Chapter 28
‘They need to do some scans to see if anything’s broken,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll make a few calls – get you bumped up to the top of the queue in the morning.’
‘Thanks so much, John. I really appreciate it,’ Mum said sincerely. How strong were the drugs she’d been given? Dad smiled at her.
I’d messaged Dad on the way to the ED and he’d been waiting for us when we arrived.
And apparently triage didn’t apply if you were related to a senior doctor because we’d been taken straight to a private room and Mum had been stuffed with painkillers.
Though there had still been hours of waiting – even Dad couldn’t magic up a queue jump for an X-ray on a Saturday afternoon.
An emergency doctor, after conferring with Dad, had declared that Mum was going to have to be admitted and stay overnight.
I’d internally groaned. Obviously I wanted Mum to have the best care. But I’d successfully managed to avoid hospitals for over a decade and now, for the second time in as many weeks, I was stuck in a place I really didn’t want to be.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ I asked Dad when it was finally just the three of us.
‘Things fracture, they break. We fix them,’ he replied without looking away from Mum.
‘Great,’ I said, biting my bottom lip. Before I knew what was happening, Dad had wrapped one of his big hands around mine and Mum had reached up and grabbed my other one from her bed. I froze.
‘I’ll make sure she gets the best care—’
‘Of course I’ll be fine—’
They both tried to reassure me at the same time.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said. I coughed to clear my throat then pulled my hands free of their respective clasps.
‘I’m just going to check on those scans,’ Dad said, which left Mum and me alone together for the first time that day.
The industrial-strength painkillers she’d been given had evidently kicked in because she no longer looked grey with pain, just tired. Now that I knew she was comfortable, I felt concern for her transform into something else.
‘What were you doing in that stupid ball?’ I asked, my voice almost a whisper. ‘You were wearing heels!’
‘It was a low wedge,’ Mum said dismissively. ‘It was your special day – I wanted to join in. I didn’t want to stay on the sidelines.’
‘Well, if you wanted to participate, you should have been prepared. Like Jane was. Like everyone else was. You don’t just get to decide halfway through to sub in and mess up everyone else’s fun.
God, Mum – you just do exactly what you want.
You never think about who might get hurt,’ I said, unable to stop now I’d started.
‘But people do get hurt! You got hurt. And you made my day about you !’
‘I make everything about me?’ Mum said, matching my tone.
‘Stones in glass houses. You got drunk at my birthday dinner. And now I’m in a hospital bed and you’ve picked a fight.
And I don’t make everything about me. In fact, Hamish and I didn’t even have a proper wedding, a real celebration, so we wouldn’t upset anyone. ’
‘Well, maybe you should call Hamish. How would he feel about the fact you’re batting your eyelashes at your exhusband while he’s on the other side of the world visiting his daughter?’
‘Is that really an accusation you want to make?’ Mum asked sharply.
We stared at each other, both of our mouths open in disbelief that the other had stooped so low.
It was like I was a sixteen-year-old again and Mum and I were having one of our shouting matches.
We’d go head-to-head over something stupid, like a curfew.
Then we’d apologise to each other and be hysterically laughing minutes later.
But we never fought like this anymore. After she left, we’d barely spoken for a year.
She lived with Hamish, and I lived with Dad.
Then we’d slowly drifted back into each other’s orbits and rebuilt a relationship.
But it was a very different dynamic from what we’d had – we held each other at a civil distance, where emotions always stayed in a calibrated range.
‘Mum, are you okay?’ Nick appeared at the door, breathless.
He was in scrubs, the lanyard from his hospital still around his neck, his auburn hair mussed in a way that made me suspect it had been recently under a scrub cap.
His work clothes suited him – I couldn’t imagine him in a suit or high-vis.
Even though it looked like he’d raced here and was worried about Mum, he emanated a practised aura of calm and competence.
‘I just had a fall,’ Mum said in her most reassuring voice.
‘I thought you were meant to be at Matt’s buck’s?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, I was really hoping to get down there but—’
‘You had to work,’ I finished his sentence before he could.
‘Becs, I don’t decide when a patient goes into labour,’ Nick said in the tone he’d once used to explain to me why, because he was so much older, he got the front seat, the better bedroom, control of the remote.
‘I can stay with Mum. You go back to your party. Stella’s put so much work into it. It’s not fair to her if you—’
‘That’s what’s not fair to Stella?’ I felt something that had been stretched too tightly inside me snap as frustration ratcheted up to anger.
It felt like my eyebrows were almost at my hairline.
He was really telling me off for leaving Stella in the lurch.
Was he blind to the fact that the struggle of trying to care for both a newborn and preschooler single-handedly had left her an exhausted wreck?
Did he not understand how unfair it was that he gave all his time and energy to his work and almost nothing to his wife and family?
Were the Hippocratic Oath and hypocrisy a package deal?
‘Becs...’ Nick began to speak but a nurse appeared at the door. I could see her take the room’s temperature.
‘I’ll come back in five to take your blood pressure,’ she said to Mum after a moment, then quickly left. I was glad she wasn’t taking my blood pressure, which I knew would be through the roof. I turned back to Nick.
‘Let me translate this into the language the Evans family understands. Patient presents—’
‘Becs...’ Nick tried again, with a weary sigh, but I was on a roll.
‘Patient presents as a mother of two with head and muscle aches. Difficulty concentrating. Extreme fatigue. Dehydration. Anxiety. Overwhelm.’
‘Take a deep breath. I can see you’re overwhelmed right now,’ Nick said in an irritatingly calm voice, ignoring everything I’d said. He spoke as if I was one of his patients – except instead of birthing a baby, it was a bouncing bundle of histrionics.
‘The answer is maternal exhaustion. Or for those of us without medical training... leaving my friend, your wife, to sink,’ I said.
I turned to face Mum, who looked bemused (or possibly high from her pain meds). ‘I leave you in capable hands.’
I stalked out of the room with as much dignity as was possible while wearing a leotard.
By the time I’d walked through kilometres of hallway to reach the hospital’s main lobby, I’d calmed down.
My finger hovered over Matt’s name on my phone’s screen.
I didn’t want to interrupt his night of fun, just because mine had been cut short.
But he’d also told me that he was the person I was meant to call when things fell apart.
He picked up after a few short rings.
‘Do you want me to come home?’ he asked once I’d filled him in on the slightly dramatic end to the party. ‘I could see if an Uber could drive me back?’
‘No, no, I’m fine. I mean... I’m acting kind of like an emotionally incontinent person.
But hearing your voice is helping,’ I said.
His offer to be by my side if I needed him was like a windbreaker, protecting me from the squall of familial drama.
‘Anyway, I just wanted to check in. Let you know that I’m in the hospital,’ I said.
There was a pause.
‘Okay. I’ll keep my phone with me. Can you message me updates?’ he asked. I could imagine his eyes crinkling with concern, that he’d be running a worried hand through his silky hair.
‘Yeah, of course,’ I said. I heard some cheers in the background – Matt’s night was clearly heading towards a crescendo.
‘You go,’ I said. ‘Have fun!’
‘Give my love to Helena,’ he said. ‘And sorry about your hen’s.’
‘I feel bad for Lily and Stella, they put so much work into today,’ I said. Nick’s comment about Stella might have been hypocritical, but it still stung.
‘Aaron just showed me a photo of the two of them at the hotel with a tray of food in the king bed you were all meant to end up in. They’re having a great night,’ he said.
‘That’s good,’ I said, relieved. Stella and Lily both had grandparents helping them with their kids this weekend, and I was glad that the hen’s day had, at the very least, been a chance for them to have a break from the churn of their lives. ‘Now go – enjoy your night!’
I ended the call then checked the time – it was almost nine. If I hustled to the hotel, they’d rally. But it was also past both of their usual bedtimes and they more than deserved a night of uninterrupted sleep.
I decided I’d say goodnight to Dad then go home. I wandered the hospital corridors towards his office, muscle memory taking over.
I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. I used to love it when Dad brought me to work with him.
The magic of the doctors and nurses helping to heal every person who walked through the hospital’s doors – with stitches, medicine and plaster – had seemed more potent than the stuff in the Harry Potter books I’d abandon on Dad’s office couch so I could sneak through all the wards.
The maladies solved with X-rays and MRIs seemed far more interesting than any of the mysteries I watched with Grandma Evelyn.
When I was little, I felt like all you could want from life was at hospitals. They were a complete world – birth, death, drama, food. I could understand when I was there why some doctors barely left, why Dad barely left.