The Surrogate's Unexpected Miracle

‘She’s still bleeding. Let’s get another litre going.’

That was this Dr Gilmore’s voice. Did he know what he was doing? He certainly sounded confident enough. Ellie could feel that her lower body was bare now. Maybe it was a good thing that she didn’t know this person but there were plenty of people she did know seeing a lot more of her than they ever had before. Not that she cared. Nothing mattered right now other than to get through this safely. There was a baby’s life at stake. Maybe even her own, if she was still losing so much blood.

She could feel a hand inside her.

‘Ah...’ The sound was hard to interpret. Satisfaction...or concern? ‘Ellie? You’re going to feel me pushing. I need to take the pressure off the cord.’

He still sounded calm, this Luke. And she could feel him pushing hard against the baby’s head.

‘Any risk factors in the pregnancy?’

‘Not that we know of.’ The paramedic sounded embarrassed. It was a question they should have asked.

‘Low lying placenta,’ Ellie said, but her voice was muffled behind the oxygen mask.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ Luke was still pushing against her baby’s head to ensure it was clear of the cord but he leaned sideways so that she could see his face as she turned her head. In the bustle of people and activity around her, there was something very calming in the steady gaze of those hazel eyes that were visible again.

‘I’ve had a low-lying placenta. Only marginal but I was due for another scan this week and possible admission for observation and a C section if indicated.’

She saw the flicker of surprise in his eyes at her clinical information.

‘Ellie’s a nurse,’ someone behind him said. Sue had come into the resus area. ‘She’s one of our best ED nurses, in fact.’

Luke’s face disappeared from her line of sight. ‘Where’s our Obs consult?’

‘Here.’ A female voice who sounded rather nervous.

‘This is Anne Duffy,’ Sue said. ‘O&G registrar.’

Maybe Luke had picked up on the nervousness. ‘Have you got a theatre available? We’ve got a cord prolapse here. She’s fully dilated but still in stage one. We’re looking at either an emergency C section or an operative delivery.’

‘No.’ Anne sounded young as well as nervous. ‘We’re in the middle of a C section for triplets. It’s got most of our staff tied up for a while but it shouldn’t be too long until one of the consultants is available. Is the baby distressed?’

Maybe it was her imagination but Ellie thought she heard Luke sigh. ‘Have we got that foetal monitor hooked up yet?’

‘Yes. Baby’s heart-rate is one-thirty. No, hang on...one-ten... It’s dropping...’

Ellie could feel her own heart-rate increasing. This was suddenly getting very serious. If the baby’s heart-rate was dropping, it meant that the head was finally putting too much pressure on the cord despite the interventions. The clock was ticking now...

And something else was changing.

‘I need to push,’ she said.

‘Don’t push.’ The registrar definitely sounded nervous now. Terrified, even? ‘Take deep breaths. Try and go limp. Relax your pelvic floor.’

If Ellie had had any spare breath right then, it might have come out as an incredulous huff. Just how much experience had this junior doctor had? She fought the urge to push, her face scrunched as tightly as possible against the pain.

‘Heart-rate’s down to eighty,’ someone said.

‘Not too long isn’t good enough.’ There was a different note in Luke’s voice now. He had made a decision and was taking control. ‘Lay out the forceps kit, please. Can someone put out an urgent page and get a paediatrician down here, stat? Anne—take over here. Two fingers on the baby’s head and upward pressure, okay?’

‘Got it.’

‘Have you done a forceps delivery?’

‘I’ve assisted with one.’

‘Ellie? Can you hear me?’

‘Y-yes.’ Her voice came out sounding oddly croaky. Frightened...

Luke was crouched right beside her now, his face only a few inches from her own.

‘We need to get your baby out as soon as possible. You’re fully dilated and with the help of forceps we can do it. I’ve done a long stint in obstetrics and have experience in assisted delivery. Are you happy for me to go ahead?’

There was nothing about this that Ellie was happy about. But there was something in those eyes that gave her something to cling to.

Confidence. Hope...

She nodded, giving her consent.

‘We can give you some Entonox but there’s no time for any other pain relief to kick in. It’s going to be a bit rough. I’m sorry...’

He was sorry. He looked as though he would take that impending pain himself rather than inflict it on her. Ellie closed her eyes to hold back tears but she nodded again. ‘It’s okay...’

She could feel the tension in the room around her. Hear the clatter of instrument kits being unrolled onto a stainless steel trolley. She felt her body being moved so that she was lying on her back, sterile drapes being folded around her and listened to the instructions Luke was issuing as her legs were lifted and supported.

And he talked to her all through it, too.

‘I’m giving you a bit of local for the episiotomy. You’ll feel it sting for a moment.’

It stung a lot but Ellie knew it was only the start. She sucked on the mouthpiece giving her the inhaled pain relief.

‘I’m inserting the first blade, now. And the second. And I’m locking them. When the next contraction starts, I’m going to need you to push—as hard as you can, sweetheart.’

Sweetheart?

The word cut through the fear and pain. It was just a word that should have evaporated into the ether the moment it had been spoken but it didn’t. It echoed in her head and sent ripples through her body. It was something warm and caring and lovely in the middle of something horrific. And when the instruction to push came moments after the next contraction started she pushed with every ounce of strength she could summon.

And maybe she found more strength than she knew she had because, in the wake of being abandoned by the person she cared about most, he’d called her sweetheart...

It only took two contractions, a minute apart, with her pushing as if her life depended on it and Luke pulling with the baby’s head cradled between the blades of the forceps and she could feel the baby coming into the world.

‘It’s a boy, Ellie,’ someone said.

She knew that. Marco and Ava had known that, too. They’d already picked out a name. Carlos.

Her train of thought vanished as she became aware of the silence in the room. There was no baby crying. And nobody else was saying anything, either. The silence was shocked. And shocking. Ellie jerked her head up to see a tiny, limp body that someone was rubbing briskly with a towel.

A woman she didn’t know—the nervous young registrar, perhaps—saw her looking.

‘It’s okay, Ellie. We’re doing everything we can for your baby.’

Tears that had been building for too long exploded from Ellie as she let her head drop back down.

‘But he’s not my baby,’ she sobbed. ‘And now nobody wants him...’

CHAPTER TWO

WHAT?

Surely he hadn’t heard correctly?

For a split second, Lucas froze, completely distracted from what he was about to do.

Nobody wanted this baby?

One of the department’s senior nurses, Sue, was right beside him.

‘This was a surrogate pregnancy,’ she told him quietly. ‘But I have no idea what’s gone wrong.’

Lucas couldn’t give a damn about what might have gone wrong. There was a knot in his chest that felt like anger.

He knew what it was like to be an unwanted child. To face a world where you were not worth enough for anybody to want you.

No more than a blink of time had passed but Lucas snapped back to reality.

‘Give him to me,’ he snapped.

Picking up the limp bundle, he carried it to the trolley that had been hastily prepared with neonatal resuscitation gear. He gently laid the tiny body onto the sterile drapes. The miniature mask seemed to cover half the face as he delivered puffs of oxygen. He put his hands around a chest that felt alarmingly fragile, positioning both his thumbs on the sternum. Gentle but rapid compressions. Sue had followed him and picked up the mask. One puff, three compressions. One puff, three compressions.

You can do it... Come on... Fight...it’s worth it, I promise...

Only Luke could hear the words in his head. Or were they coming from his heart?

Someone’s going to love you...

There weren’t any words that came with his next thought—it was just a flash of sensation that came from nowhere.

I love you...

He shook off the bizarre notion. Getting emotionally involved in this unexpected case wasn’t going to help anyone. He needed to think ahead. Professionally. Intubation as the next step... IV access through the umbilical cord...chasing up that specialist paediatric consult...

And then the miracle happened. He felt the tiny body move between his hands. He paused the compressions and felt the push of that little ribcage against the pads of his thumbs as the baby took its own first breath.

And then another. That tiny face scrunched itself into an angry expression and the third breath was enough to provide the power for a warbling sound. The next effort was much more convincing.

This little guy was a fighter, after all.

And then Luke heard another cry from a very unexpected direction. From behind him.

From this new mother who didn’t want this baby.

He could feel his face tightening as he turned. His heart hardening.

And then he saw her face.

Propped up on her elbows, Ellie must have been watching this whole resuscitation effort and she had definitely heard those first sounds of a new life awakening.

Her hair was a tangle of blonde knots around a face that was pale enough to suggest she had lost a concerning amount of blood. And those eyes...

Huge, dark blue pools that were telling him something very different than the last words he had heard her speaking—that this wasn’t her baby and that nobody wanted him.

These were the eyes of a desperate woman. A mother...

‘Please,’ she whispered... ‘Please can I hold my baby?’

* * *

It had been that sound that had done it.

The cry from that tiny human that had been nestled within her body for so many months had taken the world as Ellie knew it and tipped it upside down. It had entered her ears but gone straight to her heart and captured it in the fiercest imaginable grip.

For a long, long moment, caught in what felt like a very disapproving stare from the doctor who’d just delivered her son, she thought that she was facing an impenetrable barrier. Someone who had no intention of letting her close to that tiny being she could just catch a glimpse of behind the solid figure of this new doctor.

But Sue was picking the baby up now.

‘Apgar score is ten at five minutes,’ she said, unable to keep a grin off her face. She was wrapping the baby in soft towels. ‘He’s looking great. I think we could let Mum have a bit of skin contact, until our paediatrician arrives, don’t you think?’

Luke’s response was a huff of sound that seemed indecisive but the anticipation of holding her baby against her own skin was so overwhelming that Ellie’s breath escaped in something that sounded like a sob as she lay back and held her arms out.

‘The placenta’s delivered.’ The young registrar was sounding a lot more confident now. ‘Seems intact and the bleeding’s almost stopped. Let’s prop you up a bit so you can hold your baby.’

Ellie had barely registered the last contractions as she watched the frantic efforts to save her son. Everything was all right now, though. She wasn’t about to bleed to death and the baby’s perfect Apgar score meant that he had come through this crisis with flying colours. With pillows being layered behind her, she was more than ready to accept the precious bundle that Sue was bringing towards her.

But why was this new doctor in her department still staring at her as if she was asking for something she really didn’t deserve?

He’d called her sweetheart only minutes ago.

Before helping her deliver her baby. Before he’d saved her life. Before he’d even properly begun to start saving the life of that baby.

And then something filtered into her brain. An echo of her own voice...

‘But he’s not my baby... And now nobody wants him...’

Oh, God...had she really said that?

No wonder he thought she was crazy. Or some kind of monster.

But Sue was beside her now and everybody else in this room and whatever tasks they were attending to ceased to exist as far as Ellie was concerned. Sue was unwrapping the tiny body of her baby, and another nurse was helping to remove the oversized tee shirt Ellie had been wearing. And her bra.

And there he was. In her arms and snuggled against her bare chest, while Sue arranged some soft, fluffy blankets around them both for warmth and as much privacy as was possible, given the surroundings.

Ellie couldn’t even lift her head to smile her thanks. Her baby’s eyes were open and he was staring up at her and nothing could have induced her to break that astonishing eye contact.

‘Hullo, you...’ she whispered. ‘I’m Mummy.’

The wash of emotion was like nothing Ellie had ever experienced. Something was changing in her body at a cellular level and she would never be the same person she’d been only minutes ago.

Who knew that love could be this powerful? So huge...and every bit of it was for this tiny little human.

Had she really believed she could have given him to someone else?

This baby was a part of herself and she would fight to the death if necessary to protect him.

It was the baby who finally broke that intense eye contact. His head bobbed against the arm it was cradled by and his tiny mouth opened and closed against the skin of Ellie’s breast. Instinctively, she adjusted her position, which brought her nipple within range of the baby’s mouth. And then she watched, in astonishment, as the baby found what it was seeking and latched on to her nipple as though he’d done it many times before.

Ellie’s jaw dropped. ‘He did that all by himself.’

‘He’s a genius.’ Sue smiled. ‘Oh...where’s my phone? We’ve got to get a photo of this.’

But Ellie had closed her eyes by the time Sue had fished her phone from the pocket of her scrub pants and she could feel a tear escape and roll down the side of her nose. And then another.

This feeling—the silky new born skin against her own, the shape of those tiny limbs within her arms and, most of all, the tug of that tiny mouth against her breast—was too much.

It felt like pure joy...

* * *

Luke had rather a lot of paperwork to do to document this emergency delivery that had happened on his watch. Someone had given him the forms on a clipboard and he had a pen in his hand but he hadn’t written a word, yet.

He kept looking sideways. From where he was standing, beside the trolley they’d used to resuscitate this baby, he could see the back of the baby’s head nestled in the crook of Ellie’s arms.

And he could see Ellie’s face.

She had no idea he was watching her. Luke doubted that she was aware of anything other than the baby she was holding.

They seemed to be staring at each other. Locked in a conversation that was so utterly private that Luke felt uncomfortable observing it.

So he looked away.

Eleanor Thomas, someone had filled in under the personal details on the form. Thirty-two years old. Thirty-six weeks pregnant.

He had to look back. It was none of his business that there was something weird going on. A surrogate pregnancy?

Who for?

Why?

And what had gone so wrong that she’d claimed that nobody wanted this child now?

It certainly didn’t look as if nobody wanted him.

Ellie looked, for all the world, as if she was in the middle of a personal miracle. Mesmerised by the face of her child. As though this baby was being bathed in as much love as it was possible for any person to bestow.

It was weird, all right. And disturbing on a level that Luke hadn’t expected. Maybe it was because this was happening so soon after he’d been standing in the home it had taken so many years for him to find.

Had his own mother looked at him like that in the minutes after he’d been born?

No. He’d always known the answer to that.

This time it was easier to look away. To try and focus on the paperwork.

Surely no mother could ever look at her child like that and then simply hand him to strangers when life got tough and never even try to see him again? Had it even occurred to his mother that the scars of being abandoned and finding himself unwanted would be there for the rest of his life?

The paediatrician arrived and Luke gave him a verbal handover. He still had the notes to write up on the baby’s early resuscitation as well.

The new arrival looked at Ellie, who was now breastfeeding the infant, and he was smiling.

‘I think we can get them up to the ward before we examine baby properly. He’s looking pretty happy.’

Anne, the O&G registrar, had joined them. She was nodding. ‘I’ll leave the repair of the episiotomy until then, too. I’ll see what rooms we have available and order a transfer.’

Within minutes, the transfer had been arranged. The bed, with the baby still cradled in Ellie’s arms, was being wheeled out of the resuscitation room and staff members were already busy cleaning up. Luke heard the metallic clang as the forceps and other instruments he had used were dropped into a container to be sent for sterilisation. Blood stained towels and drapes were going into the contaminated linen bag and a cleaner began mopping the floor. A new bed was outside, waiting to take centre stage in a room that would have no evidence of the life and death drama that had just occurred.

Another one would probably take its place very soon but this one was over. Any odd personal connection he might have felt needed to be dismissed. He had done his job and whatever lay ahead for Ellie and her baby was none of his business.

Well, it wasn’t quite over yet. With a sigh, Luke picked up the clipboard. He could finish this paperwork in the office and, if he was lucky, it would be done before he was needed elsewhere. He didn’t want to be here, tying up loose ends like this, when his shift finished late in the evening.

* * *

A visitor was the last thing Ellie was expecting at this time of night.

It was after ten p.m. and she was propped up on her pillows, in the soft glow of the night light in her private room, and she was doing nothing more than being in the moment. Listening to the soft snuffles and squeaks coming from the tiny bundle in the plastic bassinet that was within touching distance of her bed. Trying to absorb this momentous change in her life.

She thought the soft tap on her door would be one of the nursing staff, coming to check that everything was okay and that she was ready to try and get some sleep. When Luke Gilmore stepped into her room, she was too astonished to even say hullo.

‘Is this a bad time? They told me on the desk that you’d just finished a feed and would probably still be awake.’

Ellie was still staring at him. It was obvious she was still awake so there didn’t seem to be anything that needed to be said. She could feel a puzzled frown creasing her brow.

Why was he here? Most emergency department doctors—especially locums—didn’t have the time or the interest in following up their cases. They treated them and moved them on, job done. There were always more to take their places.

But it was nice that he wanted to check up on them. Ellie’s lips curved into a smile, which was taken as an invitation to come into the room, but then the smile wobbled.

Had he come to have a go at her for what had been said in a moment of both physical and emotional agony? When this whole, sorry story of her attempt to be a surrogate mother had looked as if it was about to end in disaster?

He didn’t look as if he was angry about anything. Closing the door softly behind him, Luke stepped towards her bed, stopping to gaze down at the sleeping, snuffling baby.

Ellie found herself gazing at him. There was something about those rather craggy features and that shaggy hair that seemed very familiar. Had he worked in the same hospital as her in the past, maybe? Way back, when she was newly qualified and too focused on doing her job well to take much notice of staff members in other departments?

‘I hear he passed his paediatric check with flying colours.’

‘Mmm.’ Ellie found both her voice and another smile. ‘He’s perfect. A good weight, too, even though he was four weeks early. He’s almost seven pounds.’

She was still trawling through dim memory banks.

Luke Gilmore...doctor...

Or not yet a doctor?

‘Oh, my God...’ Ellie breathed. ‘You’re Lucas Gilmore, aren’t you?’

Startled eyes met her own. ‘Ah...yes. But I haven’t been called Lucas in about fifteen years. By anyone other than my parents, that is...’

‘You went to Kauri Valley District High School?’

His face had gone very still. He didn’t say anything but he was frowning—as though he was searching his own memory banks as he stared at her face.

‘I went there, too. You won’t remember me—I was a couple of years behind you. But we shared the school bus every day. You lived on the coast, didn’t you? Near Moana Beach?’

Uninvited, Luke sank to balance his hip on the end of Ellie’s bed, one arm over the base board, his fingers touching the clip of the board that held her observations chart.

‘No way... Wait...I do remember you. You always sat up the front. You had really long plaits.’

The thought that he’d noticed her at all on a crowded bus made Ellie feel suddenly shy. She would have died if she’d known it at the time. Lucas Gilmore—Kauri Valley high school’s bad boy—aware of her existence? It would have been scary. And...thrilling?

‘You always sat right at the back,’ she heard herself saying. ‘With all the cool kids.’

‘The ones who got into trouble, you mean?’

There was something intense in his glance now. Did he want to know how much Ellie knew about the kind of trouble he’d been in as a kid?

Okay, she knew quite a lot. Ellie could almost hear an echo of her mother’s voice.

‘Stay away from that Gilmore boy. He’s bad news. Nothing but trouble...’

She wasn’t about to say anything now, though. He’d clearly turned his life around. He was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. A doctor who’d just saved the lives of both herself and her baby.

There was a flash of something like relief on Luke’s features as she shrugged his comment away. She could sense the tension ebbing away from his body. Or maybe she could feel it, as the mattress dipped with his settling weight.

‘You were always with another girl who always wore hats.’

Ellie nodded. ‘Ava. My best friend. Her hair was never the same after all the chemo she had and it took her a long time to get used to it.’

‘Chemo? What for?’

‘Leukaemia.’

‘Did she survive?’

‘Oh, yeah... And her hair came back even better than ever. Turned out that she’d never be able to have kids, though.’

The sudden stillness in Luke’s face told her that he’d put two and two together with remarkable speed. Almost as though he was reading her mind.

‘That’s who you were being a surrogate for?’

Ellie nodded. She had to bite her lip to push back the wash of loss. Ava had been such a big part of her life for ever and now she had gone and it was going to leave a gaping hole.

‘Wow...’ She listened to the deep breath that Luke took and then let out in a long sigh as he pushed his fingers through that mop of sun-streaked hair. The front locks immediately flopped down onto his forehead again. ‘That’s an incredible thing to do for a friend. Huge...’