by Susi Fox
I look down at the crib. Toby’s chest and abdomen look like they’re working at odds with one another, one blowing out as the other sucks in. Paradoxical breathing. A bad sign.
After Damien, I stopped trusting my instincts when it came to illness. I decided intuition wasn’t one of my strengths. Possessing so little confidence in my abilities, each time I was confronted with another sick child I ordered more and more lab tests, X-rays, scans. Why I left paediatrics: I realised the tests couldn’t protect me from myself.
Toby, though; he looks different to yesterday. He looks unwell. Dr Green approaches again, this time her cheeks pale.
‘Let’s take him into the resuscitation room,’ she says. ‘I need to pop a drip in, take some bloods, then start some antibiotics. We’ll have more room in there.’
Putting in an IV, taking blood tests, starting antibiotics; it’s what I should have done for Damien. Instead I sent him home – and to his death. Back in those early days, I had been certain I could never make the wrong call.
Dr Green lifts Toby and passes him to me.
‘You carry him,’ she says. It feels like far too long since I last held him. His skin is clammy and cool. I could easily rest him in one hand, but I cradle him in two to support his spine. His arms and legs loll about like he’s a rag doll. I press his small frame against me to keep him warm.
Dr Green walks alongside me. ‘I remember how hard it was, seeing other babies struggling when my daughter was improving. Mark mentioned I had a premature baby?’
I nod, remembering the day I was admitted.
‘Cassie. Would you believe I felt guilty when she was doing well?’ She pauses a beat. ‘I felt guilty about everything back then. I’d even convinced myself her premature birth was my fault. It’s taken me longer than I thought to let go of my self-blame, to realise it was chance. Just one of those things. Not my fault at all.’
The resuscitation room is hidden behind an opaque sliding door. I had hoped I’d never find myself in one of these again. The walls are stacked high with shelves of equipment: syringes, needles, masks, boxes of medication. Everything a sick baby could need. The resuscitation cot, covered in various dials and switches, stands in the middle of the room, pushed up against one wall. Two gas tanks are strapped to the back, ready to pipe oxygen or air to the sick baby. A heat lamp hovers above the cot like an emergency helicopter. It’s been years since I worked in paediatrics; I could no longer resuscitate Toby according to best practice standards. He is in the hands of the medical staff now.
Dr Green shuffles between shelves, tearing open plastic packets, setting up a cannula tray. I lay Toby out on the mattress of the resuscitation cot. The heat lamp is turned up to maximum, prickling my forearms as I stroke his head. On the wall, flowcharts detail the steps of resuscitation. A whiteboard still shows the times and doses of the last baby they brought back from the dead.
Dr Green’s eyebrows are creased in worry, her hands shaking ever so slightly as she primes the IV line. ‘I wish someone could have given me a healthy baby, rather than a premature one.’ Her rich floral perfume mingles with her sweat in the confines of the tiny room. ‘It’s not fair for anyone – parents, babies – to have to suffer in this way. That’s why I do this work, you know; to ease other people’s pain.’
She hands me a small tube of clear liquid. ‘You give him this sucrose while I insert the drip,’ she says. She leans over Toby on the resuscitation cot mattress and takes his tiny arm; it’s no thicker than her thumb. Her fingers leave white imprints on his skin as she bends his wrist back. His veins become threads of violet, poking out. I use one palm to hold his chest, the other to drip the sucrose into his mouth. Despite the heat lamp, he’s cold all over. I clamp his wrist with my hand. His mouth opens and closes as he gasps and swallows the sugary liquid. Dr Green taps a bulging vein with the back of her fingers, then pricks his skin with a needle. Toby screeches.
‘It’s okay,’ I say, a layer of sweat springing up on my forehead. My pulse is racing.
Toby’s squeals reverberate through the room. My fingers spasm and cramp, but I don’t loosen my grasp of his chest or the sucrose tube.
Finally, the needle is gone, replaced by a screw-on cap and the line of plastic IV tubing. Dr Green fills a few tiny vials with Toby’s rose-coloured blood, her eyes watering. ‘I always wanted a big family, you know. As soon as Cassie was born, I became obsessed with the idea of having another baby straight away. I think part of it was to prove to myself and everyone that I could do it right the next time. But when I saw what Cassie went through in the nursery, one child felt like enough.’
Toby is whimpering now, his wails rising and falling like a church organ. A deep, almost familiar furrow forms between his eyebrows as Dr Green tapes his arm to a splint. Feeling his skittish heartbeat against my palm, my head spinning and my feet all at once unsteady under me, I let go of his chest and flee from the room, no longer knowing which direction to run.
The nursery is empty; no staff or visitors are around. Outside, snowflakes are still tumbling to the ground. I slip back through the crack between the screens to find Gabriel asleep in his crib. His skin is shining blue under the lights. I press my forehead to the perspex. He is starting to settle into chubbiness, his face rounding out, rolls developing at his wrists. I click open one of the portholes and reach in to touch his skin.
‘I knew it.’
Ursula. Her shoulders are drawn up to her ears like a serpent ready to strike.
‘You are well aware you are not permitted near this baby.’ She steps forward, a black stethoscope swaying over her chest like a hypnotist’s watch. ‘I was all for you bonding with Toby,’ she says. ‘I thought you had every chance of getting better, Sasha. I even stood up for you when the other nurses wanted you banned from the nursery.’ She fixes her eyes on Gabriel. ‘But this time, you’ve really gone too far.’
With her hand pressed against my shoulder, Ursula propels me out of the partitioned room towards the nursery exit. She directs me through the door and plonks me in a chair in the hallway beside a plastic fern.
‘Wait here,’ she instructs.
Opposite me, photos of babies born in this hospital cover a pinboard, a mass of chubby faces, double chins and wide eyes. The babies I know aren’t on that board. Not yet, at least.
Toby, in the nursery, his feeds travelling through a tube in his nostril all the way to his stomach, handled by strangers day and night.
Gabriel, with the woman sitting by his cot day after day believing he’s her son, calling him by a name that doesn’t fit.
Finally, me cradling Gabriel against my neck, inhaling the sugar-sweet scent of his skin.
Three babies, four names: Damien, Gabriel, Jeremy, Toby. Only one of them mine.
The tight furrow between Toby’s eyebrows, the one Mark is convinced is mine; it couldn’t be genetic, could it? Surely there’s no chance Toby could be my son?
All along Dr Niles has said she’s seen women with similar reactions to mine, especially after a traumatic birth. They dissociate, struggle to bond with their babies. Toby doesn’t feel like mine. And I’ve tried, haven’t I? Tried to love him, tried to feel something for him. Nothing came.
I count the number of times I’ve properly held Toby. Once. Once in seven days.
Perhaps it’s like they’ve said: it could be my fault. Perhaps I haven’t tried hard enough.
If Toby were my son, I could live with Mark’s silent reproaches. And I could learn to live with my massive mistake.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
The nursery door squeals like a whining dog as it opens and closes on its hinge. There’s no reply to the question in my head, or in my heart. As for Damien, I’ve been carrying him with me for years now, waking from nightmares and clawing at the doona. Mark stopped asking why.
In the coroner’s court, I said I had no recollection of the lesion behind Damien’s ear. But I do. I checked the spot the night before he died, trying to make it
blanch with my index finger. But it wouldn’t. It was still there when I lifted my hand from his skin. I had put it down to a birthmark his parents had never noticed. He didn’t have any others – I did check – and one lesion wasn’t enough to order more investigations, or so I believed at the time. I’d learned at medical school the meningococcal rash was always the last thing to come up before death, but Damien didn’t look like he was about to die – not that night, at least.
Yet the biggest problem wasn’t missing the significance of the lesion. It was what happened next.
The coroner interrogated me about the mark. I froze. My incompetence was on vivid display in the courtroom, illuminated for his parents, the media, assembled strangers, even myself. It had felt like I’d only had one option. My response has echoed through my head every night since then, in my weak, tinny voice.
I don’t recall.
‘I’m so sorry, Damien,’ I whisper into the hot, humid air of the corridor. The words hang in the ether, around my head, but when Toby’s solemn face hangs before me, so similar to Damien’s own, I wonder whether Damien might be ready to let me go. And I pray I will come to accept Toby – the son I might have spurned for reminding me of Damien, of my mistakes – in his place.
As the nursery door slides open and Dr Green stands before me with a stern expression on her face, it all comes to me; what I should have known this whole time, what I no longer need a test to confirm. What I hadn’t wanted to believe.
One more thing to add to the long list of my mistakes.
My heart contracts and loosens beneath my ribs. I slump off the plastic seat, onto my knees, unable to bear my own weight, but Dr Green has rushed towards me, catching me before I fall.
The carpet beneath my knees is grubby, tainted with old, dark stains. I shudder. It’s not too late. Some women don’t bond with their babies for months, or even years. Or ever. It might take me an awfully long time to learn to love Toby. At least this way he and I will both have a chance.
I haul myself to my feet.
‘I need to see Toby,’ I cry. ‘I need to hold him. Please. You have to let me see him.’
Dr Green shakes her head. ‘There have been some questions raised about Toby’s illness,’ she says. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you not to visit for now.’
‘Please. I didn’t do anything to Toby. I can see I’ve been wrong. If I can just hold him –’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dr Green interrupts. ‘Really, I am. But for now, we have no choice.’ She ushers me past the long sink towards the lifts. ‘We’ll let you know when you can visit again.’
My knees are so weak I feel like I’m going to collapse. This can’t be happening; not when I’ve finally discovered the truth. I’ve done so many things wrong. But I’m not my mother. I haven’t purposely caused Toby any harm. I can love my son and be a better mother than I expected of myself, a better mother than my own. I hope to God it’s not too late for Toby, or for me. My legs begin to slide out from under me.
I feel a hand beneath my armpit, keeping me upright.
‘Time for you to come home, Sash,’ Mark says.
For the first time in a long while, he’s here when I need him most.
Day 7, Friday Late Morning
My chest feels hollow as Mark helps me into the car outside the main hospital entrance. I shouldn’t be going, not when part of me is being left behind.
The trip home is quiet. Mark is playing a new CD of experimental jazz that makes me want to scream. Once we hit the outskirts of town, I scan the shoulders of the road where pockets of snow lie, melting in the spring sun that has emerged from behind the storm clouds. Occasional animal carcasses line the asphalt, rotted beyond recognition, feasted on by insects until they’re nothing more than lumps of bone and fur. I wonder what Mark would do if we were to see an injured animal now; whether he’d ask me for help to save its life. The thought of a joey sucking at a teat, unable to draw in enough liquid to sustain its life as its mother grows cold, is almost too much to bear.
In the overhead mirror, the baby capsule we’d set up weeks ago rests in the back seat like an empty egg carton.
‘Mark?’ I feel I owe him an explanation.
He nods.
‘This has made things really hard for you, hasn’t it?’
We leave the asphalt and hit the dirt road, stones striking the under-surface of the car as the suspension shudders beneath us.
‘I thought this would be different.’
‘Me too,’ he says.
Wind turbines on the distant hills whip around like kitchen beaters. We pass a farmhouse washing line, a fitted sheet billowing in the wind. Then the house with the front yard chock-full of rusting cars, tractor bodies and scrap metal. I turn up the heater and stretch my legs out under the dashboard. We’re getting close to home. I need to say it now before it’s too late.
‘Something happened after you left …’ But the whole story is somehow too difficult to put into words. I try again. ‘I’m sorry for making your life hell. I think I’ve been wrong. I’ve made a mistake. I do think Toby is our baby. We’ll be able to get to see him soon, won’t we? We’ll be let back into the nursery? I need to hold him. He’s going to be alright, isn’t he?’
Mark sighs, and his hands loosen on the wheel. ‘I’ll go back and see Toby this afternoon,’ he says. ‘Dr Green seems to think he’ll be fine. Hopefully they’ll let you see him again very soon. Everything is going to be okay.’ I think he’s talking more to himself than to me.
Cherry blossom petals crumple under the tyres as we turn into our white stone driveway. The snowstorm hasn’t hit this far out of town. Our house looks almost unfamiliar after the week away, its lace awnings and carved verandah posts, its deft Edwardian style all at once too elegant for these forest surrounds, as though it’s been transported here from the inner city on the back of a truck, then dumped in the middle of the bush. We’re encased by trees on all sides, our house invisible from the road. Situated in a magical clearing, the real estate agent had proclaimed. A bushfire death trap, Mark had corrected. I had insisted that we snap it up anyway, swept up in the fantasy of a bush retreat, as though serenity was something that could be bought, or owned.
Mark spent the first five years in the house whingeing about the wiring, the floorboards, the sloping ceilings. ‘Old houses,’ he’d mutter as he clambered into the manhole. He preferred modern houses: clean lines, straight roofs, everything ordered and under control.
Me, I loved houses that had history. Atmosphere. I could almost sense the people who had lived in this house before us. There was nowhere I would rather be. After eight years, it felt like home.
Once we’re inside, I see that clusters of dust and hair have been swept into piles up and down the hallway. It must have been Mark. He’s never appreciated the importance of vacuuming or sweeping before mopping. I glance at the statue of a pregnant woman on the hall table. I bought it as a present to myself, early in the pregnancy. To commemorate the nine months, I said at the time.
Above the table hangs a Monet reproduction, Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge. It will have to go. Empty walls will be enough. We had them freshly painted in preparation for the baby. Clotted cream. Mark let me have my choice of paint.
I kick off my shoes and inspect the ceiling. Stringy cobwebs dangle between the cornices and our stained-glass light fittings. In the lounge, bunches of wilting flowers line the mantelpiece – gerberas, lilies and carnations – their petals already brown at the edges. They smell of mould, of death.
‘I thought I’d leave them for you to see when you got home,’ Mark says. He hands me a stack of greeting cards. They’re from friends, work colleagues, extended family, each containing cheery messages of congratulations and well wishes, all filled with hope. Nothing dark. Nothing real. I toss the worst of the cards into the fireplace.
The presents have been left in a ceremonial pile on the lounge suite. Rattling toys, organic-cotton clothes, a set of Baby Einstein DVDs. Mark pic
ks up a pale-blue onesie and holds it against his chest for size.
‘I’ve put your tablets next to your bed,’ he says. ‘So you won’t forget.’
‘I haven’t even been taking them,’ I say.
Mark drops the onesie to the floor.
‘Why not? Oh my God. Can you please tell Dr Niles when you see her? I don’t want to have to tell her myself.’
‘She discharged me. She said I’d recovered.’
But Mark only shakes his head as he ducks beneath the doorway and leaves the room.
When I’m sure he’s gone, I spread my mother’s patchwork quilt over the back of the couch. The red of the fire engines matches the burgundy leather. The quilt is the perfect length and width, even if the childlike fabrics don’t quite suit the décor of the house.
Later, we stand side-by-side in the kitchen preparing lunch, almost like old times. After a week away, our kitchen feels sterile, with stainless steel appliances, glossy grey cabinets and clear benchtops. It’s as though I’m back in the lab.
There’s still some leftover gnocchi from the batch Mark made. The boiling water spits onto the stove as he bundles handfuls of white dough into the saucepan.
‘I saw a tawny frogmouth last night,’ he says.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘It was sitting on the tree stump by the garage. I got all the way up to it. I almost touched its feathers. It wasn’t until the last moment that it flew away.’
I cut through a tomato, the blade a scalpel in my hand as it cracks on the glass chopping board. The juice spatters up at me.
‘Careful,’ he says.
The kitchen cupboards fade from grey to black as blood drains from my head. I ease myself onto a stool.
‘You know what they say,’ Mark says with a smile. ‘If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.’
I place my hand over the scar above my pelvic bone.
‘I was joking,’ he adds. Then, gentle: ‘Are you okay?’
I don’t reply. He stirs the boiling pot.
‘Dr Niles rang,’ he says. ‘She wants to see you back at the mother–baby unit this afternoon.’
