“Only fifteen months. The job hasn’t been . . . what I imagined.” There’s an understatement and a half.
Lucy takes a deep breath and launches into what is clearly a preprepared spiel. “I’m taking you through to see Alicia. She’s agreed you can watch but she thinks you’re here in your capacity as a doctor, which, technically you are, so I think that’s okay. Alicia didn’t know when she conceived obviously that she would be giving birth in the middle of the Plague and the stress is slowing her labor down. That’s been happening a lot. We banned men from the ward for a while but then it was confirmed that women are hosts so . . .” She shrugs with forced carelessness before continuing. “Of the two hundred eighty-four boys I’ve helped to deliver in the last six months, twenty-nine have survived. The babies tend to fall ill within a few hours and we think it’s transmitted through contact after birth. Once they’re in the world, they’re touched by their mothers and then . . .” Alicia doesn’t know whether she’s having a boy or a girl, which is quite common. I think they like to have hope for as long as possible, but her body’s protective instinct is kicking in so it’s trying to keep the baby in for as long as possible.”
Lucy pauses. I think she wants me to say something.
“Is her husband here with her?”
“No, he died two months ago.”
With that, Lucy leads me through to a dark room with only a few dim lights. She tells me in a hushed voice that Alicia has an epidural and they think they might need to have an assisted delivery or a C-section. I stand in the corner, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible. Two midwives and what looks by her age like a senior registrar are encouraging Alicia to push, but anyone can see she’s not really trying. I can’t blame her.
Thirty minutes later, we’re all scrubbed up and in the theater. The need for a cesarean became obvious. Alicia is weeping in fear and shaking as her mum holds her hand. “I wish Ronnie was here,” she says, and my heart breaks for her. Time isn’t moving as we wait for the baby’s sex to be revealed. There is the usual cutting and violence of a cesarean. The senior registrar pulls the baby out. The whole room catches its breath and I’m imagining the announcement of a boy so clearly, I almost hear it in the tense silence of the room.
“It’s a girl. It’s a girl!” the registrar shouts, her voice’s volume muffled through her mask.
Alicia starts wailing and her mum holds her, cradling her from the shoulders up. One of the midwives takes the baby, cleans her up, weighs her.
“It’s a girl!” the senior registrar repeats, tears choking her voice as she starts stitching up Alicia.
“What’s her name?” the midwife says, handing the baby to Alicia’s mother, who holds the beautiful, pink crying baby by Alicia’s head so they can be close.
“Ava,” Alicia says. “Ronnie always liked that name.”
Lucy and I smile at each other, drunk on relief after the terrible few minutes before Ava was born. I can’t help but think back to the joy in the moments after my labors when finally, finally, it was over and they handed me my beautiful boys. The relief, the happiness, the sheer joy of meeting them and having their whole lives ahead of me. The contrast that appears to me—between my life then and the strange newness of my life now—feels, for a moment, so shocking it’s as though I’ve been punched in the throat. I am a single woman. I have no children. I had children but I don’t have them anymore.
“Let’s leave them to it,” Lucy says, and leads me, dazed and a bit nauseous with dread, to Delivery Room 5. Lucy takes a breath before opening the door. “Now we’re seeing Kim. She already has three girls. Her husband is immune.” My nose stings with tears of jealousy. Lucy looks at me sympathetically. “I know. I had the same response when I was doing her antenatal appointments. She’s just one of the lucky ones.”
“Does she know if it’s a fourth girl?”