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By Mark Nethercote, June 30, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 28th June 2010

Gestation: 39 weeks, 3 days

One year ago.

Our flight home is delayed by six hours.

So we spend the evening, our last unexpected evening, two hundred metres down the road from the airport, at a shitty old hotel, watching the last of our downloaded movies.

When we finally arrive home, at 3.30am on Monday, the pilot wakes us all with his announcement:

“Welcome to Melbourne, where outside, it is a frosty three degrees.”

There’s nothing quite like leaving your house unheated for nine days to realise how good its insulation is.

“I’m getting straight into bed,” Suse yells down the wintery hallway,  “I’m not even taking my clothes off.”

I walk into the room, and checking the electric blanket is on five, I do the same.  We huddle together, under our down-filled doona, like we’re on another adventure.

“That was fun,” Suse says, her beanie slipping down over her eyes.

We snuggle in close, holding each other tightly, as we drift off to sleep.

The holiday is over.

* * * * *

But it feels like we’ve turned a new leaf.  This holiday helped us to heal.  We’ve stopped taking it out on each other, using one another as an instrument to deal with our own problems.  We’ve regained the love.  And the pain is easing.

We’ve made peace with this whole pregnancy thing.

For the moment.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, June 10, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 11th June 2010

Gestation: 37 weeks, 1 day

One year ago.

I hear the back door open, but then silence.  I continue typing away for another minute, waiting for Suse to come in.

“Is that you, hon?” I shout out.

“Yes,” she says.  I get up from my desk, and walk out of the office.  The house is cold and dark, winter’s night having closed in quickly.  There on the couch sits Suse, her shoulders still slumped.  She stares at the unlit television screen.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“No,” she says, her face screwing up.  I sit.  “I thought I was doing okay,” she says, breaking into tears. She burrows herself into my shoulder.  Her head bobs up and down against my arm.  Her sobs multiply, and multiply, a release of feelings, a torrent of emotion.  I take her deeper into my arms, cradling her as I do.

“I thought I was doing good,” she manages, gasping out the words between breaths.  “I really thought I was doing well.  Until this today,” she says.  She bursts once more, tears spilling over.  “I’m on edge, Mark.  I was so good this morning, and then, now…”  she trails off once again.  “I just can’t take anything more right now.  I just can’t have anything else get in the way of…”  She falls even further into my shoulder.

I feel my anxiety building, that thing that happens anytime I see Suse cry.  I want to fix it, to change it, to stop it from happening.  I notice this thing, welling up, threatening to break over in me as anger, or resentment, or a diversion tactic.  Anything to deflect from feeling.  Anything to stop from having to witness her in pain.

But I don’t.  I notice it, and I feel it well up.  And I let it go.

And I hold her.

I hold my wife, and stroke her hair.  She sobs, and sobs, and I hold her, and I stroke her hair.

“Nothing’s changed, honey,” I say.  “Nothing’s changed.  We’re going to be okay.”

“I’m just so scared of anything else happening,” she says.  I look at her, and see the fear in her eyes.

“I know,” I say.  “I see you, honey.  I see you.  I understand.”

“I can’t have anything else happen, Mark.  I just can’t.”

I stroke her hair again, damp from the sweat of the shakes from the tears.  I run my fingers through it.  “It’s going to be okay.  We’re going to be okay.”

“I want to burn another candle,” she manages to say.

“We can do that,” I say.  “We can do that.  We can do whatever you want.  Now let’s run you a bath.”

* * * * *

Suse lies in the bath, still.  She floats her hands at her sides, washing the water up over herself, like a kid welling water over sand.  I sit on a chair, my laptop on my knees.  And I read.  I read out diary entries from this story.

I read her the entry I wrote about visiting Dr. Fleischer.  I read her the entry about the ringing the sperm lab.  I read the story about the psychic.  And I even read her the story about misfiring on withdrawal.

Each story I tell, I get some of my wife back.  Each tale I tell, a bit more of her returns.

“You’ve never let me read it till now,” she says finally.

“Well, it wasn’t ready yet,” I say.  “Or I didn’t think it was ready.”  I stop for a second.  “But now was the time for you to hear it.”

“It’s a really good story,” she says finally.

“It’s healing,” I say.  “It’s my therapy.”

“I want to read it.  All of it.”

“You will.”

“No,” she says deliberately, “I want to know what happens.”

* * * * *

We sit in front of the TV.  Suse sits there, calm and still; yet clearly drained.  In through the wringer, and out the other side.

An emotionally flat pancake.

I take my hands, and I scoop one under her right shoulder from behind.  I put one on the front of it.

And for what it’s worth, I treat it.

I sit there, with one hand at its front, and one at it’s back, feeling it.  And I suction it.  In exactly the way that the psychic had told me on my birthday, I treat it.

‘You’re a sensitive,’ she had said, ‘and you can heal Susan.’

‘How?’ I’d asked.

‘Imagine the layers of the body, and imagine going through them, and pulling out the blackness.’

So I do.

I feel stupid, and self-conscious, and kind of weird.  But I do.  I imagine her shoulder, I imagine the tendinopathy, and I imagine it healing.  I feel a gradual stickiness in my hands, as I do, after a time, and then I flick it away.

And I do the same thing over her fallopian tubes.  I imagine the blocked right tube, and I imagine it unblocking.  I imagine the tortuous left one, and I imagine it tightening up.  Again, after a time, I feel a stickiness in my hands, and I flick it away.

We sit again, watching TV.

Neither of us says anything.

There’s no need.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, June 1, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 4th June 2010

Gestation: 36 weeks

One year ago.

Suse and I sit opposite each other, in this, the counsellor’s room.

“And what do you want to do when that happens?” she asks.

“I want to punish him,” Suse replies.

“And what about you, Mark?”

“I want to punish her.”

“No!” June says, knocking the edge of the chair loudly with the butt of her hand.  “No!  You’ve got to stop!  You’ve got to stop that!”  We’re both looking at her now.  “He’s not the enemy!” she says to Suse.  “She’s not the enemy!” she says to me.

“When you’re hurting, and your wounded child takes over, Little Suse wants to yell, and Little Mark wants to run and hide.  You’re punishing the one person who gets what you’re going through!  Through all of this, through this entire painful experience, you – and only you two – really know what you’re going though.  No one else can really get that but you two.  So when arguments start, when it becomes about something petty and separate from what it should be, it erodes at your foundations of love.  You’ve got to be there for each other.  You’re on the same team here, guys.  The adults have to come back out and play.”

She leans forward, and says pointedly, “You’ve got to play together.  To get through this, you’ve got to play together.  When the shit hits the fan, the adults have to re-enter the room.”

She’s right.  It hurts to admit, but she’s right.  Being wrong feels shit.  But she’s right.

Damn right.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, May 31, 2011 10:00 am

Thursday 3rd June 2010

Gestation: 35 weeks, 6 days

One year ago.

“I had a dream about having a baby,” Suse says.  My eyes leave the traffic as I turn to look at her.  She looks back.  Her face is filled with hope.  Her eyes are light, and she is smiling.  “And every time I breast fed her, she got bigger.”

“How old was she by the time you woke up?”

“She was still a baby.   Just a really big one.”

“Okay.  You didn’t end up with a grandpa baby?”

“Nup.  A normal baby.  Just a big one.  And she was a girl, not a boy.”

“Great.”

“This is a big thing for me,” she says, touching my hand.  “You get that I’ve never actually had a dream like that before?  We’re actually going to have a baby.”

“I know, honey,” I say.   I put my foot on the pedal, catching an amber light.

“I know you’ve known for ever,” she says, sighing.  “But this is a big thing for me.  A really big thing.  It’s a big break – that I actually believe this will happen.   That we’re actually going to get pregnant.”

The traffic slows to a halt, as someone reverses directly in front of us.  We stop, while an elderly lady, her hair still flat from sleep and hairspray, tries to see over the dash.  I can just make out the top of her head above the seat.

“You know that we’ve still got a two in three chance of not having an ectopic?” she says.  I reach across, taking her hand in a squeeze.

“You’ve become my glass half-full wife, have you?”

“Two-thirds full.”

“I’ve only ever heard you tell me how it’s one-third empty.”

“And, what’s more… We might even get pregnant naturally.  I get a feeling that it’s going to happen before we need to start IVF.”

The car in front stops dead.  The old woman fiddles with the gearstick, trying to wrestle it into first.  She fails.

“What prompted all of this?”

“Dunno.  I’ve just had a change in my outlook, I guess,” she says simply.

Someone toots.  The car remains stuck.  Another person hits their horn in frustration.  I hear someone yell.

And all I can do is smile.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, April 25, 2011 10:00 am

Tuesday 27th April 2010

Gestation: 30 weeks, 4 days

One year ago.

Time passes as quickly as it does when your soul mate is in surgery.

Like cement through an hourglass.

Still, I keep myself busy.  I prepare dinner, knowing full well that after the operation Suse will want nothing to eat. I preheat the oven and half-cook her comfort food of choice – potato gems.  I hang out the washing, which Suse put on in a nervous state early in the day.

We’re like the yin and yang of anxiety.

I text her parents and mine, to let them know that it’ll be another hour until we have an answer.  I sort through a bill pile that has remained neglected for months.  Nothing like bank statements to distract.

Time suddenly feels like it is going backwards.

The phone rings.  “Hello, is that Mark?”

“Yes.”

“Susan is out of theatre.  She’s fine, but she’s in a bit of pain.  She’s asking for you.”

I pick up my keys and walk out the door.

* * * * *

Suse moves gingerly in the bed.  Her voice is soft, she looks swollen.  Anaesthetics aren’t kind to her.  I take her hand softly, noting the bandaid where the drip was.

All around there is noise.  There are four others in the recovery bay.  Three different nurses have already been in.  The curtains part for a fourth, before we realise that it is Dr. Fleischer.  She holds a series of photos;  Polaroids from her recent holiday into Suse’s abdomen.

“So we had a look inside, and we see that your ovaries look good and your uterus looks good from the outside.”  She points to Polaroid one and two.   “Both of the tubes look good too.  There is no dilated tube on the left…”

“…Oh, that’s good,” says Suse squeezing my hand.

“…Mmmm,” she continues.  “They both looked a little bit tortuous, but on the whole, they looked okay.  I looked inside the uterus itself, and the lining looked good and healthy.”  She takes a pause.  “And then we did the dye test,” she says, shuffling photos, “and with this, we saw that your left tube had no blockage…”

“…Oh, that’s good,” Suse repeats.

“…But the right one… was blocked.”  We both frown.  “I tried a couple of different manoeuvres, and increased the pressure quite high, but still I couldn’t get the dye through.  In fact, it started to dilate the uterus up, so I couldn’t really push any further.”

We both remain silent for a moment.  Suse is the first to recover.

“So what does that mean?”

“Well, whatever process caused the ectopic on the left, is probably causing the blockage on the right.  Maybe there was a bit of an infection there at some point, or something else.”

She stops for a moment, and no one says anything.  The slugs bury themselves, one in each shoulder, first rounds from the ammunition.  I stand there, like you see on the screen, as yet disbelieving that I’ve been hit.  This is the moment, that very moment – just before I realise.

Just before I fall to the ground still.

This time, I snap out of it first.  “So what does this mean?”

“That you might need to consider IVF.”  Two more bullets hit.  Suse’s hand slips out of mine.

“And when do you think we should think about that?”

I hear my voice.

I guess I just spoke.

“Maybe give it another three months.  But there’s a lot to think about.  You’ll get a call from the girls in the next few days, to have a follow up appointment.  You’ve got to have your chicken pox vaccine anyway…”

“…Which will delay everything for three months…”

“…So yes, maybe after that… How old are you, again?”

“Thirty-five,” Suse says.  “Thirty-five-and-a-half.”  She looks straight through the curtain at the end.

“Yeah, so you don’t want to leave it too long.  I think three months after that is probably about right.”  Two more bullets.  Without any cotton wool.  “But you’ll have your appointment with me to talk about all of this in the next few weeks.”

She turns and leaves the tavern.

Dead bodies strewn all around.

This woman is a straight shooter.

* * * * *

We arrive home, dazed and confused.  We sit, trying to talk.  Neither of us knows what to say.  Neither of us is coherent.  Finally, Suse turns to me, and her faces scrunches up.

“I’m so sorry that I’m broken,” she says.

Potato gems sit on the plate, going cold.

* * * * *

I get ready for bed.  Suse decides to stay up, unable or unwilling to lie awake and think just yet.  We vow a united fight, but already we’ve slipped into our own patterns of coping.  Marriage is a funny thing.  To be emotionally reliant on another after years of self management.  But when crises occur, we revert back to old strategies.  I feel myself retreating into my cave, my emotions bedded down, padded in thoughts and busyness while Suse does the opposite, her own emotions winding up, a tornado of self-flagellation in the offing.

I see it happening, watching like an observer from the sidelines.

I lie down, tossing and turning.  The doona is too hot, too cold, anything but right.  After twenty minutes, my mouth feeling dry, I head to the kitchen for some water.

As I do, Suse is standing.

I walk past her, and am instantly hit by the smell of smoke.

Of cigarettes.

“Susan,” I say softly.

“I’ve only been…  It’s just been for the last few days.  With everything…”

I walk back down the hallway.  “Please don’t hate me,” she says.

I close the door.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, April 12, 2011 10:00 am

Thursday 15th April 2010

Gestation: 28 weeks, 6 days

One year ago.

Sometimes she is present, and other times she’s not.

Sometimes I live with my beautiful, warm, sensitive, caring wife.  The woman that I married.  The one who cares for me, and loves me, and fully supports me.

Other times, I cohabitate with a powerfully intemperate, irrational woman.  An irascible, cantankerous being.  One whom I tippee-toe around.

Mostly unsuccessfully.

At other times, I share a house with a sensitive, fragile, frightened girl.  One who cries in fear of being broken, of not being able to be fixed.  Of being baron, and irredeemable, and unable to reach happiness.  And cursed.

And other times again, I have none of the above.

I have a shell of a person living with me.

This is the worst of all.

* * * * *

I wake each morning, waiting to see who’s day it is.  Where we’re up to in the cycle.  What day it is on the roster.

Because, you see, no one handed me the roster.  No one bothers to let me know who’s on yard duty.  I just have to wait for the rock to hit me in the back of the head.  That’s how I find out.

The pregnancy game.

It’s a roller coaster, they say.

But without the thrills.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, March 29, 2011 10:00 am

Wednesday 24th March 2010

Gestation: 25 weeks, 5 days

One year ago.

I hold my wife, and as I do, I see a look in her eyes;  a simple love that I don’t feel like I’ve seen for a long time.  I couldn’t even say how long.

Afterwards, we lie there, hugging each other tightly.

“That’s how I want to conceive our baby,” she says.

“Same,” I say, quietly.

I look across at her, her eyes sparkling, as she looks at me in that same way.

So simply.

And filled with love.

“I don’t know what happened,” she says.  “I feel alive again.  I feel like someone switched the light on again.”

“That’s exactly how it feels for me too.”

I’m not going to question it.

There are things mere humans will never understand.

Just let it be.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, March 24, 2011 10:00 am

Saturday 20th March 2010

Gestation: 25 weeks, 1 day

One year ago.

I walk through the door having been out for most of the day.  I dump my bag in the study and sit for a moment.  Suse appears at the doorway, framed by the… well, by the doorframe.  She rests her hand up against the wood.

“I just wanted to tell you that I did a pregnancy test today, and it was negative.  And I’m okay with that.”  I look at her and nod.  “In a strange way, I don’t think I was ready this month.”  Again, I nod.  “Anyway, what do you want for dinner?  Do you want to go for a walk?”

“Okay.  Whatever.  Sure.”

Her brow screws up.  “What do you mean?”

“I’m just responding to the three things you just said.”

“Oh, right.”  She looks at me with a smile.

“And you’re okay about the test?”

“Yeah, sure.  Why not?”

Why not?

Why not indeed?

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, March 16, 2011 10:00 am

Tuesday 9th March 2010

Gestation: 23 weeks, 4 days

One year ago.

Tonight, we have a blow out.  A real, proper blow out.

No need to detail the exchange, other than to say that we both yelled as hard as each other.  The artillery used is not relevant, other than to say that both sides fought valiantly.

There were many casualties.

It was a blood bath.

* * * * *

It ends with Suse in the car, crying;  me, sitting on the edge of the foot cushion, my head in my hands, feeling the cold slate against my feet.

We stay like this for ten minutes, probably more.  I sit there, head in hands, hearing Suse crying through two panes of glass.  I feel the twist of emotion deep, for being part of this.

For feeling this wretched emotion too.

Eventually, twenty minutes after she first stormed passed me, I open the passenger door, and slip in.  I sit there, hearing her cry.  It is so much sharper right there;  without the insulation of the glass.

It hurts so much more seeing her like this.

* * * * *

Eventually, we head inside.

We go to bed, hugging tightly.  Suse falls to sleep like she wouldn’t normally, gripped tight in my arms.

So as not to lose her again.

Meantime, I wonder what to do.

How we dig ourselves out of this deep hole.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, March 4, 2011 10:00 am

Wednesday 3rd March 2010

Gestation: 22 weeks, 5 days

One year ago.

“Hey love,” I say, waking tired.

“Hey.”

We lie still for a bit.

“Sorry for being a pain in the arse yesterday,” Suse finally says.

“That’s okay,” I reply, not quite sure if I mean it.

“It’s just that I’m petrified of getting pregnant this month,” she continues. “Petrified of getting pregnant.  And petrified of not.”

She stops.

“Fair enough,” I say.

“And then… Well, you know.”

“No?”

“Well, you were getting all full-on about buying a new car.  And buying property.  And setting us up for a family.  And so, I just kind of freaked out.”

I look at her dumbfounded.

“We’ve been talking about getting a new car for a while.”

“I know.”

“In fact, you suggested it.”

“I know.”

“And you were more excited about buying a house in the country than me.”

“I know.”

I stop, staring at the roof, at least able to see the humour in it today.

“You realise that you don’t make any sense whatsoever.”

Suse sighs heavily.

“I know,” she says.

* * * * *