‘With,’ she admitted.
‘And you won’t have the expense of getting in and out of town . . .’
‘Give me an extra fiver a week and I’ll do it,’ she suggested.
‘You drive a hard bargain, Mrs Delahaye,’ said Brendan. ‘But you’re on.’
She liked working for him. It wasn’t difficult work and it didn’t take up too much of her time, which was good because now, nearing the end of her pregnancy, she felt big, ungainly and tired very easily. She was astonished at how tired she felt. Astonished at how ugly she felt too. She was beginning to hate being pregnant, and she wished it was all over and they had their lovely baby sleeping peacefully in his cot instead of apparently doing cartwheels in her stomach. Working distracted her, and so every day she checked the invoices and balanced the bank account, a task that Brendan had added to her responsibilities. She’d felt honoured when he’d let her do this.
‘There are no secrets between us,’ he told her. ‘You should know what’s going in and out of the account. That way you also know how well we’re doing and whether you need to be buying the Yellow Pack stuff in the supermarket or whether you can go for the quality items.’
‘I’m more concerned with making sure that your work stays within budget,’ she said.
‘Quite the little Scrooge, aren’t you?’
‘Just being cautious.’
‘Pretty little Domino. That surely goes against your inner instincts.’
‘Partly,’ she admitted. ‘But I think I can be a very sensible person when I have to be.’
Brendan laughed. ‘I didn’t marry you for your good sense,’ he said, and kissed her on the back of the neck. ‘Now let’s go and do something very
un
-sensible.’
‘OK, Mrs Delahaye.’ The obstetrician looked at her over the green file he was holding. ‘Your baby is breech at the moment, but there is a good chance he’ll turn around in his own good time, so there’s no need for you to worry.’
Dominique looked at him wordlessly. She’d discovered that the baby was lying sideways at her previous visit and she hoped that he’d do as the doctors expected and turn around. They’d talked about the possibility of a Caesarean if he didn’t, but she hadn’t really been listening to them. She knew that she should listen and that she should know everything there was to know about her baby’s imminent arrival, but the truth was that she didn’t want to know. She wanted to imagine that one day she’d be sitting at home pregnant and the next she’d somehow have the baby in her arms and there wouldn’t be too much of the pulling and pushing and frankly quite awful stuff that seemed to go on at childbirth. Dominique had realised halfway through her pregnancy that she wasn’t really the earth-mother type. That she wanted it all over and done with as easily and painlessly as possible. She felt slightly guilty about this, as though she was in some way letting the whole cause of motherhood down, but she couldn’t help it. As far as she was concerned, she was leaving it all in the hands of the doctors and she’d do whatever they said.
Although she didn’t know how to feel about the possibility of a Caesarean. The obstetrician was pretty relaxed about it, but most of the books she read championed the whole natural childbirth thing. She’d nodded at the obstetrician’s various scenarios but had mentally tuned out when the words episiotomy and forceps were used. She simply couldn’t imagine how horrible that might be. He’d also spoken about epidurals and anaesthetics, but Dominique wasn’t able to get her head around those. She wondered whether she was particularly stupid, because the other mothers she’d spoken to in the prenatal clinic seemed to be remarkably well informed. They kept talking about what they wanted from the birth experience and how to enhance their baby’s journey into the world. All she wanted was to give birth as soon as possible and exchange her massive bump for a cute little baby.
She couldn’t believe how much she’d ballooned in the last few weeks. She hated not being able to see her feet. She hated the constant heartburn. She hated that her ankles hurt and that her back was perpetually sore. And she hated - as her sister-in-law June had predicted - that she was now suffering terribly with piles, which meant that she found it difficult to walk, sit or sleep. She felt big and bloated and ugly and horrible and it made her laugh (although not with any humour) to think that she’d thought of herself as unattractive as a teenager. By comparison to how she was now, she’d been an absolute babe! She couldn’t even look at Brendan without thinking back to the rainy field in Clondalkin and wondering what on earth had come over her to make her jump on him in the way she had. Right now she couldn’t imagine wanting to jump on him ever again. She wondered if anyone else in the world had ever felt like this. All the magazine articles she read seemed to focus on how lovely being pregnant was and how she’d forget all about the discomfort when she had her baby in her arms. (If the piles didn’t go, Dominique thought grimly, she wouldn’t be holding anyone!) She was struggling with the guilt such feelings were causing her too, as well as the guilt of knowing that she was hell to live with right now. During the last couple of weeks she’d probably been driving Brendan crazy, and she certainly wasn’t anything like the girl he’d once called attractive and gorgeous. So she didn’t care what way her baby was born, as long as it happened soon.
She was at home alone when she felt the first proper contraction. She sat on the edge of a chair thinking that maybe she’d been mistaken, because she’d previously panicked about contractions that had turned out to be routine. (Braxton Hicks, the nurse had told her, as if she should have known what that meant.) And then another contraction came and she knew that this was different. She wished Brendan was home, but he never left the site until it was dark. She didn’t know whether the contractions meant that the baby had turned or not. It had been doing so much moving around in the last few days that Dominique felt as though she was a character in the
Alien
movie. It wouldn’t have surprised her one little bit if her baby had simply punched his way out of her stomach and run laughing across the room. She’d actually dreamed about it one night and had woken up in a lather of sweat and fear.
The next contraction was so painful that she cried out loud. She really, really wanted Brendan to come home, even though she could hardly blame him for the fact that he’d been working late so often lately. She’d been a bear to be around. Dominique whimpered. She knew that labour could last for hours. But what if she was one of those people who had really quick labours, and what if her baby hadn’t turned around, and what if she was going to give birth here and now on the kitchen floor? She needed to get someone to help her. She thought about calling her mother, but the idea of Evelyn being beside her when she gave birth was almost worse than the idea of being alone. Her mother wouldn’t be calm and reassuring, thought Dominique. She’d simply tell her that she was getting her just deserts.
She could ring for an ambulance. But would they come out on her say-so? Or would they tell her that she was a pregnant woman, that was all, and that she should get to the hospital herself? Ambulances were for emergencies and she wasn’t an emergency. Even though she felt like one.
She gasped again as another wave of pain passed through her, and then jumped, because the doorbell had rung. Maybe Brendan had come home early after all, she thought, as she shuffled along the hallway to answer it. Which would mean they’d go to the hospital together and she’d have her baby and everything would be just fine.
Her next-door neighbour, Fionnuala, was standing on the doorstep, a form in her hands.
‘I’m just collecting signatures for the residents’ association,’ she said brightly. ‘Can you—’ and then she broke off, because Dominique burst into tears and told her that she might be going to have her baby.
Fionnuala was everything that Dominique wasn’t when it came to calmness and efficiency. She told her to get her bag, write a note for Brendan to tell him they’d gone to the hospital and get into her car right away. Dominique, still struggling with contractions and furious with herself for not having paid more attention in the prenatal classes, was only too happy to do what Fionnuala told her.
The hospital was confusing. Dominique had expected to have Brendan beside her, and she fumbled her way through the questions that the admitting nurse asked her. They’ll think I’m incredibly stupid, she thought, but they might be right. Her brain seemed to be operating in some kind of separate world to her body. She really, really wanted all this over very soon.
And then she was in a bed and attached to a monitor and feeling slightly less stressed as her quiet, confident obstetrician arrived. He was getting ready to examine her when Dominique gave a cry and her waters broke. And then abruptly everything changed. The flurry of activity was sudden and frantic, and Dominique was completely taken aback by the urgency that had come into her doctor’s voice as he called for a medical team. The cord had prolapsed, he told her. She needed a Caesarean. And she needed it right now.
Dominique couldn’t remember anything in the prenatal classes about prolapsed cords, but she knew that it didn’t sound good. And from the speed that everything was happening, she knew that nobody else thought it was good either. She could feel her heart racing so fast it was making her tremble. She wanted Brendan. She was scared of being on her own. Fionnuala had left her in the care of the doctors, assuming that everything was now fine.
Dominique knew that it wasn’t fine. She was afraid that she was going to die. Or that her baby was going to die. She knew that she was crying. She felt weak and stupid. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
They clamped an oxygen mask on her face and she struggled at first, not realising what was happening.
‘You need oxygen for the baby,’ said one of the nurses. ‘Come on, Dominique. You’ve got to do what we tell you.’
She tried to breathe deeply, even though she felt totally claustrophobic with the mask over her face. And then she heard a doctor tell the anaesthetist to put her out.
She knew that she was somewhere else. She just didn’t know where. She could feel her stomach pulsating and she was in the
Alien
movie again and the baby, the creature, was tearing her apart. She wanted to scream. But she couldn’t.
She felt sick. She didn’t know whether it was from the anaesthetic or from terror, and she was afraid that if she actually was sick the retching would split her stomach open. But hadn’t the alien creature done that already?
‘Relax, Domino,’ said Brendan. ‘You’re fine, don’t worry.’
Her eyes fluttered open. She didn’t know how Brendan had suddenly appeared in the delivery room. She hadn’t heard him come in.
‘Everyone’s fine,’ he repeated. ‘You and the baby.’
She looked at him with a total lack of comprehension. And then she realised that she wasn’t in the theatre any more; she was in a room in the hospital and she was still alive.
‘Baby?’ Her throat was dry, and she realised that every muscle in her body ached.
He grinned at her. ‘A girl,’ he said. ‘A real little fighter.’
‘Oh.’
‘She’s OK,’ said Brendan, misinterpreting the croak in her voice. ‘You were great. She was great. And the surgical team was great too. The whole thing only took five minutes.’
Dominique blinked slowly.
‘She’s in the neonatal care unit at the moment,’ said Brendan. ‘But she’s doing fine.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to Brendan, who was still holding her hand. ‘You wanted a boy.’
‘We have a beautiful baby,’ said Brendan. ‘And that’s all I wanted. Sure, you can go for a boy the next time!’
Chapter 7
It was all wrong.
Dominique shuddered as she listened to the baby screaming. The baby was always screaming, her little monkey face screwed up into a red ball of fury as the sounds of her impotent rage filled the air. Dominique never knew what she wanted when she screamed like that. And even if she had known, she wouldn’t have been able to give it to her.
She sat on the sofa, her legs curled under her, and blocked out the sound of the furious cries. She’d never been able to do that before. When she was younger she’d always wanted to pick up crying babies. Other people’s crying babies. She couldn’t imagine anyone being able to ignore them.
But it was easy, she knew now. You just put the noise somewhere else. You tried not to hear it. You tried not to let the crushing weight of responsibility press down upon you. You tried not to wonder what the neighbours thought of the constant screaming or if they wondered why it was so quiet in the evening, when there was someone else there. You sat and stared at the wall. That was what you did. And you blanked everything else from your mind, because otherwise you’d be overwhelmed by the panic and the devastation and the sadness that threatened to engulf you.