Paige shakes her head. ‘Car,’ she replies. ‘It’s not an emergency… I just… I’m feeling a little off. Light-headed. I think I’ve overdone it. I had a little… flutter.’
‘What? Like an arrhythmia? Shortness of breath?’ I feel the adrenaline kick in. This cannot be the start of the end. She’s only twenty-nine weeks.
‘Yeah, just subtle. And no, my breathing’s fine. But I’m also feeling a little tired. I don’t know… Do we need to get it checked out?’
I lift Ethan into my arms and onto my shoulders. ‘Okay, little guy, let’s go see these giraffes.’ I pull my phone from my pocket and make a call.
‘Hi, James, it’s Nick. Are you in clinic today?’
Paige takes Ella by the hand. ‘Let’s go, sweetheart. Did I tell you you’re going to Nanny Evelyn’s today?’
Dr Sanders is wearing a light pink polo and a pair of beige trousers, looking like he’s come straight from the golf course.
‘How’s my favourite patient?’ he asks, flashing Paige the kind of smile that would make any patient relax.
‘I don’t think I’ve had enough to drink today,’ she says, her voice quiet as she sits back on the crisp cotton sheets.
‘Nick wouldn’t have called me on a Saturday if he didn’t think it was important.’
‘I know. I’m only twenty-nine weeks, though, and I can’t let this happen. Not now. It’s too soon.’
‘Right. So tell me about things.’
Paige tells him about the symptoms she’s been experiencing.
‘All right, so let’s see – any difficulty breathing when lying down?’
‘No, not really.’
‘We’ll see what’s going on today, and if we need to adjust your meds, we’ll look at doing that first before we suggest any other kind of intervention. Sound okay?’
‘Yes,’ she tells him.
‘When was the last time you had an echo?’
‘Three weeks ago.’
Dr Sanders keeps his focus on the monitor. ‘And there was nothing significant to report?’
‘Nope.’
‘A slight enlargement,’ I tell him. I reel off all the figures for him. And then I show him the report on my phone.
‘Ah yes, I remember seeing that one. Okay, so Paige, you’re not going to like me for asking this one, but what’s your weight gain been like?’
She groans. ‘Um… well… I’ve been giving into my cravings lately. I figured I should fully step into the role of impending motherhood and take advantage of poppy seed bread.’
‘I see. And this equates to how many grams exactly?’ asks Dr Sanders.
She gives him a sheepish look. ‘Well, I’d say more like two kilos. Or… well, actually, two and a half kilos and a new pair of jeans.’
‘In what? A month?’
‘Um, more like the past two and a half weeks.’
Dr Sanders clicks his tongue.
‘Are you worried?’
Dr Sanders rests a light hand on my shoulder. ‘Just cautious.’ He arranges for an echo and runs some blood tests.
After a four-hour wait, the results confirm Paige has probably overdone it. He sends us home with a warning to continue watching Paige’s salt intake. ‘Oh, and Paige?’ he says as we’re walking out the door.
‘Yeah?’
‘Poppy seed loaf is my favourite too. I don’t blame you.’
She lets out a small laugh.
‘See you next month.’
‘Can I have a word please?’ I say to James before I leave the room.
‘I’m going to grab some water,’ says Paige, taking this as her cue to leave us to it.
‘Do you think she’ll be back before the month’s out? What exactly did today’s echo show?’
James puts a hand on my back and leads me out of the room. ‘It showed another slight enlargement, Nick. This is where I tell you to go home and enjoy the next few weeks with your wife. At this point we need to wait and see.’
Fifty-Three
Paige
‘Nick and I decided on a name a while ago,’ I say to Mum after work a few weeks later.
She presses a hand to her mouth. ‘And?’
‘Aveline. It’s French for Evelyn.’
‘Oh, Paige.’ Mum looks like she might cry. ‘I’m honoured.’
‘It was Nick’s idea.’
‘Come upstairs, I want to show you something,’ she says.
I follow her to her bedroom and she hands me a box. ‘This is for you.’
Inside, there’s the outfit I came home from hospital in. I move some of the tissue paper and discover a few loose photographs: my first birthday, my first day of school, my graduation. There are photos of Caitlin, me and Ryan in the back garden, bare legs, faces smeared with fluorescent zinc cream, arms wide open feeling the spray of water from the sprinkler on our bodies. The mud cakes I’d forgotten about. The fairy garden under the pomegranate tree. Dad dressed as a superhero, sitting on an upturned crate reading the newspaper.
Looking across to Mum, standing there, a serene expression on her face, her eyes blinking at me thoughtfully, I swear she’s almost seeing the memories playing themselves back in her mind. I set the photos down and take one of the last two items from the box: Ruby, the doll that saw the best of days and the worst of days, and was with me through it all. Her left eye is hanging on by a loose thread, and her cheek is grubby with dirt, and she has one shoe missing, but I feel a surge of emotion ripple through me as I turn her body over in my hands, which are so much bigger than the last time I handled her. ‘You left her on the bed for me at Grandma Beth’s when we came home from the airport after saying goodbye to you and Dad when you went to Malaysia.’
‘Yep,’ says Mum. ‘And she didn’t leave your side for years.’ Mum rolls her eyes. ‘I set a place at breakfast for Ruby every morning for six months after that trip.’ She laughs, taking her from me. ‘Snickers was very jealous.’ Snickers was the toy elf I won at a beach carnival when I was seven. She adjusts Ruby’s coat and hair as I lift out an envelope with my name on it. As I open it, Mum walks towards the window, suddenly appearing smaller to me than she ever has before. She keeps her body turned away from me as I read the note she’s written for me, in her beautiful cursive handwriting I spent hours trying to emulate as a child.
My dearest Paige,
I’ve always felt blessed to be your mother, and I’ve lived my life cherishing all the times you enriched my life, simply by being in it. When you’re potentially faced with losing your daughter, those cherished moments have a way of becoming even more precious. Each of these items are tied to moments of joy, moments I so wish I could go back and relive, just to feel your tiny body close to mine, or your face light up when Dad told a joke. Those were times when I had the power to make things better. And oh, how I wish I could make things better now.
You know, when I close my eyes, I can still hear your voice as a toddler. When you smiled, I couldn’t help but smile, when you laughed, I couldn’t help but laugh, when you cried, I’d wipe away a tear, and now that you’re all grown up, it warms my heart that nothing has changed. The only thing that really changes is time. And none of us get enough of it.