Second Chances (21 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

IT WAS THREE days after Daisy’s accident, and she was finally at home in her own bed. The doctor had said she had been very lucky; there was no nerve damage and Daisy, true to form, proved to be stubborn. Despite the serious blood loss she’d suffered, she clung on and battled through.

‘It was when you asked the nurse for dessert that I knew you were all better, baby,’ Allegra said to her, smiling. Daisy had smiled sleepily, smears of chocolate ice-cream smudged around her mouth, and drifted back off to dreamland. Satisfied that she was settled down, Allegra checked on Bella, smoothing her hair gently and kissing her softly on the forehead. She shut their bedroom door quietly behind her and went into her study.

Ejecting
the Maroon 5 disc from the CD player, Allegra dropped it into the bin. She didn’t think she could ever listen to it again. Studying her music collection, she impulsively picked out Vanessa Carlton’s Be Not Nobody, putting A Thousand Miles on to play on constant repeat as she sat down in front of her computer and stared at the screen.

After
all that had happened, Abi coming to her aid without question or judgement, more than likely helping to save Daisy’s life, Allegra wanted to tell Jack, wanted to tell him… what? She wasn’t sure, but she thought he should at least know what Abi did for her, so that he would know how grateful she felt. She doubted that Abi would tell Jack herself; it was just one of those things you wouldn’t, because it would rip the scab off a still-painful wound.

“Dear Jack,” she began typing. No, that wasn’t right. It was too formal, and at the same time too personal. Allegra deleted the words and stared at the screen, the cursor blinking steadily at her, as if waiting patiently for her to gather her thoughts and form her words properly. How could she say all she wanted to say? And the irony of it was that she knew what she really wanted was not to tell him anything, but to ask questions. “What was it all about? Was I just a game you were playing? We said ‘I love you’ to each other… did you mean it? Or were we loving each other in different ways? Because when I told you I love you, you knew I meant it… Then, nothing. You vanished back into your own world, leaving me alone in this darkness. Was I meant to wait for you? Was it all a lie? I would have walked through fire to be with you, Jack. I still would.”

Allegra
stared at what she had written, and sighed. There was no way she could send that to Jack, as much as she wanted to. There were rules you had to follow, even when your heart was broken. You didn’t send tormented emails to the person responsible, for one thing. You were meant to hold your head up high, maybe have a little cry in private, where it wouldn’t embarrass anyone… you weren’t allowed to cause a scene, in other words.

Allegra
wondered who the hell had made up these rules. Right now, more than anything else, she wanted to find Jack and scream at him until she got some answers. She thought with some envy of Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes, the singer from TLC who had been killed in a car wreck in Honduras. Lisa would never have put up with this shit. She was notorious for giving as good as she got. One time, she had actually set fire to the home of her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But that was Lisa. Her life epitomised the quote made famous by John Derek in the 1949 movie Knock On Any Door: “Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse”.

Allegra
knew she could never do anything like that. She was too conscientious, too burdened by an ingrained sense of responsibility, too aware of consequences and too afraid to face them. Slowly, she pressed the delete key and erased the message she had composed to Jack. Life really did progress in ever-decreasing circles. Once again, she realised, she would have to simply knuckle down, grit her teeth and get through a mess on her own.

She
stood up abruptly, shut down her computer and got ready for bed. Again, sleep was a long time coming. When Allegra eventually dropped off, fevered dreams troubled her mind.

This
time, she was in front of a mirror balanced on a large antique camphor chest she remembered from her childhood. She had loved that chest, the wonderful scent of the wood, stronger when she lifted the lid to carefully take out the precious linens and delicate lace table-cloths and napkins her mother stored in there. In her dream, the mirror slipped and as Allegra caught and re-balanced it, she had a weird glimpse of two different reflections of herself, changing as she looked at it from different angles.

The
first face was her own; the second was also hers, but different, with short, red hair. It could have been a boy. But it was also her. Stifling the fear that was starting to creep through her, Allegra sat down and began removing her make-up and, as she brushed her hair, occasionally talked comfortingly to herself. Then, a vicious, high-pitched voice began echoing everything she said, and Allegra realised it was coming from the mirror. Her reflection began flicking back and forth between herself and this other face she don't recognise but knew was also herself.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

DR HENDERSON SLOWLY moved the scanner over Liz’s abdomen, peering closely at the ultrasound image of the baby. Lying back on the examination table, Liz tried not to squirm. The gel he had smeared on her belly had been uncomfortably cold, the table was uncomfortable, she was uncomfortable… No, forget that, she wasn’t merely uncomfortable, she was miserable as hell.

This
baby clearly had some idea of what lay in store for it, with Liz as his reluctant mother, and had decided it didn’t want to be born. What other explanation could there be for the fact that it was now an astonishing 15 days overdue? Liz was as wide as she was tall, her feet had bloated up like water balloons, none of her maternity clothes fitted her anymore, she hadn’t been able to sleep on her front for months, even eating made her feel more ill because there was no more room in her belly seeing as this child had taken up every available millimeter of space there was in her gut.

‘It’s Rosemary’s Baby, isn’t it?’ she asked the doctor, dolefully. ‘I have the anti-Christ festering in my womb. It’s never going to be born, it’s just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually grow into my entire body and take it over, like the pod people in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.’

Dr
Henderson laughed and patted Liz’s shoulder reassuringly. He’d seen enough pregnant women waddle into his office, in tears because they couldn’t bear the thought of being pregnant for one more minute. At least Liz could still joke about it.

‘Well, everything looks fine, the amniotic fluid looks substantial and apart from your occasional Braxton Hicks contractions, there’s just no sign that this baby’s ready to emerge, that’s all,’ he said, and was rewarded with Liz promptly bursting into hysterical tears.

‘Oh please, I’m begging you, just get it out of me, I can’t stand another day of this,’ she sobbed. ‘A mercy C-section, anything, but I’m not leaving until you get it out of me. This pregnancy has been going on for at least three years, even elephants are allowed to give birth sooner than that… oh please, Dr Henderson, do something, I can’t take it any more…’

Handing
Liz a box of tissues, wiping the gel off her belly and helping her into a chair, Dr Henderson sighed. ‘Alright, on humanitarian grounds and out of concern for your distress, I’ll agree to induce the birth,’ he said. ‘Friday evening good for you?’

Thus,
two days after her humiliating outburst in his office, Liz and Luke went up to the Matilda Hospital, checked into her private room and waited for Dr Henderson. A thunderstorm had been brewing all day, and by 6pm, the Hong Kong Observatory had issued a typhoon warning. It’s a sign from God, Liz had gloomily said to Luke. Even He doesn’t want this baby to be born. The doctor finally breezed in, faced the glowering Liz and went about administering the drugs necessary to help trigger labour.

‘Now, I’m not promising anything’s going to happen,’ he warned her. ‘You are so far from ready to give birth that I think this is more an exercise in futility than anything else. So, Luke, you go home, I’ll go home, and Liz can lie back, relax, eat dinner and watch TV with her feet up. I’ll be back tomorrow, probably late afternoon or early evening, to check on you and administer another dose of the medication, alright? With any luck, this baby might be ready to be born by Sunday night.’

It
was just after 9pm when Liz finally settled back in her hospital bed, switched on the TV and tried to eat something. Twenty minutes later, she felt an odd twinge in her gut. No… surely not. It couldn’t possibly be. She tried to focus on the TV programme, and oh shit, ow, that hurt. Another twinge. She tried to remain calm. Dr Henderson said nothing was going to happen for at least another 24 hours. But dammit, those pains were coming more frequently, about 10 minutes apart now. Liz tried to ignore them, but at about half past ten, caved in and buzzed the nurse.

‘I’ve got cramps,’ she announced, brightly, hoping that if she said it, that’s all it would be.

‘Okay, I’d better check you over, just to be sure,’ the nurse replied, smiling just as brightly. Liz hoped that one day the woman would be pregnant with quintuplets and someone else would be poking and prodding her inside bits with sharp, skinny fingers encased in latex gloves. Then she’d see how much she’d be smiling herself then.

‘You’re four centimetres dilated,’ the nurse announced. ‘Will you be wanting any pain relief? How are you doing?’

‘Four centimetres? Have you gone mad? Did you check me properly? Are you even a qualified nurse? How do I know you’re not just some insane person who’s wandered in here off the street and stuck her hand up my crotch just for the hell of it? Four centimetres? Oh, my, GOD…’ Liz’s tirade was interrupted by another painful contraction.

‘Pethidine shot? Or shall we start you off on the gas and air? Have you made arrangements for an anesthetist if you’re planning on having an epidural?’ the nurse asked. She’d ignored Liz’s torrent of abuse; women in labour were notorious for being quite horrible. It was the pain; they couldn’t handle it.

‘Give me everything you’ve got,’ Liz commanded, gripping the sheets. ‘But first get me out of this bed, I need to walk around, maybe the baby’ll fall out without me noticing.’

The
nurse helped Liz to get to her feet, then handed her the mask which supplied the gas. Liz was meant to breathe into the mask at the onset of a contraction; the gas was meant to help ease the pain. Liz found all it did was make her want to vomit. The Pethidine shot was a waste of time, too. Close to midnight, she finally broke.

‘I need more drugs! Better drugs! Powerful drugs!’ Liz sobbed, collapsing back into bed. ‘Either that or kill me now, please, oh shit, I can’t believe Allegra did this twice, no wonder the woman’s a basket case.’

Eyeing
Liz, with her lips pursed, the nurse checked her cervix again and, pulling off the latex gloves with a snap, said, ‘I’m going to call the doctor, and you’d better call your husband. You’re close to eight centimetres dilated. Shall I call that anesthetist now, too?’

‘He’s not my husband and forget Dr Henderson, I only want the man with the drugs,’ Liz bellowed through her tears.

Thanks
to the storm, which had erupted into an unseasonal signal nine typhoon since Liz’s labour had kicked in, it took Dr Henderson, Luke and the anesthetist close to two hours to make their separate ways back to the Matilda. The narrow road up the Peak was tricky to drive at the best of time; in the dark, in the middle of a full-scale typhoon, it was close to perilous.

The
birth was swift but complicated. Just after 4am, Dr Henderson had to perform a high forceps delivery when the monitor showed the baby’s heart rate dropping dangerously low. When the child emerged, Luke went cold with fear. Instead of being bright red and yelling, the infant was pale and limp.

‘Is it okay? Is it okay?’ Liz asked, looking up at him through her tears. ‘Why isn’t it crying? Is my baby okay?’

Luke
swallowed hard, watching Dr Henderson and the midwives huddled over the table where they had whisked the baby away from Liz as soon as it was delivered, obviously trying to resuscitate it. ‘I… I don’t know,’ he said, holding her hand. It was the most terrifying moment of Liz’s life, to realise that Luke was himself so scared that he couldn’t even comfort her with meaningless platitudes while they waited to find out if their baby was going to live.

It
could have been a minute, five minutes, half an hour, Liz had no idea. But in the time that it took the medical team to revive her child, she made all sorts of promises to God (who she didn’t even believe in), to the baby, to Luke, to herself. Just let my baby be okay, please, she begged silently. Finally, Dr Henderson came over with the infant swaddled in a cloth, and placed it gently in Liz’s arms.

‘It’s a beautiful little girl,’ he said, looking exhausted but relieved. ‘We never anticipated that you’d go into labour so fast… Basically, your contractions were so powerful and so rapid that you almost squeezed the life out of her, poor wee thing. She’s fine now; her second Apgar score was nine, so…’

Liz
was still crying, this time for joy, looking down at this tiny bundle in her arms, scarcely able to believe it was hers, she’d grown it inside of her, that it was alright and, most amazingly of all, that she was overwhelmed with a huge, powerful and unexpected rush of love for it. She carefully counted all its fingers and toes, gazed down into its squashed little face, a big red blotch running almost right down the middle of it where the forceps had grabbed her and pulled her out.

‘Oh, Luke, she’s just perfect,’ she whispered. ‘What are we going to call her?’

Through
his own tears, Luke said, ‘Well, they’re calling this storm tonight Typhoon Victor… maybe we should call her Victoria?’

Liz
snorted. ‘You’ve got to be joking. Victoria? Who are we, the bloody queen mother? No… I know what her name is. She’s Rachel. Because it’s a beautiful name, she’s a beautiful baby, and also… well, you know.’ She looked up at Luke, kissed him. In all their lives, no moment had seemed so perfect as this did right now, regardless of the wind howling outside, tree branches battering the windows, the alarming sight of Dr Henderson wearily removing his blood-stained gown. She had Luke by her side and Rachel in her arms. Nothing would ever come close to matching this.