A Month To Marry The Midwife

Then her confidence rushed back. ‘Can I help you?’ She stood up, thinking there was something faintly familiar... But after she’d examined him thoroughly she thought, no, he wasn’t recognisable. She hadn’t seen this man before and she was sure she’d have remembered him.

The man took one step through the doorway but couldn’t go any further. Her office drew the line at two chairs and two people. It had always been small but somehow the space seemed to have shrunk to ridiculous tininess in the last few seconds. There was a hint of humour about his silver-blue eyes that almost penetrated the barrier she’d erected but stopped at the gate. Ellie was a good gatekeeper. She didn’t want any complications.

Ellie, who had always thought herself tall for a woman, unexpectedly felt a little overshadowed and the hairs on the back of her neck rose gently—in a languorous way, not in fright—which was ridiculous. Really, she was very busy for the next hour until the elderly locum consultant arrived.

‘Are you the matron?’ He rolled his eyes, as if a private thought piqued him, then corrected himself. ‘Director of Nursing?’ Smooth as silk with a thread of command.

‘Acting. Yes. Ellie Swift. I’m afraid you have the advantage of me.’

The tall man raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m Samuel Southwell.’ She heard the slight mocking note in his voice. ‘The locum medical officer here for the next month.’ He glanced at his watch as if he couldn’t believe she’d forgotten he was coming. ‘Am I early?’

‘Ah...’

Ellie winced. Not a drug rep. The doctor. Oops.

‘Sorry. Time zones. No Daylight Saving for you northerners from Brisbane. Of course. You’re only early on our side of the border. I was clearing the decks for your arrival.’ She muttered more to herself, ‘Or someone’s arrival...’ then looked up. ‘The agency had said they’d filled the temporary position with a Queenslander. I should have picked up the time difference.’

Then the name sank in. ‘Southwell?’ A pleasant surprise. She smiled with real warmth. ‘Are you related to Dr Southwell who had the accident?’ At the man’s quick nod, Ellie asked, ‘How is he?’ She’d been worried.

‘My father,’ he said dryly, ‘is as well as can be expected for a man too old to be surfing.’ He spoke as if his parent were a recalcitrant child and Ellie felt a little spurt of protectiveness for the absent octogenarian. Then she remembered she had to work with this man for the next month. She also remembered Dr Southwell had two children, and his only son was a consultant obstetrician at Brisbane Mothers and Babies. A workaholic, apparently.

Well, she certainly had someone with obstetric experience for a month. It would be just her luck that they wouldn’t have a baby the whole time he was here. Ellie took a breath and plastered on a smile.

First the green frog jumping at her from the door, then the ones croaking outside the window and now the Frog Prince, city-slicker locum who wasn’t almost retired, like locums were supposed to be.

‘Welcome. Perhaps you’d like to sit down.’ She gestured at the only other chair jammed between the storage cupboard and the door frame. She wasn’t really sure his legs would fit if he tried to fold into the space.

He didn’t attempt to sit and it was probably a good choice.

There was still something about his behaviour that was a little...odd. Did he feel they didn’t want him? ‘Dr Southwell, your presence here is very much appreciated.’

It took him a couple of seconds to answer and she used them to centre herself. This was her world. No need to be nervous. ‘We were very relieved when someone accepted the locum position for the month.’

He didn’t look flattered—too flash just to be referred to as ‘someone’, perhaps?

Ellie stepped forward. Bit back the sigh and the grumbles to herself about how much she liked the old ones. ‘Anyway, welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Most people call me Swift, because it’s my name and I move fast. I’m the DON, the midwife, emergency resource person and mediator between the medical staff and the nursing staff.’ She held out her hand. He looked at her blankly. What? Perhaps a sense of humour was too much to hope for.

His expression slowly changed to one of polite query. ‘Do they need mediation?’ He didn’t take her hand and she lowered it slowly. Strange, strange man. Ellie stifled another sigh. Being on the back foot already like this was not a good sign.

‘It was a joke, sorry.’ She didn’t say, ‘J. O. K. E.,’ though she was beginning to think he might need it spelled out for him. She switched to her best professional mode. The experience of fitting in at out-of-the-way little hospitals had dispatched any pretensions she might have had that a matron was anyone but the person who did all the things other people didn’t want to do. It had also taught her to be all things to all people.

Ellie usually enjoyed meeting new staff. It wasn’t something that happened too often at their small hospital until Dr Rodgers had retired.

Lighthouse Bay was a place more suited to farming on the hills and in the ocean, where the inhabitants retreated from society, though there were some very trendy boutique industries popping up. Little coffee plantations. Lavender farms. Online boutiques run by corporate women retreating from the cities looking for a sea change.

Which was where Ellie’s new clientele for Maternity rose from. Women with considered ideas on how and where they wanted to have their babies. But the town’s reliable weekend doctor had needed to move indefinitely for medical treatment and Ellie was trying to hold it all together.

The local farming families and small niche businesses were salt-of-the-earth friendly. She was renovating her tiny one-roomed cottage that perched with two other similar crofts like a flock of seabirds on the cliff overlooking the bay. She’d found the perfect place to forget what a fool she’d been and perfect also for avoiding such a disaster again.

Ellie dreamed of dispensing with the need for doctors at all. But at the moment she needed one supporting GP obstetrician at least to call on for emergencies. Maybe she could pick this guy’s brains for ways to circumvent that.

She glanced at the man in front of her—experience in a suit. But not big on conversation. Still, she was tenacious when there was something she wanted, and she’d drag it out of him. Eventually.

In the scheme of things Lighthouse Bay Maternity needed a shake up and maybe she could use him. He’d be totally abreast of the latest best-practice trends, a leader in safe maternity care. He should be a golden opportunity to sway the sticklers to listen to the mothers instead of the easy fix of sending women away.

But, if he wasn’t going to sit down then she would deal with him outside the confines of her office. She stood and slipped determinedly past him. It was a squeeze and required body contact. She’d just have to deal with it. ‘Would you like a tour?’

* * *

Lemon verbena. He knew the scent because at the last conference he’d presented at, all the wives had been raving about the free hotel amenities and they’d made him smell it. It hadn’t resonated with him then as it did now. Sam Southwell breathed it in and his visceral response set off rampant alarm bells. He was floundering to find his brain. There was something about the way her buttoned-to-the-neck, long-sleeved white shirt had launched a missile straight to the core of him and exploded, and now the scent of her knocked him sideways as she brushed past.

The way her chin lifted and her cool, grey eyes assessed him and found him wanting, giving him the ultimate hands-off warning when he hadn’t even thought about hands on—hadn’t for a long time until now—impressed him. Obviously a woman who made up her own mind. She wasn’t overawed by him in the least and that was a good thing.

He stared at the wall where ‘Swift’ had stood a second ago and used all of his concentration to ram the feelings of sheer confusion and lust back down into the cave he used for later thought, and tried to sound at least present for the conversation. She must be thinking he was an arrogant sod, but his brain was gasping, struggling, stumped by the reaction he was having to her.

She was right. Being jammed in this shoebox of an office wasn’t helping. What an ironic joke that his father had thought this isolated community would help him return to normal when in fact he’d just fallen off a Lighthouse Bay cliff. His stomach lurched.

He turned slowly to face her as she waited, not quite tapping her foot. He began to feel better. Impatience wasn’t a turn-on.

‘Yes. A tour would be excellent,’ he said evenly. She must think he was the most complete idiot but he was working to find headspace to fit it all in. And he could work fast.

The place he could handle. Heck, he could do it in his sleep. He had no idea why he was so het up about it. But this woman? His reaction to her? A damnably different kettle of fish. Disturbing. As in, deeply and diabolically disturbing.

‘How many beds do you have here?’ A sudden picture of Ellie Swift on a bed popped into his head and arrested him. She’d have him arrested, more likely, he thought wryly. He was actually having a breakdown. His dad was right. He did need to learn to breathe.

CHAPTER TWO

SAM HADN’T SLEPT with a woman for years. Not since his wife had died. He hadn’t wanted to and in fact, since he’d used work to bury grief and guilt, with all the extra input, his career had actually taken off. Hence, he hadn’t had the time to think about sex, let alone act on it.

Now his brain had dropped to somewhere past his waistline, a nether region that had been asleep for years and had just inconveniently roared into life like an express train, totally inappropriate and unwelcome. Good grief. He closed his eyes tightly to try and clear the pictures filling his head. He was an adolescent schoolboy again.

‘Are you okay?’ Her voice intruded and he snapped his lids open.

‘Sorry.’ What could he say? He only knew what he couldn’t say. Please don’t look down at my trousers! Instead he managed, ‘I think I need coffee.’

She stopped. Dropped her guard. And as if by magic he felt the midwife morph from her as she switched to nurture mode in an instant. No other profession he knew did it as comprehensively as midwives.

‘You poor thing. Of course. Follow me. We’ll start in the coffee shop. Though Myra isn’t here yet. Didn’t you stop on the way? You probably rushed to get here.’ She shook her head disapprovingly and didn’t wait for an answer but bustled him into a small side room that blossomed out into an empty coffee shop with a huge bay window overlooking the gardens.

She nudged him into a seat. Patted his shoulder. ‘Tea or coffee?’ It had all happened very fast and now his head really was spinning.

‘Coffee—double-shot espresso, hot milk on the side,’ he said automatically, and she stopped and looked at him.

Then she laughed. Her face opened like a sunburst, her eyes sparkled and her beautiful mouth curved with huge amusement. She laughed and snorted, and he was smitten. Just like that. A goner.

She pulled herself together, mouth still twitching. ‘Sorry. Myra could fix that but not me. But I’ll see what I can do.’

Sam stared after her. She was at least twelve feet away now and he gave himself a stern talking-to. Have coffee, and then be normal. He would try. No—he would succeed.

* * *

Poor man. Ellie glanced at the silent, mysterious coffee machine that Myra worked like a maestro and tried to work out how much instant coffee from the jar under the sink, where it had been pushed in disgrace, would equate to a double shot of coffee. She didn’t drink instant coffee. Just the weak, milky ones Myra made for her from the machine under protest. Maybe three teaspoons?

He’d looked so cosmopolitan and handsome as he’d said it—something he said every day. She bit back another snuffle of laughter. Classic. Welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Boy, were they gonna have fun.

She glanced back and decided he wasn’t too worthy of sympathy because it was unfair for a man to have shoulders like that, not to mention a decidedly sinful mouth. And she hadn’t thought about sinful for a while. In fact she couldn’t quite believe she was thinking about it now. She’d thought the whole devastation of the cruelty of men had completely cured her of that foolishness.

She was going to have to spend the next month with this man reappearing on the ward. Day and night if they were both called out. The idea was more unsettling than she’d bargained for and was nothing to do with the way the ward was run.

The jug boiled and she mixed the potent brew. Best not to think of that now. She needed him awake. She scooped up two Anzac biscuits from the jar with a napkin.

‘Here you go.’ Ellie put the black liquid down in front of him and a small glass of hot milk she’d heated in the microwave.

He looked at it. Then at her. She watched fascinated as he poured a little hot milk into the mug with an inch of black coffee at the bottom.

He sipped, threw down the lot and then set it down. No expression. No clues. She was trying really hard not to stare. It must be an acquired taste.

His voice was conversational. ‘Probably the most horrible coffee I’ve ever had.’ He looked up at her. ‘But I do appreciate the effort. I wasn’t thinking.’ He pushed the cup away. Grimaced dramatically. Shook his whole upper body like a dog shedding water. ‘Thank God I brought my machine.’

She wasn’t sure what she could say to that. ‘Wow. Guess it’s going to be a change for you here, away from the big city.’

‘Hmm...’ he murmured noncommittally. ‘But I do feel better after the shock of that.’

She grinned. Couldn’t help herself. ‘So you’re ready for the walk around now?’

He stood up, picked up the biscuits in the napkin, folded them carefully and slipped them into his pocket. ‘Let’s do it.’

Ellie decided it was the first time he’d looked normal since he’d arrived. She’d remember that coffee trick for next time.

‘So this is the ward. We have five beds. One single room and two doubles, though usually we’d only have one woman in each room, even if it’s really busy.’

Really busy with five beds? Sam glanced around. Empty rooms. Now they were in with the one woman in the single room and her two-day-old infant. Why wasn’t she going home?

‘This is Renee Jones.’

‘Hello, Renee.’ He smiled at the mother and then at the infant. ‘Congratulations. I’m Dr Southwell. Everything okay?’

‘Yes, thank you, doctor. I’m hoping to stay until Friday, if that’s okay. There’s four others at home and I’m in no rush.’

He blinked. Four more days staying in hospital after a caesarean delivery? Why? He glanced at Matron Swift, who apparently was unworried. She smiled and nodded at the woman.

‘That’s fine, Renee, you deserve the rest.’

‘Only rest I get,’ Renee agreed. ‘Though, if you don’t mind, could you do the new-born check today, doc, just in case my husband has a crisis and I have to go at short notice?’

New-born check? Examine a baby...himself? He glanced at the midwife. Who did that? A paediatrician, he would have thought. She met his eyes and didn’t dispute it so he smiled and nodded. ‘We’ll sort that.’

Hopefully. His father would be chortling. He could feel Ellie’s presence behind him as they left the room and he walked down to the little nurses’ alcove and leaned against the desk. It had been too many years since he’d checked a new-born’s hips and heart. Not that he couldn’t—he imagined. But even his registrars didn’t do that. They left it to Paediatrics while the O&G guys did the pregnancy and labour things.

‘Is there someone else to do the new-born checks on babies?’

‘Sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re it.’

He might have a quick read before he did it, then. He narrowed his eyes at the suspicious quirk of her lips. ‘What about you?’

Her hair swished from side to side. He’d never really had a thing for pony tails but it sat well on her. Pretty. Made him smile when it swayed. He’d faded out again.

‘I said,’ she repeated, ‘I did the online course for well-baby examination but have never been signed off on it. One of those things I’ve been meaning to do and never got around to.’

Ha. She thought she was safe. ‘Excellent. Then perhaps we’d better do the examinations together, and at least by the time I leave we’ll both be good at them. Then I can sign you off.’

She didn’t appear concerned. She even laughed. He could get used to the way she laughed. It was really more of a chortle. Smile-inducing.

The sound of a car pulling up outside made them both pause. After a searching appraisal of the couple climbing out, she said, ‘The charts are in that filing cabinet if the ladies have booked in. Can you grab Josie Mills, please?’

When he looked back from the filing cabinet to the door he could hear the groans but Swift was already there with her smile.

He hadn’t seen her move and glanced to where she’d stood a minute ago to check there weren’t two of her. Nope. She was disappearing up the hallway with the pregnant woman and her male support as if they were all on one of those airport travellators and he guessed he’d better find the chart.

Which he did, and followed them up the hall.

Josie hadn’t made it onto the bed. She was standing beside it and from her efforts it was plain that, apart from him, there’d be an extra person in the room in seconds.

Swift must have grabbed a towel and a pair of gloves as she came through the door, both of which were still lying on the bed, because she was distracted as she tried to help the frantic young woman remove her shorts.

In Sam’s opinion the baby seemed to be trying to escape into his mother’s underwear but Swift was equal to the task. She deftly encouraged one of the mother’s legs out and whipped the towel off the bed and put it between the mother’s legs, where the baby seemed to unfold into it in a swan dive and was pushed between the mother’s knees into Swift’s waiting hands. The baby spluttered his displeasure on the end of the purple cord after his rapid ejection into a towel.

‘Good extrication,’ Sam murmured with a little fillip of unexpected excitement as he pulled on a pair of gloves from the dispenser at the door. Could that be the first ghost of emotion he’d felt at a birth for a long while? With a sinking dismay it dawned on him that he hadn’t even noticed it had been missing.

He crossed the room to assess the infant, who’d stopped crying and was slowly turning purple, which nobody seemed to notice as they all laughed and crowed at the rapid birth and helped the woman up on the bed to lie down.

‘Would you like me to attend to third stage or the baby?’ he enquired quietly.

He saw Swift glance at the baby, adjust the towel and rub the infant briskly. ‘Need you to cut the cord now, John,’ she said to the husband. ‘Your little rocket is a bit stunned.’

The parents disentangled their locked gazes and Sam heard their indrawn breaths. The father jerked up the scissors Ellie had put instantly into his hand and she directed him between the two clamps as she went on calmly. ‘It happens when they fly out.’ A few nervous sawing snips from Dad with the big scissors and the cord was cut. Done.

‘Dr Southwell will sort you, Josie, while we sort the baby.’ Swift said it prosaically and they swapped places as the baby was bundled and she carried him to the resuscitation trolley. ‘Come on, John.’ She gestured for the father to follow her. ‘Talk to your daughter.’

The compressed air hissed as she turned it on and Sam could hear her talking to the dad behind him as automatically he smiled at the mother. ‘Well done. Congratulations.’

The baby cried and they both smiled. ‘It all happened very fast,’ the mother said as she craned her neck toward the baby and, reassured that Swift and her husband were smiling, she settled back. ‘A bit too fast.’

He nodded as a small gush of blood signalled the third stage was about to arrive. Seconds later it was done, the bleeding settled, and he tidied the sheet under her and dropped it in the linen bag behind him. He couldn’t help a smile to himself at having done a tidying job he’d watched countless times but couldn’t actually remember doing himself. ‘Always nice to have your underwear off first, I imagine.’

The mother laughed as she craned her neck again and by her smile he guessed they were coming back. ‘Easier.’

‘Here we go.’ Swift lifted the mother’s T-shirt and crop top and nestled the baby skin-to-skin between her bare breasts. She turned the baby’s head sideways so his cheek was against his mother. ‘Just watch her colour, especially the lips. Her being against your skin will warm her like toast.’

Sam stood back and watched. He saw the adjustments Ellie made, calmly ensuring mother and baby were comfortable—including the dad, with a word here and there, even asking for the father’s mobile phone to take a few pictures of the brand new baby and parents. She glanced at the clock. He hadn’t thought of looking at the clock once. She had it all under control.

Sam stepped back further and peeled off his gloves. He went to the basin to wash his hands and his mind kept replaying the scene. He realised why it was different. The lack of people milling around.

Swift pushed the silver trolley with the equipment and scissors towards the door. He stopped her. ‘Do you always do this on your own?’

She pointed to a green call button. ‘Usually I ring and one of the nurses comes from the main hospital to be on hand if needed until the GP arrives. But it happened fast today and you were here.’ She flashed him a smile. ‘Back in a minute. Watch her, will you? Physiological third stage.’ Then she sailed away.

He hadn’t thought about the injection they usually gave to reduce risk of bleeding after the birth. He’d somehow assumed it had already been given, but realised there weren’t enough hands to have done it, although he could have done it if someone had mentioned it. Someone.

As far as he knew all women were given the injection at his hospital unless they’d expressly requested not to have it. Research backed that up. It reduced post-partum haemorrhage. He’d mention it.

His eyes fell on Josie’s notes, which were lying on the table top where he’d dropped them, and he snicked the little wheeled stool out from under the bench with his foot and sat there to read through the medical records. The last month’s antenatal care had been shared between his father and ‘E Swift’. He glanced up every minute or so to check that both mother and baby were well but nothing happened before ‘E Swift’ returned.

* * *

An hour later Sam had been escorted around the hospital by a nurse who’d been summoned by phone and found himself deposited back in the little maternity wing. The five-minute cottage hospital tour had taken an hour because the infected great toenail he’d been fearing had found him and he’d had to deal with it, and the pain the poor sufferer was in.

Apparently he still remembered how to treat phalanges and the patient had seemed satisfied. He assumed Ellie would be still with the new maternity patient, but he was wrong.

Ellie sat, staring at the nurses’ station window in a strangely rigid hunch, her hand clutching her pen six inches above the medical records, and he paused and turned his head to see what had attracted her attention.

He couldn’t see anything. When he listened, all he could hear were frogs and the distant sound of the sea.

‘You okay?’ He’d thought his voice was quiet when he asked but she jumped as though he’d fired a gun past her ear. The pen dropped as her hand went to her chest, as if to push her heart back in with her lungs. His own pulse rate sped up. Good grief! He’d thought it was too good to be true that this place would be relaxing.

‘You’re back?’ she said, stating the obvious with a blank look on her face.

He picked up the underlying stutter in her voice. Something had really upset her and he glanced around again, expecting to see a masked intruder at least. She glanced at him and then the window. ‘Can you do me a favour?’