Читать книгу Christmas Brides And Babies Collection - Rebecca Winters - Страница 47

‘THAT’S NOT GOOD,’ Nadine said.

Luci agreed but at least Nadine was in town, and Seb was only metres away in the building next door.

But before Luci had a chance to say anything further Nadine gasped and doubled over.

‘Contraction?’ Luci asked.

She looked up at Luci and her dark brown eyes were filled with fear. She nodded and said, ‘It’s too early.’

Luci knew that Nadine was unsure of her dates and today’s appointment had been an opportunity to narrow them down, but there was the distinct possibility that it was far too early. In some cases labour could be delayed, even if the membranes had ruptured, but that was a clinical decision and once the contractions had started Luci knew there was very little they could do.

‘Dr Hollingsworth is just next door,’ Luci said, trying to sound calm and reassuring even as she fought back her own concerns. ‘Do you think you can walk or shall I fetch a wheelchair?’

‘I can walk if I can lean on you.’

Jenny, the child-care director, had seen what was happening and she came across the room, carrying an armful of old towels. Being a centre filled with preschoolers, they were well equipped for dealing with accidents similar to this.

‘Jenny, we need to leave Byron here,’ Luci said as Jenny dropped the towels on the floor.

‘Of course.’ She squatted down to mop up the mess. ‘What about your older children?’ she asked Nadine.

‘They’ll go home on the school bus,’ Nadine managed to say, before another contraction swamped her. She gripped tightly onto Luci’s arm. The contractions were close together and strong. Luci didn’t like the look of this at all. She needed to get Nadine next door to Seb. And quickly.

Byron was engrossed with a big box of building blocks and trucks and didn’t look up as Luci ushered his mother out of the centre.

‘Heather, can you call Seb, please?’ Luci started speaking to the receptionist in the community health clinic as soon as she and Nadine walked through the clinic doors. ‘And an ambulance. Nadine is in labour.’

Heather stood up from behind the desk. ‘Take her through here,’ she said, directing Luci into one of the old hospital rooms. She wheeled a trolley over to the bed and handed Luci a hospital gown. ‘There are gloves, scissors and basic clinical supplies on here. I’ll call Seb and the ambulance and then check back to see if there’s anything else you need. We’re not fully equipped any more but I’ll do my best.’

Luci nodded her thanks. ‘You’d better phone ahead to Dubbo and warn them too. Nadine was on her way there for an antenatal appointment,’ she added as Heather left the room. She turned back to Nadine, who was still clinging to her arm. ‘Let’s get you into this gown so that Dr Hollingsworth can examine you when he gets here.’

‘Can you stop the labour? It’s too early.’

Luci shook her head. ‘Once your waters have broken there’s nothing much we can do. These babies are on their way.’ The best they could hope for was that the ambulance arrived before the babies did.

Seb hurried in just as Luci had finished helping Nadine to change.

‘Nadine! I wasn’t expecting to see you today. What’s going on?’ He sounded cool, calm and collected but there was no doubt he’d come at a run.

Luci handed him a paper hospital gown and he slipped his arms into the sleeves and waited as Luci tied the strings before he repeated the process for her. He washed his hands and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves as Luci wrapped a BP cuff around Nadine’s arm.

‘Let’s see what’s happening,’ he said, as he positioned himself at the foot of the bed and got Nadine to lie back and bend her knees. ‘Eight centimetres dilated,’ he said.

There wasn’t going to be much time to spare. But just as Luci was praying that the ambulance was close by Heather came into the room and dashed her hopes.

‘The ambulance is forty-five minutes out of town at the scene of a car accident. They’ll get here as quickly as they can but expect them to be a while,’ she informed them.

Nadine was in the middle of another contraction and Luci didn’t think she’d heard a word Heather had said, which was probably just as well. It wasn’t great news but it didn’t appear to faze Seb.

‘It looks like your babies are going to be born in Budgee,’ Seb told Nadine once her contraction had passed. ‘Luckily for you, we’ve done this before.’ There wasn’t a trace of panic in his voice and he even had Luci believing it would all be all right.

‘You okay?’ He looked at Luci and mouthed the question. Nadine wouldn’t be able to see his lips as her belly was blocking her view.

Luci wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to deal with a woman in labour. She’d managed to cope with Nadine’s pregnancy yesterday, but actually delivering babies was a different thing altogether. But Seb didn’t need to hear about her issues now. He needed her help. Somehow she’d get through this. She would focus on one thing at a time.

She nodded. Seb needed her. She would do her best to keep it together and wouldn’t think about things that were out of her control.

‘How quick were your other labours?’ Seb asked Nadine. ‘Have you been caught off guard before or have you been able to get to the hospital?’

‘My third one was fast. She was born out at Frog Hollow.’

‘But other than that it all went fine?’

Nadine nodded, unable to speak as another contraction gripped her. She was covered in a sheen of sweat and Luci wiped her forehead with a flannel.

‘Were there any complications with your other deliveries?’

‘No,’ she puffed.

Seb picked a stethoscope up from the trolley and listened to the babies’ heartbeats. They were both around one hundred and forty beats per minute—perfectly normal. Everyone else might be stressed but at least the babies weren’t.

Heather returned and this time she was wheeling two small cots side by side. She parked these in the corner of the room and lifted out a pile of blankets and a set of scales. She wiped out the cots and folded some of the blankets, putting them back into the cots to act as makeshift mattresses before covering them with clean sheets. ‘We had these in storage but there’s not much else,’ she said. ‘There’s pethidine if you need it but that’s about it.’

Seb got the message. He doubted he had time for pethidine to work to provide any pain relief for Nadine—these babies were in a hurry and Heather’s underlying message was that there was nothing else on hand to help him manage premature infants medically. There were no drugs, no Vitamin K injections, no heat lamps and no emergency team standing by.

Babies had been born for thousands of years without all the modern interference but Seb knew the survival rate of premature twins had been low in those days. He would do his best and hope that the ambulance arrived soon. He prayed silently that everything would go right.

His gaze swept the room, looking for anything at all that might come in handy. There was an oxygen tank attached to the wall. He looked at Luci and then back at the cylinder. ‘Can you see if that works?’ he asked her.

Luci put down the flannel and crossed the room. She had been very quiet and he hoped she was coping okay with the drama, he wasn’t really sure how much experience she had with this sort of situation. But her movements were practised and efficient. She knew the basic procedures and he just had to hope that he could prevent an emergency.

Luci opened the valve on the oxygen tank. She nodded.

That was one thing he had up his sleeve if needed, he thought as he turned back to Nadine.

Her labour was progressing quickly. That wasn’t surprising given that it was her fifth pregnancy and delivery, but Seb wished it wasn’t so. He would much prefer it if she could hold on until the ambulance reached them but that was looking highly unlikely because he could see the first baby’s head crowning.

‘I want to push,’ Nadine told him.

He’d barely had time to check the position of the babies but there was no going back now. ‘Okay. We’re ready to go.’

Nadine’s knees were bent. Luci stood beside her, holding her hand.

‘Push,’ he instructed.

He reached between her thighs and eased the baby’s head out.

‘Okay, relax now. Wait for the next contraction.’

Nadine panted swiftly between contractions and with the following one Seb delivered the baby’s shoulders. The little girl slid out swiftly and he hoped it was because Nadine’s body was familiar with the process and not because the other baby had kicked it out. He didn’t want to deal with a breech presentation as well as the premature delivery of twins.

‘It’s a girl,’ he told Nadine. She came out yelling and Seb placed her on Nadine’s chest. Luci had loosened the hospital gown at Nadine’s neck so the baby could lie skin to skin on her mother but Seb couldn’t leave her there for long. She needed to be checked and kept warm and he needed to get ready to deliver the second baby.

‘Can you do the Apgar test?’ he asked Luci as he cut the cord.

Luci nodded and reached for the baby. ‘I’ll just check her out,’ she explained to Nadine. ‘You’ve still got some work to do.’

Seb briefly watched Luci holding the baby. It suited her. She had an expression of contentment and he hoped for her sake that she had a child of her own one day. He knew that was what she wanted.

‘One minute Apgar eight out of ten. Pulse ninety-six, tinge of blue in the fingers,’ Luci said as she put the baby on the scales. He was aware of her weighing the baby as she updated him. ‘Two point four kilograms,’ she said as she wrapped the baby. There was no time to clean her up as she needed to be kept warm and Luci needed to be ready to help with the second delivery.

Nadine’s contractions were continuing strongly. The second twin was on its way. He checked what was happening and breathed a sigh of relief when he felt Twin B moving down into the pelvis.

Seb had to rupture the membrane for Twin B and the next thing he saw was the baby’s head crowning. Thank God it wasn’t breech.

‘Five-minute Apgar nine out of ten,’ Luci said, updating him on Twin A. ‘Colour is good, heart rate ninety-eight.’

He nodded in acknowledgement to Luci but spoke to Nadine. ‘Okay, time for number two. You can push with the next contraction.’

The second twin was slightly bigger but was delivered just as easily. He handed the little boy to Nadine then checked the cord before clamping and cutting it. Nadine had a quick cuddle before Luci took him to assess.

‘Six out of ten. Pulse ninety-four. Sluggish reflexes, blue extremities, resp. rate thirty-five.’

The little boy was bigger, but not as healthy as his sister.

‘He needs oxygen,’ Luci said, and Seb knew she was looking to him to fix the problem. They had oxygen but how was he going to get it into a premature infant?

He looked around the room for inspiration as he prayed that the ambulance would hurry.

His gaze rested on the acrylic bassinettes.

‘Can you connect some tubing to the oxygen cylinder?’ he asked Luci as he covered Nadine with a blanket. The little boy was his priority now and there was nothing else he could do for Nadine until the ambulance arrived. If he could manage to hold the two bassinettes together he would be able to fashion a makeshift oxygen tent, which would be better than nothing in the short term. Taking the little boy from Lucy he placed him in a bassinette alongside his sister. He emptied the second bassinette and inverted it over the first. He grabbed a roll of medical tape and ran it around the edges of the cribs, taping them together. There was an opening where the sides had been cut down that would allow the carbon monoxide to escape. The ‘tent’ would be less efficient than he would like but it would be good enough.

Luci had connected the tubing to the oxygen cylinder. She passed the end to him and he slid it into the bassinette, taping it in place too.

‘Run it at eight litres per minute,’ he said as Heather came back into the room.

‘The ambulance is five minutes away,’ she told them, and Seb thought that was the best sentence he’d ever heard. He could handle five more minutes.

He left Luci to keep an eye on the babies as he spoke to Nadine. ‘Your babies are okay. Your daughter is doing well, your little boy is having a little bit of difficulty breathing so we need to give him some oxygen, but the ambulance is almost here and will transfer them to Dubbo hospital.’

‘What about me?’

‘You’ll go too.’

‘Byron?’

‘I’ve put him on the school bus with your other kids,’ Heather said as she returned to the room with the ambulance officers in tow. ‘Will there be someone home in Frog Hollow to take care of them?’

Nadine nodded. ‘My husband is there and my sister will give him a hand.’

The next fifteen minutes passed in a flurry of activity as the ambos stabilised the babies and Seb gave Nadine an oxytocin injection and delivered the placentas.

Somehow they got the whole family into the back of the ambulance and Seb breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the back doors and watched the ambulance take off.

When he went back into the community health clinic Heather was rescheduling the rest of the day’s appointments. She was proving to be worth her weight in gold today.

He left her to it and went to help Luci tidy up the makeshift delivery suite.

She was stripping the bed and had her back to him but he saw her lift her arm and wipe her hand across her face and he realised she was crying. Were they happy or sad tears? Her shoulders were shaking and as he got closer he could hear her sobs. It sounded like her heart was breaking.

He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Luci, what’s the matter?’

She turned around but she was crying so hard she couldn’t talk. He wrapped her in his arms and held her tightly until her tears eased but didn’t stop completely. He brushed her hair from her forehead and kissed her gently. ‘What is it, Luce? Tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I can’t do this any more,’ she sobbed.

‘Can’t do what?’

‘Deliver babies. It’s one of the reasons l left Vickers Hill, seeing other women holding their newborn babies. I can’t do it.’

He frowned. ‘You’ll get your turn,’ he told her. ‘We’ve talked about this.’

But Luci was shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Explain it to me, then.’

‘Not here. I need to go home.’

‘Home?’ he asked. ‘To Vickers Hill?’

She shook her head and gulped air as she tried to get her emotions under control. ‘No. Back to the motel.’

He was happy to call it quits. It was almost the end of the day and hopefully Heather had managed to reschedule the remaining appointments. Rarely was anything so urgent with community health that it couldn’t be pushed back. He would start earlier tomorrow if necessary, before they headed back to Sydney. Right now Luci was his priority.

He had bundled her into the car and driven her back to the motel and now she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were red but she had stopped crying. He boiled the kettle to make tea, wondering if he should call room service for something stronger, but decided to wait.

He handed her a cup of green tea. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘I don’t like delivering babies.’

He frowned. ‘What’s not to like? I agree, sometimes things can get a bit difficult but we had a really good outcome today, all things considered.’

‘I know and I’m happy for Nadine but I find it soul destroying. It just reminds me that the thing I want most in my life isn’t a possibility.’

‘What are you talking about? We’ve had this conversation…you’re young, you’ve got time.’

‘It’s not time I need,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘There are some things I love about small country towns and there are things I can live without. Like delivering babies. That’s part of the reason I wanted to get out of there. I don’t want to deliver other people’s babies. Not when I can’t have my own.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t have kids.’

He wasn’t sure if he was following the conversation properly. ‘But you told me you and your ex-husband were planning on starting a family.’

‘We were trying to get pregnant. It didn’t happen.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t have them. It just means it hadn’t happened yet.’

‘We tried for eighteen months. Nothing.’

‘It still doesn’t mean the problem lies with you.’

‘I’m pretty sure it does. Ben has remarried and is expecting a baby with his new wife.’

Wow. He hadn’t seen that coming.

‘Why haven’t you told me this before?’ he asked.

‘Because it was irrelevant to you.’

He was momentarily affronted until he realised she was right. Their relationship had no strings attached.

But that didn’t change the fact that Luci was upset and his natural instinct was to try to fix things. Although this could be a slight problem. He might be out of his depth.

‘I guess it’s not,’ he agreed. ‘You’ve spoken about wanting to have kids but you never mentioned you couldn’t.’ He was surprised at how hurt he felt that she hadn’t confided in him but he wasn’t stupid enough not to realise that he hadn’t confided in her either. There was plenty of information he had kept to himself so why should he be upset to find she was no different? He didn’t normally have double standards. ‘Do you know what the problem is?’

Luci shook her head. ‘No.’

‘You haven’t been tested?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Never had a truer word been spoken. They were in the middle of New South Wales. They had nowhere to go, nothing else to do. He had all the time in the world.

Luci sipped her tea. ‘The doctors said the same thing as you did initially. They told us we were young and healthy and there was no reason to worry. They said we should try to relax, try to just enjoy it, and if, after a year, we weren’t pregnant then they’d do tests. So we listened and decided to keep trying. I had no idea how hard it would be to “relax” in that situation. We kept working. We thought we’d pay off some more of our mortgage and Ben wanted to expand the family business and suddenly eighteen months had passed. So we went back to the doctor and tests were suggested.

‘We started the process but by now we were worried. We started discussing what we would do if the tests showed a problem. Would we go down the IVF path? That’s expensive and we weren’t sure how we would afford it. We were already stressed and things just got worse, and then Ben met Catriona. When Ben left me there didn’t seem any point in continuing the testing process and when I heard that Catriona was expecting a baby I figured I had my answer.’ She shrugged. ‘It didn’t matter what the tests showed. The problem was with me.’

Seb could understand her devastation and her logic but that didn’t mean she was right. ‘But it could have been any number of things.’

‘Well, until I find someone who I want to try again with it doesn’t matter. What matters is trying to get on with my life. Ben took away my marriage and I’ve recovered from that, but he also took away my dream of having a family. Even if the problem lay with me as a couple we could have adopted or fostered kids, we could have made something work, but now I either have to give up on my dream or start again. I decided to start again. I will do it. I want this more than anything but it still hurts when I see pregnant women or women with their babies. It reminds me of what I might never have and it’s part of the reason I wanted to move away from working in a country hospital. I had to assist with deliveries and I’d want to be happy for the parents but every time it just felt like my heart was breaking.’

‘Working in family and community health might be just as difficult.’

‘I know. I’m coming to realise that,’ she sighed. ‘But it’s still an area that interests me. It’s a double-edged sword in a way. I want to work with kids but I didn’t think about the fact that so many women with young children would be pregnant with another one. But I’m hoping that eventually I’ll feel better about it. It will either wreck me or help me but I don’t expect it to happen overnight. One thing at a time.

‘I’ve got over the end of my marriage, perhaps one day I’ll accept that I can’t have a family, but for the moment I just prefer not to talk about it. Not talking about it means I can try to ignore it. It’s obvious the problem lies with me, but I’m not ready to think about what it means.’

All along Seb had had the feeling that she’d been running away and now he knew why. He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to be around when her ex’s new partner had the child she’d been longing for.

And now it was Seb’s turn to feel as though his heart was breaking. In sympathy with Luci. I’m so sorry. What else could he say?

But he couldn’t help her. There was nothing he could do. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t give her what she wanted but he could take care of her. At least for now.

He lay on the bed with her and wrapped her in his arms and waited until she fell into an exhausted sleep.

But sleep eluded him. He lay in the dark and thought about Luci.

It had been a long time since anything, or anyone, had affected him this strongly. Since anyone had made his heart ache.

This was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. He didn’t want to feel. He didn’t want to hurt for someone else. And he didn’t want to think about what that meant.

In the space of three weeks he had seen her ecstatic, nervous, passionate, playful, flirty and full of despair. Unlike him, she wore her heart on her sleeve. He felt he had known her for much longer and he knew he would miss her when they parted ways, but their time was limited. He would be leaving Sydney in a little over a fortnight. This wasn’t a long-term proposition and her problem was not his to solve. As much as he’d like to, he couldn’t fix things for her and she hadn’t asked him to.

He would enjoy the next few weeks, distract her and hopefully take her mind off her problems. He would give her time to heal and then he’d let her go.

Luci picked up her wine glass and followed Seb up the steps of his boat and around to the forward deck.

The carpenter had finished installing the new kitchen while she and Seb had been in Budgee. The boat was finished, still unnamed but finished, and to celebrate Seb had invited her to spend the weekend on board. Seb had cooked a simple meal of steak and salad, the new kitchen had been tested and the new bed christened. So far the weekend was fabulous.

The boat bobbed gently on the calm waters of the Hawkesbury River. It was a beautiful warm night. There were thick clouds on the horizon and rain had been forecast. The air was heavy with humidity but so far the rain held off. The sunset had been incredible and, for now, the sky was clear and black.

Luci sat beside Seb and he slipped his arm around her shoulders, tucking her in against him. She was naked under her cotton dress and Seb wore only a pair of shorts. His body heat radiated out to her. She leaned back against the windshield of the boat and looked up at the sky. It was sprinkled with tiny stars that looked like diamonds on black velvet.

There were no other lights, on the water or on the shore. She felt like they had the world to themselves. Luci sighed. Seb was constantly surprising her with their dates and this one was particularly romantic. Lying on the deck of the boat, feeling like they were the only two people in existence, she could see the attraction of having somewhere to escape to. It was quite possibly a necessity in order to maintain your sanity if you lived in a city like Sydney, but she still couldn’t imagine making this her life. As romantic as the night was, she imagined it would be a very isolated existence with no one to share it with.

‘Do you think you’ll ever get lonely out here on your own?’

‘Maybe,’ Seb replied. ‘But that’s a chance I’m willing to take. I’ve never been lonely before.’

‘You’ve never had anyone else stay?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Why is that?’ Luci was curious and also flattered to think she was the first, but realised there could just as easily be another explanation that had nothing to do with her. ‘Was it because the boat wasn’t ready?’

‘No. I’ve stayed the night many times but I’ve never felt the need to share this with anyone else before.’

‘Why did you ask me?’

‘I thought you might like it,’ he said simply.

‘Not to keep you company?’

‘I’m happy with my own company.’

That had been a question that had been bothering her since the first time she’d set foot on his boat. His desire to have an escape, to keep a bachelor pad of sorts had seemed at odds with someone who was so vital and charismatic.

‘Have you never thought about sharing your life with someone?’ She knew he’d had at least one lengthy relationship but she still wondered why it hadn’t developed into something more serious. He was only thirty-one. Far too young to have decided to spend his life alone. What had happened that had made him so solitary?

Despite her divorce Luci hadn’t given up on finding love again. She wasn’t assuming Seb would want to share his life with her but she wondered what had happened to make him so against the idea of sharing his life with anyone.

‘Once upon a time I assumed I would marry and have kids, that it was something that was in my future. But it was just that. In the future. I assumed it would happen one day but I had no real plans that it had to happen by a certain point in my life. I guess I thought I would finish my studies, get married, eventually have a couple of kids, but it hasn’t turned out that way. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay on my own.’

She had shared so much of herself with him—her hopes and dreams, her failures and disappointments. She knew him intimately yet she still knew very little about what had made him into the man he was today.

What had shaped him? What had led him to the decisions he had made? What were his hopes and dreams? Surely no one really hoped to spend their life alone, did they? Something must have happened to bring him to that conclusion.

‘Yet now you’ve decided that you don’t want that future. What has happened that has made you think you’d be better off alone?’

‘I lost someone unexpectedly.’

‘Your girlfriend?’

She felt his answering nod.

‘What happened?’

‘She was killed in a hit-and-run accident.’

‘Oh, Seb.’ Luci felt awful now. She’d forced the admission out of him and perhaps it wasn’t something he’d wanted to share. She didn’t know what she could say to make things better but before she could say anything Seb continued.

‘It happened right outside our house. It was the day we were moving in together. Emma had parked opposite the house and she was carrying boxes inside. A car came round the corner and ran her over. I don’t know whether she couldn’t see where she was going, she might have stepped into the path of the car, but she hit her head when she fell. I guess she didn’t have time to put her arms out. When I got home there was an ambulance in the middle of the street but it was too late. I was too late.

‘She died from head injuries. I like to think she never knew what had happened but I don’t think that’s true. She didn’t die instantly. It messed me up for a long time. Thinking about what she went through. How she suffered. And I don’t want to experience anything like that again. That’s why I’ve chosen to live my life the way I am.’

Finally Luci was able to understand. She couldn’t imagine going through that experience. The trauma, the guilt, the despair. She knew he would have felt all those things, especially guilt. He would blame himself for not getting there sooner, not being there to help his girlfriend with the boxes. He would think he could have made the difference. Luci knew him well enough to know that he would struggle to forgive himself. She finally understood.

‘Did they ever find the driver of the car?’ she asked.

‘No.’

He’d lost everything that day. He’d thought losing Emma had been the worst thing that could happen but things had got worse from there, much worse. But Seb wasn’t sure if Luci could handle hearing about what had happened next. He lapsed into silence as he fought his demons. Fought with the guilt that still haunted him. He had never forgiven himself for not being there earlier. He had been held up at work, agreeing to see an extra patient. If he hadn’t he would have been there. He would have been carrying those boxes and he wouldn’t have lost everything.

‘Seb?’ Luci interrupted his thoughts.

Maybe if he explained everything to her she would understand why he was so different from her. Why he was the darkness and she was the light. Why he struggled to see the beauty in the world.

He continued. ‘The coroner ordered a post-mortem. The cause of death had to be officially determined in case Emma hadn’t died from injuries sustained in the accident. They had to determine whether it had been natural causes or manslaughter. Not that it mattered in the end as the driver was never found,’ he said, and he could hear the bitterness in his voice, ‘but the post-mortem found that Emma was pregnant. I was going to be a father.’