The Two of Us (33 page)

There is a television mounted to the wall, and we watch films and old detective shows and cookery programmes and panel shows and commercials, not changing channels but staring through the box,
passing occasional comments to fill the silence on this side of the screen. I fetch food from a supermarket concession in the hospital foyer, and we eat pre-packed sandwiches and crisps and drink
bottles of juice and water. The food makes me feel sick.

Ivy sleeps for maybe two hours in the late afternoon. I turn the TV off and close my eyes, but sleep doesn’t come. Without the background drone of Saturday daytime television, the steady
beep of the monitor fills the room. Does our baby know its twin is dead? Is he or she distressed, sad, lonely?

Inside my wallet is a laminated card, given to us at our antenatal class. Printed on one side is an acronym to help dads ask the right questions and make the right decisions while the mums go
through labour. If anything goes wrong, you consult the card and work though the word: BRAIN: What are the
Benefits
to going ahead with this decision or procedure? What are the
Risks
? What are the
Alternatives
? What does your
Intuition
tell you? What happens if you do
Nothing
?

None of it helps.

The baby’s heart beats at between 120 and 130 beats a minute. I count in time with the monitor:
one, two, three, four
. . . all the way up to one hundred and twenty, or one
hundred and twenty-four, or one hundred and thirty-two . . . over and over and over.

The sun sets between six and seven, and the sky – streaked gold and rose and purple – is beautiful. And I count to 124, and 122 and 127.

When Ivy wakes it is completely dark outside our window.

‘I think it’s happening,’ she says.

The midwife is called Phoebe; her shift finished an hour ago but she is staying to see this through to the end. She tells me they will attempt to deliver both babies naturally.
Even so, there are another four medical staff in attendance, their mute bodies seeming to amplify the silence, making it palpable and ominous.

Phoebe is the one who takes charge of the situation, everybody else apparently here only on standby – despite her professional demeanour, Phoebe’s eyes are wet with tears. Ivy is
offered an epidural to help her deal with any pain. The midwife says it will make it difficult for Ivy to feel the contractions and know when to push, possibly prolonging labour. Ivy asks for the
injection. The tension in the room ebbs and flows with the contractions, and Phoebe – her voice soft and Irish accented – tells Ivy when to breathe and when to push. Ivy is passive and
expressionless throughout. She stares straight up at the ceiling and closes her eyes for minutes at a time. Phoebe stares at me, grimaces, and mouths the words:
Help her!

I hold Ivy’s hand but I don’t know what to say. I form words in my head:
you can do this; nearly there; well done
– but they’re all inadequate; all
inappropriate; all wrong.

The first baby is born at fourteen minutes past one on Sunday morning, March 30th. He’s a boy. The less active of the twins, we used to call this baby Turvy, but the
nickname sounds shamefully frivolous now.

The midwife asks if I want to cut the umbilical cord, but I shake my head.

Ivy holds her son to her chest and cries and kisses his thin, wet, dirty hair.

This is supposed to be the happiest day, the happiest moment of my life. And maybe – as I look at my perfect baby boy, loose purple skin covered in wax and blood and gunk, eyes screwed
tight against the world – maybe for a split second it is. And then it’s gone, because – and everybody in the room knows this – Ivy still has one dead child to deliver. Even
our new baby is quiet, as if he too understands that his big moment has happened in shadow.

Phoebe asks if he has a name and we say no.

Time passes in the hard, conflicted silence of the room; me sitting beside the bed, Ivy pulling our boy against her as if, having just given birth to him, she is trying to reabsorb him into her.
Phoebe busies herself, arranging equipment, checking Ivy’s pulse, taking the baby’s temperature. She says our boy is healthy and doing fine, but he is colder than he should be and needs
to go to the special care unit. When she goes to take him from Ivy, Ivy becomes hysterical.

‘Don’t take him. Please. Please! Don’t take my baby!’

I put one hand on Ivy’s forehead, another on her hand, and she pulls the baby tight to her chest.

‘Your boy is doing fine,’ says Phoebe. ‘He’s doing great. But he needs a little extra attention. Just for a short while.’ As she speaks, Phoebe takes hold of the
boy and pulls him gently from Ivy’s grip. Ivy’s face is a mask of sadness and fear, and she holds onto her child until her arms are fully extended. When, finally, she lets go of her
son, her hands fall limply to the bed and her expression glazes over as if she has become suddenly catatonic.

Our boy is placed in a plastic-sided cot that I hadn’t noticed until now, and he is taken from the room. As the doors swing closed he starts to cry – the sound echoing and fading
down the corridor.

Danny – he is a boy, too – is born ‘sleeping’ at two twenty-eight. Identical twins. The doctors had to cut Ivy and use forceps to facilitate the
delivery, and Danny is slick with blood when he emerges. The midwife does not ask if I want to cut the cord and she wipes the baby before placing his still body in my hands. Like his older brother,
Danny’s eyes are closed. Whereas his brother was tensed against the cold brightness of the delivery room, Danny is relaxed and peaceful.

Ivy’s face is turned away. ‘Is it . . . is it okay?’ she asks.

‘He’s beautiful,’ I say, ‘here.’ And I hold the baby out to her.

Ivy turns to me and smiles, but only with her mouth. She takes Danny. ‘Hey,’ she whispers into his neck, and she kisses the top of his head, his nose and his lips. ‘Hey there,
baby.’

We are transferred into a private room where Phoebe helps Ivy express a small amount of breast milk, which will then be given to our boy in the special care unit. Phoebe says I can stay, but Ivy
encourages me to go home and sleep in our own bed. She asks me to call her mother and father but to keep them away for the time being. She wants to be alone with Danny, she says.

In the corridor, Phoebe hugs me and we cry together. I ask her what went wrong and she says that sometimes it ‘just happens’. There is no obvious cause, no immediately apparent
reason why one of our boys survived and the other died inside his mother. She tells me they will keep Ivy in for a day or so, and that Danny will be able to stay with his mother. The idea sounds
macabre, and I say as much to Phoebe, but she assures me that it will help Ivy deal with her grief and say goodbye to our boy. She explains that they will put a cold cot in the room, and when Ivy
is not holding him, this is where he will stay.

It is after six in the morning when I get back to the flat, and the sun is rising above the silhouetted trees and houses on our street. The flat feels unnaturally quiet and
empty – it feels today as if it is missing not only Ivy, but the two babies she has been carrying since the middle of last summer. Since forever ago.

I feed the goldfish, clean yesterday’s dishes, make coffee and take it into the nursery, where I begin dismantling one cot, one mobile, one baby bouncer. I take the disassembled parts down
to the car along with the extra, unneeded Moses basket. I remove the second car seat from the back of the car and transfer it into the boot with the rest of the stuff baby Danny will never get to
sit, sleep and bounce in. When I go to open the front door of the flat, my hands are shaking so much that I can barely fit the key into the lock.

And now, finally, the tears come. Angry, hysterical tears, and I’m so grateful for them that I shout at the walls like a drunk, and grind my knuckles into my temples until white spots
crackle across my vision.

At one minute past nine o’clock I drive to the charity shop, but I’ve forgotten it’s a Sunday and everything is closed. I’m tempted to leave the stuff on the pavement,
but it feels disrespectful to Danny. I drive to Earl’s Court and pull up outside El and Phil’s flat. But as I sit behind the wheel, listening to the engine cool, it occurs to me what a
bad idea this is. El can’t be relied upon not to say something crass and stupid; and the state I’m in, I couldn’t be relied upon not to slap him. And even the thought of some
imagined facetious comment has me gripping the steering wheel tight enough to make my knuckles pop. So as much as I want to talk to Phil and sit with El, I put the car into gear and drive back to
the flat.

I haven’t slept more than half a dozen hours in the last forty-eight and I feel sick. I make more coffee and call my dad. We don’t say much. I tell him what happened, and while I sob
down the phone Dad says things that are supposed to comfort me. You’ll get through it, son, he says, eventually you’ll get through it.

He repeats this phrase to me as I sit in the fairy-tale nursery, crying, staring at the indents in the carpet where baby Danny’s cot stood only one hour ago.

When I walk into Ivy’s hospital room on Sunday evening, she is lying in bed with Danny, caressing our boy’s head with her cheek. Pink, peaceful and beautiful
– he looks alive. Perfect fingers curled into tiny fists, fat cheek resting against his mother’s chest. Ivy’s eyes, too, are closed.

I sit in the chair beside the bed and stroke Ivy’s head. I run my hand over her brown hair, following the line and flow of it to where it falls against Danny’s shoulder. I let my
hand drift onto Danny’s head and it’s as cold as a stone. When Ivy opens her eyes, I flinch.

‘Hey,’ I say.

Ivy looks through me, expressionless.

A new mother and her baby should be a beautiful image, the most beautiful image in the world. Ivy looks like hell; like she hasn’t slept and hasn’t stopped crying since I left this
morning.

Inside my skull I say:
Are you okay? Did you sleep? I’m sorry.

I say, ‘Have you seen baby . . . the other baby?’

Ivy shakes her head. A tear forms in the corner of her eye, thinning as it travels across her cheek and down her chin, disappearing into Danny’s sparse brown hair. He’s been cleaned
since yesterday, but his head is damp and sticky with accumulated tears.

‘Can I hold him?’

Ivy’s bottom lip trembles, she holds Danny closer to her chest, closes her eyes, presses her cheek against the top of his head. And then she relaxes, opens her eyes and passes my son to
me. He weighs nothing at all; born five weeks premature, Danny fits comfortably into my cupped hands and he weighs . . . nothing. He is dressed in a white cotton onesy and his chest is warm with
absorbed heat from Ivy. One side of his face, too, is warm, his cheek soft against my neck. The other side of his face, though, like his back and bottom, is cold through the thin material. I push
my index finger into his curled palm and it feels as if his tiny fingers, his perfect fingers, grip back.

‘We should go and see his brother,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t even have a name.’

Ivy’s chin dimples and I wonder how many tears a person can physically make.

‘We can’t call him Turvy forever,’ I say, forcing a smile. But it’s too soon, and Ivy turns away from me.

‘Have you seen him?’ Ivy says.

‘I thought we could go together.’

Ivy turns her head to face me. ‘Is he . . .?’

‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘The midwife says he’s strong, drinking his milk, keeping them busy.’

Ivy extends her arms, asking for Daniel, and I pass him back to her. She settles him on her chest, kisses his hair, rubs his back as if trying to warm him. ‘I can’t,’ she
says.

‘Not today.’

‘Just for five minutes?’

Ivy shakes her head. ‘After this’ – she strokes Daniel’s head – ‘after this there’s nothing. This is it . . . this is all I have with him.’ She
kisses Daniel’s head. ‘This is it.’

After an hour, Ivy falls asleep and I cuddle Daniel for as long as I can bear before placing him in his cold cot. While Ivy sleeps I visit our boy in the special care unit.

He too is sleeping, curled up inside a sealed incubator. Two blue pads trailing wires are attached to his chest, and another wire is strapped to his foot via a Velcro cuff. ‘Nothing to
worry about,’ I am instantly reassured, he is breathing well but needs a little help maintaining his temperature.

Two babies who can’t keep themselves warm – one lying still inside a cold cot; the other sleeping in a heated incubator, his belly rising and falling as he draws breath. There is a
circular hatch in the side of the incubator, and after I have washed and disinfected my hands I am allowed to touch my boy through the narrow aperture.

‘Hello, baby,’ I whisper. ‘Hello, Baby T.’

Baby T straightens both legs in a long stretch and yawns, before relaxing back into a loose bundle. I place my finger in his hand, and when he squeezes it is strong and unequivocal. I feel
myself smile as if it is something happening to another person. The smile sits clumsily on my face – the first one I haven’t forced in almost two days.

On Monday morning I arrive at the hospital a little after nine and go straight to the special care unit. Baby T – just thirty hours old – is still inside his cot,
but the midwife says I can take him out and cuddle him. It’s the last day in March and warm outside; even so, Baby T is dressed in a onesy, cardigan, booties and tiny woollen cap. He makes a
small sound and it moves me more than any words could. After this, when I go to see Ivy and Daniel, everything will change again; I’ll be in a different world, one where our baby is dead and
smiles are not allowed. So I carry a chair across to the window and sit with Baby T where he can feel the sun on his face. I watch him sleep and watch his eyes flicker briefly open, I watch his
fists clench and uncurl, I watch him breathe. When he starts crying a midwife brings a bottle of milk and I feed my baby boy. I rub his back until he brings up wind and I change his nappy, seeing
for the first time his tummy, thin legs and wrinkled bottom. He sleeps in my arms for one still quiet hour before the midwife puts him back inside his incubator.