by Lilian Darcy
‘Unrelated problem, though,’ he said. ‘Bad luck for the kid.’
‘Mum’s upset, too.’
‘She would be!’
Joe checked Ben’s vital signs. His oxygen saturation had climbed to ninety-four per cent now. There was no sign of cyanosis, no use of accessory muscles to breathe, and Ben could speak a full sentence. He’d need an oral steroid drug and monitoring for at least twenty-four hours.
‘You’re off the hook now,’ Joe said to Christina.
‘I know…’ She was aware that she’d been hanging back, fiddling with Ben’s notes, not really required now that the hospital staff had taken over. But she had to tell Joe that she wanted to see him. She saw Hamish coming towards them and grabbed her last chance. ‘We need to talk, Joe.’
He looked at her, gave a half a smile at last. ‘This talking stuff is getting to be a very bad habit between us, Tink,’ he muttered.
‘I know, but something’s come up.’ My stomach this morning, and a distinctive colour in a test window.
‘I’m working a long shift today. Midnight.’ And he’d be working again all day tomorrow, and flying back to Auckland early on Sunday morning. Christina was on call all weekend for emergency flights in the helicopter. How did you schedule a pregnancy conversation into a timetable like that?
And how did you follow through? She wouldn’t see him for three weeks after this. From experience, she knew he was unlikely to phone. Three weeks was a long time when you’d just found out you were pregnant and didn’t know what the baby’s father would want.
I have to take action on this, she thought again.
‘Hello, Ben,’ Hamish said behind them. ‘And this is Mum? Of course it is! I’m Dr McGregor.’
‘Could you phone me at home, Joe?’ Christina said. ‘Let me know when you’re about to take a dinner-break. I’ll meet you somewhere.’
‘I’ll phone from the house and you can meet me there.’
‘Let me have a wee chat to Dr Barrett,’ they both heard from Hamish.
He was already coming their way. Joe’s suggestion would have to do, because Christina couldn’t come up with a better alternative in the middle of the ED.
She spent several agonising hours waiting at home, before reaching the earliest time at which she could expect Joe to call, and then she had to wait two hours more before he actually did, at nine o’clock. She knew it wasn’t his fault, but it didn’t improve her state of mind.
‘I’m at the house.’ Background sound half drowned his words. ‘It’s noisy, unfortunately.’
‘I’ll be right there.’
‘Come along the veranda. Because if you go in through the kitchen…’ Most people did, but you could get waylaid there with offers of tea or beer and never escape.
He sounded tense—irritated, probably—and she wondered what he’d picked up from her. That she was the kind of ex-lover destined to remain a nuisance?
Yes! With bells on!
‘Want something to drink?’ he offered when she got there.
‘No, thanks.’
‘I’ve got my dinner heating up in the microwave. I can’t hang around here too long, Tink.’ He said it gently, but he meant it. She felt like a nuisance again, even when he reached out and touched her shoulder, as if in apology. ‘Half an hour at the most, and I have to get back.’
‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘Get your dinner.’
He nodded and left. Christina heard voices in various parts of the house and hoped that no one knew she was there.
Joe’s room felt too small with both doors shut and Christina already very on edge. She saw the flowers she’d picked for him on Sunday. They’d wilted by this time, and though the clear glass vase she could see their water had turned to a revolting cloudy beige. Her stomach had something to say about the sight.
Turning away from it, she looked at the bed, too hastily made. She could imagine his big body there, rumpled from sleep, warm, smelling just the way it should.
Joe came back with his dinner. ‘This is horrible,’ he announced.
‘The meal?’ It was one of those frozen things. He put it down on the desk next to the wilted flowers and didn’t make any attempt to eat it.
‘No, eating in front of you, rushing this.’ He paused. ‘Whatever it is.’
‘It’s…’ As on Sunday night, she just had to say it. Creeping up on the subject—Hey, guess what, I’m going to be shopping for a whole new wardrobe in about three months, Joe—would be ridiculous. ‘It’s…’
Simple.
Only it wasn’t.
‘I’m pregnant, Joe.’
‘Say that again?’
But she didn’t. She knew he’d heard. He let out a low, rough sound, then made a jerky grab for the desk without looking at it. He hit the plate and it tipped over the desk edge and his dinner splattered onto the polished wooden floor. The plate bounced but didn’t break, and landed on top of the food. They both looked at the mess helplessly in silence, then Joe gulped back a tortured laugh. ‘Looked pretty inedible even before.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She couldn’t take this. Not the dinner. Not the vase water. Not Joe’s reaction. She fled to the veranda and then on to the lush garden endowed by one of Charles Wetherby’s forebears. She knew Joe would follow her, and it was a place that offered some potential privacy, if only behind screens of leaves.
He did follow, and she felt him behind her, watching and waiting until several deep, careful breaths had brought her nausea back under control. Was she going to feel this way for the next two months, or was it stress and fatigue as much as pregnancy?
‘OK now?’ he asked.
‘Think so.’
She heard him sigh heavily between his teeth and turned to face him. She wanted to see what was written there, not imagine the worst. A cluster of frangipani leaves brushed his shoulder unnoticed, and he looked blank, struggling for steady ground, naked in his shock.
Which was probably better than pretending he was instantly happy.
Maybe it was better.
‘Say something,’ she prompted.
‘I’m a bit stunned.’
‘Yeah. And?’ It sounded too hostile, too aggressive. Without waiting for an answer, she gabbled on, ‘I was stunned, too. I’m not saying that it’s an unacceptable response, first up.’
‘If you were stunned, then you obviously didn’t…’ He stopped.
She knew what he’d been about to say. ‘I didn’t let it happen it on purpose?’
‘I’m not suggesting it, Christina.’
Her body burned, and she felt compelled towards total honesty. ‘You probably have a right to suggest it,’ she told him in a low voice. She saw his eyes narrow, and went on quickly, ‘Remember that stomach upset? Not to get too technical on the timing, but if I’d been really on the ball I would have taken a morning-after pill the day you flew out.’
‘Did you think about it?’
She nodded. ‘Coming home from the airport. But I thought the risk was very low.’ She took a breath. ‘And then I thought that even if it happened, would it be so terrible?’
Is it so terrible, Joe?
‘So did you know about it on Sunday when you picked me up?’ He reached up and began to shred the leaves with mechanical precision.
‘No, of course not. You mean when I told you I’d arranged the room for you at the house? Of course not! Why?’
‘I thought you might have been saving it up.’
‘Saving it up?’ she echoed blankly, before she understood what he meant. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! You mean like ammunition? A last-ditch stand?’
He whooshed out another sigh. ‘That sounded bad, didn’t it?’
‘Yes. Very. If you really think I’m that—’
‘Manipulative,’ he cut in. ‘I don’t. I don’t.’
‘Then why say it?’
‘Because I’m taking this as it comes, Tink. I didn’t think you’d want pretence.’ Well, he’d got that right, at leas
t. ‘Tell me…tell me what you’re thinking and feeling. What you expect.’ He added the last three words as if they cut his mouth.
‘I don’t expect anything. From you, you mean? Nothing! Only what you want. Support for my decision to keep the baby, that’s all. Which was pretty instant, I should tell you.’
‘Because I can’t—I’m fighting to keep my head above water as it is.’
‘I know that. You’re hating this. It’s got you terrified. This is worse than I expected, Joe.’
He threw the shredded leaves away and began to prowl back and forth. She went up to him and pinned him in place with her touch, and they managed to sit down next to each other on the ornamental garden seat. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, picking the green leaf matter from under his fingernails. He didn’t say anything at first, and something told her she should simply wait.
‘I was sixteen when Amber was born,’ he said finally after several restless shifts of his shoulders and his legs. ‘Old enough to realise straight away, and to get told, that something wasn’t right. She was little and frail with such a strange, funny little face. She already had the trach in, of course, and an NG tube, and she was like…’
He stopped and shook his head, while Christina waited.
‘When I was much younger, seven or eight,’ he tried again, ‘I rescued some baby birds from a nest that a cat had got to. They were still pink and featherless, just a day or two old, and of course they died. I couldn’t manage to keep them warm or fed. And I just wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to Amber. I just wasn’t.’
‘No…’
‘Her face reminded me of those birds. Not the right shape. So naked and small. I felt so protective towards her. One of my best friends said something about her being a retard and I punched him in the stomach. Four times. This probably isn’t explaining why I’m reacting this way now.’
He twisted towards her and their shoulders touched.
‘I don’t know if it is,’ Christina said, close to tears. ‘All I know is that you’ve had two years to tell me these stories. Now you expect me to catch up in a couple of days, understand everything about who you are, because of your life and your past, in a few days. When I’ve never seen where you live, met your family, heard any of this before. You’re asking too much of me, Joe!’
‘Yeah, that’s ironic, isn’t it? That’s half of what I was trying to avoid. Asking too much of you.’
‘And what’s the other half?’
‘Of what I’m trying to avoid? A horrible marriage like my mother and Geoff have. And the agony of being ready and waiting to cut off your own arm for the sake of someone you love. We were confronted with that so often in Amber’s first few years of life. Time and time again I used to think, Today? Is today the day I should cut off the arm? I’m ready. Give me the signal. I mean, the thinking wasn’t as concrete as that, but the feeling was there.’
‘You think you’re going to have to cut off your arm for me? For the baby?’
He didn’t answer for a long time. ‘I think I’m just tired,’ he finally said.
And he needed to get back to the hospital, which meant a peanut-butter sandwich eaten standing up in the kitchen first, because his hot dinner was still splattered on the floor. ‘So you should go,’ she told him. ‘I’ll clean up.’
‘Don’t. I mean it, Christina. I’ll be really angry if you do.’
She left it where it was.
The congealed microwave meal was still on the floor when Joe got back to his room just after midnight. He looked at it, glad that Christina had taken him seriously and hadn’t cleaned it up. He unglued the plate from on top of it, tried to remember what the packet had claimed the meal to be, but couldn’t. With a handful of paper towel, he scooped most of it up and chucked it in the bin. Several passes with a cleaning sponge took care of the rest.
The ED had been busy again that night, with a procession of routine cases, including a couple of difficult types—a bad-tempered drunk who’d aspirated some of his own stomach contents, a heroin overdose whose family situation would need looking into. Christina’s asthma patient Ben had gone up to the paediatric ward, his chest in pretty good shape considering how bad he’d been earlier, but a question mark still hanging over the issue of his discharge after the period of observation. He seemed very nervous about another flight. Sedation was probably the best option.
Joe had looked in on Jim Cooper, too, even though he was listed as Gina’s patient now. He’d brewed up a mild infection which had slowed his recovery over the past couple of days. Honey split her time between her husband and her daughter, while remaining fiercely protective of Jim’s ignorance about the baby.
‘Not until he’s ready!’
Meanwhile, Honey fretted about whether the dogs and the other animals were really being taken care of properly by whatever help Charles had organised out there.
Hungry after such a long day but definitely not wanting another microwave meal, Joe prowled into the kitchen. No one was there. The house was very quiet. He peered into the fridge and found some Cheddar cheese on one of the crowded shelves. There was even some bread left. Cheese on toast. That would do.
Communal living wasn’t his favourite thing, even though everyone in this place was pretty good. Moodiness was kept private, boundaries were respected. Food kitty money was usually paid, shopping and cleaning rosters were adhered to, and quite often someone cooked a big meal.
But he had a need for privacy and solitude that couldn’t be fully met here. He also had a need to know that if he left three slices of cold pizza in the fridge overnight, they’d still be there the next day to heat up when he came in from a long stint at the hospital and wanted some supper. His life wasn’t simple, so he seized on simplicity wherever he could find it, even in the little things—like where his next meal was coming from.
He’d been pushing himself too hard for such a long time. He’d worked long part-time hours while he’d studied medicine. He had a full patient load in his practice, squeezed into three weeks out of four. He worked as many hours as Charles Wetherby would let him when he was here, bracketed on either side by flights of several hours across the Tasman Sea and boring waits at airports in Brisbane or Cairns.
He’d pretended to Christina through their whole relationship. Pretended that he was this laid-back, carefree, relaxed kind of guy. Hell, it had been so good! But it had been a pretence. In his real life, there was no room for carefree or relaxed. He wished there was. He wished he could open up that part of him and let it fly, the way he’d been able to do here, with Christina…the way she’d told him wasn’t enough for her any more.
‘What do I smell?’ said Mike Poulos, behind him.
‘I can make some more,’ Joe offered at once, hiding the fact that he’d rather eat alone.
‘It’s fine. I just wanted some water.’ Mike found a chilled jug of it in the drinks fridge, and soon disappeared again. He should have been Christina—because she was the only person in Crocodile Creek Joe wanted to share a fridge with—but he wasn’t.
Joe would be on a plane to Auckland in thirty hours. His flight would get in late in the afternoon, and he had patients to see in his group general practice on Monday morning, starting at nine and going through until seven. Later in the week, Amber had a medical appointment to talk about the jaw surgery that her doctors wanted to perform soon.
He and Mum and Geoff would all be present at the appointment as well. There was still some uncertainty about whether they’d be able to remove Amber’s tracheostomy at this point, and Geoff would no doubt get belligerent about it. How come these supposed experts didn’t have definitive answers? How come it would still take so many more procedures to get Amber looking ‘right’?
‘Joe, tell these idiots!’ Geoff would no doubt say. ‘You’re a doctor! They won’t talk down to you like they talk down to me!’
And back here in Crocodile Creek, Joe’s own child would be quietly growing in Christina’s womb. He
althy? You had to believe so. You couldn’t spend seven months or more being scared. But even the smoothest pregnancy in the world was tough to go through alone.
He felt as if someone was tearing him in two, and hated Fate for the trick it had played. He’d got himself into this situation because he’d so badly wanted time out and fun, something that was just simple and good, and now he’d ended up with more responsibility than ever.
Even if he stopped coming to Crocodile Creek out of sheer self-protection, if he never saw Christina again and never met their child, he would always know, always wonder. Boy or girl? Bright? Athletic? Artist, scientist, dreamer? Like me, or like her? He’d always know that someday Christina or the child might need or want to make contact.
At which point, he would be confronted with everything he’d put Christina through, and everything he’d missed out on.
He didn’t know what to do.
Christina couldn’t get to sleep, even though she was once again exhausted to the point of nausea. She found a packet of sea-salted chips in the pantry and the salt settled her stomach but not her stress levels.
She had meant what she’d said to Joe earlier. It hadn’t helped their situation at this point that he’d held so much back over the past two years. That story about Amber and the baby birds…You couldn’t doubt his intensity, his sincerity, but a summary of his life at home and a couple of anecdotes weren’t enough.
She gave up even trying to get to sleep, went on the internet and did another search on Treacher Collins syndrome. The first time, she’d done a search of the whole Web, but this time she clicked the ‘pages from Australia’ button.
And suddenly, after scrolling through several screens and clinking on various links, she saw Joe himself smiling out at her in close-up, his mouth wide, his teeth very white in his bronzed face, his strong arms wrapping from behind around the shoulders of a girl who looked about twelve or thirteen.
Amber.
She was smiling, too, her trach kept in place at her throat by a plastic strap that looked like a white necklace.
Christina couldn’t believe it at first. It didn’t seem real, to discover Joe and his sister this way, to think that if she’d had any reason to explore TCS on the internet over the past couple of years she might have stumbled on them like this before she’d ever heard about Amber from Joe.
