May, nine months into Anna Brooks' pregnancy.
Anna Brooks gave birth two days earlier than her due date. I was with George at the time doing school work and chatting upstairs when I heard that unmistakeable shriek and my mother's frantic cry.
"CASSIE, COME DOWN NOW. THE BABY'S COMING!"
Honestly, I didn't understand why she was so panicked, Anna - the person with broken waters - seemed perfectly calm considering the situation. She breathed in deep breaths, closed her eyes and swallowed back the pain.
"George can you drive us? I want to be next to Anna as we go to the hospital. Cassie, can you grab the hospital bag, it's in the hall." She asked hurriedly, rushing about the place grabbing towels and one to many bottles of water.
Doing as she asked, I grabbed the hospital bag and by that time George was already at the front door and clicking open the car. Seconds later a hefty Anna trudged languidly past me, and stepped through the door and onto the drive in a wobbly manner.
In the car, I balled my fists every time she had a contraction. I could hear that Anna was trying immensely to control the agony by muffling the cry and supergluing her lips together, but it was no use. The sounds of her moans echoed around the car like nails on a chalkboard and I hated it.
My mother, who was snapping 'drive faster' to George at every opportunity she could get, wasn't helping all our nerves in the slightest. You would have thought after having a baby twice before, once being twins, she'd be calm and supportive but oh no. My mum was going full on freak show right now.
I glanced behind me to look at Anna after having had enough of just hearing her pain. Thankfully, she didn't look as bad as she sounded. Little oily beads of sweat clung to her skin, a pasty paleness washing over her clammy cheeks and her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands until her knuckles turned yellow. It wasn't as bad as I expected, so I turned back around and faced the road.
Why was I getting so worked up over this? I mean, it's just Anna. Then again, things were different between us. We weren't friends, but we weren't enemies anymore. There's still a part of me that will forever loathe her for good reason but I saw no point in continuing the trivial drivel that used to pass between us.
Civil. That's what I'd call it.
The more she groaned, the more my mum snapped, the more I submersed myself in anxiety.
"It's going to be okay, Cass." George said, taking one hand off the steering wheel to hold mine. He then softly kissed my fingers. "When my mum gave birth to Izzy, it was much worse than this. Despite her having had three kids before her."
He was trying to soothe me but I was still worried. "She's two days early, will she have to have a caesarean?" I inquired, clinging onto his hand in a death grip.
"It's doubtful. Caesareans only tend to be used if the birth is exceptionally early, say a month. Or twins, triplets etcetera or also occasionally the umbilical cord gets in the way of giving birth naturally." He answered gently, glancing up in the rear-view mirror. "I'm sure Anna's going to be just fine. She's dealing with the contractions surprisingly well considering your mum is rabbiting on and basically freaking her out even more."
I laughed, but it was strangled and broken. "I know. I wish she'd just shut up."
When we arrived at the hospital my mother quickly got us all into the private suite and Anna was changed, seated and a midwife came to check her over. Apparently, Anna was at four centimetres dilation and it was expected to be an easy, quick birth.
Everything sort of passed by in a blur. People came in and out of the suite, nurses and midwives yet I hardly noticed any of them. All I heard was the pain Anna emitted from her contractions as they began to get closer and closer together.
We must have stayed in that room with Anna for about an hour, when finally my mum said I should go outside and wait until after the baby was born, even if that took several hours. She came with me, after George persuaded her with that charming, powerful way he had with her now that he'd do a better job at calming Anna than she would. He said he'd call her back in when she starts getting closer to ten centimetres.
A question suddenly popped to my head as we sat down in the hospital cafeteria. Warmth surrounded my hands from the cappuccino I was shakily circling, and my mum almost mirrored me.
"Why are you stressing so much over her?" I asked. "You've only known Anna for a couple of months."
Her flaxen bob swayed to the side as she contemplated her answer. "When I first found her, she reminded me of myself."
It was the most ridiculous thing I could have heard, both of them did not look nor acted alike. "How?"
"You know your father and I were high school sweethearts." She said, completely ignoring my question. "But then one broken condom lead us to a problem and that problem was... dealt with... fairly quickly. We were too young, and abortion was the easiest answer-"
"Wait, you got pregnant?" I cut in, barely believe my ears.
It crossed me that I hardly knew anything about my mum. Not her teen years, not her childhood, nothing.
"It was an accident of course, and we even used protection. This is why the pill is so important as a back up. Anyway, when I saw Anna that day in her room, pregnant and the same age I was when it happened to me I realised how much I'd missed of your lives. My kids' lives. I mean, it could have been you Cassie. You could have been pregnant and because I was away so much I wouldn't have even known until it was too late. That's why I decided to move back in, it wasn't because of Anna - well that was obviously an reason too, I couldn't have left her as your responsibility - it was mostly because I wanted to be back with my kids. Kids I'd pushed to the back of my mind since your dad died because I was a coward." She swallowed. "But I refuse to be a coward anymore. After this baby is born I'm going to be working from home, still at the business, but from home so I can see you every day after you finish school and on the weekends and before you leave for school in the mornings."
"You know that's the first thing that's ever come out of your mouth that a mother would say." I said quietly, locking with her russet eyes that matched mine.
There was suddenly an earnest, solemnity to those hard gems that I'd never once considered it possible to glance upon, nonetheless on me. Yet, there it was. My mother, sad because she wasn't really a mother. A glaze passed over the spheres, and next several tears trailed down either side of her angular nose like the first drop of rain after a heavy drought.
Silence stilled around us for about an hour. Both of us lost in thought, rarely looking up from the coffee in our hands. I guess there was a certain similarity between my mother and I. We'd both had something bad happen to us young and it shaped the way we were today.
"You know, I loved your father so much, more than anything in the world." She started. "He'd be so disappointed in me now."
I didn't agree nor disagree. I simply let her get everything she wanted out of her head.
"I think he was disappointed when I had that baby aborted too. He always dreamed of a big family, and he got three children years later, but thinking back he must have been disappointed when I immediately went to the doctors and murdered what could have been our child." She choked out her words. "It was a coward move." She turned to me. "But he was a coward too. Killing himself-" Why did it hurt so much to hear that? "-was just as bad as me working abroad and leaving you three with a nanny." She lifted her head to look at me. "I'm proud of you, Cassie. And Abi, and Harry. You're all so beautiful, and even when faced with tough times you fought on. You found people you love." My face reddened and I looked away. "You and George, you're like nothing I've ever seen. You care for each other so deeply yet there's still so much passion between you. Together you are stronger than on your own. It might be an even stronger love than your father and I. I see you lasting. I'd like to meet his parents soon."
"Josephine's been very kind to me the past several months." I commented.
"And I must thank her for that." My mother replied softly and something behind me caught her attention. "George is here, I expect Anna's at ten centimetres now."
Turning around, I spotted him walking towards us and nodding his head to my mum. She jumped out of her chair and ran off in the direction of the suite Anna was in. The only reminder I had of our revealing conversation was her coffee cup and my lingering disclosures.
"Cassie?" George's warm and husky voice pulled me out of my thoughts and his arms tugged at my waist so I could fall onto his lap. I complied easily and snugged into his warmth, nestling my head against his shoulder and inhaling that familiar cologne.
We stayed like that for a while and, although I'm not quite sure why, we absorbed each other's comfort like it was paracetamol fixing a headache.
"She's doing well. The midwife told us that until she was at about eight or nine centimetres we had to be left on our own and walk around as much as possible to speed up the process. Gravity is key when giving birth, so I helped her walk around the room and to ease the pain of the contractions she held the wall and sort of made circles with her hips. The midwife thought it was going to be a quick birth when she came in to check on her." He said, into my hair. "Two and a half hours of labour max."
Threading his fingers through my hair and doing that soothing motion of combing the locks with his hands, we swayed from side to side a little rhythmically. I hummed to myself because all this talk of giving birth and centimetres and contractions and labour were making me feel rather dizzy.
"You okay?" He cradled my face in his hands.
I wasn't too sure why he asked because it was clear that I wasn't. My stomach was on the verge of resurfacing and I had gone four days without throwing up which was a record for me. My head was pounding against the barricade of my skull like an insistent drum beat. My mind was clouded with clarity.
"You're doing well." He murmured and resumed to rocking me gently sideways and talking into my hair so only I could hear what he was saying.
Worry. It washed over me and I hated that I worried over Anna Brooks.
"Can we leave?" I asked shakily.
I'd never seen George look so torn. "I said I'd wait until after... but-"
"It's okay." I cut in and gave him a smile. "You're a good friend, George."
He shrugged. "I try to be."
For the time it took until Anna gave birth, I slumped on George's lap and we talked very quietly about different light hearted things. He told me that Josephine had been waiting for the day that my mum finally asked to introduce herself and that he was sure a dinner could be arranged soon.
I didn't go in to see Anna. The midwife said she now needed rest and would most likely sleep for a couple of hours and by then she could be released from the hospital.
George went inside the clinical, stark white ward she'd been moved into to see Anna and helped my mum with the end of the adoption process. By that point, I couldn't supress the intrigue to see the baby.
We went down to the adoption wards. It was filled with babies in cots or incubators, wriggling about like beetles on their backs. A few new adoptive parents sat beside a baby and cradled it, or watched it sleep. Others slept or lay waiting to be collected. The one thing they all had in common was wrinkly pink skin and most hadn't even opened their eyes yet. They were cute, but they kind of looked like aliens.
"This is Anna's baby." My mother said, leading us over to a small cot in the corner with a tiny sleeping baby inside. "It's a girl."
She was very beautiful. I'd never thought I'd ever see something so tiny and special and precious before in my life. She was just so small. A tiny, little, small human that someone had the duty and love to take care of.
"Anna wanted you to hold her." She added a few moments later.
My ears pricked up. "Me?"
"Yes. She wanted you to be the first one to hold her."
"Anna didn't even hold her own baby?" I confirmed.
Solemnly, she shook her head in dismay. "No. I tried to get her to, I almost forced her into her arms but she was screaming to get her away. The midwife had to get another new mother to breast feed her because Anna wouldn't."
It was as if she hated her. Her own daughter.
"That's so sad." I said quietly and stared down at the pink little baby before me.
"It is exactly what Anna promised herself." George added, not looking melancholic nor interested. He just looked blissful as he gazed over at Anna's daughter. "She's very beautiful. Please hold her Cassie."
So I did.
The tiny girl barely even moved once she contentedly lay in my arms; submerged in heavy slumber. I couldn't grasp how innocent this baby was. This tiny little human. So tiny.
Not so much as looking like an alien as the other new-borns did, Anna's daughter had a smoother complexion, less veiny and unsightly. I marvelled at the glorious radiance she emitted, unlike Anna herself. A minute hand raised in a cat-like stretch, propelling her fragile arms behind her head as she awoke.
"Shit, I woke her up." I mumbled.
"It's okay. Now we can finally see her eyes." George murmured back to me. I'd been so caught up in staring at this baby that I hadn't noticed him wrapping his arms around my middle from behind and looking over my shoulder, his chin perched there.
Anna's daughter had her mother's eyes. I always thought Anna had the most disgusting eye colour, mossy green and dull, lifeless. But now, as I saw the baby's sticky lids peel back and reveal her eyes for the first time I realised they were not dull at all. They were just clouded over because she was miserable.
When Anna was a child, before she got into drugs and lived with her uncle, she must have had the exact replica of these eyes. Sparkling, round, leaf green orbs that popped out and never failed to stun you. Hypnotic swirls of a darker olive poured into the emeralds like milk into hot chocolate.
"Pretty." George spoke softly at my ear. I couldn't agree more. "See if she'll wrap her fingers around your thumb."
She did. Miniscule fingers barely bigger than a pin prick curled around my thumb, surprisingly tight for a baby so young.
I mumbled an 'ow' and laughed when she wouldn't let go and her intense grip increased and increased.
"Who knew something so tiny could have such a strong grip?" I chuckled.
I watched out of the corner of my eye my mother. She was gazing in awe at the three of us, and smiling as if she were imagining a scene similar in the future for both of us.
Shortly, a nurse came over and told us that the adoptive parents were coming over to collect her soon and we needed to go and sign some more papers. My mother went with the nurse and I put Anna's daughter back in her cot and George and I continued just to look at her.
"Will you have a baby with me one day, Cassie?" George asked.
"Hmm..."
"I know you said you didn't want kids and you didn't want to get married, and I respect that, but one day a long time from now would you maybe change your plans and want to have a baby?" He continued gently, and turned me around so our eyes could meet.
A chunk of his chocolatey locks had fallen into his eyes and I realised that he needed to get a haircut soon. Picking up the strands with my fingers, I brushed it back so I could look deep into his cobalt eyes.
"You need a haircut." I said and he gave me an unimpressed look, though I could see the corner of his lips tugging upwards.
"Cassie." He spoke in that coaxing feathery voice. "I'm not proposing." A strand of my own hair was gently tucked behind my ear and a small kiss pressed to my temple. "I'm just asking, whether you'd maybe like to have a baby, with me, in the future."
"I think my mum was calling us-"
"Don't try to even pull that trick on me, missy!" He chuckled and pulled my chin back to look at him. "Answer."
"I don't know." I said but he'd brought his face closer and pecked my lips quickly.
"Cassie."
"I don't know." I repeated as he pecked several more of his torturous kisses to my lips.
"Cassie."
I looked over at the baby I'd just held and thought about all the things I thought and felt whilst holding her. "I don't know, George. I mean, it's wonderful because it would be this tiny little human that we'd have to look after together and it would be half of me and half of you." I grinned up at him. "But it's so much responsibility and attachment. It scares me and I'm only just getting used to..." I used my hands to motion to him. Come on, Cass. You can say it. "...to loving someone, and it's wonderful and makes me feel so good but it's foreign to me and a part of me is still terrified. But maybe George, maybe in the future - not any time soon - I'll consider having children with you."
I don't think I'd ever seen him smile so brightly - actually after we had sex his smile was pretty bright too-
"Thank you." He whispered and gave me a longer more satisfying kiss. "Let's just take one step at a time right now. Take things slow." He grinned. "But I still can't wait for the day you tell me you're pregnant."
I rolled my eyes a little but smiled nevertheless. "You're cute." I mumbled and tapped his chin, which earned me a scowl.
"You will regret calling me cute, Cassie Moore." He warned with a sly smirk and lightly poked my stomach. "But for now, shall we go and see Anna? She should be awake by now and can be released."
Anna. Yes, that's why we were here in the first place. "Okay." Once we left the room with all the adoptive babies we made our way to Anna's ward that she'd been moved into, I allowed my eyes one last fleeting glance at Anna's daughter. Her truly beautiful daughter.
"You know, I wasn't kidding when I said you needed a haircut." I added as we waltzed down the eerie hospital corridors.
"I let it grow out because I thought you liked to run your fingers through it." He replied and I grinned because it was true and quite funny that he'd pick that up.
"I do, but it's got too long now that I can't really run my fingers through it properly. Doesn't have quite the same effect." I fibbed, I still could of course, I just thought it looked better a little bit shorter.
"Really? Not the same effect?" He challenged playfully, rapidly tugging on my waist and dipping his head to my ear before he continued in a whisper. "Because I don't think you were thinking that when I made you org-"
"George!" I squealed and jumped out of his grip to slam my hand over his mouth. "There are many newborns around, you can't be polluting their ears by saying things like that."
He smirked at my giggles and reaction, wrapping one arm around my waist and resuming our walk. "You know for someone who had sex nearly every day of the week for three and a half years, you sure are innocent Cassie."
Shrugging, I added. "It wasn't every day of the week. Maybe four out of seven. It depended whether people were actually available."
Before he had a chance to answer or say anything else, we halted in our tracks at the end of Anna's bed in the ward with ten beds inside.
Nine of ten beds had a new mother inside.
"Where is she?" I asked, surprised that it came out so frantic.
"I don't know." George answered but I hardly heard him. My focus was directed towards the empty bed which looked like it had been slept in but apart from that, barely touched. No hospital bag. No coffee cup. No phone charger or book. Evidently, no trace that a person had stayed here besides the crumpled sheets.
"Where the fuck is she?" I whispered but George heard me, and apparently so did a nurse nearby.
"Who are you looking for?" She asked. George answered; I didn't.
Searching for a single piece of evidence that she was still here, my heart beat picked up in an unnerving way. Kind of what it felt like when I was having a panic attack.
"George where is she?" I quivered inaudibly. Why Cassie? Why are you shaking like a leaf in a storm?
He didn't get to answer me, the nurse beat him to it.
"Anna Brooks left the hospital about an hour ago. The doctor permitted her to leave and she took all of her stuff and left. Did she not tell you?"