Читать книгу Their Special-Care Baby - Fiona McArthur - Страница 7

THE room swam and it was hard to focus. Distant throbbing in her arm forced her eyes open. A vaguely familiar backpack rested on the shelf opposite and she stared at it until the blurred lines firmed and stopped their dance.

There was something comforting about having that much control of her vision again.

Then she noticed the serene-faced older lady in the wheelchair. The lady knitted sedately with her bright blue eyes fixed like a white-feathered bird watching her young.

‘Hello, Desiree. You’re awake.’ She knitted with incredible speed without reference to the garment.

Desiree? She looked around but there were only two of them in the room. Desiree?

The lady smiled and allowed her words to sink in before explaining. ‘I’m Leanore, your mother-in-law. See, I remembered.’

She looked so pleased. ‘Stewart said I haven’t met you before, which is such a relief because I don’t remember you. It’s such a pain when your brain goes, dear.’

Desiree blinked at the word usage and then moistened dry lips and nodded weakly to Leanore. She cast around for a reason to be lying in a bed surrounded by flowers but couldn’t find one.

It seemed Leanore wasn’t the only one whose mind had gone. ‘Where am I?’ Fragments of memory and the crawl from the train crash came back. The man’s eyes. She remembered the baby’s cries.

‘Where’s the baby?’ Desiree’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat at the end of the sentence to calm the semi-hysterical note she could hear in her own voice.

Leanore concentrated and then recited as if she’d been coached. ‘You’re in St Somebody’s Hospital, in Sydney.’ The lady frowned and then shook her head. ‘No. Can’t remember the name of the place.’ She shrugged and moved on. ‘The little girl is fine, Stewart said. I remember that. I’m sure that’s what he said. He’s just ducked out for a minute and will be right back. Apparently it’s a miracle you both survived.’

A sad expression crossed the old woman’s face. ‘Your little girl is my granddaughter and she looks just like my darling Sean. I remember he is dead. Now, that’s one of those things I’d gladly forget.’

A flutter of panic, like a child’s balloon caught by the wind, rose in a bubble in Desiree’s chest.

‘She’s a little girl, not my little girl.’ Desiree began to cast more frantically around in her memory. ‘I’m sure she’s not my child. I don’t think. I don’t remember…’ Then it struck her. ‘Anything!’

The woman’s eyes darkened with compassion. ‘I know. Horrible, isn’t it? My son said you mightn’t. Don’t worry. At least your mind will all come back. I’m getting dottier by the day.’ Leanore chewed her lip, upset at causing distress. ‘I’ll call my son, shall I?’

The old lady felt for the bulky necklace around her neck and pressed the centre. She tilted her head at Desiree and winked. ‘He makes me wear this and I’m not to stand up unless he’s here. He’s a good son.’

Desiree had no idea what the lady was talking about but she felt as if she’d woken in a farce. Who was her wheelchair companion and what kind of place was this?

A train crash? She remembered the baby but surely it wasn’t her baby? She didn’t have a baby. Or did she? Perhaps somewhere in the past she may have been pregnant.

Frantically her eyes darted around the room as she tried to force memories that wouldn’t come. Who was she? How could she have had a baby if she didn’t remember? How long had she been here?

The blankness of the past rose like nausea in her throat and crowded her already crowded mind until it was all too much. The room swirled as her eyes closed and with relief she allowed the room to fade away until she floated like a balloon again.

‘The lady was awake but she didn’t know me.’ The voices were distant but she couldn’t respond.

‘She will remember, Mother. You’ll have to wait a little longer to be a mother-in-law. Desiree lost a lot of blood.’ The man’s voice was gentle, as if he found the whole scenario disturbing, and there was something about his compassionate tone that cut through the airiness in her brain and grounded her again.

She opened her eyes reluctantly. The owner of the voice was tall and dark-haired with kind eyes. She registered that his eyes were as blue as his mother’s and there was something reassuringly familiar about his strong face.

The brightness of his doctor’s white coat made her blink.

Stewart Kramer stared intently at the ghostly pale woman lying back on the pillows. It was a miracle she had lived, he thought. Dark smudges lay under her eyes and her bruised cheek was swollen and purple from the accident.

She confused him. Desiree didn’t have that flashy racehorse quality about her that had consistently seemed Sean’s type and her obviously fierce will would not have sat comfortably with Sean’s need to dominate.

This woman had curves in abundance and her dark waves of hair lay softly against her cheek. Maybe Sean had acquired a more genuine taste in women because there was a lot about Desiree that made Stewart think more of wholesome warmth and strength of character than fashion magazines and the fast lane.

Desiree’s grey eyes glistened with tears but she blinked them away as he watched her grapple with her situation. Inexplicably Stewart had to fight against the urge to scoop her up and cradle her head on his shoulder.

No doubt the urge would be to do with the horror of when he’d first seen her surrounded by those who had died and the gritty hold she’d maintained on her life despite her massive blood loss.

Desiree eased higher in the bed and closed her eyes briefly, and Stewart presumed she felt light-headed.

‘You seem vaguely familiar,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘Maybe you know the answers to some of my questions?’

Stewart tried to imagine what it would feel like to wake up after such an event.

His mother, with her illness, lived in confusion every day to some degree, and he thanked God for her unfailing good humour. He didn’t fancy the idea for himself. ‘I’ll try, but I’m a paediatrician here, not your doctor.’

She looked at him with those big silver-grey eyes, eyes shadowed with pain and bewilderment, and a sudden twist of jealous rage against his careless brother stunned him with the raw emotion. It wasn’t Sean’s fault the train had crashed so his sentiment didn’t make sense.

It was just that she seemed so different to what he’d imagined Sean’s wife would be like. Sean had never cared for real people. What the hell had she been doing with Sean? He wanted to throttle the truth out of his brother but it was too late now. So too was being unexpectedly affected by meeting Desiree.

He ground his teeth and forced the useless emotions back into a deep cave in his chest and sealed the door. When he spoke his voice sounded coldly clinical, even to his own ears. ‘You have amnesia, probably retrograde, involving memory from the time prior to the blow to your head.’

‘When will I remember?’ Her voice shook, and with compunction he reached out and covered her fingers. Her hand was soft and defenceless under his.

‘In the accident you were knocked unconscious for a short time. Goodness knows what you hit on impact. With the swelling near your brain your memory could take hours to return or even months.’

She watched him as if he had all the answers and Stewart felt inadequate for the first time in a very long time.

‘Will my memory definitely come back?’ she asked, and he felt the weight of her need as if it were his obligation to make her world right.

That was the rub. ‘In the majority of amnesia cases, most of the patient’s memory does come back in time.’

‘So reassuring,’ she murmured ironically, and turned her head away from him on the pillow. Strangely, she left her fingers curled safe in his, though. Stewart found himself absurdly touched by her trust.

He left the silence between them and it built until she turned back to face him. There was resolution on her face that he could only admire and the urge to comfort her returned with force. What was it about this woman that made it so easy to read her thoughts? What was it about her that made him want to read them? The concept elbowed for room in his own crowded mind.

She cleared her throat. ‘So you can tell me anything you like and I have to believe you until my memory returns?’ she said.

He had to applaud her dry sense of humour because he doubted he’d be up to jokes in Desiree’s position.

He glanced at Leanore and his mother stared vaguely out the window, sidetracked in confusion caused by her tumour. He did it for Leanore every day.

At least he was practised at orientating lost people. ‘So it appears. You will just have to sue me for any incorrect answers.’

Desiree had no choice but to trust him for the moment. She steeled herself for the question she dreaded the answer to. ‘Who is Desiree?’

Obviously this was not the question he’d expected, by the lift of his dark brows. Well, it was the one she needed an answer to the most, and she held her breath as she waited.

‘You.’ He’d said it gently but the answer still slammed into her. ‘Your name is Desiree Kramer.’ She winced as she exhaled.

She’d been afraid of that. Desiree Kramer? No bells rang, no recognition sparked. So it was true. She couldn’t even remember her own name.

He enunciated slowly, as if she were a slow learner. ‘Desiree Kramer, lately of Queensland, and newly arrived in Sydney.’

Desiree screwed her nose up and shook her head. ‘And you are sure my name is Desiree? Not something simpler or plainer?’

‘Desiree, I’m afraid, but we could call you anything you like if that would make you more comfortable.’

‘Don’t patronise me.’ She sighed and accepted what she had been afraid of. It was incredibly hard, not having a past to call on.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was not my intention.’

She gathered her frayed composure around her. ‘I’m sorry for snapping. Do I know you?’ Her voice had wearied, and she’d closed her eyes again.

‘I’m your brother-in-law. Stewart Kramer.’

Startled, her eyes flew open. ‘I have a sister?’ She didn’t remember that!

‘You married my brother. I don’t know your family.’

She shook her head at this new information and her whole body stiffened in the bed. No way. ‘I’m not married.’

‘No.’ Stewart agreed. ‘You are a widow with a twelve-month-old child.’

She barely heard his second pronouncement because the first one had blown her away. ‘I mean,’ Desiree enunciated slowly and clearly, ‘I have never been married.’

Stewart shrugged slightly. For some reason his voice had cooled and she wondered if it had been her or his brother that had annoyed him. This was all too much but he had more to share and he was her only link to reality.

She tried to concentrate as he went on when all she wanted to do was sleep.

‘You married last April. Your husband, my brother, died in a car accident on New Year’s Day, eight weeks ago.’

Now she was a widow? Her heart was turning somersaults in her chest and she felt sick. ‘There’s no memory of anything beyond waking up a short time ago.’ She fought against rising panic and stared around the walls of the room, as if the secret of her lost life could be found there.

She felt abandoned, confused, and at the mercy of these people she didn’t recognise. She heard the shake in her voice but there was nothing she could do about it because she was doing well to avoid lapsing into hysterics.

She shook her head and then grimaced at the discomfort. Maybe she should worry about all this later. She didn’t think she could do it now. ‘Whatever. I can’t remember anything. My head hurts.’

She shut her eyes and then opened them again. This had to be a big mistake. ‘Do I know you well? Are you sure you’re right?’

She hadn’t fazed him. How could he be so calm when her whole past life had disappeared? His voice was even and unruffled as he went on. ‘Except for the accident, we’ve never met. Your identification was in the backpack.’

She glanced at the bag on the shelf again. ‘How do you know it’s my backpack?’

‘It was on your back when I found you.’

‘You were there?’

She nodded and then stared at him. His kind blue eyes kindled a flame of recognition and a strange feeling of comfort and safety finally seeped into her.

He was a good man. She felt it, so she supposed she’d have to believe him and trust in his word. As she looked into his eyes, a strange, deeper recognition began to shimmer between them, and she couldn’t look away.

She remembered. He had been there in the wreckage. ‘So it was you and not a dream.’

He cleared his throat and his hand tightened on hers. ‘It’s a miracle you can remember anything. The scene was chaotic.’

‘I don’t remember much, but I remember…’ Her eyes widened and she remembered the pain in her stomach. Her voice dropped to a whisper as the ache of realisation hit her. Her baby. ‘I was pregnant!’

She pulled her hand out of his hold and slid her fingers slowly under the covers to her flat stomach. It was then she felt the loss of her baby within. Her rounded stomach had gone, replaced by emptiness, and she hadn’t been awake to know.

Her hand returned above the sheets and searched for his. ‘Did I lose my baby?’

‘No.’ He let that answer seep in slowly.

Desiree didn’t understand. ‘What month is this?’ She swallowed the ball of fear and grief in her throat and prepared herself for the worst. Tears pricked her eyes as she sucked in her flat stomach. My poor baby.

With her fingers clutched around his, a small measure of comfort warmed the sudden coldness of her soul.

‘No, your baby is alive but it is the twenty-sixth of February, so she has some growing to do,’ he said.

She paused before she looked at him again, afraid that if she saw his face he would retract that tiny hope she’d heard him correctly.

His fingers tightened their grip on her hand. ‘After the accident you went into premature labour. We didn’t know you were in labour until just before she was born.’

Desiree remembered the pain in stomach. ‘You said she. I had a girl?’

‘We estimate your daughter was born eleven weeks early but she is stable at the moment. She will need to stay in a large hospital like this one, if all goes well, for the next few months. She’s in our neonatal intensive care two floors down.’

Her daughter was alive. There was hope. ‘Eleven weeks is very early. I’m sure of that.’

‘Your daughter is breathing for herself and seems to be adapting to the outside world well, considering she wasn’t ready for us—and you had lost a lot of blood. She weighed just over a kilogram and is a fighter.’

He smiled and Desiree remembered his eyes again from the train crash. How could she remember that and not her own name? But there was something infinitely reassuring about sharing that one memory at least.

‘Your daughter has already shown she has the will to survive, like her mother.’ There was no mistaking he admired her baby for that. ‘And she is in the next best place to grow.’

Desiree’s heart pounded. She had a baby daughter. ‘When can I see her?’

He produced a digital print of a tiny baby in a humidicrib and passed it over to her. A thin red-faced skinned rabbit looked back at her.

A lost baby, a lost pregnancy, a baby she would have dreamed of meeting in a wondrous birth surrounded by people who loved her. Too many losses to cope with. Tears welled as she thought of her daughter alone, in a crib, and she couldn’t be with her. ‘When…?’

‘Perhaps you can see her this evening. You’ve only just regained consciousness. I’m not your doctor, but he’d agree it’s too soon to go riding around the hospital, even in a wheelchair.’

She sagged back. Even that small exertion had tired her.

‘We are taking good care of your daughter and she is stable at the moment.’

She could hardly believe her pregnancy was over before it had even been remembered.

Then he said something even more frightening. ‘It worries me you haven’t asked about your other child.’

Desiree watched his lips move but the words seem to come from a long way off as she wondered what her tiny daughter looked like.

He spoke again. ‘Do you remember I said you were a widow with another child? You have a twelve-month-old. Shall we bring Sophie to you? They have her down in the children’s ward for observation.’

She tore her thoughts away from the picture of her tiny baby and looked at him blankly.

He explained again. ‘Your other daughter? You told me to keep her safe when we first met.’

The other baby? What else had she forgotten? Had another child been mentioned? Perhaps. ‘You may have said that before but I don’t remember.’

Desiree frowned as she tried to remember. She had heard a baby crying in the wreckage. Had that baby been hers? ‘I heard her cry.’

How could she not recall her own flesh and blood? Was that possible? It didn’t make senses. What if it was a mistake, or a conspiracy, or a bad dream? ‘I wish I remembered.’

The first of his revelations rose to stun her again. ‘I can’t believe I was married and don’t remember.’

Stewart grimaced at what a marriage it would have been, unless Sean had changed a lot. He watched her struggle with all the information and worried that he’d burdened her with too much, too soon.

She tilted her head towards him and her grey eyes seemed to peer inside his soul as she sought answers.

He blinked and looked away, not sure what had just passed between them and not willing to pursue the thought. This was fanciful imagining and unlike him.

He fought against a sudden stirring of emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel for many years. Especially when he looked down at her fingers as they disappeared inside his bigger hand. He wondered why she had decided not to wear her wedding ring.

Something had shifted, something that shouldn’t have shifted with this woman who was related by law, and who was the last woman he wanted to be attracted to. There was nothing he could do about that now except ignore any such emotion and help her as much as he could.

Stewart glanced across at his mother, sitting patiently against the wall as she knitted. She had the glazed look of sudden tiredness she seemed to feel more often. He’d been a fool to bring her but she’d so wanted to be here when Desiree woke up.

He never knew when Leanore would lapse into one of those turns that kept her in bed for days and she deserved to at least meet her daughter-in-law.

There were so many ways his mind wanted to go but he could only do one thing at a time. ‘We’ll go now, Mother.’

Leanore blinked and looked at him brightly, and he knew she had lost her space in time for the moment. ‘Where will we go?’

‘Home, darling. Desiree is tired.’

Leanore creased her brow. ‘Desiree who?’

Stewart sighed and squeezed his mother’s shoulder gently. ‘We’ll leave Desiree to rest for a while and see Children’s Ward about bringing your granddaughter up here after she wakes up.’ He saw the moment her memory returned and he smiled as his mother nodded.

He looked at Desiree, her eyes now drooping with fatigue. ‘Sleep now. We’ll bring Sophie to you later this afternoon. After tea I’ll take you to the neonatal intensive care, or NICU as they call it, to see your new daughter, if it is all right with your doctor.’

Desiree nodded tiredly but there was one thing she had to do. ‘Before you leave, would you pass the backpack, please?’

‘We’ll see you later, Desiree.’ Stewart laid the backpack gently in her lap and then turned his mother’s wheelchair towards the door.

‘Later,’ he said, and she closed her eyes as they left the room.

Desiree’s head ached quietly but the pain was overshadowed by the enormity of losing who she was and what was in her past.

Lost memories of a twelve-month-old baby and dead husband and now the reality that she risked losing a baby she only fuzzily remembered being pregnant with. It was all too much.

It was a nightmare and surely she would wake up soon.