LUKA (The Rhythm Series, Book 2) (26 page)

“Just give us a couple of minutes,” one of the nurses said diplomatically as Sarah refused to look at me.

We were all ushered from the room as nurses appeared, talking cheerfully. I watched as Beth was carried out of sight.

Mrs. Lintort sat in an ugly plastic chair in the corridor, while Seth rested his hand on her shoulder.

“Shall I get you a cup of tea, Mum?”

“That would be wonderful, thank you, dear.”

“Luka, you want anything?”

I shook my head.

He looked at us warily, then shrugged and walked away.

My knees felt weak and I was glad the wall behind propped me up.

I’m a father
.

My chest flooded with warmth, with such an intense and visceral love for my child that it was hard to breathe. Tears pricked my eyes and my mouth stretched in a wide smile. Was I crying or laughing? I didn’t know.

I’d lived in the present, the here and now, for so many years. But now I had to think about the future—for my daughter’s sake.

When I opened my eyes, Mrs. Lintort was studying my face, a questioning look in her eyes. I met her gaze and stared right back.

There was nothing to say. She’d made it very clear what she thought of me. And yeah, I pretty much hated her.

I slid into a chair and let my head rest in my hands, wondering how my great plan would work now.

We sat in silence: the father and grandmother of that tiny, screwed up bundle of life. There are worse starts in the world, but it wasn’t the best either.

Seth returned with two large paper cups of tea, and sat talking with his mother quietly, discussing Sarah, ignoring me.

I risked a quick glance at him. He looked the same, except for the tiredness and worry etched on his face. I missed his smile and I missed his stupid jokes. I missed his arms around me, our bodies bucking against each other in the night. I was a fool to think I could want the shallow imitation of that. With Sarah.

He caught my gaze and his eyes filled with regret. And then he looked away.

He was always looking away.

After staring at the ceiling, the floor, the walls for twenty minutes, I was led to the unit where they kept the premature babies.

I saw Beth at once. She was lying in an oxygenated crib that reminded me of a fish tank. The nurse encouraged me forward.

“Do you want to hold her?”

“Can I?”

“Yes, of course.”

She picked her up carefully, showing me how to cradle Beth in my arms.

She weighed nothing at all, but I still felt the frightening weight of responsibility for this tiny, fragile life.

The first time I held my daughter, I was changed, altered, utterly transformed by the soft rush of love that filled me. Every molecule in my body was reconfigured with a fierce desire to protect her, to care for her, and above all to love her.

I felt drunk, giddy, dizzy with an unexpected joy.

I’m sure I had a ridiculous grin on my face as I rocked her in my arms.

“Hello, Beth. I’m very pleased to meet you. Can you say
očka?
Očka!
”

The nurse smiled indulgently. “I think I can guess, but what does that mean?”

I reddened slightly as I glanced up. “Um, it means daddy.”

“I thought so.”

A putrid smell rose up from Beth. I gave the nurse a horrified look, and she laughed.

“Oops! That must be a present for daddy.”

She took Beth gently from my arms, then looked at me appraisingly.

“Do you want to change her?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. I don’t think I’d know how.”

“You haven’t been to antenatal classes with your partner?”

“Yeah,”
once, because Sarah went to classes in the evening while I was working,
“but she’s so small. I might hurt her . . .”

“Relax. I’ll show you.”

And I changed my first diaper. It was disgusting. And the proudest moment of my life.

The nurse patted my hand.

“Not bad. You’d better go home and get some rest now. The Special Care Baby Unit opens at 10AM. You can come back then. Have you managed to get some time off work?”

I hadn’t even thought of that.

“No, she was so early . . . no, I . . . but I work evenings, so I can come tomorrow.”

“Bar work?”

“What?”

“Oh, you said you worked evenings?”

“I’m a dancer—I work evenings in a theater.”

She gave me a speculative look, so I rambled on hurriedly.

“In the West End. Do you know that show
The Bodyguard
?”

“Oh my God! You’re in that?”

“Just as a backup dancer.”

“Oh, wow, that’s amazing.”

We talked for a few more minutes as I reluctantly let her take Beth from me. But she was nice, reassuring, so I decided to get her a pair of tickets to the show to thank her.

When I went back to Sarah’s room, Seth and her mother were just leaving.

“She’s resting now.”

I ignored Mrs. Lintort and walked into the room, hearing her irritated huffing behind me.

I leaned down to kiss Sarah, but she turned her head away from me, so I kissed her cheek.

“She’s amazing,” I whispered. “And she has her mother’s eyes.”

For a moment, she held my gaze, but then she looked away again without speaking.

I was dismissed.

The days that followed . . . I don’t even have the words to describe the landslide of emotions that I felt every second of every hour. Sarah was a mess, constantly crying, struggling to express milk. Beth was being fed breastmilk through a tiny tube, although the doctor was hopeful she wouldn’t need that for more than a week.

Getting the milk in the first place was hard enough—I had no idea what would happen when Sarah tried to feed Beth herself.

I spent the mornings and most afternoons sitting with Beth and talking to her in English and Slovene, holding her for a few precious minutes each day. And she grew stronger, I could see it, and felt proud of her tiny strength.

I knew that Seth was visiting in the evenings while I was at work. Mrs. Lintort came for the first two days as well. We never spoke, but I respected her rights as a grandmother. I doubted that she respected mine as a father. I knew that would never happen, but I was trying to do the right thing.

After 48 hours, Sarah was allowed home. She chose to go to her mother’s. Beth would be in the Special Care Baby Unit for another two or three weeks.

I was at the hospital so often that the nurses became good friends, teaching me the things I needed to know before Beth came home. I learned to feed her, diaper her, play with her, but no one needed to teach me how to love her.

Where Beth’s home would be was undecided. Sarah was still at her mother’s and had barely spoken to me. Part of me wanted to deal with it head-on, but right now she wasn’t the woman I knew. I’d have to wait. Although, she’d barely spoken to anyone else either. I heard the words ‘postnatal depression’ used about her.

It hurt my heart that when she held Beth, I saw only fear in her eyes. She couldn’t see how amazing our daughter was. Ugly as sin, all purple and bony like a skinned rabbit, but with those beautiful eyes that made me think the world was a wonderful place.

Everyone at the theater was great, knowing that Beth’s premature birth had blindsided me. When they kept asking about Sarah and I didn’t have much to tell them, they figured out that things were really rocky with us, but it didn’t stop them buying a ton of toys, clothes and baby blankets. A whole lot of . . . stuff! Who knew that a baby packed a heavier suitcase than I did?

It was Christmas Eve when we were allowed to take Beth home. Mrs. Lintort wanted Sarah to take Beth to her house in Richmond, and I wasn’t invited. But for once, Sarah stood up to her mother and insisted on going back to Camden.

For one magical evening, we were a real family.

Sarah hadn’t been back to the apartment since Beth was born, so when she saw that I’d decorated it Slovenian-style with greenery and special garlands, which had been fucking difficult to find in London, but reminded me of Christmas with my
babica
, she looked so happy that I thought she’d cry. I’d even found a Polish bakery that made
potica
, a roll of sweetened bread that was halfway to being cake, and traditional in Slovenia.

And then I’d decided that the apartment needed a real fir tree, not one of those lame plastic ones like
babica
stored in a dusty box and brought out each year. So I’d bought a six-footer that I carried home over my shoulder, feeling like a lumberjack. Now the room smelled of winter and pine needles, and there was a small pile of wrapped presents at the base.

“Luka!” she breathed out, clutching Beth too tightly, making her squeal. “It’s wonderful.”

It was the most personal thing she’d said to me in weeks, but seeing her smile, it was worth all the misery. I’d missed my friend.

She leaned across and brushed her lips over my rough cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Thank you.

I’d gotten a tiny crib for Beth, and when we laid her in it, we were looking at our real Christmas miracle. We held hands, grinning like idiots, unable to believe that we’d created something so perfect.

And then Beth started crying.

“Oh my God, what does she want now?” Sarah asked, tension and fear in her voice.

“I don’t know,” I said, standing and plucking Beth out of her crib. “Food? Clean diaper? Maybe she just wants to see our tree,” and I cradled her in my arms, showing her the small white lights that decorated the branches.

The plaintive cries continued and a foul stench began to rise up from Beth.

“Definitely diaper,” I laughed, wrinkling my nose.

Sarah didn’t laugh. She reached into her huge baby bag, and laid the changing mat on the floor, with wipes and fresh diaper.

Beth was cleaned and changed carefully, Sarah staring down with a worried frown the whole time.

“She’s so small—I’m terrified something will happen to her,” she whispered.

“She’s going to be fine,” I said, parroting what the doctors and midwife had told us, although I shared every single one of her fears.

“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything! All you had to do was have an orgasm and put together a cheap crib.”

For a moment, angry silence hung in the air, then Beth started crying again.

“What
now?
” Sarah shouted.

I rocked Beth in my arms, but I had to admit, the volume of her cries was daunting. Then she spit up on my shoulder.

“Wow, that’s a lot of spit-up,” I said, appalled and impressed at the same time.

Beth kept crying, and I couldn’t help thinking that part of her was feeding off of Sarah’s tension. In the end, Sarah stormed out of the room in tears, saying she was showering and then going to bed. Alone.

That wouldn’t be anything new. Me and this couch had history.

Beth cried herself out, then her soft sleepy snuffles kept me company while I watched TV in a dull haze of tiredness. I placed her crib next to the couch and fell asleep.

For about an hour.

Then she started crying again. I sat up, rubbing my bleary eyes, fed her, burped her, changed her, rocked her back to sleep.

But every hour, on the hour, for the whole night Beth woke up screaming. I was tempted to get Sarah to take her turn, but what was the point when I was already awake?

By the time morning crept snail-like toward dawn, I was ready to call up someone about the Geneva Convention, because this torture couldn’t be right.

Sarah stumbled out of the bedroom, her hair sticking up and pillow creases on her cheek.

“Did she sleep at all?” she asked grumpily.

“Yeah, some. Not sure I did,” I yawned.

“I’ll make some coffee.”

God, I needed caffeine intravenously.

This day was going to be hard enough without being sleep deprived, too.

I was quickly realizing that parenthood meant a major shift in priorities. Everything was about Beth. Surprisingly, I found I didn’t mind.

I was in and out of the shower in two minutes, water still dripping from my hair as I pulled on a clean shirt and pants, ready to face the Lintort clan. Christmas lunch with the in-laws. Couldn’t wait.

Sarah was trying to nurse Beth when I walked into the living room. Her pajama top was yanked up, and my eyes widened at the size of her nipples. They were huge and distended, looking more like pacifiers than a woman’s breasts.

“I feel like crap warmed up. That baby is sucking the life out of me.” She looked up at me tearfully. “It’s not what I thought it would be,” she whispered. “And I can’t do
this!
”

She gestured to her tits.

“It
hurts!
Do you know what that bitch of a midwife said to me? ‘You’ll be alright once your nipples leather up a bit.’ Oh my God! Really?”

I winced, my inner voice admitting that motherhood was not pretty.

“Hey, it’s new for both us. You’re doing great.”

“No, I’m not!” she shouted, the word ending on a yelp as she plucked her nipple from Beth’s mouth. “No, I’m not! It’s so easy for you!”

And she burst into tears again.

She shoved a crying Beth into my arms and ran from the room.