Perfect People

36

There was something snagging in John’s throat, tugging at it from the inside, a muscle twitching from nerves; there were muscles twitching in his guts, also. He couldn’t stay still for more than a few moments. He wanted this all to be over, yet at the same time he was truly scared. Scared for Naomi, for the babies inside her. Scared about what lay ahead.

They had given him a chair beside the operating table, and he was sitting there now, stroking Naomi’s forehead, staring at the green cloth screen that had been clipped across her chest, blocking their view of everything that was going on beyond in the operating theatre.

They were waiting for the epidural block that had been injected into Naomi’s spine to become fully effective. John glanced at the round white clock face on the theatre wall. Five minutes had passed. He smiled at Naomi.

‘How are you feeling, darling?’

She looked so vulnerable in the loose gown, with the drip line in her wrist and her plastic name tag. A tiny bubble of spittle appeared in the corner of her mouth and he dabbed it away with a tissue.

‘OK,’ she said very quietly. ‘I’ll be glad when-’ She mustered a smile back at him, then swallowed, a nervous gulp. Her eyes were wide open. Sometimes they were green, sometimes brown; right now they seemed to be both at the same time. Her smile faded and doubt flickered, like a guttering candle, in its place.

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I’ll be glad when-’

When what? he wondered. When this waiting is over? When the babies are born and we can start to find out what Dettore has really done? When we can start to discover the wisdom of what we have done?

‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

‘Waiting.’

John stood up. The theatre seemed crowded; it had filled with figures in green gowns, most of them just chatting through their masks as if they were at a cocktail party. He was trying to remember who they all were. The consultant obstetrician, the registrar obstetrician, the consultant paediatrician, anaesthetist, assistant anaesthetist, nurses, midwife. Harsh white light burned down from the overhead lamp onto Naomi’s exposed swollen belly. Banks of electrical equipment were giving off readings.

The anaesthetist, a cheery, thorough man called Andrew Davey, touched her belly with cotton wool. ‘Can you feel this, Naomi?’

She shook her head.

Next he gave her a tiny prick with a small pointed instrument. ‘Feel anything now?’

Again she shook her head.

He picked up a water spray and gave a hard squirt, first onto her belly, then either side of her navel. Naomi did not flinch.

‘OK,’ the anaesthetist said, turning to the obstetrician. ‘I’m happy.’

The consultant obstetrician at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Mr Des Holbein, was a solidly built, bespectacled man in his mid-forties. He had dark hair shorn to stubble, with a serious face that had the air of a benign bank manager. Like everyone else, he knew nothing about their background with Dettore. But he had done a great deal to bolster their morale, in particular Naomi’s, over the past seven months.

It seemed to John that for the past seven months, doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals had become part of the rhythm of their lives.

Naomi had had a rough pregnancy. John had made it his business to try to understand more about the double uterus, and the conversation he and Naomi had had over and over, to the point of exhaustion and then beyond, was why Dr Dettore had never told them about this abnormality – and why had he implanted two eggs?

And why hadn’t Dr Rosengarten in Los Angeles seen she was expecting twins on the scan? When they discussed this with Des Holbein, he told them that at that early stage, if he hadn’t known about her second uterus, and if the boy had been out of position, possibly screened by the girl, and if he had been rushed, as it sounded Rosengarten was, it could quite easily have happened.

John kept in regular contact with his friend, Kalle Almtorp. The FBI were still no nearer to solving who had killed Dettore, and the Serendipity Rose had not been sighted. It was possible, he told John, that the Disciples of the Third Millennium, if they really existed, had sunk it at the same time as they had murdered Dettore – presumably killing everyone on board. They were no closer, either, to finding the killer of Marty and Elaine Borowitz, despite the original claims that it was done by the same Disciples of the Third Millennium. Just as silently as they had surfaced and struck, the Disciples of the Third Millennium seem to have faded back into the ether.

The FBI and Interpol were baffled. His best advice, Kalle told John, was for them to keep a low profile, avoid all publicity, be ex-directory and vigilant at all times. Kalle felt that moving from the US, as they had done, was sensible.

In England they had made the decision to tell no one about their visit to the Dettore Clinic, other than Naomi’s mother and sister. Some of John’s old colleagues, and some of Naomi’s friends, had seen the press mentions when the article had been syndicated around the world, but John and Naomi had successfully played it down saying that, as usual, the press had got the wrong end of the stick and had tried to make a sensational story out of nothing.

By her eighteenth week, instead of the morning sickness having gone, as she had been told it would, it had worsened. Naomi had been vomiting all the time, unable to keep any food down, despite constant cravings for frozen peas and Marmite sandwiches. Suffering severe dehydration, with her electrolytes up the creek, short of sodium and potassium in her blood, she had been admitted to hospital four times over the next two months.

In her thirtieth week, Naomi had been diagnosed with pre-eclampsia toxaemia – pregnancy-induced hypertension – with rising blood pressure. There was protein in her urine, causing her very uncomfortable swelling of her hands and ankles, to the point where she could no longer get her shoes on.

When, at thirty-six and a half weeks, Mr Holbein advised them Naomi should have an elective lower segment caesarean section instead of going the full term, because he was worried about the function of the placenta being impaired and possibly causing death of the babies or bleeding behind the placenta, Naomi had taken little persuading; as had John.

The conversation in the operating theatre suddenly quietened and in unison the gowned medics seemed to close ranks around Naomi. John sat down and took her hand. His mouth had gone dry. He was trembling. ‘Starting now,’ he said to her.

He could hear the clatter of instruments. Saw figures leaning over the table, eyes above the masks all serious in concentration. He craned his neck around the screen and watched Mr Holbein drawing a scalpel across the base of the huge bump that took up the whole of Naomi’s abdomen. Squeamishly, he looked away.

‘What can you see?’ Naomi asked.

Then suddenly the obstetrician popped his head around the screen.

‘Would you like to see the babies delivered?’ he asked, cheerily.

John looked at Naomi, bolstered by the confident tone of Holbein’s voice. ‘How do you feel about that, darling?’

‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘Would you like to?’

‘I – I would, yes,’ he said.

‘I would too.’

Moments later, the anaesthetist undid the clips and let the green sheet down.

‘You can hold up her head to give her a better view,’ Holbein said to John.

Gently, John obeyed. They could see a lumpy ocean of green sheets and the surgeons’ gowned arms.

It seemed just moments later that Phoebe Anna Klaesson, tiny, coated in the slimy curds of yellow cream of the vernix and blood, eyes open, crying, trailing her umbilical cord from her belly and gripped firmly in a rubber-gloved hand, was pulled clear of the warmth and bustle of her mother’s womb. She was lifted up into the comparative freezing cold and eerie silence of the operating theatre.

As John watched, totally mesmerized, she was turning, right in front of his eyes, from bluey pink to bright pink.

That crying. That sweet sound of life, their baby, their creation! He felt joy and fear at the same time. Memories of Halley’s birth swirled in his head. All the pride and hope he had had. Please be all right, Phoebe. You will be. Oh God, yes, you will be!

The obstetrician held Phoebe up, while another gowned figure fixed the cord with two clamps, and a third figure cut it between them.

Holding the cord with the baby, Mr Holbein placed them into the green sterile sheet the midwife was holding out. Then, wrapping the sheet around Phoebe, he brought her close to Naomi.

‘Your daughter looks lovely!’

Phoebe cried lustily.

‘Listen to that!’ Holbein said. ‘That’s a healthy cry.’

John’s eyes were sodden with tears. ‘Well done, darling,’ he whispered to Naomi. But she was staring at her daughter with such exhausted rapture she didn’t even hear him.

The obstetrician handed Phoebe to the midwife, who in turn took her over to the paediatrician, who was standing by the resuscitation trolleys, two small mobile tables each with a large flat overhead lamp. ‘And now the next child,’ he said.

As the surgeon moved back down to the abdomen, he said, ‘The second baby is further back and higher up – this is not going to be quite so easy. It’s a breech presentation with the head tucked up in a corner of the womb.’

Still supporting Naomi’s head, John’s anxiety returned. He watched the obstetrician concentrating. The man was moving his hands around inside Naomi, but John could see from his face something was wrong. Sweat was glistening on the man’s brow.

The atmosphere in the room seemed to change. Every pair of eyes now looked tense. The surgeon was still moving his hands. He said something to the scrub nurse, too quietly for John to hear.

A bead of sweat fell from the obstetrician’s head onto the lens of his glasses.

Suddenly the anaesthetist said to John, ‘We’re having a little difficulty here. I think, Mr Klaesson, you should leave us now.’

Holbein nodded. ‘Yes, that’s sensible.’

‘What’s going on?’ John said, glancing anxiously at Naomi, who seemed to have lost what little colour she had in her face.

The obstetrician said, ‘This is really difficult and the baby’s heart rate from cord pulsation has gone right down. It would be better if you went out into a waiting room.’

‘I’d prefer to stay,’ John said.

The anaesthetist and obstetrician exchanged glances. John looked anxiously at Mr Holbein. Was the baby dying?

The anaesthetist pinned back the screen, blocking Naomi and John’s view. John kissed her. ‘Don’t worry, darling, it’ll be OK.’

She squeezed his hand. Then he stood up. Des Holbein came up to Naomi again. ‘I’m sorry, Naomi, I’ve been trying to restrict the incision to what we call the bikini line, but I’m going to have to cut you vertically now.’

She gave a faint nod.

‘The epidural block isn’t high enough,’ the anaesthetist said. Then his assistant suddenly called out, in alarm, ‘Sixty!’

There was an air of panic in the room.

‘I can’t wait,’ the surgeon said.

The anaesthetist raised his voice almost to a shout, ‘I have to get her asleep! Give me a minute!’

John looked at both men in horror as the obstetrician imperiously said, ‘Goddammit man, the baby is already hypoxic!’

The anaesthetist was struggling with a needle in a vial.

‘I’m going to have to start if we want to save the baby!’ Holbein shouted, with desperation in his voice.

‘Wait, for God’s sake, let me get her intubated and paralysed.’

The obstetrician, dripping with sweat, lifted the green sheets, and folded them back, exposing all of her tummy. ‘How long will it take you?’

‘A couple of minutes.’

‘We don’t have a couple of minutes.’ He walked back up to Naomi. ‘I’m afraid if you want to save the baby this is going to hurt a little. Are you OK with that?’

‘Don’t hurt Naomi,’ John said. ‘Please – it’s – much more important-’

‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘Do what you have to do to save the baby, please, I’ll be OK.’

‘I don’t want you to hurt her,’ John said.

‘I really do think it would be better if you went outside,’ the surgeon said.

The anaesthetist spritzed the needle, then swabbed Naomi’s arm and injected her.

John stared in horror as, seconds later, transfixed, he watched the surgeon insert the scalpel upside down into her abdomen, and with one steady upward sweep, trailed by a ribbon of bright red blood, he cut from just above where her pubic hairline had ended, right up to her umbilicus.

Naomi screamed in pain, her fingernails cutting into the palm of John’s hand. She screamed again, then again. John stood, stunned, open-jawed, helpless, feeling blood draining away inside him, his head swimming. He took a deep breath.

The anaesthetist snapped a line onto the cannula in Naomi’s wrist, and instantly she began calming down. Seconds later, she appeared to have stopped breathing altogether, with her eyes wide open, staring glassily.

Instantly the anaesthetist took the airline from his assistant and tried to intubate her. But he was having problems getting the clear plastic tube down her throat. ‘Can’t get it in,’ he said. Perspiring heavily, he pulled it out, tried again, then pulled it out again, with all the elegance of a fisherman trying to get a hook out of the gullet of a pike.

John fainted.