by Susi Fox
He turns his face away, shaking his head.
I check Toby’s chart. His temperature is stable. His heart rate is normal. He’s soared through the first six days of prematurity with ease, despite not having had the comfort of his mother’s touch.
Mark is watching me.
‘You don’t have to be his doctor too, you know. All you have to do is be there for him. You’re his mum, remember. I know you can do that.’ He tries to smile.
At last I can see the truth. It’s never been only me that doubted my capacity to be a mother – my ability to be there for my child. All these years we’ve been together, Mark has been worried about how I’ll cope, concerned I’ll end up like my mother.
‘You knew about my mother, didn’t you? You thought I’d top myself and leave you alone with the baby.’
He has such a sad stare on his face that I’m stunned into silence.
‘You know I adore our son,’ he says quietly. ‘I can’t believe I get to be his father. I’m sure you’ll grow to love him, too. And I know you would never leave us alone.’ His phone alarm sounds, a reminder of Toby’s feeding schedule. ‘The nurse just checked his nasogastric tube is in position. Maybe it’d be good for you to do this feed.’
He hands me a bottle of formula he has already warmed and heads to the formula room to heat the next batch. I don’t know why I’m finding it so hard to trust him. Of course he hasn’t switched Toby and Gabriel. He has no motive, no intent. I pour the formula into the syringe. According to the nurses, it’s a perk of me being a doctor, that they trust me with this task so early in our nursery stay. They think it will help with bonding, too. Lifting Toby’s nasogastric tube high above the humidicrib, I watch the liquid drain along its length, down through his nostril like a white-skinned snake. Without thinking, my eyes travel to Gabriel.
Brigitte is knitting by his side, her needles piercing the red rectangle perched on her lap. A thread of wool, like a trickle of blood, trails down the side of her leg into a bag on the floor. Ursula is fiddling with Gabriel’s lights. Her tunic is the grey of a prison warden. She has her back to me.
Gabriel kicks his legs up against the walls of the cot and raises his arms high in the air. Every part of me wishes I could breastfeed him. My nipples tingle. I feel the wetness before I see it, dribbling from my breasts, leaking through my bra to form two patches of dampness, instantly visible on my white cotton shirt. It’s a reflex, a natural bodily response to seeing my beautiful baby. It’s not under my control.
Brigitte looks up from her knitting. Her eyes flick from me, to Gabriel, to the wet circles on the front of my chest. Her needles freeze mid-stitch. Oh, no. Now she’ll presume I’ve had a let-down reflex because I’m still obsessed by her baby. I’m going to get into trouble again.
She taps Ursula’s sleeve and hisses something indecipherable. Ursula turns to inspect my shirt, snaps the doors of Gabriel’s humidicrib shut – not so hard, I want to call – and heads for the cluster of nurses at the nursery desk.
I pour more formula into Toby’s syringe, but it’s too much too fast, and it overflows, spilling out across the floor in a milky puddle. I crouch to try and wipe it up, but no matter how many tissues I pull from the box I can’t seem to get it all.
Ursula is suddenly in front of me, her grey torso blocking my view of Gabriel. She waits until I stand, clutching the sopping handful of tissues.
‘I believe I made it quite clear you are not to inspect other babies.’
‘I wasn’t doing anything.’ My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
‘Nevertheless, your reaction’ – her eyes take in the front of my shirt – ‘requires us to put precautions in place.’
Metallic sounds screech from nearby. The other nurses are tugging partitions around Gabriel’s cot, around Brigitte too, concealing both of them from me.
‘If I see any further concerning behaviour, I’ll have no choice but to remove you from the nursery,’ Ursula finishes.
‘Is he alright?’
Ursula’s eyes narrow. It strikes me that I haven’t yet ruled her out as a suspect in the baby swap.
‘Were you here with Toby the whole time the morning of his birth?’
‘Of course.’ She wipes at a thin line of perspiration on her brow.
‘And did you see anything suspicious?’
‘No, Sasha. In fact, the only person behaving strangely this whole time has been you.’ She wrinkles her nose before backing away towards the desk, her eyes never leaving me.
‘What’s going on?’ Mark emerges from the formula room clutching the freshly warmed bottle of milk in his hand. ‘Why are they putting up the screens?’
His eyes bulge as they fall on the wet patches on my chest, and I explain the conclusion Ursula and Brigitte have jumped to.
‘I know it looks bad,’ I say, yanking my cardigan tighter. ‘But I don’t get things like this wrong.’
Mark falls into a chair beside Toby and drops his forehead into his hands. His voice is almost inaudible.
‘Maybe the time has come to accept that sometimes, Sasha, even you do.’
I press my knuckles into my eyes until pinpoints of light dance before me. I will not give anyone the pleasure of seeing me cry.
The lime-coloured paint is peeling from the plasterboard in chunks. The sinks are green porcelain, the toilet seats black plastic. The nursery bathroom doesn’t look like it’s been redecorated since the 1970s, and it smells like it hasn’t been given a thorough clean since then, either.
The other parents never use this bathroom; they seem to prefer the modern one beside the lifts. I’ve been coming to these cubicles and locking myself in for quiet time, space away from prying eyes.
I scan the ceiling. They don’t have cameras in here – or listening devices. Nothing obvious, anyhow. Fluorescent bulbs flicker like train tracks. But I’m soon startled when the bathroom door creaks open. Heels clack against the tiles. Crap.
When there’s a click of the lock in the cubicle beside mine, I make a dash for the basins. As I shake the water from my hands, the other cubicle door opens. It’s Brigitte. Her skirt is hitched up on one side. Her hair hangs loose around her face.
‘I can explain about the let-down,’ I say. ‘It’s a bodily reflex. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s not even under my control.’
‘I get that it’s been hard for you,’ she says, not looking at me. ‘But I’d prefer you stay away from me. Okay?’
‘I’m just trying to figure everything out. I’m not trying to steal your baby.’
‘I’ll make sure you don’t get the chance.’ Her eyebrows are knotted together.
I have to ask how long I’ve got to make things right.
‘When will Jeremy be leaving hospital?’
‘Please just stay away from him. And me.’
How the hell am I going to stop him from leaving? It’s not until the door slams shut behind Brigitte that it hits me: in her rush, she’s forgotten to wash her hands. It’s important. I wonder if she realises how important it is, especially after the Serratia outbreak several years ago. The bug may still be contaminating the taps, the door handles, the shiny surfaces. But if I go after her, she’ll only make some other accusation against me; stalking, perhaps.
I crumple against the basins, being careful not to touch the porcelain with my sterile hands. This whole time I’ve done all the right things. Yet Brigitte has the one thing I want, the one thing I can’t yet claim: my child. My son.
My only option: to stick with my original plan. Pretend I believe Toby is mine. Rule out the final suspect. Wait for the DNA results to come back. Then show everyone how right I was all along, and how cruel they’ve been to me.
Day 6, Thursday Lunchtime
Back in the nursery, I find Toby asleep, his lips fallen apart to reveal the darkness of his mouth cavity. I take a cotton ball and moisten it with clear, salty water, then run it over each of his eyelids. He winces and tips his head back, away from me. Then, behi
nd me, I hear a rustle.
It’s my father, laden with plastic bags in either hand. I wasn’t expecting to see him today. He stoops to kiss me, meeting my cheek with his whiskery one, then stretches out the bags to me.
‘Bought you some baby clothes,’ he says. ‘From the friend of a friend of mine. She thought you might need them.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
He peers at my face.
‘You know, you have your mother’s eyes.’
‘I don’t think I’m like her at all.’
Dad’s nose crinkles. He reaches into his pocket and tugs out a piece of paper, folded into quarters, heavily creased.
‘I should have told you everything years ago. I meant to. I’m so sorry. This – this is the last thing I’ve kept from you. I’ve been saving it for when I thought you were ready. This is for you.’
I unfold it. My mother’s handwriting.
‘What is this?’
‘Read it.’
I thought I’d love being a mother. I was wrong …
It’s her suicide note. I can’t believe he’s giving it to me here and now. I know my father is out of touch with his emotional side, to say the least, but surely he knows this is beyond callous. I don’t want to read any more – I can’t. I fold the note back up and pass it back to Dad. ‘I … I don’t want this.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean for you to read it right now,’ he says. ‘Just thought you should know the whole story, especially as you’re a mother now. I can see I should have told you everything a long time ago.’ He tries to hand the note back to me.
‘I know you’re only trying to help. But I don’t ever want to read it.’ I push the note back into his palms.
Beside me, Toby startles in his sleep, his limbs shuddering behind the plastic.
‘I figured it out,’ I say. ‘Everything.’
Dad draws breath. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I remember now.’ Lying beside her, the drowsiness descending on me. Listening to her stop breathing. Her arms around me, turning cold. ‘I was there when she died, wasn’t I?’
Dad slumps into the chair beside Toby’s cot.
‘You really should have told me everything long ago, Dad.’
He is trembling. ‘They said the drugs she gave you wouldn’t have any lasting effect. Once you got through the worst of it, they told me you’d be fine.’
Drugs. What drugs?
There was a cup. A shining silver cup that caught the sunlight. Full to the brim with brown liquid.
Chocolate, darling. Chocolate milk. Nice and warm. Drink up, darling. Drink up.
Her slurred words. Her dank breath.
The liquid filled my mouth with warmth and coated my tongue as it drew down into my core, as though I was submerged in a bath of chocolate. I had lain down beside her, curled my body into her cool one. She pulled me tight against her, breathing against my neck. I had already become accustomed to the smell of her vomit on the quilt.
Now everything will be better. Everything will be okay.
I was with her. Of course everything was going to be okay.
Let me fix what I have done. And forgive me for what I’m about to do.
I always forgave her. She was my mother. I loved her more than anyone. I thought I always would.
My vision blurs. I think part of me has always known. The part of me that has tried so hard to forget.
‘How could she do that?’ I gasp.
Dad’s head droops onto his chest.
‘I can’t explain it, Sasha. She was … sick.’
My body feels empty, like a void, like the far reaches of outer space.
‘How close did I come to dying?’
‘The doctors said it was touch-and-go.’
It feels as if that dark liquid is now bubbling up inside me and foaming out my mouth.
‘You didn’t protect me. You left me with her. Why didn’t you know what she was going to do?’
‘I’m so sorry. I had no sense that something wasn’t right that particular day. It wasn’t like nowadays. People didn’t know how to talk about it.’ He buries his head in his hands.
An alarm sounds from further down the queue of humidicribs. A moment later a flurry of hospital staff enters the nursery. Dr Green attends to the baby with her stethoscope as Ursula takes charge, directing people with a pointed finger.
‘There must have been some signs she wasn’t right,’ I mutter.
Dad sits with his back slumped to the unfolding scene, oblivious.
‘She seemed fine to me.’ When he lifts his head from his hands, his cheeks are coated with tears. ‘I know I should have told you, but how do you tell someone their mother … I just hope you can forgive me one day.’
The nurses rush the sick baby into the resuscitation room. Right at this moment, I would do anything to evaporate into the air and be carried out the window, away into the sky. I can only hope that at some point in the future I will be able to recall the details of what it was like being held fast in my mother’s arms, with her only wanting, and loving, me.
Fourteen Years Earlier
MARK
When it became obvious that Simon’s chemotherapy wasn’t working, the doctors began looking for a bone marrow donor. The money was on his twin: me. But when the tests came back, they said I wasn’t a match. My heart seemed to stop. I’d failed him. I didn’t even get a chance to help him out.
And then, to my family’s horror, the doctors couldn’t find another donor.
The last time I visited Simon, he was in his single room in the hospital with a view over verdant parklands. At the time I didn’t know they gave the best room to the terminal patients.
‘It’s over, Marky Mark,’ he said. ‘Better say your goodbyes.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, wringing my hands. ‘You can’t give up. Anyway, what about the finals?’
‘Damn Collingwood. They’re never going to make premiers. At least, not in my lifetime.’ He chuckled at what he thought was a great joke.
He still looked okay to me, perched against the pillow, his face not quite the colour of the sheet concealing his bony body. If he wasn’t around anymore, I would no longer be a twin. I’d be an only child. I’d have no one to protect. No one to look out for. Nothing would be the same.
‘Don’t say that,’ I pleaded.
‘I can say what I want. You try and stop me.’ He laughed again, like it was another joke.
‘You can’t give up. It’s not your time.’
‘There’s a point when you have to say enough is enough. When it’s okay to let go.’
I clenched my hands into fists.
‘This isn’t that time,’ I said.
Simon’s eyelids fell shut. I thought he was trying to get me to stop hassling him. Later, I wondered if it might have been the drugs; he was in a lot of pain. Whatever it was, I stormed out of the room. I wasn’t ready to let him go.
When Mum called me later that night to tell me he had passed, my face prickled with intense heat. The doctors said he had been ready to die. He was at peace.
Maybe he was ready. I never would have been. The thing I wish most; the thing I’d give anything to change? I wish I’d had a chance to hear his final words. I wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye.
Day 6, Thursday Early Evening
A thick, harmonic noise fills my room. It’s the women chanting in unison from the recreation room, their voices resonating all the way down the corridor. I should be there, but I’ve started packing on the presumption that they’ll still permit me to go home tomorrow. Despite my let-down reflex in the nursery, and my questioning of Dr Solomon, I haven’t heard that my discharge is off the cards. Maybe, as I hoped, staff haven’t communicated their concerns with each other – the hospital bureaucracy working in my favour, for once. Hopefully that will remain the case until I’m well out of here.
The hard, shiny surfaces of my room – the bedside table, television cabinet, table and chair – remain devoid of my
possessions. The cupboard is a different matter, and my belongings, shoved in on top of each other after Mark’s frenzied search, tumble onto the carpet like guts spilling from a wound as I open the door.
My phone lets out a shrill from my pocket. Bec. I hover my finger over the accept button until the last moment.
‘How are you coping, Sash?’
‘Not great. Has my dad been in touch with you?’
‘No. No one has.’
Now I can see why Lucia had been so kind to me. All the adults pitied me – everyone must have.
‘Dad finally told me the whole truth about my mum.’ I pause. I never thought I’d have to say these words about my mother. ‘Did you know she killed herself? And she tried to kill me, too?’
Bec inhales sharply. ‘What?’
‘She drugged me, Bec. She wanted to take me with her.’
‘Jesus Christ. What the hell? Why?’
I have no idea. I doubt I’ll ever know.
Then it comes to me, something else I’ve suppressed for all these years. Lucia, licking a glob of dough from a wooden spoon, her eyes sparkling as she picked up the jar of sugar from the bench. I had mistaken the white crystals for salt.
‘Mistakes, my darling. Don’t feel bad. We all make them. Me, as well. I should have ended the pregnancy like Mario suggested.’
But ending the pregnancy would have meant aborting Bec. Surely that’s not what she meant?
‘Your mother too,’ she said as she spooned the sweet dough into the bin. ‘She felt having a baby had been wrong for her.’ She pulled me tight against her. ‘But believe me, Sasha, you are no mistake.’
All the nights I would sob into my pillow after my mother left, Lucia would find me. She would send my father next door to babysit Bec and she would climb into my bed and wrap her arms around me, pressing me into her thick, warm body, murmuring words I didn’t understand. She smelled of garlic and rose soap and love.
‘I think Lucia knew what my mother tried to do.’
