Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress of the Game

The first problems began about an hour later. The midwife frowned at one of the monitors. Its green line had begun rising in sudden, jagged leaps.

‘Stand back please, Dr Templeton.’

Peter searched the woman’s face for clues, like a nervous airline passenger watching the stewardess during turbulence … if she was still smiling and handing out gin and tonics, no one was gonna die, right? But Nurse Matthews would have made a first-class poker player. Moving surely and confidently around the room, a professional smile of reassurance for Alex, a brusque nod of command to an orderly – fetch Dr Farrar immediately – her dough-like features gave nothing away.

‘What is it? What’s the problem?’

Peter struggled to keep the panic out of his voice, for Alex’s sake. Her own mother had died giving birth to her and Eve, a snippet of Blackwell family history that had always terrified Peter. He loved Alexandra so much. If anything should happen to her …

‘Your wife’s blood pressure is somewhat elevated, Dr Templeton. There’s no need for alarm at this stage. I’ve asked Dr Farrar to come and assess the situation.’

For the first time, Alexandra’s face clouded with anxiety.

‘What about the baby? Is she all right? Is she in distress?’

It was typical Alex. Never a thought for herself, only for the child. She’d been exactly the same with Robert. Since the day their son was born, ten years ago now, he’d been the center of his mother’s universe. Had Peter Templeton been a different sort of man, a lesser man, he might have felt jealous. As it was the bond between mother and son filled him with joy, a delight so intense that at times he could barely contain it.

It was impossible to imagine a more devoted, selfless, adoring mother than Alexandra. Peter would never forget the time Robert came down with chicken pox, a particularly nasty attack. He was five years old, and Alex had sat by his bedside for forty-eight hours straight, so engrossed in her son’s needs that she had forgotten to take so much as a sip of water for herself. When Peter came home from work he’d found her passed out cold on the floor. She was so dehydrated she’d had to be hospitalized and placed on a drip.

The midwife’s voice brought him back to the present with a jolt.

‘The baby’s fine, Mrs Templeton. Worst case scenario, we’ll speed things up and do a caesarian.’

Alex went white.

‘A caesarian?’

‘Try not to worry. It probably won’t come to that. Right now the heartbeat looks terrific. Your baby’s as strong as an ox.’

Nurse Matthews had even risked a smile.

Peter would remember that smile as long as he lived. It was to be the last image of his old, happy life.

After the smile, reality and nightmare began to blur. Time lost all meaning. The obstetrician was there, Dr Farrar, a tall, forbidding man in his sixties with a pinched face and glasses that seemed in permanent, imminent danger of toppling off the end of his long, shrew-like nose. The green line on the monitor took on a life of its own, some unseen hand pulling it higher, higher until it looked like a fluorescent etching of the north face of the Eiger. Peter had never seen anything quite so ugly. Then came the beeping. First one machine, then two, then three, louder, louder, screeching and screaming at him, and the screams turned into Alex’s voice, Peter! Peter! and he reached out his hand for hers, and it was their wedding day, and his hands were trembling.

Do you take this woman?

I do.

I do! I’m here Alex! I’m here my darling.

The doctor’s voice: ‘For Christ’s sake someone get him out of here.’

Peter was being pushed, and he pushed back, and something fell to the floor with a crash. Then suddenly the sounds were gone, and everything was color. First white: white coats, white lights, so strong Peter was almost blinded. Then red, the red of Alex’s blood, blood everywhere, rivers and rivers of blood so livid and ketchup-bright it looked fake, like a prop from a movie set. And finally black, as the movie-screen faded, and Peter was falling into a well, down, down, deep into the darkness, pictures of his darling Alex flickering briefly in front of him like ghosts as he fell.

Flash!

The day they first met, in Peter’s office, back when Alexandra was still married to that psychopath George Mellis.

Flash!

Her smile, lit from within as she walked up the aisle to marry him, an angel in white.

Flash!

Robert’s first birthday. Alex beaming, with chocolate cake smeared all over her face.

Flash!

This morning in the car.

We’re finally going to meet her!

Dr Templeton? Dr Templeton, can you hear me?

We’re losing him. He’s blacking out.

Quick! Someone catch him!

No more flashes. Only silence and darkness.

The ghosts had gone.

Reality did not return until he heard his baby cry.

He’d been awake for almost half an hour, listening to the doctor and the hospital staff, even signing forms. But none of that was real.

‘You must understand, that degree of hemorrhage, Dr Templeton …’

‘The speed of the blood loss …’

‘Highly unusual … perhaps her family history?’

‘After a certain point, heart failure cannot be prevented.’

‘Deeply sorry for your loss.’

And Peter had nodded, yes, yes, he understood, of course, they’d done all they could. He’d watched them wheel Alex away, her ashen face covered with a bloodstained hospital sheet. He stood there, breathing in and out. But of course, it wasn’t real. How could it be? His Alex wasn’t dead. The whole thing was preposterous. Women didn’t die in childbirth for God’s sake, not in this day and age. This was 1984. This was New York City.

The shrill, plaintive cry seemed to come out of nowhere. Even in his profound state of shock, some primal instinct would not allow Peter to ignore it. Suddenly someone was handing him a tiny swaddled bundle, and the next thing Peter knew he was gazing into his daughter’s eyes. In an instant, every last brick of the protective wall he’d been building around his heart crumbled to dust. For one, blissful moment, his heart swelled with pure love.

Then it shattered.

Wrenching the baby out of his arms, Nurse Matthews thrust her at an orderly.

‘Take her to the nursery. And get a psych up here, right now. He’s losing it.’

Nurse Matthews was good in a crisis. But inside she was riddled with guilt. She should never have let him hold the child. What was she thinking? After what that poor man had just been through? He might have killed her.