2022 WATTYS SHORTLISTED || After being forced into a marriage by her devoutly religious parents, Aspen's husband is diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, and she must find her purpose as well as fight feelings for her husband's nurse. || Aspen Wat...
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The yellow of the walls in the waiting room seems to be getting to Nick. Yellow: Georgina's favourite colour, the colour of the middle of daisies, the colour that brings him so much joy and heartbreak at the same time.
I know for a fact that as he paces the room wall to wall, every thirty-two steps he takes one way, and thirty-two steps the other, the main reason he's nervous is for my reaction to all of this. He told me about the prognosis on the way down here, as the tears spilt down my cheeks. The funny thing is, between the three of us all sitting and standing in this room – Nick, Monica and me – the unspoken truth is that it's not just about Summer and the baby. It's about Joel.
Monica and I have both lost a part of Joel through the adoption of Gabriel. We truly might be facing another tie to him if this goes sour.
"Tell me, Nicholas, what're we looking at here?" Monica asks.
Nick stops pacing. "I'm not a midwife, Monica."
"No, but you're a nurse, and I can tell you know because you wouldn't be pacing and looking scared," she says.
"Why did you call us down here?" I question. She won't want to know the answer, I know she won't. Maybe changing the subject will help.
"Summer was asking for you, for you both." Monica shrugs. "Your friendship means more to her than I thought it would. That baby is Joel's. We all lost him, and well, Nicholas is your... fiancé. We all love this baby, whether Summer or Joel liked it or not."
I look down and my hands. They're fiddling with each other; my engagement ring is dancing on my finger. The yellow in it is deeper than this neutral colour, and I wonder why we're on the freaking maternity ward. I guess because, well, she's in labour. But after what Nick told me, it seems taunting and cruel to put a woman on the brink of losing her baby into a ward full of women at full term, giving birth.
"So, what are we looking at, because she should not be in labour at twenty-eight weeks pregnant, right?" Monica asks.
Nick sighs. He runs a hand through his curls and stares right at her. His amber eyes are liquidising a sadness I've only ever seen when he speaks of Georgina. He might not be close to Summer like I am, or this baby like Monica is, but he's feeling the loss as well and it steals my breath away and builds up my own river of tears to see him like it.
"No, she shouldn't. But it's not impossible. It... do you really want to know, Monica?"
"I wouldn't be asking otherwise. This is the last tie I have to my son, without your... well, Gabriel doesn't count because legally he isn't my grandson," Monica says sadly.
Nick ignores the comment and carries on: "The baby might not survive the birth. Most babies can live after being born this early, but there is a risk for disabilities. There's a ninety per cent chance the baby can survive if she's born breathing. She's had a normal, healthy pregnancy, whilst not impossible. This is... this is strange for a pregnancy like this. The lead cause of... neonatal death is... premature birth."
