Page 11 of Special Delivery
Through the blur of the pain she saw James almost smile again. HE WAS FUCKING INFURIATING!
‘What kind of trip to the toilet?’ he asked.
‘What the hell do you mean?!’ shrieked Poppy.
James’s lips curved into a wide smile. It was the first time she’d seen him do that. It cracked his whole face open so it shone like the sun. It was golden and warm and fuzzy and, oh god, she was too exhausted to be thinking like this! She cried out as another contraction coursed up her body and out to her extremities, warping her fingers and toes into claws. She needed sleep. She needed a tranquilliser. Even death would beokay right now. She wanted the bed to swallow her whole so she’d never wake again.
James put a hand on her shoulder. ‘If you’re thinking it’s more than a wee, then it might not be what you think. We might have a baby on the way.’
A nuclear warhead exploded in Poppy’s brain. A baby? A poo? A smile?!It was all too muuuuuuuch.
‘You do it,’ she begged. ‘Just pull it out of me. I don’t care if it’s a poo. Just pull it out.’ She paused and drew breath. ‘Sorry,’ she sobbed, her voice cracking. ‘I don’t mean that, I didn’t mean to say that. Sorry, that’s disgusting. Just pull the baby out. I just can’t do anything anymore.’ She heaved another sob. ‘I can’t do it, James. I can’t.’
‘Poppy, look at me,’ James commanded, putting both hands on her shoulders. His liquid eyes bored into hers. ‘Youcando this. I promise you.’
Another contraction surged through her body, and Poppy threw herself into his arms, her fingernails digging through his scrubs. ‘ARGHHHHHH!’ she screamed. ‘HELP ME!’
‘Poppy, you need to trust me,’ James said slowly. ‘You need to lie on the bed and I’ll help you take off your pants. I’ve got a hospital gown we can put on straight over your t-shirt.’
Her vision was blurred. She couldn’t see. The pain was an anaconda and it was choking her to death. She let herself be lowered back onto the mattress and feebly tried to push down her tracksuit pants. Somehow there was another body in the room, a woman, and she deftly grabbed a handful of Poppy’s clothing—tracksuit and undies—and yanked them down.A hospital gown materialised over her and Poppy felt her legs being eased into steel stirrups.
‘We’re getting you ready to push,’ James explained. Through the fog in her eyes, Poppy could see the silhouette of his arm pointing at the woman. ‘This is Becky, one of my colleagues, and she’ll be here to help us through the next bit.’
Poppy’s brain was mush. Words floated in, untethered, and made no sense.Use the contractions. Breathe through the pain. Push when we tell you. She threw her head into her pillow and sobbed. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to be a single mother. She was a good girl, a loveable girl, someone who deserved a husband, someone to parent with. She didn’t want to be doing this alone. She was scared.
A warm hand landed on hers and squeezed. ‘I’m here, Poppy,’ James whispered, his head beside hers. ‘We’re doing this together. I promise everything will be okay.’
CHAPTER 6
‘YOUWHAT?!’ screamed her mother.
Chrissie McKellar was a woman whose outdoor voice could pierce holes in glass, thanks to a combination of a well-used diaphragm and a sonorous nasal cavity not dissimilar to Barbra Streisand’s.
‘WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL ME?’
Poppy pulled the phone away from her ear to avoid permanent hearing loss. A baby girl lay tightly swaddled in a perspex crib in the corner.
‘Darling, I would have been there in a jiffy! Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I missed this—my first grandchild! I can’t wait to tell the girls at golf!’
‘PAUL!’ she roared in the background. ‘Turn that bloody football off. We’re going to the hospital!’
‘It all happened very quickly, Mum; even the midwife didn’t expect it to go so fast. He said it was one of the quickest he’s had in a while.’
‘He?’ her mother repeated, aghast.
‘He,’ Poppy confirmed. ‘Wenda had to leave so another midwife stepped in.’
‘PAUL, HURRY UP!’ her mother yelled. Returning her attention to Poppy she said, ‘Darling, we’re coming as fast as we can, or at least I am. Paul! Your boots aren’t there; they’re in the laundry where you left them. Darling, you just hold tight. We’ll be there before you know it. It sounds like it was an absolute debacle. Oh gosh, the girls at golf will not believe their ears.’
Her mother hung up and Poppy dropped the phone on the bed. She rose gingerly, unsure whether her limbs could still function. She’d escaped with just three sutures which stung as she moved but felt like tiny prickles of rain compared to what she’d been through. More disconcertingly, she had the feeling of having been completely disembowelled, her insides scooped out, leaving her a hollow deflated shell with no connective tissue linking her limbs to her torso. It was disorientating. Every time she moved, she wasn’t sure how it happened.
She padded quietly across the linoleum and pulled the crib next to her bed. ‘Hi, little one,’ she whispered.
Her daughter’s chest rose and fell infinitesimally and her eyes were squeezed shut, blocking out the noisy, beeping world around her. Under the halogen lighting, her skin was pale and slightly downy, her ears tiny miraculous coils of skin and cartilage.You are so small, thought Poppy reverentially.You are so precious.
‘Hello?’ called a deep voice from the doorway. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes, I’m decent,’ Poppy replied, immediately regretting her choice of words and the allusion to her prior non-decent behaviour and state of undress. God, she’d talked about poo with this guy. There was no coming back from that.
