6.30 am. It's my last day at work today. He's on before me and for now I
get to lie in the dark of a winter's morning while he makes tea and toast
and in a minute or so he'll bring it up here and sit with me while we eat
breakfast and then he'll go start his shift. I like these dark mornings.
It's very quiet here, no traffic much after the neighbours have left for
work. Next door one side is a lawyer, single, no kids; I think maybe he's
gay. The other side are two university teachers, kids grown up and gone.
We went round for coffee and cake a while back, all very nice and
neighbourly. The professors' house was a wreck, books stacked everywhere,
dead houseplants, dirty crockery, about 200 cats. There was a sandwich
under the sofa, I could see it. I'm pretty sure it could see me too. I
don't recall seeing Luka actually sit down while we were there; guess he
wasn't wild about the thick layer of cat hair covering every bit of
furniture in the place, and when we left he said that if he wasn't
asthmatic when he went in he thought he could feel it taking hold now. We
returned the invitation to Mrs & Mrs Boffin and they came, pored over the
bookshelves, asked Luka a million questions about Croatia, admired his
dad's paintings. He was OK with it and we somehow ended up agreeing to
look after their cats while they're away in Wisconsin for Christmas. I
kinda hope 200 cats = 1 baby when it comes to babysitting. Then again,
they'd probably lose the kid, put it down and forget where. We'd find our
offspring at about three years old and half way through the Collected Works
of Balzac. As it is they just left some of the cat hair from their clothes
on our couch.
We had Carter and Jing Mei round for dinner too. My idea. Luka wasn't crazy about it but went along with it pretty gamely. It was OK. I showed Jing Mei the nursery - and chalk another one up to me because she liked the green too – and left Luka and Carter downstairs talking about I don't know what because he wouldn't tell me when I asked. I think it was tough for Jing Mei, the baby stuff and I cut it short. I don't think it's going to last, her and Carter, just a feeling I have. I was trying to imagine Carter inviting Luka over for dinner if things had turned out different and I can't. Wouldn't have happened, too much . . . I don't know, but there'd be too much of it anyhow.
Still, that's not the way things went, is it; I'm lying here about three years pregnant and it's Luka's baby, not Carter's. It's weird to think it might have been his if things had taken the other direction. Maybe it could; we never even talked about it. Anyway, there was Jing Mei, telling me she loved the green and having a little boy somewhere and obviously wanting to do it again and just as obviously knowing it wasn't going to happen with Carter. It made me sad for her, for them, although I couldn't say so. I'm pretty sure he wants kids like she does, but it would be her second child and I somehow know he wouldn't want that. And look at me. Luka's third child, I'm having his third child. Well, fourth if you count Nicole, and I guess I have to.
There's a bad habit I've gotten into lately. I blame my hormones. I try to imagine what I'd have done in his place – if it was a choice between him and this baby – watch him die or let the baby go. No kidding, I can reduce myself to tears almost instantly with this. Sentimentality – imagining feelings without actually experiencing them. Cool definition, right? Not mine of course, it came from an English teacher I had, talking about mawkish Victorian literature, public hysteria over the death of Little Nell, that stuff. Crazy. Like we don't all have enough pain without appropriating someone else's. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof. He says he knows his Bible; wonder if he knows that one.
Sure he does.
......................................................................................................
"Snow's forecast"
"Great."
"Tonight probably. Move over. You want the paper?"
"I can look when you're gone."
"You going to take it easy this morning? Get some rest?"
"I am going," I say as I heave myself upright and he arranges pillows behind me, "to practice my look of delighted astonishment in front of the mirror so that I can arrange my features appropriately when they spring the shower on me tonight. Pass the peanut butter."
"I don't know how you can eat that stuff."
"I can eat it with a spoon. I am Joe Black."
"Who?"
"Never mind. Your dad likes it."
"I rest my case."
"Come on, at least I'm not eating it with saurkraut or coal or any crazy crap like that." He laughs softly and shakes his head, concentrating on the paper.
"Have your dream again last night?" he asks, without taking his eyes from the letters page.
"You can tell?"
He shrugs. "I don't know, you got a little . . . agitated. So – tell me?"
I can't believe I'm telling him this, but I give it a go.
"So anyway, I'm feeling all exhausted and happy and they're all smiling and you're smiling and they take the . . . baby away and do all the usual stuff. I can't see anything but they tell me it's a good APGAR, everything's fine and then the OB, who is actually the old guy who sells flowers by the gate at the hospital, I mean except when it's Bill Murray. Or Barbara Stanwyck.
"Barbara Stanwyck? Really?"
"Oh, you ain't heard nothin' yet. Anyway, Flower Guy or Bill or Barbara tells me that it's a female."
"A female."
"Yep. Because it's a . . . well, it's a rabbit."
He nods and looks down very intently at his paper and he tries but there it is, a snort of laughter.
"I knew you'd laugh, you bastard, I knew it."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not funny, it's a bad feeling."
"I know."
"I mean, I'm holding this baby rabbit – "
"I think they're called kittens."
"- and I know it's all wrong but you all seem to think it's OK so I smile along with you – wait a minute - what do you mean you know?"
"With Danijela it was a cat. A fish one time."
"You're making that up."
"I'm not."
"Same dream?"
"Same dream." He's trying to be serious but that smile is still there in his eyes just waiting to bust out all over again. "Come on, classic anxiety dream, like when you find yourself at the grocery store or the gas station and you're naked, or you're trying to intubate a patient with a corkscrew."
"A what?"
"Or a telephone or a hosepipe, whatever."
"You dreamt that?" My turn to laugh.
"You have to expect it. This is the biggest thing you and your body ever did; you're anxious, your body's anxious. You never heard this from the women you delivered?"
"I think they were kind of past the dreaming stage by the time they got to me. Twenty minutes of relaxation and breathing and then demands for major drugs."
"What about the other women in your pre-natal class?"
"I can't talk to them, Luka, it kinda makes me feel queasy."
"Maybe you should."
"So . . . you think it's just worry."
"Look, I did my psych rotation about a hundred years ago and I don't think we covered rabbits – "
"Or fish."
"– but it makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Maybe I have more cause to worry than most."
"Maybe. I don't think I can help you with that."
"No, I don't think you can."
"Thing is though – you love your rabbit, right?"
"Right. I mean – it's cute. It's a rabbit. They're cute."
"And it's yours."
"Yes."
"So there you are. "
"There I am?"
"Doesn't matter what it is or it isn't, doesn't matter what you expect. It is what it is and you love it."
"And you don't think I'm crazy."
"I didn't say that. Just . . . not about this."
"Thanks. I think."
"Don't meet problems half way. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof."
"What?"
"It means – "
"I know what it means. It's just . . . weird."
"Why?"
"Because I was – never mind."
"Finish your tea, get another couple of hours sleep. You're on at noon, right?"
"Noon."
"You want to get some lunch?"
"I'll find you."
"OK. I have to go." He leans over to kiss me. "Look after yourself. And Thumper."
...................................................................................................
I catch up with him at about one in the afternoon, his head bent at a curious angle to avoid the killer breath of the homeless guy who is waiting on a surgical consult, and who, when he sees me, shrieks that they've got me too and I back off, looking at Lydia questioningly.
"He thinks he's being eaten alive by something inside him."
"I know how he feels."
"I think maybe this has more to do with his appendix" Luka says.
"Let's hope you're right, Kovac, because I'm a little out of practice with Alien Incubi." Romano elbows Luka out of the way. "Stand aside, Vlad, the experts are here. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, why does this guy not have an O2 mask on?"
"He doesn't need it."
"Well I do. Is it safe for an expectant mother to be breathing this stuff in?"
A few minutes later and they're wheeling the guy out, Luka being dragged with them because he won't let go of his hand. As they reach the elevator halitosis guy shifts his grip to Romano's coat and bellows "Jeeeeesus loves you!" right in his face. Romano looks like he might throw up which has to be a first.
"Well, I'm glad to hear that, sir, because everyone else thinks I'm an asshole, isn't that right, Dr. Kovac?"
"Right as always, Dr Romano."
"Get out, your wife's waiting. Perhaps something low fat, Nurse Kovac – piling on the pounds lately, aren't we?" The elevator doors slide closed on him.
"Asshole."
"I'll get my coat" he laughs, but as he's making for the lounge a gurney rolls in carrying a young guy who's been knocked off his motor cycle and whose foot is pretty much turned back to front; the paramedics snag Luka who looks back over his shoulder and mouths, over the young guy's terrified screams, "Sorry".
"Getting something to eat?" It's Carter.
"I was, but Luka just got dragged away." I'm waiting for him to offer to take over from Luka, but instead he says "OK then – my treat."
......................................................................................................
"You do know they'll try and talk you out of it."
"Oh come on, not you too! Coburn already tried, Angela just laughed at me, Haleh told me I'm crazy."
"And Luka?"
"He's OK with it."
"Really?"
"Really."
"He's going to let you do this?"
"Let me? He can't stop me. And he hasn't tried." He's looking out of the window now although I know he can't see anything because it's steamed up to hell, and he has the patented Carter smirk on his face.
"What?" I ask him. "What's it to you anyway?"
"It's brutal, Abby; I saw Carol and Deb do it."
"I've seen hundreds of women do it."
"They weren't communing with nature you know. Nature doesn't care about mothers, she tears holes in them."
"I'm talking about going without pain relief, not squatting in a tent in the middle of a field."
"And of course the first Mrs Kovac did it, right?"
"What?"
"You're not trying to prove something here by any chance?"
"You know, I'm going to pretend that you didn't just say that."
"Well, I did. Are you?"
"Trying to prove something? You bet your ass. I'm trying to prove that I can do this, for me. Luka hasn't tried to talk me out of it because, unlike you, he seems to think I can make decisions for myself. My. Self. Nothing to do with him, or Dani or anyone else. Why can't you get that? And for the record you have no idea what this has already cost him so you can stop right there with the agenda. Thanks for the lunch." I get up to go but he catches at my hand.
"Cost him?"
"Not that it's any of your business but you might want to stop and think what it's like to watch your baby born when you've already buried two others." Shit. I shouldn't have said that.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You've – he's had problems with this?"
The fight's gone out of me and I sit down again. "You could say that."
"Well what – "
"No. I'm not going to tell you about it. He's fine, we're both fine. We worked it out."
"Look, I don't want this, fighting with you."
"Then don't do it! I thought we were better than this."
"We? There's a we?"
"We. Us. There'll always be an us. You're my friend. Jesus if things had been different this could have been your baby. But it isn't and I'm glad it's Luka's. I love him. He loves me. You don't have to look out for me, that's his job and he's doing it just fine, you get that?"
"I get that." He's looking out the window again, not smirking now, but sad. "Me and Deb ... "he starts, but doesn't finish. He smiles and shakes is head, like he's trying to dislodge something. "Never mind. Not now. Your last day, huh?" OK, we're changing the subject. I'm glad.
"Last day. I get off at midnight and then I'm done."
"Crappy last shift."
"Better than an overnighter."
"I guess. So – you all ready for the surprise baby shower?"
"All ready." I run through my range of expressions, from embarrassed to coy to delighted to 'My, that's soooo pretty' even though what I'm looking at is hideous.
"You should keep your return to nursing very much open."
"Why?"
"Because you're a terrible actress."
We had Carter and Jing Mei round for dinner too. My idea. Luka wasn't crazy about it but went along with it pretty gamely. It was OK. I showed Jing Mei the nursery - and chalk another one up to me because she liked the green too – and left Luka and Carter downstairs talking about I don't know what because he wouldn't tell me when I asked. I think it was tough for Jing Mei, the baby stuff and I cut it short. I don't think it's going to last, her and Carter, just a feeling I have. I was trying to imagine Carter inviting Luka over for dinner if things had turned out different and I can't. Wouldn't have happened, too much . . . I don't know, but there'd be too much of it anyhow.
Still, that's not the way things went, is it; I'm lying here about three years pregnant and it's Luka's baby, not Carter's. It's weird to think it might have been his if things had taken the other direction. Maybe it could; we never even talked about it. Anyway, there was Jing Mei, telling me she loved the green and having a little boy somewhere and obviously wanting to do it again and just as obviously knowing it wasn't going to happen with Carter. It made me sad for her, for them, although I couldn't say so. I'm pretty sure he wants kids like she does, but it would be her second child and I somehow know he wouldn't want that. And look at me. Luka's third child, I'm having his third child. Well, fourth if you count Nicole, and I guess I have to.
There's a bad habit I've gotten into lately. I blame my hormones. I try to imagine what I'd have done in his place – if it was a choice between him and this baby – watch him die or let the baby go. No kidding, I can reduce myself to tears almost instantly with this. Sentimentality – imagining feelings without actually experiencing them. Cool definition, right? Not mine of course, it came from an English teacher I had, talking about mawkish Victorian literature, public hysteria over the death of Little Nell, that stuff. Crazy. Like we don't all have enough pain without appropriating someone else's. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof. He says he knows his Bible; wonder if he knows that one.
Sure he does.
......................................................................................................
"Snow's forecast"
"Great."
"Tonight probably. Move over. You want the paper?"
"I can look when you're gone."
"You going to take it easy this morning? Get some rest?"
"I am going," I say as I heave myself upright and he arranges pillows behind me, "to practice my look of delighted astonishment in front of the mirror so that I can arrange my features appropriately when they spring the shower on me tonight. Pass the peanut butter."
"I don't know how you can eat that stuff."
"I can eat it with a spoon. I am Joe Black."
"Who?"
"Never mind. Your dad likes it."
"I rest my case."
"Come on, at least I'm not eating it with saurkraut or coal or any crazy crap like that." He laughs softly and shakes his head, concentrating on the paper.
"Have your dream again last night?" he asks, without taking his eyes from the letters page.
"You can tell?"
He shrugs. "I don't know, you got a little . . . agitated. So – tell me?"
I can't believe I'm telling him this, but I give it a go.
"So anyway, I'm feeling all exhausted and happy and they're all smiling and you're smiling and they take the . . . baby away and do all the usual stuff. I can't see anything but they tell me it's a good APGAR, everything's fine and then the OB, who is actually the old guy who sells flowers by the gate at the hospital, I mean except when it's Bill Murray. Or Barbara Stanwyck.
"Barbara Stanwyck? Really?"
"Oh, you ain't heard nothin' yet. Anyway, Flower Guy or Bill or Barbara tells me that it's a female."
"A female."
"Yep. Because it's a . . . well, it's a rabbit."
He nods and looks down very intently at his paper and he tries but there it is, a snort of laughter.
"I knew you'd laugh, you bastard, I knew it."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not funny, it's a bad feeling."
"I know."
"I mean, I'm holding this baby rabbit – "
"I think they're called kittens."
"- and I know it's all wrong but you all seem to think it's OK so I smile along with you – wait a minute - what do you mean you know?"
"With Danijela it was a cat. A fish one time."
"You're making that up."
"I'm not."
"Same dream?"
"Same dream." He's trying to be serious but that smile is still there in his eyes just waiting to bust out all over again. "Come on, classic anxiety dream, like when you find yourself at the grocery store or the gas station and you're naked, or you're trying to intubate a patient with a corkscrew."
"A what?"
"Or a telephone or a hosepipe, whatever."
"You dreamt that?" My turn to laugh.
"You have to expect it. This is the biggest thing you and your body ever did; you're anxious, your body's anxious. You never heard this from the women you delivered?"
"I think they were kind of past the dreaming stage by the time they got to me. Twenty minutes of relaxation and breathing and then demands for major drugs."
"What about the other women in your pre-natal class?"
"I can't talk to them, Luka, it kinda makes me feel queasy."
"Maybe you should."
"So . . . you think it's just worry."
"Look, I did my psych rotation about a hundred years ago and I don't think we covered rabbits – "
"Or fish."
"– but it makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Maybe I have more cause to worry than most."
"Maybe. I don't think I can help you with that."
"No, I don't think you can."
"Thing is though – you love your rabbit, right?"
"Right. I mean – it's cute. It's a rabbit. They're cute."
"And it's yours."
"Yes."
"So there you are. "
"There I am?"
"Doesn't matter what it is or it isn't, doesn't matter what you expect. It is what it is and you love it."
"And you don't think I'm crazy."
"I didn't say that. Just . . . not about this."
"Thanks. I think."
"Don't meet problems half way. Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof."
"What?"
"It means – "
"I know what it means. It's just . . . weird."
"Why?"
"Because I was – never mind."
"Finish your tea, get another couple of hours sleep. You're on at noon, right?"
"Noon."
"You want to get some lunch?"
"I'll find you."
"OK. I have to go." He leans over to kiss me. "Look after yourself. And Thumper."
...................................................................................................
I catch up with him at about one in the afternoon, his head bent at a curious angle to avoid the killer breath of the homeless guy who is waiting on a surgical consult, and who, when he sees me, shrieks that they've got me too and I back off, looking at Lydia questioningly.
"He thinks he's being eaten alive by something inside him."
"I know how he feels."
"I think maybe this has more to do with his appendix" Luka says.
"Let's hope you're right, Kovac, because I'm a little out of practice with Alien Incubi." Romano elbows Luka out of the way. "Stand aside, Vlad, the experts are here. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, why does this guy not have an O2 mask on?"
"He doesn't need it."
"Well I do. Is it safe for an expectant mother to be breathing this stuff in?"
A few minutes later and they're wheeling the guy out, Luka being dragged with them because he won't let go of his hand. As they reach the elevator halitosis guy shifts his grip to Romano's coat and bellows "Jeeeeesus loves you!" right in his face. Romano looks like he might throw up which has to be a first.
"Well, I'm glad to hear that, sir, because everyone else thinks I'm an asshole, isn't that right, Dr. Kovac?"
"Right as always, Dr Romano."
"Get out, your wife's waiting. Perhaps something low fat, Nurse Kovac – piling on the pounds lately, aren't we?" The elevator doors slide closed on him.
"Asshole."
"I'll get my coat" he laughs, but as he's making for the lounge a gurney rolls in carrying a young guy who's been knocked off his motor cycle and whose foot is pretty much turned back to front; the paramedics snag Luka who looks back over his shoulder and mouths, over the young guy's terrified screams, "Sorry".
"Getting something to eat?" It's Carter.
"I was, but Luka just got dragged away." I'm waiting for him to offer to take over from Luka, but instead he says "OK then – my treat."
......................................................................................................
"You do know they'll try and talk you out of it."
"Oh come on, not you too! Coburn already tried, Angela just laughed at me, Haleh told me I'm crazy."
"And Luka?"
"He's OK with it."
"Really?"
"Really."
"He's going to let you do this?"
"Let me? He can't stop me. And he hasn't tried." He's looking out of the window now although I know he can't see anything because it's steamed up to hell, and he has the patented Carter smirk on his face.
"What?" I ask him. "What's it to you anyway?"
"It's brutal, Abby; I saw Carol and Deb do it."
"I've seen hundreds of women do it."
"They weren't communing with nature you know. Nature doesn't care about mothers, she tears holes in them."
"I'm talking about going without pain relief, not squatting in a tent in the middle of a field."
"And of course the first Mrs Kovac did it, right?"
"What?"
"You're not trying to prove something here by any chance?"
"You know, I'm going to pretend that you didn't just say that."
"Well, I did. Are you?"
"Trying to prove something? You bet your ass. I'm trying to prove that I can do this, for me. Luka hasn't tried to talk me out of it because, unlike you, he seems to think I can make decisions for myself. My. Self. Nothing to do with him, or Dani or anyone else. Why can't you get that? And for the record you have no idea what this has already cost him so you can stop right there with the agenda. Thanks for the lunch." I get up to go but he catches at my hand.
"Cost him?"
"Not that it's any of your business but you might want to stop and think what it's like to watch your baby born when you've already buried two others." Shit. I shouldn't have said that.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You've – he's had problems with this?"
The fight's gone out of me and I sit down again. "You could say that."
"Well what – "
"No. I'm not going to tell you about it. He's fine, we're both fine. We worked it out."
"Look, I don't want this, fighting with you."
"Then don't do it! I thought we were better than this."
"We? There's a we?"
"We. Us. There'll always be an us. You're my friend. Jesus if things had been different this could have been your baby. But it isn't and I'm glad it's Luka's. I love him. He loves me. You don't have to look out for me, that's his job and he's doing it just fine, you get that?"
"I get that." He's looking out the window again, not smirking now, but sad. "Me and Deb ... "he starts, but doesn't finish. He smiles and shakes is head, like he's trying to dislodge something. "Never mind. Not now. Your last day, huh?" OK, we're changing the subject. I'm glad.
"Last day. I get off at midnight and then I'm done."
"Crappy last shift."
"Better than an overnighter."
"I guess. So – you all ready for the surprise baby shower?"
"All ready." I run through my range of expressions, from embarrassed to coy to delighted to 'My, that's soooo pretty' even though what I'm looking at is hideous.
"You should keep your return to nursing very much open."
"Why?"
"Because you're a terrible actress."