Lion and Lace [Tom Hiddleston]

Episode 16

I hate hospitals. There's no 'I watched someone close to me die' or 'they stuffed up and I almost died' justification for it, I just don't find them particularly pleasant.

It's the waiting.

Waiting for an answer, waiting whether you know what's going to happen or you don't, no matter whether you're in mild discomfort or doubled over in pain. Whether your pain is physical and obvious or hidden beneath the surface. A gaping chest wound or a breaking heart.

We all have to wait together.

Nathan holds my hand and rubs my back and tells me everything will be fine between scolding me for climbing a ladder and pushing myself too hard. But his eyes are soft, wide with worry for me and the baby, that the hope he's felt the last few days might be disappearing before him and there's nothing he can do.

I occasionally see his empty hand ball into a fist, the muscles in his arm clenching and almost shaking with the effort. When it does I reach over and stroke his hand gently until he relaxes it again and gives me a resigned smile.

He wants to take care of me and make it all better, and he can't.

We have to wait.

After an hour a midwife comes down from maternity and takes us to a small consultation room. She takes my history and gently tells us that they will do an ultrasound as soon as someone is available, but the result won't change the outcome. There is nothing any doctor, midwife or miracle worker can do at this point except tell us what's going to happen. I might well be miscarrying, I might not. They don't know, we don't know, and even when we do it won't change our course.

We have to wait. We'll wait another seven months, or we'll wait a few days, and we still have to wait to find out which path will be ours.

I hate hospitals.

I'm dozing on and off while Nathan browses away on his phone and I know he feels worse than ever now because of what the lovely woman in teddy bear scrubs has just told us. You can't do anything. You can't change it. No one can.

Finally the door squeaks open just after 2am.

"Hi Rebecca, Nathan, I'm Susan. I'm so sorry we've kept you waiting so long, it's been a busy night. How are you feeling?"

"Fine. The same, just a bit crampy."

"You've had some bleeding?"

"A little, yes."

"Alright. Show me your tummy and we'll have a look." She switches on the machine and squirts cold gel just below my navel. "Has someone already talked to you about the possible complications we're looking for?"

"Sort of." Nathan says. He's squeezing my hand almost uncomfortably and I give it a gentle pat so he relaxes.

"What I'm looking for is firstly that the embryo has attached to the wall of your uterus and it's not in a fallopian tube or too close to your cervix. Secondly at this gestation we should be able to get a heartbeat; if we don't it can mean it's too early in which case I'll look at the size and we might switch to an internal ultrasound, otherwise if the measurements are right for nine weeks it may mean that it's no longer viable. That would be a miscarriage. If there is a heartbeat and everything's fine – and it might be – bleeding can be caused by lots of things at this stage and it might not be anything to worry about. Are you ready?"

That's a loaded question if ever I heard one. Ready to be pregnant, ready to find out, ready to accept that whatever is happening is actually happening? Either way... not really.

"Yes."

At first I watch the screen, looking for some kind of clue, but nothing I can see looks remotely like a baby or a kidney bean so I look up at Susan's face instead. I'm fairly sure she's been trained to be expressionless and would make an excellent poker player.