Midwives On-Call

‘We’ve done it,’ he said with quiet triumph. ‘As long as we can keep her on board for another few weeks, we’ve saved your baby.’

‘Your baby’ …

Where had that come from?

And then she thought back to the teasing he’d given her when they’d first met, when they’d been working together, she as a brand-new nurse, he as a paediatric surgeon still in training.

‘Em, the way you expose your heart … You seem to greet every baby you help deliver as if it’s your own,’ he’d told her. ‘By the end of your career, you’ll be like Old Mother Hubbard—or the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Kids everywhere.’

And wouldn’t she just love that! She thought fleetingly of the two she was allowed to love. Gretta and Toby.

She did love them, fiercely, wonderfully, but she looked down at Ruby now and she knew that she had love to spare. Heart on her sleeve or not, she loved this teenage mum, and she loved the little life that was now securely tucked back inside her.

The heart swelled to fit all comers …

She thought back to Oliver’s appalling adoptive mother and she thought he’d never known that.

He still didn’t know it and they’d gone their separate ways because of it.

She stood back from the table. Her work there was done. She’d wait for Ruby in the recovery ward.

The team had another patient waiting for surgery. Oliver was moving on.

Em already had moved on. She just had to keep moving.

‘Well done.’ Out at the sinks the mood was one of quiet but deep satisfaction. There’d be no high fives, not yet—everyone knew the next few days would be critical—but the procedure had gone so smoothly surely they’d avoided embryo shock.

Tristan hitched himself up on the sinks and regarded his friend with satisfaction. He and Oliver had done their general surgical training together. They’d split as Oliver had headed into specialist surgical obstetrics and Tristan into paediatric cardiology, but their friendship was deep and longstanding.

Tristan alone knew the association between Em and Oliver. They’d had one heated discussion about it already …

‘The hospital grapevine will find out. Why keep it secret?’

‘It’s not a secret. It’s just a long time ago. Moving on …’

But now …

‘Are you telling me you and Em have really moved on?’ Tristan demanded as he watched his friend ditch his theatre garb. ‘Because, sure, Em’s your patient’s midwife and she was in Theatre as an observer in that capacity, but the contact you and she had … You might not have been aware how often you flicked her a glance but every time you were about to start something risky, it was like you were looking to her for strength.’

‘What the …?’ Where had this come from? As if he needed Em for strength? He’d been operating without Em for years.

He’d never depended on her.

‘You might say it’s in the past,’ Tristan went on, inexorably. ‘But she’s still using your name, and as of today, as an onlooker, it seems to me that the marriage isn’t completely over.’

‘Will you keep your voice down?’ There were nurses and orderlies everywhere.

‘You think you can keep this to yourself?’

‘It’s not obvious.’

‘It’s obvious,’ Tristan said, grinning. ‘Midwife Evans and Surgeon Evans. Sparks. The grapevine will go nuts.’

‘You’re not helping.’

‘I’m just observing.’ Tristan pushed down from the bench. He and Oliver both had patients waiting. Always there were patients waiting.

‘All I’m saying is that I’m interested,’ Tristan said, heading for the door. ‘Me and the rest of staff of the Victoria. And some of us are even more interested than others.’

Trained theatre staff were rostered to watch over patients in Recovery, but Isla had cleared the way for Em to stay with Ruby. With no family support, the need to keep Ruby calm was paramount. So Em sat by her bedside and watched. Ruby was drifting lightly towards consciousness, seeming to ease from sedation to natural sleep.

Which might have something to do with the way Em was holding her hand and talking to her.

‘It’s great, Ruby. You were awesome. Your baby was awesome. It’s done, all fixed. Your baby will have the best of chances because of your decision.’

She doubted Ruby could hear her but she said it anyway, over and over, until she was interrupted.

‘Hey.’ She looked up and Sophia was watching her. Sophia was a partnering midwife, a friend, a woman who had the same fertility issues she did. If there was anyone in this huge staff she was close to, it was Sophia. ‘Isla sent me down to see how the op went,’ she said, pulling up a chair to sit beside Em. ‘All’s quiet on the Western Front. We had three nice, normal babies in quick succession this morning and not a sniff of a contraction this arvo. Isla says you can stay here as needed; take as long as you want.’

‘We’re happy, aren’t we, Ruby?’ Em said gently, squeezing Ruby’s hand, but there was no response. Ruby’s natural sleep had grown deeper. ‘The operation went brilliantly.’ And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added a rider. ‘Oliver was brilliant.’

‘Yeah, I’d like to talk to you about that,’ Sophia said, diffidently now, assessing Ruby as she spoke and realising, as Em had, that there was little chance of Ruby taking in anything she said. ‘Rumours are flying. Someone heard Tristan and Oliver talking at the sinks. Evans and Evans. No one’s put them together until now. It’s a common name. But … Evans isn’t your maiden name, is it? Evans is your married name. And according to the rumours, that marriage would be between you and Oliver.’

Whoa. Em flinched. But then … it had to come out sooner or later, she thought. She might as well grit her teeth and confess.

‘It was a long time ago,’ she murmured. ‘We split five years ago but changing my name didn’t seem worth the complications. I was Emily Green before. I kind of like Emily Evans better.’ She didn’t want to say that going to a lawyer, asking for a divorce, had seemed … impossibly final.

‘As you kind of like Oliver Evans?’ Sophia wiggled down further in her chair, her eyes alight with interest. ‘The theatre staff say there were all sorts of sparks between you during the op.’

‘Ruby’s in my care. Oliver was … keeping me reassured.’ But she’d said it too fast, too defensively, and Sophia’s eyebrows were hiking.

Drat hospitals and their grapevines, she thought. Actually, they were more than grapevines—they were like Jack’s beanstalk. Let one tiny bean out of the can and it exploded to the heavens.

What had Oliver and Tristan been talking about to start this?

And … how was she to stop Sophia’s eyebrows hitting the roof?

‘You going to tell Aunty Sophia?’ she demanded, settling down further in a manner that suggested she was going nowhere until Em did.

‘You knew I was married.’

‘Yeah, but not to Oliver. Oliver! Em, he’s a hunk. And he’s already getting a reputation for being one of those rarest of species—a surgeon who can talk to his patients. Honest, Em, he smiled at one of my mums on the ward this morning and my heart flipped. Why on earth …?’

‘A smile doesn’t make a marriage.’ But it did, Em thought miserably. She’d loved that smile. What they’d had …

‘So will you tell Aunty Sophia why you split?’

‘Kids,’ she said brusquely. She’d told Sophia she was infertile but only when Sophia had told her of her own problems. She hadn’t elaborated.

‘He left you because you couldn’t have babies?’

‘We … well, I already told you we went through IVF. Cycle upon cycle. What I didn’t tell you was that finally I got pregnant. Josh was delivered stillborn at twenty-eight weeks.’

‘Oh, Em …’ Sophia stared at her in horror. ‘You’ve kept that to yourself, all this time?’

‘I don’t … talk about it. It hurts.’

‘Yeah, well, I can see that,’ Sophia said, hopping up to give her friend a resounding hug. ‘They say IVF can destroy a marriage—it’s so hard. It split you up?’

‘The IVF didn’t.’ Em was remembering the weeks after she’d lost Josh, how close she and Oliver had been, a couple gutted but totally united in their grief. If it hadn’t been for Oliver then, she might have gone crazy.

Which had made what had come next even more devastating.

‘So what …?’

‘I couldn’t … do IVF any more,’ Em whispered.

Silence.

Ruby seemed soundly asleep. She was still holding the girl’s hand. She could feel the strength of Ruby’s heartbeat, and the monitors around her told her Ruby’s baby was doing fine, as well. The world went on, she thought bleakly, remembering coming out of hospital after losing Josh, seeing all those mums, all those babies …

‘Earth to Em,’ Sophia said gently at last, and Em hauled herself together and gave her a bleak little smile.

‘I wanted a family,’ she whispered. ‘I think … I was a bit manic after the loss but I was suddenly desperate. Maybe it was an obsession, I don’t know, but I told Oliver I wanted to adopt, whatever the cost. And in the end, the cost was him.’

‘He didn’t want to adopt?’

‘He’s adopted himself. It wasn’t happy, and he wouldn’t concede there was another side. He wouldn’t risk adoption because he didn’t think he could love an adopted kid. And I wasn’t prepared to give, either. We were two implacable forces, and there was nowhere to go but to turn away from each other. So there you have it, Sophia. No baby, no marriage. Can I ask you not to talk about it?’

‘You don’t have to ask,’ Sophia said roundly. ‘Of course I won’t. But this hospital … the walls have ears and what it doesn’t know it makes up. Now everyone knows you were married …’

‘It’ll be a one-day wonder,’ Em told her, and then Ruby stirred faintly and her eyes flickered open.

‘Well, hi,’ Em said, her attention totally now on Ruby. ‘Welcome to the other side, Ruby, love. The operation was a complete success. Now all we need to do is let you sleep and let your baby sleep until we’re sure you’re settled into nice, normal pregnancy again.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

SATURDAY.

Oliver did a morning ward round, walked into Ruby’s room—and found Em there.

According to his calculations—and he’d made a few—Em should be off duty. Why was she sitting by Ruby’s bedside?

She was darning … a sock?

Both women looked up as he walked in and both women smiled.

‘Hey,’ Ruby said. ‘Is it true? Were you two married?’

‘How …?’ Em gasped.

‘I just heard,’ Ruby said blithely. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

Em bundled up her needlework and rose—fast. ‘Yes,’ she managed. ‘But it was a long time ago. Sorry, Oliver, I’ll be out of your way.’

‘Why are you here?’ Damn, that had sounded accusatory and he hadn’t meant to be.

‘I’m off duty but Ruby’s teaching me how to darn.’

‘That’s … important?’

‘It is, as a matter of fact,’ she said, tossing him a look that might well be described as a glower. And also a warning to keep things light. ‘The whole world seems to toss socks away as soon as they get holes. Ruby and I are doing our bit to prevent landfill.’

‘Good for you.’ He still sounded stiff but he couldn’t help it. ‘Are you going home now?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why did you two split?’ Ruby was under orders for complete bed rest but she was recovering fast, the bed rest was more for her baby’s sake than for hers, and she was obviously aching for diversion.

‘Incompatibility,’ Em said, trying for lightness, stooping to give Ruby a swift kiss. ‘He used to pinch all the bedcovers. He’s a huncher—you know the type? He hunches all the covers round him and then rolls in his sleep. I even tried pinning the covers to my side of the bed but I was left with ripped covers and a doomed marriage. I’ll pop in tomorrow, Ruby, but meanwhile is there anything you need?’

‘More socks?’ Ruby said shyly, and Em grinned.

‘Ask Dr Evans. I’ll bet he has a drawer full. I need to go, Ruby, love. Byee.’

And she was gone.

It had been an informal visit. She’d been wearing jeans and a colourful shirt and her hair was down. She had so much to do at home—he knew she did.

Why was she here on a day off?

Because she cared?

She couldn’t stop caring. That had been one of the things he’d loved about her.

He still loved?

‘You’re still dotty about her,’ Ruby said, and he realised he’d been staring at the corridor where she’d disappeared.

‘Um … no. Just thinking I’ve never walked in on a darning lesson before. How’s bub?’

‘Still kicking.’

‘Not too hard?’

‘N-no.’ And once again he copped that zing of fear.

This was why Em had ‘popped in’, he thought. This kid was far too alone.

That was Em. She carried her heart on her sleeve.

If it was up to Em they would have adopted, he thought, and, despite the things he’d said to her after Josh had died, he was beginning to accept she was capable of it. It? Of loving a child who wasn’t her own. The way she’d held Gretta … The way she’d laughed at Toby … Okay, Em was as different from his adoptive mother as it was possible to be, and it had been cruel of him to suggest otherwise.

It had taken him a huge leap of faith to accept that he’d loved Em. Even though he’d supported her through IVF, even though he’d been overjoyed when she’d finally conceived, when Josh had died …

Had a small part of him been relieved? Had a part of him thought he could never extend his heart to all comers?

He would have loved Josh. He did. The morning when they’d sat looking down at the promise that had been their little son had been one of the worst of his life. But the pain that had gone with it … the pain of watching Em’s face …

And then for Em to say let’s adopt, let’s put ourselves up for this kind of pain again for a child he didn’t know …

‘Let’s check your tummy,’ he told Ruby, but she was still watching him.

‘You are still sweet on her.’

‘She’s an amazing woman. But as she said, I’m a huncher.’

‘Is it because you couldn’t have children?’

How …? ‘No!’

‘It’s just, one of the nurses told me Em’s got two foster-kids she looks after with her mum. If you and she were married, why didn’t you have your own?’

‘Ruby, I think you have quite enough to think about with your own baby, without worrying about other people’s,’ he said, mock sternly.

‘You’re saying butt out?’

‘And let me examine you. Yes.’

‘Yes, Doctor,’ she said, mock meekly, but she managed the beginnings of a cheeky grin. ‘But you can’t tell me to butt out completely. It seemed no one in this hospital knew you guys have been married. So now everyone in this hospital is really, really interested. Me, too.’

After that he was really ambivalent about the babysitting he’d promised. Actually, he’d been pretty ambivalent in the first place. Work was zooming to speed with an intensity that was staggering. He could easily ring and say he was needed at the hospital and it wouldn’t have been a lie.

But he’d promised, so he put his head down and worked and by a quarter to one he was pulling up outside the place Em called home.

Em was in the front yard, holding Toby on a push-along tricycle. When she saw him she swung Toby up into her arms and waved.

Toby hesitated a moment—and then waved, too.

The sight took him aback. He paused before getting out of the car. He knew Em was waiting for him, but he needed a pause to catch his breath.

This was the dream. They’d gone into their marriage expecting this—love, togetherness, family.

He’d walked away so that Em could still have it. The fact that she’d chosen to do it alone …

But she wasn’t alone. She had her mum. She had Mike next door and his brood. She had great friends at the hospital.

The only one missing from the picture was him, and the decision to walk away had been his.

If he’d stayed, though, they wouldn’t have had any of this. They’d be a professional couple, absorbed in their work and their social life.

How selfish was that? The certainties of five years ago were starting to seem just a little bit wobbly.

‘Hey, are you stuck to the seat?’ Em was carrying Toby towards him, laughing at him. She looked younger today, he thought. Maybe it was the idea that she was about to have some free time. An afternoon with her mum.

She was about to have some time off from kids who weren’t her own.

But they were her own. Toby had his arms wrapped around her, snuggling into her shoulder.

He had bare feet. Em was tickling his toes as she walked, making him giggle.

She loved these kids.

He’d thought … Okay, he’d thought he was being selfless, walking away five years ago. He’d been giving up his marriage so Em could have what she wanted. Now … Why was he now feeling the opposite? Completely, utterly selfish?

Get a grip, he told himself. He was here to work.

‘Your babysitter’s here, ma’am,’ he said, finally climbing from the car. ‘All present and correct.’

She was looking ruefully at the car. ‘Still the hire car? Can’t you get parts?’

‘They’re hard to come by.’ He’d spent hours on the internet tracking down the parts he needed.

‘Oh, Ollie …’

No one called him Ollie.

Em did.

She put her hand on his arm and he thought, She’s comforting me because of a wrecked car. And she’s coping with kids with wrecked lives …

How to make a rat feel an even bigger rat.

But her sympathy was real. Everything about her was real, he thought. Em … He’d loved this woman.

He loved this woman?

‘Hey, will you go with Uncle Ollie?’ Em was saying, moving on, prising Toby away from his neck-hugging. ‘I bet he knows how to tickle toes, too.’

‘I can tickle toes.’ He was a paediatric surgeon. He could keep a kid entertained.

But Toby caught him unawares. He twisted in Em’s arms and launched himself across, so fast Oliver almost didn’t catch him. Em grabbed, Oliver grabbed and suddenly they were in a sandwich hug, with Toby sandwiched in the middle.

Toby gave a muffled chortle, like things had gone exactly to plan. Which, maybe in Toby’s world, they had.

But he had so much wrong with him. His tiny spine was bent; he’d have operation after operation in front of him, years in a brace …

He’d have Em.

He should pull away, but Em wasn’t pulling away. For this moment she was holding, hugging, as if she needed it. As if his hug was giving her something …

Something that, as his wife, had once been her right?

‘Em …’

But the sound of his voice broke the moment. She tugged away, flipped an errant curl behind her ear, tried to smile.

‘Sorry. I should expect him to do that—he does it all the time with Mike. He has an absolute conviction that the grown-ups in his life are to be trusted never, ever to drop him, and so far it’s paid off. One day, though, Toby, lad, you’ll find out what the real world’s like.’

‘But you’ll shield him as long as you can.’

‘With every ounce of power I possess,’ she said simply. ‘But, meanwhile, Mum’s ready to go. She’s so excited she didn’t sleep last night. Gretta’s fed. Everything’s ready, all I need to do is put on clean jeans and comb my hair.’

‘Why don’t you put on a dress?’ he asked, feeling … weird. Out of kilter. This was none of his business, but he was starting to realise just how important this afternoon was to Em and her mum. And how rare. ‘Make it a special occasion.’

‘Goodness, Oliver, I don’t think I’ve worn a dress for five years,’ she flung at him over her shoulder as she headed into the house. ‘Why would the likes of me need a dress?’

And he thought of the social life they’d once had. Did she miss it? he wondered, but he tickled Toby’s toes, the little boy giggled and he knew that she didn’t.

They left fifteen minutes later, like a pair of jail escapees, except that they were escapees making sure all home bases were covered. Their ‘jail’ was precious.

‘Mike might come over later to collect Toby,’ Em told him. ‘Toby loves Mike, so if he does that’s fine by us. That’ll mean you only have Gretta so you should cope easily. You have both our cellphone numbers? You know where everything is? And Gretta needs Kanga … if she gets upset, Kanga can fix her. But don’t let her get tired. If she has trouble breathing you can raise her oxygen …’

‘Em, trust me, I’m a doctor,’ he said, almost pushing them out the door.

‘And you have how much experience with kids?’

‘I’m an obstetrician and a surgeon.’

‘My point exactly. Here they’re outside their mum, not inside, and you don’t have an anaesthetist to put them to sleep. There’s a stack of movies ready to play. You can use the sandpit, too. Gretta loves it, but you need to keep her equipment sand-free …’

‘Em, go,’ he said, exasperated. ‘Adrianna, take Em’s arm and pull. Em, trust me. You can, you know.’

‘I do know that,’ Em told him, and suddenly she darted back across the kitchen and gave him a swift kiss on the cheek. It was a thank-you kiss, a perfunctory kiss, and why it had the power to burn … ‘I always have,’ she said simply. ‘You’re a very nice man, Oliver Evans. I would have trusted you to be a great dad, even if you couldn’t trust yourself. That’s water under the bridge now, but I still trust you, even if it’s only for an afternoon.’

And she blinked a couple of times—surely they weren’t tears?—then ducked back and kissed Gretta once again—and she was gone.

And Oliver was left with two kids.

And silence.

The kids were watching him. Toby was in his arms, leaning back to gaze into his eyes. Cautiously assessing? Gretta was sitting in an oversized pushchair, surrounded by cushions.

To trust or not to trust?

Toby’s eyes were suddenly tear-filled. A couple of fat tears tracked down his face.

Gretta just stared at him, her face expressionless. Waiting to see what happened next?

Both were silent.

These were damaged kids, he thought. Rejects. They’d be used to a life where they were left. They’d come from parents who couldn’t or wouldn’t care for them and they had significant medical problems. They’d be used to a life where hospital stays were the norm. They weren’t kids who opened their mouths and screamed whenever they were left.

Could you be stoic at two and at four? That’s how they seemed. Stoic.

It was a bit … gut-wrenching.

Kanga—it must be Kanga: a chewed, bedraggled, once blue stuffed thing with long back paws and a huge tail—was lying on the table. He picked it—him?—up and handed him to Toby. Gretta watched with huge eyes. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, her eyes said. This was her Kanga.

He lifted Gretta out of her chair with his spare arm and carried both kids out into the yard, under the spreading oak at the bottom of the garden where the lawn was a bit too long, lushly green.

He set both kids down on the grass. Fuzzy the dog flopped down beside them. He, too, seemed wary.

Toby was still holding Kanga. Warily.

He tugged Gretta’s shoes off so both kids had bare feet. Em had made the tickling thing work. Maybe it’d work for him.

He took Kanga from Toby, wriggled him slowly towards Gretta’s toes—and ticked Gretta’s toes with Kanga’s tail.

Then, as both kids looked astonished, he bounced Kanga across to Toby and tickled his.

Toby looked more astonished. He reached out to grab Kanga, but Oliver was too fast. The tickling tail went back to Gretta’s toes—and then, as Toby reached further, Kanga bounced sideways and tickled Fuzzy on the nose.

Fuzzy opened his mouth to grab but Kanga boinged back to Gretta, this time going from one foot to the other.

And then, as Gretta finally reacted, Kanga boinged up and touched her nose—and then bounced back to Toby.

Toby stared down in amazement at his toes being tickled and his eyes creased, the corners of his mouth twitched—and he chuckled.