Dot (Araminta Hall)

itself around their car, dragging them backwards, creasing the road. A heavy rain was falling, slicking the tarmac and making driving dangerous. Except this was now and that was then, when a bright winter sun had shone out of a pale blue sky.
    The policemen dropped him at the front entrance and he had to search his mind to remember his and then his wife’s name at the reception desk so that the young girl looked at him as though he was mad and hovered her finger over the security button. Eventually she gave him directions which he felt unable to follow, tripping over himself as he ran down corridors, trying to focus his eyes so that his mind could process the words on the signs above his head. He wondered at one point if he was dreaming, or if maybe he was dead and this was hell, an endless succession of hospital corridors with your wife in an unknown state at the end of one of them.
    Finally he found the right ward but he wished it was wrong. As he opened the doors he could feel the sickness heavy in the air, hear it in the silence which clung all over the space. Gerry whispered Sandra’s name to the nurse behind the desk and she told him to wait in the room next to her desk, she’d fetch the doctor. The room was as blank and terrifying as anywhere in which you are about to receive bad news. Gerry stood by the window, looking down into the car park where people came and went and laughed and smoked, as if nothing was wrong. Eventually a tired-looking young man in a long white coat came in, shutting the door behind him.
    ‘Please sit down, Mr Loveridge,’ he said, indicating one of the chairs. He sank into another one, as if he hadn’t sat for days.
    But Gerry stayed standing; his body was alive with nerves and he didn’t think he’d be able to sit. ‘Is she OK?’
    ‘She’s sedated at the moment, just coming round. She’ll be OK, but she’s had a nasty accident.’
    ‘I don’t understand. What happened?’
    ‘According to witnesses she was driving too fast and she lost control on a corner and went straight into a tree. Even though she was wearing a seat belt the force of the crash threw her into the steering wheel and the windscreen.’
    ‘Where was she?’
    The doctor looked at his notes. ‘Kelsey.’
    ‘Kelsey?’
    ‘Had you had an argument?’
    Gerry nodded. ‘But also, she’s been sick for the past twenty-four hours and she left without eating or drinking anything. And she’s pregnant, of course.’
    ‘Mr Loveridge, please sit down.’
    Gerry did as he was told this time; the air was being sucked out of the room, lights flashing before his eyes.
    ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Loveridge, but the baby didn’t survive.’
    Gerry felt his eyes twitch.
    ‘We had to operate as soon as she arrived. She was bleeding internally. The baby was already dead. He’d been killed by the force of the crash.’
    ‘He?’
    The doctor blushed at this. ‘Sorry, yes, it was a boy.’
    ‘Oh God.’
    ‘She would have died if we hadn’t operated.’
    Gerry stood up, the need to finish this conversation as pressing as anything had yet been in his life. ‘Yes. Thank you. Can I see her now?’
    ‘Mr Loveridge, there’s more, I’m afraid. Your wife’s injuries were extensive and severe. Because of the pregnancy her bleeding was hard to contain and the baby had damaged some of her internal organs. I’m very sorry but we had to remove part of her womb.’
    Gerry felt he was missing something; a memory flickered in his brain. ‘Her womb?’
    ‘What I’m trying to say is that she won’t be able to get pregnant again.’
    ‘But …’ The implications of what he’d done rushed through Gerry. ‘But she has to. I mean … she’ll want to. She’ll need to.’
    ‘I know it’s a lot to take in, Mr Loveridge, but she has no chance of conceiving again. I’m very sorry. We do have counsellors available in the hospital to help you come to terms with this.’
    Gerry steadied himself by leaning against the wall. ‘Does she know?’
    ‘Not yet. I’m going to make my rounds in about an hour. I was going to tell her then. But obviously you can do it, if you think that would be better.’
    ‘Yes, I’ll tell her.’
    The doctor put his hand on the door handle. ‘Was she pregnant with your first baby?’
    ‘No, no. We have a daughter, Mavis, she’s two.’
    ‘Well, hang on to that then,’ he said as he opened the door. ‘Her bed is the last on the right. And please let us know if we can help at all.’
    Gerry