access to Gunya Creek at the crossing. The Coopers had had an agreement over the creek water with the Wetherbys for sixty years. After the old man died, Jim went to Philip—he was running the property by then; Charles was still finishing his medical degree—and asked him, begged really, to give the access back, but Philip said no. It had only ever been a favour by the family in the past, and he was under no obligation. Since then…’ She stopped and shook her head, too weary to go on, but Christina didn’t need to hear any more.

  ‘That’s why Charles is in a wheelchair? Because Jim shot him?’

  ‘Yes. All three of them weren’t taking the right care. They never told me a story that made complete sense. Philip was mucking around, Charles was distracted. There was blame on all sides, Charles admitted that himself. Old man Wetherby thought it had ruined Charles’s life, but he was a stronger man than that and he’s made something of himself. Wetherby should have been proud of his eldest son, but Philip was always the golden boy for him. I know Charles hasn’t had much to do with any of them since.’

  Christina didn’t know what to say. She finally blurted, ‘Who knows about this?’

  ‘Oh, a lot of people. Word gets around. It’s no secret in Gunyamurra. But it’s an old story now. Jim can be…difficult sometimes. He’s too proud for his own good. He doesn’t rally the support some men might get in his position. He had a pretty rough upbringing. I think I’m the only person who ever sees…’ She tried again. ‘Even Megan doesn’t see…’ She couldn’t go on.

  They reached the emergency department, and when he heard the sound of their approach, Jim opened his eyes. ‘Honey,’ he breathed, then closed his eyes again and was immediately asleep.

  Outside, the night air was still warm, although a breeze from the ocean made it feel fresh.