Emergency

To celebrate our arrival in Australia, I soon discovered that I was expecting. We decided that with the new life we are creating in the new country, we can bring another child to this world. Having two wonderful daughters, I wanted to have a son too and had imagined my son growing up to be a man of great character, as my late brother Luka had been. This pregnancy felt different compared to the previous ones when I carried my girls, as I did not have morning sickness at all (I thought that had to do with the dry climate), and I started to experience bursts of a short stabbing pain, but there was no bleeding at all. Gradually the pain increased in duration and intensity so that on occasions I would just drop to the floor from the unbearable pain in my stomach area. Almost three months pregnant, I decided to go to the GP to seek some advice and hopefully treatment for this pain.

By that time, I had already had my driver’s licence recognised, although I had to sit for the driver’s test, and we bought our first car ever, a white Ford Falcon with the gear stick located near the steering wheel. I was the first one from our group to drive on this soil and on the other side of the road compared to the rest of the world. My plan was to see the doctor quite late in my pregnancy, as I did with the girls, as I did not see a reason to go any earlier. So, I drove myself to the doctor’s and registered my details with a mature lady doctor who spoke some Croatian, as her parents were immigrants. The lady doctor saw me and asked me to take some tests right away and to come back to see her the following week. I went to Port Adelaide to do the tests, including the ultrasound. At that time, during our stay at the hostel, we did not have a mobile phone yet or a working phone line inside the homette. This was the time when most of us did not have a PC or email or know how to use Microsoft Office.

Once I arrived home with the autumn evening approaching early during late May, we were preparing to sit down and have our dinner when suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. My husband opened the door to see a group of 5 people, which consisted of three of our neighbours and two police officers. There was some muffled conversation going on for a couple of minutes, and then my husband called me out and told me that the police are looking for me. Once my mind accepted the meaning behind these words, it started racing on possible reasons why I am being sought by the police as I am approaching the door. Then they told me that I need to go to the hospital at the same moment, and they will take me. Apparently, the GP got the results of my tests and sent them off to the specialist clinic in the hospital. Without any means of contacting me, they resorted to calling the police to get me to the hospital straight away, as my life was in danger because being three months pregnant with the embryo outside of the uterus and lodged inside the tiny tube, it could burst at any moment, and I would bleed out within minutes (ectopic pregnancy), as I was told once we reached the hospital. I was operated on that night.

Following this emergency, while lying in the hospital bed, in the aftermath of this sudden drama, I realised that the reason for me wanting this pregnancy was essentially flawed. I wanted to recreate something gone, not meant to be, to bring my brother back to life in another body. I came to acceptance that I had my brother for the first 20 years of my life, and the rest of my life will be dedicated to being a healthy mother to my two daughters. This moment of reflection, and many other moments like that one throughout my life, have been significant in the sense that, like a snake shedding its old skin, I have been discarding outdated habits and beliefs, evolving from a timid, unremarkable girl into a calm, self-assured woman, whose hidden charm stems from deep acceptance gained through enduring life’s many challenges.