Free The Mistake I Made by Paula Daly Page A

continue he winced a little before saying, ‘I’m sorry about this, but I need you to be fully transparent here. It’s important.’
    I exhaled. I didn’t want him to know. Up until this point I’d been under a kind of lovely, hazy, dream-like spell where the real world was locked firmly behind the clinic door.
    Now it was as if that spell was broken.
    ‘I lost a baby whilst on holiday in Gran Canaria,’ I said. ‘I was twenty-six weeks pregnant – quite far along.’
    He tilted his head and gave a sad smile. ‘So sorry to hear that,’ he said softly.
    ‘It just wasn’t meant to be,’ I replied.
    What I didn’t say was that this was the beginning of the end for me and Winston. He had been screwing around. I was unaware of this at that point, but I knew we weren’t what we once were. I failed to see what was right in front of my eyes and, somewhat delusionally, thought a new baby would bring us closer together again.
    Silly, really, but in my defence I’m sure I was not the first woman to think a man would change his ways once he had a new baby in his arms. If women were to stop kidding themselves with that particular fantasy, I reckon the human race would die out pretty quickly.
    Sadly for us, I started spotting blood when I boarded the plane at Manchester, and by the time we arrived in Gran Canaria it was clear something was wrong. We went straight to the hospital, whereupon I was hooked up to a saline drip, examined briefly and told I would be scanned first thing in the morning. They told Winston he could do nothing and, since I would be sharing a room with another woman, he was not welcome to stay.
    At around ten that night there was a change of plan. A gruff obstetrician performed the scan, notifying me in her limited English, ‘There is nothing.’
    When I asked what she meant exactly, she said, ‘No more baby,’ and the assisting nurse informed me that I would be induced at seven in the morning, and would need to go through normal labour. I would have nothing to show at the end of it. Half consumed with grief, half terrified, I begged for a Caesarean. But I was denied.
    I changed after that. I think I just gave up trying. I had neither the grit nor the energy and determination required to run our lives effectively and, ultimately, everything began to unravel. Winston slept around more. I didn’t attend to our financial problems. And we lost it all.
    ‘I’ll need to take some blood from you,’ Henry Peachey said now, apologetically.
    ‘A blood test? Why?’
    ‘Anything surgical performed outside the UK carries an increased AIDS risk. Did you have a D & C?’
    I shook my head. ‘Labour.’
    ‘That’s still classed as surgical, I’m afraid. The test is a thumb pinprick. I’ll just need enough for …’ His voice trailed off as he rummaged around in his briefcase, looking for, it transpired, two polythene envelopes, each containing a small plastic vial.
    ‘Here we go,’ he said.
    He set about cleaning my thumb with an alcohol wipe. I was conscious of the drop in mood and Henry’s careful way with me. The earlier playfulness between us was gone.
    ‘Gives you quite a privileged insight into other people’s lives, an assessment such as this,’ I commented as he punctured my skin.
    He squeezed my thumb and positioned the vial.
    ‘As does your job,’ he replied, screwing on the cap. ‘You must see all sorts.’
    He wasn’t wrong. I carried more secrets from the folk around here than I cared to remember. It’s an odd arrangement, the relationship between patient and therapist. Not really replicated anywhere else. I used to think it was the vulnerable condition of the patient – the fact that they were in pain, in a state of undress – which caused them, perhaps from a nervous response, to divulge. But I’ve since changed my mind. I don’t think my patients ever really feel vulnerable. I work hard to put them at ease, to present myself as an affable, capable person who can be trusted