Heartstream

by Tom Pollock

  “Come away from there.”

  I obey on instinct rather than will. I stagger back into Evie’s arms and she gives a little grunt of effort as she lowers me gently to the floor, but she’s stronger than she looks. In front of us, the attic window creaks as it flaps open in the wind, the rooftops of south London spread out before us like little insect carapaces, gleaming under the moon.

  “What were you doing?” Evie breathes in my ear.

  “I was just… I was just…” But with a little lurch I realize I don’t know. I haven’t slept more than a few minutes at a time since the fire, and my eyes throb and everything is skewed and nauseous with it. Evie’s house has four storeys, and the attic looks south-west; if you get your bearings by the clock tower of the old church on Mitcham corner you can … could … see the little three-stack chimney of my house from there.

  I couldn’t sleep, so I crept past her room and up the last set of stairs, sagging winded on the banister at the top. Some tiny, mad part of my brain I couldn’t silence kept needling me, asking What if, through that window, things are different? What if you can still see it from there?

  But I looked and, of course, I saw nothing, not even the blackened slag. The ruin of the chimney had collapsed below the roofline of the other houses.

  Panic and despair welled up in me. I suddenly remembered being tiny, maybe four or five, and losing Mum in the bustle of a supermarket, and running up and down the aisles of cereal and vegetables and frozen meat frantically searching for her and not finding her and battling against the growing conviction she was gone, gone, and I was never getting her back, and tears springing up hot in my throat because it was my fault, because she told me to keep hold of her hand.

  This felt exactly like that, only edged in a leaden despair, because I knew it would never end, because there was no bored girl with a supermarket PA system who could call her to the customer information desk from where she’d gone now. And then I was back watching the burning house, and then…

  And then I sort of lost touch with myself.

  “I was … I was just,” I say again. I’m trying to say I was just trying to see where the house was, but then I remember my foot hanging out over nowhere, like I was testing the water in a swimming pool. And just like that I burst into tears.

  “Hey, hey.” Gentle fingers take my chin and turn me. A blurry cloud of dark and pale becomes Evie as she takes my glasses, cleans them on the sleeve of her silk pyjama top and sets them back on my nose. She looks at me, anxious but resolved. “It’s OK,” she says. “I understand. “We’ll get help.”

  It’s not how I imagined it. There’s no ambulance, just a quiet cab ride through night-time streets, with Evie gripping my hand. I don’t have the strength to pull away, so I just stare angrily at the rain-streaked windowpane. Random bursts of tears keep overwhelming me, to the point where I have to ditch my glasses and put contacts in, because otherwise I can’t see. When we get there, there are no sterile fluorescent bulbs and hospital lino, just smooth light wood floors for the wheelchairs to rumble softly over, and gentle recessed lighting, like a Nordic show kitchen. No figures in white coats, just a man in a diamond-patterned V-neck jumper with a name tag who greets Evie with a hug, like she’s an old friend. I try to listen to their conversation but my head’s swimming and I only catch fragments.

  “Delicate situation, as you can see …”

  “That’s the problem. We’re not quite sure who the legal guardian is at the moment …”

  “… make an exception, for now, for you…”

  “Thank you, Ben.”

  There are forms, lots and lots of forms. I try to read them, but I can’t make myself. I can’t face the words on them. They’re too frightening. But the thought of my foot hanging out of that window’s even worse, so in the end I just sign them anyway. To the right of my scrawl is an empty white box marked Parent or guardian’s signature (if patient under 18) and I have to bite my cheek until I taste blood to keep from crying again.

  The room they lead me to doesn’t have padded walls. There’s a single bed with a taupe duvet cover and an armchair in the same colour, a TV mounted on a wall bracket, a vase of yellow flowers and a window with what the businesslike, meaty-palmed nurse tells me is a “lovely view of the garden in daytime”. The vase for the flowers is plastic, though, not glass; the window is cross-hatched with anti-shatter wire, and I can’t see any way to open it. Looking around, I note with a queasy gratitude that there are no sharp corners or edges in the whole place. Everything is subtly rounded and cushioned, like it’s been baby-proofed.

  “Well, if you need anything, you’ve only to push that button,” the nurse is saying. I give a dazed nod and sit on the edge of the bed. She smiles, and exits, closing the door behind her. I hear two clicks: one from the latch as it catches, a second that must be a lock.

  I stare up into the TV and my reflection stares back. I don’t know how long I sit like that – it could be minutes; it could be hours – but I’m still there when the contractions start.

  “Holy JESUS!”

  Turns out the malign goddess who created period pain has kept her masterwork back to spring on me in this moment. When the spasm finally subsides, I sag, gasping, and then yelp, because I’ve accidentally compressed my abdomen. I lurch for the little white button.

  “Yes, love?” What feels like an eternity later, the nurse pokes her head around the door.

  “I think” – the words ride a tidal surge of panic up my throat – “I think I’m going into labour.”

  “OK.” She doesn’t seem even slightly concerned. “Would you like me to run you a bath?”

  “A bath? Shouldn’t I go to a hospital?”

  “This is a hospital, love.”

  “I mean a proper hospital, mouthwash-coloured gowns, beeping machines and obste… Obste— Aaaah!” The last word is cut off in a strangled yelp because another spasm is mangling my womb.

  “There’s no rush for that, love. How often are you having contractions?”

  “I… I don’t know. Too often?”

  She perches on the end of my bed, looks at her fob watch and waits, patient and silent as a garden gnome, until another wave of pain blitzes through me.

  “Not nearly often enough; that was at least twelve minutes after the last one. You’ll need to be having three every ten minutes, consistently, before they’ll have you upstairs. Now, let’s see to that bath; it’ll help. I promise.”

  She vanishes into the tiny bathroom and I hear the gurgle of taps over my onrushing thoughts. Three every ten minutes? It’s unimaginable.

  “I’m Joy,” she says cheerily when she emerges. She extends a hand, I think initially for me to shake, but then I see the two white pills nestled there.

  “Morphine?” I ask hopefully.

  Her brow wrinkles. “Paracetamol. Jesus, honey, what are you trying to do to that little kid in there?”

  Taking paracetamol for these contractions feels a little like trying to take on the concentrated might of the US Navy with strong language and a water pistol but I neck them anyway; and it might be a placebo effect, but the next time the agony carousel swings my way it does feel slightly milder.

  “Bath’s ready,” Joy announces cheerily after the spasm dies away. She ambles over, takes hold of the hem of my sweater and starts to pull it up over my head.

  “I can … I can undress myself,” I protest, self-consciously yanking the top back down.

  Joy makes a tch sound in the back of her throat. “You can if you want, love, but shy’s not really going to be an option in a few hours, so if I were you I’d get some practice in accepting help.”

  So I let her undress me, and guide me naked and Zeppelin-like to the bath. The warm water is blissful. I never knew it was possible to crave a bath the way you can crave toast when you’re really starving, but turns out it is.

  But the spasms come and go and come again, faster and harder and more often. All the muscles in my back start to lock up in
sympathy with the ones in my womb and Joy kneads and pummels them with an expertise that says those axe-head palms of hers weren’t acquired by accident.

  Soon, though, all the warm water and massive hands and mild analgesic drugs in the world aren’t enough to stem the pain. It’s long since ceased to feel localized to my womb. Now when a contraction comes the pain spreads to every corner of me. It fills me up, taking the shape of me like water. I’m adrift on it, groaning and sweating and leaking spit from between my teeth. And all the while, Joy watches on, dispassionately, now and then checking her watch like she’s waiting for a cake to bake and it would ruin it to open the oven door too early. Eventually she pulls a phone from her pocket and makes a call.

  “Ted? Yeah, I think she’s getting close. Shall I put her on?”

  She hands me the phone, and it takes all of my concentration to make my fingers work enough to clutch it.

  “’Lo,” I manage to say.

  “Hello, is that Catherine?” a jolly voice answers. “My name’s Theodore, Theodore Olofade, call me Ted. I’ll be your obstetric surgeon this evening. Joy tells me your contractions are coming along nicely, so it’ll be time for us to see you soon. If you could rank the pain for me on a scale from one to ten, that would be very helpful.”

  “Gnngh,” I grunt.

  “Very good, thanks, Catherine. If you could pass me back to Joy, that would be wonderful.”

  Apparently Gnngh was the magic word, because as soon as Joy puts the phone down she’s easing me to my feet, towelling me off, tying a massively oversized dressing gown around me, and holding my elbow as I limp slowly towards the lift.

  “The … lift?” I mumble. “Not … hospital?”

  “I told you, this is a hospital.”

  “Proper – oh Christ – hospital.”

  She sighs. “You’re not the first of our patients to go through this while you’re with us. It’s much easier for us to have it happen on site where we can manage things properly, so we had a little ward installed upstairs. Just the one bed, but all the gizmos, and of course we’ve got Ted on call. We put him on notice as soon as you arrived.”

  Where we can manage things. I remember the click as they locked me in and it flits through my mind that maybe they had some brand-new mother run out on them once, but then another star of agony goes nova in my uterus and that thought goes away. There’s a liquid splatter sound and my legs suddenly feel wet and warm. I look down.

  “I, uh,” I mumble.

  “I know, honey. Don’t worry; just keep moving. You’re doing brilliantly. We’ll get that cleaned up.”

  Ted’s wearing the first white coat I’ve seen in this place and it’s kind of pathetic how reassuring I find that. He’s a middle-aged man with a welcoming smile and grey eyebrows so bushy and mobile I’m fairly sure they’re sentient. The big mechanical bed has an ominous pair of stirrups hanging over it.

  “Should I get into bed?”

  “Why, are you sleepy?”

  “I mean, to have the baby.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think we’re there yet. I’ll need to check your dilation now, but other than that, the bed’s mostly for sleeping in.”

  “I. Cannot. Possibly. Sleep,” I hiss at him, completely incensed that this man would even suggest that was a possibility.

  He shrugs. “You say that now, but after twenty-four hours of pushing, you’d be surprised how tired you can get. Sleep’s very important; you need to preserve your strength.” He says it like he’s urging me to take my vitamins, or floss. “But if it’s a problem we can give you an epidural. No father, I take it?”

  “He’s…” A wave of helpless fury chokes me. “No.”

  “Never mind, they’re really only good for back rubs at this point, and we can put Joy here on massage duty. Can you hop up onto the bed, and put your feet into the stirrups for me?”

  Do I look like I can hop anywhere in my present condition, Dr Mammothbrows? I can, however, thanks mostly to Joy’s superhuman strength, be nudged and gentled and manoeuvred and—

  “OWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!”

  “Yes, bending your legs into the stirrups will put some pressure on your abdomen; it might cause some discomfort, but we’ll get you out of them as soon as we can. I just need to … ah. OK, seven point three centimetres, coming along nicely but a way to go yet.”

  “Oh … joy.”

  “Yes, love?”

  “Not you. Help me up, please.”

  “Yes, love.”

  The pain comes in waves, cresting and ebbing and cresting again. I’m being turned inside out, and am gripped with sudden awful panics and sweats. I scream and groan and scream and vomit and scream again, and Joy’s there, she’s always there, cleaning up my spit, rubbing my back and telling me I’m doing well, so, so well.

  Time becomes greasy and slow. My contacts burn my eyes and I have to take them out and the world becomes a cloud of coloured smudges. Somehow, I find myself back in the stirrups screaming my head off and Dr Ted’s saying, “OK, it’s time to push now. Let’s get you to your feet; let gravity lend a hand.”

  I crouch beside the bed and claw at the sheets and strain and groan and growl and mangle myself. I have never been this … animal. Some deeply buried instinct takes over and I push with muscles I’ve never felt like I had any control over before. I bear down and out. At some point I feel a lightness behind my spine and there’s a familiar smell that it takes me long seconds to identify as my own shit, and I am vaguely aware that I ought to be embarrassed but I am so far past embarrassment right now and no one comments and Joy clears up and I. Don’t. Stop. Pushing.

  My breath comes in high, frantic gasps. I will never have enough air. Push.

  “We’re crowning,” Dr Ted says from somewhere by my knees and a million miles away. “OK, Catherine, one final push.”

  I scream, long and high and loud. I feel like I’m being torn open.

  And just like that, the pain’s gone.

  “Got her,” Dr Ted says, behind me.

  There’s a coughing gurgle, and then the electrifying sound of a baby crying.

  No, not a baby. My baby.

  I try to stand, to turn, but a wave of dizziness knocks my feet from under me and it takes Joy, brick-like dependable Joy, to catch me and guide me back to bed.

  “Her?” I breathe. A warm, crying, squirming bundle is placed on my stomach, and my heart catches and I look down, but everything’s still blurry.

  “I can’t…”

  But just as I’m saying see, I feel hands over my temples and the world slides into focus. “Evie went and got your glasses for us,” Joy’s saying.

  And there you are.

  You’re so tiny. So small and warm and human and alive and you were a part of me and now you’re not any more except you still are and you always will be and my head can’t manage to get itself around you, but my heart can. It latches on to you and it will never let you go.

  Dr Ted’s fussing around you, clearing out your nose and your ears, checking your pulse. He makes a little noise in the back of his throat, and immediately I’m at DEFCON 1.

  “What? What? Is she OK?”

  “What? Oh, nothing. She’s perfect.”

  Too right she is, doc.

  You squirm and scrabble and make little mewling noises. Your tiny hands grasp and clutch. Joy wraps you in a towel, puts a little cap on your head and helps you into my arms and I cradle you next to my breast and you lick and nuzzle and latch on.

  “We’ll leave you two to it for a bit.”

  Perfect. There is no other word for the next few hours. You doze and snuffle and feed and cry and doze again, and Joy and Dr Ted bustle in and out and take your temperature and reassure me that you’re fine and pull in a little plastic bassinet for you to sleep in so I can sleep too, but I don’t want to, because I love you – oh God, I love you so much. There’s an invisible cord binding your heart to my heart, and it will never, ever be cut.

  But then he comes.

  I
hear a little cough, oh so diffident, and reluctantly I look up from you. It’s the doctor who first brought me in here, the one with the diamond-patterned V-neck. He has a binder and a solemn expression. Evie’s just behind him, smiling sadly at me.

  “Catherine, I’m Ben. I don’t know if you remember me. It’s good to see you so well. I’m afraid we need to talk.”

  “Afraid?”

  He pulls two pieces of paper from the binder and hands them to me. They’re the forms I signed when I came in. The parent signature box is still blank and I swallow against a sudden choking sensation. He’s marked two printed statements with little hand-drawn stars:

  * In the last twenty-four hours I have attempted to take my own life.

  * I believe I am a danger to myself and/or others and voluntarily commit myself…

  “Under the circumstances” – he speaks woodenly, like he’s reading from a script – “we have to look to the safety and welfare of the child before anything else.”

  A claw clutches at my guts. “No.”

  “It’s just for the immediate—”

  “NO!” I scream it at him and you wake up and start crying. Evie sweeps you up and rocks you gently until you quiet. Ben “looking to your safety and welfare before anything else” Smith doesn’t bat an eye.

  “Catherine, I understand this is difficult to hear, but you have, by your own admission and with at least one witness, sought to end your own life in the past twenty-four hours. Caring for a newborn is exceptionally demanding. We have to ask if you are capable of it in your current state. And if you won’t recognize that, then that only makes us ask the question even more urgently, so…”

  Evie mutters under her breath, “Cretin.” She pushes him aside. “Listen, Cat, how long have I known you?”

  “Three years? Since the Knockout tour; feels like for ever.”

  “Right, and do you trust me?”

  I don’t answer; my eyes flash from you to her and back again. I don’t think I can trust anyone that far.

  “Cat,” she says gently. “Look at where you are; this is a psychiatric hospital. And that is, by your own brave recognition” – she squeezes my arm – “exactly where you need to be right now, so you can get well and be the best mum you can. But I can’t tell you how long you’ll need to be here, nor can Ben, nor – with the best will in the world – can you. And this is no place for a baby, for your baby. You understand that, right?”