Three Wishes

The grown-ups were coming. People hurried back to their tables, looking slightly embarrassed, murmuring seriously to one another.

Ten minutes later, the paramedics walked through the restaurant radiating waves of drama and relaxed authority, like movie stars casually strolling into a press conference.

Lyn began to speak to them, but Gemma interrupted her, her tone succinct and urgent, even bossy.

“I’m due in three weeks. I saw my obstetrician just yesterday and she said I could expect to start feeling those pretend contractions. I don’t know if that’s what I just felt, or not. There’s a lot of tissue around the uterus right? The fork couldn’t have hurt my baby?

“It’s unlikely,” agreed the paramedic. “It would have to penetrate a very long way. It looks like it’s just broken the skin. Let’s take a look at your blood pressure.”

“I think you should listen to the baby’s heartbeat,” snapped Gemma. “That’s what I think you should do.”

She sounded, Cat thought, exactly like Lyn.

Or maybe it was Maxine.

She sounded like somebody’s mother.

Cat silently cradled her jaw and looked out the car window at the lights of the city. The guy who had been sitting at the table next to them, the one who had helped Gemma with her bag, was driving them to the hospital. Cat didn’t know or care what had happened to the girl who was with him.

He’d introduced himself to Cat, but she hadn’t bothered to listen. He didn’t seem quite real. Nobody did. She felt as if she were separated from the rest of the world by a blurry membrane. Nothing really mattered, except that Gemma and the baby would be O.K. The pain down the side of her face was excruciating, and she felt strangely conscious of every breath that she took.

She could hear Lyn in the front seat, talking to Maxine on her mobile.

“Yes, I know it’s our birthday. That’s why—”

“Yes, I do know how old we—”

“No, Mum, we’re not drunk—”

“O.K. Maybe a little tipsy.”

“Yes, a fork. A fondue fork.”

“A seafood fondue.”

“Well, we liked it!”

“It was just a little argument, Mum. I’ll explain—”

“O.K., maybe not so little. But—”

“Well, yes, actually. I think the whole restaurant probably saw. But—”

“Royal Prince Alfred.”

“Fine. Bye.”

Lyn pressed a button on her mobile and shifted around to look at Cat. “Mum says take care, she loves us, and she’s coming right away.”

Cat stared at her with incomprehension, and Lyn chortled. “I’m joking!”

The guy driving the car chuckled. Cat held her napkin to her mouth and looked back out the window. Now Lyn was sounding a lot like Gemma. The world had gone topsy-turvy.

At the entrance to the hospital, Cat got out of the car without speaking, slammed the door, and blinked at the bright lights and muted roar of activity: phones ringing, a child screaming relentlessly, clumps of people walking busily in different directions.

Lyn seemed to have made best friends with the man from the restaurant. Cat watched as she leaned back in the window and chatted enthusiastically, before straightening up and waving good-bye.

She held up a little fan of business cards. “He’s a landscape gardener, a wedding photographer, and a personal trainer!” she said, as if this were interesting. “He was on a blind date but apparently it wasn’t going too well.”

Cat shrugged.

Lyn put the cards away in her purse. “Right, well, let’s see what’s happening with Gemma, and we’d better get someone to look at you. I wonder if you’ve bitten your tongue.”

Cat shrugged again. Perhaps she would give up talking forever. It might make life less complicated.

“Is that you, Lyn? Um, Cat?”

They turned around. It was Charlie walking toward them. He was wearing muddy tracksuit pants, a T-shirt, and a black beanie. He looked sweaty and agitated.

“I’m on my way home from touch footie and your sister calls for the first time in six months,” he said. “She asks me how a lightbulb works. So I start to explain it; I mean that’s Gemma, right? She was always asking funny questions. But then she starts crying like her heart is going to break and says she’s calling from an ambulance on the way to have a baby, and would I like to come and help her breathe, if I’m not too busy? Are you girls strange, or what?”

“No question, we’re strange,” said Lyn.

He held both palms upward in a very Italian gesture. “Man! She dumps me, she wasn’t even going to tell me she’s pregnant, and now suddenly she wants me to help her breathe?”

“It’s quite presumptuous of her,” agreed Lyn.

“And I don’t how to do this!” An expression of pure terror crossed his face. “There are classes for this sort of thing. Books. Videos. I like to know how things work!”

Lyn beamed at him. “Just hold her hand. Do what they do in the movies.”

“Jesus.” He pulled his beanie off, ran one hand over the top of his head, and took a deep breath. “And is she O.K.?”

“Well, there was a little accident but they’re looking at her now.”

For the first time Charlie looked at Cat and her blood-soaked napkin. Cat looked at the ground and tried to pretend she was somewhere else.

“An accident?”

“Let’s go inside and find out what’s happening,” said Lyn.

While Lyn and Charlie went off to find someone official, Cat sat down on a green plastic chair and began heavy negotiations with God.

All she wanted was for Gemma and the baby to be O.K. It didn’t seem like too unreasonable a request. She simply wanted one particular action to be without consequences.

And if God would do that, Cat would give up alcohol and every other potentially pleasurable activity. She would graciously accept that she was never going to have children herself and live a quiet, nunlike existence, thinking only of others.

She might even consider some very unpleasant form of volunteer work.

After a seemingly endless discussion, Charlie and Lyn came back over to where Cat was sitting. She looked up at them wordlessly.

“Someone’s coming to see us now,” explained Lyn.

Charlie looked closely at Cat. “Are you O.K.? You don’t look so good.”