‘You did exactly the right thing,’ Daniel said soothingly. He glanced at Emma, hoping his feelings didn’t show. Maybe it was foolish to feel upset but he couldn’t help it. In a tiny corner of his heart, he had nurtured the hope that their love could have overcome any obstacle. Even though he hadn’t been prepared to take that risk, it had been something to cling to, but now he could see how stupid it had been. His relationship with Emma would have ended the same way as his parents’ had done if they had stayed together.
‘We need to know how much longer the ambulance is going to be,’ he said with a heavy heart.
‘I’ll get onto Ambulance Control and see if they can give us an update,’ Emma offered immediately.
She left the bedroom and Daniel turned his attention to Sarah again, relieved to have something to focus on apart from his aching heart. ‘Has the bleeding stopped now?’
Sarah shook her head, her pretty face clouded with worry. ‘No. In fact, I think it’s got worse in the last ten minutes or so.’
‘I’ll just take a look, if that’s all right with you.’
Daniel drew back the bedding, struggling to hide his dismay when he saw the bright red pool that had collected on the sheets. He fetched the foetal stethoscope from the pack of emergency medical supplies and listened to the baby’s heartbeat. It was slightly slower than it should have been but not worryingly so, which was a relief. He had just finished when Emma came back and he could tell immediately that it wasn’t good news when she beckoned him over to the door.
‘What’s happened?’ he demanded.
‘Apparently, the ambulance has had a puncture. They’re waiting for the breakdown truck, so Ambulance Control has dispatched a second vehicle.’
Daniel rolled his eyes. ‘Which means we’re starting from scratch. It could be another hour before an ambulance gets here.’
‘It looks like it.’ Emma looked at Sarah. ‘How is she?’
‘She’s lost a lot of blood. I’m going to set up a drip, which should help, but I’m not happy with the way things are going.’
‘How about the baby?’
‘Foetal heartbeat is slightly slower than I would like it to be. We’ll need to keep a close check on what’s happening.’
‘It looks like a placental abruption, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s my guess too. At least part of the placenta has become detached from the wall of the uterus.’ He sighed. ‘If we were able to perform an ultrasound scan then we could tell how bad the abruption is, but at the moment we’re batting in the dark.’
‘What’s going on, Doctor? I may not have seen a human baby being born before but I’ve delivered umpteen lambs and I know this isn’t normal.’
Daniel turned when Harry came to join them. The farmer was obviously worried and Daniel led him out onto the landing. The last thing he wanted was to upset Sarah any more. ‘The bleeding could be a sign that the placenta has become partially detached from the wall of the uterus.’
‘But why?’ Harry demanded. ‘Sarah’s been fit as a fiddle up to now, so why on earth should this have happened right out of the blue?’
‘It’s impossible to say. These things just happen sometimes and there’s no explanation as to why.’
Daniel glanced back into the room. Emma was bending over the bed while she inserted a cannula into the back of Sarah’s hand. Her face was set with concentration, even though she must have performed the procedure many times before. Daniel felt a wave of emotion wash over him as he watched her. He might regret having to let her go but he knew that he would do the same thing all over again. He simply couldn’t bear it if Emma ended up hating him for ruining her life.
Emma could feel Daniel watching her but she didn’t look up. She felt too emotionally raw to take that risk. Had Daniel ever regretted breaking up with her? she wondered as she taped the cannula into place. Had he ever missed her? Even though she knew how stupid it was, she couldn’t help wishing that he’d felt something.
Sarah moaned softly, clutching her stomach, and Emma quickly returned her thoughts to what was going on. ‘Are the pains coming at regular intervals?’ she asked, placing her own hand on the woman’s distended abdomen.
‘I don’t know … they seem to be coming closer together,’ Sarah murmured.
Emma kept her hand on Sarah’s abdomen and felt it tense as her uterus contracted. There was no doubt in her mind that Sarah was in labour. She reached for the foetal stethoscope and checked the baby’s heartbeat, frowning when she discovered how slow it was. It was a sign that the baby was in distress and that they needed to take immediate steps to help it. She beckoned Daniel over to the bed.
‘The baby’s heartbeat has dropped. We need to deliver it as soon as possible.’
‘A Caesarean section, you mean?’
‘Yes. I know it’s not ideal to do it here, but we don’t have a choice,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t disagree with her. ‘Even if the ambulance arrives in the next few minutes, it will take at least another hour to get Sarah to hospital. That’s way too long in my opinion.’
‘You’re right, we can’t afford to wait that long.’ His dark brows rose. ‘It’s been ages since I did my obstetrics rotation. I assisted with a couple of sections then but I’ve not done any since. How about you?’
‘I did one a couple of weeks ago,’ Emma told him.
‘Great! You lead and I’ll assist.’
It was all arranged with the minimum of fuss. Although it made sense for her to take the lead in view of her surgical background, Emma was a little surprised that Daniel had suggested it. It certainly didn’t gel with the idea of him wanting to cover himself with glory, did it?
There was no time to dwell on the thought, however. Emma unpacked the emergency medical supplies while Daniel explained what they were going to do. Sarah and Harry were naturally concerned, but once Daniel had told them that their baby was in distress, they agreed to go ahead. In a very short time, everything was organised.
Emma draped the bed with clean sheets while Daniel attended to the anaesthetic. Harry showed her where the bathroom was so she could scrub up. Daniel did the same and then they helped each other glove up. Harry had elected to stay with his wife so once Emma had swabbed Sarah’s abdomen with antiseptic solution, she set to work, knowing there was no time to lose.
Daniel handed her a scalpel, standing back as she made a horizontal incision just above the bikini line.
Any qualms she may have had about carrying out the procedure soon disappeared as she focused on what needed doing. Within a very short time she was able to lift the baby out of Sarah’s womb and hand it to Daniel, who wrapped it in a clean towel and carried it over to the chest of drawers that was doubling as an examination table. There was a moment when they all held their breath and then the baby cried, a tentative sound at first that soon grew louder.
‘Congratulations!’ Emma smiled at the couple. ‘You have a lovely little boy.’
‘A boy?’ Harry repeated. He appeared completely shocked after what had happened and stared at her in confusion. ‘We decided that we’d wait until the baby was born to find out what it was, but we were convinced we were having a little girl. Are you sure it’s a boy?’
‘Oh, yes, there’s definitely no mistake about that. He’s got all the necessary bits and pieces,’ Emma replied with a laugh. She delivered the placenta and checked that there were no bits missing from it then set about stitching up the wound. Daniel brought the baby over to the bed while she was doing so.
‘So who gets first go at holding him?’ he asked.
‘Sarah,’ Harry said promptly. He bent and kissed his wife tenderly on the cheek. ‘If it wasn’t for Sarah, we wouldn’t have this little fellow.’
Daniel placed the tiny mite in his mother’s arms, smiling as he watched Sarah pull back the folds of towel to perform the age-old ritual of counting his fingers and toes. Emma looked away when she felt a lump come to her throat. Once upon a time she had imagined just such a scene
, only the baby whose toes were being counted had been hers and Daniel’s. That was how much she had loved him, enough to want to give him a child.
Tears stung her eyes as she busied herself, stitching up. Even though she was over him, it still hurt to recall how much she had once loved him. She had wanted the whole lot with Daniel—marriage, motherhood, years and years of happily-ever-after as a family.
Would she ever have a family now? she wondered suddenly. Ever experience the joy of holding her own child in her arms?
She tried to picture it but it was impossible to imagine a life not dictated by her work. It made her question if she was right to devote every waking minute to her job, and it was worrying to be beset by doubts. For the past five years her work had been what had kept her centred, what had given meaning to her life, but all of a sudden she found herself wanting more, a life that wasn’t shaped by the demands of her profession, and it was unsettling. However, the worst thing of all was that it was being around Daniel that had triggered such thoughts.
It was an effort to push it to the back of her mind as she finished off. She made Sarah comfortable and then Daniel helped her clear everything away. By the time they’d finished, the ambulance was pulling up outside. Sarah was reluctant to leave the house at first until Emma gently explained that she and baby Thomas needed to be checked over in the hospital’s maternity unit. Although little Thomas appeared to be fit and healthy, technically he was premature, and Sarah herself had lost a lot of blood: it would be foolish to take any risks at this stage.
She and Daniel waited while the family were loaded on board the ambulance then they got into the car and followed it back to the main road. It roared away, taking the opposite direction from where they were heading.
‘All in all, I’d say that was a good night’s work, wouldn’t you?’
Daniel’s voice echoed with satisfaction and nothing else. If he’d experienced even a fraction of the anguish she had felt earlier then it certainly wasn’t apparent, Emma thought sickly as she murmured her agreement. Maybe they had never discussed having children but in her mind the two were linked—when you loved someone, you wanted to have a child with them. It proved beyond any doubt that Daniel’s feelings for her hadn’t been what he had claimed. Although she should have felt glad that she was rid of him, oddly enough it hurt to have yet more proof of the way he had lied to her.
Daniel knew that he would remember that night for a long time to come. Seeing little Thomas make his appearance in the world had touched him in a way he had not expected it to. All he’d been able to think about was how wonderful it would have been if he’d been watching his own child—his and Emma’s son—being born.
He glanced at her as they reached the outskirts of the town but she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were closed, although he didn’t think she was asleep. Had she been moved by tonight’s events, wondered how it would have been if it had been their child? He doubted it. Emma had made her feelings perfectly clear when she had told him that she was glad they had parted. She certainly wasn’t wasting her time by thinking about what might have been!
A feeling of dejection swept over him as he drew up in front of the house. He’d known it would be difficult to see Emma again when he had agreed to run the practice, but he had never imagined that he would feel this wretched. The only way he could hope to get through the coming weeks was to forget what had happened in the past and focus on what was happening at the present moment. And the one thing that was crystal clear was that Emma had moved on.
Daniel followed her into the house and headed straight for the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea in the probably vain hope that it would give him a much-needed boost. He hadn’t expected Emma to join him and looked round in surprise when he heard her follow him into the room. ‘Would you like a drink as well?’
‘Please. I don’t know if it’s the excitement of what happened tonight or the fact that all that travelling has upset my body clock, but I’m too wide awake to sleep.’ She tossed her coat over a chair and went to the cupboard. ‘I wonder if there’s any hot chocolate. Ah, yes, there it is.’
She stood on tiptoe to try and reach the jar of drinking chocolate but it was just out of her grasp. Daniel crossed the room and lifted it down off the shelf. ‘Here you go, shorty,’ he said without thinking.
‘I’m not short, just tidily packaged,’ she retorted, as she’d done so many times when he had teased her about her height.
Daniel felt the blood rush to his head. He remembered only too well what came next, how he would apologise for the supposed slight with a kiss. His eyes flew to Emma’s face and his blood pressure zoomed several more notches up the scale when he saw that she too remembered what had used to happen. Whether it was that or the fact that his emotions were already in turmoil he didn’t know but all of a sudden he found himself bending towards her until he was close enough to feel the moistness of her breath cloud on his lips.
‘Emma.’
He wasn’t sure if he actually spoke her name out loud or not. He was beyond hearing by that point, beyond everything including reason. What did it matter if he had just resolved to forget about the past? It wasn’t a sin if he changed his mind, was it? All he wanted was to feel her lips under his once more, taste their sweetness, savour their warmth and softness. One kiss was all he asked for, just one kiss to stave off the pain that was gnawing away at his heart. Surely it wasn’t wrong to allow himself this one brief moment of pleasure?
His head dipped until merely a millimetre separated them. Daniel could feel the heat of her skin now, smell the scent of the soap she’d used. Memories crowded his mind but he no longer needed to recall the past when he had a chance to create a whole new delicious present.
His mouth touched hers and the shock of the contact almost brought him to his knees. He could feel the blood rushing through his veins like liquid fire, feel the heat that invaded every cell in his body, and groaned. His hands lifted as he went to draw her closer so that he could feel the soft curves of her body moulding themselves against the hardness of his, but he never got the chance. With a tiny cry of alarm, Emma pushed him away and ran from the room.
Daniel leant back against the worktop, needing its support as all the strength suddenly drained from his body. He desperately wanted to go after her but he knew it would be the wrong thing to do. Maybe he could persuade her to let him kiss her again—possibly even do more than kiss her—but it wouldn’t be fair. Perhaps there was still some vestige of attraction between them, but it didn’t alter the fact that he could so easily ruin her life even now. Emma needed to focus on her job now more than ever or she could end up losing everything she had worked so hard for. Nothing was worth that risk, certainly not his own selfish desires.
Emma slammed the bedroom door, scarcely able to believe what had happened. She wanted to blame Daniel for it but she was too honest to claim that she hadn’t been partly at fault. She had wanted him to kiss her, wanted it so much that her cheeks burned with shame. Hadn’t she learned anything from past experiences? Did she really want to find herself right back where she’d been five years ago, her life in tatters, her heart broken?
She pressed her fist against her mouth to stem the sob that threatened to escape it. She refused to cry, refused to risk her hard-won composure by breaking down. So what if she had been tempted for a moment? She had come to her senses in time, hadn’t she? If anything, it proved that she could handle this situation. Daniel’s kiss may have been tempting but she had realised the risks, assessed the damage it could cause, and taken steps to stop what was happening. She should be proud of herself for what she had done.
The thought steadied her. She quickly undressed and got into bed, pulling the quilt up to her chin. It was gone midnight and she needed to get some sleep if she hoped to be fit enough to help out at morning surgery.
The sound of footsteps climbing the stairs made her eyes fly open. She hadn’t thought to ask Daniel which room he was using and found herself holding
her breath as she waited for him to reach the landing. The house was large and there were a number of empty bedrooms, including the room next to hers.
Her breath whooshed out in relief when she heard his footsteps fade. He was obviously using the guest room, which was on the opposite side of the house. For some reason, she felt safer knowing that he wasn’t sleeping in the room next to hers. She had resisted temptation once tonight and she didn’t intend to put herself to the test again. She might not like the idea, but she had to face the fact that she might not have the strength to hold out a second time.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘THAT’S excellent news. Thank you for letting me know. Yes, of course. I’ll pass on your message.’
Daniel replaced the phone and leant back in his chair. Morning surgery had ended and he’d been getting ready to go out to some house calls when Harry Groves had phoned to tell him that Sarah and baby Thomas had been given a clean bill of health by the consultant at the hospital. Harry had asked him to pass on the news to Emma, which he would do, but he needed a few minutes’ breathing space before he sought her out.
He sighed as he tipped back his chair and stared at the ceiling. The memory of what had happened the previous night had continued to haunt him. He kept remembering that kiss and how sweet it had been, even though he knew how stupid it was. He had made a mistake by kissing her and he had no intention of repeating it, so it would be better if he put it out of his mind; however, it was proving to be easier said than done. Every time his thoughts wandered, he could feel Emma’s mouth under his and it was driving him mad!
‘Ruth said there’s quite a lot of calls to do today, so do you want me to help?’
The sound of Emma’s voice almost made him tip over the chair. Daniel hurriedly returned it to all four legs as he turned towards the door. He’d made a point of leaving the house extra early that morning so it was the first time he’d seen her that day. Now he found his senses running riot as he took stock of her slender figure encased in a neat grey skirt and a crisp white blouse. It may not have been the sexiest of outfits, granted, but it definitely did something for him.
Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle Page 19
