Paula Byrne - Look to Your Wife

Lisa was pregnant when they returned from the honeymoon. They called their daughter Emma.

Lisa loved her with a visceral passion and ferocity. She herself was born in August, a Leo, and although she didn’t hold much faith in astrology, she was a lioness through and through. She had flaws aplenty, but she also had loyalty and courage in spades. Her revered Coco Chanel was a Leo too, and collected lions, and used them again and again in her work. Lions embroidered onto bags, costume jewellery, even jackets.

It had been a tricky start to motherhood, however. Emma was premature and tiny. Her lungs were not developed, so she was whipped away into intensive care before Lisa could bond with her. There was a terrible moment when she experienced a fleeting desire to grab the baby and smash its tender skull on the hard hospital floor. The feeling went as quickly as it came, but it horrified Lisa. Is this how an animal feels when confronted with the runt of the litter? It was a Lady Macbeth moment. She dared not tell a soul, not even Edward, who understood her so well, and would never judge. She felt a deep sense of shame.

The love for baby Emma came later, but, when it did, it was all-encompassing. It was the truest, purest, love of her life. Emma was her Achilles’ Heel. She would die for her. The difficult first few months – Emma in an incubator, with the only possible contact through a tiny finger-hole in the Perspex casing – brought her close to Chuck, who had by now been promoted to deputy head. He had become Edward’s trusted confidant.

Chuck had lost a baby. A boy. The baby had been three weeks old when he and Milly found him lifeless in his cot. Cold as any stone. Chuck – smart-talking Chuck, the coolest dude to come out of South Carolina – still cried when the boy was mentioned. His marriage to Milly had foundered under the strain, though they would always remain the best of friends. Milly ran a small local charity for battered wives. Edward arranged for it to be the school charity, supported by cake-sale days, and sponsored walks along the banks of the Mersey.

Some of Lisa’s colleagues disliked Chuck: he was too American, too forthright, too clever. But she knew what he had suffered. She sympathized, and he in turn revealed a tender side as baby Emma struggled to pull through those first weeks.

Despite this, Lisa was never entirely sure that Chuck could be trusted. Soon after arriving at St Joseph’s, she had been warned by a colleague to be wary of him.

‘Do you know what he said about you?’

‘No, Jan, and I’m not sure I want to. I’m insecure enough as it is.’

‘Well, I’m going to tell you because he’s no friend to you. He doesn’t like women, Lisa.’

‘What do you mean? He’s not gay. No one has a better gaydar than me. Go on then, what did he say?’

‘Well, it was at your book launch party. Someone asked for you and he piped up, “You can’t mistake her. She’ll be the one with her tits hanging out of her designer dress”.’

Lisa chuckled. ‘Oh come on, Jan. That’s the way he speaks. He means no harm. He’s just joking. You know he’s got a thing about breasts, because his wife is so flat-chested.’

‘Well, look at the way he dressed for your party, in all that combat gear and muddy boots. Why would anyone turn up to a party celebrating a book about fashion looking like that? It was a deliberate slap in the face. He doesn’t like you, Lisa. I see the way he watches you all the time.’

* * *

Emma wasn’t very lucky with her health. The under-developed lungs had consequences. Apnoea episodes in the night. Parental panic. More than one 999 call. The hospital became a familiar place.

Clinics, scans, tests. And then, during what was supposed to be a merely precautionary ultrasound, the radiographer said, ‘Something’s not quite as it should be here. Can you wait a minute while I consult a colleague?’

A more senior-looking figure came in, holding the printout of the ultrasound. ‘Nothing to worry about, but just to make sure, we’re going to admit Emma to hospital down in Birmingham where they specialize in this area.’ They refused to say exactly what was wrong, only that when a young child’s lungs struggle, it was important to keep an eye on the heart. ‘Let’s leave it to the experts in Birmingham.’

‘How do we get there?’ asked Lisa. ‘On the train?’

‘No, we’ll take her in an ambulance – just to be on the safe side. Maybe call your husband and get him to drive down and meet you? Nothing will happen before he gets there. It’ll probably be a day or two before they complete the necessary tests.’

‘You’re one of the Heart Kids now,’ one nurse joked, as little Emma was admitted onto the ward. A Heart Kid, thought Lisa, as if that were a good thing. You had to laugh or you’d go mad. Soon, Emma was hooked up to an array of machines, and a whole team of doctors was standing over the bed. And then Lisa heard words that no parent should ever hear: ‘Your daughter is in serious danger of heart failure. We are going to have to perform bypass surgery. Immediately.’ A ‘nil by mouth’ sign was hung up in preparation for surgery.

Broken hearts, Lisa thought. Men and women whine on about broken hearts. Narcissists. Know what it’s like to have a consultant tell you that your child needs bypass surgery. The kind of thing you associate with old men whose arteries are clogged. A child in intensive care. That’s a broken heart.

Edward fell apart when she telephoned him. He cried and he cried. No time for tears, thought Lisa. Get this girl through the operation. She sat at Emma’s side, holding her hand, as she waited and waited for her to be taken into theatre, willing her to survive. I can be the mother of a sick child, she thought, but God please spare her. She was reassured when the surgeon came to speak to them. He told her that heart bypass surgery, even for children, was a routine procedure these days. ‘No different from having your tonsils out in the old days when you were young,’ he grinned, slightly flirtatiously. She didn’t believe him, but she liked his style. He looked alarmingly young to be performing heart surgery. He had blond, floppy hair, and was wearing DM boots. He’s OK, Lisa thought. A surgeon in DM boots is going to save my child. And he did. She never doubted him.

On coming round from the anaesthetic Emma cried silent tears and tried to mouth the word ‘Mummy’. From that moment on, Lisa knew she was going to be all right. She was strong, like her mother. No one likes a child who screams and throws a tantrum, but a child who is trying not to cry, when she has had major heart surgery … well, that was courage.

Edward had only just made it down from Liverpool to Birmingham in time for the operation. When Lisa had called him, he had been in a tricky meeting, and he’d seen it through to the finish before setting off. He was always the professional. When he arrived, Lisa shouted at him, accusing him of caring more about the bloody school than his own daughter. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’m here now.’ Though he’d only made it in time by virtue of driving the wrong way down the one-way street outside the hospital and parking in a direction that revealed his transgression.

When he emerged into daylight, after the long night waiting in the parents’ room while the surgery was taking place, then the relief of stroking Emma’s hair in the recovery room, he found a yellow ticket on the windscreen of the BMW. His head throbbing with fury, he stalked into the police station that happened to be opposite the children’s hospital. He had a thing about the police. He had been incandescent on the occasion that he had been pulled over in Toxteth, just because he was driving a black BMW. He demanded to see Officer 354, who had issued the ticket, explaining through gritted teeth that his young daughter had just gone through open-heart surgery.