SHE didn’t feel like a Desiree. She felt like a Jane or a Mary. They were safe, kind, reassuring names. You’d have to be exotic to be called Desiree and she didn’t feel exotic. But maybe that was the knock on the head too. Maybe she’d shortened her name to something easy or used her middle name?
She must ask Stewart if she had a middle name.
Desiree looked around the sterile hospital room. The walls were pale green, a soothing colour, but she didn’t feel soothed. The bed was electric and the furniture wooden, not metal, but there was nothing homey or reassuring to help her state of mind, except the flowers from a woman she didn’t know.
Her hand fell to the soft kid of the backpack on her lap and she frowned at the chic but drab leather.
She couldn’t imagine choosing it. Maybe the bag had been a gift from her husband. A man she couldn’t remember, and therefore couldn’t mourn.
A man living estranged from his family if some of Stewart’s comments were anything to go by.
Inside, an eye-make-up pack revealed a mirror and she flicked it open to stare into the tiny frame to see her face.
A stranger looked back. A very pale stranger who looked more like a plain Jane then a Desiree! Grey eyes, ordinary-looking mouth and nose, with an extraordinary bruise on one cheek. Dark mop of hair with blood congealed in the fringe. Not a good look and hardly reassuring. She snapped the mirror shut and pushed it down to the bottom of the bag as if to erase what she’d just seen.
Desiree pulled a soft leather wallet from the satchel and unclipped it.
Loose change and no paper money at all? That seemed strange. No driver’s licence—maybe she didn’t drive. A collection of gold and platinum credit cards all in the name of Mrs Desiree Kramer, a health card and a private health insurance card. A train ticket to Sydney—lot of good that had done her.
One sleeve of the wallet held a photo of a baby, obviously her unremembered daughter, Sophie. Tears welled. How could she have forgetten her own baby?
‘I’m sorry I don’t remember you, Sophie,’ she said to the photo.
She ran her fingers over her stomach and desolation hit her again. Except for the slight softness that could have been recently stretched skin, she couldn’t tell she’d been pregnant.
Perhaps she hadn’t shown much at nearly seven months. What sort of pregnancy had it been? Had she been sick or well? Excited to be having another baby or too sad after the loss of her husband to be in tune with her foetus?
Instinctively she touched her breasts and both felt tender. She guessed she’d figure out the breastfeeding as she went along, even though there would be no poster-perfect pictures of her new babe at the breast for a long time to come. Hopefully she’d breastfed Sophie and it would come back to her.
She guessed there might be many weeks before her baby would be strong enough to feed normally.
Desiree shook her head in despair. How did she accept that she was a widow of a man she couldn’t remember? Or the mother of a child in the paediatric ward? Plus the dreadful knowledge that her premature baby was fighting for her life on another floor?
All this when she hadn’t even recognised her own name—it was too much. She dragged her hands over her eyes and squeezed her fingers into her eye sockets, as though the pressure would bring back visions from her past life.
All it did was increase her headache and circulate stars.
Her fingers fell to pluck at the bag again. ‘I don’t feel like Desiree Kramer,’ she said, out loud this time, and the horror of having no memories to anchor in reality burst in her chest like a cave full of bats exploding from their perches.
Panic fluttered with larger and larger wings until she thought her throat would close.
Desiree fought the emotion as she clutched the bag tightly between her fingers. She breathed in and out grimly until she’d fought down the panic.
You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine, she told herself. Everything would work out—and whether it was the white coat or the kind eyes, she did trust Stewart, her new brother-in-law.
She trusted the sweetness in the face of the obviously forgetful Leanore.
Most importantly, she and both her daughters had survived.
Four hours later, Desiree’s new mother-in-law, pushed in her wheelchair by Stewart, returned with a nurse who steered a portable cot into the room.
A little girl stood clutching the rails with her tiny feet planted determinedly into the mattress as she swayed with the movement. Enormous blue eyes stared tremulously at the grown-ups.
Desiree’s eldest daughter looked chubby and alert but decidedly lost. Why wouldn’t she feel lost? Her own mother couldn’t remember her!
When the nurse lifted Sophie and placed her on the bed beside her, Desiree had to admit she felt better with the weight and feel of the little body against her. She gathered Sophie into her arms and hugged her.
Sophie had eyes like her uncle’s and grandmother’s. She stared up at Desiree, and then her little face dimpled and she grinned toothily. Unconsciously, Desiree hugged her close again.
‘Well, that’s the first smile we’ve seen the wee thing give since she came in.’ The nurse nodded complacently at the picture in front of her.
Leanore smiled mistily and Stewart lifted one sardonic eyebrow. ‘Well, Sophie remembers you.’
‘I wish I remembered her.’ Desiree spoke softly and brushed the baby’s cheek with wondering fingers. Her daughter’s skin was downy soft and far too pale.
The children’s ward nurse bustled forward. ‘She won’t drink for us. I’ve brought a bottle up with me. Maybe she’ll take some milk from you.’
Desiree stared down into the bright little eyes. Sophie? She tried the name out. No bells rang, nothing about the little face or her name was familiar, but Desiree couldn’t doubt that she was at ease with the toddler.
Sophie latched onto the teat immediately and Desiree smiled as she looked down into the trusting face below her as the level of milk in the bottle rapidly receded towards the teat. At least she could do something right for her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. I have forgotten you for the moment, but I’ll look after you.’
‘And we’ll look after you.’ Leanore rubbed her hands with delight at the picture in front of her. She turned to her son. ‘They will come home to us? Won’t they, Stewart?’
‘Of course.’ There were unexpected misgivings in his tone and Desiree shot him a glance.
Something was bothering him and Desiree didn’t welcome the added stress of wondering what his problem was. The last thing she needed was another undercurrent she didn’t understand.
‘I’m sure I will be able to look after my daughters and myself quite well without your help.’ She hoped the pure bravado didn’t show.
He shook his head decisively. ‘You’ll have enough on your plate, travelling to Neonatal each day. You’ll need help and we’ll give it to you.’
His voice was flat. ‘You moved here to live with us. I’m sure even Sean would agree to you accepting our help especially now.’ He included his mother in a glance. ‘We’re glad to finally have the opportunity to meet you and Sophie.’
‘We live quite close to the hospital and have plenty of room. Stay at least until we’re sure you won’t suffer any other health setbacks. You could stay longer, of course.’
He produced a final inducement. ‘It would be easier for Sophie if she didn’t have to come to the NICU all the time with you.’
She couldn’t dispute any of his rationales, or an identity she couldn’t remember. It just didn’t feel right to lean on them so heavily.
Stewart went on. ‘Remember that Leanore is Sophie’s grandmother and she has been denied access since her granddaughter’s birth.’
‘What do you mean, denied?’ Desiree frowned at the censure in his voice. Had she prevented Leanore seeing her granddaughter? Had her husband—and she had let him? She didn’t like Stewart’s tone or the inference she had hurt his mother.
He avoided a direct answer and softened his tone. ‘My mother wants to get to know her grandchild.’ Suddenly it was Leanore who wanted to look after them, which was at odds with his caring eyes. Desiree wondered if he had reservations for another reason.
Why had he changed?
She removed the empty bottle from her daughter’s mouth and sat her up to burp her again. Sophie blew a bubble at her and Desiree kissed her cheek. Thank goodness her daughter was too young to know she had been forgotten by her own mother.
Desiree’s eyes narrowed with the effort of pinpointing her greatest concern, but she was interrupted by Sophie’s wind.
They all smiled at the third loud burp but despite the surface amusement something wasn’t right. Not just in this room but with her whole world.
So many things were out of kilter she had no way of diagnosing the most worrying feature.
It was too exhausting to worry about things she couldn’t change for the moment, so she rested back and just savoured the weight of Sophie in her arms. Her head ached.
Later that evening Stewart pushed Desiree’s wheelchair into the neonatal intensive care unit, and strangely Desiree felt less adrift than she had since she’d woken up.
She was so terrified for her baby but not overwhelmed by Neonatal Intensive Care, which was strange.
The beep and hum of the equipment, the bustle of medical and nursing staff, the parents beside most cribs and the tiny patients in their plastic cocoons and open cots all seemed to make sense. Maybe she’d been in one of these places before.
Then again it could have been because Stewart was there. He was so solid and concerned, uncomfortably attractive, but she was trying to ignore that with all she had on her plate, but most of all he seemed so patiently kind.
‘It’s a pretty daunting place,’ said Stewart as he nodded to a nurse, ‘but, believe me, you will get used to it.’
Desiree allowed his words to wash over her as she glanced around. She wasn’t daunted by the place, just that her daughter was here, and she wondered about that. Was it because she’d just been in a train crash? Had her senses been so overloaded by new situations that she was immune for the moment?
At least in this unit there was ordered chaos and Stewart was the boss. She had some control with her access to him.
She obeyed the sign and washed her hands. Almost as if she knew where her daughter was, she looked ahead to the furthermost cribs, home to the most critical patients. Stewart pushed the wheelchair forward.
‘She’s up this way,’ Stewart said, as they passed alcoves of four cribs at a time, each bay seeming to utilise more equipment than the last. Some babies were tiny, some less so, and some were in ordinary Perspex cots.
Desiree’s daughter lay tiny and exposed, her red shiny skin translucent, her miniature hands smaller than the top of her mother’s finger and her bald head smaller than Desiree’s palm.
The reality of her daughter’s struggle hit her. Her baby should be safe within her uterus, not exposed to pain and fear in the bright lights, fluctuating temperatures and noise of a neonatal nursery.
Desiree felt tears well into her eyes and she swallowed to clear the lump from her throat. ‘She’s so fragile. So beautiful,’ she said in a whisper.
Stewart smiled warmly at the crib and then at Desiree. ‘She is very beautiful. I’m glad you think that. A lot of people can’t see the beauty in a premature baby. They look so different to the image most people have of newborn babies.’ He shook his head at the unenlightened. ‘She is a miracle of creation.’
Stewart crouched down and slipped his arm around Desiree’s shoulder and hugged her gently as they peered into the crib.
Somehow Desiree knew he would do that for any new mother confronted by a tiny skinned rabbit of a baby, but she was glad of even that small comfort. More than glad—she was in desperate need of strong arms around her.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ he went on. ‘Her skin is only a few cells thick and very delicate. Her tiny veins are so clear under her skin the vessels look like lace. At the moment we’re using the umbilical vein for intravenous access, which is what the contraption stuck to her tummy is about.’
There was an ice-cream-stick bridge of balsa and strapping taped to her baby’s soft belly that supported a long tube connected to the IV stand and fluids.
He pointed to the thicker red tubing that sealed each of Desiree’s daughter’s tiny nostrils. ‘She’s managing well on CPAP, which is the name we give this nasal continuous positive airway pressure that keeps her lungs inflated.’
He checked to see that she was following his explanation. ‘A tiny amount of air stays in the lungs to stop the lung surfaces sticking together like wet paper.
‘Whenever she doesn’t breathe, the machine breathes for her, as necessary. But she’s doing most of it herself.’
They both looked at the diminutive face disfigured by the thick tubing.
Stewart lowered his voice. ‘I know the tubing does stretch her nostrils and make them look larger than they are but there are disadvantages for throat intubation of infants as well.’
Desiree found herself checking the monitors and glancing over the intravenous fluids and she felt reassured by the numbers. She still had trouble grasping that this was her baby connected to these leads and monitors, but surely ‘reassured’ seemed a strange thing to be in the circumstances.
Had she been here or somewhere like this before?
Had Sophie been born prematurely as well? Could she be as familiar with this equipment as it all seemed?
Her heart pounded with the thrill of excitement at the thought of a breakthrough in her memory block.
Surely most parents wouldn’t feel this comfortable with such a bombardment of technology around their tiny precious baby. She must have loads of experience with such a place or been there before.
Stewart broke into her thoughts as he introduced a third person. ‘This is Gina. Gina is one of your daughter’s primary carers. She’s a neonatal nurse.’
‘Hello, Gina.’ Desiree forced herself to smile at the tall girl who was caring for her daughter and tried not to think she looked as if she should still be at school.
The young nurse stood up from her stool beside the crib where she’d been recording observations and shook Desiree’s hand.
Gina grinned at Desiree. ‘Your daughter has a very determined will. Dr Kramer says she takes after her mother.’
Desiree smiled and glanced at Stewart before looking back at her daughter. It warmed her that he thought that and it had been good of him to say so.
She still couldn’t believe her baby was here to see in front of her eyes when she could barely remember her pregnancy. ‘Can I touch her?’
Stewart answered. ‘Absolutely. But remember if you touch her charts, or a phone, or anything, you need to wash your hands before you open the door again. The humidicribs are perfect places for germs to grow and she’s very susceptible at the moment.’
Desiree nodded and gently opened the crib door and stroked the top of her daughter’s tiny hand. ‘She’s so tiny but perfect.’
‘I think so,’ Stewart agreed, and there was no doubting his sincerity.
Desiree knew her daughter was in good hands. ‘So what have you done for her so far?’
Stewart glanced at Gina. ‘Very determined.’
He looked back at Desiree with a smile. ‘Are you ready for this?’
Desiree glanced at her baby. She had to be. ‘Yes.’
Stewart nodded. ‘OK. She has respiratory distress syndrome because of her tiny lungs and her sudden arrival but we are treating that with the CPAP I mentioned earlier.
‘Her lungs did not have enough of a substance called surfactant in the air spaces. We gave her a dose of surfactant when she came down to us and that helps the stiffness of her immature lungs so she can inflate them and maintain the expansion she needs to breathe.’
Desiree nodded. That was clear so far. ‘So how long will she stay on CPAP?’
‘Only a few days or possibly more than a week, depending on how much help she needs.’ Stewart glanced at the oxygen saturation monitor screen and nodded at the reading. ‘The amount of oxygen present in your daughter’s skin at the moment is ninety seven per cent, which is great. We don’t need one hundred per cent and would prefer your baby’s levels stay a little under that because of the risk of damage to her eyes.’
Desiree didn’t want to think about damage to eyes. ‘What about infections? What if she does get one? You said she is at risk.’
‘Your daughter is having forty-eight hours of antibiotics intravenously for the risk of infection from her birth. Her skin swab cultures have been clear so far and that medication should stop tomorrow.’
She would pray that everyone washed their hands properly. She could feel herself becoming paranoid already. Was this what premature babies did to you?. She tried to think of something to divert her mind away from the image of other people’s dirty hands going near her daughter and germs colonising happily in the crib. ‘What about food?’
‘The fluids that are dripping into her umbilical vein keep her hydrated and with enough glucose for energy. Gina will discuss tiny tube feeds of breast milk a little later with you.’
Desiree felt absurd relief. Finally something she could do for her daughter that no one else could.
Stewart stood up. ‘The last thing for the moment is that your daughter has mild anaemia. She will probably need a blood transfusion to increase the red cells in her blood, but I’ll check with you again before we consider that. Anaemia is fairly common in premature infants.’
Stewart pointed to the crisp white hospital card with ‘Baby of Desiree Kramer’ written in black pen. ‘Now you will have to think about names for your daughter.’
There it was again, only this time in black and white. Desiree frowned, unable to come to terms with the unfamiliarity of her own name, and then she shook her head to concentrate on Stewart’s question.
To her surprise, she had no trouble choosing her daughter’s name because it floated into her head unbidden.
‘Her name is Simone Louise. The name feels right and not having her named seems so cold and unfeeling when I can’t even remember her birth.’
‘Simone Louise is a beautiful name,’ Stewart said quietly.
Another neonatal nurse signalled from further down the unit and he nodded back. ‘I have to leave you with Gina for a while but I’ll come back to collect you or arrange for someone else to get you back to your bed.’
He was leaving her? How would she cope without him there? Even in this short time she was used to his calming presence. She steeled herself to smile. ‘I’ll be fine. Thank you for your explanations, Stewart.’
He patted her shoulder and she fancied, he moved off almost reluctantly. She watched his tall figure move commandingly down the unit and he drew attention without effort. Surely his brother had been like him and that would explain why she had married. But not how she could forget.
‘He has been very kind,’ Desiree said to Gina, and Gina watched Stewart’s broad shoulders as he moved away.
‘He is the best paediatrician I have ever worked with. We all appreciate the way he communicates with the parents and the staff. It makes him very easy to work in his team. She grinned. ‘Plus he’s easy to look at.’
Gina blushed and then turned back to Simone and became professional again. ‘So you have named her, then. Simone Louise it is.’ Gina wrote Simone’s name on the baby card and then put the pen down.
She pulled her stool closer to the wheelchair. ‘Dr Kramer mentioned feeding Simone. How were you planning to feed your baby?’
‘Breast.’ Desiree had that clear at least.
‘Great,’ said Gina. ‘They’ve found if premature babies are given even a mil or two of expressed breast milk from their mother it helps prevent the intestinal problems that have been so devastating in the past and still are sometimes.
‘NEC, or necrotising enterocolitis, is an inflammation of the bowel wall which causes a swollen stomach and is very dangerous for preterm infants. The condition is less common if babies are breastfed.’
That knowledge resonated for Desiree. ‘I remember that from somewhere but I haven’t figured it out yet.’ Perhaps a clue to her past? she thought. ‘I guess there will be a lot of those times until I remember.’
‘Probably.’ Gina didn’t say much but her look was warmly sympathetic and it was obvious that Stewart had forewarned her about Desiree’s amnesia. It made Desiree feel better that Gina didn’t think she was mad just because she’d lost her memory.
‘Anyway…’ They were talking about her daughter here, not amnesia. ‘I’ll gladly leave some colostrum for her before I go back to the ward this afternoon.’
‘Great. I’ll take whatever you get, maybe half a mil or more, and pop it down a tiny tube into her tummy when Dr Kramer says it’s OK.’
Gina elaborated. ‘We’ve found the benefit so dramatic that all our extremely premature babies, without exception, are given what begins as tiny amounts of expressed breast milk at least for the first month, even if the mother is planning to artificially feed later on.’
Desiree nodded. ‘Of course. It is a real breakthrough. At least there is something I can do for her.’ Suddenly her head swam and nausea began to build. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go and lie down.’
Gina took one look at her and scurried off. ‘You do need your bed.’
Exhaustion pounded Desiree in waves but she was immensely reassured by her daughter’s condition, Gina’s competence and Stewart’s skill as a paediatrician.
She scanned the long room and allowed the sights and noises of the intensive care nursery to soak into her subconscious to distract her from the waves of nausea while she waited for Gina to arrange her transfer back to the ward.
She heard the hiss of the ventilators, the ticking of the intravenous monitors and the electronic beeping of twenty tiny heartbeats.
Movement was constant. Neonatal nurses glided between the cribs, reading monitors, recording observations, straightening a tiny body that had become skewed diagonally across a miniature mattress.
Brow-creased parents hovered anxiously as they peered into their baby’s space—too frightened to put their hands inside the Perspex cages to touch the fragile and translucent creature that held their future dreams.
The blue glow around several cribs came from the phototherapy lights. She knew that the exposure of a baby’s naked skin to the special lights would help the breakdown the extra bilirubin their tiny livers couldn’t cope with.
She knew that neonatal jaundice caused babies’ skins to become yellow and, if severe, babies, and especially premature babies, were at risk of brain damage, apart from becoming too sleepy to feed.
She glanced back at Simone and reminded herself to ask what her daughter’s bilirubin level was. She shook her head decisively. Obviously she had some previous knowledge or experience with premature babies. When had Desiree Kramer got that?
The alarm connected to Simone beeped and Desiree narrowed her eyes to watch her daughter’s chest.
Desiree wanted to lunge across and open the door to the crib and nudge her daughter into movement but they were monitoring Simone’s need for stimulation. The CPAP clicked in and her tiny chest rose and fell with the machine.
As Simone’s heart rate picked up so Desiree’s slowed down.
She didn’t care if she knew this stuff. Watching your own child dependent on machinery to live was harrowing and horrific and she felt the loneliest person in the world.
She didn’t even have people from her past to comfort her. Her whole life had started today, and if she wasn’t Desiree Kramer, then, except for this tiny human being opposite her and Sophie, she was totally alone.
Desiree watched Stewart stride towards her. She needed to know if Stewart was really a part of her life or not. If he wasn’t, she needed to know the truth as soon as possible.
Desiree glanced at the card with her baby’s name and then her own name underneath.
Simone felt right, Sophie fitted comfortably, the neonatal unit she could cope with, but everything else felt wrong.