Her brain was hurting, the blood tearing through her veins at impossible speeds, and with it, shards of her heart.
Paul wanted to comfort his daughter but his wife needed him more and he needed her. He went to the bed, bent over her and kissed Lucy and saw the new baby, wrapped in a thin tea towel, cradled in her arms.
‘She’s heavy,’ whispered Lucy.
The baby was so tiny and scrawny he wondered for a moment if it was even alive, and decided that it wasn’t. It was so small it couldn’t be. But Lucy was alive and for that he was grateful.
‘Beth, get me a knee rug,’ he said, and he ran a trembling finger through the river of sweat on Lucy’s brow, saying ‘Sshhh’ over and over. When Beth brought the rug he reached to take the dead infant from Lucy’s arms and it screwed up its face. It was alive.
He wrapped the baby in the rug. It was wet and damp, covered in the fluids that had aided its birth. He pulled up a chair and sat next to his wife, clutching his new child in his arms as though it was made of fairy floss and would float away and disappear.
The room was filled with silence. Everything was shocking and new.
Paul was so wrapped up in his new child and his wife that he didn’t hear the knock at the front door or see Beth leave the room.
‘Beth, let me in,’ said Doctor Appleby, suddenly appearing far too late. ‘The operator said you tried to ring.’
Paul moved to stand up, but the doctor motioned for him to stay where he was as he strode into the room.
‘The doctor’s here,’ Paul said to Lucy, but she barely opened her eyes. He looked at Doctor Appleby and could read the worry in his face. Paul felt his heart lurch as he registered that look.
Doctor Appleby lifted the blankets and murmured, ‘A lot of blood loss.’
Lucy’s eyes were closed now.
Paul watched as Doctor Appleby picked up Lucy’s fragile wrist. He knew somewhere inside him that Doctor Appleby was taking her pulse but routine actions seemed out of place in a world that was churning and turning. The doctor leant over and whispered in his ear so Edie couldn’t hear.
‘This happens with the change of life ones — always a risk. Not much I can do here for the moment.’
Paul stared vacantly at the meaningful glance the doctor was giving him. He knew what the glance meant but he wouldn’t acknowledge it. He’d prove the doctor to be an unreliable witness, guilty of perjury, even. Paul could feel Edie looking at him, her panic rising. To restore some normality he said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Doctor Appleby?’
‘I just got back from lunch at the Tonkins’. I could do with one. I like it white with two sugars.’ And Doctor Appleby looked meaningfully at Beth, who knew she had to make the tea but made no motion to leave.
Paul needed the doctor out of the room. He needed to be alone with his wife and children.
Beth didn’t want to go. She was part of the family, wasn’t she? That’s what they always said. Lucy was the closest thing she had to a mother. Paul nodded in the direction of the kitchen, so she motioned grudgingly for Doctor Appleby to follow her.
Paul could never remember when the realisation hit him that Lucy was going to die. It might have been when he saw Edie’s blood drop to the floor, a single tear that fell from her clenched hands and burst on the polished mirror of the floorboards. It might have been when Doctor Appleby came back into the room, balancing his tea cup on its saucer, and leant over and whispered in Paul’s ear, ‘There’s nothing I can do for her. I’m sorry.’ It might have been when Lucy opened her eyes, looked over at him and whispered, ‘Name her Grace,’ with her last ounce of energy and closed her eyes. But whichever moment it was, it was as if someone ripped his heart and soul from his body and tossed them carelessly aside.
Half an hour had passed since the doctor had left the room for an arrowroot biscuit and a second cup of tea. Paul clutched baby Grace as though she was his anchor, the only thing able to hold him back from following his wife as she slipped through the tides of life. Death was in the room, bringing its awful odour with it. It was an odour that curled the corners of the soul if you were living, but perhaps if you were dying it was rose petals and the sea because suddenly Lucy smiled and sang — just a few words of the song that had ensnared Paul’s heart at the very beginning.
‘Dear Child who me resemblest so, it whispered, come oh come with me, happy together let us go, the earth unworthy is of thee.’
Her voice was as light as the first day he heard it and it gave him hope.
‘Mama,’ called Edie and rushed to the bedside.
With an enormous effort Lucy looked into Edie’s eyes and reached out and gently touched her cheek with her finger. Edie burst into heartbroken sobs.
‘You must be her mother now,’ whispered Lucy.
‘No, you must stay,’ cried Edie.
‘Promise me,’ pleaded Lucy, her hand touching Edie’s hair. But Edie was crying too much to answer.
It was hard work for Lucy to stay in this world, even for a few minutes. It was only love that was keeping her. She looked at her new daughter, wrinkled and pink in the rug in her father’s arms.
‘Gracie,’ she whispered.
Paul nodded. ‘I’ll agree to any name you wish, if only you wouldn’t leave.’
She looked at him and
