Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [84]
‘Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s a bloody attention-seeker, that’s what she is.’
They seemed to take forever to eat their lunches, then I whisked the plates from under their noses and began to wash up. Finally, eight hours after I’d asked to be taken to the hospital, I said, ‘Peter, for God’s sake, we have to go now.’
I’ll never forget his face for as long as I live. He smiled smugly, like he was about to unveil the greatest joke ever, and said, ‘Fine – but we’ll have to walk. There’s no petrol in the car.’
If I’d known we weren’t driving anyway, I could have left on my own hours earlier, even if I’d had to climb out a window. Peter must have been aware of that too. That’s why he’d kept quiet. He’d been playing me all along.
I wish I could say that was the most Peter let me down during my labour, but it wasn’t.
There were a lot of horror stories in the press at the time about women who’d had epidural injections in their backs and lost the use of their legs. I wasn’t worried about the pain of childbirth at all, but the idea of being paralysed terrified me. So I said to Peter, ‘Whatever else happens, promise me you will not let them put me in for an epidural. Give me a full general anaesthetic and knock me out completely. But don’t let them go anywhere near my spine with a needle.’
‘Leave it to me,’ he said.
We reached the Royal Sussex at about seven and eleven hours later I’d exhausted six canisters of gas and air. I was high as a kite and still nothing was happening. Somewhere through the haze, I made out some panicking tones. Lots of people were coming in the room saying, ‘The baby is distressed.’ It turned out that he had got hold of his umbilical cord and had it clutched in his hand. He was cutting off his own oxygen supply. My baby was going to die.
I remember someone saying that they were going to perform an emergency Caesarean. That’s okay, I giggled to myself. A quick jab in the back of the hand and I’ll be asleep.
I must have switched off then because the next thing I remember is opening my eyes and seeing Peter looming over me.
‘They’re going to give you an epidural. I’ve signed for it.’
It took a few seconds for the words’ meaning to sink in. An epidural? Luckily for everyone else, I couldn’t speak. But in my mind I was screaming.
I’ve only ever asked one thing of you in our entire time together, Peter, and it was to stop them giving me an epidural. And you’re letting them do it. I don’t want to spend my life without any bloody legs. Jesus Christ, how are you allowing it to happen?
An hour later, however, at 7.05 a.m. on 21 December, I was still in my bed, exhausted but absolutely delirious. I hadn’t had a Caesarean or an epidural. Nature had taken her course. The only thing I’d had was a beautiful baby boy.
‘Welcome to your new home, Daniel.’
FOURTEEN
Think of Daniel
The baby changed everything.
I’d never hated anyone more than I did Peter for betraying my wishes about the epidural. I’d read so many horror stories and the idea of some doctor trying to inject into such a precise spot on the small of my back while I was writhing around in agony had terrified me. After the torture about John’s precious Sunday roast, it was the final straw.
And then Daniel had popped out, naturally in the end, and I was in love with everyone. Especially Peter. In fact, looking at him as he held our little boy, I didn’t have a negative thought in my brain. I didn’t see the man who’d sworn at me, hurled things at me, slammed me against walls and turned me from leather queen into dowdy frump. I didn’t see anything other than the man who had given me my child. Without him, I wouldn’t have my bundle of joy. We were a family. Together we could take on the world.
Peter and I struck a deal before the baby was born.
‘If it’s a girl,’ I said, ‘I want to call her Jennifer – after my mother.’
‘And if it’s a boy?’ Peter said.
‘If it’s a boy you can choose the name.’
So that’s how our son came to be called Daniel. I don’t know if Peter was aware