His Unexpected Child

‘And you’d win, you rat!’ Maggie grumbled. ‘Just promise me something—don’t ruffle too many feathers on your first day. Take it gently until you’ve had a chance to get to know the people you’ll be working with. They’re a good tight-knit team.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ he said in a singsong voice. ‘I’ll play nicely with the other boys and girls.’

‘Oh, you’re impossible!’ she spluttered. ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I bother.’

‘Because I’m your lovable big brother?’ he suggested, tongue in cheek.

‘Exactly,’ she said, heaving a theatrical put-upon sigh. ‘But, seriously, David…’

‘Uh-oh! When she uses those dreaded words…!’ he teased. ‘It’s OK, Moggy. You can stop worrying about me, I’m a big boy now.’

‘I know that, but I don’t just want you to be successful, I want you to be happy, too,’ she said plaintively.

The words hung in the air between them for several seconds.

David knew exactly what she meant. Since she’d found happiness with Jake, she wanted everyone to be equally happy, but he knew that wasn’t possible for him. He’d had his chance and it had all gone horribly wrong.

‘It wasn’t your fault, David,’ she said softly in his ear, and he shivered at the accuracy of the way she’d followed his thoughts. Was he really that transparent?

‘That didn’t make any difference to the pain,’ he said gruffly, startled that he’d even admitted that much. In fact, it was probably the most he’d said to anyone about the loss that would haunt him for ever, and it would be the last. ‘So, if you don’t mind, little sister, I’ll concentrate on my new job and making the department second to none. That’ll make me happy.’

‘But you can’t take the department to bed for a cuddle,’ she retorted stubbornly. ‘David, you can’t cut yourself off from people like that. If you don’t want to talk to me, you could phone Mum and Dad. Calls to New Zealand may be expensive, but on your salary—’

‘No way!’ he exploded a second before he could put a guard on his tongue.

‘What?’ Maggie sounded startled. ‘But, David, you’ve always been so close to them—they moved halfway round the world to be near you, for heaven’s sake. Surely they’d be willing to listen if you wanted to talk?’

‘Too damn close!’ he muttered under his breath, then realised that he needed to make some sort of explanation.

‘Mum and Dad—at least, Mum—is one of the reasons why I left New Zealand. I had to get away, Maggie. She was still trying to smother me, the way she did when I was a kid. I’m thirty-four, for heaven’s sake! I don’t need my mother to bandage my grazed knees and kiss them better!’

Maggie giggled. ‘That’s an image to conjure with!’

‘Well, it’s not so funny when you’re on the receiving end of it,’ he pointed out grimly.

‘But, David—’ she began persuasively, but he’d had enough.

‘And you’d better watch your step,’ he warned. ‘If you’re going to start nagging, I’ll set Jake on you. I’ll tell him that he needs to keep a closer eye on you.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ she squealed in dismay. ‘I can hardly breathe as it is. If somebody from Obs and Gyn told him I needed watching he’d never let me out of his sight.’

‘That’s because you and the baby mean that much to him,’ he pointed out softly, the pain of memories tightening its grip around his throat and his heart. ‘Enjoy every precious minute of it, Moggy. Sleep tight.’

‘This isn’t working,’ Leah muttered as she stepped back from her little workbench in disgust.

Usually she could lose herself in the timeless art of repotting, trimming and training her precious bonsai trees, the cares of the day simply melting away as she put her concentration to each measured task. Tonight it just wasn’t happening and it was all his fault.

‘I might just as well be doing something useful, rather than risking spoiling one of you,’ she muttered as she collected and cleaned her tools and put them away. ‘And I know just the job.’

Decision made, it took mere moments before her hands were washed and she was reaching for her keys with a wry grimace. It would always seem wasteful to drive such a short distance, but it would be a very foolish woman who would wander about in the deep shadows between her flat and the hospital buildings in the dark.

Not long after that, she’d shut herself in the nighttime seclusion of the untidy office and was rolling up her sleeves in preparation for the final stage in her reorganisation of Donald’s filing system. The audit of all his files had been long overdue and a surprising number should already have been sent to the hospital archives. The remaining stacks were a far more manageable number for the available space in the filing cabinets.

She pulled open the first empty drawer and couldn’t help chuckling when she remembered the horrified expression on David ffrench’s face when he’d seen the chaos in the room. It had been sheer stubbornness mixed with her disappointment at losing out on the head of department job that had stopped her from explaining what was going on, and she felt a bit guilty about it now.

‘Guilty enough to lose some sleep to finish the job, but as I’ve already checked the contents of each one of these and put them all into alphabetical order, at least this part should be a breeze,’ she muttered as she prepared to slot each file into position. In a relatively short space of time she could have every last piece of paper filed neatly out of sight and she could push the last drawer shut with a warm feeling of achievement.

Suddenly she paused and threw a disparaging glare around the room.

‘The trouble is, when there are none of Donald’s piles of filing to distract the eye, it will be even more obvious just how shabby everything has become.’

The walls, in particular, could do with a fresh coat of paint—something rather more welcoming than dingy Institution Beige. ‘But fresher walls will make the curtains look worse than ever,’ she muttered in defeat, until an image of the spare pair of curtains lurking back at her flat leapt into her head. She’d bought them for her last flat and, while they didn’t fit any of the windows in her new one, they were still nearly new.

‘And if I can corner one of the maintenance men some time tomorrow…Even if he can’t do something about it, perhaps I could get him to beg a can of paint from the stores. Then I could come back again tomorrow evening…’

Course of action decided, she put the pile of files back where she’d got them from, switched off the light and locked the door behind her, a tiny smile betraying the thought that she was actually looking forward to David ffrench starting work on Monday. She could hardly wait to see the expression on his face when he saw the finished transformation.

‘And it’ll be every bit as good as any of the make-overs he’d see on the television,’ she vowed, a fresh spring in her step in spite of the time.

David ffrench stepped back into the shadow of the stairwell with a frown.

‘What on earth is Leah Dawson doing here at this time of night?’ he muttered into the darkness, his eyes following her swiftly moving figure as she made her way to the lifts. She’d obviously been home since the end of her shift because she’d changed from her neatly tailored trousers into a pair of decidedly disreputable jeans, jeans that revealed a figure every bit as neat and slender as he’d imagined.

And that smile! It was the first one he’d seen that didn’t look as if it had been forced out of her by well-drilled manners, and it had instantly intrigued him.

What had she been doing in his office at this time of night…? Well, it would be his office when he took it over on Monday morning. His frown deepened as he considered the possibilities. She must be in her late twenties or early thirties, so far too old for juvenile pranks such as whoopee cushions, and he hoped that she was far too professional to do something as stupid as to mess about with patient files.

‘As if I’d be able to tell,’ he groaned softly, remembering the chaos littering every surface. ‘As it is, it’s going to take me a month of Sundays just to get things organised. How I’m going to be able to run the department at the same time…’

He couldn’t imagine what the patients must think when they were shown into the room for the first time. It certainly wasn’t confidence-inspiring, and the frustration was that he couldn’t do anything about the situation until he officially started work.

‘Unless…’ he mused as he turned and made his way back down the stairs, then shook his head. The possibility of enlisting Leah in some overtime to sort through the mess had briefly flashed through his mind, but it wasn’t a good idea.

‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I’ve got enough to do in the next twenty-four hours with organising my living space. And I really don’t need to get off on the wrong foot with Leah before we’ve even started to work together.’

As he left, he smiled absently at the security guard who’d earlier verified his identity before admitting him to the building, then lengthened his stride as he set off towards the nearby block of flats, wondering why the woman seemed to have taken up permanent residence inside his head when he’d only met her this morning.

‘The last thing I need is getting tangled up with some woman,’ he said aloud, startling an elderly gentleman taking his equally elderly dog out for its late-night constitutional. ‘Been there, done that,’ he muttered more quietly. ‘I’ve got the scars to prove it.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘THAT looks better!’ Leah exclaimed aloud as she clambered down from her perch on the window-sill and stepped back to admire her handiwork.

In the distance, she heard the chimes of the church clock striking two, a reassuring sound that couldn’t be heard at all when the department was busy during the day, but now only served to remind her of just how late it was.

‘If I’m going to be awake enough to work a full shift, I’d better get home to bed,’ she muttered. ‘I wouldn’t want to oversleep and miss out on seeing his reaction.’

She’d already deposited the decorating equipment in a nearby storage cupboard, as arranged with the helpful maintenance man. Now that she’d hung the curtains, she was going to leave the window open for the rest of the night to help to dispel the last of the paint fumes.

‘Now I’m the messiest thing in the room,’ she said with a grimace for her paint-splattered clothing, but the results were certainly well worthwhile.

In spite of her need to get home, get cleaned up and get some sleep, she couldn’t help pausing by the door for a little gloat at all she’d achieved.

She’d barely had time to rejoice over the improvement—the calm, professional appearance of the ‘business’ end of the room, with not a stray piece of paper to be seen, compared to the softer, more welcoming area where prospective parents would be invited to sit—when her pager shrilled its imperative summons, startling her out of her wits.

‘I hope it’s a misdialled code,’ she muttered even as she was reaching for the receiver to answer the call.

‘Leah? How long will it take you to get here?’ demanded the familiar voice of one of the midwives.

‘Is there a problem?’ Leah made a sound of disgust. ‘Ignore the stupid question, Sally. Blame it on the time of night and change it to “What’s the problem?’”

‘Major, major problem,’ she said grimly. ‘An IVF patient in advanced labour, multiple birth, malpresentation.’

Already Leah’s head was reeling with the staccato presentation of facts. One part of her brain was sifting through ‘their’ patients, but she couldn’t think of any of the sets of twins who were anywhere near due yet.

‘Which one? Is she miscarrying?’ Unfortunately, there was a high rate of loss and all its attendant heart-aches in their vulnerable group of patients.

‘Not one of ours,’ Sally reassured her succinctly. ‘She’s in a bad way. How soon can you get here? I think the only way we’re going to save any of them is an emergency Caesarean, pronto, and Chas is already fully occupied.’

For just a fleeting second she wondered if she was about to bite off more than she could chew. This would be her first really complicated case since Donald had died, and although he hadn’t delivered a baby for several years, there had been a certain sense of security in knowing that such an experienced man had been nearby.

‘How long will it take you to get her into Theatre?’ She glanced across at the clock on the wall above the filing cabinets to confirm the time while she contemplated her course of action. ‘I’ll go straight there and start to scrub.’

‘Ten minutes, tops. I’ve already warned Theatre to get ready,’ Sally informed her, then added, ‘Leah, make it as fast as you can, please. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this one.’

The butterflies in Leah’s stomach became helicopters with those parting words. Sally was an experienced midwife not prone to panicking at the slightest hitch. If she was worried, then there was something to worry about and even though she could have taken the case on herself, Leah knew what she had to do. With mother and babies’ lives at stake, this was no time for egos or hospital politics.

‘Hello, Switchboard, I need to contact one of the consultants urgently, and I don’t have his home number,’ she announced briskly, her fingers crossed that the computer had already been updated ready for David ffrench’s commencement today at a more civilised time. It only briefly crossed her mind that his insurance cover might not start until he was officially on duty. ‘It’s David ffrench…two f’s. He’s the new appointment to Obs and Gyn.’

It took several more precious minutes to persuade the person on the other end that if they made the connection to the outside line, they wouldn’t actually be breaking his right to confidentiality.

‘H’lo?’ said a husky voice right in her ear, and every nerve quivered with the knowledge that she’d just woken him up, that he was probably lying in his bed—totally naked?—with his dark hair all rumpled and…

‘Mr ffrench?’ she squeaked, and had to clear her throat before she could continue, gabbling in her embarrassment at her unruly imagination. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you when you haven’t officially begun working here, but could you possibly come over to the hospital? There’s an emergency Caesarean…multiple birth…And I think I’m going to need you. Oh, this is Leah Dawson.’

‘Foetal distress?’ he demanded, already obviously firing on all cylinders, much to Leah’s envy. She still hated being woken in the middle of the night, even after all these years in the profession. ‘How many weeks gestation and how long has the mother been in labour?’

‘I don’t know much more than I’ve told you,’ she admitted. ‘But it was Sally Ling, one of the most experienced midwives in the department, who called me, and she knows what she’s talking about. Chas—Charles Westmoreland—isn’t available because he’s already dealing with a problem delivery,’ she added, anticipating his next question.

‘I can be there in ten minutes. Get her into Theatre,’ he said tersely, and before she could utter a word of thanks, he’d broken the connection.

Leah could have wasted energy feeling snubbed by his abruptness, but all she was conscious of was relief that he was on his way. Now it was time to get moving.

‘Have you got any more details for me?’ she demanded over her shoulder as she began the scrubbing ritual, the cotton of the theatre greens feeling very thin and insubstantial after her jeans.

Sally’s head appeared round the corner, her dark curls already trying to escape from the disposable cap.

‘Mum tried to tell me that she’s thirty-eight, but I’d say she’s much closer to sixty.’

‘What?’ Leah gaped at her, hands suspended in mid-scrub. ‘You’re joking! She probably just looks a bit…shattered after carrying a double load around for so many months.’

‘You could be right,’ Sally said dubiously. ‘See what you think when you see her. Ashraf’s not too happy about any of it. We’ve got absolutely no previous notes and she’s being extremely cagey about where she had her treatment, and he’s in charge of her anaesthesia.’

‘Not another one!’ exclaimed David as he joined Leah at the sink. He’d obviously heard enough of the conversation as he’d come in to pick up on what was happening. ‘We had one like this at my last post. Apparently she’d had extensive cosmetic surgery so that she could use her niece’s passport for identification as she was well beyond the age limits for properly regulated IVF. We never did find out where she’d been treated and we nearly lost her to eclampsia.’

‘Oh, boy, am I glad I invited you to this little party,’ Leah groaned. ‘By the way, should I make the introductions? David ffrench, new head of our little domain, meet Sally Ling, midwife extraordinaire.’

‘I take it this is what’s called being thrown in at the deep end,’ David commented as he took his turn at having the ties fastened at the back of his gown, then held his hands out for gloves.

‘We wouldn’t like you to think you were going to be bored here, so we thought we’d lay on a bit of entertainment,’ Sally quipped, taking another look into the room behind her. ‘I think Ashraf’s nearly ready for you to begin, but he doesn’t look happy.’

‘Too right, Ashraf’s not happy!’ exclaimed the man in question, his dark eyes firmly fixed on the array of monitors grouped at his end of the table. ‘Some things are just not right.’

‘Is there a problem with her anaesthesia?’ Leah heard the sharp edge of concern in David’s voice.

‘You mean, apart from the fact that her blood pressure’s too high and her lungs aren’t the best?’ he said wryly. ‘No, what I meant was that I reckon we can add at least twenty years to the age the patient’s given us, and a woman in her fifties or sixties should be looking forward to grandchildren, the way nature intended. There are sound physiological reasons why there should be age limits for IVF. And it’s a multiple birth!’ he finished, the words almost completely incomprehensible as his accent became stronger and stronger in his passion.

‘You’ll get no argument from me,’ David said grimly as he painted the grossly swollen abdomen preparatory to the incision. ‘And to turn up obviously intending to leave us completely in the dark about the details of her pregnancy…!’

He didn’t bother finishing the sentence, but Leah knew he didn’t need to when everyone in the room knew just how much that omission could affect the outcome of what they were doing.

‘Is everybody ready?’ he asked, and Leah threw one last look around the assembled staff. Apart from those grouped around the operating table, there were two teams waiting in the background with the high-tech Perspex incubators for the other two tiny individuals who would hopefully be joining them in the room soon. What they were going to do if both babies needed high-dependency nursing was another problem entirely. There were never enough beds or specially trained staff to cope, and they would need to do some serious juggling with the babies already in the unit to cope with just one seriously sick preemie. A second one would probably have to face a life-threatening dash to whichever NICU had the nearest free HDU bed. She’d probably have to spend several hours on the phone begging and pleading…

But that was in the future. First they had to deliver the babies.

‘Ready,’ she confirmed as she turned back to the table. Those striking eyes were waiting for her, somehow all the more potent for the fact that they were all she could see of him above his disposable mask. For just a second it almost felt as if the two of them had made some sort of silent connection but then he had his hand out ready to receive the scalpel, and when he immediately applied it to their patient’s skin in an expert arc she knew she must have been mistaken.

It was lovely to watch him work, she thought, admiring the efficient way he’d exposed the uterus. Without a word needing to be spoken, she was ready to zap the inevitable bleeders then stood poised with suction as he carefully chose the site for the second incision. The last thing they needed was to injure one of the babies with an injudicious cut.

Amniotic fluid gushed out of the widening aperture and he had to pause for a moment before he could insert two fingers into the gap as a guide, positioning them between the wall of the uterus and the babies it contained to enable him to continue cutting.

‘It’s all arms and legs in here,’ he muttered as he inserted one long-fingered hand through the incision. ‘Ah! Gotcha! Leah?’ he nodded towards the exposed belly above the incision.

She placed one hand on the strangely brown flesh and waited for his signal, but he hardly needed her assistance, the baby’s head emerging cradled in his palm and the rest of the spindly body following in a rapid slither.

‘It’s a girl!’ Leah announced as the cord was cut and she immediately turned to place the wriggling infant into the waiting warmed blanket held out by Sally just as she let out her first wail.

‘One down, one to go,’ David said as he inserted his hand again, this time emerging with a tiny foot and going back to find the other one of the pair. ‘Come on, sunshine,’ he said encouragingly. ‘There’s a lot of people out here waiting to meet you.’

Leah smiled behind her mask, once more poised for the nod that would come if he needed help to get the baby’s head out into the world.

‘It’s another girl,’ she said, the sex of the baby all too obvious in such an undignified position, then it was time to cut the cord and hand her little charge over to the second waiting team.

She turned back, expecting to find David dealing with the clean removal of two placentas, but found him scowling darkly.

‘I don’t believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s a third one in here!’

‘What!’ Leah gasped, unable to believe her ears.

For a second nobody moved, then they all spoke at once.

‘You’re joking!’

‘We’ll need another team with an incubator. Hurry.’

‘Her blood pressure’s dropping.’

It was the final voice that silenced them all, and while Leah knew that there was frantic activity behind her as extra help was summoned from the NICU, she was focusing solely on David.

If she hadn’t been so close to him for the last half-hour she probably wouldn’t have noticed the new urgency in his movements, but, as it was, she could almost feel the tension emanating from him.

‘Come on, come on!’ she heard him mutter under his breath, almost growling with frustration.

Perhaps his hands were too large for the job, even though they were relatively slender for a man. Perhaps her smaller ones would help—anything to bring the unexpected third baby out successfully.

‘Do you want me to—?’

‘Got it!’ he exclaimed, interrupting her offer before it had been made. ‘It was a transverse lie and the poor little thing had been squashed by its sisters trying to get out.’

Even as he was speaking he was lifting the tiny scrap out of its mother’s body, and Leah’s heart clenched when she saw the state the infant was in.

‘He’s terribly floppy!’ she exclaimed, already reaching out to take the precious burden. ‘Is he breathing?’

She didn’t really want to pass the tiny being over, all her protective instincts demanding she take care of it herself, but with Ashraf’s renewed warning that they needed to finish the operation as soon as possible, all she could do was relinquish her into Sally’s waiting hands, knowing that her colleague would do everything she could.

In the meantime, there were now three placentas to remove and check for completeness before the incisions in both uterus and skin could be closed—and all with the clock ticking ominously.

‘Damn! Where is all that blood coming from?’ David swore suddenly. ‘Leah, suction! I can’t see what’s going on…’

‘Hurry up, guys,’ Ashraf warned. ‘We’re going to lose her.’

‘Not without a fight,’ David countered fiercely. ‘Get some more fluids into her as fast as you can,’ he directed as he peered into the gaping wound. ‘Damn it, the uterus is paper thin. It’s almost shredding as we look at it.’