Doctor Graham was on the ward that night, Filofax and all. The self same doctor who’d pronounced ‘You’ll never have children’ to Marilyn seven painful years previously. She doubted that he recognised her, even remembered her face. This brisk and bubbly Nurse Wilkinson was far removed from the wide-eyed newly wed whose dreams he'd shattered to pieces.
‘Mine’s black, two sugars please, Nurse’. He shot Marilyn a patronising wink, lest she should deign to find his commands unreasonable, and she resisted the urge to spit for the first time in her life, into his piping hot tea. The mug said ‘The Boss’. There were just some folks in life who seemed to enjoy the faults in God’s creation, she thought.
A first class maternity nurse, Marilyn soon had panicking mums rosy and smiling. Once the new arrivals were clean and wrapped up like presents she would retreat, allowing the women some privacy with their little miracles. Then she would weep. Though she had prayed and prayed for selflessness, thanked God for every fresh life she had the privilege of delivering into this world; though she shone in the wake of these newly happy families, part of her couldn’t let go of the dull ache inside - the knowledge of her defective womb.
‘Hey Baby’, Fraser whispered in her ear, and she jumped. He’d just arrived for his evening shift as porter, and thoroughly deserved the playful slap she gave him for shocking her so. She sometimes regretted having found him work on her ward - the hours were ridiculous - but these crossover shifts always lightened her heart. How fortunate she was to have a man who never let her down. His warm smiles never ran out, and while other Caribbean men from his area were out prowling for ladies and smack, he was racking up the hours for their future together.
‘Hey’, she said. A glance at the clock confirmed it was only three hours till home time, three hours until the dawn of Valentine’s day - a big fat sleep followed by an afternoon out with Fraser. She grinned, ‘Can’t wait till tomorrow, Sweetheart’. She was really looking forward to the moment he came and joined her in morning slumber - entwining his strong wiry body with her softness once again.
Fraser understood that grin. ‘You bet’, he replied, though there'd been no question. ‘Busy night?’
‘You kidding?’ said Marilyn, waking up to where she was, and with a stolen kiss on the lips, she spun away down to the arrivals room.
Fraser was amazing. He always knew exactly what she needed to hear, including when she needed to hear nothing at all. Other men would have left her by now, left her long ago in fact. ‘Faulty goods’, they’d say. But the two of them still gazed at each other like teenagers and she knew that would last forever. From that very first day their eyes had met, twelve years ago tomorrow, there was no looking at any other fella. He was her everything, and yet still he was not enough. No matter how often he filled her to the brim with his affection, like a canvas cup she emptied soon enough, leaving behind a damp, hollow feeling, the chilling embers of their hopeless burning passion.
It was a bitterly cold night outside and the ward was crazy. Two nurses down and a doctor out on call meant zero time for the remaining team to catch their breath. A woman had just been brought in, well into labour. She’d been in and out three times already over the last two days and even the skin on her forehead was ready to split. Marilyn prayed that this time it would actually happen. She wondered, though, if it was really such a clever idea to have a child at thirty-nine. But she imagined holding a newborn of her own in her arms, all sticky and new; she knew she’d relish that joy at any age.
Annie was her name. She seemed so frail Marilyn wondered whether she’d last the ordeal. Her purple eyes betrayed worries well beyond the pain of contractions. She was clutching a tapestry over-night bag, which Marilyn offered to unpack.
‘Yes - the picture’, said Annie. Among the array of hospital necessities, Marilyn found a teak-framed photograph of what she supposed to be three generations - mother, daughter and a baby.
‘You?’ Marilyn asked, a warm smile on her face, and Annie responded with an urgent nod. Placing the picture on the bedside cabinet, Marilyn focused on the image of Annie and imagined herself there instead: her black skin in contrast to Annie’s pale face, her strength in place of Annie’s fragility, and her smile chasing away Annie’s fear. But she was just the middle of a picture; there was no beginning nor end. The mother and baby figures faded to dark silhouettes in her mind’s eye.
‘That’s my first child,’ Annie said without breathing, ‘he’s fourteen now.’
‘He’s a cute one,’ said Marilyn. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Davey Grace’, Annie said.
‘That’s a - ’
‘I named him after the boy I should have married.’
‘Nurse Wilkinson!’ Doctor Graham barked from the gangway.
‘I'm so sorry,’ said Marilyn, ‘I’ll have to go.’ She touched Annie’s hand to show that she did want to hear the story. She might have been touching a doll.