Perhaps, I pondered, now that I was 21, my metabolism simply wasn’t what it used to be? Maybe this is what getting old felt like?
I slugged my champagne and itched at my glomesh. Happy birthday to me, I thought glumly. I was in danger of sliding into proper wallowing territory after this party was over, proper Bridget Jones-watching, Cadbury-eating, professional woe-is-me territory. But first, I was going to have a few champagnes and celebrate properly; at least, I would have, if I hadn’t felt so damn sick.
CHAPTER 7
‘Krystal Barter? The doctor will see you now.’ I stood up too quickly and had to steady myself on Chris’s arm as the surgery waiting-room walls danced dizzyingly in front of me. On the far wall, a poster for immunisation showed a bandaged teddy-bear waving a large needle rather too cheerfully. In the corner, daytime television blared out angrily from a battered television, lowering the IQs of all the patients sitting in its vicinity. The doctor’s door gaped open, like a yawning, cavernous mouth, waiting to swallow me up. I hated medical waiting rooms. To me they just meant cancer.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Chris asked softly, standing and placing his hand at the small of my back.
‘No; it’s okay,’ I said. If I was about to learn that I was dying, then there was nothing that Chris being there could do to change that. Because that’s the thing. When you come from a family like mine, where people see their oncologist more regularly than they see their dentist, then suddenly any old symptom, no matter how small or how commonplace, is blown out of all reasonable proportion.
Prior to this appointment and back before my party, I’d had a blood test to find out why I might be feeling so rotten. Faint? Lethargic? Anaemia, was the answer! My doctor prescribed iron supplements and advised me to eat more red meat, satisfied that, like many young women, I simply wasn’t getting enough protein from my diet. But the only thing my new steak diet seemed to do was cause me to stack on a load of unwanted weight. So here I was back at the doctor, more exhausted than ever and several kilograms heavier to boot, convinced that, in fact, I must be dying. I entered the surgery with trepidation.
‘Krystal? Take a seat please.’ An unfamiliar doctor smiled at me, kindly, as she opened my file on her desk and explained that my usual GP, Dr Sally Beath, had been called away that afternoon. ‘So I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me,’ she said, introducing herself as Elana Roseth. ‘Now, why don’t you tell me what seems to be troubling you?’
I took a deep breath, held her gaze, and then blurted in panic: ‘I think I have cancer!’
To her credit she didn’t even flinch. The following conversation went something like this:
Doctor: Cancer, you say? Well, why don’t we start by running through some of your symptoms, Krystal, and then we can take things from there. Do you need to take a minute first?
Me: No, it’s fine. The sooner we get this started, the sooner we can get the treatment underway. Okay, so firstly, I’m tired all the time.
Doctor: Tired? Alright. Are you working, Krystal? Or studying? Or both? Could it be that you’re overdoing things? And are you looking after yourself and eating right?
Me: That’s the problem! I’m eating better than ever but I just seem to be putting on weight around my stomach. And I feel faint.
Doctor: Okay, then.
Me: And I feel nauseous, like I want to vomit.
Doctor: Right.
Me: But only in the mornings.
Doctor: I see.
At this point, Dr Roseth put down her pen and regarded me closely before she spoke: ‘Krystal, do you think it’s possible that you might be pregnant?’
I stared at her as though she’d just spoken in Hindi, and she may as well have for all that I comprehended what she’d said.
‘Preg—what?’ I spluttered.
‘Pregnant,’ she said again. ‘Are you sexually active, Krystal? Because it may be that you’re pregnant.’
I laughed. ‘Oh no, I don’t think you understand. There’s something seriously wrong.’ I spoke these last words as you would to a small child. ‘Besides, I’m on the pill—I never miss—there’s no way I could be pregnant.’ I laughed again, more generously now, as if it were impossible to stay straight-faced at such a silly suggestion.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘But you know the pill isn’t fail-safe, don’t you? Are you supplementing it with any other form of contraception?’
I shook my head.
‘Okay, well, just for my own peace of mind, would you mind doing a urine test and then we can rule out pregnancy conclusively?’
Five minutes later I received the greatest shock of my life.
‘Krystal, you’re pregnant.’ The doctor’s words were kind but firm and with them I felt the world slipping out from underneath me.
Pregnant? I was pregnant? I felt like I would vomit. I felt like I would die.
‘Krystal! Are you okay?’ Dr Roseth leaned towards me in alarm. I could feel all the blood draining from my face and I gasped for air.
‘That’s it; deep breaths,’ she said calmly. Then, satisfied I was alright, she leaned back into her chair.
I thought back over the past few weeks—the fatigue, the emotional upheaval and the constant churning of my stomach. I remembered how, just last month, Chris and I had planned a romantic night out to watch the musical The Lion King at the Capitol Theatre in Haymarket. Extravagantly, we’d hired a room at the nearby Sheraton on the Park hotel at Hyde Park so we only had a short taxi ride home after the show, but even that had left me exhausted and I’d collapsed on the plush, king-sized bed and fallen asleep before a single champagne cork could be popped. Then I thought back to my 21st birthday party and the way my dress had stretched taut over my belly. My 21st! My head snapped up.
‘I’m 21!’ I blurted and the doctor looked at me in bewilderment. ‘I’m 21! So I can’t be pregnant!’ It was as if I couldn’t hold both thoughts in my brain. Babies were for 30-somethings with husbands and houses and sagging boobs and no life. Babies were for those women who had done all the things that they ever wanted to do and so there was nothing for it but to get a store loyalty card for Pumpkin Patch and start stewing apples and mushy pears and with them the twilight days of their long-forgotten youth! I was 21 and I owned a gold dress, dammit. I was going to Phuket with my boyfriend at Christmas. I. Was. Not. Pregnant.
The doctor reached into her files and produced a piece of blue paper with ‘Sydney Ultrasound for Women’ plastered across the header. Just the sight of the word ‘ultrasound’ made me laugh, only this time, when I laughed, it was decidedly more maniacal than it had been earlier in the appointment. Until my laughter gave way to tears and suddenly I was bawling like the proverbial.
‘I … can’t … be … preg … preg … I can’t have a baby!’ I blubbed. ‘I don’t want a baby! Chris doesn’t want a baby!’
I sobbed even more when I remembered Chris, who was sitting patiently in the waiting room, probably reading Australian Geographic magazines that were decades old. It wasn’t true that Chris didn’t want a baby. Or, at least, I didn’t know if it was or not. We’d never, ever talked about it. It had simply never come up. Having known the guy for only eight months, and with both of us still determinedly in our twenties, why on earth would we discuss babies? Now, though, we were about to have that conversation and under the worst possible circumstances. I sobbed and hiccupped and sobbed some more. The doctor passed me a box of tissues and spoke in a calm and measured voice.
‘Krystal, why don’t we ascertain how far along you are? I’m writing you a referral for an ultrasound and you can book that in at any time you like.’
She printed the words ‘UNWANTED PREGNANCY’ in screaming capitals on the form. I blushed and looked away.
‘Now, are you going to be alright after you’ve left the surgery today, Krystal?’ she asked. ‘Did anyone accompany you along this afternoon?’
I nodded. Oh, someone accompanied me here, alright. Only we hadn’t realised there w
ere three of us along for the ride.
Back out in the waiting room, Chris sat calmly playing with his mobile phone, blissfully oblivious to the fact his life was about to be turned upside down. He stared at the screen, happily distracted. I took one look at him and I ran.
I couldn’t help it; I just panicked and so I bolted straight for the car. I can’t imagine what Chris must have thought when he saw me running, red-faced and crying, out of the surgery without pausing to see him. When he finally recovered from the surprise and chased me outside, he found me barricaded inside his little red Mazda that was parked opposite a primary school gate at 3.20 p.m. Home time. Around us a sea of shrieking, lunatic children began to rush past the car, free from school for another day. We weren’t even an island, merely some flotsam, battered on both sides by the oncoming tide. Chris tapped on the glass to be admitted inside. I relented and unlocked the door. When he sat down beside me, I wordlessly passed him the ultrasound form.
It took him a full minute to work out what it meant. ‘Ultrasound request … transabdominal/pelvic region … dating scan … nuchal translucency …’ His eyes searched the text. And then: ‘UNWANTED PREGNANCY’ screamed from the bottom of the form.
‘Whoa!’ his eyes widened as he found the information he was looking for.
‘I am so sorry,’ I whispered, as I wiped my runny nose with the back of my hand. I braced myself for him to run, then, like I’d just bolted from him.
‘Babe, it’s okay,’ were the first fully formed words out of his mouth. ‘So you’re having a baby. We’re having a baby. Wow. Jeez!’ He ran a hand through his hair and let out a long breath. Then he saw my panicked face: ‘Krystal, we’ll work this out. I promise we will.’ How I desperately wanted to believe him.
Then Chris dropped the ultrasound form, letting it flutter to the floor of the car, and he picked up my hand that was streaked with snot and tears. He gripped it tightly in his and then he lifted it to his mouth and kissed it, once, twice, then a third time. And the tide of yahooing school kids flowed swiftly around us.
My family’s reaction to the news of my pregnancy was overwhelmingly positive. Once Mum realised we weren’t making it up (‘Oh, good one, Chris! Pull the other one!’) she threw her arms around Chris and I and hugged us tight, laughing and crying and excitedly making plans all at once. Nan was unsure whether to be outwardly happy for me or just reserved because she could see I was so obviously distressed. (But, on the inside, I just knew she was grinning from ear to ear at the prospect of becoming ‘Great-Nan’ for the first time.) And Dad? From amid all my hysterics and my protestations that I wasn’t going to go through with the pregnancy, Dad simply grinned and said: ‘What’s with the tears, Krystal? This is the best news I’ve heard all year!’
I, however, was still baffled as to how I got pregnant in the first place. Sure, I know how I got pregnant. By 21 years old I was pretty much across the whole birds-and-bees thing. What I mean is: how did I get pregnant despite being on the pill? I’d been on it for years now and had never once forgotten to take my tablet, nor had I ever run into any complications. Several weeks prior to falling pregnant I had switched to a different pill, which had a slightly lower dosage of oestrogen but, I was assured, was no less effective as a contraceptive. And I followed all the rules associated with switching pills (that is, start the new pill on the day after the last one; don’t miss a day; and wait one full cycle before having sex or else use additional contraception). Still, here we both were. Well, three of us now, apparently. This baby must have been pretty determined to enter the world to have made it out of the starter’s blocks. And yet my gut reaction was to end the pregnancy.
On the day I went and had my first ultrasound—the ultrasound that would decide our baby’s fate—my mind was made up for me. And not in the way I expected.
As the radiologist smeared cold gel on my stomach and began to move the ultrasound wand over the curve of my flesh, I turned to face the flat-screen TV on the wall. The grainy black and white image still showed the results of the last ultrasound that was held in this room and a large, fully formed baby floated in front of my eyes. It was curled up, contented, with its thumb in its mouth and its eyes firmly closed. One tiny hand had been raised, fingers splayed, at the moment the image had been captured and you could see every perfect finger in detail. And then it moved.
‘Meet your little baby, Krystal,’ the radiologist said happily.
I stared at the screen, and then I stared at her.
‘That’s—that’s not my baby,’ I stammered. ‘That’s someone else’s baby. My baby isn’t a baby, it’s just a foetus, no, it’s a pre-foetus.’ I turned back to the screen in alarm.
‘No, darling, that baby is yours. And going by the measurements here and here’—two small crosses appeared on the screen, marking the crown of the head and tip of the tailbone—‘your baby is already fourteen weeks old. You’re into your second trimester now.’
I gasped in shock. Fourteen weeks old? Second trimester? Our baby would be starting school soon. And needing help with university fees not long after that. We’d need a cot and a pram and a bunny rug and some Golden Books. And at that instant the ‘pre-foetus’ suddenly became our precious baby.
When I left the ultrasound clinic that day I phoned Chris to tell him I’d changed my mind; we were keeping the baby. Chris deliberately hadn’t come with me to the ultrasound as he wanted me to arrive at my own decision about termination, without any pressure from him. He would support me whatever I decided, he told me, but it was my body and my life and the decision had to be mine. And when I rang him on that Tuesday in September and told him I couldn’t go through with an abortion, that there was a beautiful little baby growing inside of me and that we would keep and love and raise it as best we could, well, of course Chris agreed and we were parents from that moment onwards.
That’s not to say things ran smoothly from here. Chris and I were still very young and very broke and living out of my parents’ front room. We were daunted and scared and frighteningly underprepared for a baby. We knew nothing about birthing or breast feeding or baby care. Hell, I’d never even held a real-life human baby before. In fact the only thing Chris and I did know was that we were hopelessly out of our depth. So we cancelled our trip to Thailand (I would be seven months pregnant then and too uncomfortable to fly, not to mention the fact we’d need that money now for other things), and we began to prepare for one of the biggest changes in our lives.
Towards the end of the year, when I was in my final trimester and feeling bloated and swollen and hormonal and dazed, my mum held a baby shower for me and, during that afternoon, someone wafted a squirming bundle in front of me and insisted I hold it. It. I didn’t even ask if this baby was a boy or a girl. I just balanced the child precariously in my shaking arms until someone else took pity and rescued the poor bub from my grasp. It was almost Christmas and our baby was due in March. In a few short months, Chris and I would be face-to-face with our baby for the very first time. We had a helluva lot to learn before then.
First though, Chris had a surprise for me. With a girlfriend who was heavily pregnant (and gaining weight by the day), Chris had decided it was time to propose. Being the kind of guy that he is, he did everything by the book, diligently ticking things off in the weeks leading up to the big day. He bought a ring (a stunning pink sapphire that I’d fallen in love with earlier in the year when I was out shopping with both of our mums); he asked my dad’s permission (Dad said: ‘Take her!’); and he’d devised a romantic plan in order to ask me to spend the rest of my life with him.
Only, he didn’t count on me messing things up.
It was drizzling the day Chris planned to propose. A fine, misty rain, so slight it could almost be mistaken for the dank humidity that soaked the sagging Sydney air. Chris and I were off to Subway to pick up lunch, then onto Harbord Headland where we would sit and eat and watch the sets roll in at Freshwater Beach, like we did when we first began dating, and where Chris was
going to astonish me by getting down on one knee. A Subway sandwich, a stunning vista and a sparkling sapphire: if there’s one thing Chris knew, it was that the way to a (heavily pregnant) girl’s heart was via her stomach. Well, that was the plan, anyway.
‘Chicken teriyaki or meatball?’ Chris fiddled nervously with the sandwich wrappers as he proffered them for selection. The drizzle on the windscreen built up into fine, trickling creeks now that the wipers had been switched off.
‘What, are you on crack? Chicken teriyaki! I may be hormonal but I’m not completely mad, you know. Who in their right mind would choose meatball over teriyaki?’ I held out my hand and Chris absentmindedly passed me the meatball sub.
‘Uh, close,’ I nagged him, picking up the correct sandwich myself. ‘Where’s your head at?’
‘Huh? My head? Oh, nowhere, nowhere,’ Chris said, acting more vague than was usual. ‘C’mon, let’s go sit on the bench.’ And he went to open his driver’s side door. The instant he did there was a crack of crazy-loud thunder, followed soon after by a blue flash of lightning that lit half the dismal sky. The noise of the thunder, plus its uncanny timing, made it seem like it had been scripted, like something out of a bad school play. Chris opened the car door anyway.
‘What are you doing?’ I said as the rain began to fall heavier now, pelting the windscreen and hammering on the roof. ‘You can’t go out there! You’ll get soaked!’ Chris ignored me and stepped outside and his hair and his clothes were instantly drenched. He started running, sandwich grimly in hand, around to my side of the car and I clocked where he was headed and slammed the lock on my passenger door.
The Lucky One Page 9
