Chapter 52
It happened in the middle of the night.
I don’t know for sure what I was dreaming, only that it was something about James Miller.
In part of it, he was coming slowly and steadily towards me at the side of the Hawthorne Road.
Holding that hammer, with that look on his face.
There was nobody else around and this time, I couldn’t find my gun.
‘Andy, Andy, Andy.’
I woke up suddenly in the dark bedroom, struggling to make sense of what was happening. It was Rachel tapping me on the shoulder, frantically.
‘What?’
‘It’s happening. Oh God.’
‘I’m awake.’
I was – instantly. I sat bolt upright in bed. Rachel was sitting on the edge, her eyes wide and bright even in the darkness.
‘How far apart?’ I said.
‘I don’t know. I’ve been awake for a while. Four or five minutes?’
‘Okay.’ I reached out and touched her face, did my best to smile. ‘It’ll be okay. I’m here and I’ll look after you. It’ll be okay.’
‘All right.’
I swung out of bed, found my trousers on the floor.
We’d done the inventory already, but I did it again in my head, suddenly unable to find everything.
The suitcase was packed, waiting in the spare room.
There were two other bags we needed. Nothing else.
I grabbed a shirt from the wardrobe and flung it on.
‘Oh God.’
Rachel knelt down and leaned over the bed. I massaged her back as best I could the whole time. I felt about as redundant and powerless as I ever had in my entire life.
‘It’ll be all right,’ I said.
‘I can’t do this.’
‘You can.’
‘I fucking can’t.’
‘I’m going to phone the hospital.’ My mobile? On the floor next to the bed. I grabbed it, then put my hand back on her shoulder. ‘You can. You’re the strongest person I know.’
The whole way to the hospital, that was what I kept telling her and what I kept thinking.
Everything about her was strong and tough – she was so single-minded, so determined.
Stuff that would faze a normal person, I told her, one hand on the wheel the other on her thigh, it was nothing to her.
She was going to be fine. Other people did this every day, and she was stronger than them, so she’d do it too.
‘I love you,’ I told her.
‘I love you too.’
‘Really love you.’
She looked at me, crying. ‘Really love you too. Watch the road.’
‘Don’t worry.’
It was a half-hour drive, but I did it in twenty. By that time, the contractions seemed to be at four minute intervals. I parked up as neatly as I could, and helped Rachel inside the hospital and up the stairs to the fifth floor, to the maternity ward we’d been shown in the pre-natal classes.
‘Rachel Hicks,’ I told the receptionist. ‘I phoned ahead.’
Beside me, Rachel started screaming.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I told her. ‘I promise.’
But I think even then I knew it wouldn’t.
Everything else is a blur of memory.
I can hardly bear to think back on it, and I rarely try. Better, I think, that most of what happened is simply lost. There is nothing important there: nothing worth remembering. But some things remain – just glimpses.
The birth suite resembled an elongated bathroom, lined with sinks and mirrored cabinets.
My wife lay on an elaborate bed, surrounded by machinery and cables, her brow damp with sweat and her hair plastered to her head.
A hat-stand contraption beside the bed had bags of misty fluid hanging from it.
A midwife monitored our baby’s heartbeat on a green monitor, as a machine skittered and stitched the contractions across an unfolding roll of gridded paper.
The contractions wouldn’t stabilise. They would come at minute intervals, each lasting a minute, and then there would be nothing for five minutes.
Every time they upped the chemical to help stabilise them, the baby – our son – his heartbeat thinned and became erratic.
In the same way that – once – I hadn’t wanted him to be, it seemed that he did not want to be born.
Rachel kept apologising to the midwives and doctors. I remember that. Even with everything that was happening, she kept saying sorry, as though it was her fault. It wasn’t, and it wasn’t mine either, but it was all I could think. It was going bad, and it was because of me.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I kept saying.
He did not want to be born.
I want you to be born, I kept thinking.
I do now.
You have to be okay.
Both of you.
The midwife called it: the contractions weren’t right, but it had been going on for too long. It was time for Rachel to push. And she did, for an hour, squeezing my hand so tightly each time, her face red as a clenched fist.
But he didn’t want to be born.
The surgeon used a suction cup on his head, pulling so hard it was like he was doing a tug of war.
People had to brace him. I couldn’t watch.
And still my son wouldn’t be born. The whole time, his heartbeat was fluttering.
They tried with forceps, the ugliest pieces of metal I’d ever seen, as huge and brutal as swords.
I don’t remember what happened next.
All I know is there was blood in the air: I have a vague impression of that.
The room was suddenly full of people. I had time to realise they must have been gathered in the corridor out of sight, ready and waiting, and that there were more of them than I could count.
I was shoved back against a wall as they moved around Rachel, talking to her, shouting instructions to each other, disconnecting her from everything.
This can’t be happening.
This doesn’t happen.
My wife’s face. Rachel. Looking at me with the purest expression of terror I’d ever seen. I did my best to smile at her, try to be reassuring, but I was too shocked, too scared.
And then they were rushing her – both of them – down towards emergency surgery.
I’d never seen anything move so quickly.
I chased the bed down the hallway, telling Rachel I loved her, over and over again, holding her hand for as long as I could, But then they disappeared through green plastic curtains and I was left standing there.
I needed some fresh air, which meant I needed my jacket.
But that was in the birth suite, and for some reason the nurses wouldn’t let me go back in for it.
It was only afterwards that I realised they were scared of what I would see, and what my reaction would be.
In the meantime, one of the midwives had to get it for me.
Outside, it was night again.
It was cold, and that was probably just what I needed.
My skin was shivery, but my insides were hot; it was like there was a furnace burning in my chest and head.
There were benches dotted around the car park.
Even at this time, residents wrapped in dressing gowns were smoking near the entrance.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d been sitting all day, so I paced a little way out into the car park, then back again.
I’d lost them both.
I knew it.
After a while, I took my mobile out and turned it back on. Not that I was going to phone anyone, but it was something to do – check for messages, stop myself imagining what might be happening with Rachel back inside. Immediately, I got a text from Laura.
Hope all well? Assume you’ll call when news. Fingers crossed! Call me asap tho.
It was from an hour ago. I called her.
‘Hicks,’ she said. ‘What’s going on? How is she?’
I started to answer. Couldn’t.
‘Hicks?’
I’ve lost them both.
‘Hicks?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Rachel’s had to go into surgery. It doesn’t look good.’
She was silent for a moment.
‘It’ll be okay,’ she said.
I said nothing, because I knew it wouldn’t be.
‘It happens all the time.’
‘What’s happening there?’
‘Here? No news. Nothing that can’t wait anyway. Miller’s still sticking to his story. Nothing useful from the CCTV at Trestle. Still no evidence that the General exists outside of Miller’s head.’
‘Laura, I –’
But just then, one of the nurses I recognised burst out of the entrance. She scanned the car park, saw me, then beckoned me across.
‘Andrew?’
I felt sick.
‘I’ve got to go.’
I hung up on Laura and ran back across the car park to meet her. I was dreading what she was going to tell me, but then I realised from the expression on her face that it couldn’t be bad news. It couldn’t be.
The baby’s heartbeat had stabilised, she said. That meant Rachel could have the emergency caesarean under local anaesthetic rather than general.
Which meant – if I was quick – I could be with her.
Again, I don’t remember much.
I know I left my clothes in a locker room and changed into green scrubs and cheap slippers.
They let me sit up on one side of Rachel, by her head, and talk to her.
The doctors had erected a sheet from just under her breasts to keep the operation out of sight.
I told Rachel I loved her, and that everything was going to be okay.
I remember this.
Sitting on the other side of the bed, the man in charge of the anaesthetic spoke to her reassuringly.
Rachel was terrified, trying not to cry, and he kept talking to her very calmly, the way you imagined he would to a friend.
There was no way, he said, that he would let anyone in the room hurt her.
He wouldn’t allow it. As he altered dials on the machine by the side of him, he kept asking what she could feel.
Was it pain or pressure? Not to worry, he said.
Stay calm. Nobody will do anything until I say they can.
‘I’m so scared,’ she whispered.
‘It’s nearly over,’ I said. Then: ‘Look!’
From the far end of the bed, someone lifted a baby high enough over the screen for us both to see. It was a tiny, fragile thing, slathered in purple light, and only there for a few seconds before they lowered it again.
Our son.
I didn’t feel any huge burst of love; it was too stressful for the moment to feel profound. But I do remember the relief. That was the first moment when I thought it was going to be okay. That I hadn’t lost them both at all, although I might have come close. Closer than I ever had before.
Thank you, I thought.
I remember that. I don’t know who I was directing it to, but I thought it anyway, over and over again.
The rest is a fracture. I remember them calling me over to cut the cord, and then being handed him wrapped in a dark towel – and panicking because I didn’t know how to hold him.
But I managed. And I sat with him cradled against me, a knot that seemed to want to untie itself, by Rachel’s side.
She was bleary with the drugs, but she turned her head and could see him, could smile at him.
‘Our son,’ I kept saying. ‘You did so well. So well.’
There was far more, but none of it really matters.
Thank you, though.
I remember that.