Mine

by Susi Fox

  My finger prickles.

  Blood dribbles out through the plastic glove, running over the curve of my wrist. I rip off the glove and drop it on the ground. Shit. I’m not paying enough attention. I’ve cut myself.

  It’s a deep cut, through the skin, down to fat. Damn. I press my hand into an old pillowcase from the kit, meant for the joey, trying to stem the blood.

  The joey is cupped in Mark’s palms, curled into a ball, its jaws gripping tight to the displaced teat like a child sucking on a lollipop.

  Mark glances at me. ‘Sash, what have you done?’

  ‘It’s just a little cut.’

  He wraps the joey in a towel and draws it to his chest. ‘Please take care,’ he says, with concern in his voice.

  I smile sweetly, pressing harder on my finger. ‘Why do I need to, when you do such a good job of looking after me?’

  Mark bites at his bottom lip. Once it was confirmed this pregnancy was likely to continue, he began attempting to treat me like royalty, carrying in the groceries from the car, drawing me deep baths, cooking me nourishing food for every meal. I’m lucky, I suppose. I’m always trying to remind myself how lucky I am.

  A thin trickle of fluid slides down my inner thigh. ‘Crap,’ I say, ‘and now I’ve wet myself.’

  Gathering the pillowcase into a clump to wipe at my leg, I look over at Mark, expecting him to be grinning at me, but his eyes are globes, the whites shining. When I lift the pillowcase to my face, I see it’s stained with bright red blood, the colour of a fire extinguisher, or a matchbox.

  ‘It must be from my finger,’ I say. There’s another gush. This time it feels like a lump of jelly sliding out of me, into my underwear. It’s not coming from my finger.

  I survey the road. There’s now so much blood pouring out of me that large clots are glistening scarlet on the gravel, trembling like my fingers as I lean towards Mark, grasping for something I can hold on to.

  ‘Mark,’ I call out.

  He is standing, the joey still clutched to his chest in one hand, reaching out for me with the other. As I crouch on the asphalt, one palm grazing the rough stones, I scrabble the other hand to the skin of my abdomen but no matter how hard I try to feel a kick of life from inside, my belly remains firm, silent and frighteningly still.

  Day 1, Saturday Late Morning

  An oxygen saturation monitor bleeps staccato time with my heart, the pitch of a car alarm. I try not to analyse the rate. It hits me quicker this time: where I am, what has happened to me. The incision across my belly – the proof that I’m a mother now. But I’ve been asleep again, when I should be by my son’s side. I’m failing him even though his life has just begun.

  A fragment of my medication-induced sleep intrudes on my consciousness: my dream-baby. I have been visualising her – what I thought was a her – for months now. Her head, covered with tufts of brown hair. Peach-coloured cheeks, shiny blue eyes. She never makes a sound. Yet her face is so different to the baby in the humidicrib upstairs. That child still feels like a stranger.

  A low thrumming starts up in my head, the persistent buzz of a memory. A news segment, reporting a story of babies mistakenly switched in a US hospital. I had heard the piece on a radio show years before. At the time I had been enthralled, listening in horror and fascination. Baby swaps weren’t uncommon, the reporter had said, quoting examples from every corner of the globe.

  A shiver runs down my back, coursing like rivulets of rain across my skin. I’m suddenly terrified. Could they have given me a boy instead of a girl by mistake? Ludicrous. I need to get a grip. I take a deep breath, try to calm down.

  As if sensing my discomfort, Ursula’s broad frame appears, casting a shadow over my bed. There is brown lipstick smudged on her front teeth, dark circles below her eyes. She scrawls notes in a red folder and doesn’t look up as I shuffle about on the mattress. Above me, the fluorescent lights buzz a warning.

  ‘Sasha. Sasha’s my name,’ I say.

  She squints down at me through her bifocals.

  ‘I know,’ she says, but she glances down at the name label in the top corner of the folder to check. Is it possible that she, or someone like her, could have been responsible for a serious mistake? In the case on the radio, it was the fault of a midwife; a simple error. One baby looks much like another. Staff are busy. Procedures aren’t followed. Mistakes are so easily made.

  ‘Your breastmilk is with your baby. You’ll be wanting to head up there again now, I suppose.’

  I nod. It seems she recognises my anxiety, at least.

  ‘I could have sworn I was having a girl.’

  ‘It’s not uncommon for the ultrasounds to be wrong,’ Ursula says.

  ‘I know.’ What I don’t say: my baby felt like a girl to me.

  ‘Are you disappointed?’ Ursula stares down at me.

  Perhaps that’s all this is – my paranoia is disappointment.

  ‘Because gender disappointment is quite common. You can work your way through it.’

  No, I realise, it’s not gender disappointment. I didn’t mind having a boy or a girl. My concerns are for something far, far worse.

  ‘Was someone with my baby the whole time after he was born?’

  She inspects me with narrowed eyes, then presses a button on a beeping monitor beside my bed. The alarm instantly silences.

  ‘Of course. We never leave babies alone.’ From my wooden bedside table, she produces a plastic kidney dish the colour of bile and removes a large syringe from it. ‘We’ll get you down to him as soon as you’ve had your meds.’

  ‘What meds?’

  ‘Morphine. Your pain relief will be wearing off any time now.’

  I’m not in that much pain, though nausea loops through my stomach like a roller-coaster. My head is still fuzzy, but I have to keep my brain switched on. The last thing I need is more medication.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Is her glare one of fury or shock? She removes a second syringe from a see-through dish.

  ‘Antibiotics, then.’ She offers a stern smile. ‘Standard procedure at this hospital. I was on the hospital committee that introduced these protocols after we had an infection outbreak a few years ago. We don’t want you getting sick now, do we?’

  I don’t have an infection so there’s no need for antibiotics, no matter what their protocol says. I extract my arm from her reach, secrete it under the white cotton sheet.

  ‘I’d prefer not. I need to get to the nursery right away.’

  She replaces the syringe in the plastic dish with a clatter.

  ‘Excuse me while I have a word with Dr Solomon,’ she says, not looking behind her as she leaves the room.

  My bedclothes feel like a straitjacket. I push the sheet to my ankles, hoist the hospital gown to my neck. My belly is still protruding, almost as prominent as when I was pregnant. I can’t believe I didn’t pay more attention to the women’s bodies after their births. I suppose I was so focused on the wellbeing of the babies that the mothers almost seemed to merge into their children, until there was nothing separate, nothing left of their bodies that was their own.

  I trace the stretch marks, shiny slivers, down to the firm, rubbery lump of my uterus concealed beneath puckered skin. The layers of my body the obstetrician, Dr Solomon, has sliced through: yellow globules of fat, tense white fascia, then the bulky mauve muscle of the uterus that failed me. Obstetricians don’t always stitch up all the layers afterwards; some are left open to find their own natural ways of closing. Fluid oozes between tissues, sometimes into places it shouldn’t. I know this from the autopsies I’ve performed on postpartum women over the years. The images of their bloated bodies, swollen breasts, don’t bother me as much as the dead babies I’ve dissected – whose tiny bodies, seeping maroon fluids, still haunt my dreams.

  A flash of red in the corner of my eye. The roses from Mark, on the shelf. I need him here. I need his opinion about all of this. Right now.

  I lean for my phone on the bedside table.
It tumbles from reach, onto the floor. With a stretch, I catch the overhead handlebar and try to haul myself to sitting. A spark of heat sears from beneath the dressing. I press into the wadded bandage with the heel of my hand as I try again. This time, it feels like a hot skewer. I collapse back against the mattress with a groan. I’m going to need help to get out of bed.

  I ring the call bell, the buzz reverberating down the corridor. A choir of babies wail from distant rooms, screaming in distress. Where are their mothers? Why isn’t anyone answering them?

  Ursula sweeps back into my room, holding a new kidney dish – this one transparent plastic – aloft like a butler.

  ‘Can you please pass my phone?’

  She bends to the floor and lifts it into my lap, then leans over the bed, inspecting the crooks of my arms. Her face is flat, her voice even. She’s hard to read.

  ‘Dr Solomon requested I take some blood.’

  ‘I really don’t want a blood test.’

  ‘He insists. Remember, you lost a lot of it.’ She holds my gaze with a thin smile. I’m first to look away.

  My fingers turn pale, then blue, then indigo, dammed like a river below the tourniquet. Finally, she finishes labelling the tubes. She holds the syringe up, ready to plunge it into me.

  I stare up at the light above my bed, a solid glow like a lightsabre. I don’t expect to feel anything – God, I’ve had enough blood tests during the years of infertility to start my own pathology company – but she strikes a nerve and an electric shock runs the length of my arm, causing my hand to jerk and dislodge the needle from the crook of my elbow.

  Ursula jumps back, still holding the syringe. ‘Sorry,’ she murmurs.

  Heat pulses through my arm, my hand tingling with pain as a blue-ringed bruise rises on my skin.

  ‘Jesus!’

  It’s Mark. He’s wearing the olive long-sleeved shirt I bought for him in New York several winters ago, his cheeks flushed as he approaches the side of my bed.

  ‘Sash. Are you okay?’

  Ursula pushes the syringe into the almost-full sharps container then snaps the lid shut.

  ‘I need help,’ I say. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

  Mark takes hold of my hand and turns it over so the inner flesh of my elbow is on display, the swollen bruise of bluey-black almost ready to explode.

  ‘Is that okay?’

  Ursula nods, her mouth cut in a firm line.

  After all the long hours spent in waiting rooms, medical appointments and hospital cubicles trying to conceive, Mark and I know what each other’s hand signals mean. I can’t take this anymore, Mark. Get me out of here.

  He squeezes back, scrutinising Ursula. It’ll be okay, no matter what.

  ‘We’ll need to repeat the blood tests later,’ Ursula says. She gives Mark a pointed look before heading out the door and leaving the two of us alone. I wait until I can no longer hear her footfall in the corridor.

  ‘I don’t know what she has against me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Sash,’ he says. ‘Our beautiful son is here. A bit early, but he’s okay. And you’re okay. I was so worried I might lose you, too.’ His face has collapsed in on itself like a crumpled paper bag. He leans in close and hugs me tight, perhaps tighter than he should, given my condition. I run my hands through his hair and take in his almond-scented shampoo.

  ‘We had a boy,’ I say quietly in his ear.

  ‘Isn’t it great?’

  Just as I thought – he’s happier with a son. ‘Tell me what happened after they put me to sleep.’ I pat the mattress beside me.

  He takes a seat, a little further away than I indicated. The bedspread crinkles under him. I take hold of his hand and bring it to my face, inhaling the familiar smell of garlic beneath the hospital soap.

  ‘Have you been making lunch?’

  He shakes his head and presses into my warm thumb with his cool one. His nails are cut into neat moons, the dirt from last weekend’s work on the veggie patch dug out from beneath them.

  I run my hand over his sandy-brown hair again, damp under my palm. I try to phrase my next words delicately, without recrimination; I don’t want to spoil our reunion.

  ‘Where have you been? We agreed in the birth plan that if I needed a caesarean, you’d stay with her … I mean him after he was born, until he was stable. You did, didn’t you?’

  He presses deep into my palm. His thumb feels like the nub of a walking stick, solid, dependable. It’s the pressure he always gives to let me know he’s telling me the truth.

  ‘I stayed with him, Sash, the whole time.’ With his free hand, he fiddles with a loose thread on my bedspread as he details the resuscitation, the cannulation, the oxygen mask pressed fast against our baby’s face in the nursery.

  ‘The whole time? But you weren’t there when the midwife took me up to him.’

  ‘I had to go to the bathroom, Sash.’

  I smile for the first time since the birth. I’m being ridiculous. I trust the man I married. Why would Mark lie about this?

  ‘And the joey. Did it make it?’

  Mark nods and kisses my cheek. I lean into him, his stubble rasping against my forehead. The warmth of his body seeping through my hospital gown onto my flushed skin is just like the feel of his hand on mine the night we met. Despite everything we’ve been through these last ten years, his presence still soothes me.

  ‘Thanks for the roses,’ I say.

  His brown eyes crinkle. ‘The florist said she ran out of white ones. I figured you wouldn’t mind. They’re nice though, aren’t they? Like our handsome boy.’

  My breath tugs inside me like a bell-pull.

  ‘Who do you think he looks like?’

  ‘Like both of us. He has your nose.’ He points at my face, then his own. ‘And my eyes. The shape of them, at least. Don’t you think?’

  The lines between Mark and the wall behind him are blurring. Surely he’s noticed there’s a problem too? I try to focus on the edges of his cheeks, his chin, his earlobes, parts of a whole that define my husband’s face.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say uncertainly. He pulls away before I can add anything more.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t like hospital food,’ he says, reaching for a bag on the floor beside the bed. Extracting a plastic container, he gives it a shake and places it on the tray table beside me with a clatter. ‘I bought you lunch from the cafeteria. Your favourite. I’d have preferred to make you something myself, but that hasn’t been possible yet.’

  It’s a prosciutto, haloumi and asparagus salad. I try not to look disappointed, even though Mark really should know that it’s not my favourite. Ever since I got pregnant, the texture of haloumi has made me gag – squeaky and sour on my tongue. I push the container to one side.

  Mark doesn’t notice. He is too busy setting several magazines, Delicious and Taste and Saveur, still wrapped in plastic, on the small table by the bed. ‘I left these in the car yesterday by mistake. At least now you’ll have something to read.’ Annual magazine subscriptions, a Christmas present from his parents, more for Mark than for me. They’ve been buying them for years, since Mark told them about his plan to open his own café. Glossy photographs of braised lamb shank with a wobbly mint jelly, confit duck leg with cannellini beans and a chocolate cake oozing ganache icing. It’s nothing like the food Mark has planned for his café: simple yet delectable organic fare. I don’t think his parents have ever really understood what he’s wanted to do.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. Right now, I’m hungry for his simple gnocchi, the curtness of the butter entangled with the gentle tang of sage, cooked until it almost melts in my mouth. We’ve made it so many times together, side-by-side at our kitchen bench, rolling the small balls, pressing our thumbs into the dough to make a dent, licking our floury fingers to taste the salt. It’s the dish that reminds me most of us, of him, and of his hopes and dreams.

  Mark takes my hand again. ‘He’ll be able to come off the drip tomorrow if he’s okay with the formula.�
�� His mouth is drawn, as if he knows what’s coming next.

  ‘Formula?’ My voice cracks.

  Mark has crossed the room to the window and tugged open the curtains to dark clouds slipping across the sun.

  ‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he says. ‘They started him on some baby formula a few hours ago through the tube in his nose. He needed something in his tummy, they said.’

  ‘But we didn’t want baby formula, remember?’

  In the container on the tray table the prosciutto is already starting to curl at the edges.

  Mark continues to jabber on.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do, Sash. I was torn. I haven’t been through everything you have. I don’t know how it feels. The nurses said he needed formula and you weren’t there. I’m trying to do the best I can, really I am.’ He pauses, returns to the bed to take my hand, and uses his fail-safe method to distract me from my anxieties: the same cheeky grin he gave me at the jazz club all those years ago. I can’t help but smile back.

  ‘Sash, please. I’m worried about you,’ he says.

  For a brief moment I hope there has been a mistake. That the nurses have got it wrong – that this baby isn’t ours. And when I’m reunited with my real baby, I’ll hold her – or him – in my arms and feel that flood of maternal love wash over me. The slate will be wiped clean. I’ll have another chance to be the perfect mother I desperately want to be.

  I fill the silence with questions I didn’t even know I needed the answers to: ‘Does he look like you imagined? Whose ears do you think he has? What about the shape of his mouth? Did you check if he has your webbed toes?’

  There’s an awkward pause before Mark begins to speak, slowly, in the voice he uses when he likes to make sure I’m paying attention.