As the breeze lifted the scent of the flowers up and into the basket, It brushed itself against my cheek like a warm hand. It smelt like her, fleeting but sure. The memories, like the wind, swept through me and for a moment I wasn’t in a hot air balloon, I was back in the rocking chair, holding her.

Australian humour is different to other countries but even here I don’t think you would hear too many mother’s describe their final memories with their child as smelling like cabbage, but as we flew over the Canola flowers, for a second, that was the smell, and that was one of the final memories I have of Audrey.

My dearest darling wasn’t destined to be in my arms very long but her time in my memories will be forever. Only a few days old and succumbing to liver and kidney failure, her breath smelled of cabbage and her skin was as yellow as the flowers below.

The lady next to me pulled out her hand cream and rubbed it between her hands, holding the scent to her nose, visibly repulsed by the faint and short-lasting smell. I looked at her hands as she rubbed them together.

Lavender was the cream I would massage into Audrey’s hands as she slept in my arms as we rocked back and forth to the beat of the heart rate machine. So slow and rhythmic, hoping it would increase and that I wouldn’t be able to rock to it any longer. But as the rocking chair slowed its back and forth dance, my hope of seeing the red haired beauty grow up to slam doors in my face and tell me how much she hated me dwindled and the tears that fell from my face so silently soaked the mint green blanket that kept her warm.

The hot air balloon was a gift from the nurses that worked with me prior to me meeting Audrey. The day we met as obscure as the smells I have to remember her by.

A rainy day, it was humid, I had worked too many hours and my feet were so sore. I tried to take a nap but the only nurses room in the small hospital I had been demoted to after an affair with my boss went wrong was being used by my new boss. I stepped outside to the small covered area used by smokers and sat on the only section of dry concrete.

I closed my eyes and regretted having let myself become involved with a married woman, a woman whose wife was our boss, a woman who knew all the right people, a woman who did not want to ever see my face again and made sure she wouldn’t have to by having me transferred to the smallest hospital in the state. I cried a little and wished I had had the self control to have looked away when the woman’s wife had tried to kiss me, when the woman’s wife had begged me to stay in bed that little bit longer on our one year anniversary of hiding in plain sight, when the woman walked in and asked me why the hell I was naked and laughing with her wife and I told her I was the one who made her wife happiest. Clearly I was incorrect as I sat listening to the rain that hadn’t shown its face in almost a year and had now not left for three days. I let out a sigh at the same time that I heard it. I wasn’t the only person crying out in the rain that day. My Audrey lay in a plastic Bunnings box, crying for the woman right next to her to find her.

Audrey was only days old, and she looked like Dolly Parton had described Jolene and as soon as I saw her I felt a love that I had never felt before. I ran her into the ward and screamed for my colleagues as I lay her in the crib and began checking her vitals. It wasn’t long before we understood why she was not with her parents. She was dying. It was too late to help her, no medicine or transplant would be the saviour. She was all alone.

We arranged for child services to meet us and there was nothing they could do. It would take too long and be too difficult to arrange an adoption for her and we all knew we would be the people to stand by her while she passed.

The other hospital staff could see I had bonded deeply with the baby girl and asked me to name her. I don’t know where Audrey came from but it felt right. I held her for two days. The other nurses would bring me meals and I would eat while I sang or read to her. She was so small but she drank more milk than I had seen a baby her age drink. I think she would have played soccer. She kicked my hand once when I changed her and she seemed to know how proud I was of her strength, though fleeting. The one time she smiled will forever be the moment in my life that no other moment will be able to compete with, like a first boyfriend, all other moments to come would be compared to this and left wanting.

Her favourite song was Final Masquerade by Linkin Park and her favourite book was Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox. She preferred being held with her head on my right side which felt uncomfortable and made my shoulder burn but I could feel her discomfort on my other side. During the day we sat by the window where the rain continued to pour yet made soothing sounds for the both of us.

I would close her weakened fingers around mine and I would sneak a peek at her little toes under the wrap. I would hold her up so our faces met and I would smell her cabbage breath as it made its way through her little lips. Until it didn’t.

I was high above the Canola plains of Temora in Victoria, Australia looking at my favourite colour and smelling my favourite person. The other’s in the basket quietly complained of the smell as I silently remembered. It didn’t matter how many years were going to pass or how many chances at a family I would let pass me by, the only person I was ever going to love was the little girl in the plastic Bunnings box with the cabbage breath who changed my soul.