Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t find the stuff I want,’ I said, returning to the table and pulling a mil each of ketamine and diazepam into a syringe. I injected slowly into the port on Taffy’s giving set, and the small woolly body went limp.

  ‘Good work,’ said Mark.

  ‘No it’s not,’ I said tiredly. Poor work at best. I should have had all the right drugs to hand, and their doses written down for quick reference. ‘Watch her for me?’

  ‘Watch her for what?’

  ‘Breathing!’ I snapped, and hurried up the hall for my toxicology book.

  The book wasn’t on the shelf above my desk, or on Keri’s, or Richard’s. This was becoming a recurring theme. I gave up the search and pulled out my phone to call my customary fount of veterinary wisdom.

  ‘Hey, Nell,’ he said. ‘Merry Christmas.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to ring you on Christmas Day,’ I said, leaning back against my desk. ‘Work question.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Lance.

  ‘I’ve got a seizuring dog, twelve years old, probably slug bait.’

  ‘Yuck,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, she’s pretty bad. I’ve knocked her out with ketamine-diazepam – I know it was the wrong thing to use but –’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to use ketamine in animals with neurological signs?’

  ‘Old wives’ tale,’ said Lance briskly. ‘Newer studies have found that it actually decreases ICP – intracranial pressure. Top it up with Nembutal.’

  I went back down the hall to the treatment room, where Mark was standing over Taffy, watching her chest rise and fall. ‘Haven’t got any. Can I use pentobarb?’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Lance. ‘The concentration of that stuff’s a bit variable. You might as well stick with ketamine, if it’s working. Got the dog on a drip?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. What brand of bait was it?’

  ‘Don’t know. The owner’s checking and ringing back.’

  ‘Some have carbamate in them,’ he said. ‘Has your dog got pinpoint pupils?’

  I looked. ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. No point in giving atropine then. Might be worth trying gastric lavage, if it’s been less than four hours since it ate the stuff.’

  I looked at my watch – it was one thirty. ‘It might be. Good idea.’

  ‘Got anyone to help you?’ he asked.

  ‘Mark,’ I said, smiling at him across the patient. ‘He’s a pretty good vet nurse.’

  ‘Good on him. You might have to keep the dog sedated for a few days: metaldehyde takes a long time to wear off.’

  ‘Will do. Thanks, Lance.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Oh, Kate’s yelling about something, hang on . . . She wants to know if you’re feeling better.’

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Is she?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s great. She says you should try vitamin B6.’

  ‘Does it help?’

  ‘So she says.’

  ‘I’ll give it a go,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Take care, okay?’

  ‘You too. Merry Christmas.’ I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket. ‘Thank you for watching her for me. I’m sorry I snapped at you.’

  ‘So K-Y man told you what you needed to know?’ Mark asked.

  Lance was a bit pedantic, and prone to experimenting with nasty straggly tufts of facial hair, but he was a better person than I was. He wouldn’t have told his new girlfriend my embarrassing secrets, and I shouldn’t have told Mark any of his. ‘Please don’t,’ I said unhappily.

  Beryl Stewart rang just then to say that the ground around her primulas was indeed devoid of slug bait, so we spent an unpleasant half hour with a bucket and a stomach tube, washing out Taffy’s stomach. Then I packed a box of supplies and we headed home, dog and all. I laid Taffy on a pile of newspapers and blankets in one corner of the kitchen, with the drip bag tied to a cupboard door handle.

  ‘Drink?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mark, crossing the kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Tea, please.’ I opened the pantry to retrieve the cake. ‘I’m sorry; this is a lousy Christmas.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said.

  ‘Did you have a nice talk with Uncle Peter?’ I asked.

  ‘Which one was he?’

  ‘The one who should have been an All Black.’

  ‘That’s right. Yeah, it was great.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I liked your aunty Deb.’

  ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’

  He put an arm around me. ‘She told me all about how clever you are, and how you were dux at high school.’

  She would. Sam won the Accounting Cup one year, and she carried it around in her handbag and showed it to people.

  ‘There were only about twenty of us in seventh form,’ I said, resting my head against his shoulder. ‘It’s not all that impressive.’

  ‘It’s a lot better than I could do.’

  I reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘But you can knit.’

  ‘So I can,’ said Mark, letting me go.

  I was sick and tired and self-absorbed, and it didn’t occur to me that he honestly thought he was stupid. So instead of pointing out that he was the smartest, most logical person I’d ever met, and that he would have passed sixth form on his ear if he’d bothered to devote a fraction of his brain to schoolwork rather than rugby, I turned away and went to check Taffy’s heart rate.

  It was a lovely summer afternoon, warm and sunny, with a light breeze ruffling the leaves of Rex’s poplars. All over the country, happy overfed people were playing cricket on their lawns and nibbling on leftover pavlova and chocolate truffles. Mark went to help Hamish milk, and I considered making something amazing for dinner for about four seconds before nausea won and I retired to the couch instead.

  In the end, Mark dined on mayonnaise-and-salami sandwiches (had Em known I’d given him a litre of condensed-milk mayonnaise and an illustrated history of the Persian empire for Christmas she would have predicted the rapid and inevitable downfall of our relationship), and I had banana on toast. As we finished eating, Taffy’s anaesthetic began to wear off and she started to paddle again. I topped her up for the fifth time, rang Mrs Stewart with a progress report and moved Taffy to the floor at the end of my bed.

  It was not a restful night. About the seventeenth time Taffy stirred, somewhere around three in the morning, I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow.

  ‘Your dog’s twitching again,’ said Mark sleepily.

  ‘Mm,’ I said, rolling back. ‘I think I’ll be sick when I stand up.’

  He pushed himself up to sit. ‘Tell me what to do, then.’

  ‘No, it’s okay.’ I swung my legs out of bed, took a few deep breaths and switched on the bedside light. I had swathed it in a pair of pyjama pants so as not to wake Mark every time I turned it on, and then proceeded to wake him anyway by blundering around the room and falling over things.

  The drip bag needed changing, and Taffy’s body temperature was down to thirty-six degrees. I filled a hot water bottle and covered her with an extra blanket, and crawled back into bed, nibbling furtively on a Cabin Bread.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mark enquired.

  ‘Eating Cabin Bread to settle my stomach,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  He sighed and sat up again.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Couch.’

  ‘No, please don’t! I’ll stop.’

  He got out of bed. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said shortly, and went up the hall.

  I lay and watched the numbers change on the digital alarm clock beside the bed: 3:40, 3:52, 4:09, 4:17 . . . Finally I got up and padded after him.

  He was lying on his back on the couch, slowly rubbing his sore shoulder with the heel of the opposite hand. A square of yellow light from the
hall framed his feet but his face was in shadow.

  ‘Is it very sore?’ I asked, stopping in the doorway.

  ‘It’s alright.’

  ‘Would you like a heat pack?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Lucky it happened now, I guess, if it had to happen,’ I said tentatively.

  ‘Helen, being injured now isn’t insurance against being injured later.’

  I bit my lip. ‘I know.’

  ‘Go back to bed,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there soon.’

  He hadn’t come by the time I went to sleep, and he wasn’t there when I woke up. I pushed myself up on my elbows – the clock said 7:05, bright sunlight outlined the curtains, and on the floor at the end of the bed lay a little white dog, watching me warily with her chin on her paws.

  24

  INJURY WOES LEAVE BLUES BLUE

  The season’s barely started, but mounting injury lists are keeping Blues head coach Bob Grantham awake at nights. There’s Mark Tipene’s shoulder, of course, partially dislocated in last year’s final Irish Test and then reinjured against the Crusaders last weekend. Tipene’s management are talking about a four- to six-week rehab, but with the World Cup looming the All Black coaching team is unlikely to want to take any chances rushing its star lock back into play.

  Then there’s prop Luke Sia’alo’s torn hamstring, fullback Sean Jones’s dodgy ankle and several senior players unavailable due to extended holiday leave. Blues captain and All Black skipper Jaeger set a good example by choosing not to take advantage of his contract’s holiday clause but was in disappointingly poor form last weekend, a mere shadow of his relentless and rock-solid best.

  Bastards, I thought, refolding the paper and slapping it back down on the coffee table between a tattered copy of the Listener and a Little Tots parenting magazine.

  ‘What’s up?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Some prat saying Alan played badly last weekend.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t have a great game.’

  ‘He wasn’t bad.’

  ‘I don’t think you should read the sports news,’ he said. ‘You take it all way too personally.’ He leant forward and picked up Little Tots with his left hand, his right arm being currently in a sling. ‘Read this instead.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said. Being pregnant was daunting enough without starting to think about how to raise the child when it arrived. This was a pretty stupid approach, and even I could see that I was eventually going to have to give the matter some thought, but just now I was far too busy comparing life as it was to life as it might have been.

  Imagine if I hadn’t decided to flick that bit of tartar off that cat’s molar with my fingernail. I wouldn’t have got myself bitten, wouldn’t have started that stupid course of Vetamox, wouldn’t have bloody ovulated, wouldn’t have stuffed up Mark’s life as well as mine, wouldn’t now be keeping up my last pair of respectable work shorts with a row of hair ties looped through the buttonholes on one side and around the buttons on the other . . . It was a particularly stupid train of thought, as depressing as it was pointless.

  Mark shrugged, settled back in his plastic chair and opened Little Tots himself.

  It was the evening of the first Wednesday in February, and we had met at the Anglesea imaging centre for my week twenty ultrasound scan. Week twenty. It really is incredible how time flies when you’re wasting it in futile regret. We were the only people in the waiting room, and after a few minutes the receptionist, a slim grey-haired woman who’d been examining Mark surreptitiously through her lashes, stood up and approached.

  ‘You – you are Mark Tipene, aren’t you?’ she said.

  Mark lowered Little Tots. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Could I just take your picture for my son? He’s a huge fan.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mark.

  ‘Thank you so much!’

  ‘Why don’t I take one of you both?’ I suggested. After seven months with New Zealand’s sexiest sportsman (News on Sunday said that, not just me), I had a good working knowledge of pretty much every available piece of photographic equipment on the market.

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ the receptionist said, handing me her camera.

  Mark stood up, and I took the photograph.

  ‘Oh, thank you, dear,’ she said. ‘How’s your shoulder, Mark?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ he said, as he always did.

  ‘So you’ll be fighting fit in time for the World Cup?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Jack – Jack’s my son – was so upset when you hurt it again last week,’ she told him. ‘Those shoulder injuries can be so slow to heal if they need surgery.’

  Lucky you mentioned it, I thought sourly. After all, he might not have realised.

  ‘And you’ll really be wanting to be at your best this year, won’t you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mark patiently.

  ‘Well, best of luck. And congratulations to you both.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘First baby?’ she said to me.

  I nodded, and her smile grew even wider.

  ‘Oh, now that’s exciting. And it looks as if Leanne’s ready for you. Go on down.’

  ‘Okay, guys, there’s a foot. Spine . . . ribs . . . arm coming across the screen now . . . there’s the head, see?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mark, almost under his breath.

  I reached out for his hand, and his fingers folded tightly around mine. Although of course you know that pregnancy results in a baby, and that a baby is a little person, actually seeing the little person is quite a revelation.

  ‘That’s a nice shot of the head,’ said Leanne, pressing a button so that the picture on the screen froze. ‘I’ll just take a few measurements.’

  ‘It’s not that nice,’ I murmured. The baby’s face didn’t show up very well, being soft tissue over bone, so that we saw a skull rather than tiny cute features.

  ‘I think it takes after you,’ said Mark. I stuck out my tongue at him, and he grinned.

  ‘Are you hoping to find out the baby’s sex?’ Leanne asked, busily drawing lines across the head on the screen with her mouse.

  I said ‘Yes,’ as Mark said ‘No,’ and we looked at each other in dismay.

  Proper couples probably manage to discuss stuff like this beforehand, I thought wearily. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just like the idea of waiting till it comes out,’ he said. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I – I just do.’

  ‘Fine. Whatever.’

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I said.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t really worry me.’

  ‘Sometimes we can’t tell anyway,’ said Leanne soothingly.

  Having measured the baby’s arms and legs, the blood flow through the heart and the size of the internal organs, Leanne printed off a CD of ultrasound pictures for us to take away. While we were waiting for it, Mark signed her coffee mug, the calendar on the reception desk and a diary belonging to one of the sports physicians next door. It was all terribly social, but eventually we made it back out to the car park.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, kissing the top of my head. ‘I’m late.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Dinner with World Cup sponsors.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. The World Cup had added another great heap of meetings and ad campaigns to the existing load, and even now, seven months out, the national sporting media seemed incapable of covering any story without slipping in a reference to the likelihood of the world’s best rugby team failing once more to win it. The World Cup was starting to feel like a great brooding presence on the horizon, blocking all view of life afterwards.

  ‘You’re still coming up on Friday?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cool. Love you.’ And pulling his keys from his pocket he sped across the car park.

  A cranky ginger cat and half of last night’s lemon spaghetti awaited me at home, but postponing our reunion, I stopped at Dad and Em
’s.

  ‘Daddy’s at a meeting,’ Bel told me, coming down the hall. ‘Lachlan Johnson was very naughty at school today.’

  ‘What did he do?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but it was very naughty. His mum came and got him after play time.’

  ‘How exciting,’ I said as we went into the living room together. The TV was on, Caitlin was writing carefully in a notebook and Em lay on the couch with a book.

  ‘Hi, sweetie,’ said Em, looking up. ‘What’s exciting?’

  ‘Lachlan Johnson. What did he do?’

  ‘I have no idea, but they’re holding an emergency Board of Trustees meeting as we speak. I can hardly wait to find out.’ She sat up, letting her book slide to the floor. ‘How was your scan?’

  ‘It seems to have the right number of fingers and toes, so that’s nice,’ I said, sitting down in Dad’s big armchair. Bel climbed onto my lap and snuggled her face into the side of my neck. I stroked her hair absently, and then stiffened. ‘Annabel McNeil, did you just lick me?’

  She giggled.

  ‘Yuck!’ I said.

  ‘I’m a baby kitten,’ she explained. ‘I’m washing you.’

  ‘Well, how about you stop?’

  ‘Annabel, don’t lick your sister,’ said Em. ‘Boy or girl?’

  ‘We didn’t find out. Mark didn’t want to know.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘It was the first thing he’d had any say in, so it seemed fair enough.’

  ‘What hasn’t he had a say in?’ asked Em.

  ‘Having the thing in the first place, for a start!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Helen, it’s not a thing, it’s a baby.’

  ‘I know,’ I muttered.

  ‘Sweetie, it’s time you started to think about what you’re going to do. Are you going to stay here or move in with Mark?’

  I rested my cheek on the top of Bel’s curly head. ‘I don’t know, I . . . Stay here, I think.’

  She frowned. ‘Haven’t you talked about it?’

  ‘He just wanted to see how things went for a while,’ I said very quietly.