The Puppy That Came for Christmas (13 page)

I was following the prescriptions dutifully, unthinkingly, since our difficulties with conception had taken a back seat to the present crisis with our puppy girl; in fact, I reflected, when it came to the crucial moment, I'd offered without a moment's hesitation to give up our IVF money for the chance to keep Emma.

I awoke from my daze one morning to a startling fact. There was no hiding it: I was two weeks late. Even by my erratic cycles this was too much to ignore, but it was impossible, I said to myself. I couldn't be. I didn't dare hope that in the midst of this dark period I might finally be pregnant. I bought a pregnancy test, but the line didn't turn red. Maybe it was faulty. I bought another one, and then another.

The pregnancy tests weren't showing that I was pregnant, but on the Internet forums there were lots of women who'd had negative pregnancy tests yet had been pregnant anyway. I also remembered what Carmel had said about the line on her test being so faint that she could barely see it. The doctors had thought she was mad, but she'd been pregnant. Another day passed and no change, and I began to convince myself I really might be. I so wanted to be. I even told a couple of old friends that I met up with at a convention that I thought I was, just to see how it felt for the words to roll off my tongue, pass my lips and take flight into the world.

“Still very early days yet,” I said, as I accepted their congratulations. I was sure there was a little person growing inside me. The little person we'd been waiting so long for.

“You'll make a lovely mum,” one of them said.

 

On Monday I decided I'd go to the doctor. The pregnancy tests were still showing negative, but maybe they just weren't sensitive enough; doctors, the forums also said, had more sensitive tests at their disposal, and it would let me know for certain, be sure about the life that was growing inside me. I phoned for an appointment but my regular doctor wasn't there. Did I mind seeing another doctor instead? I could see the other doctor today, within the next hour in fact, whereas I couldn't see my own doctor until the end of the week. I put my jacket on, gave Emma a chew to keep her occupied and got in the car.

When I got to the surgery, I was informed by the receptionist that the new doctor was videoing all his patients as part of his final training. I said I didn't mind being filmed, took a seat and flicked through a tatty magazine in a bid to block out of my range of vision the posters on the wall giving dietary advice to expectant mums. Then I got to thinking that actually I did mind, and went back to the receptionist and told her that I'd rather not be videoed.

“That's OK,” she said. “It's just for him to see his bedside manner, that sort of thing. It's perfectly within your rights. I'll ask him not to.”

 

I went into the treatment room. The video camera was placed facing the doctor and the patient's chair next to him.

“I don't want to be videoed,” I said.

“It's not on,” he said, a young man with short light hair and a small mustache, smartly dressed in dark trousers and a stripy shirt.

There was an orange light flashing on the camera, but I presumed that meant it was on standby. I looked at him.

“Why's the light flashing?”

He turned the camera so it was facing away from us.

“Now what can I do for you?”

He was a little difficult to understand. When he'd come into the waiting room and loudly announced the patient's name before mine, he'd had to say it three times before a man sitting in the opposite corner finally realized it was him being called. I told him that I thought I might be pregnant because I was late. I also told him that I'd taken more than one pregnancy test and they had all come back negative. He must have my notes, I said, so I hoped I didn't have to go into the saga of my hospital visits and my medical history too closely. Was it possible for him to do a more sensitive, accurate test, I asked, then fell silent and looked at him hopefully through watering eyes.

He looked through the notes, shuffled through them, and then read them a second time before speaking. I strained to make sense of his words.

“It is highly, highly unlikely that you are pregnant,” he said. “In fact, given your age and prognosis so far, it is doubtful, almost impossible, in fact, that you will ever be pregnant.”

I stumbled out of the treatment room wishing that he had filmed our brief, painful chat, so he could watch it later and feel ashamed—and then hopefully improve on how he talked to patients.

I had been unsure whether to tell Ian about my visit to the doctor, but a whirlwind of events that afternoon overtook my indecision and saw to it that he never knew.

My brother Jack phoned: “Carmel's had the baby.”

“Oh! Oh, good. Is she OK? What did she have?” My heart was filling with joy for them, but, with the day I'd had, it was having difficulty transmitting itself through my brain and into my voice. I struggled to rouse myself.

“A little girl. We're going to call her Maisie,” said Jack.

“Maisie's a lovely—”

“She's in the premature baby unit,” Jack interrupted. “The birth was awful. She shouldn't have been born yet, but they said they had to take her out of Carmel or she might have died. At one time I thought both the baby and Carmel were going to die. She wouldn't stop bleeding.”

His voice cracked.

“They . . . they don't know if the baby's going to have brain damage. She didn't breathe for a long, long time. But she's alive and I didn't think she was going to be . . . Can you come?”

 

I dropped Emma at Jo's and caught the train to London, got on another train into Kent, then caught a taxi to the hospital. Carmel had been given a room of her own and was being closely monitored.

“How are you?”

She smiled weakly. “Sore and swollen. The midwife said I was bleeding too much, so I had to have a blood transfusion,” she said, prostrate on her pillows. “It happens more often with black women—we're more at risk—but we've got a baby . . .” A tear slipped down her face. “She's so beautiful. Go and see her.”

 

Jack took me to the premature baby unit. There were six see-through incubators with round hand holes in one side. In one corner another mother sat gazing into the incubator at her baby.

“Here's Maisie,” Jack said, stopping beside a cot. Inside was a tiny, tiny shriveled little girl with a shock of black hair. “You can touch her.”

We washed our hands with the sanitizer and I put my hand through the hole. I stroked her miniature leg gently and she moved a touch.

“The nurse said it has to be a more definite stroke,” Jack said. “Don't know why, but she said they get irritated by flickery strokes; maybe it's like being tickled.”

I tried a firmer stroke and Maisie opened her eyes and seemed to look at me.

“Hello, Maisie. Welcome to the world.”

I sat with Jack and Carmel for the afternoon until it was time for me to go back to London and meet Ian to get the train home.

“So, how have you been?” Jack asked as I was gathering my bags together.

“Oh, fine. Fine. You know, just the usual sort of stuff.” I hugged him. “She's lovely—whether she has brain damage or whether she's fine, which I think she will be, Maisie's a lovely, lovely little girl.”

The night before Emma was to leave us we hardly slept. She lay on our bed, unsure of where this privilege had come from, or why, and I stroked her as I lay awake.

 

Ian was up at dawn to go to work as usual, but not before he served up the last puppy breakfast, complete with a final rendition of his “Puppy Breakfast-time” song. He also managed a quick play in the paddling pool with her, carefully shielding his suit from any splashes as he threw her ball and plastic duck into the water for her to retrieve. She loved the paddling pool and had even been introducing her friends to it, such as Eddie, who'd jumped straight in when he'd come around to play. Liz had been amazed; Eddie didn't usually even like getting his feet wet and would hold each paw up for Liz to dry when he came in from the muddy garden or a rainy walk. As we stood there, watching the dogs play, we reminisced about the times they'd shared and how we'd watched them grow up together. We were both upset and apprehensive about letting our puppies go, and took comfort in talking about all the good times we'd had.

One recollection sparked another and another, and I thought that we shouldn't have been surprised at anything the two of them did. Once, when they were both young puppies, they'd managed to tip a tin of white paint over in the garden and then had made rows of little white paw prints across the patio before we could stop them. Fortunately, Ian had been able to get the white paint off with a high-pressure hose. “I'm going to miss her so much,” I said.

“If only we could have kept them for a year,” said Liz, “like some other charities do.”

“I don't know how I'm going to love the new puppy.”

“Me neither,” Liz agreed. “I feel like I need a break before the next one arrives.”

But Helper Dogs was always short of volunteers and needed to keep the ones it had occupied. I could see how a small break might easily turn into a longer one, but it didn't make it any easier for me. Loving a puppy and then losing it, a conveyor belt of lost love. I just wasn't sure.

 

After Ian had left for work, I toured the house looking at all of Emma's things while she lazed on the patio in the June sun. Bowls, brushes, blankets, a basket; leads, food, towels, treats and more than a hundred toys. There was so much—physical evidence of the giant space she'd come to occupy in our hearts and lives. I couldn't imagine what we'd done before she'd been here, and I didn't want to think about how our little house would seem when she'd gone. Soon, I was just wandering around empty rooms in order to avoid looking at the pile of stuff in the hall. There was nothing I could do to delay any longer. I packed the boot, Emma jumped into the car, onto her pink princess car seat, and I drove us the fifteen minutes or so to the Helper Dogs center.

I was determined not to cry on the way. I didn't want to cause an accident, and my crying might have been distressing and confusing for my pup, which didn't seem fair. I had almost cried in the car once before, after a hospital appointment, but somehow I'd managed not to until I'd pulled up in the Helper Dogs car park. Jamie had innocently asked how I was and then I couldn't stop. Loud, nose-sniffing sobs: Emma had been very worried.

 

“It's all right, it's all right,” I tried to soothe her, but as we walked down the quiet country lane adjacent to the Helper Dogs center she wouldn't take her eyes off me. Emma knew something was up. No matter what happened, though, I wasn't going to cry, not until she was gone. I wanted Emma to remember me as happy and smiling—the way I usually was. I didn't want her to think even for one millisecond that I was leaving her with Jamie because she'd done something wrong.

 

“I'd better go,” I said, when I'd unloaded all of Emma's toys.

“I bet Head Office has never met a dog who has this many toys before!” Jamie said.

I stroked Emma. “She'll be OK, won't she?”

“Yes, you know she will. And we'll get reports on how she's getting on every now and again. We'll keep you in touch with her.”

I hesitated, unwilling to say anything or move a muscle.

“It's OK,” Jamie said. “Look, it's best if you go quickly—it's easier for you and her. I'll give you a call as soon as I have your new puppy.”

I nodded and then turned away and walked to the car, conscious of every step I was taking away from her, knowing that Emma was watching me all the way. I watched her watching me in the rearview mirror as I started the engine.

I couldn't hear what Jamie was saying, but it looked something like: “Come on, Emma, this way.” She went with him and disappeared into the center.

 

By the time I got back it was almost one o'clock and Ian, who'd only worked a half day, was already home. He opened the door and held me close in his arms as I finally let the tears come. I couldn't let myself cry for long, but for now I couldn't help it. Jamie had another little puppy for us, a new dog to love while the shock of losing Emma was still red raw.

“I don't know how I'm going to love him,” I confessed to Ian. “I don't even know if I'm going to be able to like him.”

“You will, of course you will,” Ian soothed, still holding me tight.

I was sure that I would never ever be able to love this new puppy as much as I'd loved Emma. Deep down, I felt like he was trying to take Emma's place; maybe, if the new puppy hadn't been ready and waiting to come to us—he was nearly eight weeks old—then Emma wouldn't have needed to leave quite so quickly. She could have stayed for a few more weeks. Even a few more days, a single day, and I would have had a little more time with her.

She'd be almost at Head Office by now and would be worried about me, wondering where I was. I wrote the last part of her diary newspaper column: