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Did he blame her for Mabel? He never said so. He wouldn’t say it, but he must think it. Why wouldn’t he?
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into the silence. She was sorry, sorry for being so sure of herself, so convinced she knew more than the doctor, and so very sorry she couldn’t go back and do just one thing differently .?.?.
* * *
Twenty-four babies were born on the ward that December day. It was, they said afterwards, a new record.
Claire had been admitted to the labour ward because her forty-week scan seemed to suggest that her baby wasn’t growing anymore.
‘Best to keep an eye on things’ said the nurse, tightening the blood pressure cuff on Claire’s arm. ‘Better safe than sorry.’
At midnight, a soft-spoken doctor swept Claire’s cervix with a gloved finger. It hurt, but only for a few seconds.
‘Good girl,’ said the doctor. ‘You’ll be off to the races in no time. Try to sleep.’
Claire didn’t sleep. She listened to the steady rattle and hiss of the woman in the next bed sucking gas. When the woman’s moaning began to grate on her nerves, Claire put in her earphones and listened to Glen Hansard singing ‘Star, Star’ over and over.
At 8am, the soft-spoken doctor slid a needle into the back of Claire’s hand and attached a drip, securing it to the back of her hand with sticky tape.
‘That will do the job now,’ said the doctor, with her head bowed to her chart. ‘You’ll be done and dusted by lunchtime.’ She clipped the chart to the end of the bed and disappeared.
Next, a midwife came and introduced herself as Dolores. ‘Don’t be worrying,’ she said, as she Velcroed a foetal monitor to Claire’s abdomen. ‘This is only to be on the safe side.’
‘Can my husband come in now?’
‘No. Not yet. Is he nearby?’
‘He’s in the car park. I need him.Please?’ Claire wished she knew the formula of words that would induce the midwife to take pity on her, but the nurse didn’t meet her eye.
Instead, Dolores kept her attention firmly fixed on Claire’s chart. ‘Sorry, pet. Blame Covid. They’ve tightened up restrictions because of this big spike in cases. It’s out of my hands.’
At 2pm, the doctor came again.
‘Still here .?.?.’ She held out her hand for the chart and glanced at it. ‘.?.?. Claire?’
Claire nodded. She was sitting on a yoga ball, holding the bed rail with one hand and a damp face cloth with the other. Dolores was busy making notes on her chart. The doctor walked around them both to examine the foetal monitor. She said nothing for a count of ten, then spoke in a deliberately toneless voice.
‘We might consider a C-section, Claire. You’re getting tired.’
‘No.’ Claire shook her head. She’d read about this, doctors pressing for a C-section. She wasn’t going to give up on natural childbirth for the sake of their busy schedule. She’d read the statistics to Ronan while he’d watched a rugby match with the sound turned down. She’d made him promise to stick up for her.
‘I really don’t want a C-section,’ she’d said.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ he’d answered, with his hand spread out on her bump. ‘They won’t get past me.’
‘I really don’t want a C-section,’ she said to the doctor now, but her voice betrayed her, inflecting a question mark at the end. How was she supposed to know when to give in? ‘It doesn’t hurt that much,’ Claire managed to say, but the doctor raised a doubting eyebrow and smiled at Claire’s misplaced determination.
‘I’ll give you an hour,’ she said, then turned to speak to Dolores. ‘Call her husband in, now.’
‘I’d say you’ve had enough of that yoga ball, pet,’ said Dolores, helping her back onto the bed.
* * *
We might consider a C-section, said the doctor, over and over again inside Claire’s head. We might consider a C-section.
And over and over again, Claire wished she’d answered differently.
* * *
