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CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘SHE’S a tough little one.’

Like her mother, Diego thought.

Tilia, though small for dates and premature, was also incredibly active and strong. She had only required a short time on CPAP and was doing well on oxygen.

It really was a case of better out than in—now she could gain weight and as was often the case with babies who had been deprived nutrition in utero, Tilia’s forehead often creased in concern as if she was constantly worried as to where her next meal was coming from.

‘She wants her mum.’ Brianna could not get Tilia to settle. ‘I might ring Maternity and see if Izzy’s still awake, she might get a nice cuddle. Then I’m going to have my coffee break. Could you watch mine for a moment while I call?’

They often rang Maternity, especially when babies were active and if there was a nurse who could bring the mother over—well, the middle of the night was a nice time to sit in rocking chair and bond a little. But when Diego had left Izzy she had been drained and exhausted and she could really use a full night’s sleep—not that he was going to say that to Brianna. The gossip was already flying around the hospital since their appearance at the ball—had a certain little lady not put in such an early appearance, they might have been old news now, but given the turn of events and that Diego had been in the labour ward and was up twice day visiting on Maternity, he felt as if all eyes were on them. The scrutiny was just too fierce and strong at such a fragile time.

He was actually more than glad to be on nights, away from Rita’s probing, and he had deliberately allocated Brianna to care for Tilia.

Brianna was one of the most private people Diego had met. She said nothing about her private life. She was there to work and work she did, loving and caring for her charges—gossip the last thing she was interested in.

‘They’ve given Izzy a sleeping tablet,’ Brianna said when she came back. ‘Never mind, little lady, I’ll give you a cuddle.’

‘You go and have your break,’ Diego said. ‘I’ll sort her.’

He didn’t want to be doing this.

Or had he engineered it?

Diego didn’t want to examine his feelings. Brianna was long overdue her coffee break, it was as simple as that. So he washed his hands in his usual thorough manner, put on a gown and then unclipped the sides of the incubator.

Often, so very often he did this—soothed a restless baby, or took over care while one of his team took their break.

And tonight it would be far safer to remember that.

He would sit and get this baby settled and perhaps chat with another nurse as he did so, or watch the ward from a chair.

He sat and expertly held Tilia, spoke as he always did to his charges—joking that he would teach her a little Spanish.

Which he did.

Then Chris, another of the nurses on duty that night, came over and asked him to run his eyes over a drug.

Which he did.

And then he felt something he hadn’t in more than a decade.

Something he had tried never to feel since Fernando.

He adored his babies, but they weren’t his to love.

He had loved Fernando, had held him three times in his little life, and it had never come close since.

But holding Tilia, it came close.

Dangerously close.

She wasn’t a patient and she wasn’t his new girlfriend’s baby.

She was Tilia.

Izzy’s baby.

But more than that.

He smelt that unmistakable baby smell that surrounded him each day but which he never noticed, he looked into huge eyes that were the same shape as her mother’s and she had the same shape mouth. Even her nostrils were the same.

And there, sitting with all the hissing and bleeping and noise that was a busy neonatal unit, Diego, felt a stab of dread.

That he might lose her too.

He looked over to where Toby’s mother had come in, restless and unable to sleep, for just one more check on her son, and he knew how she felt—how many times in the night at eighteen he had woken with a sudden shock of fright and rushed to check on Fernando, asking the nurses to check and check again, petrified that they had missed something, but it wasn’t that fear that gripped him as he held Tilia.

‘You’re going to be fine,’ Diego said to Tilia in Spanish. ‘You’re going to be clever and grow healthy and strong...’

Only would he be around to see it?

‘And your mother’s getting stronger each day too,’ Diego went on. ‘Just watch her grow too.’

He wanted that for Izzy. He vowed as he sat there, holding her baby while she could not, that he would help Izzy grow, would do everything to encourage her, even if that meant that she grew away from him.

How could he let himself fall in love with this little babe when who knew what her mother might want days, weeks or months from now? When who knew what he might want?

Diego ran a finger down her little cheek.

But how could he not?

* * *

Staying in the parents’ wing had been the right choice.

It was a precious time, one where she caught up on all she had missed out on, one where there was nothing to focus on other than her baby.

Always Diego was friendly, professional, calm, except for the visits before or after her shift, when he was friendly and calm but he dropped the professional for tender, but there was never any pressure, no demands for her time. Now, as Tilia hit four weeks, the world outside was starting to creep back in and for the first time since her daughter’s birth, Izzy truly assessed the situation, wondering, fearing that it was as she had suspected—that her daughter’s birth had changed everything for them, that his lack of demands meant a lack of passion.

A soft rap at her door at six-thirty a.m. didn’t wake her. She’d been up and fed Tilia and had had her shower, and often Diego popped in at this time if he was on an early shift, bearing two cups of decent coffee and, this morning, two croissants.

‘She went the whole night without oxygen.’ Izzy beamed.

‘We‘ll be asking her to leave if she carries on like this!’ Diego joked, and though Izzy smiled and they chatted easily, when he left a familiar flutter took place in her stomach. Tilia was doing well, really well, and though at first the doctors had warned it could be several weeks before her discharge, just four short weeks on Tilia was defying everyone—putting on weight, managing the occasional bottle, and now a whole night without oxygen and no de-sats. Discharge day would be coming soon, Izzy knew, but if Tilia was ready, Izzy wasn’t so sure she was.

Diego was working the floor today. Once a week he left his office and insisted on doing the job he adored. From nine a.m. he was working in Theatre with a multiple birth and a baby with a cardiac defect scheduled for delivery. The unit was expecting a lot of new arrivals, and it fell to him to tell the mother of a thriving thirty-five-weeker that her room would be needed in a couple of days.

He’d stretched it to the limit, of course.

Not just because it was Izzy, not just that she was a doctor at this hospital, but with all she had been through, he would have done his best for any woman in that situation—though he waited till he was working to tell her.

‘She won’t take it.’ Izzy was in the nursery, feeding her daughter, jiggling the teat in Tilia’s slack mouth. ‘She took the last one really well...’

He tickled her little feet and held his hand over Izzy’s and pushed the teat in a bit more firmly, tried to stimulate the baby to suck, but Tilia was having none of it, her little eyelids flickering as she drifted deeper into sleep. Izzy actually laughed as she gave in.

‘She’s not going to take it.’ There was no panic in her voice, Diego noted. Izzy was a pretty amazing mum. Often with doctors or nurses they were more anxious than most new parents and even though he’d expected that from Izzy, she’d surprised him. She revelled in her new motherhood role and was far more relaxed than most.

‘They’re like teenagers,’ Diego said, ‘party all night, and sleep all day. That last feed would have exhausted her.’

Chris, one of the nurses, came over and saw the full bottle, and because Tilia was so small and needed her calories, she suggested they tube-feed her, and Izzy went to stand to help.

‘Actually, Chris, I need a word with Izzy.’

‘Sure.’ Chris took Tilia and Izzy sat, frowning just a little, worried what was to come because Diego, when at work, never brought his problems to the shop floor.

‘Is she okay?’ Her first thought was something had been said on the ward round that morning and he was about to give her bad news.

‘She’s wonderful,’ Diego assured her. ‘So wonderful, in fact, that I need your room for some parents we are getting whose baby will not be doing so well.’

‘Oh.’

‘I know it seems pretty empty over in the parents’ wing at the moment, but I’m getting some transfers from other hospitals today, and I have some mothers in Maternity now needing accommodation too. You don’t need to leave today...’

‘But it would help?’

‘It would,’ Diego admitted. Normally they gave more notice, but Izzy had been told last week that if the room was needed, given her close proximity to the hospital and Tilia’s improving status, she was top of the list to leave if required. Izzy had been happy with that. Well, till the inevitable happened.

How could she tell Diego that she didn’t want to go home?

More than that, she had never wanted to bring her baby back to the home she had shared with Henry.

‘Izzy!’ Rita was at the nursery door. ‘You’ve got visitors. Mr and Mrs Bailey, Tilia’s grandparents...’

He saw her lips tense and then stretch out into a smile and he’d have given anything not to be on duty now, to just be here with her as she faced all this, but Diego knew it would surly only make things worse. So instead he stood, smiled as he would at any other relatives and said to Izzy, ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Just as he would to any of the mums—except he knew so much more.

‘Could I have a word, Doctor?’ Mr. Bailey followed him out.

‘I’m not a doctor; I’m the nurse unit manager. Is there anything I can help you with?’

Up shot the eyebrows, just as Diego expected. ‘I’d prefer to speak to a doctor,’ Mr Bailey said. ‘You see, we’re not getting enough information from Izzy. She just says that Tilia is doing well and as her grandparents we have a right to know more.’

‘Tilia is doing well,’ Diego said. ‘We’re very pleased with her progress.’

‘I’m not sure if you’re aware of the circumstances. Our beloved son passed away and Izzy is doing her level best to keep us out of the picture. Tilia’s extremely precious to us and we will not be shut out.’

And at that moment all Diego felt was tired for Izzy.

‘I’d really prefer to speak with a doctor.’

Which suited Diego fine. ‘I’ll just check with Izzy and then I can page—’

‘Why would you check with her? I’ve already told you that she’s doing her level best to keep us misinformed. I know she seems quite pleasant, but she’s a manipulative—’

‘Mr Bailey.’ Diego halted him—oh, there were many things, so many things he would have loved to have said, but he was far better than that. ‘I will first speak to Tilia’s mother. Let’s see what she says and then we can take it from there.’

Of course she said yes.

Diego looked over when Richard agreed to speak to them and could see Izzy sitting by Tilia, looking bemused and bewildered, and if he’d done his level best to keep work and his private life separate, right now he didn’t care.

‘They don’t trust me to tell them everything!’ Izzy blew her fringe upwards. ‘They’re annoyed I waited two days to ring them after she was born...’

‘They’re just scared you’ll keep them from seeing her.’

‘Well, they’re going the right way about it!’ Izzy shot back, but Diego shook his head.

‘Don’t go there, Izzy.’

‘I won’t!’ Izzy said, but she was exasperated. ‘They’ve been in every day, I’ve dressed her in the outfits they’ve bought, I text them a photo of her each night. What more do they want?’

‘Time,’ Diego said. ‘And so do we.’ He glanced over to make sure no one was in earshot ‘Do you want to come to my place tonight?’ He saw her swallow. ‘I’m closer to the hospital. If it makes the transition easier...’

‘Just for tonight,’ Izzy said, because she didn’t want to foist herself on him, but she couldn’t stand to be alone at the house on her first night away from Tilia.

‘Sure.’

He got called away then, and Izzy sat there awash with relief, grateful for the reprieve, until it dawned on her.

She was staying the night with Diego.

How the hell could she have overlooked that?