What's Yours Is Mine, page 19
Either way, to my intense frustration, I’m once more sentenced to bed rest, tethered into place by leads from a dazzling array of monitors and machines. Which means that when Grace bowls up to my bedside late that night, I have nowhere to run.
“Tom ratted me out,” I say accusingly. “He promised he wouldn’t tell you I was here.”
Grace looks surprised; then livid. “Tom didn’t tell me. Michael called my mobile, we were over at Blake and Claudia’s. How the fuck did Tom know?”
Poor bastard. He’s going to be in a world of hurt. Grace only swears when she’s really pissed off. “Never mind that now,” I deflect. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing here?”
“You needn’t have bothered. It’s the same thing it was before. I’ll be fine in a few days.”
“This isn’t just about you—”
“Yeah. You’ve made that perfectly clear,” I say bitterly.
Grace pulls up a chair and sits down, her fancy leather bag on her knee. It probably cost as much as a small car, I think resentfully.
“Susannah, you’ve got to start taking this seriously,” she sighs. “You’re sick, and you’re pregnant. You need to look after yourself. You can’t just run around doing whatever you want.”
“I was eating a bloody sandwich!” I yell. “I was hardly bungee jumping from the Empire State Building!”
Grace ignores my outburst. “When was the last time you had a bottle of beer?”
I shrug defiantly. Maybe I had two or three yesterday after Michael had gone to bed. Yeah, OK, the doctors said I shouldn’t drink alcohol, but if you listened to doctors, you’d need a medical certificate to bloody breathe. No soft cheeses. No raw fish. No peanut butter, no caffeine, no pig’s bladders, blah, blah, blah. For God’s sake, I gave up bloody cigarettes, didn’t I? Women have been getting pregnant and having babies for centuries without freaking do-gooders breathing down their necks, and no one died. Well, OK, they did, but not because of the fucking Brie.
“Susannah,” she says quietly, “if you carry on like this, you’re never going to make it to full term. You won’t even make it another week. Do you know what it’ll mean if she’s born now?”
“She’ll be in an incubator for a bit. She’s twenty-four weeks, lots of babies survive at that age.”
“No, Zee, they don’t. A few, a tiny few, babies survive at twenty-four weeks,” Grace says. “Most of them die. Their lungs simply aren’t developed enough for them to breathe, even with help. They can’t suck, swallow, and breathe at the same time, so they have to be fed intravenously. They can’t cry, because of the tubes in their throats. Those who do manage to make it through the first twenty-four hours have to spend months in intensive care.”
“So?”
She sucks in a breath, and I can see her trying hard to hold on to her patience. “They have one crisis after another—infections, heart failure, respiratory distress, you name it; and you have to live out every crisis with them, too. Can you imagine how hard that is? For both of you?”
“I can do it,” I say crossly. “I’m not a complete idiot. I have been a mother before, you know.”
Grace absorbs the blow without flinching. “Then you know that if by some miracle she survives and you get to take her home, it’s not necessarily happy ever after. She might be blind, or deaf; even if she seems fine, she may have learning difficulties or behavioral problems. Forget what you read in your magazines. Listen to me. If you have this baby now, she’ll probably die.”
I’m shocked more than I let on. Grace doesn’t exaggerate. It’s not her style. If she says I could lose my baby, no matter what else is going on between us, I believe her.
“Susannah, I won’t lie to you. I want this baby,” she says. “I want to be her mother. I know I could make a good one, if you’d just give me the chance. But more than that, I want her to live.” She looks me in the eye. “Prove to me you’re the right person to look after her, Susannah, and I’ll support you, no matter what you choose to do. I’ll cancel the lawyers, I’ll give you everything you need. All you have to do is prove you want her to live, too.”
AFTER SIX DAYS in the hospital, they dose me up with antibiotics (which give me diarrhea and a violent case of thrush) and release me. I might not like it, but Grace has got to me. I don’t want to have a brain-damaged baby. For the next three weeks, I lead the life of a moustachioed nun. No fags, no booze, no sex, and lots of sleep. Believe me: lots and lots of sleep. When you cut out all the things that make life worth living, sleeping is pretty much the only thing that’s left.
Meanwhile, the Asshole Formerly Known as Blake doesn’t send me so much as a get-well card.
If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s admitting when I’ve made a mistake (practice makes perfect, Grace would say). Blake hasn’t returned my calls or texts in weeks, never mind actually turning up to see how I am. Screw him. The sex was great—fucking fantastic, actually—but I still haven’t forgiven him for the Layla business. I deserve better. Thanks to the thrush, I’ve gone right off sex anyway.
True to her word, Grace calls off the dogs. I don’t get any more letters from her fancy lawyer, and she doesn’t come banging on the door at all hours of the day and night.
Actually, I don’t hear from her at all, which is a bit weird, to be honest. I’ve got so used to her keeping tabs on me, it’s a bit freaky to be left entirely to my own devices. It must be killing her not to come checking up on me.
Somehow, I hold up my end of the deal. I’m so clean-living, even the Mormons would have me. I’m taking my vitamins and drinking lots of water and generally behaving myself: right up to the point when I run into Blake and Claudia and their cute coffee-skinned children in Starbucks.
I stand in the center of the café, gripping my Skinny Latte so tightly I don’t even notice when the foam cup splits and spills hot coffee all over my hand. Blake and his wife are crushed into one outsized velvet armchair, with the children playing on a small sofa nearby, and he’s got his arm around her, and is leaning down to whisper something in her ear. She turns and laughs up at him, and I see the expression in her eyes, and I know she knows about his other woman, even if she doesn’t know about me, and I see that she still loves him and will always love him and is never going to let him go. They don’t even notice me, and it’s all so gut-wrenchingly, fluffy-kitten adorable I want to throw up; and in fact as soon as I dump the coffee and reach the safety of the toilet, I do.
Afterwards, I go straight back home to Michael’s and shut myself in my bedroom. I drink four beers, one after the other, and then I open a bottle of vodka and drink half of that, too.
It’s not even about Blake. He’s just the latest in a long, long line of assholes and losers. Every man I’ve ever been with has treated me like shit, and I’ve let them get away with it. I want to tell myself I thought Blake was different, but I didn’t, not really. We were never going to run off and play happy families with the baby. He was always going to stay with his wife, and I was always going to end up pregnant and alone.
I pass out on the bed, and wake up sometime around midday with a raging hangover. I finish the vodka, and go in search of more beer. The next day, I do the same thing again. And the day after that, I’m back in the hospital—only this time, they can’t patch me up and fix me and send me home.
{ CHAPTER TWENTY }
Catherine
I have no idea if this will work, but I’m desperate, so I’ll try anything.
Grace is fast asleep in bed, curled on her side in the fetal position. For the briefest of moments, I stand and watch her, remembering how I used to do exactly the same thing when she was a child. Her cheeks are no longer plump with baby fat, the hair spilling onto the pillow is threaded here and there with gray, and she doesn’t suck her thumb, but to me, her mother, she looks just the same.
I shake myself. I don’t have time for maudlin sentiment now. Lives depend on me. I lean over my elder daughter’s sleeping form, and urgently call her name.
She stirs, but doesn’t wake. I try again, louder this time, and Tom rolls over towards his wife, one strong tanned arm draping her hip as he moves.
I’m running out of time. I’m going to have to do this the hard way. With the greatest reluctance, I climb onto the bed and plant myself firmly on Grace’s chest. I have no weight, no substance, of course, but I have to fight my instinct to leap off her before I crush her when she starts to struggle. Grimly, I keep my seat as Grace pants and claws at her chest in her sleep. She won’t suffocate. This isn’t really happening. I’m just gate-crashing her dreams.
Grace suddenly sits bolt upright, wide-eyed and panicky, and I get up off the bed, my job done. “Tom! Tom! Wake up! Tom, wake up!”
“What?” Tom mumbles.
“I need to get to the hospital,” Grace says, throwing back the duvet and struggling out of bed. “Susannah’s sick.”
Tom is immediately alert. “I didn’t hear the phone.”
“No one rang. I just know.”
He pauses, one arm in the sleeve of his dressing gown. “You just know?”
“Don’t bloody stand there, Tom. She needs me. We have to go. Now.”
Tom knows better than to argue. He is not the ideal son-in-law, or the perfect husband, but he is a man who understands his wife. Certainly better than I ever have. I’ve been unfair to you, Grace, I think regretfully. So much of this calamity is my fault.
Briskly, I rouse myself. No time for self-recrimination now. There will be plenty of time for that later. When I know if my daughter and granddaughter are going to survive.
WHEN I GET back to the hospital, Susannah is no longer in the ER. For a moment, I panic, but then I find her upstairs, where she has been admitted to the labor ward. She looks even worse than when I left. Her face is so swollen I barely recognize her, and her eyes are yellow. Her breathing is shallow and fast; a greasy film of sweat coats her skin.
“Susannah? We need to deliver your baby now,” the doctor is saying urgently. “We can’t wait any longer.”
Susannah pulls the oxygen mask off her face. “No!” she gasps. “I told you! She’s … too little! I’m only twenty … eight weeks. She can’t be born yet. She’ll die!”
“Susannah, twenty-eight weeks is fine. I know you’re worried, but the scans show your daughter is a good weight for her age. She’ll have to be in the NICU for a few weeks, but we’ll do everything we can for her.”
“No. Just … give me some antibiotics like you … did last time. I’ll be … fine … in a few days.”
The doctor struggles to hide her frustration. “This isn’t like last time. This isn’t just a kidney infection, Susannah. You have early onset pre-eclampsia. You and your baby are both very sick. If we don’t deliver her now, you could both die.”
“I was fine … yesterday. I shouldn’t have … had those beers, I know that.” She attempts a smile, her swollen face twisting hideously like a Halloween mask. “I won’t do … it again. Just give me the … antibiotics or whatever I need and let’s … get on with this.”
Once again, I marvel at how wrong I have been. Just a few short weeks ago, I was quite certain Grace was the one at fault for allowing this insane surrogacy idea to take root. She wasn’t ever meant to be a mother, I’d known that since she was a small child. She couldn’t boil an egg without forgetting to put the water in the saucepan. Susannah was the loving one, the sympathetic, caring girl who was supposed to have a rosy-cheeked family and rambling old home and a Labrador curled up on the sofa. It was just a mistake, what had happened with Davey and Donny. Life had turned out to be too tough for her. She had never got the breaks that Grace did. If she’d had the same chances as her sister, her life would’ve ended up just as golden.
But I was wrong. I admit it now. I’ve made too many excuses for far too long. I’ve babied and mollycoddled Susannah since she was a child. She didn’t need me swooping in like an avenging angel every time she decided she didn’t want to cope. She needed to learn to stand on her own two feet, and I never let her.
I missed Grace’s ninth birthday. I keep coming back to that. I missed Grace’s ninth birthday, and until she ran away, I didn’t even know I’d missed it.
For years, I’ve allowed my need to protect Susannah to blot out everything, including Grace. I’ve accepted the front she’s presented to the world, and never taken the time to look further. But in the past few weeks, I’ve seen a side of Grace she would never willingly have shown me. I see she wants this baby, but not for the reasons I always thought. Not because she can’t bear to fail, or because she wants to tick all the boxes. She loves this child. She loves her with every fiber of her being; enough to give her back to Susannah, if that is the right thing.
That was the moment that crystallized everything. Susannah wants this child because she’s looking for a second chance. A new start. She’s not thinking of the baby at all. Grace is the one doing that. Grace is prepared to give up the child she loves and wants more than anything else in the world, and so I have no choice but to look at her differently. Suddenly my eyes have been opened.
For thirty-four years, I have told myself I had to protect Susannah because her father didn’t love her. The truth is I favored Susannah because David loved Grace so much. I was jealous.
Guilt pulses through me. David doted on Grace from the second she drew breath, and I felt shut out. I was the one who had carried and nurtured her, and yet it was her father she wanted. He didn’t reject Susannah. I withheld her from him. I kept Susannah to myself, because I was determined at least one of my daughters would love me best.
It wasn’t David who polarized our family, but me.
I don’t know when it became a competition for our children’s love, but the more Grace turned to her father, the less I wanted her near me. The more I sheltered Susannah, the less attention her father paid her. Such havoc we have wrought! And as always, it is the innocents who pay.
God forgive me, but He got this wrong. He gave this baby to the wrong sister.
Susannah’s eyes flutter, and I move closer to her in alarm. She’s losing focus. We don’t have much time. Where is Grace?
The doctor glances quickly at the monitors beeping next to us. “Susannah, we can’t delay this any longer,” she says sharply. “Your blood pressure is dangerously high. Your kidneys are starting to fail completely, and your liver won’t be far behind. As soon as the theater is ready, we’re going to get this baby out.”
“Just give me some damn pills … and leave me … alone!” Susannah gasps.
I’m so terrified for my daughter, and my unborn grandchild, I could slap her. So, judging from the expression in her eye, could the doctor. Instead, she nods curtly at Susannah, and whips the curtains closed around her bed.
“Is there anyone who can reason with her?” the doctor demands as she returns to the nurses’ station. “Boyfriend? Family? I don’t want to wait until the stupid girl passes out and I can go ahead without her consent. The longer we wait, the more trouble that baby’s in.”
“There’s a bloke on her next-of, Blake someone, but he’s not answering his phone. She has a sister listed—”
A commotion outside the entrance to the ward interrupts us. A moment later, Grace is bearing down on us with grim fury, Tom scurrying helplessly in her wake. He still has his slippers on, I notice, and his soft furry belly is visible between the top of his trousers and his hastily thrown-on T-shirt.
Even in the midst of my anxiety, I find time to worry about Tom. Grace still doesn’t know what he’s been doing with that redheaded doctor. How can she not see? It would change everything.
“Where’s my sister?” Grace demands, from halfway down the hall. “Why didn’t anyone call me and tell me she was here?”
After the long, slow-motion, anxious wait of the last three hours, in which nothing seemed to happen except for Susannah getting sicker and sicker, suddenly a thousand things seem to happen at once. Grace marches up to Susannah’s bed and snatches open the curtains, and tells her, in a tone that brooks no argument, that this baby is being delivered now! To the astonishment of everyone—everyone except Grace—Susannah agrees without a murmur. This is what Susannah was waiting for, I realize: for Grace to tell her what to do. She is thirty-four years old, and she still refuses to take responsibility for herself. How can she take responsibility for a child?
My fault, I understand now. I’m the one who never let her grow up. I’m responsible for this.
In minutes, Susannah is being prepped for theater, and an anesthetist arrives to give her an epidural. At the last moment, as she is being wheeled away, she holds out her hand to Grace, and without hesitation, Grace takes it.
There’s no time to induce labor. Susannah’s blood pressure is climbing all the time, and the doctor is murmuring about cerebral hemorrhages and complications; they drape a screen across Susannah’s chest, so that she doesn’t have to watch her own abdomen being sliced open, and prepare her for a cesarean section. The theater is filled with people: the neonatologist arrives with a four-strong team to whisk the baby away to the NICU, the anesthetist is monitoring Susannah’s every breath, Dr. Fraser and the junior doctor and numerous nurses and even a few student medics circulate around the operating table; in the middle is Grace, holding her sister’s hand, steady and calm and in control, radiating reassurance. No wonder David is so proud of her, I think. No wonder Susannah is so overwhelmed.
The doctor picks up her scalpel and waits as iodine is swabbed across Susannah’s belly, and then she cuts, swift and sure, and Grace gasps, “Oh, Susannah! She’s beautiful! She’s tiny, she’s so, so tiny, but she’s beautiful!” and Ava, my first granddaughter, is finally born.
IT TAKES EVERYONE a few moments to realize that Susannah is still getting worse.
