Read Online The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans - Free Book Online
Authors: Nicholas Evans
Ads: Link
midnight so that she could take over the vigil but as he himself had dozed Robert thought he would let her go on sleeping.
He stared at Grace's face and thought that amid all this brutish technology she looked like a child half her age. She had always been so healthy. Apart from having a knee stitched once when she fell off a bicycle, she hadn't been in a hospital since she was born. Though there had been drama enough then to last a good few years.
It was an emergency caesarean section. After twelve hours of labor they had given Annie an epidural and because nothing seemed likely to happen for a while, Robert had wandered off to the cafeteria to get himself a cup of coffee and a sandwich. When he came back up to her room half an hour later all hell had broken loose. It was like the deck of a warship, people in green running all over the place, wheeling equipment around, yelling orders. While he was away, someone told him, the internal monitoring had shown the baby was in distress. Like some hero from a forties war movie, the obstetrician had swept in and declared to his troops that he was 'going in'.
Robert had always imagined caesareans were peaceful affairs. No panting, shoving and screaming, just a simple cut along a plotted line and the baby lifted effortlessly out. Nothing then had prepared him for the wrestling match that followed. It was already under way when they let him in and stood him wide-eyed in a corner. Annie was under general anesthetic and he watched these men, these total strangers, delving inside her, up to their elbows in gore, hauling it out and sloshing it in dollops into a corner. Then stretching the hole with metal clamps and grunting and heaving and twisting until one of them, the war hero, had it in his hands and the others suddenly went still and watched him lift this little thing, marbled white with womb grease, out of Annie's gaping belly.
He fancied himself as a comic too, this man, and said casually over his shoulder to Robert: 'Better luck next time. It's a girl.' Robert could have killed him. But after they had quickly wiped her clean and checked that she had the right number of fingers and toes, they handed her to him, wrapped in a white blanket and he forgot his anger and held her in his arms. Then he laid her on Annie's pillow so that when she woke up Grace was the first thing she saw.
Better luck next time. There had never been a next time. Both of them had wanted another child but Annie had miscarried four times, the last time dangerously, well into the pregnancy. They were told it was unwise to go on trying but they didn't need telling. For with each loss the pain multiplied exponentially and in the end neither felt able to face it again. After the last one, four years ago, Annie said she wanted to be sterilized. He could tell it was because she wanted to punish herself and he had begged her not to. In the end, reluctantly, she'd relented and had a coil fitted instead, making a grim joke that with luck it might have the same effect anyway.
It was at precisely this time that Annie was offered and, to Robert's amazement, accepted her first editorship. Then, as he watched her channel her anger and disappointment into her new role, he realized she'd taken it either to distract or, again, to punish herself. Perhaps both. But he wasn't in the least surprised when she made such a brilliant success of it that almost every major magazine in the country started trying to poach her.
Their joint failure to produce another child was a sorrow he and Annie never now discussed. But it had seeped silently into every crevice of their relationship.
It had been there, unspoken, this afternoon when Annie arrived at the hospital and he had so stupidly broken down and wept. He knew Annie felt he blamed her for being unable to give him another child. Maybe she had reacted so harshly to his tears because somehow she could see in them a trace of that blame. Maybe she was right. For this fragile child,
He stared at Grace's face and thought that amid all this brutish technology she looked like a child half her age. She had always been so healthy. Apart from having a knee stitched once when she fell off a bicycle, she hadn't been in a hospital since she was born. Though there had been drama enough then to last a good few years.
It was an emergency caesarean section. After twelve hours of labor they had given Annie an epidural and because nothing seemed likely to happen for a while, Robert had wandered off to the cafeteria to get himself a cup of coffee and a sandwich. When he came back up to her room half an hour later all hell had broken loose. It was like the deck of a warship, people in green running all over the place, wheeling equipment around, yelling orders. While he was away, someone told him, the internal monitoring had shown the baby was in distress. Like some hero from a forties war movie, the obstetrician had swept in and declared to his troops that he was 'going in'.
Robert had always imagined caesareans were peaceful affairs. No panting, shoving and screaming, just a simple cut along a plotted line and the baby lifted effortlessly out. Nothing then had prepared him for the wrestling match that followed. It was already under way when they let him in and stood him wide-eyed in a corner. Annie was under general anesthetic and he watched these men, these total strangers, delving inside her, up to their elbows in gore, hauling it out and sloshing it in dollops into a corner. Then stretching the hole with metal clamps and grunting and heaving and twisting until one of them, the war hero, had it in his hands and the others suddenly went still and watched him lift this little thing, marbled white with womb grease, out of Annie's gaping belly.
He fancied himself as a comic too, this man, and said casually over his shoulder to Robert: 'Better luck next time. It's a girl.' Robert could have killed him. But after they had quickly wiped her clean and checked that she had the right number of fingers and toes, they handed her to him, wrapped in a white blanket and he forgot his anger and held her in his arms. Then he laid her on Annie's pillow so that when she woke up Grace was the first thing she saw.
Better luck next time. There had never been a next time. Both of them had wanted another child but Annie had miscarried four times, the last time dangerously, well into the pregnancy. They were told it was unwise to go on trying but they didn't need telling. For with each loss the pain multiplied exponentially and in the end neither felt able to face it again. After the last one, four years ago, Annie said she wanted to be sterilized. He could tell it was because she wanted to punish herself and he had begged her not to. In the end, reluctantly, she'd relented and had a coil fitted instead, making a grim joke that with luck it might have the same effect anyway.
It was at precisely this time that Annie was offered and, to Robert's amazement, accepted her first editorship. Then, as he watched her channel her anger and disappointment into her new role, he realized she'd taken it either to distract or, again, to punish herself. Perhaps both. But he wasn't in the least surprised when she made such a brilliant success of it that almost every major magazine in the country started trying to poach her.
Their joint failure to produce another child was a sorrow he and Annie never now discussed. But it had seeped silently into every crevice of their relationship.
It had been there, unspoken, this afternoon when Annie arrived at the hospital and he had so stupidly broken down and wept. He knew Annie felt he blamed her for being unable to give him another child. Maybe she had reacted so harshly to his tears because somehow she could see in them a trace of that blame. Maybe she was right. For this fragile child,
Similar Books
