Chapter 33
33
A WHITE COTTON HANKIE
Niamh
Niamh is holding onto Jodie’s hand in the back seat of Paul’s car as they drive to the hospital. She’s not sure whether it is her, or her daughter, who is squeezing most tightly. Jodie is remarkably stoic – more stoic than Niamh managed to be that time she was the one being rushed to hospital only to find there was nothing to be done.
She had sobbed and gulped while Laura drove and Becca held her hand. She’d been desperately trying to get hold of Paul but, given that he’d been on a flight from London to Belfast, she’d been unable to speak to him.
‘He’s going to be so disappointed,’ she’d sobbed into Becca’s shoulder.
‘We don’t know what’s happening yet,’ Becca had told her. ‘It might be nothing. Try to keep calm.’
Niamh had failed, spectacularly, at keeping calm. Afterwards she’d look back on it and come to realise it was because she knew. Deep in her heart, she knew. She didn’t have all the same symptoms she’d had when she had been pregnant with Jodie. Her boobs didn’t hurt. She didn’t wake up each morning and immediately throw up. Yes, she was maybe a little more tired than normal but she was a mother to a two-year-old and was also working full time. Her husband had been away on business for the past week. She was bound to be more tired – but she was nowhere near the bone-crushingly exhausted horror of her first trimester with Jodie when she struggled to stay awake even in front of a class of rowdy teenagers.
Still, even though she had suspected that something was not right, she still felt shocked to see the streak of red in her knickers when she went to the loo. How strange, she’d thought, to suddenly find it so alarming when it had been a monthly occurrence ever since she turned twelve. Annoying, yes. Inconvenient? Abso-bloody-lutely (no pun intended). But not alarming.
Suddenly, though, it was a signal that something had gone wrong inside her body. That her body had let her down. Was it something she had done? Had she not been excited enough? This had been a surprise pregnancy, unlike that with Jodie, which they had planned for. She had already been struggling with Jodie in the terrible twos and Paul’s work requiring long spells away. She’d cried when the test had turned positive. So was that her fault? Had she wished the baby away?
Sitting now, beside her daughter who is staring, face expressionless, out of the car window, she wonders what thoughts are running through her mind. Looking at the back of Paul’s head as he drives, she wonders what he’s thinking. Is he relieved? Worried? Scared?
She wonders if he feels the way she does right now – that she hates that there is nothing she can do to influence the outcome of the next few hours. There is no way she can take whatever pain – physical or emotional – her child will be experiencing and carry it on her own shoulders. Yes, she’ll feel it because, God knows, a mother feels the pain of their child on some instinctual, deeply rooted biological level – but it won’t be as sharp. It won’t ease what Jodie is going to go through.
If the worst happens. She tries to remind herself that it’s not always bad news. It might all work out.
Jodie winces, her hand shaking free from Niamh’s and going straight to her middle, and Niamh feels a lump form in her throat.
‘You okay, love?’ Paul asks, glancing up to the rearview mirror.
‘Aye, Daddy,’ Jodie says, but her voice sounds small and scared.
‘We’re almost there,’ he says. ‘I’ll drop you and your mum at the door and then go and get parked. Is Adam meeting you there?’
‘He is,’ Jodie says. ‘Becca is bringing him.’
‘Maybe I’ll just wait outside. There will be enough of you in there. I don’t want to be getting in the way.’
Niamh bristles. She wants to tell Paul he should be there with them but at the same time she doesn’t want to upset Jodie further by letting her know that she’s cross.
‘Okay, Daddy,’ Jodie says as they turn into the grounds of the hospital. She takes her mother’s hand again and Niamh feels that she is shaking.
‘It’s okay, love. I’ll be with you, and Adam too. And Becca.’
Jodie nods.
‘And I’ll be here. I’ll not move from this car park. You need anything, you let me know. I’ll be right here,’ Paul says, as they pull up at the doors of the Emergency Department. ‘I love you, Jodie.’
Niamh can hear the emotion in his voice and, if she’s not mistaken, a little bit of fear there too. That’s when she notices that his knuckles are white against the steering wheel – his grip being so tight. Maybe, she thinks, he does feel some of the pain too.
She guides her daughter into the Emergency Department and in a voice she doesn’t quite recognise she fills the receptionist in on what is happening. The young woman, probably not much older than Jodie, taps on her keyboard and directs them to sit down while showing no emotion or empathy on her face. Niamh supposes she sees this, and worse, every day but still, it wouldn’t hurt her to give a sympathetic nod.
‘When will she be called in?’ Niamh asks.
The woman scans her computer screen and shrugs. ‘It’s hard to tell but it’s not too busy tonight. You’re lucky.’
Niamh raises an eyebrow and gives her very best withering glare. The kind of glare that she normally only reserves for her very worst-behaved pupils. It’s the glare that says their cards are marked, their parents are being called and the detentions are being piled up. ‘Lucky’ is not the word she would use. Far from it.
‘I… I mean… it shouldn’t be long. The triage nurse should call you through in the next ten minutes,’ the receptionist says, wilting under her stare.
‘Thank you,’ Niamh says, tersely, tension thrumming through her body as she guides Jodie to her seat.
‘What if the baby is gone, Mum?’ Jodie says in a small, scared voice.
‘Let’s wait and see what the doctors say,’ Niamh tells her. ‘You never know.’
‘I know we’re young… and it wasn’t planned…’
‘I know, darling. It doesn’t make it any less scary.’
The double doors to the waiting room swoosh open and when Niamh and Jodie glance up they see Adam and Becca scanning the room. Adam is almost as pale as Jodie is, Niamh thinks. Becca has the same look on her face that she did that day eighteen years ago when she had brought Niamh to the hospital to hear that her pregnancy was lost.
It’s incredible to Niamh that even now, all these years later, she can so quickly recall almost every detail of that visit. She can feel the same feelings taking hold today and she wants to cry. But she knows it’s not her place to cry. Not now. Not here. Here, it is up to her and Becca to put on a brave face to guide their children through this. Children who just two weeks ago were living their best lives, falling in love and doing all the things that students with no real-world responsibilities did. Things have changed so quickly, and so completely and now it could all change again.
She raises her hand and waves to attract the attention of Becca and Adam. Within seconds, Jodie and Adam are hugging, Jodie finally sobbing, and Niamh finds herself just looking at Becca – both of them not sure what to say. Maybe, Niamh wonders, there just isn’t anything to say. She can hardly believe it’s only a matter of hours since they were walking along the beach in Donegal feeling reinvigorated and reinvented. It’s just a couple of days since they were joking about being GILF s. And yet all of it could be over already. For now.
When the triage nurse calls Jodie’s name, she makes to stand up to accompany her daughter in for assessment. But as Adam stands up too, Jodie says, ‘It’s okay, Mum. Adam is going to come in with me. Is that okay? It’s his baby too.’
She has to fight the urge to say that of course it’s not okay. She is her mother. She has been accompanying Jodie to every medical appointment her entire life and up until very recently she has still been subjected to Jodie turning to her and pleading with her eyes for her mother to answer every question the doctor asked. But now she wants to go with Adam and leave her outside, unaware of what the hell is happening now? Oh, she is so not ready for this, but she realises she doesn’t really have a choice. Now is not the time to have a meltdown about her child’s growing independence.
She feels Becca’s hand lightly on her arm. A gesture in solidarity of ‘this is not about us even if we feel that it is very much about us’.
Niamh nods. ‘Of course, love. Of course. I’ll be here with Becca, and we will be doubling up on giving the receptionist the evil eye.’
‘What’s that about?’ Becca asks, as Jodie gives a watery, nervous smile and – taking Adam’s hand – follows the nurse through for assessment.
Niamh can’t take her eyes off her. She can’t quite believe this is a grown woman walking away from her and not just her little girl. How can they be here already in this life? She is not ready for this. The next sound from her mouth is a sob – one so loud that the elderly gentleman in the row in front of her turns and offers her a hankie. It’s not just any hankie either. It’s a cotton one. Pristine white. ‘You hang on to that, love,’ he says. ‘I’ll say a wee prayer for your troubles.’
She sobs a little more while Becca thanks the gentleman for his kindness and asks him if he is waiting to be seen. He’s not, as it happens. But his wife is through getting a sprained wrist strapped. ‘Silly woman – does too much. I’m always telling her she needs to take it easy and sure, haven’t we seven grown-up children can come and do her errands for her, but… well. You know what you Derry women are like. Stubborn as goats.’
Niamh is embarrassed that she can’t find it in her to join in the conversation, but she is somewhere between worried sick for her daughter and in some weird PTSD replay of her own long-buried miscarriage.
It’s really only the firm grip of Becca’s hand that is keeping her grounded in this moment.
‘They’ll be okay,’ Becca says.
‘Do you really think so?’
Becca nods as if trying to convince herself. ‘I really hope so.’