“How bad can it be?”
“Bad.” She shuddered, almost dislodging her cannula. “My real name is...Pauline. After some great-aunt. I changed it when I was five—I always hated it.”
Annie gaped. Pauline. A Pauline could easily end up doing admin for the council. A Pauline could be overweight, and sad, and obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy. A Pauline could be left by her husband and could most definitely live in a horrible flat. “My God,” Annie said, her brain falling apart. Polly hadn’t been born Polly. Polly had become Polly.
“You ever tell anyone, I’ll kill you with my...bare hands.”
“You’ll be dead first, Pauline.”
“True,” she said. She started to laugh, a deep gurgling sound, and after a few moments Annie joined in, too.
DAY 67
Meet a newborn baby
“Oh, God, not another blood sample,” moaned Polly. “Why not just cut out the middleman and install a permanent pump between my veins and the lab? Sorry, Khalid. I know you’re only doing the bidding of the evil Dr. McGrumpy.”
The green-clad nurse smiled uncomfortably. “I’m not here for you, Polly.” He looked at Annie. “Are you Mrs. Hebden?”
“Well, yes. But it’s Ms. now.”
“There’s another Mrs. Hebden down in Maternity and she’s asking for you.”
Annie didn’t understand at first. Mike’s mum? Then she did. So did Polly. “Oh, no, she didn’t! She’s having her baby here?”
“It is the nearest maternity ward.” Annie marveled at how reasonable she sounded. After everything that had happened.
“And she wants you there? Jesus! The cheek of the woman!”
“Er, I thought you said we had to forgive people and let go of the past?”
“Well, yes, but there are limits.”
Khalid looked puzzled. “Will I tell her no? She’s kind of... She was screaming a lot.”
Annie got up. “Poll, I’ll see you later, okay?”
“You’re ditching me for her? I won’t forget this, Annie Hebden.” She mock-pouted.
“It’s your fault, anyway. Making me all forgiving and saintlike, like Mother Teresa in nylon slacks. See you.”
*
“She won’t stop screaming,” said the harassed-looking midwife. “I tried to tell her it’ll go on for a lot longer. You’re the friend?”
“Well...yes.” It was easier than trying to explain. “She’s in labor, then?” It was too early, surely.
“Barely. But she’s hysterical. Do you know where Mike might be?” She consulted her clipboard. “That’s the husband, yes?”
That’s my husband. It was hard to shake the impulse, even now. “Yes. You can’t reach him?”
“He’s not picking up. She says they had a row and he stormed out. Baby’s not due for another month. At least, I think that’s what she said. She was screaming a lot.”
“Okay. Thanks. Should I go in?”
“If you want. I’d wear earplugs if I were you.”
Annie advanced cautiously down the corridor. Sure enough, she could hear guttural howls, like an animal in pain. Which was true, really. One thing she’d learned from all this hospital time was that people were no more than animals under a thin veneer, and how quickly that was stripped away by pain and fear. She pushed open the door. Jane was leaning against the bed, gripping its rail in her hands, wearing a hospital gown that gaped and showed her back tattoo. It was one of a lotus flower, which she’d got in a dodgy place in Croydon when they were seventeen. Annie had chickened out of getting one, too, like she’d been doing all her life. Until now. “Jane. Jane!”
“Arrrrrgghhhh. Annie, is that you?” Panting, she stopped screaming for a moment.
“You wanted me?”
“Come here. Come here.” She held out her hands and grasped Annie’s in a death grip. “Oh, God. The pain. How did you do it?”
“You’ll get through it. Are you having an epidural?”
“I wasn’t, but holy Christ! I think I’m going to break in two. Where’s Mike? Where the fuck is Mike?”
“I don’t know.” Mechanically, Annie rubbed her ex–best friend’s back. Her breath was heaving, shallow and terrified. “They’ll find him. There’s loads of time left. How did you know I was here?”
“Called...your house... Some kid...said you were...here.”
Bloody Costas. Incapable of lying, and why would he know to, since Annie’d never told him what had happened to her?
Jane was sobbing. “I’m going to die, Annie. I’m literally going to die and it will serve me right for what I did to you.”
“Oh, come on, you’re being silly. You aren’t going to die. They’ll take good care of you.”
Tears were streaming down Jane’s face, her forehead creased in agony. “But you forgive me? Please say you forgive me, Annie. I don’t want to die without you forgiving me.”
“You’re not going to die.”
Jane sobbed a little. Annie rubbed her back, feeling the racing of her heart. She was terrified. Annie remembered that all too well. That fear you might split apart. That you’d never be the same again. That your body and your heart would be crushed by it, by sheer bloody exploding love. And how could she stay angry with Jane when she was so terrified, so scared and hurting? “It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine. I promise.”
She looked around, catching the eye of the nurse and waving frantically through the glass panel in the door. When it opened, she hissed, “Why won’t you give her some drugs? She’s in pain—look!”
The nurse shrugged. “Sorry, miss. She’s had all the drugs we can give her for now.”
“Well, what about an epidural?”
“Far too soon for an epidural. We’ll send in some ice chips.” The door closed again.
“What did she say?” sobbed Jane. “Are the drugs coming soon? Oh, God, I need all the drugs they have. I said I didn’t want them. What was I thinking? Why was I so stupid?”
“Everyone thinks that before it starts. Come on. You’ll be fine.”
Jane clutched at Annie’s hands again, cutting off the blood supply. “Oh, God. Where the hell is Mike? You won’t leave me, will you? Please don’t leave.”
Annie kept rubbing her back, feeling the baby roll and move beneath the skin. Her ex-husband’s baby. This was the weirdest situation in the world. Luckily, thanks to Polly, she’d had quite a bit of experience with weird recently. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s do the special breathing, okay?”
*
Later, Annie would remember that day as informative, terrifying and completely overwhelming. During the birth of her own child she’d been mostly out of it, alternating between screams and giggles as the drugs kicked in and they wheeled her off for a cesarean. She’d woken up to find a clean baby swaddled on her chest, Mike looking on with adoration. If only they’d known what was coming.
As a bystander, by contrast, she was there for every screaming bloody tearing moment of Jane’s daughter’s birth. Annie did her best to stay away from the business end of things, feeding ice chips into Jane’s whimpering mouth, holding her hand and trying to wipe the terrified sweat from her friend’s forehead. “Where’s Mike? Where the fucking hell is Mike?” Jane kept saying.