Chapter 21 #9
In the end, I don’t need to sit on Cam’s lap. Jim and Ash squish up, Cam squeezes in, and the four of us fit tightly but comfortably on the sofa.
These are my emotional support people. I’m braced for what I know is to come. The New Year’s Eve scenes just took me by surprise, but now I’m ready, I think.
“So,” Daniel begins with his usual opener. “It’s well documented that your pregnancy was ectopic, and you unfortunately lost the baby. Can we talk about that?”
“We can, and I want to start by saying that nothing, none of it, was how it was reported in the press.”
“We’ve collected some of those headlines. Would you like to see them, then tell us your thoughts?” Dan questions. He’s Dan not Daniel again now, because he’s stopped pissing me off with his leading questions.
The screen shifts from where it was frozen on the scenes of celebration, to newspaper, magazine, and news channel headlines.
Maca Parties While Wife Almost Dies is the first.
“Absolute bullshit,” Marley says.
Maca and Marley See in the New Year Together While Georgia Lies in a Hospital Bed.
“Oh, do fuck off,” Jimmie states.
I look over my shoulder to check my parents are still here, because my mum hasn’t said anything about the swearing. They are, but they’re in each of the armchairs in front of the fire, both asleep.
Rock Star’s Wife Loses Baby and Almost Her Life as Husband Parties.
“Yeah, we get it,” Len says. “It’s all complete and utter bollocks.”
They go on and on with the same theme.
“You know,” I say, while thinking I could really do with something stronger than coconut water right about now.
I don’t usually drink this much, but this past week has felt like a decade.
“I was in the first trimester of a pregnancy, and my body clock was still on UK time, so when I went to bed at around two a.m., it was something like seven a.m. to me. I told Sean to stay; I just wanted to sleep. He did absolutely nothing wrong. Neither of us knew things would take the turn they did.”
“We all felt bad…” Marley starts.
“Even me and Ash, and we went to bed at the same time as Georgia. Well, Ash was carried to bed, me and George used our legs,” Jimmie interrupts Marls.
“George mentioned she didn’t feel great.
I thought it was just the jet lag. I knew first-hand that it didn’t mix well with early pregnancy.
In hindsight, I could’ve been a better friend and told her to come and stay in our suite. ”
“And even worse, none of us even noticed the next day how bad she looked. Most of us slept on the plane,” Ashley explains.
“Like George said, our body clocks hadn’t even had time to adjust, and we were already on our way back home.
Add to that the late night, early morning, the hangovers most of us were suffering, and we were all fucked. ”
“I’d fallen asleep okay.” I speak aloud my recollections from that night.
“I remember having this weird pain in my shoulder and just feeling off, but I got back and shoulder pain a lot when we travelled. I’d just always put it down to staying in so many different beds.
Anyway, just before Sean was carried up to our room—yes, carried, because he was a bit—”
“A lot,” Marley adds.
“The bloke had just found out he was gonna be a dad for the first time. It was New Year’s Eve. He’d had a skinful,” Lennon says. “Give the bloke a break. He just did what any of us would’ve done, and he did it with Georgia’s blessing, right, G?”
“Absolutely. Just like the rest of the band, he’d worked pretty much nonstop for fifteen years.
I had no issue with him staying up with the band that night, and pregnant or not, any other night, I would’ve been right there with you all.
But that night, I didn’t feel great. I didn’t say anything to anyone and took myself off to bed.
No one’s to blame for what happened next.
” I pause. “Fucking hell, I hate the press and certain members of the public sometimes, and that’s after I convinced myself a couple of hours ago that Rocco and Haley were the only people I hated.
” I look at Cam. “I hate those headlines, the way they crucified him. And now I’ve forgotten where I was. ”
He leans in and kisses the side of my head. “You were saying Sean got carried up to bed.”
“Thank you. Yeah, just before Milo and Dave knocked with a barely conscious Sean hanging between them, I’d woken up and felt nauseous.
I also had a bit of an ache in my lower belly, but wrote all of it off as normal pregnancy symptoms. By the time we got on the plane that afternoon, I’d started to feel a little clammy and wondered if I’d spent too long out in the cold.
Everyone was very quiet… hungover. Despite his hangover, Sean was constantly asking if I was okay.
I didn’t want to worry him. I just wanted to get home, and then if I still felt rough, I’d tell him, and we could go to the hospital.
He got me settled with pillows and a blanket.
Then everyone crashed. I think I managed a little bit of sleep, but then I woke to a pain in my side.
I called for the stewardess, and she brought me a cup of tea and some biscuits, but the pain got gradually worse, and I started to feel cold but sweaty.
By the time we landed and got into our car, I felt terrible and told Sean that I thought I needed to get to the hospital.
For any woman out there who’s ever had a period or miscarried, you know.
You can just feel that you’re bleeding and how heavy it is.
Before we’d even reached the hospital, I knew.
I knew I was bleeding. I knew it was heavy.
I knew I was losing my baby. I just hadn’t realised how bad it was all going to get, and I don’t really remember much from there. ”
The room’s very quiet for a few long seconds before Len speaks.
“What happened next was…” He lets out a long exhale.
“I know it was you going through it, George, but for all of us witnessing it, it was fucking traumatising. She was bleeding really badly. It had gone right through her jeans. Marley went running into the hospital, shouting for help. I think I found a wheelchair, but Maca? He wouldn’t let her go.
She was barely conscious by then, and he just ran with her through the hospital.
The doctors were great. They appeared from everywhere, ran with us to the emergency department.
Only Maca was allowed in with her. I think we all sort of calmed down a bit then.
We all had kids, so had assumed she was losing or had lost the baby.
The girls were crying, but I think just for those first few minutes, we felt better, calmer for being at the hospital and knowing she was getting looked after.
“Then that call went out. I can’t remember if it was resus, crash, or a code whatever, but it’s that one you never want to hear when you’re in the hospital. And if you do, you wonder if some poor fucker’s fighting for their life somewhere, but this time, that poor fucker was my little sister.”
I don’t look at my brother as he talks. I stare down into Cam’s lap, where my hand rests on his thigh, where both his big hands are wrapped around mine.
I watch as he raises one to his lips and rubs his fingers over them.
His eyes find mine, but he says nothing.
He doesn’t have to. I know what he’s thinking, so I shake my head because there’s nothing he could’ve done, and I know he’s wishing that wasn’t the case.
“People were running into where they’d taken George, and we all just knew. We just knew it was for her.” I know without looking her way that Jimmie’s crying as she speaks.
“Marley threw up in the rubbish bin,” Ash tells us.
“Of course he did,” I say, wiping a tear from under my eye.
“She was bleeding internally,” Len says.
“Her fallopian tube had ruptured. They couldn’t get blood into her fast enough, and she’d gone into shock, then cardiac arrest. They wheeled her past us…
” He trails off, and my mind goes back to when Cam was shot, and I watched the nurse riding on the trolley, squeezing the bag of blood they were pumping into him so it would get there faster.
I remember with too much clarity for comfort how traumatic that was, so I know exactly how my family must’ve felt that day.
“When we went into the room she’d been in, Maca was…”
“Mate, he was a fucking mess,” Marley interrupts Len.
“I held him,” Jimmie says. “He shook so badly, and he sobbed so hard, so I just held him.”
“He knew the baby was gone, and he was terrified he’d lose you, too, George,” Lennon explains.
“He did, just not physically,” Marley says.
His words are like a punch to the gut.
I truly believed back then that we lost Baby M because of my adultery.
That it was my punishment, and mine to bear alone.
So, I withdrew. I can’t tell everyone that or explain that’s the reason why I distanced myself from my husband.
I suppose it was only fitting, really, that my withdrawal, caused by my guilt, was the reason he sought comfort in Carla. Well, in her mouth, at least.
“I didn’t cope well mentally,” I explain.
“Neither of us did—not really. I went to stay at my parents’ because…
I don’t know why. I made up some bullshit excuse, but it was mostly because we couldn’t look at each other without falling apart.
It’s the weirdest thing. I’d only known for sure I was pregnant for a couple of days, but the grief I felt, the sense of loss…
” I don’t mention the guilt because that was the driving force behind why I was feeling everything else so deeply.