CHAPTER 12

 

“Shoot,” Cate smacked the palm of her hand against the leather steering wheel. She was driving Kian’s car, although “car” didn’t really seem an appropriate word to describe the monstrosity she was currently trying to manoeuvre safely through the rain-slicked streets of Seattle. Mateo was strapped into his car seat in the back, still playing with his favourite toy ferry boat.

Cate was trying to fit her chores in before it was time to pick Lola up from camp. Usually she shared taxi duties with Layla but it was Luke’s grandmother’s seventieth birthday that day and so Eric had given Layla the day off. They were having a big family dinner at his grandmother’s house over in Tacoma so Eric had arranged to pick Luke up from camp a little early that afternoon.

She saw the sign for the doctor’s office and swung the Tank into the car park. It juddered to a halt just millimetres from the kerb and Cate breathed a sigh of relief that she’d got there without causing an accident. She still had to get home again but she’d worry about that later. She got out of the car and unstrapped Mateo from his car seat. He was determined that he didn’t want to go in the pushchair, he wanted to walk everywhere. This meant that Cate had to follow behind with the empty pushchair like his handmaiden.

After they’d taken her full medical history, Dr Lucas asked her to hop up on to the table so that they could do a scan. “Is that really necessary?” Cate asked. She’d had a scan back home in England and everything had seemed OK.

“It will just take a few minutes,” Dr Lucas nodded. As expected, Mateo was worn out from trying to walk everywhere and had fallen asleep in his pushchair.

Cate lay back on the table and lifted up her t-shirt. She flinched a little as Dr Lucas rubbed the cool gel over her skin.

As Dr Lucas set up the machine, Cate couldn’t help looking at the empty chair next to the table. That was probably where the expectant fathers (or mothers) sat, eager to catch the first glimpse of their unborn child. With this pregnancy, far more than the other two, Cate felt like she was doing it all on her own. Kian was in L.A. again.

“Oh!”

Dr Lucas had a deep v etched on her forehead. She brought the probe closer to her ear, “why can’t I hear anything?”

Cate wanted to slap her – you definitely weren’t supposed to say things like that to a pregnant woman already sloshing with raging hormones. “Um, Dr Lucas?”

Dr Lucas looked up, almost surprised that Cate wasn’t just one of the cadavers they must have practiced on in medical school.

She dragged the probe against Cate’s skin, harder this time, as if she was trying to force a reaction. When she looked up again, her emerald-green eyes looked a little glassy. “I can’t find a heartbeat.”

Cate felt her stomach plummet to the floor, “what?”

Dr Lucas dropped the probe and it landed with a crash on the floor. Mateo woke up startled. “Mama!”

Cate quickly wiped the gel off her stomach and pulled her t-shirt down. “It’s OK,” she said softly, trying to calm her son. She steadfastly ignored her own torrent of emotions.

Dr Lucas checked her watch, “Dr Swift will be back soon. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.” Dr Swift was the senior doctor in the practice.

“Nothing to worry about?” Cate could hardly believe what she was hearing. “You’ve just told me that you can’t find a heartbeat for my unborn child and now you’re telling me that there’s nothing to worry about?”

She checked her watch. “Damn,” Cate gripped the handles of the pushchair so tightly her knuckles turned white. It was almost time to pick Lola up from camp. “I’ve got to go.”

Mateo was still wailing as she flung open the door and rushed down the corridor towards the main entrance. “Wait,” Dr Lucas called, running after her. “You can’t just leave. Dr Swift will be back soon.”

Cate turned to Dr Lucas, suddenly realising just how young she was. “If you can’t hear my baby…” Cate choked back a sob. She gritted her teeth, “if you can’t hear the heartbeat, what does that mean?”

Dr Lucas looked hopelessly out of her depth. She obviously hadn’t been paying attention in medical school when they’d taught the would-be doctors how to break bad news to their patients. Cate didn’t need for her to spell it out though; she could feel the weight of it every time she tried to draw breath. “I need to pick my daughter up from camp. The answer is going to be the same whether you tell me now or in an hour’s time.”

Afterwards, Cate couldn’t remember the drive from the doctor’s office to the Lynx Sports Complex. In the couple of minutes before the doors opened and the children came swarming out, she wiped her face and fought the fear and pain which like quicksand were threatening to swallow her whole.

“Hi Mum,” Lola climbed into the front seat and fastened her seatbelt, waving at a couple of new friends she’d made. “Mats,” she turned and looked at Mateo in the backseat. “Why do you so look so grumpy? Did Dad take your boat again?”

She tickled his little socked feet but he let out another wail.

“Mum, what’s up with Mats?” Lola frowned. “He’s usually really happy to see me.”

“He’s just tired,” Cate sighed.

“Can we go to Top Pot on the way home?” Lola begged, “that will cheer him up.”

“Maybe later, sweetheart,” Cate was distracted. “I need to stop by the doctor’s office first.”

Dr Lucas must have told the receptionist what had happened because when they got there, she offered to watch Lola and Mateo while Cate saw Dr Swift.

It seemed to take forever to walk down the corridor to Dr Swift’s office. Cate cradled her bump. “This is not how the story ends,” she said quietly. She was determined that whatever happened she wasn’t going to cry until she was back home.

She prayed as hard as she could, desperate for them to have made a mistake. Things might have been strained between them lately but Cate still wanted Kian by her side. She’d moved to Seattle so that they could be a family again but at that moment, she felt lonelier than she had during the five months they’d lived apart.

If this had happened back home in Manchester, she wouldn’t have had to do this on her own. She would have had a whole army of family and friends supporting her – her mum, Jean, Ruby, Ben and Erin, Sinead and Fabrizio. Cate was losing her battle with hot, stinging tears. She missed her family so dreadfully.

She looked down at the palm of her hand, wishing desperately that somebody was holding it, that somebody was telling her that it was all going to be OK.

“Can you climb up on to the table for me?” Dr Swift asked gently. Cate lay back, feeling the chill of the plastic sheeting against her back. She stared up at the ceiling, her fingernails digging into her palms.

Dr Swift moved the probe across her abdomen. “Let me try something else,” she squeezed Cate’s hand and used the intercom to ask one of her colleagues to bring in another machine. Cate was so pathetically happy to have somebody holding her hand that a lone tear trickled down her cheek.

Dr Swift must have noticed because she smiled kindly at Cate, “I know it’s scary but try not to think the worst, not just yet.”

A second, older machine was wheeled in and Dr Swift carefully moved the other probe over Cate’s abdomen. A loud, thumping sound echoed off the walls.

“Open your eyes, Cate,” Dr Swift said softly. Cate shook her head. If she opened her eyes, it was real and she’d lost… “No, I’m OK. You can just tell me.”

“Come on, sweetheart,” Dr Swift persisted, “I want to show you something.”

Cate slowly opened one eye, like Lola did first thing in the morning when she was trying to pretend that it wasn’t time to get up yet. Dr Swift turned the machine around so that Cate could see the monitor. “That’s your baby, Cate.” Cate felt her bottom lip wobble as she looked at the tiny, little thing inside her womb.

“I don’t…” Cate watched incredulously as it began to move, she could feel it. She looked up at Dr Swift.

“It’s OK, Cate. Your baby’s perfectly healthy.”

Cate broke down in tears. She couldn’t believe it. “But Dr Lucas, she couldn’t find a…”

“There was a fault with the other machine, hon,” Dr Swift explained. “I’m so, so sorry.”

After Cate had composed herself, Dr Swift led her back down the corridor to where Lola and Mats were waiting. “Mum, are you OK?” Lola asked anxiously.

“I’m fine,” Cate knelt down and gave both of her children a big hug. She’d never felt more blessed.

As if they sensed something, both Lola and Mats were extra clingy with her that night.

While Cate had been in the examining room with Dr Swift, Lola had decided that she didn’t want a cruller anymore; she wanted pizza so they stopped at Whole Foods Market on the way home and bought the ingredients to make homemade pizzas.

“I’m going to have lots of mushrooms on mine,” Lola announced. She was in charge of cutting up the vegetables.

“Do you want one?” she offered a small sliver to her brother but he pursed his lips shut, wriggling in his highchair to try and escape.

“More for me then,” Lola shrugged and put it in her mouth.

Cate carefully slid the pizzas into the oven and looked over at her children. Lola had a streak of flour in her inky-black hair; she was playing with Mats and his toy boat. Her son had a smear of tomato sauce on his cheek. She wanted to wrap her arms tightly around both of them and never let go.

“I love you,” Cate tried really hard not to cry. Her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. She knew it was Kian but decided not to answer. It might be childish but she wanted to punish him for not being there today.

“How much?” Lola giggled.

“More than words can say,” Cate grinned, repeating what she said to them as often as she could.

“I love you…” Lola looked around the messy kitchen, “more than mushrooms.”

“Wow,” Cate’s eyes widened, “that much? I’m a very lucky mum then, aren’t I?”

They changed into their pyjamas and fluffy socks and curled up on the squashy sofa in the lounge, eating pizza and watching a movie. Halfway through Mateo fell asleep, curled up against Cate’s side.

“Mum,” Lola asked as they walked upstairs. “Are you really OK?”

“Yes, of course,” Cate didn’t like seeing her daughter frown.

“When you picked me up from camp today, you’d been crying…”

“That’s what happens when you’re having a baby,” Cate rubbed her bump, still marked by that awful hour when she’d thought that she’d lost her unborn baby. “You cry at the littlest things. I heard a sad song on the radio, that’s all.”

“Can we…” Lola bit her lip. “Can we sleep here tonight?” She looked at Cate and Kian’s bed.

“Of course you can,” Cate ruffled her daughter’s hair. Lola and Mats fell asleep easily, their little limbs wrapped around Cate like the vines of her diamond eternity ring but Cate couldn’t sleep.