‘Oluwa mi o! Oh, my God!’
Chiasoka was driving close behind a red 177 bus when she was stabbed by an excruciating pain in her stomach. She felt as if a ten-inch carving knife had been thrust into her, just below her navel, right up to the hilt.
She bent forward over the steering wheel. Her foot slipped off the clutch and her Mini jolted forward, its headlights smashing against the rear of the bus. She narrowly missed hitting a mother and her two young children who were starting to cross the street.
‘You dey crazy?’ the mother shouted at her, flailing at the bonnet of her Mini with her woven shopping bag. ‘Ode buruku! You nearly kill us!’
But Chiasoka was in so much agony that she couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t see anything or hear anything. After the initial stabbing sensation, she now felt as if her intestines were being churned up by some monstrous blender, tangled and untangled and stretched and pulled. She brought up a thick mouthful of the fried plantain and eggs that she had eaten for lunch, and her bowels let out a small squirt too. Her car was now surrounded by six or seven passers-by, and the bus driver was walking back to see how much damage she had done. But Chiasoka’s eyes were tightly closed and her teeth were clenched, and she felt that she was going to be swallowed up by endless darkness, and die.
She was aware of her car door being opened, and a man saying, ‘Look at this woman, man. She’s well sick. Hold on – I’ll call for an ambulance.’
‘I have – I have to—’ Chiasoka managed to whisper.
‘You have to what, love? Listen, don’t worry, we’ve called for an ambulance and look – there’s a cop car just turned up.’
‘I have to pick up my daughter… from school.’
‘Don’t you fret about it, darling. I’ll tell these coppers. They’ll take care of your daughter for you. What school does she go to?’
Chiasoka was gripped by another agonising spasm, so that she jerked forward and banged her forehead against the steering wheel. The man held her shoulders and said, ‘Try to keep still, okay? The ambulance won’t be too long, I hope.’
‘John Donne Primary,’ Chiasoka told him. ‘Her name is Daraja.’
The pain eased for a while, but she still felt as if her intestines were sliding around. It was a deeply disturbing sensation, as if her seat was sliding around beneath her too. She opened her eyes after a few moments and saw a plump blonde policewoman crouching down beside her, with a concerned look on her face.
‘What’s your name, dear?’ the policewoman asked her.
‘Chiasoka. Chiasoka Oduwole. I live in Lugard Road. Last house on the corner by Bidwell Street.’
‘Do you have your phone on you? Is there anybody we can contact?’
‘My cousin. We live with my cousin. Her name is Abebi. My phone – here – my phone is in my pocket.’
Chiasoka could hear an ambulance siren warbling in the distance. She was just about to tell the policewoman her cousin’s surname when she was seized by a pain so overwhelming that she went rigid from head to foot, gripping the steering wheel tightly in both hands and biting her bottom lip until a bead of blood slid down her chin.
She was vaguely conscious of the policewoman leaning across in front of her to unfasten her seat belt, but then she passed out and was plunged into absolute blackness.
*
When she opened her eyes, she found that she was lying on a hospital bed, wearing a flowery hospital gown and white surgical socks. She was in a private room, with a washbasin and two empty armchairs, and out of the window, she could see leafless trees, and a brown-tiled rooftop, and low grey clouds.
She rubbed her stomach. It still felt tender, and swollen, too, although the intense pain that she had felt in her car had subsided. She eased herself onto her left side and sat up, but immediately, she felt swimmy and strange, and the bed felt as if it were rocking up and down like a rowing boat moored to a harbour wall. She lay back down again and took several deep breaths.
She was still trying to steady herself when the door opened and a young gingery-haired nurse came bustling in.
‘Ah, you’re awake then, sweetheart! How do you feel?’
‘I feel very… very weird. Where am I?’
‘You’re in the Warren BirthWell Centre, at King’s College Hospital, in Denmark Hill. They transferred you here from A & E.’
‘I don’t understand. What is the BirthWell Centre?’
‘You’ve not heard of it? It’s for foetal medicine. Prenatal and neonatal. Best in the country, by far.’
‘But what am I doing here?’
‘I think I’d better leave that to Dr Macleod. He’ll be along in a minute. He’s just having a chat with the sonar technicians. Meanwhile – are you still feeling any pain?’
‘Only a little sore, that’s all. What about my daughter? I was supposed to be picking her up from school when I was taken sick.’
‘As far as I know, the police got in touch with your cousin and your cousin went to collect her. As soon as you’ve had all your tests, we’ll be calling her, and she can come in and see you.’
‘Tests? Tests for what? What is wrong with me?’
‘You’ve had a blood test already. I think Dr Macleod wants to give you an ultrasound on the basis of that. But he’ll explain it.’
Chiasoka sat up again and swung her legs off the side of the bed. When she tried to stand up though, the floor seemed to surge underneath her like a tidal wave, and she had to snatch the windowsill to stop herself from pitching forward.
‘Here, love, you need to lie down again,’ said the nurse, taking hold of her arm to steady her. She helped her to climb back onto the bed and pressed her fingertips against her neck to check her pulse. ‘It’s the painkillers they gave you, that’s the trouble… they haven’t worn off yet.’
‘Do you have my phone? I need to call my cousin and make sure that my daughter is okay.’
‘I’ll find out who’s got it and fetch it for you. Oh, look – here comes Dr Macleod now.’
A tall doctor in a grey three-piece suit appeared. His silvery hair was parted in the middle, and he wore heavy-rimmed tortoiseshell spectacles which looked as if they were just about to drop off the tip of his nose. He was accompanied by two younger doctors, an Asian man with a neatly trimmed beard and a white woman with a very flushed face. The man was smiling but the woman looked anxious.
‘Good afternoon, Ms’—Dr Macleod began and then frowned at the clipboard that he was carrying— ‘Ms Oddy-wolly. I hope I’ve pronounced that correctly.’
Chiasoka didn’t answer. She didn’t care how he pronounced her name so long as he told her what was wrong with her and reassured her that it was nothing serious.
‘My name is Dr Macleod and I’m a consultant in foetal medicine. This is Dr Bhaduri and this is Dr Symonds. You were brought across here because you were suffering severe abdominal trauma and a blood test showed a high level of hCG.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Chiasoka.
‘HCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin. It’s a hormone that indicates that you’re pregnant.’
‘Pregnant? But I can’t be pregnant! It’s impossible!’
‘Well, that’s why we need to double-check by giving you an ultrasound scan. Apart from your high level of hCG, there’s some fairly boisterous activity going on inside your uterus, and that’s what’s causing you so much pain. You say that you can’t be pregnant, but all of the external indications are that you are. Not only that, but your foetus is highly agitated for some reason.’
Chiasoka could hardly breathe. ‘I can’t be pregnant. Whatever it is, whatever is making me feel like this, it isn’t a baby. I haven’t been with anyone. My husband left me and went back to Nigeria. I live with my cousin. I haven’t been with anyone.’
‘Well, we’ll soon see, if you’ll agree to a scan. And I do advise you most strongly to agree, because we really need to find out what’s going on inside you, Ms Oddy-wolly. And to be perfectly honest with you, I can’t imagine what else it could possibly be, apart from a foetus.’
Chiasoka looked at the young woman doctor, and the expression on her face was so concerned that Chiasoka’s eyes filled with tears.
‘I can’t be pregnant,’ she wept. ‘How can I be?’
‘I promise you, you have nothing to worry about. The scan doesn’t take long, and it will cause you no discomfort. The technicians will explain to you exactly what they’re doing every step of the way.’
‘I was pregnant, yes. But that was in April.’
‘You were pregnant?’ asked Dr Macleod, taking off his spectacles. ‘What happened?’
‘I ended it. I had an abortion.’
‘You arranged this through your GP?’
Chiasoka nodded. ‘She gave me the first pill, and then I went back for the second pills to take at home.’
‘One mifepristone tablet, I imagine, followed forty-eight hours later by four tablets of misoprostol?’
‘I don’t remember what they were called. They made me feel very sick.’
‘How many weeks were you?’
‘Ten.’
‘And the termination was successful? You’re sure of that?’
‘Yes. I saw it.’
‘And you believe that there’s no way you could have become pregnant again, after that termination?’
‘I was made pregnant by my cousin’s husband. I never told my cousin what happened because my daughter and I have nowhere else to live, except for my cousin’s house. I never told her husband that I was pregnant either. But I warned him that if he ever try to touch me again, I will take a knife from the kitchen and when he is sleeping I will cut off his kòfẹ.’
‘Oh, dear. Yes. I believe I understand what you mean. But anyway, whether you’re pregnant or not, a scan is essential. In fact – if you’re not pregnant – I’d say it’s urgent.’
Chiasoka closed her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t believe that this was happening to her. It was the same unreal feeling she had experienced when she had come home from her day on the till at Peckham Sainsbury’s and found that Enilo had packed his bags. He was waiting for her to come back to their flat only so he could tell her that he was leaving her and going back to Lagos. It was bitterly ironic. In Yoruba, the name ‘Enilo’ means ‘the one who went away’.
‘What about me and Daraja?’ she had asked him.
‘You have a job. You can keep the car.’
‘But I can’t afford the rent. Not on my own.’
‘I don’t care, Chi. I just don’t care. This is not the life I want any more. In this country I feel like a piece of shit. I get no respect from nobody, not like home. I did not tell you, but on Saturday, two policemen stop me in the street and search me for a knife.’
‘Didn’t you tell them that you are an accountant?’
‘Yes. But they said it made no difference. In other words, I am black so I must be a criminal.’
‘Don’t you love us, Daraja and me?’
Enilo had looked away, as if his eyes were already focused on the future. ‘How can I love anybody if I can’t love myself?’
The nurse came back into the room, accompanied by a porter who was pushing a wheelchair.
‘All ready to go?’ she asked cheerfully.
Dr Macleod looked down at Chiasoka and gave her the most sympathetic of looks, almost as if he were her foster father.
‘Whatever the outcome, we’ll be taking good care of you, Ms Oddy-wolly.’
*
It was five o’clock and growing dark outside by the time Dr Macleod and his two assistants came back with the results of Chiasoka’s ultrasound scan.
The nurse had found Chiasoka’s phone for her, and she had spoken to Daraja and told her that she was suffering from a tummy ache but would soon be coming back to cousin Abebi’s. She had received a message too, from Peckham police, telling her that her damaged Mini had been driven back to Lugard Road and parked at the back of her cousin’s block of flats.
She was still light-headed, and she still felt as if something was sliding around inside her stomach. About twenty minutes ago she had been given a cup of milky tea, but as soon as she had swallowed the first mouthful she had promptly brought it back up, and it had splattered onto the floor.
Dr Macleod pulled up a chair and sat down next to her, while his two assistants stood at the end of the bed. She was unsettled by the way they were looking at her now, almost as if she were a living exhibit in a freak show.
‘I’ve had the results of your scan,’ said Dr Macleod. ‘I have to tell you that you are indeed pregnant.’
‘How can that be?’ Chiasoka protested. ‘How can that possibly be? I had the abortion. I saw it with my own eyes, in the toilet. And I swear to God that I have been with no man since then.’
Dr Macleod held up a green cardboard folder, although he didn’t open it, and he kept it out of her reach. ‘I’m sorry to say, Ms Oddy-wolly, that the scan clearly shows that you have a living foetus in your uterus. I have to add though, that the foetus is somewhat abnormal. In fact – without beating around the bush – it’s severely abnormal. Abnormal to the extent that we’ll almost certainly have to remove it by C-section.’
Chiasoka stared at him. ‘What do you mean, “severely abnormal”?’ she whispered. ‘What is wrong with it?’
‘I have never asked an expectant mother this before, but are you sure you want to see? I can assure you that, given its abnormalities, there is no possibility whatsoever that this foetus could survive, and you may prefer us to proceed with a termination without further delay. Let me put it this way: it is not something that you will be able to unsee.’
‘How can it be that bad? I do not even know how it could exist at all.’
‘Once we’ve terminated your pregnancy, we can carry out DNA tests, which may enable us to establish who the father is.’
‘There is no father.’
‘Can I take it then, that we can proceed with a termination?’
‘How can you expect me to abort it without even knowing where it came from or what is so wrong with it? I have to see it. I don’t care how bad. Wherever it came from, half of it is me.’
‘Are you quite sure about this?’ asked Dr Macleod.
‘Show me,’ said Chiasoka.
Dr Macleod turned around to look at his two assistants. Then he opened up the green cardboard folder and took out a 3D ultrasound scan which showed the foetus inside Chiasoka’s womb in three dimensions and in colour.
Chiasoka took it and held it up. Then slowly, she lowered it, her mouth opening wider and wider. She stared at Dr Macleod in utter disbelief, and then she heaved and brought up the rest of her lunch into her lap.