Читать книгу His Unexpected Child - Josie Metcalfe - Страница 7

‘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.’

‘You’ll have to do a hysterectomy,’ Leah said, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt. ‘With blood loss this rapid there isn’t time for any sort of repair, not if she’s going to be around for those babies.’

David met her eyes for the briefest moment and she knew that they’d both come to that same decision.

She’d thought she’d seen him working quickly before, but it was nothing to the speed at which he excised the life-threatening tissue in a room filled with the din of shrilling monitors warning of imminent disaster.

‘She’s going to crash!’ Ashraf called, and out of the corner of her eye Leah could see his hands flying from one control to another as he tried his best to support their failing patient.

‘Thirty seconds, Ashraf!’ David growled, without pausing for a single one of them in his determination to cheat death. ‘Just keep her going for another thirty seconds.’

‘I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise you’ve got even that long,’ the anaesthetist warned as the monitor told them that their patient’s heart was beating almost out of control in an attempt to circulate the remaining blood, but David didn’t even falter.

Leah was aware of a strange feeling that was almost exhilaration as she assisted in one of the most frantic operations she’d ever witnessed. For the first time ever in an operation, the lead surgeon didn’t even need to say what he wanted. Somehow she just knew and was there ready with the next clamp or the diathermy to seal off another bleeding blood vessel.

‘Bowl,’ David said, even as Leah was holding it out to him. He finally glanced towards Ashraf. ‘How is she doing?’

‘Holding her own—just,’ he said cautiously, and checked all his monitors again. ‘We’re actually managing to get some volume into her, now that she’s not leaking like a sieve. Her heart rate is coming down and her blood pressure’s coming up.’

‘In that case, Leah, would you like to close?’ He raised one dark eyebrow but she was more interested in the expression of relief she detected in those beautiful eyes.

‘Oh, yes. Of course,’ she floundered, feeling like a fool for standing gazing at him like that. What on earth was going on? She’d never behaved like this before. Imagine—standing in the operating theatre in the middle of a procedure and thinking that the new consultant had beautiful eyes!

Whatever next? she demanded silently as she did a final check to make sure that nothing was bleeding any more, then carefully sutured the abdominal musculature layer by layer.

‘Nice neat job,’ David murmured at her elbow, but she’d known that he was watching, every nerve seeming to recognise his proximity even though she couldn’t see him.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said with a mock curtsey, then stepped back to allow others to take over the application of protective dressings before their patient was taken through to Recovery.

‘And may I return the compliment, in spades,’ she continued, when they’d made their way out of Theatre to divest themselves of their liberally splattered clothing. Sudden nervousness at the thought that he was about to see her in nothing more than her underwear made her chatter. ‘I’ve never seen anyone work that fast or that accurately, and I’ll be eternally grateful that you agreed to come in tonight. I know I could have delivered the babies, but I doubt whether I’d have been able to save the mother when it all went pear-shaped so quickly.’

Suddenly confronted by the tanned width of his naked chest, her tongue stopped working, her jaw all but hanging open. Had she thought he was too thin? She could obviously blame his tailor because there was nothing wrong with the body she was seeing in front of her…close enough to touch if she just reached out…

‘You’ll be surprised what you can manage to do when there aren’t any other options,’ he said quietly, jerking her out of that dangerous line of thought, then a glint of mischief lit his eyes. ‘And I like the sound of eternally grateful. Does that translate into fetching cups of coffee?’

‘In your dreams!’ she retorted, grateful that he hadn’t noticed the way she was eyeing him and surprised that he felt at ease enough to tease. The rather solemn man she’d met the other day hadn’t looked as if he had a single joke in him.

‘But you’d join me in one?’

She glanced up at the clock and pulled a face.

‘I may as well,’ she agreed. ‘It certainly isn’t worth going back to bed now, and I’m going to need plenty of it, strong and sweet, if I’m going to stay awake today.’

‘Well, shall we agree that the first one out of the shower pours the coffee?’ he suggested. ‘How do you like yours, exactly?’

‘You’re making the assumption that you’ll finish first,’ she pointed out sweetly. ‘I like mine strong but white with just a dash of sugar—how do you take yours?’

‘White. Without,’ he said, then grinned. ‘I’ll see you in a few minutes, then. Your coffee should have cooled enough to drink by the time you get there,’ he added in what was clearly a challenge.

David tensed when he heard the door open behind him, wondering how he could possibly know that it was Leah who had just entered.

He was surprised to see that there was a slight tremor to the hand that was pouring the coffee when it had been perfectly steady in the life-and-death situation just a few minutes ago in Theatre.

‘Drat!’ he heard her say, and knew that it was in response to the fact that he’d beaten her.

He quickly stretched a triumphant smile over his face and turned to face her with a coffee in each hand, and nearly dropped both of them.

He certainly wouldn’t have expected her hair to be that long, and to see it hanging all the way to the middle of her back, still dripping with water, sent his imagination into overdrive…until he hastily put the brakes on it. He was still having difficulty trying to forget the sight of her elegant curves clothed in nothing more than creamy lace underwear as she’d stripped off after surgery.

Now was not the time for mental images of Leah in the shower, slick, wet hair flowing over her naked body, not while she was standing in front of him with her hand held out for the coffee he was clutching like a lifeline.

‘All right, I concede,’ she said. ‘But under duress. If I cut my hair as short as yours I’d be able to—’

‘Don’t!’ he exclaimed in horror at the idea. It was only when he saw the surprise on her face that he realised he’d spoken aloud and was abashed to feel the slow crawl of heat up his face. Was he blushing like a gauche teenager, for heaven’s sake? What was this woman doing to him? ‘I mean, it must have taken you years to grow it that long. It would be such a shame to just…’ He was making it worse, he realised when he saw her fighting a grin.

‘It would grow again,’ she said with a shrug, apparently totally unconcerned by the prospect of destroying what used to be called a woman’s crowning glory. ‘I’d even thought of getting people to sponsor me to have my head shaved, to raise money for charity.’

‘Shaved!’ He was definitely horrified. ‘Well, would you take offers not to cut it?’ he countered, while a tiny voice inside his head tried hard to remind him that this woman was little more than a stranger and there was absolutely no reason why she should take any notice of his wishes.

‘Now, that’s another possibility,’ she said as she put her cup down and casually twisted the length of her hair into a thick rope and wound it neatly against the back of her head, securing it with a giant clip. ‘But sometimes I think it’s not worth the bother and all the time it takes. After all, with a shaven head, I would easily have beaten you to the coffee.’

She took a careful sip to test the temperature then a larger mouthful when she found it bearable. He nearly groaned aloud when she closed her eyes and moaned in ecstasy.

‘Why does the first cup of the day taste so good?’ she demanded.

He didn’t reply. The memory of waking up to other activities, and the realisation of just how long ago that had been, reminded him with a jolt of all the reasons why he shouldn’t be indulging in this sparring with her. It wasn’t right, not when he had absolutely no intention of following through. His days on the relationship merry-go-round were over, and he was glad of it. He wouldn’t willingly go through that pain again for anything.

‘I stuck my head round the door to check up on the babies,’ he announced, needing to get his thoughts onto more professional matters. As that was the only sort of relationship the two of them could have, he might just as well set the boundaries right from the start. ‘Baby three—the little boy who got squashed—wasn’t doing very well, but his big sisters were doing amazingly well, in spite of their size and prematurity.’

‘And Mum?’

‘Still in Recovery. Ashraf’s hovering over her. All her vital signs seem to be slowly coming good but she hasn’t really shaken off the anaesthetic yet.’ He frowned briefly. ‘She’s certainly not compos mentis enough to be told what happened on the table.’

‘Well, that’s certainly going to be an interesting set of notes to write up. Perhaps you could make a presentation of the case at the monthly meeting.’

‘A presentation?’ He was startled by the suggestion. At his last post he’d barely had time to breathe, let alone prepare presentations, then he realised how logical the suggestion was when she continued.

‘Not only would it serve as a cautionary tale for those who weren’t involved today, but it would also scotch the rumours that are bound to grow with every telling.’

‘Ah, yes. The hospital grapevine,’ he said ruefully. ‘That’s one aspect of our job that’s the same wherever we go—a hairline crack becomes multiple fractures and a Caesarean delivery and hysterectomy becomes—’

‘A life-saving procedure performed superbly to give mother and all three babies the best chance possible,’ she interrupted, and for the first time in a long time, in spite of his embarrassment, he allowed himself a brief moment to bask in the warmth of her praise.

‘Which I couldn’t have attempted without a damn good team to back me up,’ he added, giving them their due, too. ‘Ashraf’s definitely one of the best anaesthetists I’ve worked with. That woman was emptying out so fast…’ He shook his head at the scary memory. ‘I honestly don’t know how he kept her going long enough for me to tie everything off. And as for you…’

It was her turn to blush, but he wasn’t giving her empty words—he wouldn’t waste his time on anything but the truth.

‘I admit that I was quite surprised to hear that you were one of the applicants for the AR head of department. I couldn’t believe that someone so young could possibly have the necessary skills.’ He bowed briefly towards her. ‘Suffice it to say that since I’ve witnessed your skill and intuition, albeit assisting this time rather than leading, I’m no longer surprised. You knew exactly what I was going to do and how to make it easy for me—proof, in spite of your own doubts, that you would have been equally able to do the job.’

She was obviously trying to bury her embarrassment in her coffee-cup but he could tell that she was pleased with his recognition of her skills. He had a brief image of the chaos that awaited him in his office and suppressed a shudder that it had been allowed to get into such a state. Was it just that organisation was not one of her skills? He supposed he had to make allowances for the fact that she’d been trying to run the department short-handed, but just in case her weakness was paperwork, he was going to offer to write up this morning’s case notes himself.

‘Are you sure?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Donald hated doing them—said he’d rather have his teeth pulled.’

‘I’m sure,’ he said with an even deeper sense of foreboding. Had he been unlucky enough to take over a department that hadn’t had anyone willing to take on the essentials? ‘I’ve brought everything with me and I shall have another cup or three of coffee while I get it done.’

‘In that case, I’m going to check up on Mum then sneak in for a peep at the babies. I wonder if anyone’s been able to contact their father yet.’

‘I’ll leave you to check up on that and I’ll see you in my office at, say, eight?’ he suggested.

For just a moment there was a strange expression on her face but it was gone too quickly for him to decipher it. Was it chagrin that it was now his office rather than hers, or was it the fact that she was handing it over in such a disastrous state? Well, either way, there was nothing she could do about it now. The job was his, and, providing there wasn’t a run of emergencies like this morning’s, it really shouldn’t take him long to get everything organised, even if he had to ask Personnel for the temporary loan of some sort of specialist filing clerk.

In the meantime, he had a complicated surgery to document, right down to the last suture and cc of drugs. At least that ought to push Leah out of his mind until he saw her again at eight.