My Husband's Wives

by Faith Hogan

  ‘Be gentle with her, she’s only got a month to go. If anything happens to that baby…’ From the way they went about Kasia, Grace knew she was in good hands, which was maybe as much as she could hope for now. As they were making their way towards the ambulance, the police arrived. Two uniformed guards, glad to get in out of the evening mist.

  They steered her away from where she found Kasia; she wasn’t sure if that was to preserve the scene or her emotions. They spoke quietly, but their voices were urgent; this wasn’t just another thing – they were taking it seriously. Perhaps they had to plan for the worst, she thought then.

  ‘She had a partner called Vasile. He works in one of the clubs in town. She was afraid of him. He’s a very dangerous man.’

  ‘You think he may have done this to her?’

  ‘It’s my only bet. There’s no other damage done, is there? Nothing taken? So it’s not a robbery.’ She turned to Martin who shook his head, but seemed unable to speak.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after her.’ The paramedic tucked Kasia’s arm beneath the blanket.

  ‘Can I travel to the hospital with you?’ Grace asked the driver.

  ‘If it’s okay with the Sergeant here, then no problem.’

  ‘I’m not sure if there’s any more I can tell you.’ Grace rooted in her memory, and managed to pull up the address of Kasia’s little flat. Despondency surged through her as the guard wrote it down; somehow, she felt they’d failed her. ‘If you do question him. Please, until you’re sure he did this, you won’t tell him that she’s here? She’s been hiding from him.’ She sighed, a deep rattling sound, verging on the edge of tears. ‘And don’t tell him that she’s pregnant. It will be safer for her and safer for the baby.’

  ‘Just one more thing,’ the guard called after Grace as she made her way out the door behind Kasia. ‘Did she ever make a formal complaint about this guy?’

  ‘You won’t find anything on file,’ Grace said, pursing her mouth. ‘She was much too scared for that.’ She touched Martin on his shoulder as she walked past him, wrote her number on a paper liner that lay across the till. ‘When you’re feeling up to it, ring me and I’ll let you know how she is.’ He was in such a state, she wouldn’t be surprised if she met him wandering about the A&E himself.

  *

  It felt like the same room they’d sat in before, but of course it wasn’t. They took the baby first. There was, the doctor said, no guarantee either of them would make it, but at least by removing the baby from any trauma they could treat Kasia more directly. The baby, a small wriggling creature – too small, but with perfect proportions and features – stirred something deep within Grace. It was something she couldn’t remember feeling before, not when Delilah was born. She’d been a different person then, of course. A little girl. She would be beautiful, if she got through this. Evie stared, longing to hold her. Annalise just stood silently by, tears streaming. They took the baby to the Neo-Natal Special Care Unit. Grace felt one of them should go, just to give her some support. Kasia hadn’t talked about names and Grace didn’t want to ask them what they would do if anything happened to her. The hospital, the waiting, and the agony; the whole thing made Grace feel as though she was going silently mad. There was nothing to do but wait. They were in limbo.

  ‘You go home, get some rest,’ Grace urged Evie. There was no point making the suggestion to Annalise. She’d already heard her organizing Madeline to stay with the boys for the night.

  ‘Really,’ Evie snatched her gaze from the untouched tea that one of the trainee nurses had brought hours earlier, ‘I’m better off here.’

  ‘Of course, she’d want you here, Evie.’ In a way, Grace was glad; she didn’t want to think of Evie alone in Carlinville tonight.

  ‘I can’t be anywhere else.’ She bent down over Kasia, whispered into her ear, ‘You are like the daughter I never had, Kasia.’ A large tear plopped down on Kasia’s face. ‘You need to get well. You have a beautiful daughter; you will have a beautiful life. Just come back to us.’

  Grace sat on one side of the bed as Evie whispered, for most of the night, into Kasia’s ear. Small things, endearing thoughts of the life that could lie ahead, if only she’d come round.

  The doctor entered and considered the group of them, then to Evie. ‘Are you her mother?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Evie firmly and Grace knew she felt as though she was now. ‘How is she?’

  ‘It’s too early to say. There was a lot of blood lost. The scan showed a lot of internal damage and the concussion. We’ll need to continue monitoring her for a while.’ She was wired up to every machine imaginable. ‘But there hasn’t been a bleed,’ the doctor added. ‘That’s good. Brain haemorrhaging or any kind of internal bleeding, that’s when we really start to worry. She’s been knocked about a lot. Her body is just trying to recover.’ He tilted his head, as though trying to make out Kasia’s face properly. The bruising covered over her familiar features, swollen and blackened; she was unrecognizable. Grace felt anger surge through her. How could anyone do this to Kaisa, a person so full of goodness, who want so little from life? How could this have happened to her? ‘We’ll give her twenty four hours here, keep her stable, just let her body do the repairs it needs to do for itself. If we can get through that, then…’ He put a hand on Evie’s shoulder. She didn’t want to think of any other alternative. ‘I have every hope your daughter will make it. We just have to get through the next day or so.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said simply.

  ‘Okay, I’m going to check on the baby.’ Grace didn’t want to leave, but they weren’t doing Kasia any good all sitting here. She would want them to keep an eye on things in the baby unit.

  ‘I’ll stay with you, Evie?’ Annalise sounded as though her voice had travelled across an ocean instead of just a single bed. It was hard to believe she was the same girl who only months ago had stood at the foot of a similar bed, hating Kasia with a viciousness that Grace could almost smell.

  Grace felt the emotion begin to rise up in her again. ‘Keep each other safe while I’m gone.’

  *

  In the baby unit, they’d placed a tiny tag on the baby’s foot, ‘Baby Petrescu,’ and seeing it, written in scrawled handwriting, finally tipped Grace over. She began to cry. One of the nurses asked if she was all right.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, but she was far from it. If anything happened to this baby, all of Kasia’s struggle would have been in vain. Grace started to pray, simple phrases pulled together like stitches, threading through her mind, reams of them. She spent the night sitting close to Baby Petrescu, as near as the nursing equipment and the incubator would allow. She prayed they’d both make it; she prayed that this child would feel that she was rooting for her to make it. She prayed that someday soon their disparate little band, their peculiar family unit, with this latest edition, would once more sit at her kitchen table to burned roast and good cheer and Kasia’s red velvet cake.

  19

  Evie Considine

  It was half four in the morning. Faded light blanketed the city before her, and Evie could see the occasional wink of the Dublin Spire glinting in the distance. She stood for a few minutes, feeling the chill of the morning air about her body. She couldn’t remember waking up. Annalise slept serenely on the armchair. The spire caught her eye again in the distance, keeping watch over the city-centre streets. She read somewhere you could see it from outer space.

  ‘Evie, are you awake?’

  ‘I’m fine Annalise, just fine. Go back to sleep.’ Nothing had changed. If anything, Kasia looked worse than earlier. Her face was a patchwork of bruising and cuts, purple, yellow, blue and black, a rainbow of blows that could still take her from them. Evie began to cry. She abandoned a lifetime of poise while she cried, for Paul probably, but mostly for Kasia, whose life was in the balance.

  ‘Oh, Evie, are you all right?’ Annalise came to her side. There was something about Annalise. They had a connection that made it possible for Evie to le
t go more than she ever had with anyone else; even, she had to admit, Paul.

  At seven, Grace knocked at the door. She brought with her two cups of strong tea and news that the baby was stable. Against all the odds, she was far more robust and healthier than expected. Evie was delighted with the baby. If only Kasia would come round soon to share this wonderful time. Evie had never experienced a newborn baby before and even now, amidst the angiuish and fear for Kasia, she felt it was wondrous. She whispered the news into Kasia’s ear.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Evie whispered. ‘She moved. Did you see the expression in her face? Tell me you saw it? It was as though she heard you, Grace. Tell her again about the baby.’

  ‘Get a nurse,’ Grace said before repeating the words she’d said to Kasia. ‘Such a fine baby, with your eyes, Kasia. She has long arms and legs, a strong baby girl. She will be fine.’ It wasn’t strictly true. There was no guarantee that any of the babies in the special care unit would make it, but Kasia needed optimism. She needed something to come back for.

  Suddenly Kasia’s body tensed rigidly. It lasted for a split second, but when she relaxed Evie felt it was as though her spirit left them. Later she’d wonder if she’d imagined it. Then it seemed as if every buzzer in the hospital started to squawk and whine. Lights flashed and doors crashed open; frenzied, efficient doctors and nurses pressed their way to Kasia’s side. For Evie, the next few seconds were a blur. She couldn’t remember if she stood back or if she was pushed. She found herself next to the nursing station, holding a cup of tea she’d never drink, watching as a large doctor attempted to resuscitate Kasia.

  ‘Will she be okay?’ Grace asked a nurse. It was all happening too fast. Kasia couldn’t die. Not when things could be so good for her. For all of them. Not with the baby.

  ‘Her heart has stopped. We have to get her breathing again, and then we’ll have to find out why.’ An older nurse shepherded the three of them out into the waiting room. ‘This is no place for you. Trust me; the team will work hard to make sure she pulls out of this.’

  The waiting room was little more than a white box: no windows, no colour, save for a cheap Degas print, faded blues and purples and pinks and ballet dancers long since dead. She had, from the moment they arrived in the hospital, studiously ignored the memories from the last time she was here. This time was very different. Then she didn’t think she had anything to live for, now the very person who pulled her through was fighting for her life. She couldn’t think about any of this, no matter how it tried to invade her thoughts. She knew the reason, too. It was guilt, pure and simple. No matter which way she turned it over, her attempted suicide had brought Kasia and her baby to this place. So they sat there silently until a bright-eyed doctor knocked quietly on the door. He seemed impossibly young to Evie to pass on bad news; he must, she reassured herself, be here to tell them all was well.

  ‘It’s not good, I’m afraid,’ he said. Evie didn’t hear much else. She flapped back into a chair, felt the world muffle in about her. All the happy pills in the world would be of no comfort to her this time. ‘She’s in surgery now,’ he said, his face stonily serious.

  ‘They managed to get her heart started, which has to be good?’ Annalise said. Grace remained silent.

  ‘Yes, but she’s not breathing, not independently. If the damage done by a haemorrhage is too severe…’

  ‘So she was haemorrhaging?’ Grace whispered.

  ‘I’m afraid so. The surgery will take hours. If it’s successful, she’ll be in recovery after that.’ He spoke softly. ‘You probably won’t be able to see her for the remainder of the day.’

  ‘Will she make it?’ Grace asked the one question they were all afraid to ask. If they were operating, there was a chance of success, surely?

  ‘I can’t say. I’m afraid we’re back to waiting.’

  ‘So, it’s no different to last night?’ Grace’s voice sounded as if it came from deep in her gut. There was too much emotion here not to have affected all of them starkly.

  ‘No. I’m afraid not. The worst has happened. We feared that there might have been trauma severe enough to cause bleeding; she really is badly injured. We’re very lucky she was here, near enough to operate quickly. It will depend on how tough she is and the damage done.’ He spoke to Grace. Maybe he sensed that she was the strongest of them. ‘She’s already lost a lot of blood – with the baby,’ he sighed. It was all he could say.

  ‘So…’

  ‘So we need to start praying,’ Evie croaked the words.

  ‘That’s as much as you can do.’ He knelt down in front of Evie. ‘We’re doing all we can for your daughter. She’s in the best place possible.’

  *

  It was the most dreadful shock. Far worse than Paul dying, Evie surprised herself by admitting that to Annalise. Was it worse than finding out Paul hadn’t told Annalise that he was still married to Evie? Was it worse than finding out that Kasia had been in the car with him that night? It was a hundred times worse, because with Kasia, she knew she was losing her future. Of course, there were conversations to be had, but Evie decided weeks ago that she was leaving Carlinville to Kasia. She hadn’t said anything because she wasn’t sure how Kasia would react. After all, it is only people who are dying, or planning on it, who talk about making wills. Evie didn’t want people believing that her thoughts might be wandering in that direction again. Far from it, as it happened – Evie felt she never had more to live for.

  She knew it was down to these three women. Since Paul left, for the first time in her life, she had back-up. She had an odd mixture of family, who were no relations and yet they were all connected. The turning point was that awful day she woke up after she’d tried to… Funny, although it had probably been the lowest point in her life, that was when things started to improve.

  Having Kasia in the house certainly helped. Grace too, doing this exhibition; it meant a lot to Evie. It was going to be a celebration of what Paul had left behind. Maybe this was his greatest legacy. Once she would have preferred to keep his other lives hidden from public view – now, she didn’t care. Kasia was more important than what people thought. She had become the glue that bound them all together. She had to make it through this, she just had to.

  20

  Annalise Connolly

  Annalise thought researching a whole intro for ‘Political Animals’ had been stressful, but it was nothing close to this. She watched Evie and Grace and considered the three of them here, compared to when they first met. Annalise hadn’t liked either of them. The truth was, they made her feel common and stupid, and as for Kasia, well, she felt worse about Kasia. That first day, on the journey to the hospital, she had wished her dead. Even thinking about that now sent her into convulsions of shame. It was guilt mixed with desperation; now she wanted nothing more than for Kasia to make it. The doctor hadn’t said it outright, but if Annalise wasn’t smart with theoretical stuff, she could read people like professors read academic journals. That doctor was telling them there was no chance for Kasia; bar a miracle, it was all over. They’d been in this waiting room for over four hours. Under normal circumstances, Annalise couldn’t imagine staying anywhere for four hours without Wi-Fi access or at least a magazine to thumb through. Here though, today – it seemed as if time had flipped. Four minutes or forty-eight hours, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

  ‘We should probably go back down to the baby?’ Grace’s words sounded as if they’d come from deep inside an empty tunnel.

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ Annalise said. More than any of them, Annalise loved babies. She was a baby grabber, one of those women who liked to get every newborn baby that came their way in their arms and just look and smell and coo and cuddle. She knew other women eyed her with distaste, as though she was constantly playing the role of yummy mummy, but it was real – or it was until now. She could not bear to leave Kasia’s side; not even for a baby. Whether the child was Paul’s or not, didn’t matter any more to Annalise and she guessed that Gr
ace and Evie felt the same. Babies were like that though, weren’t they? In Annalise’s mind, they just made everything right.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Evie got up. ‘It’s a terrible time.’ She glanced across at Grace. ‘I’ll go,’ she said.

  ‘No, you sit with Annalise; I’ll go,’ Grace said, although she’d spent most of the night in the baby unit, surrounded by buzzers. Annalise would be happy if she never heard another buzzer for as long as she lived.

  The police, when they came, were almost a relief. Their broad shoulders were at odds with the fragile lives in the rooms nearby. Somehow, they made her feel that something could be done. Perhaps, they were not as helpless as she felt. They asked their questions quietly. Annalise and Evie told them what they could, but they’d be back. Vasile had a price to pay; she wondered wryly later if any of them could afford the cost.

  The door opened sharply just as the caterers were making their squeaky noisy way along the corridors, and it occurred to Annalise that she couldn’t be sure if it was breakfast, dinner or tea time. The doctor’s expression was still worried, but he didn’t look as though he was ready to give them the final news.

  ‘She’s out of theatre,’ he said. Evie took Annalise’s hand for moral support.

  ‘And it went…?’ Annalise asked. They were all wishing for one word – well.

  ‘It went as well as we could expect.’ He chose his words carefully. ‘That doesn’t mean she’s out of the woods. She’s had an extensive rupture to one of the vessels on the exterior of her brain. We have no definitive answers as to what that will mean for her recovery.’

  ‘If she recovers?’ Evie asked. It was almost the question that Annalise was too afraid to ask. They couldn’t consider the alternative.