The Last Love Note(27)

Sirens wail in the distance. It’s the sound that never comes for us. Always for other people. The people on the other end of bad things happening. Not us. Since the moment I got pregnant with this baby, without even trying, we’ve been in a bubble. Perfect. Safe.

‘She’s pregnant,’ I hear Cam tell the paramedics minutes later. ‘Check her first.’

‘How many weeks?’

That stumps him.

‘Eleven,’ I respond, fighting tears. ‘We just had the ultrasound, minutes ago.’

The paramedic nods and suggests his partner checks me out, while he shines a light into Cam’s eyes and looks at his pupils. ‘Did you hit your head?’ he asks.

Cam doesn’t know. Like he doesn’t know how many weeks our baby is. And like he misjudged the space between cars at the intersection and couldn’t pay attention in the ultrasound.

There are other things too. Things I’d noticed and brushed aside over the last few weeks. Moments of forgetfulness. Missteps. A faraway look in his eyes that he worked hard to wrestle back to the here and now whenever I caught him.

This accident is the universe’s way of forcing me to face facts. There is something very wrong here. We’re about to be put in two separate ambulances and carted off to hospital and that’s when they’re going to find it: the thing in Cam’s brain that has been gradually stealing my husband from me, one little slip-up at a time.



We’re brought in and parked on gurneys in a corridor out the back of the Emergency Department at the Canberra Hospital in Garran. Nursing teams are hovering around both of us, putting cannulas in our hands in case we need fluids or surgery. It seems an overreaction; we were barely hurt. They’re treating us as if we’d had internal injuries anyway. Maybe it’s protocol.

Cam is parked just across the corridor. For my entire life with him, every time we’ve looked at each other since we first met way back in that lecture theatre, I’ve felt secure. Certain. Protected. And so has he. With our necks immobilised right now, we can’t turn our heads, and that connection is cut. Even worse, I think the connection was already interrupted before the accident.

There’s something missing in the way he’s been looking at me. I’ve been noticing it for weeks. I’d even wondered the unthinkable: had he met someone? He seemed distracted and quiet and just not himself. I saw it in the ultrasound room, and again in the car. Add to that all the forgetful little incidents – missing our wedding anniversary, forgetting Charlie’s sleep routine, looking for stuff he’d already packed, too many words on the tip of his tongue . . . The lights are on, but my incandescent husband is not one hundred per cent home.

‘What’s happening?’ I ask, grabbing the arm of a nurse as she hurries past.

‘Someone will be with you as soon as we can.’

‘Can you tell us your name?’ a doctor is saying across the hall.

‘Cameron Edward Whittaker.’

Thank God.

‘Date of birth?’

He rattles it off, and I’m feeling comforted. I have an active imagination. Always have had. Maybe I’m making things up. Perhaps it’s the PND and the unexpected pregnancy and the new job causing me to be overly anxious and invent things.

‘Can you tell us, Cam, what day it is today?’

Monday 8th. Monday 8th. Monday 8th.

Silence. ‘Umm . . .’

‘Just the month is fine,’ the doctor says. ‘Or the year?’

Come on, Cam. You can do this! Think!

‘Is it . . . I don’t know.’

They check his pupils again. ‘Can you tell us who is with you today?’

‘Yes,’ Cam says, and I can hear the smile in his tone. ‘That’s the love of my life. Mother of my child.’

I melt. The nurses melt. Everyone within earshot melts.

‘Aww, how old is your child, Cam?’

‘He just had his first birthday.’

Well, a couple of months ago, but okay.

‘Any plans for a brother or sister?’

I put a hand over my non-existent bump and think of the ultrasound photo. Where is it? I feel quite panicked. This early on, it’s the only real proof, apart from my morning sickness, that I’m pregnant.

‘No plans,’ Cam says, confidently.

If I wasn’t already lying down, I would fall down. I’m dizzy. Hot. And scared witless.

‘Cam—’

A nurse puts a finger to her lips, asking me not to say anything.

‘Do you remember where you were just before the accident?’

I hold my abdomen protectively and will him to know. Despite all the clattering in Emergency, I can almost hear him trying to concentrate.

‘We were at . . .’ Recognition flits into his voice, briefly. ‘Katie – are you pregnant?’

I start to cry and imagine his face lighting up the way it lit up when I showed him the early pregnancy test. It’s like he’s learning this news for the first time.

The more excited he sounds, the more terrified I become. I don’t know what’s wrong with him but I know it’s serious.

‘Out of an abundance of caution, I think we might order a CT scan,’ a young registrar says. ‘Nothing to worry about at this stage. It’s likely concussion.’