Peter James - Perfect People

In the small white room, curtained off from the Accident and Emergency admittance ward, banks of monitors beeped as digital displays of numbers and jagged spikes charted Naomi’s vital signs.

She was lying on a leather-padded table. John, standing beside her, stared anxiously at the EEG. The bright fluorescent lights gave her pallid face an even more ghostly complexion. Desperate with worry for her, he didn’t care at this moment if she miscarried, he just wanted Naomi to be OK, that was all. And he was feeling utterly useless.

White shelves on the walls were lined with vials, bottles, syringes in plastic bags. There was a smell of disinfectant. A nurse in a blue scrub suit was adjusting the flow valve on a drip line. Another said, ‘Eighty systolic, rising.’ Naomi stared up at John, bewildered. She was a horrible colour, calm one moment, then the next she was all contorted again, shuddering, screaming in pain.

Please let her be all right. Please don’t let anything happen to her. Please Another woman in blue nursing uniform entered the room. ‘Dr Klaesson?’

‘Get a doctor here! Jesus!’ he shouted at her. ‘My wife is losing our baby – get me the duty obstetrician!’

She wore a badge that said: A amp;E, ALISON SHIPLEY, HEAD OF NURSING, and held a clipboard in her hand.

‘Dr Klaesson, could I please ask you a few questions?’

‘GET ME A FUCKING OBSTETRICIAN, FOR GOD’S SAKE!’

Unfazed, she gave him a gentle smile. ‘Dr Klaesson, Mr Sharpus-Jones is on his way down from theatre. He’ll be here in just a few minutes.’

‘John.’

Naomi’s voice. So calm. Serene.

He stared down at her.

‘Just some admittance formalities, please,’ the nurse said.

‘John, please calm down,’ Naomi said, panting, almost breathless. ‘I’m fine now, I’m OK, really I am.’

John stared at the lines connected to Naomi’s chest and wrist, then kissed her on her clammy forehead. Nothing mattered in the whole world except stopping her pain. ‘I love you.’

She nodded, whispering, ‘Love you too,’ and held out her hand. He took it and she squeezed him hard. ‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘Honest injun, I’m OK.’

The curtains suddenly swished sideways, and a tall man entered, dressed in surgical scrubs and white clogs, with his mask dangling below his chin. ‘Hallo, Mrs Klaesson?’ he said.

Naomi nodded.

He shot a glance at John then looked back at Naomi. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you. How are you doing?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said.

John wanted to scream out, You are not fine, you have been in unbearable agony, you are not fine at all, tell him the truth! But instead he stood there and said nothing, while Sharpus-Jones examined her carefully, externally first, pressing all around her abdomen, then internally, all the time firing questions about her medical history, some of which Naomi answered directly, and some of which she answered after prompting by John.

Finally, pulling off his gloves, Sharpus-Jones said, ‘Well, the good news is that your cervix is closed and you’re not bleeding, which means that you are not miscarr-’

He was cut short as Naomi suddenly convulsed violently, sending the obstetrician stepping back in shock. She threw her arms in the air, arched her back, her eyes rolling, and let out a scream that tore through John’s soul.

Moments later – barely seconds, it seemed to John – there was a whole team of people hoisting her onto a gurney, then they were wheeling her out of the room and along the corridor.

‘Where are you taking her?’ he asked in sudden, blind panic.

No one answered.

John followed them, but after only a few paces the nurse, Alison Shipley, took his arm and stopped him.

‘Please wait here,’ she said.

‘No way!’

John shook his arm free and hurried after them. Then his path was blocked by the obstetrician

‘Please, Dr Klaesson, I know your anxiety, but I must ask you to wait here.’

It was a command, not a request; non-negotiable, said with a mixture of kindness and authority.

‘Where are you taking her?’ John said. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to do an ultrasound scan and I’ll take it from there. I may have to open her up to see what’s going on inside. It would be better for everyone if you waited here.’

He went outside to call Naomi’s mother and tell her what was happening; he needed someone he could share his distress with.

*

An hour later the obstetrician came back into the room, still gowned-up, mask dangling, looking deadly serious. John stared up at him in terror, and was about to stand, when the obstetrician sat down beside him.

‘That was a close call.’

John stared at him, wide-eyed.

‘Are you a doctor of medicine, Dr Klaesson?’

‘No – I’m a scientist.’

‘OK. We had to do an emergency laparotomy-’ He raised a calming hand. ‘A little incision in her tummy – called a Pfannenstiel incision. She’s fine, everything is fine. The pain she was experiencing was caused by a cyst in the right ovary that had twisted, obstructing the ovary’s blood supply, so that the ovary had become gangrenous. It was a dermoid cyst that she probably had all her life, and I’m surprised it wasn’t found on the ultrasound scans. I don’t know if either of you were aware of it, that your wife has a congenital abnormality of her reproductive organs?’

‘Abnormality? What kind of abnormality?’

‘She has a double uterus.’

‘Double uterus? What – I mean – what does that-?’ John’s brain was racing. Why the hell hadn’t Dr Dettore told them this? He must have known. He must – perhaps he was hiding it from them. Why hadn’t Rosengarten told them? That was easier to answer – he was in a hurry when he had carried out the examination, his mind elsewhere.

‘It’s relatively common – about one in five hundred women has this, but in your wife’s case it was not immediately apparent. But anyhow, your wife is now fine and the babies are fine.’

‘Babies? What do you mean, babies?’

‘She has one on one side and one on the other.’

Seeing John’s expression, he hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Your wife is having twins. A boy and a girl. You do know that, don’t you?’

Naomi’s Diary

Twins!

Mum and Harriet are over the moon. I’m still in a state of total shock. I’ve had enough surprises and I don’t know how I feel emotionally about this. I’m trying to understand just what having twins involves. There’s a website that gives a week-by-week account of what to expect during pregnancy and the first year after giving birth – it isn’t going to be easy.

Last weekend Harriet brought down a newspaper article talking about an epidemic of twins. The article said it was caused by fertility specialists putting back clusters of eggs into the womb. I tried to explain to Harriet that it wasn’t like that at the Dettore Clinic, there should have been only one egg. But I don’t think she was really that interested in listening.

I sense she’s a little jealous. She’s thirty-two, hugely successful at her bond-dealing job, but single. I know from the many conversations we’ve had over the years that she’s always maintained she’s not particularly interested in having children – maybe she’s hoping that by my having twins it’ll take pressure off her from Mum to produce grandchildren!

Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about Halley lying in his tiny coffin in his grave in that pretty cemetery off Sunset. He’s all alone. Lori takes him flowers once a week for us. I wonder though if he’s even more lonely now that we’ve moved so far away?