Quiet Isaac went to pick up the two large bags they had packed to bring in. One was full of baby clothes, blankets, newborn nappies and everything they could possibly need to bring their new little one home. Isaac wanted to get this bag especially out of Hope’s eyeline and out of the building into the boot of his tatty old Honda Civic parked in the hospital’s basement garage. The zip was tightly closed on that one; it hadn’t even been opened once. It would return home packed. The saddest bag in history.
Quiet Isaac picked up the other overnight bag, but Hope stopped him.
‘Best leave that one. I’ll put my nightie in it, and there’s my washbag stuff …’ she said, touching his arm.
‘OK, I’ll take this,’ he said as he went to the corner of the room and picked up the baby car seat they’d bought to make sure the tiddly infant was safe homeward bound. He was a pitiful sight. A man so loaded down with the defunct detritus of his tragedy.
The seat was a pastel purple colour with a pattern of ducklings on the padding. The bag was pale yellow with cheerful pink hearts all over it. The man was brown, with a black and blue interior. He attempted a valiant last smile; then he was gone.
Hope was grateful the delivery suite had its own bathroom. She closed the door behind her. This was the first minute she’d had entirely alone since … well, since.
Everything inside Hope was trembling. She felt that only her skin was keeping the shaky jelly in, and her skin was extra thin right now. She wondered if people might actually be able to SEE the wobbling mass she was just beneath the surface, if they were up close? She turned the shower on, and she stepped in.
Something very strange happened to Hope as the water hit her upturned face. It gave licence to Hope’s tears, the first she had cried. Hope had cried before in her life, many times; she’d had some pretty lonely moments trying to be both parents to her sister, and worrying herself sick about her mum and dad, but she’d not experienced anything like this. These tears came from a bottomless well she didn’t know was there. How could something so recent, so new, feel like such ancient sorrow? It was as if she’d lost her oldest, dearest darling, the closest soul to hers. Some of her, of herself, had died. Unexpectedly.
She opened her mouth and as the shower water gushed in, she let out a choking yelp. She held on to the wet, cold tiled walls for balance as she looked down at the water disappearing into the plughole, taking with it all the hopeful skin she had yesterday, when life was so differently better and so full of happy anticipation. Hope’s tears joined in and swirled around the drain along with all of her joy and she watched it vanish. She was emptying out. She felt weak. And raw. And strangely heavy. Surely all these tears escaping should leave her lighter, in every way? And yet she could barely stand, owing to the weight of the concrete sadness in the pit of her stomach. She placed her back to the wall, felt the cool of it with a wince and slid down until she was crumpled up in the shower tray, curled in on herself with the hot water pounding down on her. She started to slap the wall with the flat of her hand, and soon she was on her knees thwacking the wall repeatedly and howling out her pain.
When, finally, Hope’s breathing was back to calm and regular, she stepped out of the shower and vigorously rubbed herself dry with the merciless over-bleached hospital towel. She rubbed very hard. She wanted that top layer of baby-hopeful skin gone. She wanted her hair clean of the baby-pushing sweat. She wanted no single remnant of any of it. Her skin felt raw but it helped somehow. Even the way it stung felt right. The inner anguish boiling away, filling her up and pushing out through every pore.
Fatu popped back into the room and heard the noises coming from the bathroom. ‘You OK in there, Hope?’ she enquired as she knocked on the door.
‘Yep. Yep. Fine. No problem,’ Hope shouted from within her own private wet hell. ‘I’m nearly done …’
‘Take your time, no rush,’ Fatu answered. She hesitated briefly in order to listen closely at the door, just to be sure Hope was all right. She heard nothing alarming, so she carried on with her work.
Home was definitely where Hope wanted to be now. She wanted everything familiar around her; it might help to anchor her to the earth again because, sure as hell, nothing in the hospital seemed normal. Even though it was her place of work, it felt like a completely strange and hostile other planet. She was glad it was early and she might avoid seeing any of her cleaning team as she left. She’d promised that she would present her new little one to them on the way home, but she couldn’t face telling them. She couldn’t face the pity; it would tip her over the edge. She wanted to dodge them all and get straight down to the car and waiting Quiet Isaac.
Home. Home. Home.
Hope looked in the mirror, and saw a strange, drawn face she barely recognized. She was only twenty years old. How could a twenty-year-old woman look like the haggard, haunted person staring back at her?
Working in the hospital, Hope saw every day how illness affected people. She regularly saw the brutal ravages of cancer and the toll that pain took on so many patients. It was a difficult truth to face so often, but she was aware that she had come to normalize it a bit. She had
