Gemma woke trying to get comfortable. But no matter how she squirmed around, trying not to disturb Mike who was sleeping silently beside her, she couldn’t position her huge belly anywhere without feeling oppressed by it. She squinted at her bedside clock: 12.43 a.m. on a humid summer’s night. She hauled herself out of bed, wishing she hadn’t had quite so much of the Madras curry at dinner, feeling it as an added burden to lug around. They’d enjoyed a meal at a Randwick restaurant and the food had been delicious. Too much naan bread, too much mango chutney. Nine months pregnant plus indigestion is not a good combination, she decided, lumbering into the bathroom to find something to ease her discomfort.
The cramping pain made her gasp. This isn’t just indigestion, she thought, opening the bathroom cabinet. This is food poisoning. She waited until the spasm in her gut eased before swigging a couple of good mouthfuls of the thick, chalky mixture.
She walked into the living area where pale starlight shone through the glass of the sliding doors. She stood a little while, enjoying the balmy softness of the deep night, listening to the pound and swing of the waves at the base of the cliffs below. On the wall behind her, a large Findlay Finn painting of bottlebrush and lorikeets hung, presented to her as a memorial, according to Findlay, of his wife and brother. Paulette Heath was safely incarcerated, awaiting trial. There was a caveat on Wisteria Cottage and a very good chance that Grace’s home would be saved.
The next cramp took her breath away and she had to sit suddenly on a dining-room chair.
‘What are you doing? Where are you?’ Mike called sleepily from the bedroom.
‘Out here,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve got food poisoning. Are you feeling okay?’
Mike appeared at the doorway in his jocks. ‘I’m fine. What’s up?’
‘I’ve got these cramps. What are the odds? Nine months preggers and I get some horrible bug,’ she said, hurrying back to the bathroom. ‘I can’t believe my bad luck.’
Mike appeared at the bathroom door as she doubled over the handbasin. ‘Oooh,’ she cried, ‘it’s horrible.’
‘Don’t blame dinner,’ said Mike. ‘Steve Brannigan has a lot more to do with it.’
‘Steve?’
A long pause.
‘Labour?’ she cried. ‘Is this labour? Bloody hell!’ Then she was gripped again.
‘But the pains are supposed to be spaced widely apart in the early stages,’ she said when she’d recovered. ‘Not like this, every minute.’
‘Not always,’ said Mike. ‘Sometimes they come thick and fast right from the beginning. Focus on your breathing, Gemma, like we learned.’
At 4.21 a.m. Mike rang the birthing centre and described Gemma’s sense of wanting to push down hard.
‘Okay,’ he said and rang off, then headed for the bedroom where her birthing centre bag stood packed and ready.
‘The midwife wants you straightaway, Gemma,’ he said. ‘She said it’s nice and quiet at the moment.’
‘Now?’ Gemma squeaked as another contraction bit.
Mike drove, throwing her an anxious glance every moment or two. She still couldn’t quite believe what was happening and it was hard keeping her mind on the breathing.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked as they headed towards Barker Street.
‘I can’t talk,’ she puffed. ‘Did you ring Kit?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’s going to ring around later. Tell people you’re going in. Is that okay?’
Gemma waved the question away. She had other things to consider.
At the end of High Street the lights changed, and Mike accelerated, starting the turn. Gemma yelled, ‘Look out!’
‘What’s the idiot doing?’ Mike swore.
Ahead, coming straight at them despite the red light, was a speeding car. Gemma didn’t have time to call out the thought:
He’s going to hit us!
Mike hit the accelerator, skidding forward fast on the turn to avoid the collision. But, with a shocking impact, the black Subaru clipped the tail end of their car, spinning it round. Gemma slammed against her seatbelt as Mike desperately tried to regain control.
As they mounted the footpath, Mike braked while the black Subaru, deflected by the impact, spun sideways and smashed across the road into a shopfront.
A shocked silence. Gemma sat stunned, trying to breathe. Something was sitting on her chest, making this impossible, but when she looked down, there was nothing there. Just her big, aching, impossibly painful belly.
‘You okay?’ Mike said. Already, he was out of the car and running round to her side.
Gemma still couldn’t breathe. Although the seatbelt had released, a heavy pressure, as if an elephant was standing on her chest, made it impossible to inhale. She felt the beginning of panic and she seemed to be sitting in warm water.
Mike was at the passenger door, pulling it open. He dialled emergency, giving the operator their coordinates.
‘Gemma!’ he said, putting his mobile away. ‘Talk to me. Are you okay? Talk to me!’
She couldn’t. She had no breath at all. The baby, the baby, she was thinking. Is the baby all right?
Finally, her sternum, which must have been squashed flat against her spine, lifted from where it had been crushed, and with that release she gasped a long inhalation. At the same time, a gargantuan contraction forced her to cry out.
‘The baby!’ she screamed. ‘The baby’s coming!’
Mike squatted beside her, undoing her seatbelt, trying to ease her out of the car.
From the distance came the wail of a siren and soon the interior of their car was lit up with strobic flashes of blue light.
‘What about the other car?’ she gasped, aware that nothing seemed to be moving across the road.
‘Hold on to me,’ Mike said. ‘Let’s get you out of there.’
Gemma struggled to get out of the seat but fell back. ‘I can’t! Not just now! I can’t move!’
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, his concerned face highlighted with blue flashes.
‘The baby’s
coming
!’ she cried. ‘Quick! Get me to the –’ But all she could do was growl as a powerful contraction convulsed her.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Mike, ‘just take it easy. The police are here. I’ll talk to them. We’ll get an escort. Try to hold on!’
‘I can’t hold on!’
Another huge, agonising contraction and Gemma roared with the force of it, half-lying, half-falling out of the front seat. She could feel the baby pushing down through her body.
From what seemed a long way away, she was aware of voices, police radio calls, Mike’s voice cutting through all of them. ‘My partner’s having a baby. No, I mean now! The baby’s coming now! We need to get to the birthing centre.’
‘We can take her there now,’ somebody said. ‘What happened here? Looks like that idiot ran straight into you.’
In Gemma’s disoriented, pain-filled universe, none of that distant activity had anything to do with her. Right now, she was completely bound up in a monumental effort, overtaken by massive forces.
She was transferred to the back seat of a police car where she half-lay, half-sat, panting, aware of a young woman in police uniform on the other side of the back seat draping a thermal blanket over her body. With Mike in the front passenger seat, the police car took off, siren screaming.
Gemma gasped, pushing the blanket aside, feelings of panic exacerbated by the noise.
‘It’s okay, Gemma,’ said the young woman. ‘I’ve done this before. Just hold on!’ Gemma felt the woman pulling down her wet pants. ‘By the way,’ she added, ‘I’m Pippa. You’re doing brilliantly. Your baby’s almost here.’
Gemma cried out, confused and frightened. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d had plans. Splashing around in a warm spa, Mike giving her back massages, a smiling midwife checking in on her every few minutes. Mozart in the background, soft lights. Gentle barracking from Kit and Grace urging her on. Perhaps the reading of a Shakespearean sonnet or two. Not this crazy chaos, the aftermath of a collision, in the back seat of a police car wailing its way to the birth centre.
Gemma wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed since the collision. Time had a different quality to it now – she felt suspended – and with every breathtaking pain the narrow neck of her cervix creaked open and the baby tried to squeeze out of her. And this was happening right here and now, whether she liked it or not.
Another mighty contraction caused her to push down with all her strength, and, unlike the previous pains, this contraction had a solid core to it. This contraction, Gemma tried to say, as the impossible pressure took her breath away, had a baby at its heart. Tears ran down her face as she felt she would burst into a million pieces.
Just when she thought she’d be split apart, the baby came, gushing out of her body and slipping between her thighs in a great relieving surge.
‘Stop the car!’ Pippa yelled.
‘We’re here,’ said the driver.
Through her exhausted triumph, Gemma heard Mike’s sharp intake of breath as she struggled to get up and see for herself.
‘Gemma!’ Mike yelled. ‘He’s here! He’s a boy! He’s got everything!’
‘There you are, Dad,’ said Pippa, scooping the baby up. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Give him to me!’ Gemma gasped as the baby made some squeezed sounds, a tiny cry, still attached to her by the thick mauve umbilical cord.
Gemma forgot everything – the fact that she was lying semi-naked along the back seat of a car, with a group of strangers around her, trying to load her and the baby and the mess onto a trolley.
‘Give him to me!’ she said again, and Mike helped her take the baby, all blood-streaked and slippery, his little caked head and filmy, blinking eyes. Gemma wiped the gunk from his eyes with her fingers, pressing her face against his wet, smelly, warm head. ‘Oh you baby,’ she whispered. ‘My big, fat, beautiful boy.’
The baby stopped his half-hearted crying and looked up at her, frowning and puzzled. How did I get here? he seemed to be asking. And do I know you?
‘Thanks, Pippa,’ said Mike. ‘Have you got a card? We’d like to thank you properly later.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ said Pippa. ‘I just said nice things.’
‘Thank goodness you’d done it before.’
‘Actually, my experience has only been with foals. Heaps more legs.’
Gemma, dimly aware of the conversation, of Pippa leaving and Mike’s presence beside her as she was wheeled into a lift, then out again, had forgotten about the mess and the smell and the fact that she was still tied to her son by the cord and still suffering aftershock contractions. As they trundled along into an empty ward, she held her son in awe, gazing into his tiny pink face, his perfect little fingers with their miniature nails holding one of her fingers. He didn’t look like anyone she knew; not like herself, not like Steve. He just looked like himself; a perfect baby. He turned his head to her breast, seeking her nipple. Gemma fumbled her blouse open and shoved her bra up and the baby knew exactly what to do and latched onto her, suckled for a few moments, shuddered, then fell asleep.
Gemma glimpsed their dim reflections, madonna and child, in the window a little distance from her bed, Mike’s outline just behind them. My little family, Gemma thought.
‘He looks like you,’ said Mike of the tiny creature, sleeping on his mother’s body, covered with a hospital bunny rug.
As a midwife approached, Gemma appealed, ‘Don’t take him away from me.’
‘I’ll weigh him next time he stirs. Do you want to clean up a little?’
‘Actually I’m starving,’ said Gemma. ‘And I’d love a decent cup of coffee.’
‘Our coffee is disgusting, but there’s that all-night place in Bayswater Road,’ the midwife told Mike. ‘They do nice pastries too.’
Gemma shook her head. ‘Toast and Vegemite. It’s gotta be toast and Vegemite. And real coffee!’
‘Anything you want,’ said Mike, kissing her. ‘You were fantastic. Like you did it every day. I’ll be back as fast as I can.’
The midwife drew the curtains around the bed and told Gemma to rest.
Gemma remembered the last time she’d lain in a curtained bed. She gave thanks that she hadn’t stayed there. She owed Angie a lot.
Kit rang to say she’d be there first thing in the morning.
Soon, she drifted into sleep, the baby a warm bundle glowing against her heart.
‘Where is she? Is she all right?’
The sound of Steve’s voice woke her and her heart missed a beat. Suddenly Steve was there, opening the curtains, his face drawn with concern and anxiety. ‘Gemma, I just heard over the police radio that you were in a car accident. Are you okay? I –’
Gemma blinked up at him, shocked. He stopped mid-sentence as he registered the baby in her arms. His startled gaze flickered between the baby and Gemma.
‘You’ve had the baby,’ he said finally.
Slowly, Steve approached, his eyes on the tiny bundle in Gemma’s arms.
‘Holy frigging hell,’ he whispered, standing close to her bed, looking down at the baby.
It all seemed a long way away, Gemma thought, the pain around Steve and Julie, the illogical sense of betrayal this had created. She could hardly remember why she’d suffered so. Something big happens when you have a baby, Kit had once told her.
‘Meet our son,’ she said. ‘He’s perfect.’
She was surprised to notice tears in his eyes.
‘I wish you’d told me earlier,’ he said.
‘Julie’s baby must be due around now too,’ said Gemma, astonished that she could say it without pain.
Steve sank into the chair beside the bed. ‘Julie and me are finished. She wasn’t pregnant after all.’
Gemma looked down at her son. ‘Poor Julie,’ she said. She discovered she wasn’t curious about what had happened.
‘I’ll tell you all about it sometime,’ he said.
‘Another time,’ she agreed.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘Ever since we talked down by the café. When you’re home, we should get together and work out a plan. I want to contribute to my baby’s life.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘That sounds good.’
She looked up at him, his familiar, even features, his eyes still shining with tears. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him just now; couldn’t trust the warm baby-glow that was filling her heart with love. Just in that moment, she loved everyone.