The doctor stayed for four hours. She came out and spoke to us in between trips to Mum’s room, telling us what to do. We were to make sure Mum had plenty of fluids during the day.
‘But she can’t drink more than half a cup of tea,’ I whispered. She was going to get sick again, I knew it!
The doctor smiled at me. ‘I’m leaving some bottles of electrolytes and some anti-emetic pills. She should soon be feeling much better.’
‘Why’s she so sick?’ Noah asked — a very subdued, low-key Noah.
‘It’s a severe form of morning sickness, which she had to some extent before the chopper ride,’ the doctor said, looking at Noah and not anywhere near Dad. ‘She had it with both her other pregnancies.’
‘But she wasn’t sick before the chopper ride,’ Dad said.
The doctor gave him a very level look. ‘Yes. She was. Not quite as bad as this, but bad enough.’
Images flickered through my head of her pale, strained face and of how she hadn’t eaten with us because she said she’d eaten with her friends, or she wasn’t hungry. ‘What about when the baby comes? She can’t have it here.’ Not with bird-shit water and nobody to help her except me. ‘How will we get her to hospital?’
The doctor smiled at me. ‘Don’t worry. I think now we’re getting her rehydrated the worst of the nausea will go. Then we’ll give her time to build up some strength before we fly her out.’
‘When’s the baby due?’ Dad squeezed the words out the way you’d squeeze the last dribble from a tube of cleanser.
The doctor gave him a look that had a lot of stuff behind it that she could have said but chose not to. ‘Mid-February. We’ll need to have her off the island by mid-December at the very latest.’
That meant we only had four more months here. I could survive four months. Mum could and I could.
The two women stood up. Dr Hunter said, ‘I’m coming back a week from today but if you’re at all worried, call Cara and she’ll get hold of me immediately.’ She looked at me as she spoke, not at Dad.
They headed for the door. Dad went with them, but I didn’t have the energy. Cara gave me another hug. ‘You did well, Minna. Very well.’
Yeah. I guess it wouldn’t look too good in the headlines if Mum had died: Reality TV series goes tragically wrong. TV company and husband to be charged over death of artist.
Noah and I watched them go, then we turned and went to Mum’s room. She was asleep, but she looked better already. We tiptoed back to the kitchen.
‘Sorry I ate all the chocolate,’ Noah said.
We heard the chopper lift off and spin away over the sea. Dad came back. He walked over to me and gave me the hugest hug. ‘I can only say I’m sorry, Min. Very, very sorry.’
I let him hug me and I cried into his jersey.
He sat me down on the sofa and said, ‘Noah and I are on canteen duty tonight.’
I went and checked on Mum, and then again five minutes later. After that, I just curled up under the duvet on her bed. She’d nearly died. She might be a bad mother, but she was the only mother I had. I didn’t want to lose her.
I stayed there till Noah came and whispered that dinner was ready. Mum slept on.
We ate and it was good. Dad had made the pork crackle and he’d made gravy. Nobody talked much and they didn’t make me do any of the dishes.
I woke Mum up before I went to bed to see if she wanted to go to the toilet. I helped her, and she didn’t need to lean on me as much as she had before. ‘I feel so much better. Love you, Min.’
I kissed her cheek and tucked her up. She loved me, I loved her, she didn’t love Dad — well, I guessed she didn’t any more, Dad for sure didn’t love her but he did love me, and I loved him when he wasn’t totally pissing me off. Noah was somewhere in all of that and it was all too complicated. I wanted ordinary life back again and I wanted it so much I ached with wanting, or maybe I just ached with tiredness.
I went to bed. I slept. I didn’t want another day like this one in a hurry.
The next morning got off to a lively start with a weta in Noah’s boot. He was heading out to use the facilities, shoved his bare feet into his gumboots and encountered the weta which wasn’t friendly.
Life trundled on.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I had a hope that all this would make Dad realise how much he really did love Mum, that he’d forgive her, she’d cry and say how wicked she’d been and they’d get back together and we’d all live happily ever after.
Dreams are dangerous.
Dad was different but it was still bloody awful and actually I preferred pissed-off Dad. It was much harder to yell at polite Dad. He cooked breakfast. ‘Morning, Min,’ he said when I yawned my way into the kitchen. So far, nothing was different. ‘Will you go and check on Liv please?’ I noted the use of Mum’s name.
I considered a conversation with him, but he didn’t exactly look in that frame of mind. I went and checked on Mum. She smiled at me — a proper smile — and she sat up, kept still for a minute, then said, ‘Can you find my dressing gown, Min? I’m going to get up, have a cuppa and then a shower.’
I gave her the sort of hug you’d give a fragile doll. ‘That’s great Mum. But you’ve got to eat something too.’
She patted my hand. ‘I will, darling. But in an hour or two I think.’
So. She still felt sick, but I could see she was a major heap better. I found the dressing gown and walked beside her out to the facilities.
‘Check your boots,’ said Noah.
When we came back, I hoped Dad would say something to her. Anything. Slut and why did you do it? would have been better than the empty look he ran over her from top to toe, and then he turned back to the bacon.
Mum caught a whiff of the smell, turned green and headed back to her bed. ‘Mum, the smell will be all through the house. Here, look, we’ll put a chair on the verandah and you can sit there. It’s sunny. It’ll be nicer than the bedroom.’
Dad didn’t comment. Maybe he didn’t hear because that’s for sure what it looked like. Noah wrestled the armchair out on to the verandah and wonder of miracles, he then scurried off and came back with a blanket all on his own initiative. We got Mum settled, brought out our breakfast and sat where the smell wouldn’t get to her. Dad stayed inside which meant that he missed the birds hopping up to chat with us, and the little lizards scurrying around — they were skinks according to Mum. Dad did the listening watch while we stayed outside.
Then Dad and Noah went off to do their chopping and digging. Mum and I stayed at the house. I did the dishes. Mum had a shower while I hung about outside the bathroom door in case she fell over. She didn’t, but she lay on the sofa after that and slept for ages.
I took the camera and fed the chooks. ‘What do you think of The Situation, chooks? Have the latest dramas changed anything? Will there be tearful reconciliations? Maybe Mum will have the baby here. Dad will have to deliver it, because I’m telling you, chooks, I for sure aren’t going to, and what with all the excitement and worry, they’ll both see how stupid they’ve been.’ I threw in another handful of wheat. ‘What’s your opinion, Tizzie?’
I held the camera low to catch a shot of a line of beaks, feathers and combs bobbing up and down. ‘You think yes? You’re all agreed? A unanimous decision?’ More nodding. ‘But what say I ask you: is it curtains for Liv and Wes? What if I ask: is this marriage doomed? What do you say to that?’ I recorded more nodding, plus Fizzie looking straight at the camera for three seconds, her head on one side.
I stood up. ‘And there we have it. The opinion from the chook run.’
I collected seven eggs.