Chapter 16 #2
‘Billie, I can’t tell you what to do, but you realise it’s important to go to these appointments?
If there’s a problem with you or baby, these are good opportunities to pick it up.
I’m not trying to scare you, but I’d hate for there to be something wrong and we didn’t know about it until it was too late to do anything.
Unless being scared is the reason you don’t want to go? ’
‘I told you, I wasn’t feeling great.’
‘OK…’ Zoe said slowly. ‘So that’s twice you weren’t well enough to go. Should I be worried about that? It seems a lot, doesn’t it?’
‘You’ve never been ill more than once?’
‘But it’s a coincidence that both times you were ill were the days of your scans. Billie, you no-showed at one of my clinic appointments too. I only want to know that there isn’t something deeper going on. I can’t help you if you keep it to yourself.’
Billie gripped her phone as she rounded on Zoe. ‘There’s nothing wrong! Stop saying it! Stop talking to me like I’m going mental!’
‘I never said that.’
‘It sounds like it to me.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I’m only trying to understand what’s going on.’
‘Nothing’s going on – I was ill.’
‘Will you do me a favour?’ Zoe asked after a pause.
‘When the next appointment comes through from the hospital, if you’re not up to going, will you phone and tell me?
Even if you don’t want to call the ultrasound department, please tell me.
Or your dad so he can tell me. It’s important, as your midwife, that I know.
And I realise this sounds patronising, and I’m afraid it has to, because I need to get through to you how important this stuff is.
I have to know, and I have to somehow find a way to make sure you go to these appointments, and I have to be sure that when the baby comes, you’re going to be in the right place, mentally, to cope. Because if not?—’
‘You can’t take my baby away!’
‘Nobody wants to, but you have to understand that, even though we’re friends?—’
‘We’re not friends.’
‘—even though we’re sort of friends because we’re neighbours, my first duty is to the protection of you and the baby. I have to do what’s right no matter how I might personally feel about it. So believe me, Billie, if I have any doubts, any at all, I will act on them.’
Billie stared at her. It was hard to tell what was going on behind her eyes. ‘Is that a threat?’ she asked finally.
‘No; it’s a promise.’
‘Dad!’ Billie yelled.
Alex appeared at the door almost immediately, and Zoe motioned for him to leave them again.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Give us another minute.’
‘We don’t need another minute,’ Billie said, but when Zoe asked him again to leave, he did.
Zoe took a deep breath and did the thing she hadn’t wanted to do. But her hand was being forced, and she couldn’t see any other way to get through.
‘I don’t have children,’ she began. ‘I’d love one, but I’ve never been lucky enough to carry a baby to term. I haven’t even had much luck getting pregnant in the first place.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Billie said, though she sounded as if she didn’t want to be sorry but couldn’t help herself. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘It’s nobody’s fault – certainly not yours.
For a while, I thought it was mine. I was pregnant, not so long ago, but I lost the baby in my second term.
That was hard. I thought if I’d done more, looked after myself better, worked less, eaten healthier…
all that stuff. Even though I know this job inside out, and if it were any other mother I’d be telling them they weren’t to blame, I couldn’t tell myself that. ’
‘You want me to take care because you think you didn’t?’
‘Sort of. I want you to take care because I want you to enjoy what I couldn’t have.
I want all my mums-to-be to have what I couldn’t.
I want them to do it for me because then at least I feel as if I mean something to someone.
Does that make sense? And I’m sure you’re finding it hard doing this alone, and I can imagine you’re scared, but the alternative is worse – take it from me. ’
Zoe drew a breath. Had she crossed a line?
Sharing something so personal with a woman in her care, laying it on the line like this – was it professional?
Probably not, but if it worked, Zoe would consider it had been a risk worth taking.
‘I don’t usually tell people…well, not the women I look after anyway.
I’m not even sure I should be telling you, but I have. I only hope it somehow helps.’
Billie was silent for a short while. Zoe looked towards the window, recognising that the younger woman needed time to process what she’d been told.
She had things to process of her own. It was true that she had her own rules about not sharing the loss of her baby, and the reasons were complicated.
This was the first time – other than having to explain to people who’d already known she was pregnant – that she’d told someone in her care about it.
Did she feel better for sharing? Had it lifted a weight?
She didn’t think so, because she didn’t think anything would ever do that, but she hoped some good might come from it.
If it helped change the way Billie felt about her own pregnancy, then that had to be good.
‘I am scared,’ Billie said finally. ‘I never asked to do this on my own. I didn’t even plan to get pregnant. I can’t do it without Luis.’
‘I know,’ Zoe said. ‘Nobody expects you to. Your dad wants to be there for you. I want to be there for you.’
‘It’s your job,’ Billie said with a dismissive waft of her hand.
‘Yes, it is, but there’s nothing in my job description that says I owe you anything once the baby is born.
Even then, I’m only a field away, and you can call on me any time for anything.
Yes, you will be bringing up baby as a single parent, but you don’t ever have to do it alone.
’ Zoe smiled, encouraged by the sense that Billie’s walls were lowering, ever so slightly.
‘There are other women locally who will be single mothers, and there are parent and baby groups in the village too. I know they probably sound boring, but would it hurt to give one a try? You might make a friend or two with people who understand what you’re going through. ’
Billie shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Billie…I need you to be honest with me, no matter how painful it is. Do you want to keep your baby? When he or she is born, do you want to keep them? Because if you feel it’s going to be too much, nobody would judge you.
It’s not a decision to be taken lightly – I’m not suggesting for a minute it is – but it is a decision that you are allowed to make. ’
‘I couldn’t do…It wouldn’t be right. It’s not fair.’
‘What’s not fair? Who wouldn’t it be fair to?
At the end of the day, you might not be as alone as you think, but you will be a mother, and that comes with responsibilities that you can’t get away from.
There’s no shame in admitting that you can’t face them – sometimes it shows the greatest love for your child to know that you can’t care for them and to give them a better chance with someone else who can. ’
Billie’s eyes were wide. She suddenly looked so much younger than her twenty-three years. ‘Do you think I should give the baby up?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying, and it’s not for me to say even if I had an opinion – which I don’t. I’m not entitled to one. I’m simply saying that if you think there’s only one way to go here, that’s not true.’
‘But Dad says?—’
‘It’s nobody’s choice but yours. Forget what anyone else has to say on the matter.
But I will ask you for one favour – whatever you decide, that little one growing inside you needs to be cared for, and that’s one responsibility only you can take on.
Please go to your appointments and let people help you to do that.
Your baby deserves the best start, even if that’s as far as your part in their life goes. ’
Billie nodded. ‘I’ll go to the next one, I promise.’
Zoe got up. ‘Thank you. I’ll ask the hospital to send one through…unless you’d rather phone the department and reschedule yourself?’
‘You can do it…if you don’t mind, I mean.’
Zoe watched her carefully. The act had been dropped.
She looked as scared as she’d admitted to – and ashamed.
It hadn’t been Zoe’s intention to do that, but if it was the only way to make her see that she had a duty to the baby she was carrying, then she’d have to deal with her part in that outcome.
She was only glad she didn’t have a colleague looking over her shoulder right now because she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d just done was professional.
As she left the living room, Alex came from the kitchen to meet her.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
Zoe shrugged. ‘She’s promised to go to her next one,’ she said in a low voice as she glanced back to the closed living-room door. ‘I can’t really do a lot more than that, so fingers crossed I’ve managed to get through.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Do you talk to her much?’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘About the future? About what it’s going to be like, your part in her life once the baby is born?’
‘She knows I’ll always be there for her. She’s my daughter – of course I will be.’
‘But do you say it? Because I don’t think she does know that. It seems obvious to you, but I don’t think it would hurt to make it crystal clear to her.’
Alex seemed offended, but he nodded anyway.
Zoe had definitely crossed a line this time, but she was tired, stressed and almost past caring.
Whatever she had to do to get this family on the right track, she would do.
They were far from dysfunctional – and she’d certainly come across a lot worse – but she could see that their relationship was strained in a way it didn’t need to be, if only they’d communicate better.
‘I’ll get the ultrasound department to send another appointment,’ she added, realising they were way past the point of worrying about confidentiality. ‘If you could look out for it and make sure Billie doesn’t forget she promised she’d go this time…’
‘I will. Thanks for coming over.’
Zoe left, emotionally drained. The truths of her own experiences she’d told Billie felt like truths she’d barely shared with anyone.
She’d never before admitted that so much of what she did as a midwife was coloured by the loss of her own baby, and yet it was.
She cared more than was good for her, and she panicked when she ought to have been calm.
She knew her job inside out, but there were things that worried her, even if more often than not they worked out.
It wasn’t only that. Billie’s plight had touched her in an unexpected way.
She couldn’t say what it was that felt so personal about it, but there was something.
Perhaps it was simply because she was a neighbour as well as a client, someone new to the area in the same way she was and so there was some sense of camaraderie, of shared experience.
Maybe, but it seemed too simple an explanation for something that felt so much more complicated.
As she marched towards her own cottage, the path marked out by the soft yellow lanterns Victor had installed for her, she tried not to work it out. Because she was certain that there was no answer to be found.