Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

by Danielle Hawkins

  It may have helped, I suppose, in the same way that paracetamol may help with third-degree burns. I held the mouthpiece in one hand and clutched poor Alison with the other, and sucked frantically as the contractions built and ebbed and built again.

  ‘Hurts.’

  ‘I know,’ said Alison, stroking the hair back off my forehead. ‘Mark will be here soon.’

  ‘What’s the time?’ I wheezed.

  ‘Ten to nine.’

  Ten more minutes of game time, and then he had to get here.

  ‘Helen,’ Suzie said, ‘I need you to stand up.’

  The woman must have been out of her tiny mind. I shook my head mutely.

  ‘Gravity will help baby to come down into the birth canal. Come on, sit up.’

  ‘Fuck off ,’ I said. I’d never sworn at a stranger before, but there’s a first time for everything.

  Unmoved, she unbuckled the foetal monitor and slipped an arm underneath my shoulders. ‘Pull her hands,’ she told Alison.

  They heaved me up to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘Wonderful,’ said Suzie.

  ‘Have you done this?’ I demanded.

  ‘Three times, dear.’

  ‘Have you forgotten, then?’ Another contraction started, and the pain of sitting drove me to my feet. ‘God!’ I lurched forward, half falling against Alison.

  The two of them grasped an arm each. ‘Stand up, Helen,’ Suzie said. ‘Come on, now, don’t be silly.’

  I wasn’t being silly; it’s unreasonable to expect anyone to stand up straight when they’re being ripped in half. I screamed.

  ‘Don’t push,’ Suzie ordered, dropping to her knees in front of me. ‘Don’t push; you’ll tear if you don’t give yourself time to stretch.’

  I didn’t push, but the baby was coming anyway. It hurt more than I had ever thought that anything could hurt – more than anyone could possibly bear – and then something slithered down between my thighs into the midwife’s waiting hands, and the pain went away.

  ‘Oh,’ said Suzie, lifting a slimy purple squirming thing. ‘Oh, you precious wee angel. You little darling.’

  The baby opened its mouth and wailed.

  40

  IT WAS A LITTLE GIRL. SUCH A TINY LITTLE GIRL, WITH damp whorls of fine dark hair and a thick rope of umbilical cord still connecting her to me. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth was wide open, and she flailed at the air with her small fists.

  I stood and looked at her, knees trembling and blood running down the insides of my legs, as Suzie got to her feet with the baby in her hands. ‘Sit down and I’ll give her to you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a lot of blood,’ said Alison hoarsely.

  ‘I know. Press the call button.’

  I sank onto the side of the bed and held my arms out.

  ‘Just lie back, dear, and I’ll put her on your chest. Pull up your top – skin to skin, that’s the way . . .’

  I tugged up Mark’s rugby shirt and Suzie laid the baby down on her stomach between my breasts. She stopped crying, and I covered her little body wonderingly with my hands. She was perfect, crumpled and purple and covered in white slimy stuff, but perfect nevertheless. Suzie pressed the call button again and held it, and then hastily put on a fresh pair of gloves to carry out some examination, but I wasn’t really paying attention.

  ‘Hello, little one,’ I said softly.

  Alison leant over me and pushed the call button again. ‘Why is no-one coming?’ she demanded. She ran to the door and shoved it open. ‘Someone get in here! She’s bleeding out!’

  ‘Am I?’ I asked, lifting my head.

  ‘There’s some bleeding, yes,’ Suzie said in that very calm, deadpan voice that is supposed to give the impression that everything is under complete control. It didn’t.

  I had, however, no time to dwell on my imminent death from haemorrhage because just then a whole army of medical professionals arrived at a gallop. The baby was whisked away, and within moments I had an IV line in my arm and a pulse oximeter on the end of my finger, my feet were up in stirrups and a senior-looking doctor wielding a large pair of forceps was poking around between my legs. It was all quite dramatic for a while, but very soon they decided that I wasn’t going to bleed to death after all and most of them went away. The young doctor who had approved of my nice painful contractions stayed, pulling up a stool between my legs and donning a pair of surgical gloves, and a nurse fiddled with the buttons on the drip machine.

  Alison, who had retired to a corner during the flurry of activity, returned to the side of the bed and took my hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ We smiled at one another.

  I looked over towards the baby. Across the room Suzie was examining her, moving her deftly from one hand to the other in much the same way as a chef shapes a pizza base, but with infinite tenderness and expertise. ‘Is she okay?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s perfect. I’m just going to prick her wee heel, and you can have her back. Look at those beautiful little ears.’

  ‘Suture, please,’ said the doctor briskly.

  ‘Did I tear very badly?’ I asked.

  ‘It could be worse,’ he said, not looking up. A nurse opened a pack of suture material onto the tray beside him.

  ‘Was the bleeding from the tear or from inside the uterus?’

  ‘From the tear,’ he said, grasping the needle at the end of the suture material in a pair of needle holders and taking a nice deep bite through my quivering flesh.

  ‘Ow!’ I cried. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  He lowered the needle holders and glared at me. ‘I don’t have to sew you up if you’d rather I didn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s your perineum, after all.’

  ‘Have you got something against local anaesthetic?’

  ‘It probably hurts more putting in the local than it does to stitch.’

  ‘How would you feel about having your bum stitched up without local?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, throwing down his needle holders. ‘Whatever you say.’

  Alison, that epitome of mild-mannered gentility, looked him up and down and said, ‘That’s a fabulous bedside manner you’ve got there.’

  ‘Local, then,’ he snapped at the nurse. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  There was a thin cry from across the room as Suzie jabbed the baby’s heel and pressed a card to the bead of blood. ‘There,’ she soothed. ‘There, precious, all done, and here’s Mummy.’ She wrapped the baby tenderly in a cotton blanket and put her into my arms.

  ‘She’s lovely,’ said Alison softly.

  She was. She was soft pink now instead of purple, and she opened one dark eye and squinted up at me as if she had wanted for a long time to put a face to the voice. I bent and kissed the top of her head. ‘I wish Mark was here.’

  And right on cue, the door flew open. Mark tumbled into the room still in uniform, sweating and streaked with paint and with his left eye swollen almost shut. I smiled at him in pure uncomplicated delight and lifted the baby to show him.

  ‘She’s a girl.’

  But he had stopped short and was staring appalled between my legs. ‘Jesus, McNeil,’ he said.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘It’s not.’ He looked like he was going to faint. Behind him I caught a glimpse of Sam’s shocked face as he recoiled and hastily left the room.

  I started to laugh helplessly. This was the moment when, as I lay propped against the pillows with my pale face suffused with joy, Mark should be taking his child in his arms and whispering something about us being a family now. For once, just for once, it would have been so nice to achieve the cheesy Kodak moment.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the doctor, his attitude taking an abrupt U-turn. ‘It looks much worse than it is. We’ll have her stitched up as good as new in no time.’

  ‘Come and look at the baby,’ I said.

  Mark came up and reached out very, very gently to stroke the little head. Then he took my face in h
is hands and kissed me, and the moment was perfect after all.

  Epilogue

  MEGAN ALISON TIPENE IS FOURTEEN MONTHS OLD NOW, with big brown eyes and fine, thick black hair that sticks straight up on end. Mark is her parent of choice. She follows him slavishly around the house and shouts, ‘Dad! I up!’ from her cot every morning at six fifteen, but she quite likes me when he’s not home.

  Murray appears resigned to the addition to his life of a small shrill person with a taste for cat biscuits. However, he remains steadfast in his dislike of my sisters, who stayed last week while Dad and Em went to Rarotonga for their wedding anniversary.

  It has since transpired that last June, Saskia quietly went out and bought herself a home pregnancy test. Then she rushed back to the chemist’s and bought another in case she’d done it wrong, found it was still positive and scared Alan nearly to death by casting herself sobbing on his chest during his Sunday afternoon post-game nap. Their little girl is seven months old. She is small and dainty and very cute, crawls as fast as most people can run and puts everything she comes across into her mouth. Her parents are very happy but somewhat exhausted.

  Sam and Alison are backpacking around South America, due home for Christmas. Aunty Deb is terrified they’ll elope while they’re over there and do her out of the chance to be mother of the groom, and to be honest I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they did.

  Lance is doing his Australian board exams in small-animal surgery and seeing an occupational therapist. I believe he is making good progress with both.

  Tamara Healy co-hosts a breakfast show on TV, and recently launched her own fashion label. (Tammi H – a little bit street, a little bit funky. Lots of very short shorts and backless silk blouses with big floppy bows at their necks.) She is engaged to a famous-ish children’s show presenter, and New Idea have bought the exclusive rights to cover the wedding.

  Mark’s mother came to visit last summer. She stayed for two nights, and apart from addressing Meg as ‘poor wee mite’, which I felt was unnecessary, she seemed pleasant enough. Mark’s father has yet to meet his grandchild, but we’re bearing up pretty well without his input.

  I work two days a week at a small-animal practice in Mount Wellington, dropping Meg at day care on the way. It’s a nice job, although short on cows, and it keeps my hand in. Nick rings me from time to time, usually when presented with a sick chicken, and assures me I can come back whenever I want to.

  After the World Cup we moved into a big, rambling, single-storey house in Grey Lynn. It’s a nice house, and it will look even nicer once the builder gets home from his Test match in Argentina and finishes the railing around the back deck. The hole is plugged in the meantime with a row of outdoor chairs and my cow-casting rope, which slightly lowers the tone of the place but does stop the baby from falling into the veggie garden.

  I am so happy it scares me a bit.

  Oh, and the All Blacks won the World Cup.

  Acknowledgements

  I’D LIKE TO THANK AUNTY AGGIE, WHO NOT ONLY LOOKED after my children while I finished the manuscript but baked and weeded my garden while she was at it.