Look to Your Wife. Paula Byrne

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.

      The constable looked visibly taken aback, and said, ‘I’m so sorry to hear that, and in the circumstances I’m going to rescind that ticket, sir. And I do hope your daughter makes a full recovery.’ She did, and somehow his faith in human nature, even in God, was restored by the policeman’s evident delight in the opportunity to use the word rescind.

      Having come close to it, Lisa knew that there could be no pain in the world like losing a child. Once it was clear that Emma had got through the operation without infection or complication, she was moved from isolation to a ward. One evening, Lisa saw a tiny premature baby boy in a side room. The door was ajar, and she overheard family members saying platitudes to the mother like ‘he’s a little fighter’, ‘he looks stronger today’, ‘you’ll be home before you know it’. But when Lisa looked at the father’s pale, pitiful face, she knew that he knew the truth. At least her daughter was still alive. She thought of Chuck that day, and the hell that he had endured.

      In the months following Emma’s recovery, Lisa became desperate for another baby. Edward had always insisted that he only wanted one child. That was his own experience. ‘Have two and it will soon be three,’ he said. ‘And then you lose your man-to-man marking capability.’ And again, ‘If there are three, one child will always feel left out – and then you’d have to buy a people carrier, get an extra bedroom on holidays.’ His other worry was Emma’s health. What would happen if she needed another heart operation, if there were a new baby in the family?

      ‘I’m not talking about six children, like in my family, darling. Not even about three. Just one more.’ Lisa was not to be deterred, and Edward believed her when she said that she could cope just fine. Her strongest argument was her concern that their home life would be dominated by Emma’s poor health. What could be more distracting, more lovely, than a baby in the house? The milky, yeasty smell of a new baby. Then, as Emma began at school, a toddler making them all laugh.

      Edward never really had a choice. When a woman wants a baby, nothing or no one will stand in her way. Emma told her colleague Jan about her plan to become pregnant. She had conceived easily the first time. She had no worries on that score. ‘Tonight’s the night,’ she said. ‘The champagne’s in the fridge, and I’m going to seduce my husband.’ Three months later, she told Jan that she was having a baby, a boy. They both giggled conspiratorially. ‘I always knew you were a determined woman,’ said Jan, admiringly.

      Emma was delighted to know that her mother was having a boy baby. Lisa told her, ‘He’s yours. I had him for you.’ She wanted something good to come out of the sadness of Emma’s health problems. She had secretly longed for another daughter, but little Emma much preferred the idea of a brother.

      Emma was special. One day when Lisa was heavily pregnant and climbing the stairs, she felt two little hands underneath her belly, lifting up the weight. The support felt fantastic. During the early part of the labour, Emma came into the hospital ward and encouraged Lisa to walk around and work through the pain. Much to Lisa’s amusement, Emma found a large pink plastic ball in the maternity suite and rolled it towards her.

      ‘Em, how on earth do you think that exercise ball is going to help?’

      ‘Sit on it, Mummy. Then your back won’t hurt.’

      It worked like magic.

      Because Emma had been premature, Lisa had been told to have an epidural. There had then followed a messy forceps delivery. This