by Andrews, Amy
They seemed tense, troubled.
Megan skittered past, adding to the surrealism. Harriet watched her go about her work in a disjointed, puzzled kind of way. Where was she? Was she dreaming? What had happened? There was a dull ache in her stomach and she shut her eyes, sighing blissfully that the pain had gone at last.
And then it all came back to her in horrible Technicolor detail and her eyes flew open. She tried to sit up, displacing Gill.
‘Harriet?’ he said, waking instantly.
Megan saw Harriet’s attempt to sit up and rushed to help. Harriet desperately wanted to tell her to stop fussing, but she felt as weak as a kitten and knew she was flailing hopelessly about like a drunken octopus. Gill joined in, stuffing pillows behind her back.
‘What happened?’ she asked. She’d wanted her voice to sound stronger but her throat was sore and her voice sounded hoarse and it hurt to talk. ‘The baby...’
Megan’s eyes met Gill’s and she melted discreetly away. ‘Harriet...’
She braced herself. From the time they’d first met he had shortened her name to Harry. He’d only ever called her by her proper name during their wedding vows or when things were serious.
‘It was an ectopic. The tube had ruptured. There was
nothing I could do.’
Harriet heard the words as if they were coming from far away, but they hit her with the speed and ferocity of a cobra strike. She couldn’t stop the gasp or the rush of tears. ‘So, I
was...pregnant?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly.
Tears streamed down her face and she clasped her hand protectively over her stomach. The unfairness of it all was
crippling. The one thing she’d wanted more than anything taken from her before she’d even had a chance to savour the knowledge. She took a few breaths to quell the escalating emotion before she asked the next question. ‘What about the tube?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘I had to remove it.’
Harriet stared at Gill with tear-filled eyes and he blurred out of focus. No. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. It just couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t fair.
What had she ever done to deserve this?
Despair took hold and she lashed out at him. ‘Did you even try?’ she demanded, not caring that her voice was loaded with bitterness.
He blew out an unsteady breath. ‘It was a mess, Harriet.’
‘So you didn’t even try?’ Her voice shook and wobbled as the enormity of what he had done hit her hard. A tear ran down her cheek. ‘Even though you promised me you would?’
‘I’m sorry...there was no point. I —’
She sucked in a harsh breath cutting him off and wishing she had the energy to slap him across the face. ‘No point? No point?’ she said, her voice rising sharply.
Was it not bad enough that he had removed a vital part of
her reproduction capabilities? Did he really have to dismiss it like it meant nothing? Pass it off as some clinical surgical decision with no consequences? ‘Speak for yourself.’
He cursed in French. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Harry...I meant the tube was too damaged to even attempt it.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said, sniffling and flicking her hair off her face and wiping at the flow of tears with the back of her hand. ‘You can spend half an hour getting an amputation just right but you can’t give me equal consideration?’
‘That’s different, Harry...’
‘Is it? Is it?’ she demanded, not caring that her voice was
verging on hysterical or that the pitch hurt her vocal cords. ‘The difference is, Gill, that a stranger’s prosthetic future was more important than my future fertility. Because, let’s face it, that’s hardly on your list of priorities, right?’
He sat there silently letting her vent, his jaw clenched as she let loose. Harriet knew she was being unfair but she couldn’t seem to stop, either.
‘I mean, what do you care? Suck out a baby, rip out a tube. What’s it’s to you? Just one less complication in your perfect, child-free existence.’ Harriet broke off on a sob, her belly hurting as she laid back against her pillows.
‘It was my baby, too,’ he said quietly.
Harriet raised her head up and fixed him with an angry stare as a harsh, incredulous laugh curled her lips. ‘Your baby? Since
when have you cared?’ He reached for her hand but she snatched it away. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she snarled. ‘Don’t ever touch me again.’
Gill swallowed a lump in his throat as he pulled his hand
away. Her distress was painful to watch. She was like a wounded animal lashing out. He knew she wasn’t being rational and he refused to take what she said to heart, but he also knew that trying to reason with her at the moment was folly.
The news was too fresh, too raw. And anything he said now about his feelings would only be dismissed with a cutting cynicism. She needed some time to digest what had happened, grieve for her loss and this further blow to her fertility.
She was sobbing loudly now and he wished he could say or do
something to help. It seemed ludicrous to be sitting so near his distraught wife and not be able to comfort her.
‘Just go, Gill,’ she said between sobs, not even bothering to look at him. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘No, I want to stay.’
‘I don’t want you here.’
Her rejection was like an axe to his heart and he looked helplessly at Megan who was standing in the doorway. She shrugged and mouthed, ‘Give her some time.’
Reluctant, but following Megan’s advice, Gill rose to leave. ‘I’ll come back in a bit.’
She turned on her side, away from him. ‘Don’t bother.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - 0500 HOURS
Harriet lay awake, crying silently into her pillow as a desert dawn broke gently over the harsh landscape outside. Megan came by every now and then to check on her and ask if she needed any pain relief. She refused. The pain was hardly anything compared to what it had been before she’d collapsed.
And nothing compared to the pain in her heart.
In fact, she welcomed the vague incisional discomfort. At least it was a reminder that, ever so briefly, she had actually been pregnant because there was nothing else to show for it. No trace that a baby – Gill’s baby - had been growing inside her.
Just the pain and eventually, she supposed, a scar.
Trying to get her fuzzy head around the fact that she’d actually conceived was almost too much in her weakened state. How could she not have known? She knew enough as a nurse to know that the contraceptive pill wasn’t infallible, that there was a small failure rate.
But how could she not have known?
She’d always thought she would just...know. The minute – no, the second - it happened. That her desire for a baby was so strong, so visceral that she’d be totally in tune with her body’s signals. That something inside her would know the exact moment egg and sperm joined and started to multiply.
Apparently not.
She thought back to her cycle, trying to work out when she had conceived. The two-day lurgy she had caught initially had probably been the culprit. She’d been about mid-cycle when she’d arrived two months ago so she had obviously ovulated when the Pill’s influence had been interrupted because of her illness.
Which meant she must have fallen almost immediately
afterwards. She thought back to the time when Gill had knocked on her door the night after her symptoms had abated. She had felt wrung out and had spent most of the day in bed, sleeping. He had spent fifteen hours operating and had looked as done in as her.
But he had made her get up and have a shower and brush her teeth and put on clean pyjamas. You’ll feel better. That’s what he’d said, and he’d been right. He had changed the sheets for her and brought a tray of tea and a mountain of hot buttered toast and ordered her to eat it.
Which she had. Most of it anyway and he’d finished the rest.
And they had slept. For about five hours. But then she had woken to his hand on her hip and his stubble on her shoulder and she had wanted him. And it had been as if he had known, too, because he’d stirred, kissed her shoulder and she had turned in his arms and they had made love.
And had been doing it ever since, despite their supposed irreconcilable differences!
Harriet forced her mind away from replaying images of their two months together. It hadn’t resolved anything and she’d probably been exceedingly foolish to have ever thought it would. She did a quick calculation to banish the self-recriminations. She must have been about seven to eight weeks along, which fitted the time frame for a ruptured ectopic perfectly.
She gingerly felt her abdomen. It was still so hard to
believe. She had been pregnant for almost the entire time she
had been here, and hadn’t known. There had been none of the
usual symptoms of which newly pregnant women complained.
No nausea, no breast tenderness, no debilitating tiredness, no funny cravings.
If only she had known! But how could she have? She’d had two periods while she’d been here. Looking back, they hadn’t been typical — a little lighter and shorter than normal but not
noticeably so. She hadn’t really thought about it, had put it
down to a different time zone screwing with her cycle which was quite common in her line of work.
Being pregnant had never occurred to her. Never!
She knew that you could still have a cyclic bleed if you were pregnant and taking the Pill and could only assume that this was what had happened to her. Why hadn’t she questioned a scant period instead of just being relieved and grateful?
Harriet felt the hot sting of tears in her eyes again. It just wasn’t fair to learn of her baby and lose it all in the space of two hours. Why couldn’t she have had some time to savour the new life growing inside her? To be happy and joyous as all mothers-to-be were? To walk around with the delicious secret like she was the only woman in the world who had ever managed the miracle of new life.
But, then, how would she have handled Gill? Would she have told him or kept it from him? Could she have borne it if he had stuck to his guns and rejected their baby?
But what right would she have had to withhold it from him?
Despite her anger at him, there was no other man’s baby she wanted. Despite her insistence that he sign the divorce papers and set her free to find someone else, deep down she doubted she’d ever find another Gill. Another man she could love enough to share the most intimate of human experiences. She had come here to leave her marriage behind, but maybe the invisible hand of fate had had other things in mind.
Maybe it had been her destiny to come back and fall pregnant with Gill. Maybe there was some vital life lesson they were both supposed to learn from these tragic circumstances. Was it supposed to make them see reason? Bring them closer? Because at the moment she had never felt further away.
They should be together as a couple mourning their loss.
She should want him to be by her side, comforting her. And she
should be letting him lean on her, giving him a shoulder to
cry on. But why would he waste his breath grieving for something he had made patently obvious he had never wanted in the first place?
What had he said? It was my baby, too? What the hell did
that mean? She daren’t let herself think it was an emotional plea and she was too physically wrung out to care. The only thing on her mind right now was that she’d been pregnant and now she wasn’t.
Her head hurt and her heart ached and all she wanted to do was cry herself to sleep.
‘Harry?’
Harriet shut her eyes hard and lay very still hoping Katya wouldn’t approach. Go away. Leave me be. You promised, too, damn
it. You’re as bad as him.
Katya came round and stood in front of her. ‘I know you’re awake, Harry, I could hear you crying.’
Harriet reluctantly opened her eyes. ‘I’m tired,’ she said, fixing her gaze on the neckline of Katya’s scrubs.
‘You’re angry,’ said Katya, coming straight to the point in her typically blunt fashion.
Tears welled in Harriet’s eyes again and she choked on a sob. Yes. She was. But she was hurting more than anything else.
‘Gill did an excellent job. He did everything he could.’
Harriet snorted, not ready to forgive Gill yet. Was he sending others to fight his battles now? ‘He didn’t even try to repair the tube, Katya. You were there, you know that.’
Katya stood staring down at her for a few moments before speaking again. ‘I have something for you.’
She thrust the medium-sized specimen jar at Harriet who could barely see it through her watery vision. ‘What is it?’ she asked, grabbing a tissue from the box Megan had left on her table.
‘It’s your tube.’
Harriet blinked. Slowly, she reached out and took it from
Katya as she gingerly tried to pull herself up into a more upright position. Katya eventually took pity on her and helped.
Harriet blew her nose and wiped her eyes then held the jar up to the light. Bloody hell. What a mess. There was a gaping hole in the middle of the specimen. The slenderest thread of
tissue held it precariously in one piece superiorly and there was obviously not enough tissue remaining to have made closing the shredded edges even a remote possibility.
Hot tears burned her eyes and the specimen blurred out of focus. Katya took the jar from her trembling fingers and placed it on the table.
‘There was nothing he could do, Harry.’
‘Oh, Katya,’ cried Harriet. ‘It’s not fair. Why me, why me?’ Her face crumpled and when Katya slipped an arms around her shoulder, she completely broke down.
After a while Harriet’s distress quieted and Katya handed her the box of tissues. ‘I must look an absolute mess,’ she said, drying her face again.
‘I have seen you look better,’ Katya admitted.
Harriet laughed at her friend’s candour, her vocal cords protesting the strain. It was impossible to have an ego around Katya.
‘Oh, God, Katya,’ she said, chewing her lip. ‘I was so horrible to Gill.’
‘Gill is a big boy. He understands,’ she dismissed.
Harriet laughed again and felt it in her stitches this time. They sat in companionable silence for a couple of minutes. Harriet picked up the jar again. ‘This is it. I don’t have another.’
Katya placed her hand over Harriet’s. ‘There are many ways
to have a baby,’ she said. ‘So... it’s not going to be as easy for you as a lot of women out there. So be it. IVF, adoption.’
She shrugged. ‘You will have a baby, Harry. I just know it.’
More tears threatened at Katya’s steadfast faith. Harriet only wished she could be so certain. ‘It’s not such a romantic
way to start a new life with someone, though, is it? Marry me
and have my babies and oh, you don’t mind providing a specimen in this jar do you?’
They both laughed, but it hurt Harriet’s stomach, and the
thought was so depressing that she quickly sobered. ‘What if no one wants me?’
‘Gill does.’
Harriet nodded slowly. ‘It’s not enough. I need more.’ She picked up the jar again, inspecting her lost tube. ‘This just makes me more determined. For a few weeks I was a mother. I want that again.’
‘And Gill was a father. A lot has happened tonight, my friend. You two need to talk. Why don’t I go and get him?’
She shook her head. ‘He said he’d be back.’ Well
...before she’d told him not to bother, anyway. Luckily, he didn’t scare away easily. ‘And I’m tired and I need some time to think for a while.’
They did need to talk — she definitely needed to apologise to him if nothing else. But the op and the bleeding and a thousand tears had left her drained and weary. She felt like
she could sleep for an eternity.
Gill could wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - 0600 HOURS
Gill sat on the edge of his bed beside his packed bag. He held his copy of the divorce papers in his hand. He was staring so hard that the words irreconcilable differences duplicated
themselves before his tired eyes. Harriet’s bitter don’t bother echoed through his head.
He’d had a good hard think about his life since Harriet had
asked him to go. He didn’t want this. He’d never wanted it, had only signed the damn papers because she’d wanted it. But the events of the last twenty-four hours had made him reassess
their supposed differences.
So much had happened in such a short space of time. It was like each thing that had happened had been part of some grand plan, bigger than him, to make him see the error of his ways. Unbeknownst to him, each wake-up call had given him a piece of a
puzzle. A puzzle that he hadn’t been able to figure out until all the pieces were in place.
His first wake-up call had been the divorce papers. After two months when he had thought they’d been reconciling, the paper had come as a surprise. They’d made him really look hard at the things Harriet had been asking of him over the last two years. And had made him question the strength of his beliefs.
Were they really worth losing Harry over?
Next had been his grandfather falling ill. The news that his fit and healthy grandfather had succumbed to a massive heart attack had been a shock. He’d always seemed larger than life, like he’d live for another eighty years. But...he was old and Gill realised that he’d neglected his family over the last decade.
Sure, his grandfather didn’t mind in the least, was proud
of his humanitarian-minded grandson and encouraged him to continue the aid work. But family was important, too, and it had taken this one last day to make him realise that.
