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An Untimely Birth

By Alison M Tomlinson

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CHAPTER 1

“You cheated on me?”
I couldn’t believe it. There I was, sitting in a hospital bed about to produce his baby, and my goodie-goodie, butter-wouldn’t-melt in-his-mouth boyfriend was telling me he’d been cavorting with a hooker?
Julian hung his head and averted his eyes. “I’m sorry, I—“
“You’re sorry? I’m lying here with doctors and nurses running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to find out what the hell’s wrong with me, and you go let some scrubber show you a good time. And you’re sorry? Well that’s OK then, isn’t it? As long as you’re sorry.”
“It was months ago when you said you were going to abort our beautiful Daisy. I was out of my mind. I couldn’t bear it. I had a bit too much John Smith’s and I—“
“You’ve sat on this confession for months, and you think now is was the best time to tell me? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m stressed out, every muscle aches, I’m running to the little girl’s room every thirty minutes, this rash makes me look like badly mixed strawberry mousse, and I feel like I’ve been hit over the head with a welding mallet. Sure, just the right time to spring this on me.”
Julian steeled himself. “Beckie, listen to me, please. I love you and our baby, and I know you’re having a tough time, but I had to tell you for two reasons. Firstly, I’m a Christian now—“
“Don’t start that again. If it makes you happy, go put on a purple dress and join my mum and dad singing “The Magnificat” in Latin every week, but leave me out of it. When you told me about your Road to Damascus experience, I started getting cold feet about this pathetic excuse for a love affair. Well, this settles it. You can get out of my life. I’ll move back in with my parents. At least that way, Daisy won’t have to live on fish and chips or grow up with the shame of having a postman for a father.”
Despite feeling like death warmed up, anger exploded within me. Even so, I couldn’t stop my heart melting just a little as I watched Julian’s big muscular frame sag and large tear drops begin to run silently down his cheek.
“God forgive me,” he muttered under his breath.
“God might forgive you, but I won’t. Get out.”
He stood up, and he seemed to fill the tiny room. He ran his hands over his almost shaved head, screwed up his face, and pursed his lips. He looked like Harry Potter mustering the courage to face Lord Voldermort in the graveyard.
“You’ve got to listen. You haven’t heard the worst yet,” he said.
“Come on then, spit it out. What’s worse than cheating on your pregnant girlfriend?”
“Oh God, forgive me,” he repeated.
“Come on, Julian, you’re scaring me.”
He took several deep breaths and forced himself to look me in the eye. “When you started to get ill a few weeks ago, I was desperate to find out what was wrong. Then I remembered my . . . And I thought, just to me sure, just to rule it out, I should go for an . . .“
“Oh my God. You’re HIV positive.”
He nodded. “The first test has come back positive, but they’ll have to do confirmatory tests to be sure.”
I froze.
My brain filled with white noise like an untuned TV set. I felt like I was falling, and I clung onto the sides of the bed. My huge belly rose and fell as I struggled to breathe.
Then it hit me. My baby was doomed. Her life was blotted out before it even began.
“You’ve killed Daisy. Get out,” I said quietly.
“Beckie, I love—“
“GET OUT!” I grabbed the nearest thing that came to hand, a glass paper weight, and flung it at him. He ducked, and it went through the observation window to the surgical ward beyond. Julian was caught in a shower of glass, and blood started to drip from a gash in his forehead.
I heard shouts and screams and people running towards us.
“Call security,” the staff nurse bellowed behind her as she opened the door. “And keep the patients away from the glass. Sweep it up and call maintenance.”
She stepped into the room, “What’s going on here?” she barked at Julian. Then, seeing the cut on his face, shouted out the door, “And bring a basic wound-cleaning pack.”
She obviously assumed Julian was the guilty party, and I understood why. I’d heaved my five foot two, slight-framed but heavily pregnant body off the bed and was standing next to my hulk of an ex-boyfriend. In a fight, Julian was the odds-on favourite.
Before he could open his mouth to answer, I interjected, “I need to see my doctor right now.”
“As soon as this is sorted, I’ll send someone to the maternity ward. They can also check if any beds are available yet.” She sighed. I was the most troublesome patient she’d ever had the misfortune to deal with, and she couldn’t wait to be shot of me.
“You don’t understand. I need a doctor NOW!”
“Please get back into bed, Miss Baxter, and calm down.”
I didn’t move.
She turned back to Julian. “No more unscheduled early morning visits. This is no way to behave on a hospital ward.”
“But I didn’t—“ Julian started to protest, but at that moment a security guard walked in. If Julian was six-foot-one, this guy had to be six-three. The name tag on his bulletproof vest read “Tony Romani.” He was speaking into a radio. “Looks like something got thrown through an internal window.”
The cramped room was now full to bursting, and Tony waved us out into the ward. Several patients were sitting up in bed glaring at us. An auxiliary nurse was busy sweeping up broken glass.
Tony squared up to Julian and said, “What’s the problem here?”
I tried again. “I need to see a doctor right away.”
The staff nurse ignored me as she pulled up a chair, sat Julian in it, donned latex gloves, and started to examine his wounded forehead.
“Why do you need a doctor, Miss? Have you been injured?” Tony asked looking suspiciously at Julian.
“No, I’ve just found out that my moron of an ex-boyfriend is HIV positive.”
There was a split second pause as this news was digested.
Then the staff nurse backed away from Julian, looking at the bloodied piece of gauze she now held in her hand.
One of the patients jumped out of bed and ran out the door.
“Don’t move. Stay right there,” the staff nurse instructed Julian.
“But I want him out of here,” I said.
“Call infection control,” she yelled at a nurse down the ward. She carefully placed the gauze in a plastic bag, removed the gloves, put them in the same bag and then placed the bag on the floor next to Julian. She leaned sideways to look into the side room and said, “There’s blood on the floor.” As she took her shoes off, she turned to Tony and said, “Did you stand in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Take your shoes off and step away from the contaminated area.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
He reluctantly obeyed.
She then instructed me to take off my slippers, step behind a nearby curtain, and remove all my clothes while she fetched a clean bed gown.
“But I need to see a doctor.”
Her tone had softened, “Yes dear, I understand. We’ll call a doctor as soon as possible.”
A few minutes later, I looked behind me as I followed her down the ward to a small sitting room where I was to wait. I saw Julian obediently sitting on his chair, with his head in his hands, sobbing his heart out.

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