Emergency: Wife Lost and Found (12 page)

P
AULINE
was vacuuming when James opened the door, but her bright smile faded the second she saw Lorna, pale and shivering, beside him.

‘James, I’ve got the most terrible migraine,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to go home.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘I’ve put the dishwasher on.’

‘That’s fine, Pauline,’ James said, relieved that she was going. This ten years overdue conversation didn’t need an audience.

‘It’s not fair.’ Lorna sat on the sofa and said it again. ‘Why couldn’t our baby have lived?’

‘Because it couldn’t,’ James said sitting beside her, holding her frozen hands. ‘Because it didn’t…’

‘I know it was ages ago, I know I should be over it, I am over it.’ She screwed her face up as she tried to explain. ‘I just…Seeing that little baby…’

‘We all feel it,’ James said. ‘And it isn’t fair, because we’d have loved ours so much.’ And the tears started then, but they were different tears from her usual ones. Her usual tears were silent and frequent, a little river
that flowed easily, while this was like a dam bursting, an outpouring that had even James wondering if she
would
ever stop. He held her body as she cried, not just for the little baby this morning but for her baby, for their baby that they’d never even got to hold.

‘I don’t even know what it was. I didn’t ask, I didn’t.’ She was bent over double on the chair and he was holding her shoulders, had been for the last hour now.

‘A girl.’ James said, because ten years on they could finally talk about it. ‘It was a little girl that we lost.’

And it was nice to cry together, horrible and sad but nice. It was good to hold each other and weep for their little girl who should be dashing off to school right now, who would have been so very loved if only she had lived. It was good, James thought, to be able to
say
it, to let Lorna know that he really had cared, that it had made him bleed too, but on the inside.

And even if they thought she’d never stop crying, of course Lorna did, beating the dishwasher to the end of its cycle, in fact. She let James hold her and listened to the noise of his empty house the gurgle of the dishwasher draining. Lorna was just
being
for a moment instead of thinking, until James spoke.

‘I love you Lorna.’ She froze in his arms, wished he wouldn’t say it. ‘I always have and I always will.’

‘You said you didn’t.’

‘No.’ He would say it this time, would tell her what he’d tried to all those years ago. ‘I said in a row that I felt trapped, and I did feel trapped, because I was twenty-five and we’d barely started going out and your parents insisted we marry. I did feel trapped, because you lost the baby and then you hated me.’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ James countered. ‘You just lay on that couch and looked at me as if you hated me.’

‘No.’

‘Yes!’ James insisted, because she had. ‘And then we’d row and then you dragged it out of me that I didn’t love you on our wedding day. Hell, Lorna, I didn’t know you on our wedding day and,’ he admitted, because he was going to be honest now, ‘I didn’t know
how
to love you once we lost the baby. I’ll tell you when I realised I loved you. The minute you walked out that door, the second I lost you, I realised how much I loved you, only you didn’t want to hear it. You went back to your parents and let them brainwash you some more.’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ James said, but this time she was adamant.

‘No,’ Lorna said again. ‘I did go back to Scotland and I stood up to him. I told him I wasn’t a whore because I’d had sex out of wedlock, I told him what a good man you were and that divorce wasn’t a sin—that it just didn’t work out.’

‘You said that?’

‘Yes.’ And he held her tight because he knew how hard that would have been. ‘And I believed it too. We didn’t speak for years after that. But, James…’ Oh, this was hard, this was so hard. ‘I loved you so much, I loved you from the first day of medical school and I set my cap at you that night.’

‘Lorna.’

‘No, listen. That night I dressed for you, I put on make-up and perfume and I set out to get you to notice me.’

‘Lorna!’ He halted her then, stopped the rotten legacy
her father had given her in its tracks. ‘That’s called flirting. That’s what people do when they like each other. You’re not some witch who cast a spell on me that night. I was crazy about you too.’

‘I didn’t expect it to be so-o-o…’ She screwed her face up as she tried to explain. ‘I never thought it would be so much, that we’d want each other so much!’

And even if it was jumbled, he
did
understand. Because they hadn’t just flirted, they’d connected that night, connected at a level James had spent the last decade trying to recapture. They’d entered a world where they spoke in a new language, cracked the code, discovered new colours. His twenty-two-year-old virgin had unlocked the door and unleashed a tiger, and she blamed herself for it.

‘I set out to hook you that night and I did, and I got the prize—you married me for the baby, and suddenly there wasn’t one. You did marry me for the baby, James.’

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But I also believe we’d have got there in the end anyway.’ He felt the shift in her then, could almost see the mist clearing as she stared back at their past and took away all the hurt and pain that had led them to this. ‘I’ve never been happier than you made me, Lorna.’ And now ten years on surely he could say it. ‘And I’m sorry we couldn’t talk about the baby, but we are now, and there
will
be others.’ It was the worst thing to say to a woman who had lost a child, but this was ten years on, he knew that. Surely it was okay now, but seeing her stricken face he could have kicked himself for saying it. ‘You’re thirty-three, Lorna.’

‘There’ll be no others.’ And out it came. If she’d
been upset before it was nothing to this. ‘He said my sins would catch up with me and I didn’t believe him. I know that I did nothing wrong, I’m a doctor for God’s sake, but that year, that horrible year, when I went back to the doctors each time, I felt as if my sins
were
catching up with me. Adhesions from my appendix, endometriosis…I’m a mess inside, James. There won’t be any more babies.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do!’ Lorna sobbed. ‘Because I can’t live with the pain, and in four weeks’ time I’m having a hysterectomy.’

And it was out and she’d said it and he was still holding her.

He never wanted to stop holding her—here in his living room, his head felt as if it was imploding. There was a tumble of regret, of anger, about wasted, wasted years and wasted, wasted futures, about the damage that had been done, not just this morning to the baby they had fought to save but to the woman he was holding in his arms now. He knew she was spent now, knew he needed to think before he rushed in and said the wrong thing, so instead he stood her up and said the only thing he knew that she wanted to hear.

‘Bed.’

He gave her his
nice man
kiss, a little kiss on the forehead that told her he knew she was tired, drained, utterly exhausted. He took her upstairs, unbuttoned her coat, took off her clothes and his own. He pulled the duvet over and pulled her into his arms and held her, didn’t say a word as it all sank in. He held her the same way he had the night her father had screamed at them
and told her she was a slut and a whore, the same way he had the night she’d come home after losing their baby.

Their little girl.

Lorna was thinking about her too.

‘Is she the L on your keying?’

‘She’s the one,’ James said.

‘Lily.’

There were no tears left, just relief at being able to finally mourn
her
and the shrivelling sorrow for the baby that had died today too. Then there was James, his hand low on her stomach as if somehow he loved it—adhesions and endometriosis and missing Fallopian tube and all.

As if somehow still he loved her.

L
ORNA
had no idea what time it was when she awoke. For a while she lay there, his body spooned into hers, not trying to orientate herself, suspended in whatever time it was and remembering.

The hellish night shift.

Telling him her truth.

And waking in his arms.

Oh, James was too much of a gentleman to baulk and run. Lying there, she almost braced herself for a talking-to, that he cared for her, that he always would, but it was ten years ago now…But his warm palm was pressing harder into her breast, and his mouth was on the back of her shoulder and for a moment she wondered if she had actually told him because it seemed as if nothing had changed, as if, even with the truth, he still wanted her.

And then she stopped thinking, turned over in the darkness and faced him, kissed him on his lips and meshed her skin with his. It didn’t matter if it was morning, afternoon or evening, because time took on a new meaning when she was in his arms.

He sort of tumbled her onto her back and he was still kissing her. He could be almost matter-of-fact at times in his love-making, but in a delicious way that drove her wild. As if her body were dotted with Braille he read it, taking his weight on his elbows, parting her warm legs with his knees. And who the hell needed foreplay? Because as he slipped inside her she was ready anyway, ready for James to take his time. He didn’t say a word and neither did Lorna. They revelled in each other’s bodies, and whoever said the missionary position was boring hadn’t been a devotee of James. There was no rush, just a lovely languorous journey, where she crept out of her mind as he crept inside her body, accepting the sensations he afforded—the slide of his skin over hers, the taste of his chest, her hands slid down his torso in their own lazy time then felt his taut buttocks and dug him deeper inside her. She loved his ragged breathing in her ear, loved the weight pressing down on her, but he was being too gentle, mindful of her chest when he didn’t have to be any more. Or maybe he did, because it hurt just a little but he solved that in an instant, wrapping his arms under her now, so she got the contact but not the weight, and it was so nice she wanted to stay there for ever.

She wished she could stop moaning, because she didn’t want to signal the end, wished she could tell her hands to stop digging into him and her legs to stop tightening around him because she never wanted him to stop. He didn’t. Even as she was coming, still he drove her further, and it was delicious, like gorging yourself on chocolate ice cream and going back to find the freezer still full. Still he was there, still he
was driving into her, and if James’s control was to be admired, she had absolutely none, and for a minister’s daughter her language was shocking. She’d have to have a quiet word to herself later. James did not seem to mind, he
obviously
didn’t, in fact, because as her orgasm hit again he forgot to be gentle now, held her so tight as he thrust inside her, muffled her words with his chest and took her—because he could.

‘You want babies,’ Lorna said into the darkness. Having made love in his very dark bedroom, they were lying there all wrapped up and content, and when it came around, it was nice to find out they were big enough and able enough to talk about it now.

‘I want lots of things,’ James said, ‘but I want you more.’

‘We could adopt.’

‘We can do lots of things.’ James agreed.

‘I’m worried.’ She took a big breath and blew it out and tested flying with her new honest wings. ‘I’m worried that I’ll get depressed again after the operation, that I’ll put you through it all over again.’

‘You won’t,’ James said, ‘because I’ll drag those dark thoughts out of you and you’ll talk to me this time, and you’ll see someone if you have to. Lorna, if you knew the hell of these past years. I’ve been trying to find you, find a woman that made me laugh, that fitted…’

‘James!’

‘We fit,’ James said. ‘We just did, till you went all dark on me.’

‘We did,’ Lorna agreed, then addressed a nagging guilt. ‘What about Ellie? That was more…’

‘It was,’ he admitted.

‘What will you tell her?’ Her body swept with dread, because Ellie hadn’t entered her head till now, and that he’d hurt her once over Lorna was bad enough, but that he’d hurt her twice was unthinkable.

‘Tell her?’ He could feel her cringe and then he remembered that little look in Resus, where she’d got it all wrong, and he’d chosen, though it had been hard to do so, to not put her right—but he could now.

Could, because finally they were being honest.

‘She asked if we could go out for dinner—there was something she had to say. So I went, I owed her that.’

‘You did,’ Lorna admitted. ‘So what did she say?’

‘A lot!’ James rolled his eyes in the darkness. ‘I was never into her, I never took her to work things, we’d been going out a year and I’d never even hinted that she move in, I was too wrapped up in work. She gave me a right earful actually. Then she said she deserved better, which I agreed with, and then Abby rang and asked me to come in, which she said proved her point exactly, so she took the phone, gave Abby an earful and then stomped out of the restaurant and I paid for dinner.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m rubbish in bed too, by the way.’ James added glumly. ‘It wasn’t a great night, but it had to be done.’

‘She’ll be okay.’

‘She will be,’ James said, ‘because she was right. She did deserve better. Now…’ He rolled on his side and faced her. ‘About you. You’re going to see Henry Lowther. He’s the best gynaecologist—’

‘I’ve had second, third, fourth opinions,’ Lorna said.

‘Good, but Henry’s the best and he’ll do a wonderful
job and hopefully sort out those adhesions too. Is that why you were on so many painkillers?’ He kissed her forehead when she nodded. ‘Well, you won’t be soon. You shouldn’t have to live in pain.’

And he was so nice and so accepting of it that it turned out there were some tears left after all. ‘It’s been a bit better,’ she admitted. ‘A lot better, actually—like going to the dentist and suddenly your toothache’s gone.’

‘Go and see Henry.’

‘He’s at the same hospital, though.’ Lorna cringed but James just laughed.

‘I’m sure he’s seen it all before!’

He had.

He waded through her medical history, which was as thick as a telephone book from the car accident alone, looked at all her scans and reports and medications and then he examined her.

‘Hmm.’ He was one of those eccentric old-school doctors who wore a bow-tie on a Tuesday. ‘I will want to have a look before I proceed to a hysterectomy.’ This made her groan because so many doctors had had so many looks. ‘You still look a bit anaemic. I’ll run some bloods but I’d like you to up your iron, and my secretary will arrange an ultrasound, then I’d like to do a quick laparoscopy and have a look before we decide how to proceed.’

And she was about to say no, to just go with the doctor she was with, because she’d been through it so very many times, but he was rather thorough and reassuring,
and it was her only womb and, yes, as she rolled up her sleeve and the needle slid in, Lorna knew that even if it just made James realise she’d done everything, it was worth just a bit more discomfort.