What's Yours Is Mine (26 page)

For thirty-four years, I have told myself I had to protect Susannah because her father didn't love her. The truth is I favored Susannah because David loved Grace so much.
I was jealous
.

Guilt pulses through me. David doted on Grace from the second she drew breath, and I felt shut out. I was the one who had carried and nurtured her, and yet it was her father she wanted. He didn't reject Susannah. I withheld her from him. I kept Susannah to myself, because I was determined at least one of my daughters would love me best.

It wasn't David who polarized our family, but me.

I don't know when it became a competition for our children's love, but the more Grace turned to her father, the less I wanted her near me. The more I sheltered Susannah, the less attention her father paid her. Such havoc we have wrought! And as always, it is the innocents who pay.

God forgive me, but He got this wrong. He gave this baby to the wrong sister.

Susannah's eyes flutter, and I move closer to her in alarm. She's losing focus. We don't have much time. Where
is
Grace?

The doctor glances quickly at the monitors beeping
next to us. “Susannah, we can't delay this any longer,” she says sharply. “Your blood pressure is dangerously high. Your kidneys are starting to fail completely, and your liver won't be far behind. As soon as the theater is ready, we're going to get this baby out.”

“Just give me some damn pills … and leave me … alone!” Susannah gasps.

I'm so terrified for my daughter, and my unborn grandchild, I could slap her. So, judging from the expression in her eye, could the doctor. Instead, she nods curtly at Susannah, and whips the curtains closed around her bed.

“Is there anyone who can reason with her?” the doctor demands as she returns to the nurses' station. “Boyfriend? Family? I don't want to wait until the stupid girl passes out and I can go ahead without her consent. The longer we wait, the more trouble that baby's in.”

“There's a bloke on her next-of, Blake someone, but he's not answering his phone. She has a sister listed—”

A commotion outside the entrance to the ward interrupts us. A moment later, Grace is bearing down on us with grim fury, Tom scurrying helplessly in her wake. He still has his slippers on, I notice, and his soft furry belly is visible between the top of his trousers and his hastily thrown-on T-shirt.

Even in the midst of my anxiety, I find time to worry about Tom. Grace still doesn't know what he's been doing with that redheaded doctor.
How can she not see?
It would change
everything
.

“Where's my sister?” Grace demands, from halfway
down the hall. “Why didn't anyone call me and tell me she was here?”

After the long, slow-motion, anxious wait of the last three hours, in which nothing seemed to happen except for Susannah getting sicker and sicker, suddenly a thousand things seem to happen at once. Grace marches up to Susannah's bed and snatches open the curtains, and tells her, in a tone that brooks no argument, that this baby is being delivered now! To the astonishment of everyone—everyone except Grace—Susannah agrees without a murmur.
This is what Susannah was waiting for
, I realize: for Grace to tell her what to do. She is thirty-four years old, and she still refuses to take responsibility for herself. How can she take responsibility for a child?

My fault, I understand now. I'm the one who never let her grow up. I'm responsible for this.

In minutes, Susannah is being prepped for theater, and an anesthetist arrives to give her an epidural. At the last moment, as she is being wheeled away, she holds out her hand to Grace, and without hesitation, Grace takes it.

There's no time to induce labor. Susannah's blood pressure is climbing all the time, and the doctor is murmuring about
cerebral hemorrhages
and
complications;
they drape a screen across Susannah's chest, so that she doesn't have to watch her own abdomen being sliced open, and prepare her for a cesarean section. The theater is filled with people: the neonatologist arrives with a four-strong team to whisk the baby away to the NICU, the anesthetist
is monitoring Susannah's every breath, Dr. Fraser and the junior doctor and numerous nurses and even a few student medics circulate around the operating table; in the middle is Grace, holding her sister's hand, steady and calm and in control, radiating reassurance.
No wonder David is so proud of her
, I think. No wonder Susannah is so overwhelmed.

The doctor picks up her scalpel and waits as iodine is swabbed across Susannah's belly, and then she cuts, swift and sure, and Grace gasps, “Oh, Susannah! She's beautiful! She's tiny, she's so,
so
tiny, but she's beautiful!” and Ava, my first granddaughter, is finally born.

IT TAKES EVERYONE
a few moments to realize that Susannah is still getting worse.

Grace is chattering excitedly to her sister, telling her that her daughter is beautiful, she has ten fingers and ten toes, they're so tiny, she's like a beautiful porcelain doll, only a million times more gorgeous, oh, Susannah, wait till you see her properly! The nurses are bustling around the theater, tidying bloodied cloths into a green plastic sack, returning unused gauze pads to their proper places. The doctor is checking the placenta to make sure none of it has been left behind to cause infection and septicemia. Even I am a little distracted, gazing at my granddaughter in wonder. The neonatologist has whisked her into an incubator bristling with wires, but I can see already how beautiful she is.

Suddenly a monitor starts beeping, and the doctor looks up alertly. In an instant the brisk, celebratory mood changes.

“Get Mark Jaylor down here,” she snaps. “Drag him out of bed if you have to. This girl's going into acute renal failure.”

One of the nurses reaches for the phone on the wall. The baby is wheeled from the theater for the warming lights and high-tech care of the NICU. Grace is gently but firmly escorted out with her, despite her protests. Once she is gone, the doctor doesn't pull her punches.

“If we don't act fast, we're going to lose her,” she says, scooping up the placenta and dumping it into a stainless-steel basin. She palpates Susannah's abdomen, her eyes on the monitors. “Where's Jaylor?”

A figure in green scrubs strides into the theater, fiddling with his face mask. “Right here.”

Someone has put an oxygen mask over Susannah's face, but her skin has a gray pallor beneath the yellow jaundice. I can feel Death's presence all around us.

I can't stay here any longer. I can't watch my daughter die.

In the space of a breath, I'm with Grace, standing outside the NICU, peering through the viewing window as a cluster of doctors and nurses battle to save the life of my granddaughter. She weighs less than two pounds; she would literally fit into the palm of my hand. Her skin is covered with soft fur, and so translucent we can see her heart beating.

Grace spreads her palms against the glass and presses her forehead to the window. “Please don't die,” she whispers, over and over. “Susannah needs you. Please don't die, please don't die.”

We all need you
, I think.
We are all going to need you to survive this
.

I have no idea how long we wait. It is long enough for Tom to find Grace and take her back to the waiting room, another of those windowless, soulless rooms, where she paces restlessly, unable to keep still. “It's too much,” she says. “Mum, and Susannah, and poor little Ava. It's too much.”

Tom disappears to find coffee. Alone, Grace sinks to the floor and puts her head in her hands and gives way to a deep, aching grief. Her pain is even harder to bear than my own.

In the darkest hour, somewhere between black night and the gray fingers of dawn, the doctor finally comes to find us. Tom is asleep on one of the blocky beige sofas, his head lolling forward on his chest, his mouth slightly open. Grace is awake, but in a world of her own. When I try to comfort her, she shows no sign of hearing me. I know she's blaming herself, convinced that if she hadn't driven Susannah to leave, both her sister and the baby would be safe. Once, I would have agreed with her. Now I know that Susannah is the architect of her own misfortune. Her life has turned out the way it has as a direct result of the choices she has willingly made. Perhaps she isn't happy with the outcome, but that is no one's fault but hers. It certainly isn't
Grace's
.

“Mrs. Hamilton,” the doctor says, “your sister is stable. We—”

“She's going to be OK?” Grace demands.

The doctor pushes back her hair with the heels of both hands. “She's stable,” she says again. “Her condition is no longer life-threatening. I'm afraid it was rather touch and go for a while, but I think we're just about out of the woods. She had severe acidosis and her central nervous system was starting to shut down. If we had waited much longer to deliver the baby, I'm not sure if—”

“But she's going to be OK?” Grace says again. “She's going to get better?”

The doctor sits down on the ugly sofa, and waits until Grace has taken an unwilling seat beside her. “Your sister has Stage Five kidney failure,” she says gently. “That means she has less than fifteen percent kidney function. There may be some limited recovery, but I'm afraid it won't be much. As soon as she's well enough, Mark Jaylor, the head of our renal unit, will need to sit down with you and Susannah to discuss the best way forward.”

“What about the baby?” Tom asks suddenly. “Is she OK?”

“The baby's doing well. She needs help with her breathing, of course, but she's a good weight for her age. It's just a waiting game now, I'm afraid. If you want to speak to the—”

“Tom,” Grace snaps. “One thing at a time.”

“I'm afraid Susannah really is still very sick, Grace.
She's in the ICU, and she's on dialysis at the moment, because her kidneys can't do their job and clean her blood, so we're having to do it for her.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“This time? Only a few hours. But you need to understand: this isn't going to go away. Susannah will need dialysis three times a week from now on. The damage to her kidneys is irreversible. She'll be able to come to the hospital as an outpatient, and will be on dialysis for between three and five hours each visit. She is going to need a great deal of support and care.”

Grace stares at her. “She's just had a baby! How can she go off for dialysis three times a week? How is she expected to
cope
?”

“That's something Mark will need to discuss with you and Susannah. The hospital will give her as much help as it can, but she'll need her family for support. This is going to be a major adjustment for her.” She hesitates. “Dialysis is usually seen as a short-term option. Mark will explain the details to you, but I can tell you, Susannah's best chance at a normal life is a kidney transplant.”

“A
transplant
?” Grace gasps. Her face is ashen. “She's only thirty-four!”

“The prognosis of transplant patients is usually excellent these days. Naturally, the closer we can come with the match, the better. Close family are usually the best donors, but failing that, she'll go on the waiting list. I'm afraid I have to warn you that you may have to be quite patient.
We do have an acute shortage of donors in this country. But I suspect Susannah will be given priority because of the severity of her condition.”

“I'll give her mine,” Grace says instantly. “I can do that, can't I? You only need one to live. She can have one of mine.”

“Grace,” Tom demurs. “This is a big decision.”

“She's my
sister
. It's not a decision. Of course I'll give her my kidney. I'll be a match,” she says to the doctor. “We have the same blood group. I'm sure I'll be a match.”

“The same blood group doesn't guarantee that you'd be a suitable donor, but it's certainly possible,” the doctor says cautiously. “The transplant team would need to run a number of tests on both of you first. It's certainly something Mark could discuss with Susannah and the rest of your family.”

I stare at my daughter through eyes blurry with tears. I have never been more proud of Grace. I wasn't sent here to change anything, I realize. There was nothing I had to
do
. I was sent back to
see
. That is what this strange limbo is about. I had to understand that my daughters are neither good nor bad, but a mixture of both. I have only ever seen them through the prism of my preconceptions. It is only now that I can see them as they really are.

“How did this happen so fast?” Grace asks. Her hands are shaking, and she reaches for Tom. “I know she's had problems with her kidneys before, but how can she suddenly need a transplant? Was it because of the baby?”

“It sometimes happens this way. Certainly the stress of the pregnancy will have played a part,” the doctor said.

Grace looks confused. I pick up on the doctor's hesitation, too.

“Is there something else? Is something wrong that you're not telling us?”

“Your sister's blood alcohol level was rather high when she came in,” she admits.

I watch Grace absorb the information, but I can read nothing from her expression. Then, unexpectedly, she smiles. “Can we see her now?” she asks.

My heart surges with relief.
Thank God Susannah has Grace
. Whatever happens to me, she'll have her sister to look after her.

Tom and Grace follow the doctor to the ICU, where Susannah is recovering. Even though I've prepared myself for the monitors and machines—heaven knows, I've grown used to seeing them around my own bed—it's still a shock to see my child like this. Her skin is less yellow, her face no longer swollen, but she still looks ill and weak, and I feel sick with worry. She may have brought this on herself, but she's still my baby.