What Alice Forgot

“I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat.”

Who was that? Who said that? Did it really happen? Tears welled in Alice’s eyes, and she thought again of those bouquets of pink balloons whipped by the wind in a gray sky. Had she seen those balloons in some long-forgotten movie? Some extremely sad movie? She felt another wave of extraordinary feeling rise in her chest. It was just like in the ambulance. It was a feeling of grief and rage. She imagined herself sobbing, wailing, digging her fingernails into her own flesh (and she’d never behaved like that in her whole life). And just when she thought the feeling would sweep her away, it dissolved into nothing. It was the strangest thing.

“How many children do you have?” asked the doctor. She had pulled up Alice’s T-shirt and pushed down her shorts to feel her abdomen.

Alice blinked to make the tears go away. “None. This is my first pregnancy.”

The doctor stopped and looked at her. “That looks very much like a cesarean scar to me.”

Alice lifted her head awkwardly and saw that the doctor was pointing a nicely shaped fingernail low down on Alice’s stomach. She squinted and saw what looked like a very pale, purple line just above the top of her pubic hair.

“I don’t know what that is,” said Alice, mortified. She thought of the solemn expression on her mother’s face when she used to tell Elisabeth and Alice, “You must never show your private lady’s parts to anyone.” Nick fell about laughing the first time he heard that. Why hadn’t he noticed that funny scar? He’d spent enough time examining her private lady’s parts.

“Your uterus doesn’t seem to be enlarged for fourteen weeks,” commented the doctor.

Alice looked again at her stomach and saw that it was actually looking pretty flat. Skinny-person flat, which would normally be an unexpected bonus, except that she was having a baby. Nick had started to chuckle gleefully whenever she wore something that showed the round bulge of her stomach.

“Are you sure you’re that far along?” said the doctor.

Alice stared at her flat stomach—very flat!—and didn’t say anything. She was filled with confusion and fear and excruciating embarrassment. It occurred to her that her br**sts—which had become so heavy and tingly and overtly breasty—felt like they had gone back to their normal humble, unobtrusive state. She didn’t feel pregnant. She certainly didn’t feel like herself, but she didn’t feel pregnant.

(What was that scar? She thought of those stories of people drugging you and removing your organs to sell. Had she gone to the gym, got deliriously drunk, and someone had taken the opportunity to help themselves to her organs?)

“Maybe I’m not fourteen weeks,” she said to the doctor. “Maybe I’ve got that wrong. I can’t seem to get anything straight in my head. My husband will be here soon. He’ll explain everything.”

“Well, you just relax and try not to worry for now.” The doctor readjusted Alice’s clothes with gentle pats. “First we’re going to get you a CT scan and see if you’ve done anything serious to yourself, but I think you’ll find things will start to fall into place soon. Do you remember your obstetrician’s name? I could give him or her a call and check how far along you are. I don’t want to upset you if we can’t find the heartbeat because you’re not far enough along to hear it.”

I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat.

It was such a clear memory. It felt like it really happened.

Alice said, “Dr. Sam Chapple. He’s at Chatswood.”

“Okay, good. Don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal to feel confused after a serious head injury.”

The doctor smiled sympathetically and left the room. Alice watched her go and then lifted up her shirt again to look at her stomach. In addition to being flatter, her stomach had feathery silver lines up and down the sides. Stretch marks. Awestruck, she ran her fingertips over them. Was this really her stomach?

A cesarean scar, the doctor had said (unless she’d got it wrong, of course. Maybe it wasn’t a cesarean scar at all, just a perfectly normal . . . scar. Of some sort).

But if she was right, that would mean some doctor (her own Dr. Chapple?) had sliced through her skin with a scalpel and lifted a bloody squawling baby straight out of her stomach and she didn’t remember any of it.

Could a bump on the head really knock out such a significant event from her memory? Wasn’t that a bit excessive?

She thought of times when she’d been watching a movie with Nick and had fallen asleep halfway through with her head on his lap. She hated it because she would wake up sticky-mouthed to see the lives of the movie characters had moved on and the couple who hated each other were now sharing an umbrella under the Eiffel Tower.

“You had your baby,” she said tentatively to herself. “Remember?”

This was absurd. Surely she wasn’t about to slap herself on the side of the head and say, “Oh, the baby, of course I had the baby! Fancy that slipping my mind.”

How could she have forgotten her baby growing and kicking and rolling inside her? If she’d already had the baby, that meant she’d already been to the prenatal classes with Nick. It meant she’d bought her first maternity clothes. It meant they’d painted the nursery. It meant they’d been shopping for a crib and a pram and nappies and a stroller and a changing table.

It meant there was a baby.

She sat up, her hands pressed to her stomach.

So where was it? Who was looking after it? Who was feeding it?

This was far bigger than a normal “Oh, Alice” mix-up. This was huge. This was terrifying.

For God’s sake, where was Nick? Actually, she was going to be just a bit snappy with him when he finally turned up, even if he did have a good excuse.

The nurse with the green eyes came back into the room and said, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, thank you,” said Alice automatically.

“Do you remember why you’re here and what happened to you?”

This constant re-asking of questions was presumably to check her mental state. Alice thought about yelling, ACTUALLY, I’M GOING OUT OF MY MIND! but she didn’t want to make the nurse feel uncomfortable. Crazy behavior made people feel awkward.

Instead, she said to the nurse, “Can you tell me what year it is?” She spoke quickly in case the doctor with the glasses came back in and caught her checking up on her facts behind her back.