Emergency: Wife Lost and Found

‘Just leave it, May.’ He had gone to his office, because this he certainly wasn’t going to do on the shop floor—his personal life had already provided enough entertainment for the entire hospital these past days. From professor to porter, everyone seemed to be offering sympathetic smiles, or stopped talking when he walked in, and James didn’t like it one bit. He certainly wasn’t going to go up to the ward just to add to the drama of it all. ‘It was over years ago between Lorna and me. You’ve heard what Minister McClelland said—she’s uncomfortable that I’m here and she doesn’t want me to come and see her.’

‘According to her father.’ May said. ‘James, you were devastated when she was brought in.’

‘It was a shock.’ James shrugged. ‘She was my wife once—I’m not that callous.’

‘You’re not callous at all! You married her because she was pregnant, I take it.’

He gave a curt nod.

‘And then she lost the baby.’

‘Yep!’ His voice was flip, but there was a muscle pounding in his cheek and finally he relented a touch. ‘Lorna went crazy when she found out she was pregnant—she said her father would be wild, I told her that he’d come round, that once the news sank in, he’d support her.’

‘She didn’t consider an abortion?’

‘Nope.’ James shook his head. ‘Not for a minute. I said I’d support her in any way I could. I went with her to tell her family… May, I have never seen anything like that man’s reaction. The names he called her, called me. He wasn’t worried about Lorna, about her future, he was worried what his congregation would say—what people would think. We were married two weeks later and it still wasn’t enough. We had to keep the pregnancy quiet. He didn’t want people counting on their fingers and working out dates—we moved down to London just to get away.’

‘Oh, James.’ May shook her head at the horror of it all. ‘I know…’

‘No, May, you don’t know.’ James said angrily. ‘You don’t know what he’s like.’

‘Actually, James, I do.’ May stood her ground. ‘I worked for ten years on a gynaecological ward. I didn’t actually like working there, but I’d laid out two beautiful young women’s bodies in my training. Beautiful women, who were too scared to tell their parents they were pregnant. I chose to do the best job I could on that gynae ward for the sake of those young girls. So don’t stand there and tell me I don’t know, because I do.’

And James understood that she did, wished for a moment that he’d spoken to her about it years ago. In those early days when he’d started at the hospital, he’d been so blind with confusion and grief he’d been positive no one would understand—yet he’d been working all the time, next to one woman who perhaps did. ‘At her antenatal we found out the baby was ectopic, she had to go to Theatre straight away. It had already ruptured by the time she got there. I rang her father to tell him, and all he was was relieved. He didn’t say it out loud, but I knew from his voice he was relieved that his congregation wouldn’t be counting backwards on their fingers now when the baby arrived. There would be plenty of time for other babies apparently and he and his wife said the same when they came to see Lorna.’

‘She wanted that one,’ May offered but James shook his head.

‘We both wanted that one,’ he corrected her.

‘I’m sorry.’ May nodded.

‘It was a shock finding out she was pregnant, but we’d dealt with that. We got married and even if it was rushed, even if we were broke and the timing could have been better, we were crazy about each other and looking forward to being parents. When we lost the baby, we lost everything, May. She walked out on the marriage before the first anniversary, headed off back to Scotland and became a GP, refused to even talk to me. It’s taken me years to get over what happened and finally I have. I’ve been seeing Ellie for more than a year now. That’s the longest relationship I’ve had since Lorna and if you think I’m going to jeopardise it by heading up there to go over old times you’re wrong. For a start, it wouldn’t be fair on Ellie.’

‘It’s not fair on Ellie if your heart’s elsewhere,’ May said. ‘Maybe it’s time to find out. Maybe you’ll see Lorna and feel nothing and you can move on properly, because it sounds to me like you haven’t.’

‘Oh, and you’d know, would you?’ James said, annoyed with May for saying out loud what he had been thinking. ‘You’ve been married for forty-two years—’

‘Which makes me an expert!’ May answer tartly. ‘Because you don’t stay married for forty-two years these days without learning a thing or two! Do you want me to go and speak to her?’

And say what?’ When May widened her eyes a touch, even James managed a reluctant smile—May was certainly never lost for words and, in her line of work, had handled far more than this little drama without rehearsal. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, irritated but curious and just a little bit relieved too that he might hear what Lorna had to say. ‘Go and test the water.’

Lorna remembered virtually nothing of ICU. Just the odd blurry memory of noise and someone asking her to say her name and if she knew where she was and then being wheeled through the hospital.

There had been lots of lights flashing into her eyes and people asking her what her name was and even though she’d known it, she hadn’t known how to say it, her mouth and tongue refusing to obey. She had just wanted them to leave her alone so that she could go back to sleep, because it had hurt to be awake. It felt as if a bus had been parked on her chest and moving her limbs in response to the questions had taken a massive effort and one she hadn’t had the energy for.

‘Come on.’ Someone was pinching her ear. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘Lorna.’

‘And do you know where you are, Lorna?’ It was a very good question and one that had been asked a few times, Lorna hazily recalled.

‘Lorna, answer the nurse!’ Dad was there, which didn’t exactly cheer her up. Here she was in hospital and her dad still managed to make her feel as if she was misbehaving. Oh, yes, that was where she was…