Free The Drowning Lesson by Jane Shemilt Page B

drowning?
    Thirty agonizing minutes later, in a hot slithery rush, I pushed the baby out and lay back, sweat-soaked and gasping for breath.
    ‘It’s a little fella,’ Duncan said. His tone carried the same serious delight as if he had been presenting me with an important award. A boy. How was that possible? I’d been so sure it would be a little girl. Adam squeezed my hand, his eyes full of tears.
    Before I had time to stop him, Duncan had clamped, then cut the cord. I felt a moment of anger: all the papers I’d read on the timing of this showed it was better to wait. Then the baby was whisked to the bassinet to be checked by the young paediatrician. Adam followed closely. He’d been smiling broadly, but suddenly his face fell. My irritation about the cord faded. Something was wrong.
    ‘What’s happening?’ I raised myself on one elbow, craning to see.
    ‘Nothing. He’s lovely, beautiful, fine,’ Adam said heartily. The list was chilling.
    ‘Then why –’ Before he could answer I leant forwards and vomited into the cardboard pan on the bed. Even as I was retching, I was trying to see what
was happening in the little huddle by the bassinet. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ I lay back, feeling giddy, as the midwife took away the pan. ‘Someone tell me what’s wrong.’
    ‘Here’s your son.’ The paediatrician put the baby into my arms.
    A blotchy stain covered his right cheek, a brilliant strawberry map printed on perfect skin, the edge laced with indentations. I looked at the rest of him: well-shaped rounded head, a dusting of fair hair, tiny neat ears. Thin little fingers flickering next to his face. My eyes went back to the birthmark. The girls had been perfect, I hadn’t expected this, I wasn’t prepared. The paediatrician was a new registrar I hadn’t met before.
    ‘This looks like a strawberry naevus, unless it’s a port-wine stain. Where’s Mr Sutton?’ An older paediatrician, he and I often worked together at difficult births. I wanted his gruff truthfulness now, not this nervous boy.
    ‘His day off. I’m covering,’ he said apologetically.
    ‘We need to scan the lesion.’ It was simpler to think of it as a surgical issue. If it was a port-wine stain, it might be linked with an underlying arterial-venous malformation that would need treatment.
    ‘Of course, though I’m sure it’s a typical strawberry naevus. It’ll get bigger for the first few years, then fade completely.’ The registrar paused and blushed.
‘As you know. We’ll keep you in for a couple of nights as he’s three weeks early but there shouldn’t be any problems.’
    I tuned him out. As I brought the baby to my left breast, he turned his head inwards, the small mouth seeking the nipple. From this angle the red stain was invisible. He might have been completely normal.
    Adam touched the baby’s head reverently. ‘It couldn’t matter less about the mark, Em. You won’t even notice it in a few days.’
    My eyes filled with tears. Duncan rested his hand briefly on my shoulder. ‘Time to do the repair work. Ready, Emma?’
    The midwife guided my ankles into stirrups. A needle slipped into my bruised flesh like a bee sting and then the anaesthetic began to numb my perineum.
    ‘John, after my father?’ Adam cupped the tiny bloodstained foot.
    ‘Samuel.’
    ‘Where did that come from?’ He bent to kiss the curling toes.
    ‘Alice. She’s reading
Lord of the Flies
. It was going to be Samantha for a girl.’ But the faint image of a tiny dark-haired girl had disappeared, bleached out under the bright lights.
    ‘What wrong with John?’ he asked.
    ‘Let’s please Alice for once.’
    ‘Samuel. Sam.’ He walked around testing the name. ‘I like it. I’m sure there was a judge in the Old Testament called Samuel.’ He smiled. ‘It means “heard by God”.’
    I was too tired to smile back – even my voice was thin with exhaustion. ‘It’s a name, Adam, not a biblical reference.’
    A name Alice had got from
Lord