Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell

by Debbie Carbin

  ‘You all right there?’ I hear a man’s voice nearby but I can’t look up or answer. There is nothing but pain. ‘OK, listen, try and hold on there, I’m going to get you a chair. All right?’ I can’t even nod. ‘Hold on, I won’t be a second . . .’ The voice recedes, and with it goes the pain, fading back like the tide. I concentrate on my belly for a moment and now it seems impossible that the pain was ever as bad as all that. I shake my head. I feel guilty because that man has just rushed off somewhere to get me a chair, but I’m perfectly all right. It’ll be embarrassing when he gets back; perhaps I’ll just be gone by then and we need never even see each other’s faces. I pick up the telephone receiver and hang it back up properly, then turn round ready to go back up the corridor to Sarah and Jake.

  There’s a male nurse – the same one I’ve seen before – standing behind me with a wheelchair. He smiles brightly at me. ‘Here we go then. Pop yourself down here and I’ll take you down to Maternity.’

  ‘Oh, no, really, there’s no need. I’m having a caesarean in six days, and right now I have to get back to I.T.U. My friend—’

  ‘I.T.U.? No, love, I’m taking you down to the labour ward. Sharpish.’ He spins the chair round expertly and we head towards the lifts.

  I feel like I’m being kidnapped. ‘No, no, please, I really need to get back to my friend in Intensive Care. Her little boy is in there. She’s all on her own – I can’t go . . .’

  ‘Look, don’t worry, er . . .?’

  ‘Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel. It’s all right, I’ll come back up here later and tell her where you are. All right?’

  ‘But she’s—’

  ‘She knows you’re pregnant, right?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Well then, she’ll understand, won’t she? She’s got a little boy herself, she probably knows only too well how babies decide to come at the most inopportune moments. Although your little bundle couldn’t have picked a better one, could he now? You were already here – that’s a great start!’

  We come out of the lifts and this time we’re following a white line. I feel like a complete fraud being wheeled along when I’m perfectly all right, but it is a relief to get the weight off my feet. Thank God I was able to tell Glenn and Hector where Jake is before the pain came. In fact, Glenn will be with Sarah soon, so she won’t be on her own for long—

  ‘Aaaah!’ Abruptly the pain whooshes back in and the world around me fades out. My breath is gone, there is nothing but pain, coming on and on, pain on top of pain, throbbing, grinding, shattering. There is a rushing sound in my ears and I know it is the sound of pain and death, I know I am dying and right now I want it, I want death because then the pain will stop.

  ‘. . . out, in and out, nice big breaths as slowly as you can, soon be over, and there you are. Well done.’ As I come back into the world, a world of no pain and life continuing, I realize that we’ve stopped moving and the nurse is crouching in front of me holding my hands, his voice calm and hypnotic. It’s very soothing – I just wish I’d noticed it earlier.

  And now we’re arriving at the labour ward. Bit different from the dim, hushed corridors of I.T.U., isn’t it? People rushing everywhere, calling to each other, carrying things in and out of different rooms. Did you hear that? The crash of something large and metal hitting the floor, followed by a loud curse. And suddenly the air is slashed by a terrifying shrieking wail that rises to the point where the hair on the back of my neck is standing up and I have tears in my eyes.

  ‘Here we are, labour ward,’ says the nurse with me, wheeling me up to the nurses’ station. ‘I’ve got to go now but you’ll be fine here.’ It feels like he’s brought me to the depths of hell and is now abandoning me. ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  In the lulls of sound between blood-curdling screams, I tell him quickly about Sarah, and he rushes off. I watch his receding figure with terrified longing.

  ‘Well now, and what do we have here then? Everything a’right with you, precious?’

  Another nurse has appeared, this one in a dark blue dress. She’s wearing a name badge that says ‘Rosie’, and she certainly is. She’s rounded with lots of frizzy ginger hair escaping randomly from a thick plait. ‘What’s your name, honey?’

  ‘Rachel Covington. Actually, I’m due to have a caesarean next week, on the fifth of April, so I shouldn’t really be here.’

  ‘Ah,’ she says, looking at me. ‘The ting is, precious girl, my friend who brought y’in says you’ve been getting contractions about every three to four minutes, bad ones. Is that right?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t timed them, but they have been quite painful.’

  ‘Right then. Well now, can you tell me how many weeks you are, darlin’?’

  ‘Thirty-seven.’

  ‘Ah. So your wee mite is a wee mite early. Not to worry, he’ll be absolutely fine, I promise.’

  I hadn’t worried until that moment.

  ‘And who’s your GP, my pet?’

  ‘It’s Dr Kantha—’ I’m cut off by yet another fierce, overwhelming, ripping-me-in-half-and-stomping-on-the-pieces pain.

  ‘Are y’getting pain now, precious girl?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes then, will I? All right, poppet, just let your breath out, nice and slowly, that’s the way, there y’are, all done. Now then, Dr Kant, did you say? Right. Let’s get you into a delivery room.’

  She takes hold of the handles and wheels me towards the screams. The sound is unholy and I wonder about the horrific agony that is causing them. Sarah thinks the Caesar women have it bad, but I wonder if she’s ever heard anything quite like this?

  ‘Ah, one of our ladies is making a bit of a racket today, isn’t she? Poor ting. She’d do better to keep her energy for the pushing. That she would.’

  She wheels me into an empty room. ‘Here we are. Now then, you just pop yourself up on there, honey, and I’ll come back with the doctor. All right then?’ And off she goes.

  I am clearly in no condition to be popping anywhere at the moment, least of all on to that bed. What do you make of it? It looks like an instrument of torture to me. Or a magician’s prop, with stirrups and foot pedals, a dividing lower half that comes completely away from the top half, and a nice big absorbent pad across the middle. On trays, shelves and hooks around the room are gathered the other presumably essential giving-birth equipment. It seems all the best pregnant women are squatting on footstools or over buckets, or rolling around on giant inflatable spheres. And the rear-opening nightie is the item to be seen in.

  Another contraction comes – yes, yes, you were right the whole time – and I fall against the bed. The pain travels down into my thighs and groin and I crouch down, holding on to the bed with one hand for stability. I lose all sense of where I am and what is going on, only clenching my teeth together, tensing every part of me, waiting for the pain to pass. What if they don’t know about Plum being breech and try to make me deliver him normally, all the time expecting to see a head pop out while his feet are tangled up in my pelvis? What if I can’t do it? Why have they all left me alone?

  As I’m rapidly turning back into a four-year-old, I think we would do better to go back to Intensive Care and see how things are up there. Sarah has been visited by the doctor who is treating Jake, and by a very young male nurse who tells her that I am in the labour ward. She gives me a moment’s thought, then goes back over what the doctor said. Severe concussion, causing some swelling internally, probably from the impact of his head with the ground. His head with the ground. She can’t get that image out of her mind.

  ‘His injuries aren’t too severe, from what we can see. He’s fractured his arm, but not seriously. We’re keeping him unconscious at the moment and the ventilator is breathing for him to give his brain a chance to rest and mend. We’re monitoring his progress constantly and when the swelling has gone down sufficiently we’ll let him wake up. That’s when we’ll be able to see if there’s any long-t
erm or permanent damage.’

  Sarah shivers as she hears those words again in her head. Brain damage. She moves nearer to her tiny son, clutching his arm. ‘Please, please,’ she whispers, tears in her eyes. His face seems whiter than ever, apart from the red grazed area, and she can’t stop herself from seeing, over and over again, in a slow-motion replay in her head, Jake’s sweet, soft little face thudding into the ground and sliding along it, the skin being torn away, the arm being broken. She forces herself to think about the pain and fear her precious child must have known in that moment, then closes her eyes as tears slide down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh my God!’ comes a cry behind her. Sarah’s eyes fly open and she looks around to see Glenn and Hector arriving.

  ‘Oh Glenn!’ she says, standing up and rushing to him. He wraps his arms around her, holding her close for a moment then releasing her and moving nearer to the bed. He is holding the frog rucksack, and carefully places it on the end of the bed. Jake’s feet don’t reach this far.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’ he says shakily, taking in the bruises, the red scrape, the taped eyes, the terrifying bandage.

  ‘He’s got concussion and some swelling in the brain. They’re keeping him unconscious to give his brain a chance to recover. When the swelling goes down they’ll let him wake up and then we’ll know if there’s any . . . damage.’

  ‘Damage?’ Glenn turns to face her, horror-struck. ‘Do you mean brain damage? They think he’ll have brain damage? Oh Jesus.’ He leans over the bed, placing his cheek against Jake’s, stroking the hair back gently from his forehead. ‘Oh Jakey, my little Jakey, I love you so much, matey. My precious little boy. I’m so sorry.’ He stares at the tape over Jake’s eyes for a few moments, then turns to Sarah. ‘Are you . . . all right?’

  She nods, then her face crumples as she starts to cry. Glenn moves nearer, enfolding her tightly in his arms, rocking her gently as she sobs.

  ‘Oh, Glenn, it’s all my fault, I should have been watching, I didn’t even notice . . . I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No, no, Sarah, it’s my fault,’ he says, his lips in her hair. ‘I’m the one that’s in the wrong, not you. I have put you through hell, both of you, and I don’t deserve to have . . . I don’t . . . Sarah, I love you. I don’t want a divorce. I have missed you so much. You and Jake. You’re the best things in my life. I don’t want to lose you.’

  She sniffs, pulls back so she’s looking into his face. ‘I’ve missed you too.’

  They lean forward gently and rest their foreheads against one another.

  Don’t look at them for a moment. Look at Hector. See the expression on his face? He is standing a few feet away, glancing around the ward anxiously. What do you think he is searching for? He looks very worried about something. He turns to his left, scans the room, then turns again, peering through the low light into the corners of the ward, the other beds, the corridor. Finally, he turns back to Glenn and Sarah.

  ‘Ahem, sorry to interrupt you two, but do you know where Rachel is?’

  Here’s Hector, fourteen seconds later, tearing along the corridor to the lifts. He thumps the call button repeatedly but no lift arrives in the two seconds he allows, so he bursts through the adjacent door on to the stairs, descending them two, three, sometimes even four at a time.

  After two flights, he explodes out of the stairwell into the first-floor corridor and begins to sprint along it, heart thudding wildly, breath coming fast, eyes darting up, down, right and left looking for signs to the delivery suite. He realizes quickly that he does not need to see a sign as he can simply follow the coarse, inhuman shrieking he hears every minute or so. It makes the hairs stand up on the back of his neck with terror; he wonders with dread if that voice is mine.

  As he runs along the white line, it crosses his mind fleetingly how many feet before his have pounded along this corridor, rushing to be by the side of the woman they love as she delivers their child? He wonders how many men have run to be by the side of a woman who is delivering another man’s child? But it doesn’t feel like another man’s child to him.

  At the nurses’ station, he almost shouts out Rachel’s name, then fidgets and shifts for ten seconds while the nurse looks her up on the computer. Eventually, she leads him deeper into the hellish place, screams and swearing rending the air.

  ‘You must be excited. First baby, is it?’ she says conversationally as she walks, apparently oblivious to the sounds of human torture going on all around.

  ‘I can’t fucking do this any more, I can’t take it, will you just get the bloody thing out of me, cut me, please God just cut me, get it out, get the bloody thing out!’

  ‘Yes,’ says Hector distractedly, shivering.

  She leads him through a doorway and he finds himself in a small room, in the centre of which is a high bed with bars either side, pedals underneath and lots of machinery on all sides. He looks at all this before finally noticing the tiny pale person sitting atop the bed.

  ‘Hector!’ Oh my God, am I glad to see him! ‘Thank God you’re here.’

  He looks over at me from the doorway, his face a mixture of relief and concern. ‘Rachel, there you are.’ He comes over to the bed and leans down to embrace me, and he’s all hot and damp as if he’s been running. His arms are warm and tight as they enclose around my back, and he smells so reassuring. He looks into my face. ‘Are you all right?’ he says really softly, touching my cheek with his thumb.

  I nod. ‘Not in half yet. Do you know how Jake is?’

  ‘The same as when you saw him, I think. You know he was found in Church Road? That’s near his school, isn’t it, where we found the rucksack. God, we must have driven right past him, lying there . . .’

  ‘Don’t think about it. It’s not your fault.’

  He rubs the back of his head. ‘I can’t help it. I’ve got these images in my head that won’t go away . . .’ He closes his eyes. ‘That poor little boy. He must have been desperate . . .’

  ‘Do you know who found him?’

  ‘No. I haven’t spoken to—’

  ‘Nick Maxwell.’

  He stares at me. ‘What, you mean . . .?’ His eyes flick to my bump. I nod. ‘Bloody hell. Christ. What a small . . . Hey, did you see him here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So, what did he say about the . . .?’ He indicates Plum again. I bite my lip and look shifty. At least, I feel shifty. Hector is looking disapproving. ‘You did tell him, didn’t you? You didn’t? Oh, Rachel, that’s not good.’

  ‘Oh, Hector, I completely forgot about it. I forget things all the time at the moment. I forgot something this morning.’

  ‘Did you? What?’

  I stare at him. ‘I’ve forgotten. That’s what I’m telling you.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right. I get it. But how could you forget this, when it’s right there in front of you?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t remember at work, and then when I saw him upstairs I did remember but he was talking to the police. The time didn’t seem right, somehow.’

  ‘All right, point taken. But you must tell him the first chance you get. If not before.’

  ‘I will, as soon as I finish this.’

  The nurse comes back in with a trolley laden with terrifying implements. ‘Right, Rachel m’lovely, you’ll soon feel more comfortable.’ I look at the equipment at hand and somehow doubt it. ‘The anaesthetist is on his way to pop your epidural in. Do you want Dad to go or stay?’

  ‘Stay.’ I look at Hector who is eyeing the trolley uneasily. ‘Is that all right?’

  He smiles at me, realizing that I haven’t corrected her assumption that he is the father. ‘Of course, Rachel m’lovely. As long as I don’t have to do anything.’

  Hector has agreed to come into the operating theatre with me. I’m not sure that he is entirely comfortable with the plan, but he couldn’t really refuse. Sarah, of course, is otherwise engaged and I can’t face going in alone. I have never known fear like this. I know that I won’t feel any pain, but it’s t
he knowledge that parts of my interior workings are going to be shown to daylight that disturbs me. I keep thinking about the cut they are going to have to make in me, a very, very deep cut that goes through flesh, through muscle, through tissue. I’m going to have an extra opening for a while. The thought is almost enough to make me puke. Except I am numb from the chest down so vomiting without the use of my stomach muscles would be virtually impossible. Oh my God, I hope I don’t have to throw up while I’m split open from hip to hip. I might lose some bits.

  Anyway, here I am, flat on my back in the operating theatre. It’s like a scene from E.R., with the big circular lights above me, and people moving around just outside my field of vision. If only George Clooney was here.

  They gave me some kind of sedative to drink about half an hour ago, which is supposed to calm me down enough to endure being conscious while they slice a new hole in my belly. If they’d have given me a crate of diazepam and a bottle of gin to wash it down with, it might have worked. Hector’s gone off somewhere for the moment and I think they’re about to start, so I wish he’d hurry up and come back.

  Can you hear that buzzing sound, or are my ears ringing? No, no, it’s definitely there. There’s a green curtain hung up by my chin, and some activity is going on on the other side of it. How strange is this, being able to hear what’s happening, but not feel it.

  ‘Can you make it a heart shape?’ I call out. They chuckle but I know they are shaving the lot off.

  A nurse appears at my right shoulder with a blue gown and scarf on and crouches down to eye level. I look at him, thinking that he’ll be wanting to look at my pupils to make sure they’re dilating, or not dilating, or whatever they’re meant to be doing, and I realize with a start that it’s Hector.