The Surrogate's Unexpected Miracle

by Alison Roberts

  Luke’s impatience to get on with the rest of his life became clear as he spent evenings working on applications for new positions and sent them off to London and Boston. He even found one in Washington DC that piqued his interest.

  Sue came out to visit one afternoon that week and, while she was watching Ellie change Jamie’s nappy, she told her friend that everybody knew that Luke had also been offered a permanent position at North Shore General hospital.

  ‘Everybody’s hoping he’s going to accept the offer. He’s fabulous to work with.’

  Ellie’s heart had skipped a beat. That would mean that—in the not too distant future—she and Luke would be working together.

  But then she’d shaken her head.

  ‘He’s applying for jobs that have way more to offer. Why would he choose to live here and not in London or New York?’

  ‘Yeah...’ Sue’s sigh sounded envious. ‘I’d be off like a shot, myself. How exciting would that be? He’s so good at what he does, too. I would think that he could get any job he wants. Ooh...can I have a cuddle now?’

  Ellie helped settle Jamie into Sue’s arms. Her smile was automatic but her heart was sinking. Apparently, the job that Luke wanted was somewhere on the other side of the world. Anywhere that was as far away as he could get from her and Jamie?

  ‘Oh...he’s gorgeous.’ Sue sounded misty as she smiled down at Jamie. ‘I want one.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Ellie told her. ‘Not until you’ve got a baby daddy who wants to help, anyway. Being a single mother is...’ It was her turn to sigh as she sat down on the couch beside Sue. ‘Well...life-changing, that’s for sure. Nothing will ever be the same.’ She reached out to touch one of the adorable starfish hands Jamie was stretching out into space. ‘Not that I’d want to be without this little one. Not now...’

  ‘Uh-oh...’ Sue chuckled as Jamie turned his head and nuzzled her chest, opening his mouth to let out a hungry whimper. ‘I can’t help you there, mate. Here...you’d better go back to Mum.’

  She watched as Ellie adjusted her clothing and let Jamie latch on with the same ease and familiarity she’d had in offering her friend a cup of coffee on arrival.

  ‘He’s always been good at that.’ Sue nodded. ‘Do you remember how he got into it when you held him for the very first time?’

  Ellie’s smile was genuine this time. She would remember for ever just how much her life had changed in those first tugs of a tiny mouth at her breast. Breastfeeding was so much more than simply providing food for her baby, now, and she knew she would make the most of the next few months and cherish this bond that seemed capable of expanding infinitely.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how tired you are, or how difficult things have been,’ she told Sue. ‘When you’re feeding them, you can just forget about it for a while and everything in your world is exactly how it should be.’

  ‘Mmm...’ Sue’s glance was thoughtful. They both knew that Ellie’s world was very different than she had intended it to be. ‘Have you heard anything from Ava, yet?’

  ‘No. Have you?’ Especially in the days before her marriage to Marco, Ava had been very much a part of Ellie’s circle of work friends and she and Sue had stayed in touch.

  ‘I don’t think anybody has. She hasn’t even been on social media since the day Jamie was born. It’s been well over a month and she used to update her status every day. It’s like she’s just vanished.’ An angry edge coated Sue’s words. ‘I can’t believe she hasn’t at least tried to find out how you are.’

  ‘Her life tipped upside down, too. She’s got a lot to deal with.’

  ‘And that’s the time you need your friends the most.’ Sue was frowning. ‘What about her family? Do they still live out this way?’

  Ellie shrugged. ‘I haven’t actually been into the village. I’ve been too busy with Jamie. And helping Luke with the garden here. When I do go out, it’s usually to a viewing for an apartment. Or a mad dash through a supermarket.’

  Time away from this house and garden felt like an interruption, didn’t it? That was something Ellie needed to deal with. However much she loved it, this wasn’t her house or her garden. She wouldn’t be living here for much longer.

  ‘She’ll have to come back at some stage, surely. Will you want to even talk to her?’

  ‘Of course...’ Jamie had fallen asleep in her arms, his mouth still on her breast. Ellie eased him upright and began rubbing his back gently. ‘We’ve been friends for ever and I’m worried about her. I want her to know that I’m okay, too. That she actually did me a favour because I know I couldn’t have given Jamie away.’

  ‘Maybe you should talk to her mother or something. If there’s anybody she would have been in contact with, you’d think it would be her mum.’

  Talking to Ava’s mother was a good idea, Ellie decided later, but there was someone she would much rather talk to first.

  Luke.

  And it seemed as if that was a possibility tonight. He hadn’t sat down and fired up his laptop as soon as he arrived home from work. He was much later than usual and Ellie had already eaten her own dinner but she had the remains of the casserole and baked potatoes keeping warm in the oven. She knew he would have smelled the hot food as soon as he walked through the door and the pleasure she got from how much he appreciated her cooking for him hadn’t worn off. It had become a bit of a joke to ask if he was hungry after the day he’d laughed at her query.

  ‘You create something that smells that good and then ask me if I’m hungry? Silly question...’

  But this evening, he simply shook his head in response and, instead, took a beer from the fridge and went outside, to sit down at the table on the terrace.

  He was still sitting there, oddly still, when Ellie came back from feeding and changing Jamie and settling him into his bassinet for the night. For a long moment, she stared at the slump of his shoulders through the window.

  Something wasn’t right.

  She poured herself a glass of the red wine she had opened to add to the beef bourguignon that was probably getting rather dry by now but she didn’t pause to turn the oven off. She took another glass and the rest of the bottle and walked outside, before she lost her nerve. She tried to ignore the way her heart-rate picked up and seemed to be beating right in her throat.

  ‘Want some company?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Ellie poured Luke a glass of wine, too. Asking him how his day had been would be a sillier question than asking if he was hungry when she knew perfectly well something was upsetting him, so she didn’t say anything.

  She remembered the way he had sat on the end of her bed, the night Jamie had been born, when she had been struggling with the emotional trauma of the surrogacy plan going so terribly wrong. He hadn’t tried to encourage her to talk. He’d simply given her the opportunity by sitting there and absorbing her struggle. Offering his company and what had felt like genuine empathy.

  That was what she could give him right now. And the empathy was more than just genuine. Looking at hair that was even shaggier than usual after having fingers dragged through it and the deep crinkles around eyes that advertised distress, Ellie had never been more aware of just how much Luke had come to mean to her.

  How much she loved this man.

  She wanted to reach out and touch the hand that was resting on the table so near her. She wanted to lace her fingers through his and create a physical bond that would let him know that her heart was aching for him. That she would do anything she could to make whatever was hurting feel better.

  When the urge became too great, she picked up the small box of matches that lay beside the collection of candles she had impulsively put out here a few days ago but had never bothered lighting because that was a romantic thing to do and that elephant in the room might have got big enough to crush them both.

 
Now it was just something to do. With a very different kind of tension in the atmosphere, that elephant seemed to have vanished. She took her time, holding the flame of the match to each wick, and she knew that Luke was watching each candle come to life. It took two matches, and it was while she was blowing out the second one that Luke spoke.

  ‘Do you remember that baby with whooping cough that Sue told you about? The one I’d seen the night of your fire?’

  Ellie nodded. How could she forget? Inadvertently, maybe, Luke had let her know that he’d been thinking about her and Jamie. That, on some level, he really cared about them and was worried about their welfare. Telling him that Jamie had had his first vaccinations the other day had been one of the most relaxed conversations they’d had ever since that night the elephant had appeared.

  ‘Her name was Grace,’ Luke continued. ‘She was six weeks old when she came in—not that much older than Jamie would have been, then. And she was pretty sick. The level of cyanosis with each coughing fit had me worried.’

  Ellie swallowed hard. It was a parent’s worst nightmare to see your baby desperately ill and even hearing the story of a baby she’d never met gave her a clutch of fear for Jamie.

  ‘She got admitted to PICU and kept in isolation for a week. They battled what looked like the start of pneumonia a week or so later but she seemed to be improving. They still kept her in, though, because of an apnoeic episode or two and a low-grade fever that wouldn’t go away. I went up to see her on the ward a few days ago.’

  Ellie felt the corners of her mouth tilt as she nodded. She’d been surprised when he’d made a follow-up visit when she had been transferred to the maternity ward but it was clearly a normal part of Luke’s involvement with his patients and a part of what made him such a good doctor. She was proud of him, she realised. Proud of what he did and what kind of man he was.

  ‘She’d spiked more of a fever and had a bulging fontanelle, which bothered me. And then I heard she’d had a seizure that afternoon and been taken back to Intensive Care. They did a lumbar puncture and an MRI and made the diagnosis of encephalitis.’

  ‘Oh, no...’ Ellie whispered. She’d seen babies like that. Sedated and ventilated. Looking so tiny on a bed, with distraught parents hovering nearby. It had been hard enough to see that before she had become a mother herself. Now it was unbearable. She could feel her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘I heard that she died today,’ Luke added quietly. ‘I can only imagine the agony that those poor parents are going through.’

  Ellie didn’t say anything. She could do more than imagine it. She could feel the edges of it touching her heart and she had to fight the urge to get up and run to her room to check on Jamie. To touch him. To stand there beside his bassinet and watch him breathing and soak in the awareness of just how precious he was.

  ‘I couldn’t do it.’ Luke sounded as though he was talking to himself rather than Ellie.

  ‘At least they have each other,’ Ellie murmured. If something so terrible happened to her, she would have to face it alone and that was...unthinkable...

  She took in a shaky breath. ‘Is that why you never want to have kids, Luke?’

  She knew she was pushing past a barrier and might very well be inviting rejection that would hurt but the question came out before she had time to think. Maybe she’d seen a tiny crack in that carefully constructed barrier and the lure of getting a little closer to what lay behind it had been irresistible.

  And Luke didn’t seem to be pulling away. His body language didn’t freeze up. He didn’t even reach for his drink. The huff of breath he released suggested surprise more than anything else. As if he hadn’t really thought about it enough to put something into words.

  ‘No. I guess it’s more like the opposite scenario.’

  Ellie frowned. She didn’t understand. Luke glanced up in the silence and the darkness of his eyes in the flickering light of the candles made his face look haunted.

  ‘I mean a child left bereft,’ he said. ‘Rather than the parents. I don’t have to imagine how bad that can be because I know. I was that child. Left alone and nobody wanted me.’

  ‘Oh... Luke...’ Nothing could have stopped Ellie touching him now. She wanted to gather that child into her arms and never let him go. He was still there, wasn’t he? Somewhere deep inside this amazing man. She couldn’t gather Luke into her arms but she could touch his hand. Cover it with her own and give him, at the very least, the human touch of someone who cared.

  And Luke accepted the touch. He turned his hand over so that their palms were together and his fingers tightened around Ellie’s hand.

  ‘That’s something no child should ever have to go through,’ she said, softly. She had lost her father when she was young and could remember the enormity of missing him so much but she’d still had her mother and her home—a safe place where she knew she belonged and was loved.

  The silence grew. Would Luke say anything more?

  Ellie wanted to hear more. She wanted to hear everything.

  Finally, he spoke again. Tentatively—as if it was the first time he’d tried out this particular combination of words.

  ‘I was too young to remember or understand, the first time. Well, the second time if you count my mother not even taking me home from the hospital.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Two, according to the records the social services kept. I’d been taken in by a childless couple and then the woman got pregnant, after all. Apparently they didn’t want me when they discovered they could have their own children.’

  Two years old, Ellie thought with dismay. Just when children were starting to talk and begin to try and understand the world around them.

  ‘The next time I was nearly five and that wasn’t really the fault of my foster parents. My foster mum got very sick. She died later but I’d already been moved on by then because the family couldn’t cope with looking after me as well as nursing her.’

  Ellie could actually hear Luke’s painful attempt to swallow. At five years of age, he would remember that abandonment.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Turned out that was by far the longest time anyone would keep me. I saw the list, once, and there were at least six more foster homes by the time I was ten.’ He shrugged. ‘I got labelled as a “difficult” child. Nothing worked, apparently—even a good hiding or not being fed. People took me on because they got paid to do it but nobody wanted me.’

  Ellie could feel the pain in those words and it felt like a physical blow. How big was that button she had pushed when she’d said, out loud—in the first minutes of his life—that nobody wanted Jamie?

  Luke must have felt her flinch beneath his hand. The pressure she felt from his fingers was gentle. A crooked smile even appeared on his face as he held her horrified gaze.

  ‘It’s okay... I understand completely what made you say that. And I know how much you love Jamie.’

  ‘I’d die for him,’ Ellie whispered. ‘If it came to that.’

  ‘I hope not.’ Luke was still holding her gaze. ‘I hope that nothing ever happens to Jamie. Or you...’

  Ellie found she was holding her breath, waiting for his next words. He looked as though he was about to tell her how much he cared.

  That he loved her?

  ‘If something did happen to you,’ he continued very quietly, ‘I want you to know that I would do whatever I could to make sure Jamie was okay. And that’s a promise. We can get it written up legally so that you’ll know he’ll always be safe.’

  It wasn’t quite what Ellie was hoping to hear but it was huge, nonetheless.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why would you do that for Jamie?’

  Luke finally looked away. Down at their hands that were still joined. She could see the furrow that appeared on his brow, beneath the shaggy lock that never behaved itsel
f well enough to stay back.

  ‘I’m not sure what it was,’ he said. ‘But I felt a connection. Maybe it was because of what you said. Or maybe it was because I knew that I was fighting to save his life. I just knew he needed someone in his corner. Someone that was prepared to fight for him.’ A tiny shrug rippled down Luke’s arm into his fingers. ‘I just knew that, in that moment, I was that person.’

  Ellie’s lips trembled. ‘Thank you,’ she managed. ‘Thank you for being there. Thank you for being that person.’

  Luke’s smile was gentle. ‘You’re that person now. But I can be...I don’t know...an insurance policy?’

  Ellie found herself returning the smile without even trying. A slow, soft smile that felt as if it were a neon sign, advertising just how much love she was feeling for Luke.

  And maybe it did. Was that why Luke eased his hand away from hers? Why he picked up his glass of wine and drained it? He reached for the bottle and raised his eyebrows in a query. When Ellie shook her head, he refilled his own glass.

  ‘I’ve never told anybody about the disaster that my childhood was,’ he said, then. ‘And I’m not going to go horrify you with how much trouble I caused when I got older but it was when I overheard the plan to send me into the equivalent of a prison for teenagers that I ran away. I managed to live rough for nearly a week before the Gilmores caught me.’ His smile was wry. ‘At least you’ll understand now why I’m never going to have a family of my own.’

  It was Ellie’s turn to frown. ‘I’m not sure I do.’ He knew exactly how bad it could be when a child didn’t feel loved or safe. Surely he was the best person to be able to give them everything they needed. He was prepared to do it for Jamie, who wasn’t even his own child, if something terrible happened to her.

  ‘Things can happen,’ Luke said, as if he’d overheard her last thought. ‘What if I got married and had a kid and I wanted to take my wife away for a romantic weekend, say, and I could because we had hired the best nanny...’