The Baby Doctor

by Fiona McArthur

  For a second Maddy sagged. Thank goodness, she thought, this wasn’t about the pregnancy, and she tried not to show the relief that flooded her and instead converted it into the semblance of guilt for a different wrongdoing. ‘I’m . . .’ her voice stuck in her throat, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know where we would be working when I said I’d do the job.’

  He frowned at her. And she could tell he was sensing an undercurrent he didn’t understand. His temper flared and he squeezed her between the two crutches, catching the skin as she braced. She winced at the sting. ‘But you’ve worked there for days now, haven’t you, and you know I hate McCabe.’ He ground the name out like a dirty seed in his teeth. ‘You know I don’t like deception.’

  She put her hand gently on the metal and tried to push past the crutch in front of her. When he didn’t budge she looked at his face. Forced herself to smile up at him. ‘I was wrong. I’m sorry. Let me put my bag down and we can talk about it. I don’t want to upset you, Jacob.’ She hated the trace of fear she could hear in her voice. But he loved it.

  Jacob’s fingers slid off the crutch to pinch her arm, slid down and did the same at the soft part of her inner thigh, and hot tears pricked with the pain as she tried not to cry out. She’d realised the more she’d cried out the harder he pinched. Cruel, painful pinches that would turn into black bruises all over her white skin.

  He pushed her away. ‘Don’t lie to me again.’

  ‘No, Jacob,’ she lied.

  ‘But you have upset me, Madison,’ he said and let her go for the moment. ‘We’ll do more than talk about it when you come home tonight.’

  She tried hard to stay out of his reach for the next twenty minutes, but by the time she left her sobs were hard to contain. This time she needed to hide in the gap between the buildings for more than a few minutes before she showed her face at work. She pushed open the door to the old service station and closed it behind her. Hopefully nobody had seen her come in here, today or yesterday when she’d left more supplies.

  Maddy leaned panting against the wall and sniffed in the dim light. Then she stumbled further inside holding onto the grubby walls for support with one hand, the other over her mouth to quieten her sobs.

  Thank goodness she could get away to a place she could disappear into unnoticed. A place between Jacob’s house and the pub, a place nobody could hear her if she locked herself in the back room and closed the door. She hadn’t thought she’d need it before she went into labour. She closed her eyes and tried to stop the sobs that racked her body. Enough. This is the end. She just needed one more night to get her things, tonight when she came home – please God, let Jacob be asleep – and she’d be gone.

  Her hands found the nob and she pulled herself through the hallway arch and closed another door behind her with an echoey click. At the loudness of the noise she jumped and then scolded herself. This was a safe place. She had control. Not Jacob.

  Darkness shrouded the corner of the room and somehow that helped, but the light seeped across the backyard and in a slash across the middle of the room through the curtains hanging over the cracked window. More dust motes reflected and danced in the dull triangle of light and the place smelled musty and sickly sweet.

  She shuddered and hoped mice or rats hadn’t burrowed into her little hidey hole, but she couldn’t hear any scratches or see anything scuttle away. Hard to comprehend she’d considered having a baby in this deserted room. It would be good to be gone tomorrow. This was her emergency-only plan. Soon she wouldn’t need this place as a backup, but knowing it was here was a good idea. Especially after today.

  The birth itself had stayed nebulous. Of course she’d seen births on TV and they’d been pretty noisy, but she had a good tolerance for pain. She winced at the thought of what she’d put up with in the last few weeks. Her lip curled. Training for this. Lucky her.

  The best thing she’d seen had been a documentary on YouTube about women in the fields in Brazil and the way they simply stopped their work, squatted to give birth, and then picked up their babies and walked on. That had given her hope. She wasn’t stupid enough to think it would be that easy, but they’d been real women and real babies, so somewhere in between would do her fine. And there’d been that beautiful birth in Sweden.

  Adjusting to the light, her eyes could make out where she’d prepared a tidy corner on the floor with a clean old rug and the thick newspapers she’d been collecting. The cordial bottle filled with water sat there, as did the washed scraps of old towels from the pub, and some white string she’d found wrapped around a pile of magazines.

  Thanks to Dr Google she’d known to boil the string in the kettle with a pair of small scissors when she’d made Jacob’s coffee, and hung the string discreetly on the line. Then, she’d carefully wrapped up everything in a piece of aluminium foil and brought it here with a little bottle of hand sanitiser, some baby wipes and a box of tissues.

  ‘Just don’t get frightened. Everything will be okay if you don’t get scared.’ Her low-pitched words seemed to swirl around her with the dust motes. ‘Just like the animals on the farm when you were a kid. You can do this.’

  Maddy leaned down and scrubbed her face with the baby wipes. Washed her hands and drew in several long, calming breaths. She finally lifted her head. She knew that time was getting away and she needed to go.

  She glanced down one more time at the torch beside the papers – there so she had more light if she needed it. The nest was ready. Please God, she prayed she wouldn’t need it.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Sienna

  At five p.m., alone in her hotel room, Sienna picked up the ringing phone. Dr Regan Tindel was the Director of Nuclear Medicine and also acted as the lead on the NSW EDM Squad, Emergency Disaster Management. He had been flown to Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as a consultant on radiation poisoning. Just the sort of knowledge bank she needed.

  ‘Thank you for ringing me back, Dr Tindel.’

  ‘No problem. What have you got, Dr Wilson?’

  Straight to the point, then. ‘I’m looking for possibilities, but I don’t have much. A small cluster of microcephalic babies and no cause. I wanted to sound you out on how to exclude the possibility of a radioactive cause. A leak, an accident, a natural event. Maybe on how to arrange a measurement of the area perhaps? Is that possible?’

  After a small pause, Regan said carefully, ‘What makes you think your health problems could be from a radioactive source?’

  ‘No reason at all except radiation is listed as one of the causes of birth defects such as these. At present, we have three babies conceived around the same time with similar medical issues. It could be a disease process, a chemical spill or I’m asking you if it could possibly be a radiological incident that wasn’t notified.’

  Regan enunciated carefully as he said, ‘Nuclear incidents from lost or misplaced sources are rarely missed. You don’t just lose something that’s radioactive.’

  As she’d thought, but it had been worth a shot. ‘I imagine there’d be strong penalties for inadequate safeguards?’

  Dryly and succinctly Regan said, ‘Very.’

  Something niggled and Sienna wasn’t ready to give up. ‘So it’s not possible?’

  Regan huffed. ‘Anything is possible. Where exactly are you?’

  ‘Spinifex. Central West Queensland. Pretty close, on the map anyway, to the Northern Territory and South Australian borders.’

  There was a pause. ‘You’re a long way from home.’

  Sienna grimaced at the phone. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Just a moment, I’ll pull out my maps and see what we have near you.’

  Sienna sighed. She actually didn’t want to find out she was standing in a town with a radioactive source nearby. At least she wasn’t pregnant, but Eve was, and she glared at the mirror on the wall as she waited.

  ‘Nothing I can see.’ His voice held a hint of amusement directed at a lay person. ‘You’re a long way from Maralin
ga.’

  ‘Very funny.’ Nuclear physicists were so freakin’ amusing.

  ‘Okay. That went over like a lead balloon. Let’s see. There’s quite a few fracking expeditions. South Australia has a fracking group we’ve been told has lost an isotope down a sink hole, but that’s a long way from you. I’ll phone a friend to confirm they didn’t just drop it off the back of a truck like those guys in America who lost their radioactive isotope for a week.’

  Sienna’s antenna went haywire like she imagined a Geiger counter would rattle in the movies. ‘What? People actually dropped a radioactive source at the side of the road off the back of a truck?’

  ‘Yep. These things can end up in scrap metal and cause quiet havoc.’

  She did not want to hear this. Or maybe she did. ‘How does a fracking group use the radioactive rod?’

  ‘Well,’ he paused and she hoped he was dumbing it down for her. ‘The radioactive part of the rod is cased in a metal tube and they lower it into a bored hole and use it to find optimum areas for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”. Or they lower the rods down into wells to find the best places to break up shale to release deep oil and gas deposits. The rods are small, about fifteen centimetres long, not much bigger than the new iPhone.’ His voice became even drier. ‘There are all sorts of safeguards so that they don’t lose them.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ Sienna knew there were different types of radiation but hadn’t researched it. ‘What sort of radiation would this be? Could it be harmful?’

  ‘Most rods are americium-241/beryllium, or Am-241. It’s classified as a “Category 3” source of radiation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That means, if it’s “not safely managed or securely protected, it could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them, or was otherwise in contact with them, for some hours.” I’ve got what the American NRC said on that particular incident report in the US in front of me.’

  ‘So it’s not fatal.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘But capable of causing genetic changes?’

  There was another long pause. This guy did careful wordage to an art form. ‘Let me quote them,’ he said. ‘Though Queensland would use the Rad Safety Regs. The Americans said, “It could possibly – although it is unlikely – be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of days to weeks.” So it’s unlikely to be fatal. The source itself is encased in that steel container, but it does pack something of a punch. The rod is “not something that produces radiation in an extremely dangerous form. But it’s best for people to stay back, twenty or twenty-five feet.”’

  ‘Is it possible something like that could be lying around Spinifex unnoticed?’

  ‘Highly unlikely. Corporations should not lose their radioactive material, but unfortunately it is remotely possible. I’ll talk to a colleague closer to you and sound him out about a surveillance trip for a neutron source. Get out his BF3 detector.’

  Well, at least she had his attention. Although now she wasn’t so sure she wanted it. Then she thought of Eugenie. Yes, she did.

  ‘Thank you. What about if it was say, parked here in a truck for a day. Are there any tests we can run that can confirm exposure to patients or the area?’

  More enthusiasm leached into his voice. ‘There’s some great work being done by molecular geneticists looking at identifying genes that respond to radiation. They’re examining effects of time from exposure, gender, age and additional genetic factors to predict the radiation dose.’

  Sienna felt her heart leap. ‘That would help.’

  His voice became less enthusiastic. ‘It’s not available in Australia at present, I’m afraid.’

  Sienna looked at her phone incredulously and tightened her grip. He did not just dangle a carrot and snatch it away! ‘Well, why mention it?’ Sienna wondered if he could hear the grinding of her teeth. She forced her hands to unclench on the phone.

  His reply showed him oblivious to her ire. She could imagine his shrug. ‘I find it fascinating.’

  Instead of labouring that annoyance she said, ‘So you’ll set wheels in motion to send someone to rule out this cause for Spinifex?’

  ‘I’ll ask if the HSQ Radiation and Nuclear Sciences team can send someone out to do a radiation sweep. If they can’t find it,’ he paused, ‘well, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. But I’ll start with some questions of accountability and make sure everyone has all their equipment.’

  He was useful after all. And she guessed it had been a pretty big ask to send someone when it had taken her so long to get here herself. She upped her appreciation. ‘Thank you for responding with that. And for listening.’

  His voice came down the line and this time she could hear the extreme interest and she knew he would take this seriously and see it through. ‘I live for this stuff.’

  ‘Lucky someone does.’

  She just hoped they didn’t find anything.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Maddy

  That night, as she was walking home at five minutes past ten, Madison’s waters broke. The sudden unexpected pop between her legs, and the sensation that someone had poured a cup of warm tea down her inside thigh, tricked her at first. Her nose crinkled as she looked down in disbelief, disgusted she’d wet herself, and then realisation sank in. The puddle widened on the path below her legs and she remembered reading that the bag of waters around the baby would pop and it could be a little or a lot. Felt like a lot.

  The sudden spike of fear ran in tentacles around her body until she reeled it in shakily like a first-time angler. Stop it. This was okay. It could have happened two minutes ago at work, or ten minutes ahead, when she got home to Jacob, who she feared had uncomfortable plans for tonight.

  This could be the best place for it to happen, the best time, here in the dark, alone. Not that she could change it now anyway. So she must be lucky. Her heart pounded, and she glanced up at the sky overhead and drew in a long, quiet, shaky breath. Give me strength. Why couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?

  It had been a relatively slow night behind the bar, and she’d had far too much time to imagine the punishment Jacob would have been cooking up all evening, so she’d tried to stay busy. The clean-up had been completed in record time, which was lucky because the gripey pains had been coming at least every fifteen minutes or so for a couple of hours now, and towards the end she’d had a hard time hiding them from Alma.

  So stupid, of course. These pains had been warning her that things might happen, and now she needed to be out of sight.

  She eyed the door of the old service station she’d passed several paces away. Paces she couldn’t do right at this minute. Now, in the relative cool of the late evening, the whole idea of being in labour, all alone, made her falter. Suddenly, a vice-like grip squeezed stronger across her belly and back, lasting longer than any of the cramps had before. A tiny fear-filled voice whispered in the back of her head: Just how strong did these contractions get?

  In the dark, she leaned on the telegraph pole, feeling the dry splintery wood beneath her fingers as she dug her nails in and kept breathing – when all she wanted to do was hold her breath and moan.

  The cramp continued, like Jacob’s fingers had before work this afternoon.

  Well, she guessed she’d got used to not crying out, because here and now, instead of making any noise she sucked in a breath while the fluid trickled messily down her legs and pooled on the concrete.

  She should go back to the hotel and wake Alma – or the doctor. For a moment she let that enticing thought – the idea of handing over control to others and being looked after – ease the tension in her shoulders, but she just couldn’t. Tears stung. She didn’t want to see the disappointment in their eyes. They both seemed to think she was something special, and look at her now.

  She sniffed and lifted her head. Her mother’s words came back to her. You’re a strong girl, Madison.

  When that first heavy-duty cramp eased, she dr
agged herself along the footpath to the dusty door of the deserted garage. ‘Don’t get frightened,’ she ground out through gritted teeth.

  Then the next pain came and the vice in her back and her lower belly hurt more than anything Jacob had done to her, and she grunted to stop calling out.

  Finally, gradually, that cramp eased and she puffed short breaths through clamped teeth, the discomfort reduced enough to allowed her to creak open the door, edge through, and close it behind her. She crab-walked her way towards the inside room and the outside world receded. Now she stood truly alone.

  The pain came again and she leaned against the wall and breathed in shallow gasps as she waited for it to pass. A minute later she was through the next doorway seeking out the darkest spot, where she eased herself down to rest on the small milking stool she’d found in the back shed when she’d been exploring. The pain came back and she moaned her way to kneeling, dragging the stool in front of her so her forearms could rest on it.

  She sighed as the backache eased with her belly hanging forward, but then the pain in her belly began to escalate again. She gasped and unconsciously swung her pelvis left to right, right to left, in a slow beat in time to her breaths as she concentrated on the picture in her mind of a beautiful baby that stared at her.

  Her beautiful baby, the baby she couldn’t take home to Jacob. She hadn’t thought of that. Of afterwards. She would have to leave her baby for others to keep safe because she couldn’t even keep herself safe. The tears rolled down her cheeks and for the first time she wondered if she would die in here and nobody would find her.

  An hour later the idea of death occurred to her again and she stamped it down. She’d live and no way was she ever doing this again. No fear!

  She pushed herself off the wall she’d been stumbling along, around and around, circumnavigating the room like one of the videos had said, and put her hands low on the back of her hips and rocked her way around the room again. Telling herself each time as she moved to the next place on the wall to lean, that that was one less contraction. One closer to the end.