Page 47 of Just Say (Hell) No
She gave him the address. St. Heliers Bay Road. “The midwife?” he asked. “Something wrong with Ella?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve just stepped around the corner to ring you. But I think you’d better come. Please.”
He may have exceeded the speed limit again on the way there. When he could, because traffic was Friday-afternoon rubbish. Finally, though, he pulled into the carpark of MedScan Radiology, then found the waiting room.
He may have had to stop and take a breath when he saw the two of them. Ella in her new school uniform, but with her legs pulled up onto the seat like a little girl, her arms wrapped around her shins and her cheek on her knees. She was watching Nyree, who was sitting with her legs crossed and a pad of paper on her knee, holding a stick of charcoal. Sketching. That didn’t look too bad.
Nyree looked up and saw him.Everybodylooked up and saw him, because he’d come in his Blues hoodie and shorts. Most people looked surprised, or excited. Ella looked… something else. She said, before he even sat down beside her, “Why are you here? You’re supposed to be at training.”
“All good,” he said. “Captain’s Run. Always short, eh. What’s happening? We waiting to take some pictures?”
“Yeh,” Ella said. “And the midwife wouldn’t tell me why.”
“Oh.” He contemplated saying that surely everything was fine, but as a veteran of more surgeries than he cared to count, when they sent you for further tests and wouldn’t tell you why, it usually wasn’t fine.
“Yeh,” Ella said. “Sucks.”
Marko looked at Nyree, who shrugged a tiny bit. It probably meant something to her, but it wasn’t helping him much. He wasn’t sure what to say next, so he looked at her sketch pad instead.
It was him. His arms, anyway, folded across his chest. The fact that she’d drawn him would’ve been nice to see under other circumstances. And if he hadn’t had Cat on his shoulder.
He said, “Entertaining the troops?”
“Yeh,” she said. “Cats and dogs. Always a good choice, distraction-wise.” She flipped back a page, and there they were. The puppies from that first day. The bold one struggling his way out of the box, his belly hanging over the edge. The little white one upside-down in his palm, a few lines under his fingers showing where she’d weed on him.
“My shining moment,” he said.
“Funny, though,” Ella said. Proving that the distraction was working.
He told Nyree, “You’re good.” There was nothing fussy about the drawings. A few quick lines, that was all, but somehow, the personality and humor showed through. He wondered how she did that, and if she could even say. Wondering about it seemed like the best place to rest his mind at the moment, since nobody was giving him any helpful clues.
The door opened to the inner sanctum, and everyone in the room looked up. Nervously, or otherwise.
“Fenella Hardigan?” the angular middle-aged woman called out, and Ella jumped up, looking like she’d been called into the head’s office. Looking sixteen. Her face paler than usual, the white uniform blouse shapeless over her billowing navy skirt, because she’d bought both of them too big on purpose. Long blue socks and chunky black shoes. A schoolgirl.
The woman led them back to a corner, where a few chairs stood beside a coffee table bearing some limp, outdated women’s magazines, and said, “You two can wait here. Fenella—”
“Ella,” she said. Quickly, because she hated her name. Maybe that was her own place to rest her mind.
The woman said, “You can change into a gown in a cubicle. Once you’re in the room, your…” She paused with an assessing glance at Marko.“Friendscan come join you.”
She led Ella away, and Marko didn’t sit. He leaned against the wall instead and said to Nyree, “Fill me in.”
She wasn’t sitting down, either. She kept her voice low, so Ella wouldn’t hear. “We went to the midwife as per specifications, and she did some prodding around Ella’s inner bits and some measuring of her outer dimensions and said, “Eighteen weeks or so, but we’ll arrange for you to go next door and get some dates.” Then she put a sort of oversized stethoscope on Ella’s belly, and we heard a racing sound. She said, ‘That’s a heartbeat,’ and Ella was excited, I think. And scared. It got real, maybe. But then the midwife listened some more, and felt Ella’s belly some more, and said, ‘Hmm. Something not quite usual here. Let’s see if they can get you in right now.’ I asked if something was wrong, and she said, ‘Probably not. There’s a fetus there, yeh. We just want to check.’ And that was it.”
“Well, bugger,” Marko said blankly.
“It was. I’m guessing Ella’s wondering how she’s supposed to feel. Glad if there’s something wrong, and maybe it’ll all be over? Sad about that? Both, probably. I thought she needed you here. I was out of my depth, you could say. And misery loves company.”
“No worries,” he said. “Thanks for calling me.”
He saw some of the tension leave her. “I thought you might want to ring her mum. I asked Ella, and she didn’t even answer.”
“Not yet,” Marko said.
“Her mum not likely to be helpful? Even now?”
“Not so much. It’d be panic stations.”
