The Woman Before Me (19 page)

“I’m glad you’re here,” Mark said, standing a little closer than was comfortable.

She smiled weakly and saw with amusement that he wouldn’t need much encouragement to think he stood a chance with her. He was like a puppy dog.
To get through this party I just might have to drink more alcohol.
At least she could have a lie in tomorrow.

She shouldn’t have had so much to drink.

Cate was lying flat on the bed and the room was spinning. She prayed she wouldn’t be sick but the posters on the wall didn’t help – pictures of semi-clad women on motorbikes and one she recognised as a C-list celebrity.

“Drink this,” Mark said, handing her a glass of water. The mattress sagged as he sat beside her on the cheap slipperiness of the single duvet.

“Thanks, Mark. I really couldn’t have driven home.”

She had ended up in his bedroom, too intoxicated to drive, too drunk to care. But she told herself she could handle him; he was just a boy. As the water hit her stomach it churned.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

Mark grabbed the waste paper bin, half full with sweet wrappers and sock labels. Bending over, she vomited, and he put a hand on her back. She was too sick to push him away, as she brought up the bitter taste of regurgitated wine and cheese and pineapple. A sour taste coated her mouth, the dizziness not gone, and there was sweat on her forehead. She fell back on the bed.

Still with the bucket in his hand Mark fell back with her, and kissed her clammy face. She moved her head away, and he placed the bucket on the floor.

To her horror he started to unbutton his jeans. She groaned, thinking that she had brought this on herself.

“Mark,” she said feebly, “I’m not feeling well.”

He was down to his boxer shorts and she was amazed that despite just seeing her puke he had an erection.

Cate thought about Amelia, and the heat of shame made her feverish. What was she doing? For God’s sake, she wasn’t a teenager. She was a mother, and here she was, half-drunk, in some guy’s bedroom.

“Can I just hold you, Cate? Please?”

He was so pathetic that when he lay beside her on to the narrow bed she didn’t pull away. At least she was fully clothed. His hands clumsily wormed their way under her skirt, up her bare leg.

“Mark, I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

She pushed his hands away, tugging her skirt back down, but as she sat up her head violently spun, and she collapsed back onto the bed. She’d had more to drink than she’d thought.

His puppy dog eyes burned into her, his clammy arm over her breasts, as the nylon sheet wrapped around her legs. “Come on, Cate.” He lunged at her, his mouth open, and she saw some food caught in his front teeth, smelt a brewery on his breath. His weight pinned her down, and she tried to push him away but his hand burrowed under her top, clamped on her left breast. He started to squeeze, and she felt herself being crushed.

“Mark! You need to stop this now.”

His slobbering mouth swamped her, muffling her words. As his saliva ran down her throat she gagged, pushing him off her, off the bed, and into a thudding heap on the floor just before she leaned over and vomited the last of her stomach contents all over him. The taste was foul, and her head pounded. “Oh God, Mark, I’m so sorry.”

Mark lay on the floor, his face and shirt matted with puke. He wiped a sleeve over his face then, seeing the sleeve, pulled his shirt off his back revealing a concave chest speckled with black straggly hairs.

“I’m so sorry.” She looked at the carpet. “I’ll help you clean the mess.”

She was empty and sore. Her head was splitting and she was parched, longing for a drink and a sleep in a dark room – alone. She had to get out of there, but she couldn’t drive in that state. She could use her mobile to call for a taxi but the idea of waiting while one arrived was unbearable.

She forced herself off the bed, retrieved one shoe from underneath and another from the doorway. She couldn’t look at Mark, still sitting on the floor with his head in his hands.

“Look, Mark, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong idea.”

He was embarrassed and angry. “I have to get a decent sleep anyway,” he slurred. “I’m on duty in the morning.”

She didn’t look at him again, but fumbled down the hall to the front door, into the night air outside.

28

Black Book Entry

You came to the hospital room, looking pale and anxious. “How are you, pet?” You struggled to look me in the eye.

“Sore.”

You pushed your hands into your jeans pockets, staring at the carpet. “They don’t seem to know why it happened or anything.”

“Just bad luck.”

“Do you think, when I pushed you…” You didn’t finish the sentence.

“Can you help me get up?”

You supported me as I sat up, then took my weight as I struggled into the wheelchair. You were so gentle with me. “Alright, Rose?”

“I’ll be better when we see Joel.”

You pushed me down the corridor, past the maternity ward, scooting round a woman who was vacating an individual room. “Sorry, pet,” you said to her, “these things are like shopping trollies.” When we arrived at the door of the neo-natal unit you stopped and looked at me, your eyes clouded with crushing sadness. “I’ll never forgive myself for all this,” you said.

Inside the unit it was quiet. The babies were too poorly to cry. A nurse was sat at a desk, making notes and she smiled when we came in, recognising us.

“How is he?” I asked her.

“Joel’s had a stable night. We’re happy with his progress.”

You squeezed my shoulder. Then you pushed the wheelchair next to the crib. Joel was sleeping, the tube in place and a machine keeping beat with his heart. You looked down at our son. “He’s so beautiful.”

Your eyes welled up, as you stroked a finger down his cheek, across his brow, touching the tip of his nose. “Hello handsome.”

Eyes still closed, Joel’s mouth made a circle as he yawned. You gasped as if it was a miracle.

I watched you fall in love with your son, and the mix of pride and pain was unbearable. If only you could look at me like that.

“Joel?” you said, “I’m your Daddy. You sleep and get better, little man.”

If you were surprised that I’d named him without talking to you first, you never said.

We sat by his crib, me in the wheelchair and you on a chair, your hand still touching Joel. The nurse came over, checked his feeding tube and watched the machine for a few moments.

“Is he going to be alright?”

“He’s doing very well, his SATS are a bit low but we’re helping him with that. He’ll be running around kicking a ball before you know it.”

“I hope so.” I saw that expression in your eyes, that same raw pain as when Emma first left you. I knew that I must be strong for us both. The nurse went to check on her other patients.

“He’ll be fine, Jason. He’s in good hands.”

You couldn’t take your eyes off our boy, and kept stroking his tiny arm.

“Will you be okay at home?” I asked. Since you’d moved into my flat I’d done all the cooking and housework, as well as paying all the bills.

“The fridge is almost empty, but we can live on takeaway for a few days.”

“Not ‘we’ Jason. I’m not leaving here yet.”

“God, of course not, pet. Ignore me. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

I leaned forward and touched your cheek with my lips, stroked a golden curl that had escaped from behind your ear. In just one year I’d become your mainstay. Since moving in with me we’d never been apart. I’d created a role for myself as lover, friend and confidant all rolled into one. It didn’t matter about love: you needed me.

But I couldn’t think about returning home. My whole world, my whole purpose for living, now lay in an incubator which kept temperature constant, every breath monitored, situated worryingly close to the duty-nurse’s desk, whilst inside, alone, Joel struggled to hang on to his fragile existence.

“Christ, Rose. If I hadn’t lost my temper with you,” you bowed your head, “this is all my fault.”

You wanted forgiveness. For the first time that look of grief in your eyes was anticipating my reaction, not remembering one of Emma’s. I could see that things had changed between you and her, you and me. How sad, that it took a sick child to finally sever her grip.

“I’ll never forgive myself if he dies,” you said.

I placed my hands on your head, your curls twisting around my fingers, and pulled you close as you crumpled, a grown man becoming a boy, tears falling as I held you tight. And then you said it. “I wish I could love you, Rose.”

I froze. It was still hard to hear you say this. When you pulled away, you looked back into the crib where Joel was still asleep. “I will love him, though. More than I’ve ever loved anyone.”

You had to leave to get something to eat, since the hospital only provided food for patients. As with all institutions, the hospital honoured the tradition of presenting its inmates with food at times better suited to young children, so dinner was at 4.30. The meal came on a grey plastic tray, accompanied by a shallow clear cup holding three tablets. They were the only colour in the scene, Smartie-like in their brightness. Unthinking, I bolted them down with the tepid water and handed the cup back to the nurse. Satisfied, she left, leaving me to survey the food.

The meal was an uninviting splodge of brown, beige and white. Mince and potatoes, a slice of anaemic bread and a small plastic tub of margarine. In another container a dark red jelly wobbled under Dream Topping. Food for the sick. Well, I was sick; I realised that. But my sickness was inside. I was sick with fear for my little boy.

I felt Rita and Mum watching over me, and sent a prayer to them.
Please let him be okay.

I couldn’t think of anything but Joel. We’d spent most of the day in the intensive care unit, staring into his cot, feeding him with his special bottle or expressing my milk into Daisy. But now you had gone and I was in my room, resenting every moment that I was away from him.

There were happy voices coming from the ward. They were strange to me, those voices, cooing over healthy babies, as they would be to a foreigner. Those mothers were swamped with cards and flowers, when I hadn’t got one. The birth of a sick child isn’t something to be celebrated. That’s why I was separated. Segregated. Those women wouldn’t want to be near me; my bad luck could be contagious. But I was glad to be in my own room. From the elevated bed all I could see through the window was sky. I was several floors up, and remembered the view of this rectangular block from the ground, when I carried Joel inside me. When he was still safe.

Intensive care was on the same floor as the maternity wards. The thought of his tiny, fighting heart grabbed my own, which kicked into rapid palpitations as I thought of the thin valves pushing life around his body.

Making me jump, the nurse came to reclaim the tray. I registered the uniform without directly looking at her and was surprised when I recognised the voice. It was Nurse Hall, who had been so kind on that first terrible night. “You’ve eaten well – quite a feat in here. And you have more colour today. Feeling a bit better?”

I nodded, risked a smile. After all, Joel was alive.

“Good. Maybe you’d like to try getting dressed? And I think we can get rid of the wheelchair now.”

I shuffled down the corridor, making my way to the neo-natal unit. As I walked by the maternity ward I saw visitors sitting on beds and auxiliaries were in the ward handing out teas. People wandered past me clutching flowers and boxes of chocolates in pastel paper. Reaching the junction of wards I followed the corridor marked ‘Paediatric’, under the picture of a stork whose beak pointed the direction.

The wards in the maternity block, all named after Suffolk rivers, came off a main spur; those wards were for the healthy babies. I walked past two nurses who were deep in whispered conversation. Next was the individual room where you had struggled with the wheelchair, nearly bashing in to the woman who was leaving. It had been empty when I passed it earlier. The door was open and in the room a woman was talking tenderly to her baby.

I stopped, transfixed, thinking I’d seen her somewhere before.

She was dressed like me, in hospital gown and slippers. We were like inpatients in an asylum. She looked up and smiled.

There was a baby in her arms, its blue hat snug over escaping wisps of blonde hair. It’s easy to smile when your child is perfect. His beauty drew me forward.

“Is it a boy?” I said.

She nodded, pulling the blanket aside slightly. He was bigger then Joel, and bonny. He began to mewl and she cooed at him, reaching for a bottle on the bedside cabinet, lost to her son.

“Congratulations,” I said as I left the room, passing a man who was heading towards it. He was an older man with snowy hair, smartly dressed, holding a huge bunch of yellow roses in his arms. He brushed straight past me, knocking me off-balance, as he marched into the room where he swept up the woman and her son in a possessive embrace.

29

In the neo-natal unit six perspex incubators lined the sides of the room, four of them empty.

I walked to Joel’s crib by the nurse’s station, where he was pale and unmoving. I turned briefly, saw that the nurse was engrossed in paperwork, her head bent low over the desk. I wanted her to talk to me, to ask her if there has been any progress, but I didn’t like to disturb her.

When Doctor Cross arrived to do her daily round, she came to me first.

“Hello, Miss Wilks. How are you?”

“Fine.” I said. But I wasn’t the patient. “How is he?”

She picked up a clipboard from the edge of the incubator and glanced at the charts. “Joel is doing as well as could be expected. The blueness on his skin suggests he may have some weakness in the heart, but we won’t conduct any diagnostic tests until he’s stronger. His breathing is slightly laboured but that should improve, as he gains weight and his strength increases. The machine there is just helping him along, breathing for him when he weakens.”