Midwife in the Family Way (12 page)

She caught a glimpse of her cheeks in the mirror, rosy pink like her slightly swollen lips, and she toyed again with the idea that he truly did find her necessary for his happiness.

Some time during the night when he had been sleeping beside her, she too had seen the moon and it had dusted the harsh lines of his face with a softness that had clutched at her heart. She'd wished she could say yes to his proposal and all he promised her; she even considered the idea that if the results came back as she expected, if she was positive, then she could call it off. Just so she could pretend she could be Gianni's wife for an hour or two to see how it felt.

But it wouldn't be fair. Or sensible, and she couldn't guarantee he wouldn't guess what she intended.

She bundled the sheet up, placed it on the bathroom stool and slipped into the huge shower. The hot water cascaded over her shoulders and she closed her eyes. Her body ached, she was a little stiff and tender and intimate moments she'd shared with Gianni came back to her in erotic, blushing detail as she stood there and soaped her breasts and belly.

It had come to the end. Finished, because today was the day. Every day she'd counted down to the end of not knowing. To having no choice but to accept her fate. The fate of Grace. The fate of their unknown baby. And by proxy the fate of her love for Gianni. Suddenly she didn't want him to see her in the shower.

No matter that they'd spent a delightful episode there during the night; this morning was a new, momentous
day and she needed to create distance before she caved in and told him what was happening. Hastily she turned off the water and dried herself in a huge towel before slipping on the thick white robe that hung behind the door.

When she opened the bathroom door she found the maid had been. How had he achieved that so quickly? But the bed was fresh and turned down, in case…what?

With breakfast laid out on the table on the spacious veranda overlooking the Brisbane River, Gianni finished his phone conversation when she reappeared.

‘Bonguiorno.'
The warmth in his eyes did strange things to her already slightly nauseated stomach but she decided that breakfast was a necessity, given the day she was going to have.

‘Good morning again, Gianni.' Then she clarified her day so there could be no confusion. ‘I have an appointment at noon and afterwards I'll visit my parents again, but I'd like to go on my own.' She looked up. ‘My plans should take an hour or two after lunch. Is it acceptable for you to leave for Lyrebird Lake after that?'

He tilted her head, unable to miss the change in her. ‘You are very businesslike after your shower, Emma.'

She avoided his eyes. ‘I have a big day ahead.'

‘Anything you'd like to discuss?' He was watching her. Sensing her evasion.

She picked up her coffee cup and took a sip of the warm liquid and grimaced at the strong taste. ‘No. Thank you.'

‘Then eat. I will shower.' He glanced around for his watch and picked it up. ‘Perhaps I could drop you off at your appointment.'

She shook her head. ‘I'd rather you didn't. I'll catch a taxi.'

He frowned but finally nodded. ‘You may leave your things here as I have taken the room for the rest of the day for a meeting after lunch.'

‘It makes it easier if I know I'm not holding you up. So it would work if I saw you back here this afternoon.'

He shrugged at her stubbornness. ‘As you wish. I will arrange a taxi when you're ready to leave.'

T
HE
taxi pulled up outside the glass-and-steel building in the middle of Brisbane. She wondered, not for the first time, why a building you would associate with life-changing events should look so ordinary. For Emma it was as if it hid the secrets of the world behind those blank windows that soared up to the sky.

It had been easier than she'd thought to shake Gianni, and she squashed the traitorous thoughts that wondered if perhaps it would have been better if she hadn't. Of course she should do this on her own. It was something she'd tried not to imagine doing and there was an almost strange relief that after today she wouldn't have to dread it again. What would be would be.

‘Sit down, Emma. Nice to see you again.' Jenny Bloom was a thin-faced brunette with a severe bob and the warmest brown eyes Emma had ever seen.

‘Hi, Jenny.' Emma settled herself and discreetly inhaled an extra-big breath to settle her nerves.

‘Didn't bring anyone?'

‘No. I wanted some time to myself to think about it.'

Jenny nodded. ‘Fair enough.' She shuffled some papers on her desk, withdrew an envelope and then stood up. ‘Would you like me to leave while you read that?' She reached over and offered the envelope to Emma.

Emma's heart seemed to be thumping in her ears, not her chest, and she automatically took the envelope, though gingerly, as if it were a time bomb. In a way it was.

A letter bomb that could hold her and her daughter's, and now her and Gianni's future. She should have brought him. The realisation that this was one hundred per cent Gianni's business arrowed uncomfortably into her heaving emotions. But it was too late now.

She looked at Jenny. ‘Do you know what's in there?'

If anything, Jenny's eyes grew warmer. ‘Yes. I do.'

Emma couldn't tell anything from the counsellor's face and she guessed she'd had plenty of practice at poker. ‘Then how about you tell me?'

Jenny nodded and sat down. ‘The results came in on Friday, as I said.' She paused and stared straight at Emma. ‘As you know, the laboratory analysis comes in two cag repeat numbers. Your mother's numbers were a seventeen and a forty-four. Therefore she did have the HD gene as forty-four is above the thirty-six cut-off for inevitable disease process.' Without more ado, she went on, ‘Your numbers are 17 and 17, which means you and
your children are not at risk of having the Huntington's gene.'

Sudden nausea came out of nowhere. Emma clamped her lips shut and inhaled desperately through her nostrils. Slowly her head cleared and her stomach settled. But she still didn't know what to think. The expected bloom of relief, the explosion of joy that she was safe from the gene, as were Grace and the baby, the incredible dropping of an enormous weight, didn't come.

All she could do was stretch her face into a caricature of a smile and offer it to Jenny. What she felt was a grey wall of sadness that seemed to sink over her. She, out of all her family, would be free of the spectre yet more tied to it than any of the others by watching and worrying for them. She felt like a survivor from the
Titanic
.

She'd never felt so alone in her life and Emma ached to have Gianni beside her. Her hand in his. Drawing on his strength, which she knew he would have offered. She realised Jenny was speaking but no sound could penetrate her isolation yet. Slowly the world returned and she hoped relief would come later.

‘It's okay, Emma.' Jenny watched her with compassion and no judgement. ‘You don't have to be thrilled and it's natural to think of your family. Are you sure there's no one I can call?'

She almost said it. Almost asked for him—but then remembered he had a business meeting. Where would she start in explaining why she hadn't asked him to come? How would she tell him she'd been? She closed her eyes and tried to think what she would have done
if there had been no Gianni. Incredible how hard that was. Her mind cleared.

‘I'll go and see Mum and Dad.' She looked around the office and surprisingly it still looked the same. Nothing momentous had happened in the room, so nothing had changed. Something momentous had only happened to her.

Late that afternoon, when Gianni saw Emma enter the suite, he knew something had occurred. Something large in her life. Something she had excluded him from.

His first thought was the baby but she had no signs that her issues were physical. The emotional stress was plain to see and his stomach sank at the reality of his own guilt. His fault. He'd done this.

It must be that again she regretted their night together, and because he had grown to love her he began to wonder if it would be better for him to leave. For good. Of all things, he wanted Emma to be happy.

‘Does the fact that we spent the night together make you feel so bad that you cannot be happy, Emma? What can I do to replace the smile on your face?'

‘I need my space, Gianni. I have a lot on my mind and I can't think when I am with you.'

‘I can see you are burdened. Why can't you share those burdens with me?'

She shook her head. ‘That's not how I do it.'

His eyes narrowed with exasperation. ‘Perhaps you should learn. For both of us. For our unborn child.'

She sighed so heavily he wanted to lay her head
against his chest. Why would she not let him in? ‘Our child is the one dilemma I can't see my way past.'

‘Then let me worry for you.' He sat her down on the lounge and took her hand in his. The words came heavily and his heart ached because it seemed she could never be happy with him. Perhaps if he left her to think, things would change, but he wasn't sure any more. He squeezed her hand. It was the best he could do for the moment.

He looked down at her. ‘So tell me what happened in Brisbane that changed you.'

Emma didn't want to. Didn't want to face this moment and admit the doubts and the lack of faith in Gianni she'd had. Now she could see her fears were unfounded but her own confusion had masked that. Until too late. Too late to change the way she'd planned her day.

But it was the time to be brave. She'd lied to him by omission this morning. She wouldn't lie to him again.

‘Today I picked up the results from my genetic testing.'

He didn't say anything so she stumbled on. Saying it quickly and for the first time out loud. ‘I don't have the gene.'

His face was expressionless. Too expressionless. ‘You found this out today?'

His response wasn't what she expected. It was almost as if the results were unimportant.

She said it again. For both of them. ‘I don't have the genetic predisposition for Huntington's disease.'

‘Of course it is good you are free of that worry.' He
brushed that off. ‘But you went for these results on your own? While I was this close to you?' His black brows snapped together, and she tightened her hold on his hand in case he pulled away.

Her voice faltered. ‘Afterwards, I thought about how it would have been nice to have you there.'

‘Nice?' He shook his head as he assimilated her choice to exclude him. ‘Nice to be present when the fate of the woman I love and my child is decided?'

He didn't love her. He was just saying that. He shook his head again and her stomach sank at the degree of his distress. ‘I agree,' he said coldly. ‘I do believe it would have been—' the sarcasm thickened ‘—
nice
to be there, myself.'

He looked down at her and she shivered at the bleakness in his eyes. He peeled her fingers away. Untangled them one by one as if they offended him. ‘You really don't need me at all, do you, Emma? You want to be your own person. Alone with Grace. With your own decisions, no matter if they are wrong or right.'

‘I should have asked you to come.'

‘You forget, I have told you of my love for you. I do not have the luxury of turning that emotion off.' His eyes lingered on her face and he shook his head. ‘Like you seem to be able to do.'

Then he said the words that sent a coldness along her spine that she doubted would ever go. ‘I will leave next week and not bother you. But I must have access to my child, must have news of your pregnancy, and of
course financially I will support you in whatever you need.'

He was leaving. She'd achieved what she'd thought she'd wanted. Well, if he left, he wasn't paying her for having his child. It was her child, too.

She had her pride. ‘I don't want your money. That won't be necessary.'

He stood up and looked down at her. ‘For me it is. You have no choice. You are not giving me an inch, Emma. This I will not be swayed from.'

It was all too much. She couldn't take much more before she dissolved into a weeping frenzy that once started she doubted she'd be able to stop. Would this day never end?

She couldn't take any more, and mostly because she knew she was at fault. ‘As you wish,' she said, and stumbled into the bathroom to hide her face.

W
HEN
they picked up Grace after a silent trip back from Brisbane, Emma alighted quickly and knelt to scoop up her daughter in her arms.

She hugged Grace with a fierceness that made Gianni's chest hurt with all that he had lost. After a minute Grace wriggled free as if overwhelmed by the unexpected fervour of her mother's embrace, and he saw Emma's flinch of distress.

He understood her anguish. It was what she had done to him.

Even though he was not a part of her life, that Grace was free of the spectre that had haunted Emma was a reason to smile, if a trifle grimly, at his own exclusion.

‘Hello, Grace.' He got out of the car to take her little suitcase. When he bent down to shake her hand she leaned forward and unexpectedly kissed both his cheeks in the Continental fashion. Diverted, Gianni smiled. ‘And who has been teaching you Italian customs?'

‘Nana and I watched a movie and there were Italian people in it. That's what the people did when they met.
I asked and Nana said that was how people greeted each other in your country.'

‘That is true. I thank you.' He had tilted Emma's seat forward so the little girl could slip past it. Once in the vehicle, she bounced around like a little cricket in the back until her mother told her to put her seat belt on. The old Gianni would have winced at the risk to fine leather—the new one smiled with amusement.

‘I've never been in a sports car before,' Grace chattered as Emma seated herself again and Gianni shut her door. He could hear her ask if the car went fast but he didn't hear Emma's answer. He could have told her it did.

When he climbed back in behind the wheel, Grace asked where Gianni's house was because apparently her grandmother had shown her a map of Italy.

‘In the outskirts of Portofino, what was once a small Italian fishing village. Now it is also a tourist resort in the province of Genoa on the Italian Riviera. I have a beautiful home.' He paused and glanced at Emma. ‘I had hoped to take you and your mother there one day.'

The glance he received from Emma would have stripped paint off the inside of his hire car but he was over guarding her sensibilities. It was the truth. And she was the one who prevented such a thing. When he glanced in the rear-vision mirror he could see that Grace thought it was a fine idea.

‘I'd like to see Portofino,' Grace piped up, and after a pause she looked at her mother's stiff neck and subsided.

Emma didn't speak once on the short ride home but Grace made up for it. Even in the heavy mood of the car, mostly caused by Emma's silence, Gianni found it a novelty to listen to the chatter of an excited child as she discussed the circus and her visit.

‘Thank you for the lift,' Emma said stiffly when they pulled up at her house. She didn't wait for him to open her door and Gianni narrowed his eyes at her. What had happened in Brisbane would lie between them until it was discussed again because the change in their rapport had been catastrophic. But this time he would not be the one who chased her. And time was running out.

By the time he was out of the car she had extricated Grace from her seat belt and bustled her up the path to the house without a backward glance. Grace turned and waved, and he waved back.

Emma's coldness left a knot in his chest that made him frown. He closed her door thoughtfully and returned to his car.

The next afternoon, after work, Emma dragged her feet up the path and under the rose arch to her front door. When she was inside she sank back against the panels and kicked off her shoes. In stockinged feet she trailed across to the kitchen window and gazed out. She had done so many absent-minded things today that if she hadn't had the results she'd be sure she was coming down with her mother's disease.

She'd avoided Gianni too successfully and began to doubt if she could continue for another four days. Even
though Angus and Mia returned on Friday and then he'd be gone for ever.

The greyness she'd caught like a virus after the results and the resulting emotional battle with Gianni had sapped her strength and all she wanted to do was sit on the veranda and gaze out over the lake to find some peace.

She stripped off her stockings and filled a glass with water before she wandered towards the back door. Such was her state of mind she even left the water by the sink.

No flutter of apprehension in her belly warned her. No prickling of hairs on her neck and certainly no noise. Emma's mind remained totally focussed on the decision she'd made last night. And with Grace not due home for fifteen minutes she could allow herself to be as miserable as she liked for a few brief minutes.

She pushed open the old screen door onto the veranda. The soft sole of her foot lifted, exposed and unprotected, when instead of the hard wood of the veranda as she'd felt a million times before she felt the sinuous circular thickness of something that contracted under her instep and then the sudden sharp pinpricks of fire as the snake struck.

The four-foot reptile arched its head and struck again as she stumbled backwards into the house and the last things she saw was the flicker of crimson under the black belly as the snake's tail disappeared off the veranda and into the bushes.

Red-belly, she thought still with icy-cold horror and a
mounting flare of panic, but there was just a glimmer of relief. It wasn't the deadly poisonous and vicious brown snake there'd been sightings of lately. Thank God, and thanks also that it had been her and not Grace that had been struck.

Her brain, mashed from shock, stared unseeingly at where the snake had disappeared. On one leg she twisted to stare at the twin bite marks on her heel and ankle. The pain was building and she needed to bind her leg and stop movement. Movement would pump the poison around her body. Around her baby.

That fear clutched at her heart.

Emma blinked away stinging tears and reached for her mobile in her pocket but discovered she'd left it at work when she'd turned it off that morning. More brain mush.

All she could think was she wanted Gianni but her mind couldn't process a plan of action.

She couldn't stay standing there and she needed a bandage. Her head felt funny but it was probably the shock of the bite. She lowered herself carefully onto the floor and stretched her leg out in front of her.

She needed a bandage. With a snakebite victim you were supposed to bandage from the bite down and then up again and then down again. Enough to compress but not enough to occlude blood flow. And not move. That was all she could remember. But how did you get the bandage if you weren't allowed to move?

The pain shot in tendrils of acid-like burning up her ankle and she wiped her forehead with the back of her
hand as the sweat trickled into her eyes. Nausea hovered and she glanced around for something in case she was sick. How on earth did one throw up without moving? she thought mistily.

All these years she'd worried about the onset of Huntington's and here she was almost dying from a snakebite, though people didn't usually die from black snakes, unless they frightened themselves to death, and she could see the danger of that.

Her heart beat at her ribs like a caged bird trying to escape, and she forced herself to slow her breathing into some semblance of control.

Black snakes didn't usually attack unless provoked and she guessed she must have upset it when she'd stood on it. But she'd never had one at the door before. What if it had been a King brown? She'd be pushing up daisies before she knew it.

She tried not to think about poison soaking into her blood like ink into chalk. She looked around at the kitchen. She had a strange perspective from sitting on the floor and decided it was what infants saw when they crawled around.

She wouldn't have minded a sip of that water she'd left by the sink but the cupboards seemed to loom away from her and she wasn't game to move. It was scary sitting here on the floor by herself. And uncomfortable. And lonely.

Was this what her life was always going to be like in moments of crisis because she'd locked everyone else out? She knew she didn't like it. The lonely interim
while she waited for the end that would come in some form—though not as she'd imagined it the last eight years. She could see she'd concentrated on the destination of her life more than the journey but was it something she could change now that she knew her destiny did not lie with the Huntington's gene? It was certainly something Gianni wanted her to change. She could have had a lovely affair with Gianni after all. Maybe even a lovely marriage. Silly fool.

The front door opened and she heard Grace's step.

Thank goodness. ‘Down here, darling.'

Grace dropped her satchel beside Emma and knelt down. ‘Why're you on the floor?'

Emma looked again at her heel and ankle and licked impossibly dry lips. ‘A snake bit me.'

Grace's eyes widened and then screwed up in fright. ‘What type?'

Emma reached out her hand and gripped Grace's arm. ‘It's okay. A red-belly.'

Grace's head swivelled. ‘Where?'

Emma pointed to her foot. ‘On my ankle.' Grace shook her head and kept scanning the room and Emma understood the question this time. ‘On the veranda. It's gone now.'

Grace sighed with relief and then looked quickly at her mother. ‘Are you going to be all right?' She didn't wait for an answer as she stood up straight. ‘I'll get Gianni.'

How strange her daughter thought of Gianni first,
too. And not Andy or Ben or her other grandfather. ‘I have his mobile number in my bag if you'll bring it.'

Grace was back before she'd almost finished speaking. Emma stroked her arm. ‘It's okay. Good girl. I'll be fine.'

She rummaged in her bag but couldn't find the number. She knew it was there. Her head swam but shock and the nausea she'd had all day more than accounted for it. The paper crackled and she pulled it out and Grace snatched it and ran for the phone in the bedroom.

Gianni was about to leave work when his phone rang. He flipped it open with unusual impatience. He wanted to see Emma.

‘Gianni?' A little girl's voice. ‘It's Grace.'

His heart rate picked up at the fear in her voice. ‘Grace? What's wrong?'

‘Mummy's been bitten by a red-belly snake.'

It felt as though a boxer had stepped up to him and hit him as hard as he could in the centre of his chest. Then his heart started again. A snake. Not again. His worst nightmare and a vicious irony.

He swallowed and cleared his throat. ‘Grace. Where is she?'

Grace sniffed and he could tell she was trying to hold back tears. ‘Just inside the back door. At home.'

‘Hang on, little one. I'm on my way.' He looked up at Christine, who would share the evening shift with Andy. ‘I'm bringing Emma in, she's been bitten by a
red-and-black snake. Your Australian snakes. How bad are they?'

‘Red-belly black snake.' Christine rummaged in the emergency kit. ‘Not usually too bad for adults. Go bring her in.'

 

Gianni brought the bandages Christine had thrust into his hands. He came through the house at speed, with Grace glued to his back after she'd opened the door for him. Emma sat and smiled tiredly when she saw him. Emma was alive and conscious and his breath eased out.

To Emma he was the most beautiful sight in the world.

‘Hello there, little Emma,' he said, and crouched down beside her. Her eyes widened to drink in the sight of him. He whistled silently when he saw the twin spots of blood and the gradual redness that was surrounding the bites.

‘Nasty.' He slid the bandage out of its pack and began to bandage her ankle, down her foot and back up again. ‘We'll do this and then I'll take you in. I still think I can get you to hospital quicker than the ambulance will get here.'

She winced as he bandaged over the area and his hands paused and then gentled before he continued. ‘Sorry.'

She moistened her lips. ‘I trod on it. Accidentally.'

He continued his bandaging. ‘So that's why it bit you.'

She nodded. ‘Twice, I think, and then it shot away.'

‘Christine says they'll have a snake venom detection kit ready, but asked if you're still sure it was red underneath.'

‘Yes.' She touched his arm. She could see he was pale with fear for her. ‘It's not the worst snake and it might not have injected much poison.'

He nodded grimly. ‘Not like the brown apparently, who loves to dump as much into your bloodstream as possible. I hate snakes. I'll be pleased when we get confirmation you are safe.' He looked over his shoulder at Grace and lowered his voice. ‘You are both safe.' Then he scrutinised her face. ‘You're looking pale and sweaty.'

She breathed out heavily. ‘I feel sick. It was all so quick.' She too glanced at Grace. ‘And I'm scared, too.''

‘I feel sick and I wasn't bitten.' He smiled grimly at her. ‘I'd rather it had bitten me than you.'

He was serious, she realised. ‘Me, too. But you've had enough bad luck with them.'

‘An understatement. Now you sound more like your self.' He finished bandaging and tucked the end in. ‘Right, then.' He reached down and lifted her off the floor as if she were as light as one of Louisa's scones. When he was upright she was in his arms against his chest.

They should have got the ambulance. ‘Your back. I'm heavy!'

‘Spoken like a true nurse.' He smiled and turned to see that Grace was behind them. ‘Come along, Grace, we'll take Mummy to the hospital, but we'll use her car. Can you find her keys, please?'

Grace opened the screen door at the front and closed the main door after them as she followed. She rummaged in Emma's bag as she walked.

‘I've been wanting to carry your mother like this for a while,' he said over his shoulder. ‘It's a shame we have to go to the hospital.'

‘Why do men like women to be helpless?' Emma couldn't help the tinge of sarcasm in her voice but she was beginning to see why women liked it. Incredible how much better she felt already with Gianni's arms around her.