Maternal Instinct
Page 4
‘Better?’
‘Fine,’ he said, but there was that thing in his eyes again, and casual seemed to have flown right out of the window…
‘Coffee?’ His eyes were expressionless again, so that once more she wondered if she was imagining it. Silly.
She got her lungs working again and managed a smile. ‘That would be lovely. Thanks.’
They adjourned to the sitting room at the front of the house overlooking her perfectly safe car and, prompted by her questions, he talked enthusiastically about the job and his philosophy of childbirth, so that before she knew where she was the clock in the hall was striking twelve.
‘Heavens, I’m sorry, I’ve kept you talking for ages. I’d better go,’ she told him, checking her watch in disbelief, and he stood up and showed her to the door, helping her into her coat with hands that very carefully didn’t touch her.
Too carefully, or was she imagining things again? Maybe he was getting paranoid about her because of the harassment thing, or maybe he was simply a very nice, very married man and this silly reaction was totally one-sided.
Which would be ideal, and much safer, and absolutely the most sensible thing.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he murmured, and for a moment she thought he’d swayed towards her, just a fraction. Not far enough to kiss her, but…
No. She was being silly. Definitely silly. She needed to give herself a good talking-to.
She pasted a bright smile on her face. ‘Goodnight, Hugh. Thanks for supper. I’ll see you at eight.’
‘Fine. Sleep well—we’ve got a busy day.’
And she knew she’d imagined that flicker of something in his eyes. His only interest in her sleeping pattern was professional, and if she carried on like this he’d be accusing her of sexual harassment!
She got into her car and drove away, wondering as she went where his wife had been all evening and whether Tom would come home tonight as instructed by his father. Whatever, it wasn’t her problem.
When she got home she made herself a cup of fruit tea and took it to bed, looking forward to the time when the weather warmed up enough for her to sit out on her balcony and look at the river. She could see it from where she sat propped up on her pillows, and she turned out the light and stared at it, allowing her mind to empty. She could see lights reflected in the dark water, broken by the ripples, and the effect was soothing and calming.
More than the next day would be, she thought, but she wouldn’t allow herself to worry about it, or about her new boss. She was good at her job. She had to be. She wouldn’t allow herself to be anything else. And in the meantime she needed sleep.
She set down her cup, snuggled under the covers and was gone in minutes.
Hugh couldn’t sleep.
For some reason Eve had got under his skin, making him think crazy and inappropriate thoughts.
Thoughts of her hot and wild under him, her slender legs locked around his waist, her breasts crushed against his chest and her frantic little cries echoing in his ears…
‘Oh, damn!’
He threw back the covers and strode across the room, grabbing his dressing-gown off the back of the door and slinging it on as he headed for the stairs.
He checked in mid-stride, swivelled and opened Tom’s bedroom door, nearly falling headlong over the mess.
No sign of him, at nearly four in the morning with school the next day.
So either he was still out far, far too late, or he had stayed over at Kelly’s. Either way, he would get the benefit of his father’s opinion when he next set eyes on him.
Hugh put the kettle on, propped himself against the worktop and stared blindly down the empty drive. Should he ring Tom and ask him just where the hell he thought he was? Or wait until tomorrow?
What if he was dead in a ditch, stabbed on the way home by some drunken lunatic?
In which case, ringing him won’t achieve anything and you won’t bring him back whatever, reason told him pragmatically, but he was past reason. He picked up his phone, called Tom’s number and was further frustrated by the fact that the phone was obviously off.
He left a pithy message on his son’s voicemail, threw his own phone down on the worktop and made a cup of tea. Not decaf, not herbal, just good old-fashioned caffeinated builder’s tea, nice and thick and calculated to keep him awake.
So what? He was awake anyway, what with Eve and Tom doing their best to drive him to distraction. He may as well have a decent cup of tea and enjoy it.
CHAPTER THREE
‘FIRST stop, Jeannie,’ Hugh said, and led Eve down the ward to a side room tucked in the angle between two bays, pausing at the sink to wash his hands and rub them with alcohol gel, while Eve followed suit without thinking. It made her hands dry and she had to drown them in heavy-duty hand cream every night, but at least that way she wasn’t spreading infection, and right now antibiotic-resistant bugs were everybody’s nightmare.
‘How’s she doing?’ she asked as she rubbed the gel briskly into her hands.
‘She’s getting on really well, and the baby’s fine. They can go home today, so long as everything looks OK, so we’ll just give her the good news.’
The door was open, and Jeannie was propped up in bed breastfeeding her little daughter. As Eve had expected, the baby hadn’t needed any extra support, and although she was a dainty little thing, she was in perfect working order and Jeannie was radiant.
‘Hi, there,’ she said, grinning broadly at them. ‘Come to see my little treasure?’ She slipped the tip of her little finger into the corner of her baby’s mouth, breaking the suction, and eased her away from her breast, sitting her up with her tiny chin cradled in the fork of Jeannie’s thumb and forefinger. ‘Say hello to Mr Douglas, little one.’
There was a resounding burp, and they all laughed.
‘No name yet?’
Jeannie gave a wry chuckle, gently continuing to rub the baby’s back. ‘We can’t agree. I like Eleanor, Paul likes Katherine.’
‘You know she’ll be Ellie or Kate, don’t you?’ Hugh said.
‘Probably. I don’t care. I just want to call her something other than “Baby”. It’s getting a little ridiculous!’
He laughed with her. ‘You’ll get there. Can I take her from you for a moment? I just I want to examine Eve’s needlework. Have you seen it yet?’
‘Mmm. Looks very tidy. Are you Eve? I’m sorry, I didn’t really get to meet you properly the other day.’
Eve smiled. ‘No, we were all a bit preoccupied. How are you feeling now?’
‘Bit sore, but delighted with the baby and hugely relieved that everything went well. Thank you for sewing me up so beautifully.’
‘My pleasure,’ she said with a smile, delighted that her careful suturing hadn’t gone unappreciated, just as Hugh turned round with the baby in his arms.
‘Here,’ he said, passing Eve the little one with a knowing grin. ‘The best bit of the job. Have a cuddle—I know you’re dying to.’
She settled the baby securely in her arms, staring down in fascination into the wide blue eyes and perfect features of Jeannie’s tiny daughter.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ she murmured, suppressing that little maternal urge that seemed to flare up every time she held a baby. One day, she told herself. One day in about eight years or so, once she’d achieved what she’d set out to do.
Until then, she’d content herself with doing the best job she could to ensure her patients had safe deliveries, and she’d grab the odd cuddle along the way. For now, at least, that would have to do.
Hugh looked at Eve with the baby cradled in her arms, and the look on her face brought a lump to his throat.
She should have a child, he thought inconsequentially. She’d look so right with a baby at her breast.
No. Don’t think about that. Concentrate.
He checked Jeannie’s suture line, felt the position of her fundus to make sure her uterus was contracting properly and glanced through her charts.
‘Today?’
He smiled at her delighted expression. ‘If you want to,’ he said, knowing what the answer would be. ‘Your community midwife will come and check you and make sure everything’s OK, and you’ll need to have your stitches out this time next week, but I don’t see any reason to keep you here. Will you have some help at home?’
She nodded. ‘Paul’s arranging to have next week off, and my mother’s here now and can stay till the weekend, so I’ll be fine.’
‘Excellent. Right, Eve, give the baby back.’ He said it with a teasing grin, but her answering smile was a little bleak, and he wondered why.
Why obstetrics, really? And why so forlorn?
A broken heart?
He knew all about that and how it hurt. He knew about holding babies and handing them back to their parents, knew the dull ache it could leave when his arms were empty again.
If Eve’s heart was broken, she wasn’t alone.
‘Right. We need to sort the paperwork, then see the other patients. Some of them might be able to go today as well. Then after lunch we’ve got a clinic starting at one and I’d like to get down there a little early and go through the paperwork.’
They were walking down the ward towards the nursing station, and he was deliberately brisk, but it seemed to do the trick. The melancholy left her eyes, and she quizzed him about their afternoon ahead.
‘Obs or gynae clinic?’
‘Gynae. There’ll be the usual run-of-the-mill things, but there are one or two odd ones I want to look at a bit more closely. I’d like you to do the initial assessments, then go through your findings with me and I’ll see anyone I feel is necessary. Happy with that?’
She nodded. ‘Fine.’
‘They won’t all be well, you know,’ he warned, wondering what she’d say to that, but she just looked at him, her brows pleating together into a frown.
‘I can do sick people, Hugh. I just didn’t want to specialise in anything too unrelentingly heart-rending.’
He stopped walking, an almost-forgotten sorrow reaching out to touch him yet again. ‘Obstetrics can be heart-rending, Eve. Believe me. If you don’t think you can hack it, get out before it’s too late to change your mind.’
‘I’m not going to change my mind. And I have no intention of going into general practice or retraining as a midwife!’
A grin flickered over his face and was gone. ‘Good. Right, where were we? Oh, yes, the clinic. And tomorrow we’ve got an early day-case list, and on Wednesday we’re on take and we’ve got an elective list as well, so no doubt it’ll get even more hectic. Anyone we aren’t happy about today we’ll admit, and deal with tomorrow at the end of the day-case time.’
‘Will there be room on your list?’
He gave a wry laugh. ‘Probably not. How late do you work?’
She grinned. ‘How late do you want me to work?’ she said, and he shook his head.
‘Don’t ask. There’ve been nights when I’ve finished my list at midnight. Let’s hope Wednesday isn’t one of them. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that not too much comes in overnight tomorrow.’
Famous last words, he thought, wading through his clinic at the end of the day.
He’d had a woman with fibroids in the clinic whom he’d admitted for blood transfusion prior to urgent surgery on Wednesday morning, if her haemoglobin level was high enough by then, and now he had a mother up in maternity with early signs of pre-eclampsia that was threatening to escalate, so her community midwife had admitted her. He had a feeling she’d be in Theatre in the morning for a section if her blood pressure didn’t respond overnight, in which case Sam would take her as he was on call tomorrow, but if she hung on they might end up with her on Wednesday.
And that was without all the miscarriages that would be admitted overnight for D and C the next day to remove any last products of conception, and women in labour who got into difficulties and needed assistance.
Still, at least he didn’t seem to need to spoonfeed Eve. If her first day was anything to go by, she’d been an excellent choice, and would relieve a lot of the pressure on him and Oliver.
And Alison, his SHO, would be relieved to have another woman on the team. Eve was up on the ward at the moment with Alison, checking on the patient with pre-eclampsia, and once she’d done that she’d be heading home like him, leaving Alison and Oliver in charge for the night.
Now he just had Tom to deal with when he got home, and maybe he could catch up on some of the sleep he’d missed last night. He reached for his mobile in his pocket to turn it on and check his messages, and it wasn’t there.
Great. Where on earth had he left it?
He went into his office, searched high and low, checked with the ward and again through the clinic, and finally came to the unwelcome conclusion that he’d lost it.
And as it was a PDA—a diary and organiser, as well as a phone—its loss was catastrophic.
He swore, softly but with considerable feeling, and headed for the car. There was nothing he could do about it tonight. He’d looked in the only likely places. He’d just have to report it missing and replace it.
Again.
‘Oh, no.’
‘What?’
Alison had lifted a set of patient notes off the corner of the nursing station, and there on the desk was a mobile phone.
‘It’s Mr Douglas’s phone. He’s been looking for it everywhere. It’s his lifeline—he’ll go mad without it.’
Eve hesitated for a second, then picked it up, slipping it into her pocket and giving Alison a carefully neutral smile. ‘I’ll drop it in to him. I know where he lives.’
And maybe this time she’d get to meet his wife…
She could hear them as she pulled up outside, on the other side of the street.
Hear them, and see them through the kitchen window straight ahead of her, Tom and his father, with the odd interjection from another voice—a girl? His daughter, maybe, or Tom’s girlfriend? It sounded too young to be a woman’s voice. They were going at each other hammer and tongs, and her heart sank. She really didn’t need this.
She was about to head to the front door when she noticed a door on the side of the house that was hanging open. There was no chance they’d hear the doorbell, she realised, and if it hadn’t been for the emphasis Alison had placed on getting the phone back to Hugh quickly, nothing would have induced Eve to go in there.
But she had the phone, and he needed it, and so she took a deep breath and tapped on the open door, just as a pretty girl in her early teens flounced down the hall, rolling her eyes in a perfect recreation of Eve at the same age.
‘Oh, hi. Can I help you?’ she asked, pausing in her tracks.
‘Um—I’ve got Hugh’s phone. He left it at the hospital.’
‘Oh, great. Are you Eve?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Lucy. He’s in the kitchen. Just go in. He’s talking to Tom.’
Talking?
Hardly, she thought, but the girl had run upstairs, leaving her with no choice but to deliver the phone personally, so she made her way warily down the hall towards the kitchen.
The door was ajar, and she put her head round it and cleared her throat. ‘Um…Hugh?’
He didn’t hear her, of course. They were standing practically nose to nose, Hugh only an inch or so taller than his furiously angry son, and as she took a step into the room Tom delivered what was clearly the coup de grâce.
‘I’m only telling you this because I need your professional advice, so get off your bloody high horse and listen to me! I may have got Kelly pregnant last night!’
You could have heard a pin drop.
Hugh’s jaw sagged, he dropped his head forwards into his hands and groaned. ‘How?’ he mumbled through his fingers.
Tom gave a bitter litt
le laugh. ‘The same way you got my mother pregnant, I guess.’
Her heart pounding, Eve backed away, mentally as well as physically. There was no way she needed to hear this. No way. Eve took another step backwards, just as Hugh dragged his hands down his face and caught sight of her.
He stiffened, groaned again and scrubbed one hand round the back of his neck. ‘Uh…Eve. Hi.’
‘Um…your phone,’ she said inadequately, giving a helpless little shrug. ‘You left it on the desk and someone put a set of notes on it. Alison said you’d need it. I’m sorry I just barged in—the door was open. Your daughter said to come through. I, um, I’ll go.’
‘No—wait. Can you give us a minute?’
‘It’s OK, I was just dropping it in. I can’t stop. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
And setting the phone down on the table, she hightailed it out of the door.
‘Eve, wait!’
He caught up with her just as she was getting into her car, his smile rueful and distracted. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this.’
‘Don’t be. These things happen in families.’ And she didn’t have a family, thank goodness, and she was getting away from his just as fast as she could.
His laugh was harsh and a little ragged. ‘Only in mine, it seems. Thanks for bringing me the phone.’
‘You’re welcome. I’ll see you in the morning.’
He frowned. ‘Uh—are you doing anything later?’
‘Oh. I don’t know,’ she said, her mind emptying itself of excuses. ‘Why?’
He said nothing for a second, then shook his head. ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
And he turned and went back into the house like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Eve didn’t envy him the conversation that was sure to follow. She thought of Jeannie and her darling little daughter, and wondered what was in store for them as a family fifteen years down the line. Chaos, probably, like Hugh’s, like everyone else’s that involved teenagers. She shuddered with the memory. It was all too much.