Life is a funny thing, isn’t it? Back in the days when I was single, skinny
and capable of cohesive thought, I don’t think I was ever particularly confused
about the future. Even the onset of war
with an alien species didn’t fill me with so much anxiety that I found myself
unable to speak in complete sentences. Which is just as well, I suppose, given
that in my job, clear communication is key; if you hope to stay alive, that is. But things have changed; now I’m so confused
I’ve become dyslexic. I keep saying
‘post-mortem’ when I mean ‘post-partum’.
Perhaps it’s to be expected; there are days when I feel like my hormones
are playing Pac-Man with my brain cells- devouring them, one by one. So maybe slipping up with the wrong word
isn’t unusual.
Then again,
perhaps the slippage is Freudian in nature, and post-partum and post-mortem
will turn out to be one and the same.
Perhaps some prescient voice is warning me that I’m a fool to have
embarked on this venture in the first place, an idiot to think I could survive
it. For the first time in seven months,
I’m beginning to think my husband may have been right in his belief that there
is no way any of this will end well. The
truth might be that he simply took more notice of the warning voices than I
did.
Another funny thing, which I didn’t find odd until I
actually thought about it, is this; I
wasn’t anxious or worried at all until a few weeks ago, when my husband
returned from his self-imposed emotional exile and finally acknowledged that
not only was fatherhood imminent, this time it would not be thwarted. After months of a - frankly appalling- lack
of concern, he is now the epitome of calm solicitude. I, on the other hand, have gone from serene
Mother Earth goddess to hormonally enraged harpy in the blink of an eye. It’s as if, by some weird symbiotic osmosis,
he has got rid of all his worry, fear and negative emotions by simply
transferring them to me. Great exchange,
don’t you think?
Yeah, right. I
thought so, too.
Still. I’m not
complaining, not really. It was good to
have him back, even though there were times when he drove me mad. Like that day, in fact; 31st
October, the day everything was about to change forever. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, as
we set off in the Swift, en route to my parents’ home in California; ostensibly
to attend my mother’s annual Halloween jamboree, but in reality to afford her
an opportunity to show off her glamorous new son-in-law. Paul and my mother are soul mates; he gets on
with her far better than I ever have. In
fact, I think there are times when she prefers him to me. Still, at least I’ve done something right for
once; she hasn’t bothered to conceal her relief that her wayward elder daughter
has finally chosen a man on whom she can bestow her wholehearted approval. Given past history, I think this is a first.
The problem was that although I’m the pilot by
profession, he was flying the Swift, something he doesn’t do particularly
well. He’s not good with passenger
jets. He prefers smaller planes,
machines that respond both instantly and powerfully. You don’t get that with the Swift; you can’t
fling it around. It needs subtlety and
a delicate touch, neither of which he possesses in abundance. Earlier on in the
flight, I had been grinding my teeth in irritation, to the point where I’d
actually entertained wild notions of storming the cockpit and wrestling the
controls from his hands, just so I could show him how it should be done. Only the knowledge that jamming my thirty-six
week pregnant stomach between the seat and the control panel would be a nigh-on
impossible feat persuaded me to abandon such a crazy idea.
So I forced myself to settle back in my seat and
direct my gaze at the blue and gold vista of sun and sky before me. The views from the Swift are unparalleled I
must admit, and passenger comfort second to none. I felt guilty about my husband’s insistence
on using Spectrum’s premier people-carrier for such small, personal purposes –
a Hummingbird would have done just fine.
But Colonel White, my unexpected friend and champion in recent months,
had been unequivocal in his generosity.
“Go, my dear,” he said expansively. “Enjoy some time
with your family and don’t worry about a thing.”
Doctor Gold had echoed his sentiments, although I was
aware that he’d only agreed to let me fly at all because he was perfectly
acquainted with the Swift’s well-equipped medical facilities. I was partly amused, partly annoyed at the
whole business. Perhaps it is comforting
to know that a defibrillator is on hand, but I wasn’t sure how much use it
might be in the circumstances. In any
case, there was nothing to worry about.
I was at least four weeks from my due date and everyone knows first
babies are always late.
At that moment, my husband turned his head and looked
at me. I love calling him ‘my husband’,
I must say. I never imagined I
would. I was not exactly the most eager
of brides; it took some persuasion to get me down the aisle. But now that I’m officially ‘the wife’, it’s
surprising how conformist I’ve become.
Another of life’s anomalies, I guess.
“Are you okay?” he asked, with that smile that can,
inexplicably, still my heartbeat and flood my veins with such warm, liquid love
that I am calmed and comforted.
“Yes,” I
murmured. “Yes, I’m great.” And I was.
I was great, the baby was great, everything was
great. It’s a word used inappropriately
most of the time and I’m as guilty of it as anyone. But in that moment, it
didn’t seem wrong. I had already placed
myself in the hands of fate and I had no choice other than to believe that the
bargain would not be reneged upon. And I
did believe it; despite my overwhelming anxiety of recent weeks, I had faith in
the future. Whatever was to come, we
were ready – we could deal with it.
This is the big difference, you see. Before, we hadn’t been ready. We hadn’t known what we wanted and eighteen
months ago, our first unplanned foray into parenthood had ended with
devastating finality at fourteen weeks gestation. I had woken from surgery to the news that
not only had I lost my baby and almost my life, but that I should say goodbye
to any future hopes of becoming pregnant.
Yet another funny thing; you don’t always know how
much you want something until you discover you can’t have it. I am a pilot, an astronaut, a mathematician,
daughter, sister, lover and latterly, a wife; but never had I envisaged myself
as a mother. Equally, never had I
questioned my ability to be one; like most women, I assumed I had the gift of
choice. My biological femaleness was
taken for granted, there to be exercised if I wished. Now, it didn’t matter how much I wished, it
seemed I was no longer equal to the challenge.
My fit, lithe, toned body wouldn’t do my bidding; it was a damaged
creature, a lesser thing, a twisted maze of circuitous scar tissue that would
reject even the most hopeful of incumbents.
Except – this once, it did not. Only two months into our marriage, I was
amazingly, miraculously pregnant. After
the shock had worn off, it was replaced by blissful, delirious happiness, along
with a quiet pride that, despite medical opinion, I was still a woman with a
fully functioning uterus. Nothing, I
must say, prepared me for my husband’s reaction. Yes, he shared my astonishment that,
unwittingly, we had created the seemingly impossible, but there, all
similarities ended. Unlike me, he did
not see this miracle as ‘A Good Thing’.
Shock quickly gave way to horror and then incredulity, as he realised that
I intended to carry on down what he saw as a sure path to disaster. He trashed
my argument that it was ‘meant to be’ and rode roughshod over my hopes.
“If I had thought there was ever any possibility of
this happening again, I would have made damn sure it didn’t”, he snapped.
I tried to explain how this time was different, that
the prospects of carrying this child to term were excellent and that Doctor
Gold was perfectly content with both my own and the baby’s state of
health. Unlike last time, I felt great,
other than a little tiredness which I had been assured was perfectly
normal. In short, all the signs were
good that I would make it through to a real live baby.
He didn’t believe me.
No matter what I said, he remained unmoved in his conviction that a
termination was the only sensible option open to us. Even Doctor Gold’s reassurances fell on deaf
ears. So we argued, we fought, we cried,
we pleaded, both on opposite sides of the fence and all to no avail. I was determined to keep this child and he
was equally determined I should not.
It’s always been a moot point as to which one of us is the more stubborn
but now we were both entrenched. I knew
what was going on, of course. After all,
everyone knows that logic plays little part in one’s deepest fears. I knew that, despite all scientific evidence
to the contrary, he believed he was responsible for the loss of our first
child. In the deepest, darkest corner of
his soul, he blamed himself. I, on the
other hand, blamed someone else entirely.
But that’s another story. Now, he
was thinking only of me while I was thinking only of the baby.
The arguments were eventually silenced by a display of
callousness of which I had not thought him capable.
“Very well,” he said coldly, on yet another night when
he realised his entreaties were getting him nowhere, “if you are so hell-bent
on killing yourself, you go right ahead and do it. Clearly, nothing I can say will stop
you. But don’t expect me to stand by and
watch you, Sim.
You’re on your own with this. I
want nothing more to do with it.”
Looking back, I can see how nonsensical this was –
after all, short of dropping off Skybase and resigning his commission, there
was no realistic way he could avoid being involved. At the time though, I was not only dumbfounded
at his willingness to discard the ‘for better, for worse’ part of the vows we
had so recently taken, I was terrified at the prospect of abandonment. Still, I
managed to comfort myself with the thought that he couldn’t possibly mean what
he said.
I was wrong – he very definitely meant what he
said. Thus began a period of what we
jokingly refer to as ‘The Cold War’ (now that we can joke about it, of course).
Following our stand-off, he was true to his word. He simply absented himself, both physically
and emotionally. Although he didn’t actually move out of our quarters, he might
as well have done. For the next few
months, the most I saw of him was his tunic dashing out the door on yet another
jaw-dropping mission to rid the world of not just Mysterons, but any entity
that looked as if it had ENEMY tattooed to its forehead. He volunteered for everything, whether or not
his presence was actually needed.
Hurtful? You bet it
was. Okay, I know that what he does is
because of his deep concern for the fate of the Earth, but sometimes I wished
he would display as much concern for the fate of the Wife. I had even begun to suspect that he was
taking greater than usual risks with his own safety on the grounds that being
incarcerated in sick-bay meant that he didn’t have to deal with me and Timothy
Jane (one of the nicknames for my growing bump, the other being Lumpkin).
All this irony was not lost on me. He was employing my favourite trick of
running away from whatever is too difficult to face head-on. That was fear:
fear for me, fear for the baby, fear of what the birth of our child might mean
for the future of the world. He’s the
most courageous person I’ve ever known, but fear – and anger – at what he’s
become is omnipresent for him. Most of
the time, he can control it, not let it dominate, so he can get on with doing
what he has to do. But there are times
when he can’t hide from it and I knew this was one of them.
I have a theory that the only time he’s truly unaware
of what has happened to him is in those first few minutes when he recovers
consciousness after being hurt. (We try not to use the word dead. It has such negative
connotations). When he opens his eyes,
there’s a sort of blankness in them and I can tell he doesn’t remember. I hate that moment when comprehension creeps
in. I wish he didn’t have to go through
it so often.
The reason I know my theory is spot-on, is because, on
the day after I had my twenty-week scan, he banned me from sick-bay; if I was
visiting on his account, I mean, rather than my own. The ‘official’ reason given was that he
considered my hovering over his injured body might be too stressful for me in
my delicate condition. Well, he obviously found it too stressful
because he couldn’t even impart the news himself. The miserable coward got Captain Blue to do
it for him. Poor Adam – he was so
embarrassed. I would have felt sorry for him had I not wanted to give him a
good hard kick for not being man enough to tell my husband to do his own dirty
work.
I knew the truth, though; when he opened his eyes and
saw me, he no longer had those few precious moments of ignorance. As soon as his eyes alighted on Lumpkin, he
knew. There was no respite from the
consequences of Fate’s right hand, and he hated me for it.
Well, that was okay because by then, I hated him
too. While I understood the reasons
behind his desertion, it was cold comfort on those mornings when I would have
appreciated a cup of tea being thrust in my hand after spending half an hour
retching over a toilet bowl, or a back-rub on the nights when my ever-more
energetic child kept me awake. It was as
if he thought that by determinedly ignoring the changing situation before him,
it would miraculously disappear.
During that time, there were only two pregnancy-related
questions asked, one of which was a blanket-coverage, “Is everything all
right?” to which I invariably gave the short, sharp answer, “Yes.” Then he would nod slowly and say,
“Okay.” And that would be the end of
that. No further details were required or
desired.
So I hated him.
I wanted to slap him because he would get to be a father without having
his body permanently altered. I’m
ashamed to admit I wasn’t mollified in the slightest by the knowledge that his
body had already been permanently altered in the most extreme circumstances
imaginable. I still hated him. The thing is, I
wasn’t just lonely and angry, I was sad, too: sad that he was missing out on
what was actually quite a lovely time.
After the initial tiredness and nausea had worn off, I felt really
good. I had tons of energy, my skin and
hair were glowing and I was more optimistic than I’d been in years. I wanted to nest, to make plans for the
future, but I didn’t want to do it on my own.
And because I didn’t know if we even had a future, there seemed little
point in planning.
I couldn’t confide in anyone; I simply didn’t know
what to say. It’s not as if there weren’t plenty of possible candidates. The other Angel pilots are like my sisters
and Serena – Lieutenant Green – is my best friend. Yet I couldn’t talk to any of them about the
fact that my husband and I were so estranged that we could barely tolerate five
minutes alone in a room together. I
mean, I used to wax lyrical over how generous and thoughtful he could be, even
over small things. He’s so romantic, I
used to say. What a joke. Believe me, there’s nothing in the world less
romantic than having a child with a person you effectively have no romance
with.
So I tried to distract myself by throwing all my
energies into whatever jobs Skybase could offer to a former top-gun pilot who
was no longer able to fly. I was
temporarily retired from the Angel squad as soon as my pregnancy was confirmed,
but this didn’t mean I wasn’t fit to continue working for a while in other
capacities. When I got bored with
analysing flight logs and co-ordinating training schedules, I pestered Serena
to show me the finer points of the Control Room. “I can fill in for you and Lieutenant
Silver,” I offered. “I know how all this
works, I can help out.”
Colonel White
frowned at this and even Serena looked doubtful. But I persevered, until eventually, one
particularly manic day when communications were stretched to breaking point,
the Colonel turned to me and said irritably, “Oh, for goodness sake woman, stop
drifting around like a wet weekend. Get
up here and make yourself useful!” I
needed no further bidding and so began my brief career as Skybase’s
deputy communications officer.
This brings me neatly to the M&M Incident. Two things you need to know here: one is that
my new role brought me into more contact with my husband than I had had for
some time. Not exactly intimate, but
still, conversation of sorts, even if it consisted of nothing more than lots of
‘SIG’s’, ‘Fire at will’ and ‘Runway One is all
yours’.
Oh, the joys of marriage.
The second is that Skybase has shops. It has to; it’s pretty huge and houses a lot
of folk who don’t live on land as often as they might. It’s not exactly a mall, but we have what
you’d expect, a couple of hairdressers, a pharmacy, dentist, optician,
etc. There are a couple of clothing
stores selling unexciting leisure basics and most importantly, the Spectrum
7-11, a large, get- everything- you- need-under-one-roof affair.
I love the 7-11, especially because it should be
renamed the 24-7. You can walk in at any
time of the day or night and know they will almost certainly have the staples
of life, which for me at this point were jars of beetroot, stretch mark cream
and M&Ms. I’ll explain about the beetroot later.
The M&M Incident happened on a quiet day,
activity-wise, although having volunteered for a full shift, I wasn’t due to go
off duty till 8pm, which meant over twelve long hours of work. I didn’t mind, although I suspected Dr Gold
would. But then I figured what he didn’t
know wouldn’t hurt him. I was tired though and looking forward to
a nice long bath and something comforting in the chocolate line. I wasn’t expecting to hear from my husband,
but he checked in shortly after seven to say his ETA on base was thirty
minutes. The mission had gone well,
everyone was safe and uninjured and he sounded pretty good-humoured. Pretty husbandly, in fact. So after I had confirmed his landing
instructions and apprised him of my shift patterns, I switched to a more
private frequency and asked him if he could call at the store on his way from
Hangar Deck and pick up some M&Ms.
There was static (or something) on the line. Then he said, “Sorry, what was that?
Something’s coming in from Koala Base.”
“I said I need chocolate,” I replied, at the same time
checking to see if whatever information he was getting from Spectrum Australia
was anything I needed to know about.
“There’s chocolate in our quarters – in the cupboard
under the sink,” he said.
“It’s an out of date bar of fruit and nut that was a
present from your long lost cousin Phyllis last Christmas. I don’t like fruit and nut. Paul, I’ve just done a twelve hour shift
after almost no sleep last night and I really, really need M&Ms. Would you please go to the store for me?”
There was a pause and then he said, “Is something
wrong? You seem a little testy.”
“Really, you think so?”
There was more static (I swear he was doing it
deliberately) then he said, “Listen, I have to go, there’s more coming in from
Koala.”
I didn’t reply because I was concentrating on picking
up whatever he was listening to, but I think he thought I was still miffed
because there was a definite note of exasperation in his voice as he continued,
“Look, I’ll be back soon and I’ll get chocolate, okay?”
He brought me a Snickers bar. That’s his favourite. He said I didn’t specify what kind of
chocolate I wanted. It seemed he’d never
noticed all the M&Ms wrappers in the waste disposal unit. When I sat down on the floor of the bathroom
and started to sob, he got the message.
“I’ll just pop back to the store,” he said
quietly. He didn’t hold me, hug me, kiss
me or console me; it was like he feared me.
Like I had turned into his worst nightmare. Still, he did return with six large bags of
M&Ms. I devoured two of them while
the bath was running, as if my life depended upon it. He watched me silently. By the time I had topped up my blood sugar
and soaked out my weariness in hot, scented water, I felt sufficiently
magnanimous to offer him a bag. To my
surprise, he took it and opened it, trying to search surreptitiously for the
blue ones. These are the only ones he
likes, even though I tell him every colour basically tastes the same.
Then he put his arm round my shoulders (shock-physical contact!) and said, ever
so casually, “There’s a movie I thought we could watch tonight, if you’re not
too tired.”
I was
terminally exhausted, but in a spirit of heroic benevolence, I smiled at him
and nodded my acquiescence. So, for the
first time in many weeks, we contentedly curled up together on the sofa. It was almost like old times and for a brief
spell, I forgot about how much I hated him.
It must have been the chocolate.
On its own, it didn’t constitute any sort of
break-through, though. We might have
reached some kind of rapprochement in the weeks that followed, but that period
was characterised by a surge of Mysteron activity unlike any we had seen for
some time. The result was that when we passed each other like ships in the
night, our conversation was necessarily restricted to the ‘hi’ and ‘bye’
variety; not exactly conducive to connubial bliss.
So when I wasn’t working or eating M&Ms (which
wasn’t often), I was at the gym. I
wasn’t allowed to do anything too combative or physical, you understand, but
swimming, yoga and gentle Pilates were allowed.
I might have argued the toss about some things, but Doctor Gold and I
had entered into an agreement at the start of my pregnancy. The agreement was that he would dictate what
I could and couldn’t do and I would follow orders implicitly. This went against the grain, of course, as he
expected it would, but I didn’t put up too much resistance. I found reining in my natural energy
difficult, but I was committed to doing everything right. I wanted this baby so much that I was
prepared to do as I was told however hard it was.
I needed the calm discipline of my Yoga sessions,
though. It was the only activity keeping
me sane during the Cold War. I tried to
remember what my original instructor had taught me:
“Breathe into things just as they are without wanting
to change them.”
At this point,
that mantra seemed as impossible to me as visualizing myself fitting into my
Angel flight suit. But I tried.
Because I was finding it so difficult to sleep, my
yoga mat and I were often outstretched on the floor of the gym at 6am. It was normally pretty quiet at that time of
day, which was how I liked it. The only
other “regular” who showed up early morning was Colonel White. He too enjoyed the peace and quiet,
apparently. He surprised me one day by
asking – rather diffidently, I thought – if I minded him pounding away on the
treadmill while I practised my asanas.
“Of course
not,” I replied in perfect truth, although I would have said the same if it hadn’t
been. He is my commanding officer after
all and he’d been so good about agreeing to me spending my maternity leave on
Skybase, I certainly didn’t want to rub him up the wrong way.
“I’m sorry I can’t fence at the moment,” I
volunteered, with a smile. “It’s top of
Doctor Gold’s banned list, I’m afraid.
But I miss our sessions, sir; you’re my favourite sparring partner.”
He beamed back
at me, seemingly delighted at this. “I too miss our little competitions,” he
said. “I’m afraid your husband, accomplished
as he is, doesn’t compare to you. I must
confess, however, that I’m finding our present workouts most enjoyable;
something to look forward to at the start of the day.”
He looked at his watch. “I don’t have to be on duty for another
forty-five minutes. Perhaps,” he said, clearing his throat, “you would care to
join me in a cup of herbal tea? Assuming
you don’t have any other plans, of course.”
Plans? The only plans
I had were to head back to bed for a breakfast of M&Ms. Herbal tea would
undoubtedly be better for me; if I opted for the fruit variety, I could even
reassure Doctor Gold that I was getting at least one of my five-a-day.
“That would be lovely, sir,” I replied.
And so, it was
as simple as that. We slipped
effortlessly into an almost daily routine of exercise, tea and chat and soon, I
found myself looking forward to our meetings as much as the Colonel apparently
did. Unlike some colleagues who shall
remain nameless, my boss didn’t treat me as if he thought my brain had decided
to accompany my waistline on its trip down the Swannee. Admittedly, there were days when I felt so
unhinged that I thought the same, but I appreciated the fact that Colonel White
believed I was still me in my head.
He’s a damn good conversationalist, too. We discussed everything, from politics to
operational strategies, to books we loved and movies we had recently
watched. Although our friendship grew to
the point where I didn’t think any subject might be off limits, we did not
touch on the state of my marriage. He’s
one of the most perceptive men on the planet, so I assume he had a pretty good
idea of what was going on, but he asked no questions, thus sparing me the
ordeal of having to put my roiling emotions into a verbal format that would
make sense to someone other than me.
One day, though, when I was feeling particularly
tranquil after a second lemon and ginger infusion, I dipped my toes in a topic
we had not so far addressed. This was
Life with Baby, or more accurately, Life with Baby on Skybase. How, I wanted to know, did he think this was
going to work on a practical day to day basis?
He looked a trifle surprised at the question. “I thought,” he said, carefully setting the china
cup down on its saucer (he believes that tea should be consumed in traditional
old English fashion), “I thought we had agreed that it was best for you and the
child to remain here on Skybase for at least the first few months. Until we know what we’re dealing with.”
What we’re dealing with. It
sounded so cold-blooded. It struck at
the heart of me and I was suddenly suffused with anger.
“We’re dealing with
a baby, Colonel,” I snapped back. “My baby! And Paul’s,” I added, in a hasty attempt to
deflect any suspicions he might have had that my husband and I weren’t exactly
united over our joint production.
“Exactly,” he replied evenly. “And I’m sure that the two of you know better
than anyone what the implications of that could be. The safest place for you all is here.”
He looked me
straight in the eye and I realised he wasn’t going to dress it up. In a grudging way, I admired him for not
coming straight out and saying that what my husband and I might or might not
want counted for nothing here. The
powers-that-be would make damn sure of that.
He was not so gently reinforcing the facts. We could all pretend that this was just Paul
and Simone, a normal young married couple about to have their first child; or
we could admit that this was an event of biblical proportions. (Never before
had I given any thought to how Mary must have felt before giving birth to
Jesus, but I was starting to get up a bit of empathy with her).
Fact: I was soon to produce the first – as far as any
of us knew – human/alien hybrid. How
human, how alien, no one knew for certain.
Fact: my choices were limited – I wasn’t going anywhere. Fact: assuming the birth went to plan and
everyone came out of it intact, my child was going to be an object of immense
scientific curiosity. I wasn’t so naive
as to imagine that my rights as a mother were likely to be respected, given the
circumstances.
Still – I wasn’t going down without a fight. Someone
had to protect the baby and that person had to be me. I sat up straight.
“You need to understand something, Colonel,” I said
coldly. “I will not hand over my child
for scientific experimentation. I appreciate that tests will be needed and if
the baby helps us to learn more about the Mysterons, all well and good. But there are limits and if necessary, I
will set them. Am I making myself
clear?”
My glare was a
direct challenge and to his credit, he didn’t shrink from it. In fact, he seemed merely crestfallen, as if
my retort had disappointed him in some way.
He opened his mouth and then closed it again, shaking his head in
hesitation.
“I thought you would give me a little more credit than
that,” he said at last. “I hoped we had
got to know each well enough for you to realise that I would never sanction
anything that you and your husband were not comfortable with.” He picked up his cup once more, drained it
and then placed it back on its saucer in silent reproach.
I felt my cheeks grow hot with shame. Maybe I had over-reacted, which to be honest,
wasn’t unusual. “I’m sorry, sir,” I muttered
at last. “I think I’m just a little
spooked right now – hormones all over the place, that sort of thing. It’s making me a little irrational, I guess.”
He laughed and touched my hand in what I hoped was a
gesture of forgiveness. “I believe that’s perfectly normal. My wife was exactly the same when we were
expecting our daughter.” He paused and
then continued, “Simone, of course you and Paul will do everything in your
power to protect your child – and so will I.
Scientific curiosity notwithstanding, I truly believe this is the best
place for you all. Here, I have a better
chance of fending off the vultures; and you, my dear, have access to all the
help and support you may require. I
admit that I was initially uncomfortable with the idea of Skybase acquiring a
nursery, but I’m now convinced that it will make it easier for everyone.”
“Meaning that you don’t need to worry about Paul
taking paternity leave,” I responded with a wry smile. “He’ll still be right here doing what he
always does without any distractions.”
“A crying baby at 3am is always a distraction,” he
replied pointedly. “I am perfectly aware
that adjustments will need to be made.
But yes, you’re quite right; this is also a way of ensuring that my most
valuable operatives are right where I need them. It may be some time before you will feel
ready to return to active duty, my dear, but Spectrum needs your skills and
expertise in whatever capacity they can be utilised. Keeping you in the chain of command is one
way of doing that.”
“Thank you, sir.
That’s quite a compliment.”
He smiled.
“Becoming a parent will change your priorities, Simone. When you are
responsible for the life of someone else, you may discover that you are no
longer prepared to take such risks with your own life. I would be very naive indeed not to consider
the possibility that you may decide not to return to the Angel squad. However, from an operational point of view, I
sincerely hope that you will, because, frankly, Spectrum needs you.”
“I can’t imagine not flying, Colonel,” I said. “It’s what I do best. I know balancing work with the baby will be a
bit of a juggling act, but still...” I
did not bother to add that no matter what the future held for me, the baby
would be left with at least one parent, albeit a reluctant one.
“Well, I can’t imagine you’ll be short of
baby-sitters,” he replied mildly. “I’m quite sure many of your friends and
colleagues will be happy to step in if required. I count myself among that number, you know. I’m a little rusty at changing nappies, but
I’m sure it will come back to me. It’ll
be good practice if I’m ever blessed with grandchildren.”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. “That’s... that’s a very
kind offer, sir,” I stammered. “I-we-really appreciate your generosity in all
this. To be honest, we haven’t thought
too far into the future. I guess staying
here really does make life easier.”
He gave me a shrewd look. “Do you have somewhere else to live?” he
asked casually. “On land, I mean?”
We didn’t and he knew it. At no point had my husband and I discussed
the possibility of a marital home. True,
we had been given larger quarters as befitting our couple status, but it wasn’t
exactly set up for the addition of a baby.
Since we didn’t expect to become parents, that hadn’t bothered either of
us and anyway, we were too busy saving the world to worry about mundane things
like our living arrangements. I was all
too aware that this needed to change, but the Cold War prevented us from
engaging in any conversations that included a timeline beyond tomorrow. Even the purchasing of a crib was off
limits. Besides, the idea of a marital
home seemed a little pointless when it was quite likely that very soon we might
not have a marriage. Naturally, we
weren’t talking about that, either.
“Not really, sir,” I replied at last. “I have a villa in France that originally
belonged to my grandparents and Paul has an apartment that dates back to his
student days at MIT. They’re both rented
out most of the time and in any case, neither would really be suitable as a
family home. I guess we need to think
about it, though; we can’t just live on base forever.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “There will be things like schooling to
consider. But that’s all a fair way into
the future, my dear. Skybase may not be
ideal in all respects, but babies aren’t fussy about their surroundings – for
the first year, at least. You’ll have time to decide what’s best.” He gave me a kindly smile. “Don’t worry, it will all work out. You’ll see.”
I was not so convinced about that, but I didn’t want
to tell him what really frightened me.
But then he said something that made me realise he probably knew,
anyway.
“The biggest misconception – if you’ll pardon the pun-
about parenthood is that you imagine your children will simply slot into your
life. What you don’t understand is that
life as you know it disappears the minute they’re born and what replaces it has
to fit around the needs of your children.
Sometimes people fail to grasp this until it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
He looked pensive and then said, “Diana and I married
young by today’s standards, you know. We
didn’t expect to have Victoria quite so soon; she came along at a time when we
were both utterly absorbed in our work.
We didn’t mind that, though. We
assumed, totally naively, that life would go on as before, simply with a
delightful additional element to it.
Looking back, I can’t believe how clueless we both were.”
As I opened my mouth in surprise at this unexpected
confidence, he continued. “We thought it
was quite acceptable to just drag her along with us. We had nannies – a whole string of them at
one stage – so it wasn’t practically difficult to take her wherever in the
world we needed to be. When she started
school, though, we knew travelling as a family would have to stop. We tried to ensure that one of us would
always be at home with her, but it didn’t always work out. There were a few occasions when we didn’t see
our daughter for weeks on end; consequently, we didn’t realise how
badly-behaved she’d become.”
“Victoria had always been a bit of a naughty child,
but when she was expelled from her first boarding school, we finally understood
the extent of it. So we made changes,
tried to provide the support and discipline she clearly lacked. It still wasn’t exactly joined-up parenting –
my life in the Royal Marines took me away from home a great deal. The burden of responsibility fell on my wife
and she also made the biggest sacrifices from a career perspective. To her credit, she has never indicated she
resented that, although I’m certain she must have found it immensely
frustrating at times.”
“On her own, though, she wasn’t able to provide the
level of discipline Victoria needed; that should have been down to me. But I chose to ignore all the signs and as a
result, our daughter has grown up – how can I put it? Wayward.”
“Oh, no, sir,” I protested, somewhat half-heartedly.
“Vicky is a credit to you! She’s a lovely, charming girl”
“A view shared by at least fifty percent of the male
population of London, I believe,” he replied caustically. “There’s no need to sugar-coat it, Simone – I
am perfectly aware of my daughter’s shortcomings and I hold myself responsible.
If I’d been more of a hands-on father, I might not have found myself in the position
I’m now in –trying to build a relationship with a child who’s turned into a
young woman I simply don’t know.”
There was an awkward silence for a few moments. In the end, because he looked so sad, so
defeated, I ventured to ask, “How is that going sir?”
He raised an eyebrow as if checking to see if my
concern was genuine. Apparently
satisfied that it was, he replied, “We’re talking, listening; getting along
better, I think. She knows I can’t play the heavy-handed dad anymore, but she
seems to appreciate that I’m not trying to.
She is growing up at last.”
I nodded. This whole conversation felt surreal. Despite the fact that we were at ease in each
other’s company, never before had he offered up such deeply personal
revelations. He was a very proud man and I knew it must have cost him to admit
that he regarded himself as a failure in anything, let alone in such an
important part of his life. I didn’t
quite know how to respond.
Eventually I said, “I appreciate your candour, sir and
obviously, I’ll respect the confidence.
But I’m not sure I understand why you
told me.”
“Simone,” he said quietly, “You’re already facing the
possibility that your baby might turn out to be more unusual than the average
child; consequently, you may have different challenges to those of most
parents. But that doesn’t mean you won’t
also have to deal with the same problems everyone else has. I don’t want you and Paul to make the
mistakes Diana and I did. This life we
lead sometimes requires more of us than the average person could imagine. That makes things like parenting doubly
difficult and therefore even more important that the load should be shared
between you. In order to do that, you
need to be together, at least as much as you can be. If I am able to assist in that by allowing
you to remain on Skybase as a family, then I’m more than happy to do so.”
“I see.” I
swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the sudden lump in my throat. His kindness was so well-intentioned that I
couldn’t bear to confess that my husband and I had been sailing down the white
waters in different rafts for so long that the idea of us as a family seemed as
remote as the Mysterons unilaterally proposing a peace treaty.
He gave me a long look of appraisal and I realised he
was waiting for me to say something more. Perhaps his confession over his lack
of parenting skills had been intended to encourage me to reciprocate, I
thought. Maybe he could offer insights
on the growing cracks in my marriage.
Perhaps I should confide in him, if only because he might know the names
of some good divorce lawyers.
Fortuitously (or not), I didn’t get to do that because
right then, his comm-link buzzed with a reminder that
the Control Room required his presence more than I did. He got to his feet and picked up his cap. “Saved by the bell, I think,” he said lightly
and in clearly perfect understanding of what was going through my head.
I couldn’t think of a reply – I was concentrating on
blinking back tears that were threatening to blind me. He laid his hand on my shoulder and said
simply, “This will pass, my dear. You’ll
get through it.”
Then he turned and strode out of the cafeteria without
a backward glance, leaving me alone with my tears, my tepid tea and my
half-eaten beetroot sandwich.
Ah. Now that
brings me to my other pregnancy craving, the alternative to the sweet
stuff. After I had finally conceded that
M&Ms were not providing a sufficiently balanced diet, I discovered that the
only other things I really wanted to eat were pickled beetroot sandwiches. I’m not proud of this fact, but it’s
true. Even the abject horror on the
faces of the canteen staff – not to mention my dentist – did not make a
difference. In the light of my husband’s
abandonment, walking around looking like a vampire at a blood-fest seemed
entirely reasonable; tooth whitening could come later. Oddly, the one person who agreed with me was
Doctor Gold, although that was only because he considered a craving for
beetroot carried less of a risk of hypoglycaemic shock than eating my entire body
weight in sugar-coated chocolate.
As a combination, beetroot and M&Ms weren’t
wonderful, though. Unlike chocolate and
peanut butter, they weren’t up there in the stratosphere of matches made in
heaven. They actually seemed to work
against each other. Chocolate calmed me
down, lulled my senses into a state occasionally bordering on soporific,
whereas beetroot, much as I loved and demanded it, set my stained teeth on
edge. The pickled acidity did nothing
for my heartburn or my deepening anxiety levels. I was now twenty-eight weeks into the most
momentous task I had ever embarked upon and my husband was still conspicuous by
his absence. It was perfectly possible
that by the time D-Day came round, I would have completely lost my mind.
People did give birth in mental institutions, I
knew. I wondered if those poor women
knew they’d had a baby or whether their husbands had stuck around. Perhaps they were just drugged zombies, out
of it all, oblivious to the fact that their children would have to be put up
for adoption because there was no one to take care of them. I would end up like that, I thought. Every night, my dreams were populated by men
in white coats, tying me into a strait-jacket and jabbing hypodermics into my
arms while they carried my baby away to be dissected. I woke every morning in a cold sweat, my
throat stiff with silent screaming.
Only after I had spent an hour in his office, wracked
with hormonally-induced sobs and begging for tranquillisers, did Doctor Gold
relax his Hippocratic Oath long enough to hint that the situation might not be
as bad as it seemed. My husband had recently been making
surreptitious visits to sick-bay in a bid to acquire a few salient facts about
pregnancy and childbirth. Nothing he
couldn’t have got from me of course, had he bothered to ask, but still, it was
comforting to discover that maybe his levels of indifference were less than I
thought.
“He’s just scared, that’s all,” Doctor Gold declared,
with his unerring capacity for stating the blindingly obvious. “He’s worried for you, for the future. He’ll come round once the baby arrives.”
“But what if he doesn’t? What if this is how it will always be?” The thought of absentee daddyism
was starting to seriously freak me out.
“Doc, I can’t go on like this. I’m a wreck.”
He patted my hand in that paternalistic manner that
usually annoys me, but on this occasion, I was too busy crying to care. “Don’t worry,” he said kindly. “Everything will be fine. I guarantee it.”
He was right, of course, although it turned out we
didn’t need to wait until D-Day to find that out. Around the beginning of the third trimester,
our unborn daughter decided to put an end to this unhappy state of
affairs. One sleepless night, sometime
around 3am, she swapped her usual gymnastics practice for an enthusiastic
kick-boxing session. As I tossed and
turned in tandem with the rhythm, I accidently crossed the demarcation line
between my husband’s side of the bed and my own. I flung myself and my burgeoning stomach over
and pitched up against his spine. As I
was considering how quickly I could change position without him noticing, the
baby let fly with a well-placed left hook that managed to make itself felt not
only against the wall of my stomach, but also in the small of his back.
The effect was startling. He said, “Jesus, what the hell.....?” and
shot over to face me. Even in the dark,
I could see he was glowering. “If I was
snoring, I’m sorry,” he snapped, making it sound more like an accusation than
an apology. “All you need to do is ask
me to turn over. You don’t have to punch
me!”
“I didn’t. It
was the baby.”
Even as I said
it, I realised how ridiculous it sounded.
Clearly, he thought so too, but luckily Lumpkin backed me up by landing
another kick on, I think, the top of his leg.
This time he was in no doubt; I had not moved a muscle. He shot upright and snapped on the
light. Then he proceeded to watch in
fascination as my stomach rippled along with the baby’s exercise class.
“Bloody hell.
That’s amazing,” he murmured at last, placing his hand gingerly on my bump, presumably to better acquaint himself with our
daughter’s activities. I was annoyed
because I had not given him permission to touch me, but the baby, apparently
delighted that she had at last captured her father’s attention, showed off with
an impressive display of somersaults.
After several minutes of this, the only intimate
physical contact we had had for several months, he asked the second of the
blanket-coverage pregnancy questions, which was, “Is this normal?”
I was too tired to give the stock response – yes – and
in any case, I was no longer a hundred percent sure it would be the right
answer. I frequently asked the same
question myself and it was invariably met by Doctor Gold’s calm, ‘All babies are
different, Simone. Stop worrying so
much.’ Needless to say, I didn’t stop
worrying.
So now I said, “She’s always like this, although it’s
worse at night. I don’t think she sleeps
much. Doctor Gold says she might be
hyperactive. I hope he was joking.”
At that, he removed his hand from my stomach and
started paying attention to my face.
“She?” he asked slowly. “The baby
is a girl?”
No shit, Sherlock, I thought, fighting back the
temptation to point out that the odds were pretty heavily weighted in favour of
one or other of the genders.
“Yes,” I muttered back. And then, because my bitterness was spilling
over and I wanted to wound him, “The female of the species, whatever the
species turns out to be.”
Maybe the barb fuelled his own hostility because he
shot back with an accusatory, “I see. So
I take it you weren’t actually going to tell me, then? Was I only supposed to find out when it’s
born?”
Maybe it was the word ‘it’, I’m not sure. But something pushed me over the edge. I was suddenly so consumed by rage I could
scarcely breathe.
“I asked you
if you wanted to know!” I screamed back at him.
“Doctor Gold asked you if you
wanted to know! The technicians asked you if you wanted to see the scan
results! And did you? No.
You said,” and at this point I was practically choking, “you said you didn’t care; like you haven’t
cared about anything for the last five months!”
“That’s not true.”
“What’s not true?
That you haven’t cared about me or our baby? How about our marriage? Have you cared about that? Have you cared about one single goddamn thing
in the last few months other than you and the fucking Mysterons?”
“I just meant that I didn’t care if it’s a boy or a
girl,” he responded defensively. “As long as everything is.... you
know....okay.”
“That’s not what you meant when you said it,” I yelled
back. “You meant you didn’t care at all!
Don’t you dare to deny it, you bastard!”
Giving vent to my pent-up anger and misery had taken
so much out of me I was left shaking and once more dangerously close to tears,
neither of which I wanted the stranger in my bed to observe. So I retreated to my default position on the
far side of the mattress and turned my back on him. There was silence for a while as I lay in
anger, trying to regulate my breathing and comfort the baby, who had gone very
still during my outburst.
Then, across the miles of
darkness between us came one single truth. He said, “You’re absolutely right. I’ve been a complete jerk, haven’t I?”
Well. I was
certainly not going to argue with him about that. “Yes,” I sniffed, “you have. A total shit, in fact. Not to mention a lousy husband.”
“I know.” He
scooted across the bed and rested his forehead against my shoulder. He felt really hot, like he was coming down
with a fever – except of course, he doesn’t really get fevers. “I never intended to be,” he mumbled. “I was just so scared. I was convinced it would be like last time. Every day, I waited for someone to tell me
that everything had gone wrong and that no-one could save you. I was so scared of losing you; I thought the
only way I could deal with it was by backing off. That way, maybe I could insulate myself, so
that when it happened I would somehow be able to cope. I’ve been so angry, Sim. Angry with you, because your tendency to
self-destruct was going to result in me being left alone and you didn’t care
enough about me to prevent that. I
couldn’t understand why you were prepared to take such a huge gamble when the
odds are so bad.”
“The odds
aren’t so bad,” I said softly. “I knew
that from the start and don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. Maybe it comes down to faith. I had it and you didn’t.”
“Not for the first time, I guess,” he replied, a
slightly rueful note in his voice. “But
that’s the other thing; as time went on and disaster didn’t happen, I gradually
stopped being terrified every time I got a call from sick-bay. I could see that this pregnancy wasn’t
turning out as I’d imagined, but by that time I couldn’t backtrack. I didn’t know what to say to you. You seemed to have all the answers and I
realised I didn’t. You’re handling it
all so brilliantly, Sim, and I’m not”
“You think I’m handling it brilliantly, do you? How the hell would you know? Have you been here to check? You’ve spent all these months in absentia, consumed with defending the
planet, leaving me on my own to worry about what exactly I’m going to give
birth to. Did you think for one single
second how much of a stroll in the park that’s been for me? Have you any idea how hard it’s been to get
used to the idea of being a single parent, to know that my husband has no
interest in his child? I’ll tell you
something – I’d have been handling it a bloody sight more brilliantly if you’d
been here when I needed you.”
“I know.” He
sounded thoroughly miserable. For a
second, I actually thought there were tears in his voice, but I decided against
turning over so I could check if they were in his eyes as well. “Everything you’ve said is right. I fucked up, big style. But I didn’t know how to talk to you, how to
reach you. You’ve been a little crazy,
honey; I mean the beetroot, the chocolate, all the
goddamn yoga sessions. You haven’t
exactly made it easy at times.”
“I’m pregnant!”
I screeched. “I’m not supposed to make it easy!
Paul, I’m bored, I’m isolated and I’m lonely. I spend half my days in the gym, the other
half worrying about what the future holds.
And that’s not to mention worrying about whether or not I am ever likely
to fit into a Falcon Interceptor again; I see myself in the mirror and it’s
like looking at a reject from the House of Fun.”
He chuckled at that.
I couldn’t believe it – he actually laughed. Then he said, “I don’t care
if you never fit into a Falcon again.
You look amazing – being pregnant suits you. Your breasts are fantastic.”
I don’t know what surprised me more about this
statement; the fact that my husband, never a “busty babe” fan, was delighted
with my expanded chest, or the fact that he had noticed it in the first
place. He had taken so little interest
in my body in recent months I’d begun to wonder if he was giving his healthy
sex drive a good workout in other quarters.
In my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn’t the case – for one thing, he
didn’t have time and, while he had shown himself capable of betrayal, he
wouldn’t go so far as to send the Skybase gossip machine into warp drive. Still – even if he had only said it as a
placatory gesture, it was kind of nice to know he still saw me as a woman and
not as some kind of pet that had outlived its usefulness; an ageing Labrador
retriever, say.
It wasn’t good enough to get him off the hook,
though. He needed to suffer and after
all, I’m the yoga expert. I’d been
holding my breath and practising non-violence for months; giving him the silent
treatment was a cinch. Eventually he
said, “Look, what can I say? I’m sorry;
beyond sorry. There’s no excuse, I
know. I totally screwed up. All this time, I’ve felt we were in
completely different places, but now I think we’re not. We’ve been in the same place all along, just
reacting differently. Simone, I love
you. I know that may not be enough to
fix things, but if you’ll just give me another chance, I promise everything
will be better. Please, please forgive
me.”
Just as I was conceding that there is only so much
begging a girl can take, he flung his left arm across me and slid the right
under me so that I was completely gathered up in his embrace. I had forgotten how big he is, how easily he
finds it to do this. There was a small
shred of pride in me that was resistant to his overtures – was I so easily
overcome? Apparently so, because pride
shut up and went home as the rest of me melted into his warmth.
We lay there, wrapped up together, arms and legs
entwined for I don’t know how long. We
touched and caressed and explored until finally he said, with a touch of
wonder, “We’re having a baby, aren’t we?”
“Welcome back,” I murmured, pressing my rump firmly
into his groin.
He chuckled.
“Does that mean I’m forgiven?” he asked, a
teasing note in his voice.
“Not necessarily.” I turned in his arms so that we
were face to face – admittedly not as close as we used to be now that we had
Lumpkin in between us. “I have
terms. Conditions.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, looking a trifle wary,
nonetheless.
“First off, you need to be with me. I mean, really
with me. I can’t do this on my own.
I want you in on everything, especially the delivery room stuff. If you want to be part of this child’s life,
then you have to get on at the ground floor.
Agreed?”
“Agreed.” His eyes
regarded me steadily. “What else?”
“Every decision that needs to be made – every decision
for the future – we make it together. No
ifs or buts, we do it jointly. Whatever
happens, we’re a family.”
“I understand.
And yes, you’re right. But, I
need to know, Sim – what might we be dealing with
here? I mean, the baby, is she......?”
“Human? Yes, of
course she is. Does she also possess
your DNA? Yes, of course she does.”
I was quite
surprised at how matter-of-fact this sounded.
It was not a subject I liked to dwell on, the alien-ness
of our child-to-be. “Your DNA makes her
technically a hybrid, but at the moment, she appears to be nothing other than a
perfectly ordinary human baby.”
“Appears to be?”
“Doctor Gold has run all the tests he can in utero. Everything is coming up absolutely
normal.”
“What about retrometabolism?”
“There’s nothing to suggest she’s inherited that.”
“Oh. Well,
that’s something, at least.”
The relief in
his voice made me glad I had not added there was also nothing to suggest she hadn’t inherited it. There was so much we didn’t know – so much to
be apprehensive about. But my husband
was back and the great thing was that we hadn’t needed to ask the really big
questions like, do you still love me? Do you still want to be married to
me? When it came down to brass tacks, we
knew the answers and always would. We
were an integral part of each other and that was all that mattered.
“Talk to me.”
He rolled over onto his back, pulling me over with him, so that Lumpkin
and I could nestle in with ease. “I want
to know what I’ve been missing.”
“How long have you got?” I asked jokingly, knowing
that sleep was not going to beckon for some time to come, unless the Mysterons
posed another threat in the meantime.
What? You think I hoped for that
in order to get some shut-eye? Well,
only for a split second.
We talked all that night until the sun came up on
Skybase and the alarm reminded him he had to report for duty. Because I didn’t
need to be anywhere other than in bed, Lumpkin and I happily snuggled down to
catch up on our much-needed rest. I was
content and the baby seemed to respond to that. She was quiet, just moving
gently, with the result that I had the best kip I’d had in weeks.
After this epiphany, everything changed for the
better. Well, almost everything. My husband’s behaviour went from the sublime
to the ridiculous. After months of
showing almost no interest in me or what I was doing, he was now reluctant to
let me out of his sight. He monitored my
condition with a precision that made Doctor Gold look sloppy. He told the canteen staff to ration my
beetroot intake because so much vinegar couldn’t possibly be good for me. They agreed, the traitors, so I was reduced
to only one sandwich per day. Even my
chocolate habit was picked over. I took
to hiding bags of M&Ms and cramming them down in secret because I couldn’t
stand the look of disapproval on his face when he caught sight of all the empty
wrappers in the waste basket.
Then he started accompanying me to the gym, ostensibly
because he was now committed to the idea of us spending more time together, but
in reality so he could satisfy himself that the content of my yoga sessions
were suitable for Mom and Baby. He was
even having me stalked; I suspected that he had drawn up a ‘Keep an eye on Sim’
rota, so that when he was not around, our friends would take it in turns to
make sure I wasn’t doing anything that could possibly be included on Doctor
Gold’s banned list. In short, he was
driving me nuts, which, considering I was already a woman on the edge, was not good.
The other problem was that having finally opted for
full parental commitment, he was doing it in his usual
no-holds barred style. After months of
burying his head in the sand, he was now determined to look fatherhood right in
the eye by being, as he put it, “fully prepared”. When he wasn’t following me around with a
watchful look in his eye, he was camped out in Doctor Gold’s office,
re-acquainting himself with all data appertaining to things of a Mysteron
nature. This was freaking me out,
because in preparing himself for worst case scenario – whatever that might turn
out to be – he was bringing my deepest fears to the surface. I mean, I was apprehensive enough about the
birth as it was, without dwelling too much on what could go wrong. Thinking negative thoughts was bad for the
baby, so yogic principles dictated; it was important that I remain calm and
serene, but as D-Day approached, that was becoming increasingly difficult.
So, as we flew through the skies towards a weekend of
normality (or as normal as life with my mother ever gets), I tried to
concentrate on the mundane by consulting my lists. I have lots of lists, covering all things
from baby clothes to essential baby equipment, from milk formula (just in case
I couldn’t come up with the goods) to the D-Day Plan. I had been pleasantly surprised at the
options open to me in this respect – it turns out that giving birth in the late
21st century is pretty civilised, all things considered. If I plumped for a water birth, I could have
one; if I needed hard-core drugs, they were on order. If I wanted candles and soft music to herald
our daughter’s entry into the world, that could be arranged. It certainly seemed possible to get through
it all with my dignity intact and hardly a hair out of place. If I was going to make history by delivering
the world’s first human/alien child, I was determined to do it in style.
The medics on Skybase are the best in their field and
I have every confidence in them. The
trouble is, being an expert in obstetrics is not normally a requirement, so
Doctor Gold had engaged the services of a trained midwife as a backup to the
team. Her name is Marla Dwyer – code
named Lieutenant Sable – and she’s originally from Illinois, although prior to
this temporary post on Skybase, she was part of the medical staff at Spectrum’s
London headquarters.
After our first
antenatal session, I nicknamed her Nurse Ratched
because she reminded me of a character in that ancient film ‘One flew over the
Cuckoo’s Nest’. This was what my husband
and I had watched on the evening of the M&Ms incident. He’s obsessed with old movies – he must have
trawled his way through the Skybase archives at least half a dozen times. I go along with him and I’m not usually fussy
about what we see, but I didn’t enjoy that one.
I think I wasn’t in the right mood at the time. I would have preferred a comedy such as
‘Three Men and a Baby’ or something like that.
Not that Sable looks like the movie character; quite
the opposite, in fact. She’s a huge
black woman with a shelf-like chest and a massive behind. When she glides along like a ship in full
sail, each cheek of her backside seems to move independently. It’s fascinating to watch. Not that I would dare to tell her about her
bum’s entertainment value, mind you, because Sable frightens me to death. She is one seriously scary woman. Lest you should think that being with child
has turned me into a snivelling wimp, I must point out that she even terrifies
Doctor Gold and believe me, that takes some doing.
What reminded me of Nurse Ratched
was this curious kind of ‘scratchy’ quality she has. When she speaks, it’s like chalk on a
blackboard. I couldn’t imagine why she
had chosen nursing as a profession; it certainly wasn’t because of an inbuilt
compassion for her fellow men and women.
She doesn’t exactly overflow with the milk of human kindness. Her bedside manner is worse than Doctor
Gold’s and that’s saying something.
Although some sort of explanation was needed as to why
her services were required, Colonel White had taken the decision that some
information should be left classified. Ratched, therefore, was only told that this particular
mother-to-be needed careful monitoring. Maybe she resented the fact that she
was not privy to the specifics of the situation, or she was unimpressed that
she had to spend several months doing a job which probably wasn’t nearly as
exciting as anything Spectrum London had to offer. I suppose having only one patient would get a
bit boring; although Doctor Gold did take advantage of her other qualifications
(Surgical Theatre Sister) when necessary.
Anyway, she made it clear she wasn’t going to go out
of her way to dole out any special treatment.
Her disdain stopped just short of outright disapproval. I didn’t take it personally because I’d seen
how she operated with other people, but occasionally, I longed for a little
motherly softness, a kindly smile as she dished out another supply of vitamins
and folic acid. It shouldn’t have been
impossible; she was practically beaming in her ID badge photo, so at one time
she’d clearly had enough facial muscle tone to move her mouth upwards.
Perhaps I was being unfair; Doctor Gold had told me
enough about her to make me realise she’d had a tough life. Jamie, her only child, had succumbed to
leukaemia when he was twelve, just two years before her husband (‘My Bernie’)
dropped down dead of a massive heart attack.
‘My Bernie’ hadn’t been replaced, so as a consequence, neither had
Jamie. If Marla didn’t feel like smiling
much, I guess it was because she thought she had nothing to smile about. Maybe I would have summoned up more
compassion for her if I hadn’t been so intimidated.
Thoughts of Ratched were
bringing me uncomfortably close to thoughts of D-Day, so I turned my attention
back to window gazing. Because this was
a fairly short flight, we were cruising at a sufficiently low altitude to
render the scenery below us reasonably visible.
And what wonderful scenery it was; the canyon and forest lands of western
America, cloaked in their autumn magnificence.
The fall weather had been gentle and mild, so even at the end of
October, the tree-covered mountains and valleys glowed soft orange, green, red
and gold. Nature was amazing, I
thought. Despite man’s destructive
tendencies, it was still hanging in there, refusing to be decimated, coming
back renewed and refreshed, year after year.
My mind touched
on the Mysterons once more. Did they actually
want to bring Earth to its knees, or just the people who populated it? Up to now, that was a conundrum we didn’t
really have an answer for, but it
occurred to me that whatever happened to its inhabitants, the Mysterons might
discover they’d bitten off more than they could chew in their efforts to
destroy our planet.
My husband turned his head and flashed me a quick
grin. “Fabulous, isn’t it?” he said, with that uncanny ability to tune into my
thoughts.
In case you
think this is just what comes of having acquired alien DNA, I must confess he’s
always been able to do it; at least, with me.
I think that’s one reason why I love him so much; when we’re in sync,
there’s none of the usual ‘Men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ stuff. We pretty much know where we’re both coming
from. This is kind of ironic, I suppose,
in as much as he really does have a touch of the Martian about him, although
there is nothing Venusian about me.
“How long till we get to San Francisco?” I asked, realising just what a passenger
I’d become. At my flying peak, I hadn’t
needed any maps, electronic guidance or even navigational skills to tell me
where I was at any given moment; I operated on a basic instinct that had never
let me down. Well, almost never. Now, all that told me we weren’t yet in the
vicinity of Fog City was the fact that I could still see land below.
“We’re still in Utah,” he replied. “So I reckon ninety minutes or so. Maybe a little less if SFO isn’t fogbound.”
“That’s not a serious risk, is it?” I asked,
startled. I had been so lost in my
reverie that I hadn’t heard any of the exchanges between my husband and the
airport authorities.
“I hope not.
No-one’s mentioned it so far, anyway.
No news is good news, I guess.”
“I guess.”
I went back to
window gazing, wondering idly if it would be possible to identify some of the
mountain peaks I had climbed in my student days. Working as a ranger at Arches National Park
during vacations had helped to fund me through three years at Princeton,
although most of what I’d earned had been eaten up by the cost of travel
between Utah and New Jersey. Flying has
never been cheap. Worth it, though;
those journeys showed me that there are bigger thrills in life than merely
exploring wilderness. I gained my wings
in those years and my passion was born.
As the La Sal mountain range swam into view and I
trawled my memory to name the individual peaks, the corner of my eye was caught
by something else; a huge black something that seemed to be approaching us at
speed. I stared, mesmerised for a
second, unable to quite comprehend what I was seeing.
“Shit, what the hell is that?” muttered my husband,
once again giving voice to my thoughts.
“Birds,” I said, as my brain eventually kicked into
gear. “It’s a flock of birds....and
they’re heading straight for us.”
“That’s impossible. We’re too high. No bird would be flying at this altitude.”
“But they are.
What could they be? They’re too
big for buzzards.... maybe ravens?
What would ravens be doing this far up?
Oh my God, Paul! There are
hundreds of them. How is that possible?”
“Christ. If
they hit us.....” The sentence went
unfinished as he powered the control yoke in a desperate attempt to gain
altitude and avoid collision.
We might have got away with it in a Hummingbird or a
Falcon, something smaller and more manoeuvrable. The Swift simply can’t respond that
quickly. There was a loud crack as
dozens of black flapping wings collided with the windshield and then all I
could hear was the harsh deafening screams of dying birds, battering us with
their bodies.
“Get your seat belt on!” yelled my husband, as he
desperately fought for control. “They’re
all over us, Sim.
I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Neither had I.
This was no ordinary bird-strike.
These creatures were almost kamikaze-like in their enthusiasm for
certain death.
“Just hang on to the throttle,” I instructed him. “Plough through it, we’ll outrun them. This is the Swift; they can’t do too much
damage to it.”
“Never pass up an opportunity for a bit of back seat
driving, do you?” he hissed through gritted teeth, as we yawed and rolled in
our efforts to shake off the intruders.
“Don’t porpoise,”
I said. “If we start pitching, we’ll be thrown all over the place.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he roared back at
me. “For fuck’s sake, just do as you’re
told and buckle up!”
One look at his face brought the truth spinning
home. He was right; the pregnant
civilian needed to sit down and shut up.
As I sat back in my seat and reached for the metal clasps, I heard a
high pitched whine, followed by a noise that sounded like rushing air. I knew what it was. I glanced out of the window and watched,
horror-struck, as a huge black mass was sucked inside the starboard engines.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “This can’t be
happening. They’re in our chokes.”
Now we were really in trouble. The engines on the Swift are designed to
account for the possibility of avian ingestion; they’ll expel the odd airborne
intruder before any real damage is done.
But this was a whole new ball-game. The birds were almost swarming in
their eagerness to invade, screeching and flapping their enormous wings as they
dived in head first. There was no way
the engines could contain them. I
stared in disbelief, realisation slowly dawning that this was no random
accident. Ridiculous though it was, I
had the sense we were being deliberately attacked. These creatures were out to destroy us.
The vague sense of menace that had underpinned my
pregnancy, colouring my dreams in a green glow, now began to crystallise in its
intensity. I suddenly understood that I
didn’t need to worry about the birth, or what my child might become; I had
never needed to worry about the state of my marriage because the Mysterons intended
to ensure that I wouldn’t survive long enough for it to be a problem.
As I fought down a rising wave of panic, my husband
said, in an oddly normal voice, “I think we may have a problem. They’re in the port engines.”
“They’re in the starboard ones too,” I replied flatly
as, underneath my layers of clothing, the chill of cold sweat trickled down my
back. There was silence for a couple of
seconds and then his head turned and our eyes met in sudden registration of the
position we were in.
“How long before the engines blow?” he asked urgently,
finally acknowledging that on this issue at least, I knew more than he did.
“A minute. Maybe less. Depends on how determined they are.”
One of the things I love about Paul is that he’s
pretty quick on the uptake. He said
slowly, “You think we’re being targeted?
My God, Sim.....Mysteronised birds?”
“That would be my guess,” I replied, just as the
starboard engines exploded in a hail of burning metal.
We pitched
alarmingly as he fought to compensate for the loss of power and I snapped shut
the restraining straps of my seat belt in an effort to stop myself slamming
into the bulkhead.
“We’ll have to ditch,” I told him, in as
matter-of-fact a manner as I could, while praying that the fire wouldn’t spread
to the main fuselage.
“No way. That’s
suicide.”
“Listen to me, Paul.
We’re losing height as it is and if the other engines go, we’ve had
it. But they might just hold out long
enough for us to land in one piece, so take us down now, for God’s sake.”
Someone needed to alert the authorities, I thought,
realising that he had his hands full just keeping us airborne. So as the Swift lurched and tilted crazily, I
stood up again and staggered forward to fall into the co-pilot’s seat. Maybe I’d misjudged the control panel’s
capacity – it accommodated Lumpkin after all.
“Take us down where?” he muttered, as I frantically
logged into Salt Lake City’s Terminal Radar Approach Control System. “There’s nothing down there but rocks and
trees.”
“The Colorado Plateau,” I said, although my reply was
actually directed at the air traffic controller who had instantly acknowledged
my mayday signal and asked for our position.
Thank God; at least our comms were still
working. For the
moment. I gave him our grid
reference and said, with a nod of confirmation to my husband, “We’re near
Moab. We’ll aim for Canyonlands
Field, but we may not make it that far.”
“Can you get to La Sal Junction, then?”
“Negative, Control.
We may have to ditch somewhere around Mount Mellenthin
– Clark Lake, if it’s deep enough. We’ll
try not to hit any hikers.”
There was a pause and something vaguely resembling a
chuckle before the disembodied voice said, “Roger that, Spectrum. All emergency services are on full alert at
CNY Field. We’re tracking you at SLC and
this channel will remain open. Good
luck, guys. Keep in touch.”
“Nice to know someone knows where we’re going,” said
my husband with an unnecessary touch of sarcasm. The fact that I knew this part of the world
so well had clearly come as something of a surprise to him. Being male, it would take him a little longer
to be thankful for it. “Are there any
mountains I should avoid, any trees you’d particularly like me to miss?”
We were so low by now that it was a moot point. I had to acknowledge some degree of tree
surgery was unavoidable. The port
engines were sputtering ominously; I hoped they would simply shut down, rather
than explode. Even if we landed with
mechanical breakup, our chances were infinitely better than trying to escape
from a fireball.
Speed was a problem, though. Despite the deployment of the auxiliary power
unit and the ram air turbines, we were dropping faster than we should. We needed something to slow us down. “Aim for those trees over there,” I shouted,
in a surge of adrenalin-filled desperation.
“Are you nuts? They’ll rip us apart,” he yelled back.
Well, that was
a distinct possibility, but by then, it was too late to argue. We were already being pistol-whipped by
trunks and branches as we crashed-banged our way through a mini forest. Thank the Lord, I thought with sudden
relief as I realised we weren’t breaking up.
Young trees. Recently planted: strong enough to be a
buffer but not sturdy enough to do us any major damage. I hadn’t misjudged it;
we were still in with a chance.
Then we were down on the ground, skidding and sliding
our way through the undergrowth. The
noise was horrendous. The shrieking of
ripped metal, combined with the roar of defiled nature, echoed with the death
cries of those damned birds as they wrapped themselves around our broken
engines.
It seemed to go on forever, before we eventually came
to a halt and the noise died down. I
stayed crouched in the brace position (or as far as I could get to it) for what
seemed like an age, hardly daring to breathe. I truly wasn’t sure whether I was
alive or dead until my head was gently raised and I met my husband’s frightened
eyes.
“Jesus,” he said.
“Oh, Jesus.
Sim, are you okay?”
I thought the answer was yes, but strangely, could
only shake my head. Instinctively, I
placed my hands across my stomach and detected a faint flutter. She was still there. She was all right. We were intact, my husband, my child and
I. In that moment, my brain rather
bizarrely took the opportunity to remind me of the collective term for a group
of ravens; it was ‘unkindness.’ An Unkindness of Ravens. Well, that was about right, I
thought. I wondered briefly if the
Mysterons had chosen those particular birds because they’d seen the funny side
of it.
Eventually, my voice came back to me. “I’m okay,
Paul,” I gasped, trying and failing to give him a smile of reassurance. “We’re all still in one piece. Well done,
honey – that was a text-book crash landing.
I couldn’t have done it better.”
We sat silently for a few minutes, as we caught our
breath and waited for our heart rate to return to normal. I guess we should have been worried about
the risk of explosion; after all, we had no idea what further damage the Swift
had sustained in the wake of our calamitous descent. Yet, somehow, I wasn’t worried. We were on the ground, alive. We had survived whatever the Mysterons had
planned for us. They’d lost again.
My husband was desperately trying our radio signals,
to no avail. “Guess we’ve lost the lot,”
he muttered. “Not surprising, I suppose.”
He was right.
The control panel was a mess. The
cockpit windshield had two massive Aspen trees bisecting it. How we had managed to avoid injury was a
miracle in itself.
“We need to get out,” I muttered. “We don’t know how long we’ve got till it
blows.” I struggled out of my
restraints, my fingers clumsy and shaking. I felt very strange; it was as if my
body had shut down and was no longer able to move of its own volition. But
then, crashing a plane is probably not one of the recommended activities in the
eighth month of pregnancy.
“I don’t think it’s going to blow,” my husband
said. I hadn’t really realised that he’d
already clambered out of his seat and had been making a thorough reconnaissance
of what was left of the Swift. As I
blearily looked around me, I saw he was right.
God, it was a mess – no doubt about that. But there was no tell tale smell of leaking
fuel, no aroma of still burning fuselage.
Maybe Lady Luck had been with us after all.
“You’re right, though.
We need some fresh air,” he announced at last, smiling at me. “Let’s stretch our legs, see where we
are. Maybe the Spectra-techs will work
in the open.”
“Okay.” I
stretched my hand out to him, needing his assistance to get to my feet. My legs were wobbly, as if I’d just completed
three hours of circuits followed by a mammoth session of Pilates. Everything hurt. My spine felt as if it had been caught in a
wrench and my shoulders were sore.
Maybe, I thought, this was just my muscles softening up, unused to the
type of exercise they were previously subjected to. Getting back into shape after the baby was
born might turn out to be a bigger challenge than I thought.
Outside, the air was crisp and clean, holding just a
touch of seasonal chill. Not surprising,
I thought, since we were several hundred feet above sea level. I looked around
me. The sun shone as brightly as an undashed hope. The
sky was deep azure, with just the odd white cloud, innocent of rain. It was a
perfect autumn day. In the distance, I
glimpsed Clark Lake. We’d missed it by a
long way, but it seemed our headlong pitch through the aspens had brought us to
rest on a plateau carpeted with sage brush and various wildflowers whose names
I couldn’t remember. Above us, Mount Mellenthin rose
majestically, if uncomfortably close to our ruined plane.
“That was lucky,” my husband remarked, following my
gaze. “If we hadn’t stopped when we
did....you were right to tell me to aim for the trees.”
“I guess,” I replied, with a sudden shiver that was
unrelated to the temperature. In other
circumstances I would have appreciated the sheer beauty of this place, but now
all I could think of was how close we’d come to ploughing into the mesa.
My husband was busily checking his Spectra–tech. I realised I hadn’t a clue where mine was –
probably under my seat in the Swift. He
said, “The signal’s not great, but I’m getting something. Hopefully enough to let Canyonlands
or La Sal Junction know where we are.”
“Maybe you’d better try calling my mom too,” I
replied. “Let her know what’s happened. She’ll worry if we’re late arriving in
SF.”
He looked askance.
“Are you kidding me? Simone, I am
not going to tell your mother that I’ve crashed a plane carrying her pregnant
daughter into a mountain range in deepest Utah.
She’ll be frantic.”
“Don’t say we’ve crashed. Just tell her we’ve been delayed. Say that there are reports of a storm brewing
in the Bay area and we’ve had to divert.”
“Honey, your parents watch the news. They’ll know there’s no storm coming.”
“No, they won’t.
All they’ll be concentrating on right now is tonight’s party. Pops will be fretting over the number of
trick or treaters who might turn up and Mom will be
in a blind panic over whether or not she’s ordered enough canapés. They won’t have time to check the weather
forecast.”
He cast me a dubious look, but made the call without
further comment. Sure enough, our flimsy
excuse was swallowed without hesitation.
Mom was too busy with the caterers to come to the phone, which was
fortunate because she asks more questions than my father does. She would also have insisted on speaking to
me and at this particular moment, that was the last thing I felt I could cope
with.
I heard Paul say, “I’m afraid we’ll be a bit late,
Phil. No, nothing
serious. Yeah, Sim’s fine, everything’s okay. She can’t wait to see you, too. We’re both really looking forward to the
weekend. Okay, we’ll be with you as soon
as we can.”
Although I was glad he’d reassured my father about my
state of health, I wasn’t so confident myself.
I had gone from being a little woozy to feeling downright peculiar. The pain in my back was moving around to the
front and it was making me feel slightly sick.
I wondered if I’d pulled muscles when I’d been thrown around in the
Swift. I rubbed my back and stretched,
hoping to ease out my cramped vertebrae.
The baby hadn’t kicked for a while now, I realised. Perhaps it was nothing to worry about; after
all, she’d had quite a shock, too.
“You’re doing fine, sweetie,” I whispered, gently
caressing my bump. “You just hang in
there where you’re safe. We’ll be home
soon.”
I didn’t realise I was pacing in concentric circles
around a patch of sagebrush until my husband said, with a slightly puzzled look
on his face, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “Yes,
I’m fine,” I replied, although that was as much as I could say because my
breath was suddenly whipped away by a shudder that reverberated through me,
passing through my legs and across my pelvis.
It finally found focus in my stomach, tightening with agonising
intensity.
Okay. Not so fine, then.
I tried to relax and breathe deeply. This would pass, I thought. My body had been badly shaken up; hardly
surprising that it was protesting a little.
I had experienced a few minor contractions before now and had been told
that it was absolutely normal.
“Your body’s preparing itself for birth,” Nurse Ratched had said. “This is practice.”
Okay, then; that was all that was going on here. Just practice.
“Have you got through to the airport yet?” I asked, as
casually as I could muster.
“Nope,” he replied with a frown. “The signal keeps fading. I don’t get it; we’re in range of at least
three Radar Approach Controls. They’re
supposed to be tracking us. And I didn’t
have any problem getting through to your folks.”
“Maybe the spectra-tech’s damaged,” I suggested.
“That’s why it’s misbehaving.”
“Could be,” he agreed, somewhat doubtfully. “I’ll try Skybase instead; although I can’t
say I’m looking forward to telling the Old Man that I’ve totalled his beloved
Swift.”
“Well, that was hardly your fault,” I replied, “We’re
alive, Paul. We’re safe. That’s all the
Colonel will care about.”
“Let’s hope so,” he said, as I heard Lieutenant
Green’s voice in swift acknowledgement of our call sign.
As always, Serena instantly took control of the
situation. She would liaise with the
airport authorities to make sure rescue was underway. At some point Spectrum would deploy its own
team to sort out what was left of the Swift.
She even volunteered to be the one to break the news of its fate to the
Colonel, which certainly came as something of a relief to my husband. Now all
we had to do was wait until someone arrived to pick us
up.
“Maybe we’ll make the party after all,” I said brightly.
“I’m dying for a piece of pumpkin pie.”
“Well, it’ll make a change from beetroot sandwiches, I
guess,” he replied, pulling me into a swift embrace. I leaned against him, allowing my head to
rest in that spot just below his shoulder blade where it fits so perfectly.
We stayed like that for several moments before he
suddenly said, “Do you think we need to log this as an official Mysteron
incident?”
At that, I raised my head. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “As weird as
it seemed, it might just have been some sort of freak accident. We have no proof that it wasn’t.”
He frowned and gazed past me into the distance. I knew that look. “What?” I said. “Tell me.”
“I took a look at the engines a little while ago. I wondered if it might be possible to repair
them if they were cleaned out.”
“So?”
“They don’t need to be cleaned out, Sim. The birds have
gone. There’s no trace of them. No
bones, no feathers, nothing. It’s as if
they’d never been there at all.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “That would be impossible,
unless....” My words trailed off as I
felt myself go icy-cold in sudden fear.
“Exactly,” he replied grimly. “So I think we have our proof, don’t you?”
Back in the
Swift, I had known the truth of it, but once the danger was over, it had been
easier to tell myself that I had simply been at the mercy of my overactive
imagination. But now....the saying,
‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,’ had
never sounded less hollow. It was
real. The Mysterons wanted to destroy me
and my baby. I felt sick with terror.
My stomach’s response to this was to harden again,
this time clenching like an enormous fist, squeezing out coils of pain. This was entirely different to anything I’d
been experiencing over the last week or two.
I began to wonder if it wasn’t just a limbering up exercise after all,
but the real thing. The middle part of
my body suddenly felt like a vast round territory that was unilaterally making
up its own rules and starting a bid for independence. Not
yet, I thought in sudden panic. Not
now. It’s too soon, I’m not ready.
My stomach answered me with a contraction of such
strength that I couldn’t stop myself from giving a tiny, involuntary moan. At that, my husband placed his hands on my
shoulders and gently pushed me away from him, his eyes searching my face.
He said slowly, “Simone, what’s going on? What are you not telling me?”
I had to wait for the pain to subside before I could
reply. When it did, it felt weird, as if it had not really happened in the
first place.
“It’s nothing,” I said reassuringly, still hoping that
might indeed be the case. “Just Braxton-Hicks.
I’ve been having them for ages.
It’s probably a false alarm.” I
straightened up and stepped out of his arms.
As I did so, I felt a rush of something warm and wet flood down my
legs. I glanced down. My cream maternity jeans were soaked in
pink-tinged water.
“Then again,” I
said bleakly, “maybe not.”
He might have missed out on two-thirds of my
pregnancy, but he’d quickly caught up; he knew what this was. He said flatly, “Your waters have gone. It’s the real thing; you’re in labour. Oh, boy.”
Oh boy, indeed.
We stared at each other, in utter disbelief that this could be happening
now, here, at this inopportune moment and in the worst of all possible
places. I felt panic rise in roughly the
same measure as the pain of the next contraction. Fear must have shown on my face because my
husband drew me into his arms again and hugged me to him.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured into my hair. “Everything will be fine. These things take ages, right? We’ll have you back on Skybase long before
Junior gets serious.”
I nodded. What
he said made sense. Nurse Ratched had told me I could expect hours and hours of this
simple cadenced pain; no need to be unduly concerned until the contractions
were regular and at least four minutes apart.
As if he read my mind, my husband said, “Maybe we
should start timing them.”
So we did. The
next three were each two minutes apart.
After that, it was ten, six and back to two again. It was fifteen minutes before I could trust
myself to believe it. My body was
clearly getting right down to business.
“Tell Skybase,” I muttered. “Let them know it’s started. Then call Mom and tell her we won’t make the
party after all.”
He was already doing it. He’d realised something I
hadn’t; now we couldn’t risk being picked up by the civil aviation
authorities. Our new destination was
Skybase, not the local maternity hospital.
That meant Spectrum would have to reach us before anyone else did.
Doctor Gold was quietly reassuring. A rescue helicopter would be deployed
immediately, he said. As a purely
precautionary measure, he would also be on board. It wasn’t unusual, apparently, for the
contractions to be all over the place to begin with. Once labour was properly established, things
would settle down. Properly
established? I didn’t want to think what
the pain would be like by the time that happened. This was bad enough.
“Doc, would you bring drugs, please?” I begged. “Otherwise I think Paul might as well just
shoot me now.”
He laughed, as if I had said something immensely
witty. “Of course I will, don’t
worry. Everything will be fine, just
concentrate on breathing correctly.
We’ll be with you in no time at all.”
I sat back down on the grass and dutifully practised
my Lamaze breathing techniques. I was
not particularly hopeful. A few weeks
ago during one of my check-ups, I had asked Nurse Ratched
if breathing in a particular way did actually make labour easier.
“Not really, hon’” she
replied in her usual detached manner.
“It just gives you something else to think about.”
Well, I guess she was right about that. I sure needed something to take my mind off
my current situation. The baby hovered
somewhere in the distance like a half-formed thought or the refrain from a
song. Only my stomach felt real. It didn’t seem part of me anymore; it had
become like an older, braver, rather frightening entity, a being that was
leading me to places I didn’t want to imagine.
The autumn sun had disappeared and the air was
distinctly chilly as daylight began to fade.
Gradually, I realised I was losing track of time. The contractions were relentless by now. No sooner had the waves subsided then they
began again, rolling along like an incoming tide. I felt as if I were being
tossed around like a piece of flotsam.
There was nothing I could do other than try to breathe and not scream.
“Can you get me a drink?” I asked my husband after he
had ended what seemed like his fifth call to the medical team in the last hour.
“Sure.” He
darted back to the wreckage and quickly reappeared with a bottle of mineral
water. I gulped it down greedily. Nothing had ever tasted so much like
nectar. “Are you okay? Is there anything else I can do to make you
more comfortable?”
You could try tasering me with the stun-gun, I thought. That
might do the trick. Aloud, I said,
“Maybe I just need some more lipstick. I want to look presentable when they get
here. My purse is in the plane, would
you get it for me?”
He smiled at that and said, “Oh Sim,
I love you.”
Well, that was good to know, but I would have
preferred it if he’d told me that help would be here any second. I realised
that my cherished birth plan had died along with the engines on the Swift. Nothing was happening like it was meant to
and I was more than apprehensive. More
like deeply afraid, in fact. So much had
already gone wrong; I was starting to feel really scared at what might be to
come. I am a realist, after all. I didn’t need my first-class mathematics
degree to tell me that you can’t fit a big head through a small hole without a
hell of a lot of trouble.
With yet another impressive display of mind-reading
skills, he said, “They’ll be here shortly, don’t worry. You’re doing great, but you’ve got a while to
go yet.”
“How do you know?” I asked, half reassured, half
petrified at this news.
“One of the nurses told me. She said if you’re still smiling and joking
around, you’ve got a long way to go.”
Ha! That would be Nurse Ratched,
I thought sourly. Well, was she in for a surprise! I decided then and there that no matter what
happened, I was going to try to smile and joke through it all. After all, women had been doing this for
millennia, so it couldn’t be that hard.
I pursed my lips, gritted my teeth through the next contraction and
tried to put aside my worries over what could go wrong.
An hour later and I was starting to think Nurse Ratched had a point.
I was no longer capable of smiling and there was definitely nothing to
joke about. My husband had become very
irritating indeed; all I wanted to do was drown in my ocean of pain. Why couldn’t he let me? Since I was clearly about to die, why did he
insist on wiping my face? No-one would
care what I looked like on my death-bed, least of all me. As he came towards me once more, tissue in
hand, I batted him away with what little strength I had left.
“Go away, leave me alone,” I moaned, although I
suspect my words were lost within the howl of agony that heralded the onslaught
of yet another contraction.
Dear God, please let this
end, I prayed, at the
precise moment my husband leapt to his feet and yelled, “They’re here! Sim, it’s okay,
they’re here. Don’t worry, everything
will be all right.”
I managed to
raise my head long enough to see him racing away towards the whirling blades of
a Hummingbird. Suddenly there was lots
of noise, voices, movement. Then an
ebony face with something vaguely purple perched on top of it bent over me.
“How you doin’, Ms G?” asked
a familiar English voice.
As my vision cleared, I realised that the purple thing
was actually Captain Indigo’s cap. I
felt vaguely confused; I had no idea why he was here and it took another few
seconds to realise he must have been piloting the Hummingbird. I wished it had been one of the Angels; much
as I like Indigo, his presence here was discomforting.
I’ve known John Roach for years, long before we ended
up together in Spectrum. He used to be
an RAF pilot and then a shuttle astronaut for the ISA. He and I had flown on several trips together
and I admired him enormously. His physical presence was amazing; six feet five
inches of solid Africa. Despite the fact
he had been born and brought up in Brixton, he looked like an iconic tribal
warrior. Brought up was putting it
kindly, however. As he would be the
first to admit, ‘dragged up’ was nearer the mark. Born to an impoverished
single mother who had not always selected the same sperm donor for each of her
six children, he had surpassed all educational expectations and carved out a
remarkably successful career, while retaining not only his optimistic, sunny
personality, but also a strong south London accent. Since the first day I met him, in our
off-duty moments, he called me ‘Ms G’.
The fact I was now technically ‘Mrs M’ had not changed that and I loved
him for it.
I did not love the fact he was here, however. What was left of my dignity told me that it
could definitely do without Indigo witnessing my
present vulnerability. I didn’t have time to protest though, because now Doctor
Gold was bending over me, rapidly assessing all vital signs, the late afternoon
sunlight glinting off the rim of his spectacles.
“Please tell me you’ve got pain-relief in that bag,” I
murmured. “I can’t cope with this for
much longer.”
“Coming up,” he responded briefly, and instantly, I
felt the hypodermic in my arm. “You
should feel better in a minute or two.
It may make you a little nauseous, however.”
Nauseous? I couldn’t
have cared less at that point. I lay
back and closed my eyes, waiting. Sure
enough, when the next contraction began, the pain didn’t build and build to the
intolerable level I had come to expect; it was dulled, muted, like aspirin on
toothache. What replaced it, though, was
a dragging sensation, as if all of my insides were being pulled apart. It was terrifying.
I said, to no-one in particular, “I think I need to
push.”
My husband looked alarmed. “You can’t push now,” he said, with a blatant
disregard for the futility of such a statement.
“Can’t you just puff and blow, or something? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? For God’s sake, don’t push! Not here.”
Someone was making her way through what looked like a
crowd – it was probably no more than three or four people – until she was
directly in my line of sight. Nurse Ratched. She gave
me an appraising look and said bluntly, “We need to see where we’re at. I’ll just do a quick exam; see how far you’re
dilated.”
“Okay.” I struggled
to sit up, expecting, bizarrely, the miracles of modern technology in this
god-forsaken place.
To my dismay, she pushed me back down and said,
“Sorry, hon’.
This ain’t Skybase. Gotta do this the old-fashioned way. Just relax and it won’t hurt too much.” She turned her head to whoever was behind her
and barked, “Vamoose, all of you. Give
us a little privacy. That goes for you,
too, Blue-Eyes.”
I realised with a slight sense of wonder that her last
sentence was directed towards my husband. The legendary Captain Scarlet was
being dismissed as if he was the lowliest of ensigns. Meekly, he did as he was told.
“Now.” Ratched turned her full attention to me. “Let’s get some of these clothes off. Don’t worry, this won’t take long – and I
promise to be gentle.”
I wasn’t
entirely sure I believed her so I said, “Marla?
Will you at least wait until I get through this next contraction?” I didn’t think I could cope with the two
things at once.
Her face softened in what I thought was sympathy
(although that might have been my imagination).
But she did say, “Of course, sugar.
You just tell me when you’re ready.”
Well, I’m not sure I would ever have been ready, but
it wasn’t so bad, especially now the drugs were kicking in big- style. Eventually, she straightened up, a look of
surprise on her face.
“My my, you have been busy,”
she said. Then she raised her hand
behind her in a beckoning gesture and Doctor Gold reappeared, followed by my
husband. “Nine centimetres,” she said
flatly. “Looks like
we’re not going anywhere.”
Not going anywhere?
I didn’t understand what she meant.
Neither did my husband. He said,
with a note of deep uncertainty in his voice, “Nine centimetres? That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no,” Doctor Gold replied heavily. “Good in that this should not last too much
longer. Things have progressed quicker
than I imagined they would. But it does
mean that we can’t risk taking off now – we’re too close.”
“What are you talking about?” I could feel hysteria coming on. “Doc, I can’t have this baby here! We have to get back to Skybase!”
He bent over me and took hold of my hand. “This is not ideal, I know,” he said
gently. “But we have no choice. And there is nothing to worry about, liebchen.
You are doing magnificently. We
are all here with you, everything will be fine.”
Fine? Only a moron
with half a brain cell would think there was anything fine about this. In fact, it was as close to a nightmare as it
was possible to get with your eyes open.
Ratched said, “How about we decamp to somewhere indoors? The Hummingbird’s not big enough, but we can
use the back of the Swift. There’s
equipment and shelter from the night air.”
At last; someone had made a sensible suggestion.
“That’s a great idea,” I replied.
I turned and managed to get on my knees, as a prelude
to making it to full upright status, when Doctor Gold said swiftly, “You can’t
walk.”
“Of course I can,” I muttered.
As my legs trembled and my knees buckled, Nurse Ratched said, “No, hon’, you
can’t,” and my husband swept me gently up in his arms and carried me towards
what was left of the Swift.
Once we had pushed back all the seats and cushioned
the floor with every bit of padding we could find, I had begun to accept that
the fate of my daughter and I was in the here and now. As my husband lowered me
gently down to my makeshift delivery room, Doctor Gold’s predictions of nausea
came true.
“Oh, God, I’m going to be sick,” I gasped. This was insult to injury as far as I was
concerned; it was bad enough that I was expected to do the impossible by
pushing out something that was starting to feel like a gigantic bowling ball
without needing to vomit at the same time.
Everyone ignored me- they were all at the other end of my body,
organising some proper lighting, doing stuff with white towels and muttering
things I could no longer be bothered to listen to.
The only person who took any notice of me was my
husband as I threw up all over his tunic. To his credit, he said nothing other
than “Are you okay?” as he accepted a towel from someone and began to wipe
himself down.
“Thirsty,” I muttered.
“I need some water.”
“Here you go, hon’,” Ratched said, wetting my lips with a moist cloth. “Can’t
let you have a proper drink, you’ll just bring it back up again.”
I didn’t ask how she could possibly know that. I just sucked at the cloth and said, “Thank
you.”
Then the fist inside my stomach reached up and pulled
me down hard. And this time I knew I
definitely had to push. It was
impossible not to; it was as if my body had started to obey a new set of
instructions that came without a manual.
My husband was holding my hand, but I wasn’t with him. I wasn’t even with the baby. I was with something else; some power I
didn’t recognise and couldn’t understand, in a place I’d never been to before.
“Keep pushing,” someone said. “That’s good, keep it going.”
Then a deep male voice said, “Come on, Ms G, put your
back into it. My mum told me that with
all of us it was like shelling peas. You
just need to give it some welly!”
That brought me back.
Indigo; I had totally forgotten he was there. As I raised my head, someone accidently hit a
mirror above me and I caught sight of my face.
The sight shocked me. I was red and shiny-looking and it seemed I had
two chins for I was digging my chin into my chest as I pushed. I had become something else; no longer me,
but something wild and primitive, a sister to cows and bitches and tornados and
lightning. I terrified even myself.
“Get him out of here!” I shrieked.
Indigo beat a hasty retreat to a position that was at
least out of my sight line, as Nurse Ratched pushed a
plastic mask over my mouth and nose. I
yanked it back off.
“What the hell is this?”
“Just gas and air,” she replied, succinctly. “Old fashioned, but it works. Take a couple of deep breaths and get ready
to push with the next one.”
I put the mask back on and did as I was told. And when the clenched fist rose up to claim
me again, I pushed. I kept pushing. Never had I pushed so hard and never had
anything hurt so much. Nothing was
happening. After what seemed like an
eternity of alternate pushes and gulps of gas and air, I finally realised the
futility of it all.
“I can’t do this,” I moaned. “I can’t push anymore, I can’t.”
My husband, seated slightly behind me so he could use
his arm to prop me up a little, gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “Of course you can,” he said, brightly.
Looking back, I
guess I should have been grateful for small mercies – at least he hadn’t added,
“It’s a cinch” or, worse still, “You have no choice.”
But then he excelled himself in his efforts to
encourage me. He said, “Just get through
this and next time, I promise you I will personally ensure that you get every
drug of choice. It’ll be a breeze.”
I stared at him, unable to believe my ears. “Next time?” I screamed.
“Are you completely crazy? I am never going to do this again,
never! Do you understand me? I hate you!
If you so much as look at me again, I’ll kill you!”
The expression on his face told me that never again
would he want to. It was as if he had
just woken up to the fact that lust molecules do not survive childbirth. They get expelled along with the placenta. Apart from that, I was living proof of the
kind of trouble sex can get you into. Who
would want to go there again?
From the other end of my body, I heard Doctor Gold
chuckle. What he thought was funny about
this, I couldn’t imagine. “Calm down,”
he said. “You need to save your breath
for pushing.”
Calm down? It
was like a red rag to a bull. “Don’t
tell me what I need!” I yelled. “You’re not the one being torn apart
here! What I need is to get this thing OUT!”
“I agree,” Nurse Ratched
intervened unexpectedly. Although she
was stating the blindingly obvious, her voice was sober, totally unlike her
normally laconic tone. I saw my husband
frown.
“Is something wrong?” he asked anxiously.
“This has been going on too long,” she replied
shortly. “Everyone’s getting very tired,
including the baby. Her heart rate is
slowing. Back on Skybase, that wouldn’t
be a problem, but out here.....” Her
voice trailed off and she looked at me.
“Come on, honey. You can do this. Get mad!”
I was already mad, surely she could see that? Not angry mad, but crazy. I was delirious with pain and too much gas
and air. I couldn’t focus properly and
there was a whistling noise going on in my ears which made it difficult for me
to hear anyone. Then, out of nowhere,
came a voice in my head, the voice I would always recognise the instant I heard
it. Haven’t
you learned by now? It asked. Don’t you know we won’t permit this? Not a hybrid.
It’s not possible.
Conrad. Captain
Black. In that moment, I knew the
truth. This was my punishment for
hooking up with an alien half-wit. My
pregnancy, the baby, even my marriage, was all part of a subtle plan to ensure
my destruction. They’d failed with the plane crash, but they would succeed
now. The Mysterons – also no slouches in
the geometry stakes – understood only too well the impossibility of trying to
force something that felt like a baby elephant through an aperture the size of
a small grapefruit. It could not be
done; no way could I deliver a living, breathing entity. It would be game, set and match to the
aliens.
I wanted to fight back, to tell them that they had
underestimated me, but for some reason I couldn’t. It was as if something was trying to pull the
“I” of myself out of my head and down into the centre of my body and I was
powerless to resist. I was no longer
Simone, who was thirty-one years old, who loved climbing and long walks through
the woods, who spoke fluent French and understood calculus. I was something else now, blended with a
greater, fierce, ripping power over which I had no control.
Let go, said a different voice in my head, one I’d not heard
before.
This is necessary. Accept
it. Let go.
So I did. I let
go of me. I let go of my life. I let go of everything except my husband’s hand
as I arched my back and pushed so hard I thought I would burst apart and set
the Swift and everyone in it on fire. If
the Mysterons were taking me, I wasn’t going quietly. I screamed in a way I would never have let
myself cry out before and in the distance I heard someone say, “The head’s
crowning now. Don’t push again until I
tell you.”
That didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. I stood on top of a high red Mysteron cliff
and threw myself off into the abyss, screaming with sudden joy as I fell.
“Sim, Sim,
it’s okay,” my husband said, pressing his hands on my
shoulders. I was shaking all over.
“Of course it is!” I yelled back and pushed again,
this time with a final, furious elated force that came easily to me. My baby slid out. There was silence for a few seconds and I
didn’t know where I was. But then she
gave a cry, a single howl of outrage and in that moment, I became me
again. It was very strange. I was myself, returned from Mars; a queer,
wild, slightly drunk self, but still me.
“Is she okay?” I asked anxiously. “Please give her to me, I want to see her.”
“All in good time,” Doctor Gold replied. “We’ll just clean her up a little.”
I searched my husband’s face. “Is she all right?” I asked again. “What does she look like? I want to hold her.”
“She’s perfect,” he replied softly, his eyes misty
with emotion. He bent over me and kissed
my parched lips. “You did it, Sim. You did
it. She’s here and she’s okay.” Then he
turned to accept the towel-wrapped bundle from Ratched
and gently placed it in my arms. We both
gazed in wonder at the dark blue eyes looking solemnly back at us, the tiny
fist reaching out to clench my finger.
“She’s so beautiful,” I murmured in awe. “Isn’t she,
Paul?”
I looked up at him for confirmation, surprised to see
the mist in his eyes turning to water as he reached out to touch his daughter’s
soft downy head. “Yes, she is,” he
said. “But not yet as beautiful as her
mother.” He smoothed the hair back from
my face and said tenderly, “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known. That was truly heroic.”
“Those things I said earlier,” I murmured. “The stuff about hating you
and all. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know,” he replied.
“I guess you were entitled; although I do think you may have broken all
the bones in my hand. That’s quite a
grip you’ve got, my darling.”
Superhuman strength, I thought.
Maybe that’s what it takes to give birth, especially if what you’ve
given birth to is a superhuman. Could she be?
Our little girl, born of love between a human and a
not-so-human-anymore? I gazed
down at the black hair and dark blue eyes that so clearly belonged to her
father and wondered what the future held for us all.
“I can’t quite believe she’s here at last,” I said
slowly. “We’re parents, Paul. And just look at her; she’s our baby and
she’s human.”
At that, Ratched shot me a
look that suggested she thought I hadn’t come through labour with all my
marbles intact, but then she hadn’t been privy to the finer points of just what
made our child so special.
“Of course she’s human,” Doctor Gold replied with
satisfaction, also apparently forgetting that there were things his obstetric
nurse didn’t know. Either that, or he
wasn’t bothered about the fact that she’d think he was equally unhinged. “A perfect little girl, even if her arrival
in the world has been somewhat.... hasty.”
“You can say that again,” my husband responded with a
grin. “Let’s hope her timing improves as
she gets older.”
“Doc, thank you for delivering her,” I said
earnestly. “I’m sorry I yelled at you
earlier. That wasn’t one of my better
moments.”
“On the contrary,” he said, beaming at me. “This may very well have been your finest
hour, liebchen. I am privileged to have been part of it.”
“Does this little one have a name yet?” Ratched asked, looking up from whatever she doing with
cords and afterbirths, none of which particularly interested me in my newfound
state of maternal bliss.
“Well, we thought... Caitlin?” my husband said
hesitantly, giving me a slightly doubtful look.
“Are we still going with that, honey?”
I hadn’t realised we were going with it at all. My mind had been firmly set on Deborah
Jane. Maybe I’d missed something during
all the Pac-Man sessions between hormones and brain. But as I looked at her, I knew she wasn’t a
Deborah. Deborahs
are blonde and delicate; Deborahs look like me. And my baby didn’t really look like me at
all; she possessed the dark sturdy good looks of the Metcalfes.
So I said firmly, “Yes. Caitlin Anne; after your
mother, Paul. I’d like her to
have something belonging to a grandmother she won’t get to meet.”
The look in my husband’s eyes told me I’d made the
right decision. It was worth everything.
“Thank you,” he murmured in my ear. “I wish she could
see her. She would have been thrilled to
have a granddaughter.”
At that moment, Caitlin turned her tiny head and began
nuzzling in the general direction of my breast.
She was making small snuffling noises, her mouth opening and closing
gently. I felt a tug in my womb and
moisture surrounded my nipples.
“I want to nurse her,” I announced to Ratched, who seemed to have finished her ministrations to
my nether regions and was packing up all the equipment brought in the
Hummingbird.
“Wait till we get back to Skybase and get you both
settled,” she replied. “She’ll be fine
till then.”
“Please, Marla?
I really want to do this. Show me
how.”
“Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” she muttered, “Save me from modern mothers.” Then she saw the light in my eyes and heaved
an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, very well, if you must.”
She briskly removed my jacket and tee-shirt and helped
me to loosen my bra so that the baby could hopefully attach her little mouth to
me. It took a few seconds of fumbling,
but amazingly, we both got the hang of it before my daughter started screaming
in frustration.
“Well done,” Ratched said,
after a minute or two. She sounded
positively admiring and I allowed myself to bask in a self-satisfied glow
before she continued, “Latched on right away, you clever little baby.”
I don’t remember much about the journey back to
Skybase. After Caitlin and I were
settled as comfortably as the Hummingbird would allow, we both fell into a deep
sleep, exhausted by the day’s events. I
don’t think I even asked what happened to the remains of the Swift – no doubt
it would be salvaged as much as possible in the days to come. As we approached touchdown, I woke up in my
husband’s arms, stiff and sore, to discover my baby was the centre of everyone
else’s attention.
Caitlin,
kicking her little legs and waving her arms around, was making eyes at Indigo,
who was regaling her with a fairytale of ( I thought) rather dubious
morality. When I said as much to my
husband, he laughed it off and kissed me rather indulgently.
“She loves it.
He’s entertaining her,” he said, as if that was all that counted. Boy, he needs to learn. I can see I’m going
to have my work cut out if our daughter is going to grow up alongside the
reprobates on Skybase.
As the Hummingbird ground to a standstill in its
landing bay, I glanced out of the window and realised we had a welcoming
committee. Half of Skybase seemed to
have turned out to meet us -word of the new arrival had clearly travelled
fast. I sat up immediately, energised
after my nap and reached for my discarded clothes and make up. At the very least, I wanted to walk unaided
down the steps, my baby in my arms, the Amazonian princess presenting her
precious legacy to her tribe.
Those fanciful notions were quickly disposed of. A stretcher was brought on board and it was
immediately apparent that I was supposed to transfer to it. I was lifted onto the wretched thing and
blankets were artfully draped around me.
I wanted to protest that this was not in the Birth Plan, but somehow I
didn’t have the energy to do so. I
didn’t even protest about the clothes.
When we reached ground level, I did say to Ratched, “Isn’t a stretcher a little over the top?” in a ground teeth kind of way and I think she
got the message because she waved over a medic with a wheelchair and I was
lifted up and plopped into it without further ado.
“Thank you,” I murmured with a fixed smile, trying not
to wince in the belated realisation that my daughter’s over-eager entry into
the world had not left me unscathed. Ratched eyed me balefully, her expression clearly conveying
the fact that she thought I was an irresponsible patient and probably would go
on to be an unfit mother.
My husband exited next and took up his position behind
my wheelchair. Someone – probably Doctor
Gold – placed my beautifully wrapped up baby in my arms. I was flanked by all who had been onboard the
Hummingbird. I felt a sudden rush of
warmth for them – my birth committee, my team.
They’d been wonderful and together, we’d achieved something elemental,
timeless. I even forgave Indigo.
We looked across Hangar Deck to those who stood
waiting, seemingly a little shy, a little reluctant to
rush forward and greet us. There was
silence. Then my husband broke the spell.
He shouted, “Hey, Adam! Come and meet your god-daughter!” as he began
to push the wheelchair towards the waiting throng.
“God-daughter?” I asked, distracted. I hadn’t realised we’d got to christenings
already.
He looked guilty.
“Is that okay? I mean, I know we
haven’t discussed it, but I just thought...”
As I watched Captain Blue leading the move towards us,
his face glowing with love and pride, I knew it would have been a redundant
discussion anyway. I said softly, “Of
course it’s all right – it’s perfect.
There’s no one else I’d choose.”
My husband kissed the top of my head, while at the
same time accepting a congratulatory handshake from Blue who then stooped to
kiss me and gaze in unabashed admiration at our daughter.
“Wow,” he murmured in wonderment. “Spectrum–The New
Generation.” He touched his lips
to the top of Caitlin’s head and then gave me a swift hug. “Well done, Gorgeous. She’s amazing.”
He straightened up and seemed to notice my husband’s
dishevelled appearance for the first time.
“Well, I know what she’s been doing, but what the hell happened to you?”
he asked, gazing at the vomit-spattered tunic.
“I threw up all over him, “I replied sweetly. “He
stinks, I know.”
“It was worth it,” my husband replied, with a slightly
pained smile, holding on to his dignity with an effort.
Then the Angels were upon us, hugging and kissing me
as they cooed over my baby and congratulated my husband.
“Hey, girl, can’t keep it simple, can you?” drawled
Harmony. “Always have to be the drama
queen. I should have known you wouldn’t
pass up an opportunity to add to your impressive total of ditched vehicles.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. Rebecca knew perfectly well that my husband
had been piloting the Swift. “I have a
reputation to maintain,” I said, primly.
“Can’t let my record go to you now, can I?”
“We’re just so glad everything is fine and the baby’s
arrived safely,” Rhapsody interjected hastily, with a glare at Harmony who
affected not to notice. I couldn’t help
smiling. My sweet
Caroline; always mindful of the sensibilities of others. What a pussy cat she is - and what a lion she
can turn into when it’s required.
“I think we should get our patients to Sick-Bay now,”
Doctor Gold announced, looking with slightly indulgent disapproval at the melee
going on before him.
“Come on, Doc, you know the plan,” said Blue,
persuasively. “We want to show them our
surprise.”
“It can wait,” Gold replied, irritation clearly
visible on his face. “I have people
needing medical attention here.”
“Plan? What
plan? What’s going on?” I asked. There were lots of significant looks shooting
between my colleagues.
“It’s just... well; we wanted to show you
something...” Rhapsody ventured. “Obviously, it wasn’t meant to happen quite
like this, but....” She shot a
beseeching look at Gold. “Please, Doc? It will only take five minutes.”
“Like hell it will,” he grumbled. “Where you people
are concerned, nothing ever happens as it should. I expressly forbid it.”
My husband placed a hand on his arm. “Come on, Mason,” he said quietly. “Whatever it is, five minutes won’t hurt.”
“Oh, very well,” the doctor replied with impatient
resignation. “I don’t know why I bother
– no one ever listens to me, anyway.”
“Doc. Thank you,” I
said, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards me into a somewhat impetuous
hug. “I promise you we’ll report to
Sick-Bay as soon as we’ve seen whatever this is.”
Maybe a hug from me was so unexpected, it floored
him. Anyway, he went a little pink
around the gills and made no further protest as Blue and Rhapsody led the way
from Hangar Deck in the general direction of Skybase’s
medical facilities.
However, we bypassed Sick-Bay and eventually stopped
outside the entrance to what I knew was a huge storage bay for scanners and
other large items of medical paraphernalia.
Oddly, the sign on the door which proclaimed this purpose had been
removed.
“What’s going on?” I asked in bewilderment, as Blue
punched the security code into the lock and the door slid aside.
“Close your eyes, both of you,” commanded
Harmony. “Don’t open them till we tell
you.”
This day surely couldn’t get any more bizarre, I
thought, nevertheless doing as she instructed.
My wheelchair was pushed forward a few feet and then
Blue said, “Okay, you can look now.”
My husband and I opened our eyes and gasped at exactly
the same moment. The storage bay was no
more; it had been completely transformed into a beautifully decorated living
room, complete with plush carpeting, soft furnishings and muted lighting. Half-opened doors leading off the main area
held the suggestion of a kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms.
We gaped in stunned silence as Harmony said in a
matter-of-fact way, “It’ll look better once you move all your stuff in.”
“It’s not quite finished,” Rhapsody added,
an anxious look on her face. “We thought
we had more time, you see... but we did get
the nursery done. What do you think?”
She flung open
one of the doors and propelled me into a small haven of wonderment. The walls had been painted a soft buttercup
yellow and stencilled with rabbits and teddy bears. A white-painted cot stood in one corner with
a musical teddy bear mobile suspended above it.
Soft sheets and a fluffy blanket were neatly folded at its base. In the opposite corner was a comfortable
armchair with, next to it, an old-fashioned Victorian bassinet, exactly like
the one I had been secretly coveting in my favourite mother and baby
catalogue. A little bath stood on the
floor next to a padded changing table and a small chest of drawers. Hanging up on the doors of the tiny wardrobe
was a selection of the baby clothes I had been collecting over the last few
months, along with a few I didn’t recognise.
Rhapsody followed my gaze, saying apologetically, “We
grabbed what we could from your quarters as soon as we knew you were on your
way back, but we didn’t have time to get everything. We so wanted it to be perfect for you.”
I was incapable of speech. I simply couldn’t take it all in. I looked from Rhapsody to my husband and back
at the tableau before me and felt tears start to run down my cheeks.
Harmony looked dismayed. “Oh, God, you don’t like it,” she said in a stricken
voice. “We thought.... well, I
thought... this was just the way you’d want it, the bassinet and all. But if we’ve made a mistake......”
“A mistake?” My husband had
found his voice, even if I’d lost mine.
He sounded incredulous. “Bec, this is amazing. It’s just.... well... I simply don’t know
what to say...” His voice tailed off and
I knew by the pressure of his hands on my shoulders that he too, was struggling
to hold it together.
“This is not everything,” Blue said. “There’s a proper bathroom, of course and we
even managed to get a little kitchen fitted so you have no excuse for not
improving your cooking skills. But don’t
worry, the health and safety people did insist on
installing full extractor fans and smoke alarms for when it all goes wrong.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “How did you manage to do all this? It must have taken ages. And why?”
“It’s been going on for a while and yeah, it wasn’t
easy keeping it under wraps,” Blue acknowledged. “Making sure you didn’t
suspect anything was quite difficult at times.
But we were obliged to follow orders and that’s the why of it.”
“Orders? Whose orders?”
“Mine,” said a deep male voice behind me. I turned my head to see Colonel White beaming
down at us. “I’m very pleased to see
they’ve been followed to the letter,” he continued, looking around him with
evident satisfaction.
He gazed at
Caitlin, his eyes glowing with unexpected tenderness. “So this is our new recruit. Welcome to Skybase, little one. And congratulations to you both,” he added,
with a smile at my husband and me. “I’m delighted that everything has turned
out so well, despite the... er... somewhat dramatic
circumstances.”
“Thank you, sir,” my husband replied. “It was Simone
who did all the work. I couldn’t be more
proud of her. But are you saying that
all this, making new quarters for us, this is your idea?”
Colonel White nodded.
“It occurred to me,” he said, “that I hadn’t actually given you a
wedding present. I saw the arrival of
your daughter as an opportunity to redress that omission. Clearly, you need somewhere large enough to
cater for the needs of a baby and I thought Skybase could afford to lose this
storage space. In addition, you’re
closer to the medical facilities, should they be required, and this level is
nice and quiet for a family unit.”
The wily old fox, I thought.
He knew that separating us from the main living quarters meant it would
also be nice and quiet for the rest of Skybase’s
personnel. Well, I couldn’t blame him
for that, I suppose; he is running a military operation after all.
And I was
stunned by his generosity. “I can’t even begin to imagine how much this has
cost, sir,” I said. “We can’t let you
pay for it, it’s too much.”
“Nonsense, it’s my pleasure,” he replied, indeed
sounding very pleased with himself. “I should say our pleasure, of course – this is a gift from my wife too and I
can’t tell you how difficult it’s been to persuade her that she didn’t need to
be here to personally oversee the makeover.”
I laughed and winced again in the sharp realisation
that sudden movements might not a good idea for a little while. My body was beginning to remind me of just
what it was I’d done today and that it might not be possible to continue in
even a semi-upright position for much longer.
My husband,
with yet another display of his impressive mind-reading skills, said, “I think
we should head back to Sick-Bay now before Doc Gold sends out a posse to look
for us.”
“Indeed,” The Colonel agreed. “I always feel that it’s best not to push
one’s luck where the good doctor is concerned.”
He bent over me and the baby once more. “These quarters will be ready for you as soon
as you’re fit to move into them, my dear.
In the meantime, get as much rest as you can and do try to follow advice, as difficult as it may be.”
“S.I.G.” I replied with
a grin. “You know me too well, sir. But I must admit that sleep sounds rather
wonderful right now. Of course, with a
hungry little mouth to feed, I’m not sure how much of it I’m likely to get.”
“You learn to snatch it where you can,” he said with a
smile. “But that’s something you already
know, I imagine. Spectrum has never
advertised regular sleep as one of its career highlights.”
I was so tired that the next hour passed in a blur of
almost cotton wool softness. Without
protest, I allowed the baby to be taken away for weighing and examination. She was just under
seven pounds, a good weight considering she was four weeks away from her due
date. Nurse Ratched
pronounced her strong and healthy, alert and very calm, despite the
circumstances of her birth.
Then Caitlin was passed over to one of the nurses who
settled her in a little cot next to my bed and Ratched
turned her attention to me. By this time
all the pain relief had worn off and I was exhausted and aching all over. Every movement hurt despite the efficacious
properties of ibuprofen, the most heavy-duty drug Doctor Gold was prepared to
sanction.
“I’m so sore,” I complained, as I swung my legs over
the side of the bed in a misplaced attempt to make it to the bathroom unaided.
“You pushed when I told you not to,” she said
dismissively. “Lucky you didn’t tear
more than you did. But don’t worry,
you’ll heal. It’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad as what?”
“Twenty-four hours of contractions,” she replied with
a sniff.
I stared at her
in disbelief. If my perineum could have
answered for me, it would have given her a damn good argument on that one. After all, what did this woman know? How many labours had she gone through? And was it my fault my child had chosen to
take the epic-thrill water-slide out?
I sat there on
the end of the bed, watching my shaking legs quiver. I debated my options. Eventually, I gave in. There was no pride and dignity in new
motherhood, it seemed.
“Marla, I need the bathroom,” I said. “Would you please help me?”
She came towards me, slid her arm around my waist and
gently hoisted me to my feet. She felt
good - solid, somehow- and I allowed myself to lean on her as we made our way
towards the bathroom in the shuffling gait I now recognise as common to most
new mothers.
As we got to the cubicle door, she said, “I’ll be
right outside. Yell if you need me.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, wondering where my husband was in
all this. Not that I needed his
attendance for toilet duty of course, but he was at least on my side. Appreciation for what I’d done today seemed
to be fading fast. I wanted a bit of
pampering and cosseting, neither of which this battleaxe was prepared to
provide, even if it was her job. I
wondered why she hated me so much.
After I’d managed to survive the first POP (Pain on
Pooping) after childbirth, I staggered out of the cubicle, tears of self- pity
welling in my eyes. Who on earth would
have kids, I thought. My husband had been right in the first place; why in
God’s name had I ever thought motherhood was a good idea? I should have stuck with being the World’s
Greatest Pilot. (My husband’s description of me, I hasten to add. I wouldn’t say I have an excessive amount of
false modesty, but even I wouldn’t call myself numero
uno. It’s nice
to have a fan club, though.)
Unsurprisingly, Ratched was
exactly where she’d said she would be, lounging against the wall, arms
folded. She gazed impassively upon my
flushed, tear-stained face and then heaved her bulk towards me. Her arm went around my shoulders and I
couldn’t stop myself from turning my head into her vast chest and giving way to
girlish sobs. (I know – this is not a fact I’m proud of).
But then I saw a whole new side to her. She tentatively stroked my hair and shushed
me in that way mothers do with distressed young children. She said soothingly, “It’ll get easier,
sugar. I promise.”
As I continued
to cry, she went on, “Don’t underestimate yourself; you did well today. This is
just your hormones talking. It will all
look better in the morning.”
I was too tired to wonder if she’d had a personality
transplant in the time I’d spent in the bathroom. I said, “Marla, I have to sleep. If you don’t walk me back to bed right now,
you’ll have to carry me.” She could do that, I thought. She was probably big enough and tough enough
to haul my wobbly, jiggly, post-partum body
anywhere. And if she wasn’t, someone
else would be. I didn’t care who.
As she tucked me into bed with all the solicitude of a
mother (okay, maybe I was hallucinating by this time), she said, so softly I
almost missed it, “That’s a beautiful little girl you have there. I’d like to stick around and help you take
care of her, if you’ll let me.”
Despite the sleep deprivation, my ears registered the
hesitancy, the pleading undertone and in some way I recognised that we had seen
a need for each other in our separate vulnerabilities. But this was a conversation for another day. All I was capable of now was a mumbled
“Okay,” as I tumbled into the arms of Morpheus.
I awoke to a low murmur of noise beside me. As my eyes and ears joined me in full
consciousness, I realised that the murmurings belonged to my husband. He sounded like he was engaged in
conversation with a deaf-mute, because his was the only voice I could
hear. I had no idea how long I’d been
asleep. I turned my head to see him bent
over the baby’s cot, apparently giving her chapter and
verse on goodness only knew what.
“What are you doing?” I asked, caught in that twilight
world between fascination and too-tired-to-care.
“Talking to Caitie,” he
replied with a bright smile. Amazingly,
he didn’t look tired at all, although I was pleased to see he had showered and
changed so that our daughter was not unnecessarily exposed to the pungent aroma
of stale vomit.
Here we go- Caitie already, I thought with resignation, knowing my husband’s
penchant for shortening any given name.
I said, “She’s barely twelve hours old, Paul. Don’t expect her to talk back.”
His grin was still like a Belisha
beacon. “I just want her to know stuff,
that’s all.”
“Like what?”
“Like what a great mom she has, for instance.”
I smiled at him.
“Darling, she knows. I’ve been
telling her that for the last eight months.”
He looked unabashed. “Yeah, well. It’s just that she was awake and so was I, so
I thought I should explain things to her, that’s all.”
This caught my attention. “What things?” I asked guardedly. “She’s a baby, Paul. She can’t understand much beyond when she
wants to be fed and when she needs her diaper changed.”
“Maybe. But she’s
listening, Sim, I know she is. And, weird though it may sound, I think on
some level, she does understand what
I’m saying. Perhaps not the words
themselves, but what they mean.”
I looked at the baby.
Her face was tiny but composed, not scrunched up like so many
new-borns. Her dark blue gaze was fixed
steadily on her father without a trace of myopic lack of focus. I realised that he was right. She saw him, recognised him on some primeval
level. They were in silent
communication, two kindred spirits who knew each other in a way I never
would. My stomach lurched and my breath
caught in my throat.
“You can read her mind?” I whispered, wondering at the
same time why it felt necessary to keep my voice down. Even though the nurses’ station was only a
few feet away, Sick-Bay sound-proofing was such that I knew we couldn’t be
overheard.
He looked startled at this suggestion. “No, no, nothing like that,” he answered
slowly. “It’s just that.... well, I
don’t know, really. I mean, what
thoughts does a new-born baby have? How
would I know?”
“What then?
What is it you can feel?”
He shrugged.
“It’s.....vague. I can’t describe
it. Perhaps it’s nothing – maybe
something all parents feel towards their child.
That invisible umbilical cord, whatever you want to call it. Perhaps it doesn’t just apply to moms.”
“Hmm,” I responded with a nod. “Well you might be right, although I suspect
my biological connection is a little more physical than psychic. For instance, something tells me she needs
feeding right now.”
“She’s okay,” he replied, once more exchanging glances
with our daughter. “She’s not making a
fuss.”
That was true enough.
Caitlin was quiet, but as she turned her steady gaze to me, I saw her
lips pucker and her cheeks start to scrunch up.
“She’ll be howling any second,” I said
resignedly. “Better pass her over.”
He reached into the cot and picked up the baby with an
adroitness that surprised me. He was
going to be good at this, I thought, with a rush of love for both husband and
child. He placed Caitlin in my arms and
rearranged my pillows so that my shoulders were well supported as the baby
latched on to my nipple with what was now becoming quite a familiar tug.
He sat on the bed beside me and watched in comfortable
silence for a while, until eventually Caitlin’s eyes closed and her mouth went
slack. She was asleep.
At that, we both looked at each other, a ‘What now?’ expression on our faces.
“Should I wind her?
Or will that just wake her up?” I said in a stage whisper, as if my
keeping quiet mattered to anyone.
“I don’t know,” he replied, looking equally
uncertain. “Does she need changing? I mean, feeding and changing are supposed to follow each other, aren’t they?”
“She seems dry enough,” I said, with a tentative
exploration of the netherlands. “Maybe we should ask someone. We’re such novices, Paul. How on earth are we going to do this?”
“We’ll learn,” he replied, reassuringly. “Heck, other people manage, why shouldn’t
we?” He gazed lovingly at our daughter.
“She’s so peaceful, isn’t she? God, Sim – how did we create something so perfect?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But if she doesn’t need
feeding or changing, I’ll be happy to put her back in the cot so I can go back
to sleep.”
He shook his head.
“She hasn’t finished,” he said casually.
“She’s just taking a break, I think.
Maybe you should switch her to the other side.”
Sure enough, as I swapped breasts, she fluttered her
little eyelashes and opened her mouth in anticipation. No one had warned me about this, I
thought. If she was going to take nipple
naps at every feed, I’d never be done; I would be the twenty-four hour milk
machine. Maybe I could have my Angel flight
suit redesigned so she could be permanently attached to me; she would become
the youngest co-pilot in history. Supersonic Baby.
And on that thought, my eyes snapped open. “You knew she was going to do this,” I
accused my husband. “That wasn’t just a
lucky guess, was it? You knew.”
“Maybe.” He looked
guarded. “I honestly don’t know, Sim. I’m feeling
something I’ve never felt before, but I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like I’m part of something brand new – I
can’t see it, or hear it, but I can feel it and I understand it.”
“The Mysteron Consciousness?
Caitlin has it and she’s passing it to you?”
“Not passing; channelling,” he said. “Something like
that. But it’s
fine, Sim.
It’s not malevolent, it’s good.
It’s peace. Whoever..... Whatever
our daughter is, she’s not a threat to us.
I know her... in a way, she’s me.”
Oh, boy, I thought.
A peace that passeth all understanding. I had no idea why that
popped into my head.
“What do we say?”
I asked. “Who do we tell?”
“No one,” he said quietly. “Not yet, anyway. Let’s keep this to ourselves for now. We’ll see
what happens next.”
See what happens next.
That was a loaded phrase. I
looked at the baby who was still nursing, her eyes firmly fixed on my face.
Who are you, little
girl? My October child, born on All Hallows Eve, that traditional time
when the lines between worlds are supposed to overlap. Was there some significance in that? Or was it just my imagination on overdrive
again?
Two Mysterons and Me. It
could have been the title of a movie; way better than ‘Three Men and a Baby’, I
thought. Perhaps someone would write it
one day.
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