The Midwife's Longed-For Baby

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you down here,’ he said after a second of silence that seemed to scream on for eternity, and his gruff voice set her free and she breathed again.

‘Ditto, but it’s just as well you’re here now, we’ve got a lot of work to do.’ She pretended to look at the notes in her arms. Anything to get away from those searching eyes when her own were bound to be too revealing. ‘I take it you managed to tick all HR’s boxes?’

‘Yes. I have a file I keep up to date. It comes in handy when you’re a locum.’

That again. Why hasn’t he got a full-time job?

He hesitated, as if there was something else he wanted to say, but after a moment he looked down at the armful of folders she was holding. ‘So, what’s that lot?’

‘The ladies who’ve had their BP and fundal height measured and their urine tested, so they’re all ready for you.’ Her voice was almost normal again, and she nearly laughed. If he had any idea what was going on in her chest—

She led him into the consulting room and handed him the folders, and as he took them his hand brushed lightly against hers and the heat from his skin sent a wave of longing through her. She almost dropped the files but he had them, and he turned swiftly away and dumped them on the desk.

‘Anyone I should be particularly aware of?’ he asked, his voice a little taut and very businesslike, so she followed his lead. Anything to help get herself back under control before her heart gave out.

‘Yes, Judy Richards,’ she said briskly. ‘She has a history of early miscarriage. This is her fourth pregnancy, she’s thirty-two weeks which is the longest she’s ever gone, but her fundal height hasn’t changed since her last appointment a week ago and that wasn’t as much as it should have been, so it might be that the baby’s found a new position, or it could be that it’s stopped growing for some reason. She’s on the top of the pile.’

He frowned thoughtfully, all business now. ‘Right. Good. Has she been tested for APS?’

‘Yes, after her last miscarriage. The test came back negative.’

‘Hmm. OK, well, she’d better have another scan before I see her, if we can do it without worrying her too much.’

‘It’s done. I knew you’d ask for it so I told her it was because it was a new consultant, and she didn’t question it. The results are on here,’ she said, handing him the department tablet.

‘Great. Thanks.’ He scrolled through and studied the results, then handed it back, frowning thoughtfully.

‘OK. I think I’m going to admit her. Can you call her in, please, and I’ll check her over and break the news?’

‘Sure.’

And oddly it was fine, because Judy Richards and her baby needed them, they had a job to do and so they just got on with it, slipping seamlessly back into the familiar routine as if it had been yesterday. Not that she was relaxed in any way, but it was a joy watching him with Judy, and a stark reminder of how good he was at his job.

She’d forgotten how intuitive a doctor he was, and how caring. Kind, gentle, thorough—and from his first greeting onwards, Liv could see Judy had utter faith in him.

‘Mrs Richards—I’m Nick Jarvis, I’ve taken over from Simon Bailey. I’ve had a look at your notes, and also the scan you had done today. It doesn’t really shed any light—which is good news in a way, I suppose, but it still leaves some unanswered questions and I don’t like that, so I think I’d like to admit you and do a few more tests, get a closer look at your baby and the placenta and retest you for APS—antiphospholipid syndrome. Has anybody discussed that with you yet?’

‘Yes, Mr Bailey did, but he didn’t think I’d got it.’

‘He may well be right, but I’m erring on the side of caution, so if that’s all right with you, I’ll ring the ward and make the arrangements for you to be admitted now, and then maybe someone could bring some things in for you later.’

‘I can’t go home and get them myself?’

‘You can, of course, but I’d like to get the tests under way as soon as possible and I’m in Theatre this afternoon, so I’d very much rather you didn’t because I’d like to look after you myself rather than hand you over to someone else in my team.’

By the time he’d convinced Judy to come in immediately for closer monitoring, she was still calm and relatively relaxed, which considering her obstetric history was nothing short of a miracle.

If only they were as calm and relaxed things would be fine, but they weren’t. Liv felt like a cat on hot bricks, and she wasn’t sure he was faring any better.

They got through the morning by keeping out of each other’s way as much as possible, avoiding eye contact, restricting conversation to a minimum and all work-related, but fun it wasn’t and her nerves were in bits, so the second the clinic was finished she made her escape.

* * *

He closed the door as Liv went out with the last patient, leant back against the wall and closed his eyes, letting his breath out in a long, slow huff.

Well, they’d survived, if you could call it that.

Not that it had been easy, but they’d got through it by sticking to business and getting on with the job, and they’d done that well, working together as a smooth, well-oiled team just as they had in the old days. Except in the old days they’d enjoyed it, and he was pretty certain neither of them had enjoyed it today, and the tension between them could have been cut with a knife.

It couldn’t go on like this, though, and he knew he had to do something to break through the icy politeness and careful distance between them or it wasn’t going to work. At all.

He shrugged away from the wall, picked up the last set of notes and left the room, scanning the clinic for Liv, but there was no sign of her.

‘Seen Liv?’ he asked at Reception as he handed over the file, and was told she’d gone for lunch.

Which meant, unless she’d changed her habits, she’d be in the café that opened onto the park.

Good. He could do with a nice, strong coffee, with caffeine in it for a change. It might help him get through what was sure to be a deeply awkward conversation.

CHAPTER TWO

‘MIND IF I join you?’

She might have known he’d find her here. She should have gone to the other café, or the restaurant—or even better, gone off-site.

Too late now. She looked pointedly at the two free tables, then up into those beautiful, unreadable eyes that were studying her knowingly. Too knowingly. She looked away.

‘Is this about work?’

‘In a way.’

He didn’t wait for her to invite him, just put his cup on the table and sat down, his gaze meeting hers again, but this time she didn’t look away because his eyes looked guarded and a little wary still, and she realised he was—nervous? No, not nervous, that didn’t sound like Nick. Uncomfortable, maybe. That didn’t sound like him, either, not the Nick she knew and loved anyway, but maybe he’d changed. Maybe she’d changed him by cutting him so brutally out of her life, but she’d been so hurt...

‘Liv, I realise this is awkward, but I do think we need to clear the air if we’re going to work together,’ he said quietly, ‘unless you being in the clinic this morning was just a one-off?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t a one-off, but I wasn’t meant to be doing the clinic today and I didn’t realise you’d be starting work so early. I thought it would take longer with HR.’

‘Ah, well, that’s the file for you,’ he said with a slight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Answers all the questions in an instant. So, getting back to us, I’d assumed when Ben asked me that you’d still be in the midwife-led unit?’

She shook her head again. ‘No, I only moved there while you were working your notice, and after you’d gone there was no point in me staying there, so I switched back to the consultant unit when there was a vacancy. I’ve been back six months.’

He frowned. ‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry, I would have talked to you first if I had. Obviously I knew we’d see each other anyway from time to time, but that’s not quite the same as having to work together. Are you going to be OK with that?’

Was she? OK with spending day after day bumping into him, working alongside him on deliveries, their hands, their bodies touching as they brushed against each other in the confines of the delivery room? OK with hearing his voice, catching endless glimpses of him around the maternity unit, hearing him laugh? He had a wonderful laugh, warm and rich and never, never unkind.

Would she really be OK with all of that?

She let out a soft, slightly shaky sigh. ‘Nick, it’s fine. We managed this morning and as I said to Ben, I’m sure we can be civilised.’

‘I’m sure we can, but that still doesn’t make it easy.’

The despairing little laugh escaped without her permission. ‘What, you thought you could come back into my life after a year and it would be easy? Get real, Nick. We’re not married any more, in case you hadn’t noticed. Of course it won’t be easy.’

He winced slightly—so slightly that anyone who didn’t know him as well as she did wouldn’t have spotted it, but when he spoke it was without emotion.

‘We are still married,’ he corrected, his voice carefully controlled, ‘but I haven’t forgotten for a single moment that we’re not together. That’s not what this is about. But we are going to have to work together, and we never had a problem in the past and I don’t want us to have a problem now.’

‘Did we have a problem today?’

‘With the work? No. With the atmosphere, definitely, and I’m not sure I can do it unless we can find some middle ground. We used to be such a brilliant team, and I want to find a way to get that back.’

‘Seriously?’ she asked, slightly incredulous, but he nodded.

‘Seriously. I realise it’s not going to be the same, but it needs to be better than it was this morning, and I just wanted to clear the air, break the ice a bit and get rid of the awkwardness, so that we’re more at ease next time.’

In his dreams. There was no way she was going to be at ease with him. She only had to hear his voice or catch a glimpse of him and her heart started racing, but he was here and she was stuck with it, for now at least, and he had a point. They did have to be able to work together, although she still had questions about that, so she went for the first one on the pile.

‘How come you were available to locum anyway?’ she asked without preamble. ‘I’d imagined you tucked up in a nice little consultant’s post somewhere picturesque.’

Probably with another woman. She didn’t add that, because he was trying to pour oil on troubled waters and it wouldn’t help at all if she threw petrol on the fire instead. And besides, it was none of her business any more who he chose to sleep with.

He glanced down, stirring his coffee on autopilot even though she knew it wouldn’t have sugar in it.

‘I didn’t want to tie myself down,’ he said, finally putting the spoon back in the saucer and meeting her eyes again. ‘After I left here, I just wanted to get away, let the dust settle, work out where I wanted to go. I thought maybe New Zealand, but my parents are still alive and they’re getting older, so I took a two-month locum post covering maternity leave fairly close to them while I worked out what I wanted to do, and then when that was coming to an end they asked me to cover the fertility clinic until it shut because the services were being centralised and the consultant had left, so I did. I saw my last patients two days ago, on the day Ben rang, and I had nothing else lined up, so I’m here.’

‘Why on earth did you say yes?’

‘To Ben? Because I need a job, so I can eat and keep a roof over both our heads.’

She felt another pang of guilt. ‘I didn’t mean that, Nick, but if the mortgage is an issue—’

‘It’s not an issue, Liv, it’s a fact, and I’m not going to make you homeless under any circumstances so let’s just ignore that. So what did you mean?’

‘I was talking about the fertility clinic job. I couldn’t believe it when Ben told me that’s what you’d been doing. It seems such an odd choice to make, under the circumstances, and I couldn’t understand why on earth you’d do it.’

His eyes flicked away, then back to hers, curiously intent. ‘Because I needed a job, as I said, and I was already in the hospital, I’d made a few friends, it meant I wouldn’t have to relocate—and maybe, also, because I thought it might help me understand what had happened to us.’

Her heart thumped. ‘And did it?’

He smiled sadly. ‘Well, let’s just say it made it blindingly obvious that we weren’t the only couple struggling.’

His expression wasn’t guarded now, just full of regret, and she lowered her head, unable to hold those clear grey eyes that seemed to see to the bottom of her insecurities.

‘How about you?’ he asked softly. ‘What have you been up to since I went?’

She picked up her spoon and chased the froth on her cappuccino, stalling just as he had. ‘What I’m doing now, pretty much. What did you expect?’

‘I didn’t. I had no idea what you’d want to do.’

Cry? She’d done so much of that after he’d gone, but she wasn’t telling him that, although he could probably work it out. Fix it? Impossible, because the thing that had been wrong was the thing they hadn’t been able to fix, so she’d just got on with her life, putting one foot in front of the other, not even trying to make sense of it because there wasn’t any sense to be made.

‘I didn’t want to do anything,’ she said sadly, watching the froth slide off the spoon. ‘I just wanted peace, that was all. Peace, contentment, and the satisfaction of a job well done instead of the endless spectre of failure—’

‘You didn’t fail, Liv!’

She dropped the spoon with a clatter. ‘Really? So what would you call it? Month after month, all our hopes and dreams flushed away—and then, just to rub my nose in it, you go off and sleep with your ex. That doesn’t exactly make it a success in my book—’

She pushed back her chair, grabbed her bag and walked swiftly away from him, out of the café into the park, hauling in the cold air as if she’d just come up from the bottom of the ocean.

Don’t cry! Whatever you do, don’t cry—

‘Liv! Liv, wait!’

She turned and looked up at him, right behind her, his grey eyes troubled, and she had the crazy urge to throw herself into his arms and sob her heart out.

Don’t cry!

‘Leave it, Nick,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t show her desperation. ‘Just leave it. I don’t mind working with you, I said that to Ben, and I’m sure we can keep it professional, but I don’t need any cosy chats or in-depth analysis of where it all went wrong for us. We both know exactly where it all went wrong, and if I’d gone to the conference with you that weekend then you would never have slept with Suzanne—’

‘I didn’t sleep with her.’

She stared at him, stunned. ‘What?’

‘I said, I didn’t sleep with her.’

Shock robbed her of breath.

‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying!’

‘No, I’m not, Liv. I didn’t touch her. Honestly.’

She took a step back, struggling for air, for sense, for understanding, but they all eluded her.

‘That’s not true. It can’t be true. Why would you suddenly come out with this now?’

‘Because it is true, and I should have told you at the time.’

How did he do that with his eyes? Make them appear utterly unguarded and shining with sincerity?

‘But—you admitted it!’

‘No. No, I didn’t Liv, I just confirmed that she’d spent the night with me in my room,’ he told her. ‘That was what you asked me, and I said yes because it was the truth. She did spend the night in there with me. You didn’t ask why, though, or what for, because by the time I came home you’d spoken to Beth, you’d found the note Suze had left in my luggage and you had me hung, drawn and quartered and hung out to dry before I even stepped over the threshold, so you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

‘You just assumed I’d slept with her,’ he went on, his voice heavy and tinged with sadness, ‘and I let you, because in that split second I felt that you’d thrown me a lifeline, a way out of a marriage that was tearing us both apart, so I just grabbed it and ran. And I’m sorry. I should never have done that to you. I should have told you the truth there and then, and made you listen.’

His words stunned her, the shockwaves rolling through her, bringing a sob to her throat.

‘How could you do that?’ she asked, her voice a strangled whisper. ‘How could you let me believe that for all this time? I’ve spent a whole, agonising year believing that you slept with her, that I wasn’t enough for you, that you didn’t truly love me any more—you’re right, you should have told me the truth then, Nick, instead of letting me think that you’d spent the night making love to—’

She broke off, unable to say her name. ‘You let me end our marriage, on the grounds that you’d slept with that whore—’

His eyes hardened. ‘She’s not a whore, she’s a friend, a damn good friend, who told me to pull myself together and go home and sort out my marriage.’

A sob rose in her throat, threatening to choke her, but she crushed it down and pulled herself together. ‘Well, you did a great job of that—’

Her voice cracked and she pushed past him, shaking his hand off as he tried to stop her. She went back inside, cutting through the café to the main hospital corridor, then out on the other side bordering the car park, deliberately going the wrong way to throw him off the scent and lose him because if she had to spend another moment in his company she was going to cry, and she wasn’t prepared to give him the satisfaction.

So she kept on going, and she didn’t stop until she was back on the ward.

* * *

She’d gone.

The corridor was empty and he stood there, kicking himself for letting the conversation stray into such dangerous territory—especially in a public place and right in the middle of the working day.

Idiot!

He had to talk to her, to explain why he’d let her believe what she had, how he’d felt, why he hadn’t stood his ground and told her the truth at the time. The real reason.

But not now. This afternoon he had a—mercifully short—elective list, so his first port of call was the wards, to make sure Judy Richards was settled in, and to meet the patients he was going to operate on and read through their notes before he was due in Theatre. And if he was lucky, Liv’s shift would be well and truly over by the time he’d finished.

He’d go and see her at home later, to apologise, to explain, to try and help her understand.

If he could get her to listen, and judging by the way she’d just reacted, that was by no means a foregone conclusion.

* * *

Liv was tied up in a delivery for the afternoon, the nice straightforward labour of a woman having her sixth baby. She’d haemorrhaged after the last so she’d been admitted directly to the consultant-led unit with this one just in case, but so far everything was going fine.

Just as well, because Liv’s concentration was totally shot.

How could he have done that to her? Let her believe he’d betrayed her like that if he hadn’t? And why then, when she’d just found out that yet again she wasn’t pregnant, so she’d been at her most vulnerable? She’d spent over a year living with the bone-deep certainty that he’d been unfaithful to her, and now she didn’t know what to believe—

‘I need to push.’

‘OK, Karen. Nice and steady. That’s good.’

But Karen’s baby wasn’t going for nice and steady, and three minutes later, half an hour before the end of Liv’s shift, a lusty, squalling baby was delivered into her father’s waiting hands.

‘It’s a girl,’ he said, laughing and crying as he lay their daughter in his wife Karen’s outstretched arms. ‘Finally, it’s a girl!’

Liv’s eyes filled, and she had to blink away the tears as she gave Karen the oxytocin injection to help her uterus to contract down.

If this had been them, if she’d been able to give him a child, then maybe that would have been enough to keep him...

Liv checked the baby quickly as she lay in her mother’s arms, making sure that all was well, but the baby was lovely and pink, her pulse steady and strong, her skinny little arms and legs moving beautifully. She’d stopped crying now and was staring up at her mother, riveted by the first face she’d ever seen.

It was a beautiful moment, one Liv never tired of seeing, and she watched the two of them staring into each other’s eyes and falling in love and felt a familiar lump in her throat.

‘Apgar score ten at one minute,’ she said, her voice miraculously steady. ‘Congratulations. She’s lovely.’

She checked her again four minutes later, by which time the cord had stopped pulsating, so Liv clamped and cut it and handed the baby back to her mother.

‘I take it this is your first girl?’

Her father’s grin was wry. ‘Yes, so hopefully we can stop now. Six is getting a little crazy, but we did want a girl so we thought we’d have one last try.’

‘We may live to regret it when she hits puberty,’ Karen said with a laugh, her hands cradling the naked baby tenderly at her breast.

Liv laid a warm towel back over them both and tucked it round the baby. ‘She’ll be fine, and she’ll have all those big brothers to look after her. She’s latched on well,’ Liv added, struck yet again by the miracle of birth and the naturalness of this wonderful bond between mother and child. The bond she would never know...

‘Yes, and thank goodness I’ve never had any problems with feeding any of them,’ Karen said with a laugh. ‘There’s way too much to do in our house without sterilising bottles and making up feeds. Ooh, I can feel a contraction.’

‘OK, Karen, that’s good, you’re nearly done. Gentle push for me when you’re ready?’ she said calmly, but Liv felt her heart rate pick up, because this was the moment, as the placenta separated from the uterine wall, that the haemorrhage would happen, and she really, really didn’t feel ready for that.

Didn’t feel ready for any more stress today, and the last thing she needed was Nick striding in there to take over like the cavalry after he’d just destabilised her fragile status quo with that bombshell about Suzanne.

Concentrate!

The haemorrhage didn’t happen. To everyone’s huge relief, the placenta came away cleanly with hardly any blood loss, so after they’d sorted Karen out and Liv was happy that her uterus was contracting down well and that all was as it should be, she left the other midwife to fill out the notes and headed for the changing room, only an hour late.

Tomorrow was Saturday, and with any luck she wouldn’t run into Nick again today which meant she was unlikely to see him again until Monday. That would give her two clear days to get her emotions in order.

Except it didn’t, because she walked out of the lift at the bottom of the building and ran slap into him.

‘Sorry—’

She stepped hastily back, and they stood transfixed in awkward silence as the lift doors hissed shut behind her, cutting off her retreat.

‘I gather your delivery was all right?’ he asked, breaking the silence. ‘I’ve been on standby in case she haemorrhaged again.’

‘Oh—yes, it was fine, thanks. No problems. How’s Judy Richards?’

‘Settling in. I think I’ve reassured her.’ He paused, his eyes searching hers. ‘Look, Liv, are you done for the day?’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly, holding his eyes with a determined effort and clutching her coat in her arms like a shield. ‘And I’m going home.’

‘Can we talk?’

Her heart sank. ‘Again? Nick, there’s nothing you have to say that I need to hear. If there’s a shred of truth in what you said, you should have told me then, not saved it for now, and I really don’t want to discuss it. For heaven’s sake, just leave it. It’s not relevant any more anyway.’

She pushed past him and walked out of the door, but of course he couldn’t leave it, could he? She could barely hear his footsteps behind her but she knew he was there, his voice calling her name as she made her way across the car park, but it was almost drowned out by the pounding of her heart.