Chapter 49
WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE
“Hey.”
She swam up from the darkness, though the world kept fading in and out. Zane’s voice was soft. Kind. And her tears were right there, spilling over. She was so groggy. What was …
Zane must have seen the tears, because he took her hand. “How ya goin’?” he asked. “All right? Wait, obviously not all right. But—pain? How is it?”
“D-drugs.” Her eyes kept wanting to close, and his face wasn’t quite in focus. She had an IV in the back of her hand, and it was bothering her. “I’ll be … fine. I’m fine.”
She remembered now. She’d been pregnant, and it was gone.
“Skylar.” Too much kindness in his voice, and the tears were rolling down her cheeks now, hot and tickling. He picked up a tissue and dabbed at them. “It’s OK not to be fine.”
It hurt to cry, drugs or no. She cried anyway, and couldn’t even have said why. The pain. The fear. Or something else. “Did they … tell you?” she got out at last. “What it was?”
“Yeh. Ectopic pregnancy. Where it implants in the wrong place. I’d heard of it, I guess, but not much.” He was still dabbing at the tears, then offering her the cup of water with its straw. “We can talk about it later. You should rest now. Want anything? Cup of tea? Tea would be good, surely.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t sobbing, but the tears wouldn’t stop. Resistance down, or something. “Could you … could you stay? For a bit? The kids … but …”
“I’ll stay,” he said. “And hold your hand, too.”
“You’re good at … that. Always been good.” She wanted to close her eyes, but she wanted to see him, too. He was something to hold onto, and she was rootless. Empty.
“Yeh,” he said, “I am. I rang the resort. Asked them to get word to the nanny that you’re OK, in case the kids wake up.”
“It’s dark. How long—”
“Nearly five. In the morning. You’ll be here for today, and no worries, so will I.”
The tears were still tickling when she fell asleep.
When she woke again, it was light outside. There were palms outside her window, and banana plants, too. The kids had been thrilled to be able to pick bananas themselves, and to watch boys scramble up the coconut palms. It had been such a good holiday.
Oh. Zane. He wasn’t beside her anymore, and she got a flash of disorientation that was nearly fear. Her abdomen ached, though distantly, and she was still groggy.
The door opened, and it was Zane. He didn’t smile when he saw her, but he had that intense look again when he came over, took her hand, and asked, “Better now?”
“Yes. Awake, anyway. What time is it?”
“Nine-thirty. I went downstairs for something to eat. They said they’d look after you. Have they been?”
“Dunno. I just woke up.” They were saying normal things, but it didn’t feel normal. It felt unreal. And there was an ache. A hollowness. “I do need the toilet, though.”
“Want me to help you?”
She stared at him. “No, I don’t want you to help me! To go to the toilet? There’s an image you’d have in your head forever.”
He grinned, and she laughed, then regretted it. “Could you get the nurse? Please? And then wait outside for a bit?”
He came back as the nurse was settling her into bed again. “Café’s pretty good,” he said. “They have smoothies. Also mango lassis. You like those. Want one?”
“We can bring you a meal tray,” the nurse said. “If your stomach’s up to it.”
“Not a meal,” she said. “A mango lassi would be good, though. I’ll try it, anyway. But—Zane.”
“Yeh?”
“The kids. Are they OK? Is somebody with them?”
“I told you before,” he said, “but you were pretty out of it. The resort sent over a nanny. I asked for it when I rang about the ambos. Do you remember that bit?”
“No. I don’t remember much. Have you talked to them this morning, though? They must be worried.”
“Not yet, but I will. Let me go get your drink first.” He leaned over the bed, took her hand, and kissed her forehead, and it was so tender, she got those tears again.
When he was gone, the nurse said, “He’s lovely, isn’t he? Zane Mahuta, isn’t it?”
“Uh … yes. How do you know?”
“You haven’t seen the Blues play the Fijian Drua, then,” the nurse said.
“We love our Drua, and on home soil, they’re hard to put away.
Not so good when they play in New Zealand, but no wonder.
Too cold down there for them to be at their best, or too hot up here for your boys to be.
” She smiled, and Skylar smiled back. “You’re here on holiday? ”
“Yes.” Skylar shifted, and the nurse said, “Pain? Where is it?”
“My shoulder. Weird.”
“Ah,” the nurse said. “That’s gas. They pump it in there to distend your abdomen for the surgery, and it likes to hang about and make a nuisance of itself. Let’s get you up and walking around. That usually moves it along, and helps you heal, too.”
Lovely. She was not only sweaty, bloody, and messy, she was also gassy.
What a prize.
When Zane stepped out of the lift, Skylar was walking the corridor with her hand on an IV pole and the nurse beside her.
She was dressed in two hospital gowns, one worn front to back and the other back to front, their edges flapping about in disorganized fashion.
A pair of gray slipper socks completed the look. He said, “Ah, the glamour of hospital.”
“To add to my allure,” she said, “I’m walking to get the gas moving.
Charming.” She smiled, white, drained face and all, and he grinned and said, “Nah, no worries. I told you, it’s all men in my life, and for some reason, they all fart too much.
When they do it in the scrum, now … that’s a special kind of awful.
There should be a rule. No baked beans on toast for rugby forwards. ”
He kept up that kind of chat back to her room, and when they were alone again and she was taking cautious sips of her drink, said, “I rang the room, but didn’t get the kids.
Rang the front desk and got the nanny’s number, and finally talked to Scarlett.
They’re at the pool, and glad to hear you’re OK.
I had to talk to Finlay personally, because he needed to hear it from me. ”
“He worries.”
“Yeh.” There was his hand, wrapped around hers again. “Scarlett told me that she and Finlay’d made a pact. She’d look after my kids, he’d look after yours, and they’d decide together what to do. Co-captains, she called it. Seemed quite proud of herself, and Finlay did too.”
“Kids like to be responsible,” she said. “As long as it’s something they can handle. It’s good for them. They did well in the earthquake, too.”
She shifted in bed, and he asked, “Pain?”
“No. Not bad. Oh—I should tell you that I got travel insurance before we came. Thank God, because this is a private hospital, and heaven knows how much all of this will have cost. I’ll have to pay the bill myself, but then I get reimbursed.”
“It makes me less of a hero,” he said, “but I reckon I can stand that. I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay, and you can reimburse me later.”
“You may have a complex,” she said.
“Same one you do. That we’re used to handling things ourselves.”
She sighed. “Too deep for me today. I’ll have to think about it later. We fly out tomorrow morning, though. We need to pack and all. When are they letting me out of here?”
“Tomorrow sometime. Stop worrying. I already rang up and asked for bereavement leave.”
“For—” She blinked her green eyes at him. “What?”
“For the miscarriage. We’ll fly home on Wednesday instead. The doctor says you’ll be good to do it by then, if you don’t have to walk too far or carry any bags. Wheelchair, I reckon, at the airports, and I’m pretty good at carrying bags.”
She looked down and plucked at the white sheet. “What?” he asked.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “That I was pregnant. I don’t want you to think—I can’t bear you to think that I—” Her hand was shaking. “And I don’t—”
“Bloody hell,” he said. “I need to hold you.”
She looked up at him at last. Pink around the eyes and nose, because a ginger couldn’t hide a thing. “Can you? Please? Because I feel—”
It took some maneuvering, but he managed to get onto the narrow bed and to get his arm around her, and that was so much better.
He wanted just to lie here like this, but she needed to talk, so he said, “This isn’t an accusation.
It’s a question. How didn’t you know? It must have been from that first time.
Which was … what? A couple of months ago? ”
“It was the implant. For birth control. Not how I got pregnant, but why I didn’t know.
They tell you that you might bleed more than usual, or that you may not bleed at all, or just spot.
It mucks up your hormones, too, so when I was a bit emotional, a bit tired, and a bit spotty, I just thought it was that.
And I don’t know what to feel now. I know it should be relief. It is relief. But …”
“But it was a pregnancy,” he said. “And now it isn’t. And I’m not sure whether I should tell you this next bit, but I think maybe you should hear it.”
“Please,” she said. “Anything you have to say, tell me. We have to be honest here. It feels too bad otherwise. It feels too bad anyway, but I need to know what you feel. What you think.”
“The doctor told me this morning that pregnant women shouldn’t travel to Fiji, especially in the first trimester.”
“What? Why not?”
“Zika.”
“Mosquitoes. Birth defects. Oh, my God.” Her hand was on her belly as if there were still something there. “But I haven’t been ill.”
“People often aren’t, but they can have the illness all the same. I don’t want to say it was for the best, but maybe it was.”
“My God,” she said again. “But you see, this is the problem! Why do I feel so bad, when it was for the best, and I know it? How could I have had another baby? How could I have managed?”
“Well, to be fair,” he said, “it would’ve been mine too. Easier to manage with two of us, eh.”
“But you can’t have wanted that.” He didn’t answer, and she said, “You need to tell me, Zane. I can’t handle the stoical thing. Not today.”
“I reckon,” he said, feeling his way, “that I have mixed feelings. Or I don’t know what I feel. I knew last night, though. Scared to death, that was how.”
“But you’re tough.”
He laughed, though it wasn’t easy. “I’m tough for myself.
Not about you. And definitely not about losing you.
Same as with the kids. In the earthquake, and after it …
that was bad. The kids, and you, too. I knew you’d gone into the CBD, and it was a bad time, knowing that, but not knowing whether you were safe or—or not.
When I found you, I—” He had to stop, because he wasn’t able to get the words out.
“Me too.” Her hand was on his face now, in that way she did that got him in the heart. “I was so relieved to hear from you. And to see you. To see that you were safe, and just having you be there.”
“OK,” he said. “I’ll try some more, then.
I was nothing but relieved when the doctor told me what it was, and that they’d got to it in time.
That it hadn’t been worse. I looked it up, afterward, while I was sitting here.
If we’d been on the plane home when that happened, or if you’d been alone with the kids when I was in Safa, and not able to get help fast enough … that’s what I kept thinking about.”
“But I wasn’t alone. You were there.”
“Yeh. And as for the ‘baby’ part—”
“Yes?” she asked, when he didn’t go on.
“Dunno, exactly. I love my kids. I don’t get to spend enough time with them, but I love being their dad. So there’s some of that, too.”
“You’re sorry,” she said. “A bit sorry that it isn’t happening, despite everything.
That’s how I feel, too, except I keep crying, so it’s all mixed up with hormones, and—” She waved her free arm.
“It makes no sense to be sorry, but here I am, crying again anyway.” She laughed through the tears, a choked sound, and he mopped up the tears, the same way he’d done earlier.
“Yeh,” he said. “We can both be sorry, and we can both be relieved. Feelings don’t have to make sense, eh. What d’you plan to tell the kids?”
“We can’t tell them,” she said at once. “That’s too much for them, along with everything else.
If we were really together, maybe, but not like this.
We’ll tell them I had an obstruction and they had to do surgery to remove it, and that I’ll be crook for a bit.
They don’t have to know what the obstruction was.
But bereavement leave? You can seriously get it for this? I need help getting home, but—”
“You’ll need help, full stop. My house for the rest of the holidays, and Nan and Geoffrey can bloody well buckle down for once and make sure you get that help.
The kids, too. My house. And ‘if we were really together?’ Pardon bloody me?
What d’you call this? I’m in your hospital bed.
That’s got to be some kind of relationship milestone. ”
“In Fiji, too,” she said. “Giving me the best holiday of my life. And, of course, my eleventy-six children.”
“Our eleventy-six children. We really know how to do romance.” They were both laughing, then, so that was better, even though she was still crying, too. “As for the baby thing—”
“What? Other than the wrong time and the wrong place. In more ways than one.”
“Yeh,” he said. “Those. But maybe not the wrong idea. Kids are pretty awesome, after all. At least I’ve always thought so.”