Читать книгу Their Newborn Baby Gift - Алисон Робертс - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

JANINE LOOKED SHOCKED, as well she might, when Evie hurried into the neonatal intensive care unit accompanied by a man in a tuxedo who was carrying a cardboard box. One of the intensive care specialists, Susie, was sitting beside Janine at the central station and her jaw dropped as well.

‘A baby’s been abandoned in the car park,’ Evie explained. ‘A neonate.’

‘I’ll take him.’ Susie was on her feet now.

‘Procedure room?’ Janine asked.

‘I’d like to examine him myself,’ Ryan told them. ‘I don’t think this baby is well. And I don’t think it’s simply hypothermia.’

Both the women behind the desk stared at him.

‘This is Ryan Walker,’ Evie said. ‘Our new neonatal cardiac surgeon?’

‘Oh...’ Susie blinked. ‘Pleased to meet you. You’ve been at the gala, I guess.’

‘Yes.’ Ryan’s smile was tight. He clearly didn’t want to waste time on introductions. ‘Where is this procedure room?’

‘Right this way.’ Janine was back to her normal calm efficiency in the face of any emergency.

There was no real reason for Evie to go with them but nobody stopped her and she didn’t even pause to think about whether it was appropriate. She was the one who’d heard this infant and discovered him. She was already involved. Connected. Worried sick, even.

‘I’ll get the heaters on,’ Janine said, as soon as they entered the clinical space, which was equipped with everything they could possibly need, including ventilators and an empty, state-of-the-art incubator. ‘Where did you find him? Just out in the open in the middle of the car park?’

‘No. He was kind of hidden between the wheelie bins near the ambulance bay,’ Evie said, and the squeeze around her heart was almost painful.

Ryan put the box down and then reached inside to carefully lift the baby out. It was wrapped in a piece of clothing as a blanket. A well-worn hoodie.

‘It’s a girl,’ Susie murmured. ‘And very recently born. Within the last hour or two, I’d say. Oh, my...is that a hair tie on the cord?’

‘How long has she been outside, do you think?’ Janine had switched on both overhead and mattress heaters. ‘It’s freezing out there.’

‘It has to be more than half an hour,’ Ryan said, stripping off his tuxedo jacket and throwing it into a corner of the room. He started to roll up his shirtsleeves, stepping towards the sink to wash his hands. ‘I was standing not far away for at least that long and I would have seen somebody leaving the box.’

He turned his head to glance at Evie, which made her blink and then catch her bottom lip between her teeth. He’d been standing in the car park for at least half an hour? Waiting for her so that he could return the necklace?

Wow...

It made her feel...special?

More than that...it reignited that sensation in her belly and gave her a disturbing flashback to that moment when her fingertips had touched his hand. This had to stop, right now. It was worse than simply finding a man attractive. This Ryan was a doctor and that put him completely out of her league even if she was prepared to consider getting close to someone. She’d been taught that lesson long ago. And she wasn’t interested in getting close to anyone, anyway. So much safer not to.

But she couldn’t look away from this someone, despite her best efforts. This was her first proper glimpse of the man in strong lighting and it stole her breath away. Tanned skin on muscled forearms was dusted with golden hair and there were matching streaks of gold on his head. He looked like someone who spent all his spare time on a beach, which was not unlikely given that he had come from Australia. Something like surfing was probably a normal hobby over there. He had blue eyes, she noticed as he turned back to the table. Very blue eyes...

With an actual, physical wrench, she dragged her gaze away from him. It snagged on the empty box that had been the baby’s only shelter from the chilly autumn night. Except...it wasn’t quite empty, was it?

‘There’s a note in the box,’ Evie said.

Only Janine glanced in her direction. Ryan and Susie were completely focused on the baby, checking her out from head to toe.

‘What does it say?’

‘“Please help my baby. Find her a mum who can look after her because I can’t.”’ Evie’s voice choked up. ‘It looks like it was written by a kid... Oh, I hope she’s okay...’

‘They’ll find her,’ Janine said. ‘Or maybe she’ll come back to find us.’

Evie swallowed. ‘I don’t know about that. How desperate would you have to be to leave your baby and run away?’

She put the note back with the box and the hoodie—the only items they had that might provide a clue to the mother’s identity and perhaps her whereabouts. Where had she given birth? And had she been all alone? How frightening would that have been?

Evie took a step closer to the table where the doctors were examining the tiny baby. She was so tiny. Naked and vulnerable. She had stopped crying for the moment and, while her body was squirming under the attention of professional hands, her eyes seemed to be trying to focus on the nearest face—as if she was searching for someone she recognised.

‘I can’t see any obvious major abnormalities,’ Susie said. ‘But I’d only give her an Apgar score of about six. Seven at the most. Her respiratory effort is down and her colour’s off. Look at her legs.’

Evie looked as well. While the baby’s upper body was quite pink, her legs were very pale and the tiny toes had a distinctly bluish tinge.

‘Differential cyanosis,’ Ryan nodded. ‘Let’s check the peripheral pulses.’

His hands looked huge against the tiny body under the warmth of the lamps. Clever-looking hands, Evie thought, and so gentle as he felt for the different pulses. Brachial at the elbow, radial in the wrists and femoral in the groin.

Janine, standing close to Evie, let her breath out in a sigh. ‘Poor little mite,’ she murmured. Oh... I’d better call the police, hadn’t I? And Social Services?’

‘It can wait for a bit. I want to know what’s going on here.’ Ryan’s face was creased with concentration and then his frown deepened. He put his fingers on the baby’s chest, very softly, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Was he feeling for the way the heart was moving?

His eyes snapped open. ‘Stethoscope?’

Susie pulled hers from around her neck and handed it to him. Evie caught the glance she gave Janine that suggested they might be lucky in having a cardiac specialist on hand.

‘Femoral pulse is absent,’ Ryan said, as he warmed the bell of the stethoscope in his hand. ‘And the radial is weak.’

It had to be hard to hear any heart sounds with the warbling cries the baby was making again. Maybe that was why Ryan cupped the tiny head with one hand, his thumb offering a comforting stroke over the whorls of dark hair. Watching him do that melted something deep inside Evie, maybe because it was so tender and suggested a concern that went beyond anything purely professional. Then he nodded once and straightened and it was clear that his only thoughts were clinical.

‘Systolic murmur,’ he said.

‘Congenital heart condition.’ Susie nodded. ‘What’s your guess? A ventricular septal defect, maybe?’

‘Could be. Or a hypoplastic left heart. Or coarctation of the aorta. We need to get some ECG dots on and do an ultrasound.’ He looked down at the baby and his mouth curved in a poignant smile that made Evie’s heart skip a beat on top of that melting sensation.

‘You’re having a bit of a rough start at this game of life, aren’t you, sweetheart?’

‘She needs a name,’ Janine said. ‘Even if it’s just temporary.’

‘Grace...’

Everybody’s heads turned and Evie blushed. The name had just popped out before she’d stopped to think.

‘It was my mum’s name,’ she added. And she’d been thinking of her mother just before she’d found the baby, hadn’t she? Her mother’s necklace, anyway.

‘I like it,’ Susie said. ‘Grace it is.’

‘Can she stay here?’ Ryan asked. ‘What’s the protocol at Hope Hospital for treating abandoned babies?’

‘I have no idea. It’s not something you expect to happen, is it?’ Janine shook her head. ‘I’d better get hold of Theo and let him know what’s happening. He might not have left the gala yet and he’d better be the one to handle police involvement and any media coverage, etcetera.’

‘I could do that,’ Evie offered.

‘Oh, please do,’ Janine said. ‘You’ll know all the numbers needed. But don’t you need to get home to the kids?’

‘I’ll call and make sure everything’s good. And then I’ll stay as long as I can.’ Evie took one more look at the baby. She didn’t want to leave.

What she really wanted to do was to pick up this baby and cuddle her—more than she’d ever wanted to cuddle any of the babies here.

She’d found this one. And she’d named her.

The feeling of connection was rapidly getting stronger.

Ryan seemed to sense her hesitation. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll take good care of her while you’re gone.’

As if to underline the promise, he touched baby Grace’s hand with his forefinger and she saw the tiny fingers curl around his. That image stayed in her mind with startling clarity as she headed out to the reception area and the phones she needed to use.

* * *

There was so much to do to stabilise this baby’s condition and the medical team was very busy for quite some time. Inserting an umbilical arterial catheter was always a challenge but delicate procedures with such small vessels were precisely what Ryan Walker was so good at.

‘I’ll take a sample of blood. Is there any way we can get an arterial blood gas measurement immediately?’

‘Yes.’ Susie took the syringe containing a tiny amount of blood. ‘We’ve got a small lab here and I can run this one myself. If we need anything else, there’ll be a technician on call all night.’

‘I want to get a Foley catheter in as well, to monitor renal perfusion and urine output. And do we have a portable ultrasound?’

‘Yes. Do you want me to call in an ultrasound technician?’

‘No. I’ll do it myself.’

‘Do we need to put Grace on a ventilator?’

‘Not yet. But we’ll keep a close eye on her oxygen saturation levels. We’ll need the go-ahead for any further invasive procedures, won’t we?’

‘Theo’s on his way,’ Janine told them. ‘He’s with the police at the moment. And the security team. They’re having a look at the CCTV footage that covers the car park area.’

Theo Hawkwood arrived as Ryan was completing his ultrasound examination.

‘Are you okay to be doing this?’ he asked Ryan. ‘It’s a bit of an unexpected start, isn’t it? How’s the jet lag?’

‘No problem,’ Ryan assured him. He had forgotten he’d even been weary, in fact, faced by the adrenaline rush of this case.

‘What are we dealing with?’

‘Looks like quite a severe coarctation of the aorta. Along with a ventricular septal defect, although I don’t think that’s overly significant.’

‘She’ll need surgery?’

‘Possibly. We’ll start some medication and I’d like to do an angiographic study as soon as possible, when we’ve got a full team available for the catheter laboratory. I could do a balloon angioplasty as well, which would be a bridge to surgery, if it wasn’t enough by itself. Unless...’ Ryan looked up to meet Theo’s gaze. ‘Can we treat her here or do we need to transfer her to a public hospital?’

Theo shook his head. ‘We’re set up to take a percentage of pro bono cases. Someone has entrusted her to our care and I want Hope Hospital to do everything possible to help.’

‘What did the police say?’

‘They’ve got the CCTV footage. We can’t get a good look at the girl’s face but it’s a start. And they think there must be other people that will know something. She couldn’t have given birth entirely by herself, surely?’

‘It’s not an unlikely scenario,’ Janine said. ‘Especially if the girl was hiding her pregnancy. Poor thing,’ she added. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’

‘The police are out in the waiting area at the moment. They want the box and any other evidence that might help. I understand there’s a note?’

‘Yes. It doesn’t say much. Just that the mother isn’t able to care for the baby.’

Theo nodded. ‘Someone from Social Services is coming as well. They’re going to take care of registering the baby and signing her over to our care for now.’

‘We’ve given her a name,’ Janine told him. ‘Grace.’

He smiled. ‘Nice. I like it. A name with meaning. Like my Hope.’

‘Your Hope?’ Ryan raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean this hospital?’

‘It was the name of my wife,’ Theo said quietly. ‘And building this hospital had been a dream for both of us.’

‘Grace was Evie’s choice,’ Susie said. ‘Apparently it was her mum’s name.’

Ryan was watching Grace’s ECG trace on the monitor screen again. Evie hadn’t hesitated to offer that name for this baby. The memory of her mother had to be very strong. He’d noticed the way she’d been watching the baby during their assessment of her, too. Did she always bond with her patients so completely? Or maybe it was because she was a mother herself? Hadn’t someone said something about her having kids at home?

She hadn’t wanted to leave the room, either. Oddly, despite his total focus on everything that still needed to be done after that, he’d also noticed her absence. There was certainly something about her that was different, and it wasn’t just her unusual hair colour. Something that interested him. She was completely off limits, though. That comment about her having kids at home had been a red flag. A whole ring of red flags, in fact, that had her penned in its centre. Women who wanted kids were enough of a problem. One who already had them was someone who inhabited a planet Ryan was never going to visit.

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to find her out in the unit’s reception area, when they’d finally settled baby Grace into a space where she could be monitored continuously until the catheter laboratory was available first thing in the morning. He’d been offered one of the overnight rooms here and he had to pass the reception area on his way to find it.

‘You’re still here,’ he said to Evie. ‘You’re not actually on duty, are you? You must have been on your way home when I met you in the car park?’

She nodded. ‘I was just waiting. To hear an update on Grace...’

The weariness that had been banished by the need for action had come back with a vengeance but Ryan pushed it aside as he pulled out a chair to sit down beside Evie.

He’d seen many faces that looked like this but only on parents who were waiting for news on their sick babies. Desperate faces that could make it very hard to stay professionally distant but that was another one of Ryan’s skills and he knew exactly how to deal with it. By providing whatever information he could and being very honest about his opinions without letting emotion cloud any issues.

‘Grace has a coarctation of her aorta.’ He could see that his words hadn’t triggered any more than superficial recognition. Was Evie only a junior nurse, perhaps? ‘It’s a narrowing of the main blood vessel that comes from the heart,’ he added.

‘Sounds serious.’ Evie’s eyes had darkened.

Hazel eyes, he noticed, which were just perfect framed by that dark blonde hair with its distinct auburn tint. Very expressive eyes, as well. He wanted to offer reassurance now. Comfort, even.

‘It’s a relatively common congenital heart defect,’ he told her. ‘And we have a few things we can do to treat it. She’s going to stay here as well so I’m taking over her case. I’ll do whatever I can to help her.’

‘Like what?’

‘We’ve started some medications. A prostaglandin that can temporarily maintain the patency of the ductus arteriosus. Do you know what that is?’

Her nod was thoughtful. ‘It’s a little vessel that lets blood bypass the lungs until the baby is born, isn’t it? And then it should close. That’s often when congenital heart problems become obvious, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Or they can become rapidly much worse, which is why we’re going to try and keep it open. We can use inotropic agents to deal with heart failure symptoms as well. And tomorrow morning, after I’ve had some sleep, we’re going to take Grace to the cath lab. I may be able to open the narrowed area of the aorta with a balloon. She’s probably going to need surgery but I’d like to make sure she’s completely stable before that happens.’

Evie nodded again. And then she smiled at him. ‘Sounds like you know what you’re doing, Mr Walker.’

Wow...that was some smile...

‘Ryan, please...’

‘I’m glad you were here.’

He could see something other than anxiety in her eyes now. Hope. Along with trust. He liked that. He’d better make sure he didn’t do anything to make it vanish.

‘Me, too...’ He smiled back at her. ‘It’s not every job that starts with a roller-coaster like this. A glitzy party, an abandoned baby...a partner in her rescue.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘It was nice to meet you, Evie. Unforgettable, in fact.’