EPILOGUE & Coda for ‘Sherry Baby:
Danny & Sherry:
Sam was pacing nervously in the little ante-room, wearing a groove in the stone-flagged floor.
“I wish she’d hurry up and get here,” he muttered for the umpty-zillionth time. I had to grin. All he had to do was stand there, look sober, and not faint, and he was stressing in a way I’d only seen him do on finals-day. The morning coat and white tie was definitely irking him, but Sherry had been adamant: grey morning suit, buff waistcoat, and white tie for the groom and best man, and woe betide him if he showed up looking like an unmade bed, his normal ground-state.
“Calm down, boyo!” I grinned, “It’s quick and painless, just like you told that big bloke when you pulled that “foreign object” out of his rectum!”
Sam glared at me.
“You just had to bring that up, didn’t you? The bastard came after me, four nurses and a porter had to hold him down, and I had to leave via the dumpster entrance for bloody weeks after that!”
“What can I say; it looked like true love to me!” I laughed while he glowered at me.
“You’re a sack of shit, you know that?” he growled, and I frowned at him in overdone sanctimonious annoyance.
“Shush, you’re in the house of God now, show some respect!” I chided him, and he glared back.
“Bunch of English Protestants, ‘House of God’ my arse, what do they know, bloody pagans, if it’s not Chapel, it’s not real!”
“Then why are you here, you Welsh sex-fiend?” I asked him, and he grinned.
“Because you threatened me, Sherry threatened me, and because Shirley Conroy’s here, and those tits, I mean, a man could die happy…”
I grinned at him.
“Sherry was right, you are a disgusting, sex-obsessed pig… whoops, there’s the signal, show-time Sammy, let’s go.”
Sam and I got into place as the organ started pealing out ‘The Wedding March’ from Lohengrin. I resisted the urge to turn and watch her walk down the nave, I wanted to see her for the first time when she stood with me, and when she arrived, she was everything I knew she’d be, and more. She was on the arm of her uncle James, looking amazing in yards and yards of crisp white satin and a long, trailing lace veil dotted with tiny, powder-blue rosettes, and held in place by a simple, elegant silver tiara, a gift from Jamie and Nia.
She was wearing her mother’s ruby and sapphire pendant paired with my mother’s gold box chain and tiny gold heart-locket with pictures of mum and dad inside, and her Aunt Barbara’s platinum charm bracelet borrowed from Bobby and Ricky.
To complete the wedding charm, Nicky and Ashley had given her a gorgeous, blue-enamelled platinum brooch made in the style of a bouquet of Forget-Me-Not’s, with tiny gold centres to each individual flower, so she could have the traditional ‘something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue’ to bring good luck on her weddding day.
Her bridesmaids were elegant and low key, as they should be, Shirley and another of her friends from medical school, with her Cousin Bobby’s gorgeous little girl holding her train, all three girls in pale blue watered silk dresses to complement Sherry’s “blue” theme, with delicate chaplets of cornflowers on their heads.
I never took my eyes off her as we recited our vows, I couldn’t, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen; she looked radiant, that’s the only word I could think of, cliched as it sounds, glowing so brightly as she did in the sunlight bathing the altar. Nia’s little boy in a page-boy’s uniform brought the rings on a gold-tasselled white velvet cushion, and her little girl, his twin sister in a crinoline dress and sun-bonnet scattered blue flower petals as we walked back up to the church doors.
I was pleased to see Sam walking with Shirley Conroy’s arm through his and a ‘do not take liberties with me, boy’ expression on her face, and I almost grinned at the thought of what she’d do to him if he tried his usual Sam ‘Magic’ on her; oh well, there were enough medical people here, we should be able to patch him up…
The reception was an emotional affair for both of us. Three seats at the top table had been set aside, and large framed photographs of Rosa, my mother and father, and Barbara set in their place so Sherry could have all her family present on her special day. Anh stood proxy as mother of the bride, and James, proud as any father would be, gave the speech dad would have given, taking Sherry around in the father-daughter dance after she and I had our first dance, while I danced with Anh, as befitted the mother of the bride.
After I danced with Sherry once again, Jamie claimed her, and then the men in her family queued-up to dance with the beautiful bride: Mark, Julie’s husband, then her two long-lost cousins, Bobby and Ricky, Bobby’s half-brother, Nicky, no relation to Sherry but someone very special to Bobby, Ricky, and their beautiful wives, with a deep and personal connection to Sherry’s uncle James, too, and a helluva nice guy in his own right.
Last but not least, a fellow doctor, a surgeon, Darryl, there with his beautiful wife Lena, yet more of Nia, and now Sherry’s, extended, adopted family. All the men in her family got to dance with her on her special day, and she was bright-eyed and smiling at the realization that these were indeed her family for real, come together to celebrate this day with her.
*****
A honeymoon was, of course, out of the question; Sherry was still in full student-doctor mode, this was the lead-up to both our year-end finals, so a break was out of the question. We compromised, a long weekend now, and a blow-out holiday and late honeymoon combined once she’d qualified. I took her to Brighton, she’d never been there, and while it’s not a heaving metropolis like London or New York, it has its charm and its nightlife.
Making love in an opulent Regency hotel was the best alternative we had to a romantic break in Grand Cayman, but when it came to my Sherry, even making out with her on the top deck of a London night-bus ticked all our ‘romance’ boxes.
We’d chosen Brighton because of the shopping opportunities in ‘The Lanes’, but I have to be honest; getting my new wife naked in a classy hotel room trumped any thoughts of shopping. Sherry seemed to feel the same way, and so we spent four days exploring each and every avenue it was possible to take, seeing how inventive we could be in the privacy of our love-nest.
*****
Back to reality, and life for us soon settled into our preferred pattern. As medical trainees based at a major hospital, we lived a pretty hectic schedule, whether wards, lab, or, in my case, interning in the general surgery team, and we agreed that was what we wanted, but when it came time for Sherry to choose her elective, we’d talk again. That never came about.
When we sat down to work out where we were going, I started out reiterating what we’d agreed when we were first married: it was Cherie’s choice, and I wasn’t going to back her into any corners.
Sherry had other ideas, however. Now that the fuss and bustle of graduation had died down and we had room to breathe and space to plan, she derailed everything.
“Danny, I know we talked about me possibly following you into one of the surgical consultancy teams, but there’s another option for me now, and I’m going to stick with it; it’s what I want.”
I looked at her in anticipation rather than dread or misgiving; if Sherry had made a decision, it wasn’t lightly, but I was intrigued.
“Please, baby, don’t leave me hanging here. What have you decided?”
“I think I’m going to give my surgical elective a miss, baby, in fact I think I’m going to step away from medicine entirely, I don’t know how long for, exactly, but it will be a while, I think.”
“Ooo-kay, you want to tell me why, baby?” I asked, knowing it this wasn’t a snap decision on her part.
Sherry smiled her beautiful, radiant smile, and fished around in her handbag.
“I need you to see something, baby-boy…” she murmured, before handing me a white stick. It took me a second to register I was looking at a positive pregnancy test, and then all Hell broke loose as I launched myself at her, kissing her wildly and gabbling, trying to ask a thousand questions at once. I just had to pull her shirt out of her jeans so I could kiss her smooth tummy and introduce myself to my baby from the outset.
Sherry giggled as I kissed her tummy repeatedly.
“I think this counts as “valid reason”, don’t you think, Baby-Daddy?” she chuckled, before kissing the top of my head and handing me the phone.
“I think you’d better let Uncle James know the family just got a little bigger!”