Frontwards

Still Wednesday, January 11th, 2006

Why does he have to be so god damn good-looking? Leaning there on the hood of his crappy old car in that leather jacket and those tight jeans and smiling at me like that and with those eyes and his stupid sexy voice all like “Hey beautiful,” and those wonderful lips. It makes it that much more difficult for me to hate him. Bastard.

“Hi,” I said darkly, making every effort to avoid eye contact as I was all too aware that those hazel depths might actually push me to my breaking point and I was trying to pretend to be strong and assertive and angry and definitely not crying inside. Frank looked like he wasn’t sure whether to hug me or not. I just got in the car so he wouldn’t have to make that decision. And I made a point of slamming the door. The whole thing was like a fucking pantomime or a soap opera. Every move was dramatic.

Frank sat heavily in the driver’s seat and just stared ahead over the steering wheel for a little while with his hands by his side. I kept catching glances at him and his eyes were sparkling. Maybe it was tears. Maybe it was just the reflection of the moon in his irises. I guess we’ll never know. After a couple of minutes he started the car.

As we weaved through the city streets in silence, I found my arms wrapping instinctively around my belly. There is no real bump yet but I can’t wait until there is. In my mind I imagined resting cereal bowls and cups of tea and whatnot on it. And then the baby would kick and it would fall off and the bowl or cup or whatever would break but I wouldn’t mind. I would just laugh and be happy. I can’t wait to be happy.

However, the thought of having something actually living inside me is a concept which I have yet to make my peace with. I know that pregnancy is a natural and beautiful thing, blah blah blah, but every time I think about it I just remember that film Alien which is not beautiful at all.

But I digress. Yet again.

Frank drove around for a few minutes before pulling up into the woods by the side of the road. It was almost midnight so there were not many cars passing us, but every time one drove past, its headlights would blind me for just a second or two, the beams of light distorted through trees. The atmosphere was horrible. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realised that if my life were a horror movie (and touch wood it isn’t, yet) then this would be the perfect opportunity for Frank to kill me and ditch my body.

“So,” he said, leaning his head back against the rest. Fuck he’s gorgeous. In the moonlight coming through the leaves above us I couldn’t make out his features so well so I tried to memorise them. His messy, dark hair. His twinkly hazel eyes which I had stared right into all those weeks ago and got lost in. His obscure band t-shirts and his dark jeans. His smell – I could smell it still now – a curious mixture of cigarettes and vanilla. I could tell he was dying for a cigarette now. “I guess we should talk.”

I arched an eyebrow, unclipping my seatbelt and shuffling around on the seat until I was a tad more comfortable. “Yeah, I guess so.” When I glanced over, he was looking at me expectantly. “Shall I start?” He didn’t move or speak so I took this as a thumbs-up.

Over the past 24 hours I thought a lot about what I wanted to say to him but I couldn’t remember any of it. I took a deep breath. “Right. Well. I am ten weeks pregnant with our child. I have no job. I have no flight back to England. I am fucking terrified and pissed off and I have a lot of questions for you. My back aches. It hurts when I pee. You couldn’t get the condom on. I cry all the time. It’s all a fucking mess.” I leant my forehead against the cool glass of the window, closing my eyes as tears threatened to fall. My breathing was shallow and uneven.

I couldn’t see Frank but I imagined he was scratching the back of his head. It fucking irritates me when he does that. He sighed quite melodramatically. As if this was all just too much for him. As if it was all so fucking exhausting. He still had his seatbelt on and his hands on the wheel even though the car was stationary and the engine was off.

“Why did you do it, Frank?” It was not much louder than a whisper but I knew he heard me. I opened my eyes and looked over at him. He was staring out at the stars with a distant look on his face.

“I thought I was happy with her,” he said quietly, finally meeting my gaze and making my heart twinge. “I used to be happy with her. Things changed. I changed. She changed. But I just kept telling myself that I loved her and I was going to marry her and everything would be perfect.” He paused, and I let a tear fall. But I thought he at least deserved to explain himself without me interrupting him so I stayed silent. After a couple of seconds he looked back towards the stars. “When I met you, I realised that I wasn’t happy with Saskia. I realised that I was kidding myself the whole time. And maybe we didn’t plan for any of this to happen and maybe it shouldn’t have happened but really I’m just glad to have you back in my life.” He glanced back at me. I looked away. Condensation was forming on the windows. I resisted the urge to write my name in it.

I took a shaky breath and wiped my tears with the back of my hands. “Did you just think that you could pretend nothing happened?” I whispered, hands and voice trembling with unease. “Were you really going to marry her?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said.

I took another deep breath. “Do you love her?”

He hesitated. “I did,” he replied. “A long time ago.”

“Do you love me?”

I held my breath as I waited for his response, fighting back a fresh wave of tears quite unsuccessfully. “Yes,” he breathed, his hand roaming the darkness for mine. “Yes, Daisy, I love you. I know I’m an idiot but I’ve never stopped thinking about you and I’ve never...” He paused. “I’ve never felt that way about anybody before.”

I shook my head but left my hand limp in his. This was far, far too much to handle on a Wednesday night. But I needed answers and now seemed like the time. So I composed myself. “Then why were you still with Saskia?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Like, extremely uncomfortable. And not just metaphorically. Suddenly, I was in pain, and I was trying to breathe right but my stomach and my chest felt tight and I knew something was wrong and then I looked down and there was blood on the seat and I thought I was going to be sick.

“Frank,” I said slowly, my fingers gripping his hand like a lifeline, “take me to the hospital.”

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

“Name?”

I could barely remember. What was my name? God damn. I was so busy freaking out and panting that I could barely think about anything other than making sure this baby was going to be okay. And, bizarrely, the fact that I had spoilt Frank’s upholstery with my blood.

“Daisy... erm...” Frank turned to me looking lost. He didn’t even know my name. Great.

“Montague,” I gasped, “Daisy Montague. I’m ten weeks pregnant and I’m bleeding and it hurts and I can’t breathe and I’m scared.”

The receptionist at least seemed to understand me, even if Frank didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on. She typed things into her computer and gave me a small smile and handed us over some forms to fill out and told us to take a seat. The ER was packed but my name was called straight away, before I had even had the chance to fill out my date of birth on the form. I was being taken into a small room with yellow walls and a blue ceiling and a white bed. Frank stayed with me because I could not even comprehend the idea of letting go of his hand.

My doctor was a tall, serious-looking woman with quite masculine features. She told me to take off my clothes and lie down on the bed. “Don’t panic,” she kept saying in a very calm voice. How could she ask me not to panic? If they were seeing me so quickly when there were people in the waiting room with their severed fingers in bags of frozen peas, surely something was very wrong, no? I was bleeding for Christ’s sake. Bleeding is rarely good.

As the doctor prodded away at my nether regions (a part of this story which I would really not like to re-live so I will keep it as brief as possible), a nurse came in and took a sample of blood from my arm. Frank kept telling me that everything would be okay and kissing my fingers and stroking my forehead, but truth be told I didn’t feel too bad by this point. I’m not sure if it was the blood loss or if the doctor’s soothing words had worked or if it was some defence mechanism or some shit, but I was actually feeling decidedly calm as people rushed and machines beeped and doors opened and closed around me. I focussed my attentions on the clock, counting the minutes. It was almost an out-of-body experience. Like the real Daisy had floated up towards the blue ceiling and was just watching as the other Daisy was being poked and prodded and tested and given all of these tablets and medicines to take. It was all just so surreal.

At one point there was a very brief sonogram, nothing like the first one I had had with the nice technician. This one was hastily done, with the screen turned away from us so that we couldn’t see if anything was wrong.

“You’re doing great, Diz,” Frank whispered, squeezing my fingers between his.

Finally, after what seemed like forever but was in fact only 54 minutes, the beeping of machines slowed down and all of the people trickled out of the room until it was just me and Frank and then the serious-looking doctor walked back in. I was quite alarmed to see that her white coat was now stained red, and it took me a couple of seconds to realise that it was my blood all over her. There was lots of blood. Blood on her coat and the bed and my legs and the floor.

“The good news,” she began, peeling off two blood-coated rubber gloves, “is that your baby is okay.”

And just like that the air of calm lifted and I was in floods of tears, burying my head into Frank’s chest as I cried and cried and cried tears of relief. It was okay. My baby was going to be okay.

“I told you,” he whispered, but he was crying too.

The doctor gave us a moment to cry before she continued. “However,” she said, and we both looked up at her very quickly. Why does there have to be a ‘however’? Why can’t it just be ‘your baby is okay, now go and live your lives together with no complications’?

“It seems that your baby has a positive blood type, Ms Montague, and because your blood type is negative, your body thinks that the baby is a foreign threat. But now your blood and the baby’s blood has mixed, which can cause problems at birth and means that complications such as today’s have to be taken much more seriously. To reduce the chance of your body creating antibodies and completely rejecting the baby, you will need routine injections throughout your pregnancy.”

I stared at her for a long time. Maybe twenty full seconds of silence, just blinking and trying to understand what I had just been told. My arms were still around Frank’s neck and I realised that I was still very much naked from the waist down. Fantastic.

“Can that be done at home?” I sniffed, my voice cracked and quiet from the crying. “In England? I wasn’t planning on staying here.”

She shook her head. It looked like she wanted to sigh at my ignorance and I found myself shying away a little bit. She was a scary woman, with thick eyebrows and a square jaw and short dark hair. There were rings around her eyes and her hands were very big. I wasn’t going to argue with her. “Flying poses too big a threat to you right now, Ms Montague. I suggest you stay here until the birth.”

Well, we all knew what that meant. I glanced at Frank and he was smiling. “You’re staying with me,” he said. It wasn’t a question or even a suggestion. It was just what was going to happen because there was no other choice.

Brilliant.