Fruiting Bodies Read online

  ‘I was only surprised because Rob said he would talk to you yesterday afternoon.’ She hoped that there was nothing wrong. ‘He must have forgotten.’

  ‘I wasn’t here yesterday,’ said Ros, who did not look at all put out by the sight of Willow’s manoeuvres, ‘so I don’t know what happened then, but he came running over a few minutes ago and told me you wanted to see me. He was breathless and I thought it must be very urgent. So here I am. What is it I can do for you?’

  ‘Oh, dear, I am sorry,’ said Willow, relieved to see that her new visitor was amused by the summons rather than irritated. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing dramatic at all. I just thought I’d like to find out more of what you’re about. You see I was actually in labour three nights ago when there was all that trouble, and …’

  ‘There was rather a lot of noise, wasn’t there? I’m sorry about that.’ Ros pushed her hair away with one hand, twisting it all over her left shoulder in a loose, shining rope. ‘We all are, because one of the many things we’ve been battling to get across to the male medical establishment is how frightening noise and bustle are for the newly born, and how unpleasant for their mothers.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Willow with a dryness that made the other woman flush and fiddle with her ring.

  ‘But we couldn’t help it that night,’ Ros said earnestly. ‘You see, the hospital security men suddenly got amazingly aggressive. They were yelling at us and trying to drag some of us away physically and banging and crashing about all over the place. It’s difficult not to yell back under that kind of provocation.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Willow, glad to feel that her brain was working again. ‘Why had they suddenly got belligerent? After all, you’ve been demonstrating before and since and no one’s tried to stop you, have they? What was different that night?’

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘Of course; I should have said. Do please.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ros, slumping into the chair and leaning her chin on her hands. In spite of her careless pose, she still looked wonderful.

  ‘One of our people had had a meeting with the hospital administrators that afternoon, and apparently it all got rather adversarial. They’d let us do our thing without interference until then, but somebody at the meeting must have lost his temper and told the security guards to get rid of us. It looks as though wiser counsels have prevailed again since.’

  ‘What was the meeting about?’

  ‘Why d’you want to know?’ said Ros, sitting up and staring suspiciously at her.

  Unwilling to explain that she thought WOMB could have been providing a decoy operation for whoever had murdered Mr Ringstead, Willow shrugged.

  ‘Curiosity, really,’ she said, hoping that she sounded convincing. ‘I’m interested in your organisation and what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’re up against as you do it. I rather like the idea of it, you see. I’ve never been a great one for female company before, but now that I’ve had a baby I find I want women around me, knowledgeable women, I mean. D’you see?’

  Ros’s face relaxed. She bent down to dig into the small orange rucksack she had with her and brought out a professionally printed, full-colour leaflet with a striking, bright blue outline of a pregnant woman on the dazzling yellow cover. The sketch appeared to have been achieved with a single flowing line. It was at once stylish and touching. Willow was surprised by the quality of the leaflet’s paper and the clarity of its colour printing.

  ‘Here,’ said Ros. ‘This will explain what we’re about and you’ll see that it’s absolutely normal to want women around you. One of the things we’re campaigning for is to have well-informed, friendly women available to support mothers during and after labour, instead of hierarchical male doctors who are too busy and self-important to give enough time to listen.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful – just what I need. So why should the administrator have got so angry with you?’ Willow took the leaflet from Ros and put it carefully on top of her book so that she could read it later.

  ‘It was to do with a couple we’re sponsoring.’ Ros looked reluctant to say any more. Willow did not help her by changing the subject or even looking away. She simply raised her red eyebrows and waited.

  ‘They had a baby here about two months ago and he’s severely brain-damaged,’ Ros went on after an uncomfortable pause. ‘The hospital is denying liability, even though it’s fairly clear that there were some serious mistakes made during delivery.’

  ‘That’s standard practice, isn’t it?’ said Willow. ‘As in car accidents. I think insurance companies insist that you never admit liability even when it’s clear that you drove into someone else.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s so silly and causes such trouble in medical cases. If all the money that’s paid to lawyers could be handed directly to victims of negligence, everyone would be better off.’

  ‘Except the lawyers.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Ros looked at Willow with clear approval and spoke more energetically. ‘WOMB supports the idea of a national no-fault compensation scheme so that victims of medical accidents can be given the money they need without going to the courts, but until it’s in place victims of negligence or accidents have to sue, and a lot of them need help to do that. We’re helping this particular couple.’

  ‘I see,’ said Willow, remembering the fruiting bodies and the trust’s financial crisis.

  ‘We have a lawyer on the committee, who’s advised us that the parents have a good case, but, like the rest of us, she’s concerned that they may not have either the sophistication or the emotional stamina to deal with all the hassle they’re likely to get before any compensation’s paid. They have no financial resources of their own at all. He’s unemployed, and she’s had to give up her cleaning job to look after the baby. Our lawyer felt a compromise might be possible; you know, that if we leaned on the hospital they might settle, which would mean that the poor parents would get their money much quicker and without all the legal nonsense.’

  ‘That sounds sensible, too,’ said Willow. ‘And even though I don’t suppose the trust has any money to spare, I can’t see why the manager should have lost his temper. Which one of them was it?’

  ‘The director of finance. I think the problem was that our lawyer had taken the parents with her to the meeting and it was the first time they’d heard anyone spell out quite how hopeless their baby’s chances are. They seem to have believed that he might improve as he gets older. And, you see, I think they’d believed what Ringstead told them.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘That it was just a terrible accident of nature, not anyone’s fault.’

  ‘Couldn’t it have been? Accidents of nature do happen, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, they do. And it still isn’t absolutely clear what happened in this case, but our information suggests that it could have been a muddle of contraindicated drugs. All I know for certain is that at some time, for some reason, the child was starved of oxygen and his brain was terribly damaged as a result.’

  Willow looked down at Lucinda again, suddenly unable to think of anything except her safety. As she stroked Lucinda’s cheek, the big eyes opened again. For an instant Willow thought that Lucinda was aware of who was holding her and then she turned her head inwards a little towards Willow’s body.

  ‘I say, there isn’t anything wrong with her, is there?’ said Ros clumsily. Her face was bright red.

  Willow saw the pulse beating in the gap between the plates of Lucinda’s skull and could hardly bear to admit how fragile she was. Letting her lips brush the soft furriness of the small head, Willow felt the steadiness of the pulse underneath her lips. Her arms tightened involuntarily around Lucinda and she felt tears rising in her eyes.

  ‘She’s fine.’ Willow coughed and shook her head. ‘Sorry. I just get a bit overwhelmed by it all sometimes. She’s had all the neurological tests and shown all the right reactions. But I keep worrying.’

  ‘Of course you do. Anyone w
ould.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Willow and then forced her mind back to the easier topic. ‘So what did the parents do in the meeting when they heard how bad it all was?’

  ‘The mother was nearly ill with hysteria and the father got into what sounds like a ferocious rage. You see, being not all that articulate, he didn’t know how to handle himself. He was yelling and screaming and hitting out in all directions. He even broke a bit off the desk. The finance director, presumably scared witless, called security and had him bundled out of the room. Then he tried to have us moved on as well, as though it was all our fault.’

  Thinking that he had had a certain amount of justification for that view, Willow frowned.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Ros, flinging her heavy hair over the other shoulder and crossing her legs. Her boots looked even more incongruous than they had when she was standing up. As she moved, her cotton sweater was pressed against her front and Willow noticed that she was not wearing a bra. Something about her looks, and the perkiness of her breasts, suggested that she was not following any tenet of 1970s feminism but something much more traditional.

  ‘Was Mr Ringstead involved in the birth himself?’

  ‘As the responsible consultant, he was technically in charge,’ said Ros, running her fingers through her hair again, ‘although it was a house officer who was doing the actual delivery. When he belatedly started to understand how serious the problem was, he sent for Ringstead, who set about getting the baby resuscitated.’

  Lucinda moved then and opened her eyes again. Willow looked down and smiled at her. After a moment Ros got to her feet.

  ‘I shouldn’t really be here at all so soon after you’ve been delivered, worrying you with WOMB policy and stories of damaged babies. I’ll get out of your way now. But when you’ve read our leaflet, if you want to know anything else, or if you do want to join us, just get your son to come and tell me – I’m there every third day – and I’ll come up and see you.’

  ‘My son?’ For a moment Willow could not think what Ros was talking about and then she remembered Rob. It was odd to realise that she was old enough to be his mother.

  ‘What’s the matter? You look very worried.’

  ‘What?’ Willow saw Ros looking anxiously at her and quickly smiled, banishing all her mental pictures of the ostensibly cool and efficient – but in most important ways incomplete and hopeless – person she had been eighteen years earlier when Rob was conceived. ‘No, he’s no relation of mine; just a friend. But thank you very much for coming. I’ll read the leaflet and be in touch. How much is the subscription?’

  ‘Whatever you can afford.’ Ros looked at Willow’s flowers and her delicately embroidered pure-white lawn nightgown. ‘Maybe twenty-five pounds? There’s a form thing on the back of the leaflet. I’ll see you again.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Willow, watching her walk out of the ward with surprising grace in her clumping boots.

  When Lucinda was satisfactorily back asleep in her cot and Willow had taken the opportunity to have a bath, she put on another of the stack of clean nightgowns Tom had brought with him that morning and got back into bed to read the WOMB pamphlet.

  There turned out to be very little in it that she had not already read in all the books she and Tom had studied so closely during her pregnancy. As Brigid O’Mara had told her, the founders of WOMB were anxious to promote passive rather than active management of labour, to warn of the dangers to babies of many of the drugs that had been routinely used in hospitals for years, and to recommend a much less medical atmosphere for maternity wards.

  ‘After all,’ the editorial ended, ‘pregnancy is not an illness. Most women will suffer less and produce healthier, calmer babies if they are allowed to give birth under the care of a midwife in surroundings as much like their own homes as possible. An atmosphere of noise, hard surfaces and medical drama is not helpful.’

  That seemed unexceptionable, and would presumably have pleased the hospital managers. A midwife and some soft surfaces must come considerably cheaper than teams of doctors, quantities of drugs and banks of sophisticated machinery. On the other hand, Willow could well understand why the managers had taken exception to members of WOMB seeking out patients of damaged babies and encouraging them to sue the hospital.

  She could also understand, with deep pity, how parents might hate the doctors responsible for their child’s brain damage.

  ‘How are you this morning, Mrs Worth?’

  Willow looked up and saw the thin, dark-haired registrar watching her as she read the pamphlet. Realising that he was just the man she needed to tell her more about the child in question, she smiled at him.

  ‘I’m fine, Doctor Kimmeridge. And so’s Lucinda. She’s asleep at the moment. D’you need to wake her?’

  ‘Not just now. Tell me, though: how are the two of you getting on?’

  Willow’s smile faded at his question. She thought that Sister Lulworth must have told him that she was worried that Willow was not bonding correctly with Lucinda.

  ‘Perfectly well, thank you.’ She saw her frosty tone registering with Kimmeridge and wondered what he would say next. Deciding that she did not want to hear it, she hurriedly added: ‘I gather that poor Mr Ringstead was battling with the hospital administrators over cuts in the obstetrics budgets.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Kimmeridge, coming nearer. Willow gave him high marks for not leaning over Lucinda’s cot to check that all was well. ‘Money is tight at the moment, but you needn’t worry about it. Everything that you and Lucinda need will be provided.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Willow quickly. ‘And that wasn’t why I was asking. We’ve both been treated in the most exemplary fashion. It’s just that I’m interested in how a department like this could possibly cut costs. After all, as I gather Ringstead said himself, none of you could exactly tell women in labour to cross their legs and hang on until the budget allowed another birth.’

  ‘You were on very good terms with him if he passed that gem of his well-known sense of humour on to you.’ Kimmeridge looked puzzled and a little suspicious. Willow did not disabuse him. After a moment he seemed to make some kind of decision and said in a businesslike voice: ‘The only area of major cost-cutting, apart from downgrading some of the specialist nursing posts, is in the resuscitation and care of highly premature babies.’

  ‘You mean the managers want them to be left to …’ Unable to finish the sentence, Willow herself got up to check that Lucinda was all right.

  ‘It’s not as callous as it sounds, Mrs Worth. Many obstetricians as well as administrators believe that very premature – or very damaged – babies should not be treated. If they’re born before about twenty-four weeks they don’t have much of a chance. Even if they are successfully resuscitated and nursed through the first few months, they tend to suffer serious health problems for the rest of their lives – and a large proportion of them are permanently brain-damaged. Life caring for such a child can be virtually unbearable for the parents, and I for one believe that it must be pretty good hell for the child as well. There are a great many considerations other than the balance sheet here.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course there are.’ Kimmeridge might lapse easily into irritability, but he could sound quite kind, too. ‘Mr Ringstead believed that if a life could be saved it should be, however limited or full of suffering it might turn out to be; but other people have different views. Is it fair, for one thing, to put a baby through procedure after procedure, knowing that it’s never going to be able to lead a normal life and may well die after months or years of pain? And is it fair to put the parents through it?’

  ‘I expect,’ said Willow, dragging the words up from her deepest, least examined feelings, ‘that all they mind about just at the beginning is keeping the child alive. And who can judge the quality of any baby’s life in any case?’

  ‘There aren’t any easy answers. I suspect there aren’t any right ones either.’ Kimmeridge seemed both frie
ndly and surprisingly ready to talk. ‘A few years ago most of the dilemmas simply didn’t arise,’ he went on, ‘because we didn’t have the technology to keep such premature babies alive.’

  ‘In the abstract,’ said Willow at her driest, ‘it’s an interesting question, isn’t it? But I suspect faced with actual people, suffering people, it must be agony for you to have to make that sort of decision. I can’t think how any of you manage to keep going at all.’

  Kimmeridge’s face looked harder as he leaned sideways to pick her chart from the rail at the end of her bed.

  ‘All doctors have to put boundaries between themselves and their patients. Otherwise their judgment becomes unreliably swayed by emotion and that leads to all sorts of trouble.’

  ‘I suppose so. And presumably for a lot of the time you’re too busy to think about it all.’

  ‘There is that too,’ said Kimmeridge more lightly, checking some figures on the chart. ‘Which reminds me that we’d better get back to work. Tell me how you really are.’

  ‘Fine.’ Willow was much more interested in finding out what Kimmeridge thought about the baby whose case WOMB had taken up than in her own health, but before she had formulated her next question, Kimmeridge said: ‘I’m not asking out of curiosity or politeness, Mrs Worth. My job here and now is to help you. And, believe me, I can. But you must talk to me.’

  Willow laughed, but to her horror the sound she produced was more like a sob. She was not prepared to risk crying in front of him again and pulled herself together with all the savagery of which she was still capable.

  ‘There’s nothing physically wrong with me at all,’ she said carefully. ‘My emotions are extremely volatile, but so far I’m managing to contain them.’

  ‘Good for you, but don’t bottle up too much. A lot of it’s better out than in.’

  She managed to smile then, wondering what he would have said if she had told him that most of what was wrong with her was anxiety about the future and what she might come to feel about her daughter. So far there was not much of a problem, but she could not help thinking that there might come a time when Lucinda’s existence curtailed her freedom so severely that it would be impossible not to resent her. Willow took her upper lip between her teeth and bit it hard.