Sorrow and Bliss(38)
There was nothing on Wikipedia. I asked her if she wanted me to distract her by reading aloud from the Daily Mail celebrity sidebar. She batted the phone out of my hand and told me to die in a hole, then screamed at me to get it again because another one was coming and I was supposed to be timing them or something.
For however long, we stayed like that. I told her it was going to be completely fine, desperate for it to be true, desperate that nothing happen to my sister and her baby. The contractions got closer, then joined together until Ingrid was racked by sobs and saying she was going to die. Hamish walked in as she was pushing herself up onto her hands and knees, screaming that something was coming out of her.
It had not occurred to me that Patrick would be with him, but he entered first. I moved out of his way and went and stood by Hamish who had stopped just inside the door because, as soon as she saw him, Ingrid said she didn’t want him there any more.
Patrick told her he needed to check what was happening. Ingrid said, ‘Fuck off, Patrick. Sorry, I am not having a family friend look between my legs.’
Probably, Hamish said, she did need to let someone have a quick squiz, particularly as he’d just realised he hadn’t thought to ring an ambulance.
Patrick had, but told my sister then that if she could feel something, it wasn’t going to arrive in time.
‘She can do it then,’ Ingrid said. ‘Martha can. You can just tell her what to do.’
I looked at him hoping he would shake his head because I was desperate not to have to assess a cervix but his expression was so commanding, I found myself already moving towards him.
Patrick told Hamish to go and get some scissors, reassuring my sister that it wasn’t, as she instantly thought, so he could do a floor Caesarean with no fucking anaesthetic.
Something was definitely coming out of her. I started to describe what it looked like until she told me, between breaths, that Patrick didn’t need me to paint a fucking word picture and ordered me to move.
It was the last thing Ingrid said before she pushed up off her hands and released a long animal groan. Hamish was back to see her deliver an impossibly small, angry baby into her own hands. He went pale and listed towards the wall, not immediately responding to Patrick’s request for the scissors he was holding. He apologised, saying they were the only ones he could find. ‘Winsome’s sewing room.’
Ingrid, slumped, holding her baby, said, ‘Oh my God, no Hamish. They’re pinking shears. Patrick?’
He said they would be fine.
She looked at me, pleadingly. I told her they would give a lovely effect and went to turn away, overwhelmed by the quantity of blood on the floor but then Patrick reached out, and took the baby, cut the cord and returned it to my sister’s arms in a series of movements so swift and silent, it seemed like a routine they had been practising. I was so transfixed, it was only the echo of Patrick’s voice in my head, asking me to go and find more towels, that prompted me to go out and get as many as I could find.
Ingrid tried to wrap the baby up in one of them and started crying. She said to Patrick, ‘Do you think I’m hurting him? He’s too small, he shouldn’t be here yet.’ She said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ looking from him to me then Hamish, as if she’d sinned against each of us individually. I felt tears in my eyes when she looked down and apologised to the baby.
Patrick said, ‘Ingrid, he was going to come anyway. It was nothing you did.’
She nodded but wouldn’t look at him.
Patrick said, ‘Ingrid?’
‘Yes.’ She raised her head.
‘Do you believe me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ Patrick took the rest of the towels I was holding and put them around her shoulders and over her legs. My sister – I had never loved her more intensely than I did then – wiped one of her cheeks dry and tried to smile and said, ‘Martha, I hope these are Winsome’s good towels.’ She was still crying, but in a different way then, as though everything was suddenly alright.
*
Patrick and I stayed with her while Hamish went to meet the ambulance. I said no but she made me hold the baby and I let myself be obliterated by the intensity of my love for this almost weightless thing. In front of Patrick, she said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’
‘I want this one. But you got him so I will have to go without.’
Patrick said, ‘He’s lovely, Ingrid,’ looking at the baby in my arms.
*
Hamish came back accompanied by a man and a woman in dark green uniforms jointly carrying a stretcher. He described the situation downstairs now that everyone had returned from the walk as controlled mayhem but nothing compared to the state of up here which, he said, really struck you afresh once you’d gone out and come back in.
He came over, and gently touched his son’s forehead, then said to Ingrid already on the stretcher, ‘I expect we ought to call him Patrick.’
Ingrid turned her head on the pillow and looked at Patrick, who was moving a towel back and forth with his foot, smearing blood more widely across the tiles. Then, to Hamish, she said she would have, if she was more of a fan of Patrick as a name, but unfortunately she wasn’t. The ambulance people started wheeling her towards the door. As she passed him, Ingrid reached out and got Patrick’s forearm. For a second she just held it, as if searching for words, then said, ‘You are doing an amazing job of the floor.’