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Two Little Words
In which Lily worries too much, Zoe sets the world to rights, and everything turns out right in the end. (Lily and Ethan are a married couple here)
Having vomited for the third time that morning, Lily sank back from beside the toilet and sat against the bath, her knees drawn to her chest. She rested her forehead on her knees. She strongly suspected that this latest bout of nausea and vomiting was inextricably linked to the period that she should have started four days ago. And the two previous ones which also had not arrived. But so far, she hadn't yet dared to actually take the over-the-counter pregnancy test which lay buried in the back of her sock drawer, wrapped dramatically in a plastic carrier bag.
It wasn't that she didn't want to be pregnant. In fact, the reverse was true, but this didn't stop her being terrified at the same time. It had all gone so horribly wrong last time, and she was so afraid that the past would repeat itself that she had been relieved, when their previous two tries had been unsuccessful.
She was very glad that Ethan had already left for work. This gave her time and space to make herself look presentable, to conceal the fact that she was still feeling very wobbly. It also meant that he wasn't present to protest against her not eating any breakfast.
"Do you want to lead this one, Lily?" Zoe asked, after reeling off the information she'd received through the red phone. But, instead of the usual focus and enthusiasm, Zoe saw the junior doctor look up like a startled rabbit, as though she hadn't been concentrating. "Adult trauma call, chemical incident, ETA fifteen minutes," she repeated levelly.
Lily froze. She leaned over to look at the incident sheet, scanning it for chemicals that she knew to be teratogenic. Nothing stood out to her – and besides, she wasn't even really sure that she was pregnant yet, so it would have to be a risk she was willing to take. "No – I – no, thank you," she stammered. "I mean – just – I'll assist, not lead, if that's okay."
"Sure, don't worry about it," Zoe replied, not drawing attention to Lily's sudden desire to shy away from the spotlight. "Okay?" she checked, raising one eyebrow.
"Yes, of course," Lily said, hoping that her lie would pass muster.
Once they were treating the patient, Zoe was glad that Lily had elected to assist and not to lead. The younger woman's concentration was lapsing far too easily, and she seemed peculiarly unwilling to get too involved with treating the patient. When the man was, at long last, wheeled out of resus, Zoe watched Lily closely. She was almost completely zoned out.
"Lily?" she said, placing a hand on her shoulder and trying to gauge how she was feeling from her pale face.
Lily was aware of being spoken to, but Zoe's soft voice sounded very far away. She was even disconnected from the consultant's touch on her shoulder. Her thoughts travelled slowly as she began to feel faint. "I'm not feeling too well," she mumbled, taking an unsteady step backwards.
"I can see that," Zoe answered calmly. "Let's get you out of here."
With a motherly hand at her back, Zoe steered Lily out of resus and into an empty cubicle, before pulling the curtain tightly shut.
"So, are you going to tell me why you're not yourself today?" she asked.
Lily sat on the edge of the bed, her legs dangling anxiously over the side. Where should she start? It wouldn't be news to Zoe that she had suffered a miscarriage several months ago: the consultant had been present on that awful day, and had been one of the first to offer her condolences afterwards. She had also been present when Ethan had arranged to release white balloons on the seafront. Zoe knew how much this would matter, and could probably guess how anxious Lily was, if only Lily could find the words to express all the thoughts rushing like an unstoppable current and crashing about in her brain.
"I noticed a couple of days ago," Zoe began, "but it's worse today, Lily. You've gone very quiet, is everything alright?" When Lily stayed silent again, Zoe noticed that she looked so deeply conflicted that she might cry. She switched tack quickly. "Okay, first of all, let's fix the fact that you nearly passed out in my resus. Toast? Cup of tea?" To her relief, Lily nodded. "You take sugar, don't you?"
Lily knotted her hands in her lap. "I'd rather not have sugar today, thank you." She knew that she sounded ridiculous: who changed the way they took their tea at the drop of a hat?
But if Zoe was surprised, she didn't show it. She'd had half an idea of what could be happening, from the moment that Lily looked over the incident sheet to see what chemicals they were dealing with. Almost fainting, and now a sudden change in preference only cemented her assumption. It wasn't her place to dig out the truth at this precise moment. Lily would spill the beans in her own time. And if she didn't, then there would be plenty of time for questions when she had something to occupy her wrung hands.
Zoe returned to the cubicle a few minutes later, carrying two mugs, Lily's full of unsugared tea and her own with strong coffee. A packet of rich tea biscuits was tucked under her arm.
"I was going to make you toast, and then I thought, if you're not feeling well, you'll want something plainer than that," she explained, unpicking the end of the packet of biscuits and taking one herself before handing the rest to Lily, who looked horrified. "I'm not expecting you to eat them all!" Zoe laughed. "Just get something in you, it might help."
But Lily looked down at the biscuits as though she might burst into tears.
"Hey, it's okay, Lily, I'm not trying to upset you," Zoe said softly.
"I know," Lily whispered. "I'm just so scared." She covered her face loosely with her hands, not caring that she would probably smear her glasses horribly.
"What are you scared of?" Zoe pressed. "There's nothing to be afraid of in here. Surely you know that there's too many people in here who are rooting for you, so nothing can go wrong?"
"I know," Lily repeated. She knew she would have to come out and say it, but the words seemed unwilling to escape the recesses of her brain. "You're going to think I'm being absurd – I think I'm being absurd."
"Try me," Zoe said, her voice an exact equilibrium of firm and caring, pushing Lily's mug into her hands.
Lily sighed, and then all her words tumbled out in an unstoppable rush. "I'm almost completely sure that I'm pregnant. I've been nauseous constantly for more than a fortnight; I threw up three times before coming to work today but I made myself keep going because I almost had myself convinced that I'd missed three periods because I was stressed, and that my own worrying and overthinking was making me sick. I keep putting off taking the test because of what happened last time, and I'm so afraid that I'll do something wrong or my body just won't let it happen."
"Oh, Lily," Zoe said, her face falling. This poor young woman was almost hiding from the obvious, medical truth, to comfort herself and avoid the terror that was encroaching upon her at the prospect of history repeating itself.
"I think," Lily said, taking a deep breath and gathering her thoughts sufficiently to return to something resembling normal, "I think what I mean to say, is that I would like you to test my blood and just tell me either way, even though I more or less know already."
A strange sense of calm had at last settled over Lily, while she waited in the staffroom, under Zoe's instruction to stay there while she rushed the sample of blood through the lab. And at last, her stomach was no longer rolling. Having eaten two slices of toast, she felt so much better that she forgot to worry until Zoe returned.
The consultant quickly scanned the room to check that Lily was alone. Even though she was, Zoe couldn't help herself whispering. The walls had ears in this place, after all. "Congratulations Lily. Looks like you don't have to worry, now."
Lily covered her mouth, feeling like she was frozen in time. She was very grateful when Zoe wrapped her arms around her, hugging her tightly.
"I think you need to go and find Ethan, don't you?"
Lily stood a few feet away from her husband. She was behind him, so he couldn't see her psyching herself up. In the next five minutes, her utterance of two simple words would turn their world upside down. Or maybe, since the miscarriage had already up-ended everything, her announcing a so-far completely viable pregnancy might just serve to put everything in their world back right again. Reminding herself that it was Ethan she was about to talk to, her beacon of light on a stormy sea, she walked around so that she was in front of him, leaned on the counter between them and rested her right hand on top of his left. He looked up, and when their eyes met, Lily was reminded of precisely why there was no need for her to be afraid. Leaning closer to him, her left foot lifted from the floor, only by a few inches but enough that Lily felt herself magnetically attracted to Ethan.
"Have you got a minute? Maybe ten?" she asked quietly. "There's something I'm dying to tell you, but I can't do it here."
Ethan's eyebrows furrowed. He studied Lily's face. She was trying so hard not to reveal a thing, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching upwards and her eyes gave her away. "Good news or bad news?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.
Lily ran her tongue along the edges of her front teeth. "That would be telling," she teased. "I promise it won't take long," she assured him, as she watched the way he considered his watch and the papers in front of him.
"I think you can be excused," Zoe said, walking up behind Ethan and making him jump. Her face was a further clue to Ethan that Lily wasn't about to break bad news: unlike his wife, Zoe couldn't hide an obvious smile.
"Why did we have to come all the way up here?" Ethan asked, looking at Lily, who was standing at the edge of the roof, leaning on the surrounding wall and looking down over the front of the hospital.
Lily took a while to answer, watching life go on at ground level. "Because… because you know what it's like down there," Lily said, turning back to face her husband. "You can't say anything without being overheard, and it's not that I don't want them to know, they'll know soon enough, but I want you to know first." She took a step closer to him and held his hands. "I'm pregnant."
Ethan's eyes lit up with joy. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came. Instead, he smiled, then put his hands tenderly on either side of Lily's face before kissing her forehead. "You know when people say that something has made their day? You've just made my whole year."