Almost Mine (26 page)

‘No,’ I said.

He gestured for me to hand him back the referral and he pencilled a map on the back of it.

‘Thanks, Dr Crawford. We really do appreciate all that you’re doing for us.’

‘My pleasure and good luck. Make an appointment with the girls out the front on your way out. I want to see the two of you next week, whether you are pregnant or not.’

‘It’s twelve o’clock now. Should we get some lunch somewhere?’ Nick asked as we climbed into the Jeep.

‘Sure.’

‘Anywhere in particular?’

I shook my head.

‘What is it, angel?’

I turned in my seat to face him. ‘I love you.’

He laughed. ‘I know that. I thought we had so thoroughly covered this earlier.’

I leaned in and kissed him. ‘Just making sure.’

It was as if time had stood still as the seconds barely ticked between twelve o’clock and three, and the actions of lunch were played out in slow motion, or so it seemed. Even the forty-five minute drive to Mount Morgan travelled in long play. But, at almost two o’clock we sat — not all patiently — as we waited for Dr Reilly to call our names, and with one minute till the top of the hour, he did.

Dr Reilly was a young man — perhaps in his mid-thirties, with cropped blonde hair and green eyes — and had no remarkable features, none, in-fact, that would warrant such a long stare that Nick was giving him as they shook hands and sat on opposite sides of the mahogany desk. And the look Nick gave me was panicked if I’d ever seen one. I mouthed
what?
But he didn’t answer. It was then that I noted the expression on Dr Reilly’s face. Was it confusion? Was it displeasure at being somewhat bullied into seeing us at such short notice? Then, as he shuffled papers and eyed Nick with a disapproving frown, it occurred to me.

‘Do you two know each other?’ I dared to ask. Dr Reilly said nothing, but Nick shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Clearly this is where he’d brought Lucy only a couple of days ago. What a dishonourable man Dr Reilly must think of my husband.

‘So,’ Dr Reilly finished reading over my file that Dr Crawford had forwarded to him via email. ‘You’ve been trying to get pregnant for a while, I see. Let’s see if I can give you some good news. Do you have an empty bladder?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Let’s get ready for the ultra-sound. I’ll give you a moment while you organise yourself on the bed there; underwear off, please.’ Instinctively, Nick threw him a look, but then realised the question was one of profession and not attraction. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Once we were alone, I took the opportunity to press Nick to see if he could confirm my presumptions.

‘You’ve been here before?’ I asked in a quiet voice.

‘Not now, Cate.’

That was answer enough, and honestly, all that I wanted to know. I was grateful that the ultra-sound was being performed in the comfort of Dr Reilly’s office and not one of the procedure rooms that we’d passed. I wanted good news from this place, not for this moment to be tainted by something much, much less exciting.

I was propped up on the bed and covered with a white sheet. Nick sat on my left side, leaving room on my right side for Dr Reilly and his equipment to do their work.

‘Ok,’ the doctor said, ‘let’s see what we have here.’

It took too long for him to say something, anything. The monitor was facing our way, and in clear view, but I couldn’t see anything that meant that a baby was growing inside me; not that I’d know what I was looking at anyway.

‘Well?’ Nick said impatiently and Dr Reilly gave him a petulant look.

‘Cate,’ he addressed only me when he spoke. ‘I’m not seeing any sign of pregnancy. Look,’ he pointed at the monitor, circling a small area of the screen, ‘this is your uterus. If you were four or five weeks pregnant, as predicted by Dr Crawford, we should be able to see a sac here.’ I leaned forward slightly even though the ultra-sound apparatus felt uncomfortable to do so.

‘But there isn’t one?’ I said but hoped that I was wrong. I gripped Nick’s hand.

‘I’m sorry, no.’

‘Are you sure?’ Nick asked as he looked closer at the monitor.

‘Yes, Mr Mathieson. I’m sure. Now,’ he addressed me again, ‘while we’re doing this ultra-sound, I thought I could investigate any issues that may explain your infertility. Is that ok?’

I nodded.

‘Well,’ he said after a few quiet moments and he finished up, ‘everything looks perfectly normal; nothing to assume that you can’t have children.’

A guilty tear fell down my cheek and he plucked a tissue from the box beside him and handed it to me. ‘That’s good news at least.’

‘Sometimes it can take a while,’ he flashed Nick with a not-so-subtle glance, ‘sometimes it happens without even trying.’

‘We know that. We have faith.’

‘Good. Good. Well, I’ll give you another moment of privacy.’

Alone again in the office, Nick let out a deep breath and I began pacing.

‘That was brutal,’ I said as I shook my head irritably.

‘I’m sorry, Cate.’

‘Why are you sorry?’

He shrugged because he didn’t want to say the words.

‘Oh, Nick,’ I wrapped my arms around his waist, ‘I can’t believe he treated you like that. So unprofessional.’

‘That’s what was brutal?’ He pulled back. ‘Not the fact that you’re not pregnant?’

‘You don’t take offence to him being all judgy?’

‘I only care for his medical expertise. Everything else means nothing to me.’

‘Come on, Nick—’

‘I don’t care, honestly, I don’t.’

‘I’m furious!’

He eyed me curiously. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What?’

‘Tell me what you’re trying to do,’ he dared me.

‘Nothing.’

‘You haven’t distracted me.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but instead I gave in. ‘It was worth a try.’

‘Now that’s offensive.’

‘What?’

‘That you think that I can be side tracked by a senseless doctor that knows nothing of our lives instead of thinking about what just happened.’ I swallowed hard as he let me go and sat on the chair. He ran his fingers through his hair.

‘I just want to get out of here,’ he said, and, as if on cue, Dr Reilly entered the office.

‘Please,’ he gestured to my empty chair, ‘sit.’

I did. He sat on his leather chair behind the desk.

‘Ok. I am sending my results through to Dr Crawford. They’ll be available before your next appointment. You’re in good hands with him,’ he smiled fondly, ‘but I’m sure you know that.’

He finished updating my file on his computer.

‘Do you have any questions?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Mr Mathieson?’

He shook his head.

‘Ok, well then, I think we are done here.’

Nick stood and shook the doctor’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said, in my opinion a generous sentiment that Dr Reilly did not deserve.

‘Cate,’ he held his hand out to me and I shook it, but without the thank you.

We’d walked a few steps down the wide hall but before Dr Reilly closed his door, I turned back and asked him for a private word. He obliged.

I didn’t sit like he’d offered for me to; instead I stood in the middle of the room as he hovered behind his desk in confusion.

‘What can I help you with, Cate?’

‘I just wanted you to know that I’m well aware that my husband was here a few days ago.’

His eyes grew noticeably wide, but kept his lips tightly, dutifully closed.

‘Lucy is a close friend of his who was alone in a situation that a person shouldn’t be alone in. Nick stepped up and made sure that she was taken care of. He wasn’t the father; he was the best friend a person could have. I just wanted to tell you that so that we don’t walk out of here leaving you to assume that he’s some kind of, and excuse my language when I say this, cheating bastard.’

‘Thank-you for clearing that up,’ he said. ‘You didn’t have to, you know.’

I turned to leave. ‘Yes. I did.’

‘What was that all about?’ Nick asked as we pulled out of the shaded car park that was dripping with rain due to a downpour while we were inside.

I reached over to Nick’s hand as it sat in his lap and he pulled it slightly away. I squeezed it. ‘Just protecting what’s mine.’

Nick pressed the CD changer function on the steering wheel and in a second Kings was exchanged for The Heavy. Nick turned the sound system up and the beat vibrated through us. I turned it down again.

‘I love you anyway,’ I told him.

He turned the volume up once more, enjoying the beautiful song; or just completely shutting my words out more than likely. I cried, but I hid it by staring at the trees flying past my window as Nick drove the forty-five minutes home. I had a fight on my hands with him and I knew it. I also knew that I was up for it.

A few months later spring arrived and finally the sun shone down on the Shady Valley vineyard; the warmth defrosted the grass and trees and homes that long yearned for something to replace the dreary, leaden clouds and the tedious rain.

I smiled each morning as the sunrise brightened our bedroom in the hope that Nick’s perfunctory mood that he’d worn since the ultra-sound had also thawed. Each morning I’d reach for him — some mornings he’d be there — and on others he’d be up already, and without a kiss good-bye, he’d begin his work on the new restaurant. He practically came to bed after me and then got up before the sun.

The summer of our third year of marriage brought with it no improvement. Nick’s head hung as low as it had six months ago, and his communicative skills were seemingly stunted as he limited himself to single word answers, if any answers at all. I allowed him his grieving; the blow he had been dealt would be enough to bring even Goliath to his knees. I spent many nights alone because Nick worked later than he ever had in the past. I sat thinking, devising a plan to coax him out of the hole that he’d climbed into, and it was on one of these nights that I realised that he actually was the most robust of men that I’d ever known; for Nick to be brought so low by something so uncontrollable must have devastated him beyond anything that I could imagine. But I refused to believe that he couldn’t be saved. It could be done. I’d been in a low place once and he’d saved me; it was my duty as his wife to repay him his dedication and benevolence.

In the later days of January, I managed to lure a smile out of him when I’d taken him a midnight snack of cool iced-tea and a platter of cheese and crackers. He was sitting behind the bar in the new restaurant as he thumbed through menus and resumes from potential chefs. He didn’t lift his head when I sashayed through the open double French doors as they let in a cool summer breeze, but he did when I placed the tray on the bar and turned to leave, silently praying that he’d ask me to stay. The night was still and quiet, which was why I easily heard his sudden intake of breath. I was wearing a sheer white shirt that was open at the front, and not a stitch more. The dance floor was polished jarrah and was a virgin — until I began dancing to the slow music that played only in my head. As I moved I could feel his eyes on me and I remembered the last time that we’d danced; when “Syrup and Honey” played and we couldn’t keep our wandering hands off one another. I wanted that again. I wanted him again: his touch, his breath on my neck, his murmuring sweetness in my ear.

I hoped that he would come to me. I hoped that giving myself openly, exposed and vulnerable, that I could remind him that he knew me and that nothing mattered to me but him. But he remained seated behind the bar, watching.

‘Now I just feel like an idiot,’ I said as I stopped dancing and stood bare foot and half-naked as the low moon hovered in the sky behind me. His pained expression made me cry. But still he sat, in place behind the bar as he maintained the distance between us. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ I sobbed, ‘and you can push and push as much as you like, but I’m not going anywhere.’ He held my searching gaze but said nothing. I grabbed the picnic blanket that was folded on a table beside the door and ran.

Sheltered by the blossoms until the sun raised itself above the mountain peaks, illuminating the silver linings of the clouds, the memories of our past, of every beautiful
moment we shared, of our wedding day, of his touch, of his words that always brought me back from the brink of giving up on everything, all spurred me on.

But despite my efforts, the next winter seemed to freeze him further.

The restaurant was in full swing and he managed it like the professional that he was. He’d attended night courses and had received high distinctions when he’d completed them, of course; because he’d done nothing but study, work and sleep.

I planned and plotted schemes to at least have him acknowledge me with a smile or a kiss; he still hadn’t touched me since the Dr Reilly visit when the earth swallowed him up. My body screamed for him. My heart ached for him. Just a touch, just one, would have been absolute heaven compared to the burning hell that I was living.

I made sure I did everything that needed doing before it needed to be done, but after a while I slowed my duties with the thought that Nick may tell me off; I’d take any communication, negative or positive; I would sit there while he screamed at me if it meant hearing a spoken word coming my way.