Yet as they turned around, they were faced with another woman. A woman in her early sixties with a round face that had numerous smile lines, except she wasn’t smiling now. It took Harper a moment to place her.
‘You’re Jasper’s mum,’ she said.
At the same moment, the woman spoke. ‘I’m Wendy Lombard. You’re the wonderful woman that gave Claire her eggs.’ Then she closed the small gap between them and threw her arms around Harper.
Harper hadn’t known she was capable of so many tears but more poured down her face as she clung to this woman she’d only met once. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered into the older woman’s hair. ‘This is so unfair.’
After a few long moments, Wendy finally pulled back, although she slid her hands down Harper’s arms and held her hands. Jasper’s father stood right behind her.
‘It was kind of you to come,’ he said, the smile he’d been wearing when they’d met at the balloon base absent now.
‘I wasn’t sure if I should but when I heard the news, I felt compelled. I can’t believe this.’
Wendy nodded. ‘We’re all in shock. It doesn’t seem real.’ Then she let go, stepped back and indicated another middle-aged couple a few feet away. ‘Harper, this is Joanne and Mike Wallace, Claire’s parents.’
Harper didn’t know what to say to these clearly broken strangers. The man’s arms were wrapped around his wife’s shoulders and she was clutching a sodden hanky the way a child might cling to a teddy bear.
There was nothing to say.
‘This is the generous woman who gave Claire and Jasper her eggs,’ Wendy told them.
‘Thank you,’ whispered Joanne. ‘You made our daughter the happiest she’s ever been. She was so looking forward to being a mum.’
And then her face crumbled, and she leant into Mike’s chest as she let out a gut-wrenching sob. With a look at Harper that conveyed so much emotion, Mike led Joanne over to a row of plastic chairs and sat her down.
‘How’s Jasper?’ Harper asked, her voice low.
Wendy and Paul sighed in unison, then Wendy spoke. ‘We haven’t seen him or the baby yet. We only just got here ourselves, Claire’s folks too. Her brother’s on his way, so …’ Her voice trailed off. It was clear she was trying to be strong—for her son and Claire’s parents—but struggling to hold herself together.
‘The local police called us,’ Paul continued, putting his arm around Wendy, ‘but they’ve only given us the bare details. Apparently the baby is a girl.’
Harper nodded, the insider info from Miriam meant she likely knew as much, perhaps even more than they did, but they didn’t ask how she’d known to come so quickly. She was about to say something about hospitals being able to do amazing things with premature babies these days, but the door to the ward opened and they all swung round in anticipation.
Jasper stood there, staring at them. Almost staring through them.
And if she’d thought Claire’s parents broken, he looked a mere shadow of his former self.
The birth of his baby should have been the happiest day of his life.
Instead it was the worst.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jasper hadn’t wanted to leave Claire all alone in that god-awful place, but he’d been ushered out and led to another part of the hospital. Once there, Nick and Constable Morrissey led him to a tall woman with long brown hair tied back off her face. Her uniform and the little upside down watch thing clipped to her shirt told him she was a nurse. She introduced herself with a warm sympathetic smile and her hand brushed gently over his arm as she did so, but her name went in one ear and out the other.
All he heard was, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your wife.’
‘Claire. Her name is Claire,’ he said.
‘Yes, Claire.’ Her expression of pity still etched onto her face, she dropped her hand and turned to a woman behind a reception desk. They exchanged a few words and then she opened a door with some kind of security card and indicated for them to go through ahead of her.
Morrissey stayed behind in the waiting room but Nick accompanied them a little further. It suddenly became clear to Jasper where they were—the ward for sick and premature babies. He couldn’t remember the proper term but on either side of a long corridor were rooms with glass windows and inside those rooms were lots of tiny little box things with babies inside.
He stopped walking and struggled to catch his breath. They were taking him to see the baby.
‘You’ll have to stay out here I’m afraid.’
Jasper heard the nurse speaking and hope lifted his heart—he didn’t want to see the baby, he just wanted to go back to Claire—but then he realised she was speaking to Nick.
‘It’s only immediate family and medical staff allowed in with the newborns,’ she said, then looked to Jasper. ‘I’ll show you your little girl in a moment, but first I need you to wash up.’
She steered him over to a sink just outside one of the glass rooms. ‘Wash your hands right up to your elbows with the soap and then rub this sanitiser on. We want to limit all risk of infection.’
He found himself doing as he was told, telling himself that deep down he owed it to Claire to go and see the baby. It was what everyone would expect him to do.
Moments later, the nurse opened the door and ushered him into a room filled with little baby boxes, the whir and beep of machinery, a couple of medical staff and a few people he guessed were new parents.
‘Here she is,’ the nurse announced, holding Jasper’s arm as she positioned him in front of one of the little boxes.
He gazed down at the tiny red-faced human, naked except for a miniature nappy and the tubes coming out of its nose.
He vaguely registered the nurse speaking. ‘Isn’t she a doll? Your little miracle. She weighed one point five kilograms but she’s doing well considering she’s only thirty weeks. I’d say this one’s a fighter. This is a heated incubator because she’s unable to regulate her temperature yet. We can’t let you hold her just yet, but you can put your hand in through the hole and touch her.’
When he didn’t say anything, she put her hand onto his arm again. ‘Anyway. This is a lot to take in. I’ll give you a few moments with her, I’m just over at the desk if you need me.’
Jasper stared down at the baby, taking stock. Although small, this infant looked well-formed—he counted ten fingers and ten toes. Its limbs were a little blue but its chest was rising slowly up and down. He didn’t know if it needed help breathing—perhaps one of the tubes was respiratory assistance. A scant scattering of dark hair covered its head. It was scrawny, quite long in body and legs, with no fat to flesh it out. The only indication it was a girl were the pink coloured hospital identity bands—one around its thin wrist and the other its ankle.
He leant closer and read the words—Baby of Jasper Lombard—and the date.
This is your and Claire’s child, he silently told himself, but he couldn’t make the connection between this baby and the one that had been in Claire’s belly when she’d left that morning. It simply didn’t compute. He felt absolutely nothing for this miniature little stranger.
He’d rather have Claire than this baby. It wasn’t even a part of her—it wouldn’t grow up to look like her or sound like her. It was no consolation.
Why couldn’t they have saved his wife instead of this tiny little girl who hadn’t been in the world long enough to miss it?
Why couldn’t he have died instead? Claire would have been okay without him—she would have devoted all her love and energy to this baby—but he wasn’t okay. And without Claire, he didn’t even know if he could love this child.
His heart heavy, his head sore, he looked up and around, taking in the people staring into the other incubators. They were mostly couples, all smug in love and new parenthood—even if their babies still needed medical assistance, they were all alive and together.
He’d thought he was numb, but that wasn’t the case. He did feel something. A burning rage deep
within him, an anger stronger than anything he’d ever felt before.
He hated everyone in this room and felt an intense urge to run around and tear the place apart. How dare these couples look so content! How dare the nurse talk to him about miracles and this baby being a fighter!
He had to get out of there. Without a word to the nurse, he barged out of the room, not caring about the noise he made as the door slammed shut behind him. Nick, who looked as if he’d been leaning against a wall taking a little snooze, snapped his head up, but Jasper ignored him as he made a beeline for the exit.
Frustration filled him as he yanked at the door but it refused to open. Nick came up behind him and without a word, touched his hand to a button on the wall. The door clicked and this time when Jasper pulled, it opened.
He didn’t know how his parents and Claire’s parents had found out—perhaps he’d called them or maybe the police had, it was all a blur—but he emerged into a waiting room full of family, Constable Morrissey and … Harper.
Harper? How on earth had she found out?
‘Jasper,’ the small crowd breathed his name in unison, like some kind of pity choir. Their faces wore identical expressions of sympathy and he didn’t want any of it, but it was Harper he zoned in on.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked, stepping right up into her personal space.
She blinked and stepped back a little. ‘I’m … I’m sorry. I heard … I just—’
‘Jasper,’ his dad said sharply. ‘Harper came because she cares.’
Jasper screwed his face up, barely able to look at her as he thrust his finger in accusation. ‘It’s her fault we’re all here. If she hadn’t given us her damn eggs, then Claire wouldn’t have been pregnant and she wouldn’t have been in Newcastle at all today. If it wasn’t for her, my wife would still be alive.’
‘Jasper!’ exclaimed his parents in unison.
‘It’s okay.’ Harper shook her head at them and clutched the strap of her shoulder bag. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Jasper. I didn’t mean to intrude.’
She turned and fled from the waiting room. Another woman he’d not even noticed before glared at him and then hurried past, following her.
‘Oh Jasper,’ his mum said as she wrapped her arms around him. When he was little he’d loved nothing more than being in his mother’s arms. If he scraped his knee, her kiss could fix it; if someone had been unkind at school or he’d missed out being picked for a team, she could fix it.
But she couldn’t fix this.
And if one more person looked at him in the way they were right now or said his name that way again, he was going to scream. He shrugged out of her embrace, because he didn’t want their pity or sympathy—that might make this real. Instead, he walked over to the wall and slammed his fist into it, welcoming the pain that exploded from his knuckles.
His dad approached and clamped his hand down on his shoulder. ‘Don’t do that, son. Talk to us. Let us be here for you.’
But he shrugged him off as well. What did he think they could say or do that could possibly make this better? ‘I don’t want to fucking talk,’ he screamed.
He wanted to turn back time, he wanted to do something.
‘I know you’re hurting,’ Nick said, approaching with wariness, ‘but I’m going to need you to calm down. This is a hospital.’
The sight of Nick’s uniform jogged something in Jasper’s mind. They’d said Claire had been hit by a vehicle travelling on the wrong side of the road.
‘What happened to the driver of the other car?’ he asked, dropping his hands to his sides. ‘Why were they travelling on the wrong side of the Expressway? How is it even possible to travel on the wrong side of the Expressway?’
Nick and Morrissey glanced at each other and this time Morrissey spoke—he’d been beginning to wonder if she was mute.
‘The other driver sustained serious injuries and is currently in surgery.’ She rubbed her lips together, then continued. ‘He was involved in a police chase and entered the Expressway the wrong way while attempting to get away. We believe he was under the influence of drugs.’
Jasper’s head spun—her few sentences were so full of wrongness. The fact that the other man, a drug addict, had lived to tell the tale; the fact that this could have been avoided if the police had abandoned their chase. How many times had he heard of something like this happening on the news? Anger at the cops warred inside him with anger at the bastard who had killed his wife.
The bastard who was here. Somewhere in this hospital.
‘I want to see him,’ Jasper said, his fists clenching again. He wanted to punch his hand into the man’s face as he had into the wall, although this time he wouldn’t stop at one hit.
‘That won’t be possible,’ Nick said, firmly. ‘I think you should just focus on your little girl now. Let us do our job where the driver’s concerned.’
‘Because you’re so fucking good at that, aren’t you?’ Jasper shouted again.
‘Jasper, please. Stop!’
He turned at the sound of Claire’s mum’s voice to see her sitting crumpled on a seat a few steps away. Her face was blotched red, her eyelashes wet and her eternal smile gone.
‘Nothing you can do is going to bring Claire back.’
At the sight of her, something broke inside him and some of his anger drained away. He’d lost his wife but Joanne and Mike had lost their daughter. If anyone could understand a fraction of how he felt, it was them. He took a few steps and dropped into the seat beside her. She opened her arms and he fell into them, resting his head on her shoulder.
The hug he couldn’t stand from his own mother, he took from Claire’s and he gave one back, clinging to her tightly, never wanting to let go. Joanne and Claire were as close as a mother and daughter could get because of all they’d gone through when Claire was ill as a child. But what was the point of her daughter being saved back then, only to die now? What was the point in letting them fall in love, giving them the promise of such joy, and then ripping it all away?
If Jasper had held any belief in the possibility of a God before now, it had died alongside his wife.
After what seemed like a very long while, Joanne sniffed and looked up at him. He realised his shirt was soaked with her tears and in some ways he envied her them. He wanted to cry, felt like he should, but his eyes were as dry as a piece of burnt toast.
‘Tell me about the baby,’ she whispered.
For a second he had no clue what she was talking about, and then he remembered. Claire was gone but in her place was a tiny person he was supposed to feel something for. He looked up to see both his parents and hers looking at him in expectation.
He swallowed. ‘It’s a girl.’ He wasn’t sure what the police had told them. ‘And she’s doing okay I guess. She’s tiny. And has to be in an incubator for a while.’
He felt stupid but he couldn’t tell them anything else because he’d barely listened to the nurse and hadn’t cared enough to ask any questions.
‘Have you chosen a name yet?’ his mum asked.
‘Claire wanted to call her Anaya.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she replied with a sad smile.
‘Anaya?’ His dad tried it on for size. ‘What does it mean?’
He remembered it meant ‘God answered’, but he shrugged as if he didn’t know. Name meanings were a crock of shit anyway and he was only going to call her that because it was Claire’s wish, and because it meant he wouldn’t have to think of something else.
‘Have you got a photo?’ asked Mike.
At the same time, Joanne said, ‘Can we see her?’
He blinked. How could they be wondering about the baby when their own daughter was lying cold and lifeless on another floor?
‘I’m sorry. I … I haven’t got one. And, I’m not sure about who can see her.’ Had the nurse said something about who could visit?
‘Hospital policy,’ said a lady he hadn’t noticed before from behind a reception desk,
‘is parents and grandparents only, but one parent must be present and no more than two people per baby at a time.’
His parents and in-laws looked from the woman back to Jasper.
‘You probably want to be getting back to her anyway,’ said his mother. ‘And we can take turns. Joanne, would you like to go in first?’
‘Oh.’ Joanne sniffed and pressed a hand to her chest. ‘Would you mind?’
The others all shook their heads, so Jasper found himself leading his mother-in-law over to the door. The woman behind the desk pressed a button and it clicked open.
‘We have to wash and sanitise our hands before we go into the room,’ he told Joanne, following the exact steps the nurse had led him through earlier.
‘Of course.’ She nodded and scrubbed up as well.
The nurse who’d dealt with him before met them at the door.
‘Hello,’ she said softly. ‘You brought a visitor?’
He nodded. ‘This is Claire’s mum, Joanne.’
‘Hello Joanne.’ She offered a sympathetic smile. ‘Let’s take you over to meet your granddaughter.’
The nurse led Joanne to the baby and Jasper followed limply behind, thankful she’d taken control because he wasn’t sure he’d even remember which baby was his.
‘Oh!’ Joanne gasped, her hand rushing up to cover her mouth as she looked down at the tiny baby.
Jasper peered over her shoulder, wondering if she’d noticed something wrong with the child that he hadn’t seen before, but aside from the tubes, its size and the fact that it was in a box, it looked okay. Perhaps even a little less blue at the hands and feet than half an hour ago.
Then Joanne clutched his arm and looked up into his face. ‘She’s absolutely beautiful.’ She sniffed and tears fell down her cheeks again, yet this time they were that weird cocktail of happy and sad. ‘Claire would have adored her.’
He nodded and tried to smile, but all he felt towards the little person in front of them was resentment.
The Greatest Gift Page 21
