Their Special-Care Baby

‘In the accident you were knocked unconscious for a short time. Goodness knows what you hit on impact. With the swelling near your brain your memory could take hours to return or even months.’

She watched him as if he had all the answers and Stewart felt inadequate for the first time in a very long time.

‘Will my memory definitely come back?’ she asked, and he felt the weight of her need as if it were his obligation to make her world right.

That was the rub. ‘In the majority of amnesia cases, most of the patient’s memory does come back in time.’

‘So reassuring,’ she murmured ironically, and turned her head away from him on the pillow. Strangely, she left her fingers curled safe in his, though. Stewart found himself absurdly touched by her trust.

He left the silence between them and it built until she turned back to face him. There was resolution on her face that he could only admire and the urge to comfort her returned with force. What was it about this woman that made it so easy to read her thoughts? What was it about her that made him want to read them? The concept elbowed for room in his own crowded mind.

She cleared her throat. ‘So you can tell me anything you like and I have to believe you until my memory returns?’ she said.

He had to applaud her dry sense of humour because he doubted he’d be up to jokes in Desiree’s position.

He glanced at Leanore and his mother stared vaguely out the window, sidetracked in confusion caused by her tumour. He did it for Leanore every day.

At least he was practised at orientating lost people. ‘So it appears. You will just have to sue me for any incorrect answers.’

Desiree had no choice but to trust him for the moment. She steeled herself for the question she dreaded the answer to. ‘Who is Desiree?’

Obviously this was not the question he’d expected, by the lift of his dark brows. Well, it was the one she needed an answer to the most, and she held her breath as she waited.

‘You.’ He’d said it gently but the answer still slammed into her. ‘Your name is Desiree Kramer.’ She winced as she exhaled.

She’d been afraid of that. Desiree Kramer? No bells rang, no recognition sparked. So it was true. She couldn’t even remember her own name.

He enunciated slowly, as if she were a slow learner. ‘Desiree Kramer, lately of Queensland, and newly arrived in Sydney.’

Desiree screwed her nose up and shook her head. ‘And you are sure my name is Desiree? Not something simpler or plainer?’

‘Desiree, I’m afraid, but we could call you anything you like if that would make you more comfortable.’

‘Don’t patronise me.’ She sighed and accepted what she had been afraid of. It was incredibly hard, not having a past to call on.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was not my intention.’

She gathered her frayed composure around her. ‘I’m sorry for snapping. Do I know you?’ Her voice had wearied, and she’d closed her eyes again.

‘I’m your brother-in-law. Stewart Kramer.’

Startled, her eyes flew open. ‘I have a sister?’ She didn’t remember that!

‘You married my brother. I don’t know your family.’

She shook her head at this new information and her whole body stiffened in the bed. No way. ‘I’m not married.’

‘No.’ Stewart agreed. ‘You are a widow with a twelve-month-old child.’

She barely heard his second pronouncement because the first one had blown her away. ‘I mean,’ Desiree enunciated slowly and clearly, ‘I have never been married.’

Stewart shrugged slightly. For some reason his voice had cooled and she wondered if it had been her or his brother that had annoyed him. This was all too much but he had more to share and he was her only link to reality.

She tried to concentrate as he went on when all she wanted to do was sleep.

‘You married last April. Your husband, my brother, died in a car accident on New Year’s Day, eight weeks ago.’

Now she was a widow? Her heart was turning somersaults in her chest and she felt sick. ‘There’s no memory of anything beyond waking up a short time ago.’ She fought against rising panic and stared around the walls of the room, as if the secret of her lost life could be found there.

She felt abandoned, confused, and at the mercy of these people she didn’t recognise. She heard the shake in her voice but there was nothing she could do about it because she was doing well to avoid lapsing into hysterics.

She shook her head and then grimaced at the discomfort. Maybe she should worry about all this later. She didn’t think she could do it now. ‘Whatever. I can’t remember anything. My head hurts.’

She shut her eyes and then opened them again. This had to be a big mistake. ‘Do I know you well? Are you sure you’re right?’

She hadn’t fazed him. How could he be so calm when her whole past life had disappeared? His voice was even and unruffled as he went on. ‘Except for the accident, we’ve never met. Your identification was in the backpack.’

She glanced at the bag on the shelf again. ‘How do you know it’s my backpack?’

‘It was on your back when I found you.’

‘You were there?’

She nodded and then stared at him. His kind blue eyes kindled a flame of recognition and a strange feeling of comfort and safety finally seeped into her.

He was a good man. She felt it, so she supposed she’d have to believe him and trust in his word. As she looked into his eyes, a strange, deeper recognition began to shimmer between them, and she couldn’t look away.

She remembered. He had been there in the wreckage. ‘So it was you and not a dream.’

He cleared his throat and his hand tightened on hers. ‘It’s a miracle you can remember anything. The scene was chaotic.’

‘I don’t remember much, but I remember…’ Her eyes widened and she remembered the pain in her stomach. Her voice dropped to a whisper as the ache of realisation hit her. Her baby. ‘I was pregnant!’

She pulled her hand out of his hold and slid her fingers slowly under the covers to her flat stomach. It was then she felt the loss of her baby within. Her rounded stomach had gone, replaced by emptiness, and she hadn’t been awake to know.

Her hand returned above the sheets and searched for his. ‘Did I lose my baby?’

‘No.’ He let that answer seep in slowly.

Desiree didn’t understand. ‘What month is this?’ She swallowed the ball of fear and grief in her throat and prepared herself for the worst. Tears pricked her eyes as she sucked in her flat stomach. My poor baby.

With her fingers clutched around his, a small measure of comfort warmed the sudden coldness of her soul.

‘No, your baby is alive but it is the twenty-sixth of February, so she has some growing to do,’ he said.

She paused before she looked at him again, afraid that if she saw his face he would retract that tiny hope she’d heard him correctly.

His fingers tightened their grip on her hand. ‘After the accident you went into premature labour. We didn’t know you were in labour until just before she was born.’

Desiree remembered the pain in stomach. ‘You said she. I had a girl?’

‘We estimate your daughter was born eleven weeks early but she is stable at the moment. She will need to stay in a large hospital like this one, if all goes well, for the next few months. She’s in our neonatal intensive care two floors down.’

Her daughter was alive. There was hope. ‘Eleven weeks is very early. I’m sure of that.’

‘Your daughter is breathing for herself and seems to be adapting to the outside world well, considering she wasn’t ready for us—and you had lost a lot of blood. She weighed just over a kilogram and is a fighter.’

He smiled and Desiree remembered his eyes again from the train crash. How could she remember that and not her own name? But there was something infinitely reassuring about sharing that one memory at least.

‘Your daughter has already shown she has the will to survive, like her mother.’ There was no mistaking he admired her baby for that. ‘And she is in the next best place to grow.’

Desiree’s heart pounded. She had a baby daughter. ‘When can I see her?’

He produced a digital print of a tiny baby in a humidicrib and passed it over to her. A thin red-faced skinned rabbit looked back at her.

A lost baby, a lost pregnancy, a baby she would have dreamed of meeting in a wondrous birth surrounded by people who loved her. Too many losses to cope with. Tears welled as she thought of her daughter alone, in a crib, and she couldn’t be with her. ‘When…?’

‘Perhaps you can see her this evening. You’ve only just regained consciousness. I’m not your doctor, but he’d agree it’s too soon to go riding around the hospital, even in a wheelchair.’

She sagged back. Even that small exertion had tired her.

‘We are taking good care of your daughter and she is stable at the moment.’

She could hardly believe her pregnancy was over before it had even been remembered.

Then he said something even more frightening. ‘It worries me you haven’t asked about your other child.’

Desiree watched his lips move but the words seem to come from a long way off as she wondered what her tiny daughter looked like.

He spoke again. ‘Do you remember I said you were a widow with another child? You have a twelve-month-old. Shall we bring Sophie to you? They have her down in the children’s ward for observation.’

She tore her thoughts away from the picture of her tiny baby and looked at him blankly.

He explained again. ‘Your other daughter? You told me to keep her safe when we first met.’

The other baby? What else had she forgotten? Had another child been mentioned? Perhaps. ‘You may have said that before but I don’t remember.’

Desiree frowned as she tried to remember. She had heard a baby crying in the wreckage. Had that baby been hers? ‘I heard her cry.’

How could she not recall her own flesh and blood? Was that possible? It didn’t make senses. What if it was a mistake, or a conspiracy, or a bad dream? ‘I wish I remembered.’

The first of his revelations rose to stun her again. ‘I can’t believe I was married and don’t remember.’

Stewart grimaced at what a marriage it would have been, unless Sean had changed a lot. He watched her struggle with all the information and worried that he’d burdened her with too much, too soon.

She tilted her head towards him and her grey eyes seemed to peer inside his soul as she sought answers.

He blinked and looked away, not sure what had just passed between them and not willing to pursue the thought. This was fanciful imagining and unlike him.

He fought against a sudden stirring of emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel for many years. Especially when he looked down at her fingers as they disappeared inside his bigger hand. He wondered why she had decided not to wear her wedding ring.

Something had shifted, something that shouldn’t have shifted with this woman who was related by law, and who was the last woman he wanted to be attracted to. There was nothing he could do about that now except ignore any such emotion and help her as much as he could.

Stewart glanced across at his mother, sitting patiently against the wall as she knitted. She had the glazed look of sudden tiredness she seemed to feel more often. He’d been a fool to bring her but she’d so wanted to be here when Desiree woke up.

He never knew when Leanore would lapse into one of those turns that kept her in bed for days and she deserved to at least meet her daughter-in-law.

There were so many ways his mind wanted to go but he could only do one thing at a time. ‘We’ll go now, Mother.’

Leanore blinked and looked at him brightly, and he knew she had lost her space in time for the moment. ‘Where will we go?’

‘Home, darling. Desiree is tired.’

Leanore creased her brow. ‘Desiree who?’

Stewart sighed and squeezed his mother’s shoulder gently. ‘We’ll leave Desiree to rest for a while and see Children’s Ward about bringing your granddaughter up here after she wakes up.’ He saw the moment her memory returned and he smiled as his mother nodded.

He looked at Desiree, her eyes now drooping with fatigue. ‘Sleep now. We’ll bring Sophie to you later this afternoon. After tea I’ll take you to the neonatal intensive care, or NICU as they call it, to see your new daughter, if it is all right with your doctor.’

Desiree nodded tiredly but there was one thing she had to do. ‘Before you leave, would you pass the backpack, please?’

‘We’ll see you later, Desiree.’ Stewart laid the backpack gently in her lap and then turned his mother’s wheelchair towards the door.

‘Later,’ he said, and she closed her eyes as they left the room.

Desiree’s head ached quietly but the pain was overshadowed by the enormity of losing who she was and what was in her past.

Lost memories of a twelve-month-old baby and dead husband and now the reality that she risked losing a baby she only fuzzily remembered being pregnant with. It was all too much.

It was a nightmare and surely she would wake up soon.

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