Chapter 8
Bella was in the surgery waiting room flicking anxiously through old magazines, even though she had stacks of work things in her bulging bag that she could be looking through instead.
She was four months pregnant and had been postponing this midwife appointment for several weeks because she had been so busy at work. Finally, overwhelmed with guilt, she’d taken a half-day off to coincide with the antenatal clinic at the surgery.
When she clapped eyes on midwife Declan, he was somehow not what she had expected. He was a slight, wiry guy with frizzy hair and bright eyes.
‘Bella Browning, hello. Gorgeous name,’ he said, instantly revealing his Irish heritage.
‘Hello.’ She shook his outstretched hand. ‘You don’t look nearly old enough for this job.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ve been doing this professionally for ten years,’ he replied. ‘But I delivered my first baby when I was twelve. Now, sit down and relax. You’re not due for months, so we’ve plenty of time to get acquainted and go through your options. But, first of all, do you mind explaining exactly what you’re doing pitching up here at sixteen weeks, when you should have had a booking appointment with me a month ago?’
‘Sorry, I’ve just been so busy with work.’
‘Yes, you and every other woman who pokes their little Italian shoes into this surgery.’ He went on. ‘Antenatal care is a serious business, for which you are entitled to official time off work.’
‘Well, if you’ve told your work you’re pregnant, and if they don’t demote you on the spot for showing “lack of commitment”.’
‘I’m sure you’re aware there are laws against that kind of thing.’
‘I’m sure you’re aware that there are ways around those laws,’ she replied.
‘OK, so let’s put a big “S” for stressed in your book here, shall we?’ He turned back the cover of a blue booklet.
‘Was the pregnancy planned?’ he asked.
‘Is that anything to do with you?’ she bristled, not even sure why she was feeling so defensive.
‘Look, I’m trying to fill in your maternity book here, this is an official question. But you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.’
‘No, it wasn’t planned, but we’re both very happy about it,’ she snapped, feeling angry because she didn’t like to give too much of herself away, ever.
She watched him tick the box.
‘So you won’t have had a chance to do pre-pregnancy folic acid, cutting down on any drinking and so on?’
‘No.’ She registered her pangs of guilt about this.
‘Well, try not to worry, we can help you catch up on all that now.’
They went through the list of questions – age, allergies, illnesses – then he asked if she smoked. To her astonishment, Bella found herself bursting into tears.
When Declan instinctively put his hand on her arm and asked if she was OK, out tumbled a rush of worry she’d barely admitted to herself before – the guilt at having this unplanned ‘accident’, the deep anxiety that she would have miscarriage after miscarriage like her mother, and not even wanting to tell her mother about the pregnancy because it would upset her. The fear that she’d missed those vital vitamins, and had been drinking heavily and smoking until she’d realised she was pregnant. All her deepest-seated fears and here she was coughing them out to a complete stranger.
‘Have you been half-pretending to yourself that you’re not really pregnant at all?’ Declan asked again in the very kind voice which had made her crack up in the first place.
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ She was frantically dabbing at her eyes and trying to stop the tears.
‘Look, it’s really OK.’ He smiled at her. ‘You’ve got to sixteen weeks, that’s a very good sign, and there’s no point worrying about what you’ve done, it’s water under the bridge. But it is time to look after yourself better now. Swimming maybe? Yoga… although I know that’s not for everyone… punching pillows might be more your style?’
She cracked a smile at that. As she calmed down, they talked about hospitals and scans and he rolled up her sleeve to take blood.
Several days later, she was holed up in her tiny office at Merris lost in thought, staring at the graphs on her screen, when her mobile trilled.
She was irritated at the disruption but picked up anyway.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Bella Browning?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Hello, it’s Declan here.’
Her mind was blank. Declan?
‘The midwife.’
‘Oh yes. Hello, sorry about the other day. I’m really fine, I don’t know what—’ she felt embarrassed.
‘Bella, chill out, will you? We need to talk, is now a good time, or should I call back?’
‘Now is fine. What is it?’
‘We’ve had the results of your blood tests and I’d like you to come in and discuss them.’
She felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
‘It’s the blood screening test. Look, you really need to come in and see me,’ he said.
‘Please, Declan, just tell me now.’
‘Well, it’s come back with a higher than usual possibility—’ he trailed off, then added, ‘I’d really prefer to see you.’
‘How high?’ she said immediately.
‘One in 50 chance of Down’s Syndrome.’
‘Two per cent? That’s small, in fact, statistically insignificant,’ she replied, trying to convince herself.
‘Well, we consider it higher than it should be for your age. There are some steps you can take to check. You can have an amnio or a detailed scan. It would be best if you came in and talked it through.’
‘I can’t, Declan, we’ll have to do this on the phone.’ He sounded so serious it was making her scared.
‘Well, OK, I’m going to give you my mobile number. I’m on duty tonight, so when you get home and you’ve put your feet up and chilled out, call me and I’ll talk you through it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
‘Bye.’ Bella clicked the phone off and looked at the screen again. The figures were wobbling around and for a moment she couldn’t think why. She was about to cry. Quickly she tilted her head back so the tears wouldn’t trail mascara down her cheeks. A two per cent chance of Down’s Syndrome. What did that mean?
There was a tap at the door, so she pressed her fingers under her eyes to blot the tears away. ‘Come in,’ she said, hoping she looked normal.
‘Hi.’ It was Mitch. She waved at the spare seat.
He sat down, then looking at her properly, said, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, fine. My eyes are tired from looking at the screen all day.’
‘No wonder. You are allowed out of here, you know, you can have lunch, you can go out to the atrium where you will find other, live people.’
‘I know. But I have a hell of a lot of work to do. I’m starting to panic I won’t get it done in time. I don’t want the contract extended.’
‘Are things here worse than you expected?’
‘I don’t know if it would be professional to comment,’ she said.
‘Can I level with you?’ he asked. ‘My wife is expecting our third baby in the spring and I’m not a UK resident. If I’m going to need a new job, I want to know so I can start looking now.’
She looked up at him but didn’t answer straight away.
Why was he asking her this? It wasn’t fair.
‘I really won’t know the full situation until I’ve completed a thorough assessment, then I’ll report in detail to the board.’
‘Yes, but I’m just asking you for your opinion.’ He looked tired and stressed. Plus, he was a nice guy, not the type to get involved with industrial espionage.
‘Well…’ she paused. ‘Let’s just say if Merris was a racehorse, I wouldn’t be taking it round the back and shooting it in the head just yet. And that is all that I’m saying.’
Mitch burst into relieved laughter. A little too relieved, she thought. If Merris was a racehorse, she’d certainly not be placing any bets on it either.
When Mitch had gone, her phone rang again. It was Don.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m getting nothing done today.’
‘Shall I go?’
‘No, no I want to talk to you. It’s the baby, I got the test results and there’s a very small chance it might have Down’s Syndrome.’ The words tumbled out.
‘What? What test?’
‘A blood test they do. There’s a two per cent chance of Down’s Syndrome. They’re suggesting we do more tests.’
‘OK…’ he said slowly. ‘It’s OK. I’m sure it’s going to be OK… We need some more information about this, don’t we?’
‘I’m speaking to the midwife this evening.’ She realised her heart was beating fast and she was feeling panicky. ‘Can you try and get home early tonight? I’m going to leave soon.’
‘Yeah, no problem. I’ll be there just after seven unless there’s a last-minute hitch. Shall I get some food?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘What do you want?’
‘It doesn’t matter, Don.’
‘OK, see you later, sweetheart. Don’t worry – it’ll be fine.’
Even though he didn’t know if it was going to be OK any more than she did, it still felt reassuring to hear him say that.
‘Thanks, Don,’ she managed. ‘Bye.’
She struggled on for another hour, trying to work but finally she powered down the computer. She’d had enough for the day, she couldn’t concentrate, her hand was resting on her faint tummy bump. She felt a little scared and confused. And she realised as she felt the bump under her hand that she felt protective.
By the end of the evening, she and Don had reached a decision. She was not going to have an amnio test. Declan had told her it was the only way to know for certain but she and Don had decided that it didn’t make sense to assess a 2per cent risk with a procedure which carried a 1per cent risk of miscarriage.
They would go to the hospital tomorrow for a detailed scan which had an eighty per cent chance of giving them an accurate result. Percentages, percentages… and stats. At least these were things she felt comfortable around.
The next morning, Bella climbed into the saloon car, said hello to Geoff, then slumped into her seat, too tired and preoccupied to bother with reading anything.
She felt her stomach flutter in a strange way… nerves. It fluttered again and she just knew it was the baby moving – one of those magical first-time experiences, like a first kiss, first aeroplane ride, first Valentine.
She looked out of the window to make sure Geoff couldn’t see the tears welling up in her eyes. She was expecting a baby. A real, live, little person. It was as if it was dawning on her for the first time.
Bella had arranged to meet Don outside the main entrance of the hospital at 2p.m. that afternoon. It was ten to two as she stepped out of the cab and she was so pleased to see that he was already there.
His coat was buttoned with the collar up against the wind. He was trying to read the Metro newspaper he must have picked up on the way there, but it was getting blown about and he was struggling to fold it. She watched him for a moment as he tucked it into a quarter and carried on reading. Then a scowl crossed his face and he took his ringing mobile out of his coat pocket.
At that moment, she absolutely loved him, this tall, capable, independent, clever man.
He spotted her and came running over, mobile still clamped to his head.
He put his arm protectively around her and said into the phone, ‘I’m sorry, Mike, this is important. You’ll just have to cut me a couple of hours of slack here. Yup, I’ll be back at five, and we’ll sort it. Right, bye.’
He put his phone back into his pocket, then turned on a smile for her. ‘Hello, Bella.’ He kissed her on the mouth. ‘It’s nothing, let’s just concentrate on this, shall we?’
She was so glad he was there. She had contemplated doing this on her own, but he had insisted on being with her before she had even voiced anything to him about going alone, so she slipped her arm through his and they went in, making their way through dreary, fluorescent-lit corridors to the ultrasound department.
In the large, institutional beige waiting room, the chairs were crammed with heavily pregnant women and slightly pregnant women. In the corner a girl of about eighteen or so was sobbing.
She handed over her appointment card. It was taken wordlessly and put in a tray on top of a bundle of others.
‘If you could take a seat and drink plenty of water, please. You need a full bladder for the scan.’ The woman didn’t even look up at her, just carried on typing.
Bella knew this and had already glugged back a large bottle of water on the way over. Her bladder was full. She looked at the room packed with waiting women and realised she might have made a mistake there. Should she go for a tactical pee now and start drinking water again? Or wait with her legs crossed and hope it wasn’t going to take too long?
She sat down and Don took her hand to give it a reassuring squeeze. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he added in a whisper.
When her name was finally called, her heart jump-started and she felt both cold and sweaty at once. This was really happening – in just a few minutes, they would know. She stood up with Don and gripped his hand.
Her mind was racing. She and Don were in a hospital together – already a first – and they were about to see their baby on a screen and possibly be told that there might be something wrong, before it had even been born. This was unreal. She walked along the lino corridor clutching Don’s hand with her heartbeat hammering in her throat.
She was ushered into a curtained cubicle with a little bed. A friendly nurse said hello then gestured to the examination bed. Bella lay down and unbuttoned her blouse and her skirt.
Don seemed to be awkwardly filling up all the available space left. The curtain was hanging over his shoulder and snagging along the rail whenever he moved.
Bella lowered her waistband and was preoccupied with the prospect of Don turning suddenly and bringing the whole flimsy contraption down.
‘OK, we’ll just put some gel on.’ The nurse smiled and squirted something ice-cold onto Bella’s stomach. ‘Now we’ll have a look.’ She moved the grey handset into place and began sliding it along Bella’s navel.
She could hardly breathe. Don fixed his eyes on the screen, which was just out of Bella’s view. For several long moments, the nurse looked and slid her handset and said nothing. She pressed a button and the screen made clunking noises.
‘I’m just taking some cross-sections for a better look.’ This was not reassuring.
More agonisingly long minutes went by. Bella fixed her eyes on Don’s face and he broke off from looking at the screen to give her a wan smile.
Finally, the nurse turned to look at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ the word hung in the air and everything after that went into slow motion. Bella watched her lips form the next words: ‘…to take so long. I wanted to be sure.’
Bella could feel the blood draining from her head.
‘Your baby looks healthy,’ said the nurse. ‘We can’t guarantee from the scan, but I can see no cause for concern. Let me talk you through it.’
She swivelled the screen to face Bella and Don moved round the bed to stand beside her. She felt for his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed her back. She was trying to feel relief, to run the words ‘absolutely fine’ over in her mind again, but she still felt a residue of panic.
The nurse ran the handset over her stomach again and a grey and white grainy image flashed up. It looked like the surface of the moon and Bella could see a little astronaut moving about dreamily.
‘There is baby, bouncing up and down. You can see the legs and arms.’ She pressed a button. ‘This is a cross-section of the heart. The four chambers are all as we’d expect.’
Amazingly up on the screen was a tiny pulsating heart, contracting and opening at a relentless pace.
‘This is the spine and the nuchal fold – all as we’d expect. And the brain ventricles… everything is looking healthy. I’ll put on your report that there are no markers here of any anomalies.’
Bella was looking inside the head of her baby before it was born. She felt in awe.
The nurse clicked back to the lunar surface view again. The little astronaut was turning about, carefree and gleeful.
‘OK, that’s it.’ She turned off the monitor and handed Bella a wodge of tissue paper to wipe down her stomach. ‘I’ll print off a picture for you and do you want to know your baby’s sex?’
Bella and Don were already looking at each other in delighted relief. She felt as if she couldn’t be happier. The boy or girl surprise could wait for another day.
‘No!’ she heard herself say. ‘If that’s OK, Don?’
‘Whatever you want, Bella.’
‘OK, I’ll put the report in your maternity book, take it to your midwife who’ll go through it again with you, but there’s no obvious cause for concern. The ladies’ is second on the left,’ she added.
How could Bella have forgotten? The dull ache in the pit of her stomach was a bladder shrieking to be emptied.
When she came out after a marathon pee, she and Don hugged hard.
Then he took her arm and led her down the corridor. ‘That was one of the most amazing things ever,’ he said.
‘I know,’ Bella replied. ‘I’m just so, so relieved everything looks OK.’
‘What would you have done if it wasn’t?’ asked Don, seeing how pale and shaken she looked.
‘I don’t know, Don. I’m so grateful we don’t have to think about that now.’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed and squeezed her round the shoulder. ‘I didn’t know either. I think we should go and get a drink.’
‘I’ve got to get back.’ Bella sounded gloomy.
‘Me too, but I think we owe ourselves just a half an hour to adjust.’
‘If you insist.’
Looking down the road in front of the hospital, they could see a pub sign fifty yards ahead.
‘That will do.’ Don steered her along the pavement and they opened the door on a cosy little pub, quiet after the flurry of lunchtime drinkers and before the evening rush kicked in.
Don went to the bar as Bella sat down on a sofa. He returned with a glass of soda and lime for her and a pint of lager.
‘Here we go.’ He sat down beside her and she could smell on his breath that he’d tossed down a whisky at the bar.
He gave her a little smile and took a sip from his glass. ‘Jeeeez,’ he sighed and leaned back in his chair, ‘I was pretty worried, you know.’
‘Same,’ she agreed.
‘Up until today, this has been so abstract. I mean, you’ve hardly even got a bump.’
After a pause, he added, ‘I’m trying really hard to imagine us with a baby, Bella, and I can’t…’
She didn’t say anything, so he took another gulp from his drink then added, ‘I’m excited, but I’m also so unprepared for this. I’ve never pushed a pram or changed a nappy or held a bottle or even a baby, I don’t think. Then suddenly there’s all this worry about whether it will be OK.’
‘You want a girl, don’t you?’ Bella guessed.
‘And you want a boy, right?’
‘No. Honestly, I just want everything to be OK. I thought I wouldn’t think about the baby until it was here, but this baby already exists. I’m already frightened for it. Me… frightened? See, I’m already changing. And that is frightening too. I’ll change, you’ll change, we’ll change. I don’t think I saw that coming.’
This made Don laugh.
‘Really?’ he asked. ‘You thought you were just going to power-suit your way through pregnancy, childbirth and raising a baby?’
When he saw the expression of surprise on Bella’s face, he quickly added, ‘Of course you did, Bella. And to some extent, you will. I know you. But, yes, sweetheart, you can expect a lot to change and not everything will go according to your plan.’
‘Right…’ she said quietly.
‘But I’m here to help and to look after you both. I promise.’
Bella reached for her glass and took a mouthful of lime and soda. It was definitely not helping as much as Don’s whisky and beer were helping him.
‘How about a second drink?’ he asked.
‘Or in your case a third,’ she reminded him. ‘You can’t just sit here and get sozzled.’
‘It’s solved a lot of problems for me in the past.’ Don was smiley and relaxed now, leaning back on the sofa beside her. He unbuttoned his coat, ran his fingers through his hair and looked at her with one eyebrow raised.
‘Oh, don’t give me that look,’ she said.
‘What look?’ he asked, eyebrow still cocked.
‘That “I’m sooo bad, you know you want to misbehave with me” look. I said I’d be back at the office.’
‘OK, go outside, phone them, tell them you’re stuck in traffic and you’ll be in early tomorrow.’
‘No. No. No. No.’ She was smiling at him now and feeling very sober by comparison.
‘OK, plan B,’ he offered, ‘we’ll have another relaxing half an hour here together, then we will go back to our tosspot offices and say we were delayed by aliens who forced us to drink in a faithfully replicated pub in outer space.’
‘Nope. I need to go and I’m going to order a cab for you.’ She said it firmly but she wasn’t at all angry with him. He had calmed her down and made her feel better about everything.
‘You’re no fun, Bella. But that’s why I married you, to stop me degenerating into a drunken bum.’
‘I am fun. But only at the right times in the proper places,’ she answered and couldn’t resist leaning over to kiss that face.
‘See?’ he said. ‘OK, sit with me for another fifteen minutes then we’ll do as you say.’
‘You total soak.’ She laughed at him as he picked up his pint and began to drink it at speed.
When he’d set it back on the table, he looked up at her, serious again, and said, ‘It is time to tell your folks about the baby.’
‘Yeah…’ she agreed reluctantly.
‘And time for you to tell your work.’
Now Don had really touched a nerve.
‘No!’ Bella exclaimed. ‘Absolutely not! Susan only works with superwomen. An admission of pregnancy is definitely going to be seen as an admission of weakness. You have to trust me on this. I’ve got a strategy.’
‘Of course you do. And OK, I won’t interfere,’ Don told her.
But, really, after this afternoon, Bella wasn’t quite so confident about her strategy of carry on completely as normal until the very last minute and then go back to work as soon as humanly possible. Maybe… she thought of the grainy black and white photo of their baby tucked into her bag… maybe it wasn’t going to be quite that simple.