The Accidental Daddy

by Meredith Webber

She wanted someone, anyone, she told herself, not necessarily him.

  The pain eased and she pondered her reaction as the orderly took her inside. She’d done her obstetrics training years ago at another maternity hospital across the river, and one of the things on her to-do list in the lead-up to the birth had been to visit the maternity ward of this particular hospital.

  So much for plans!

  * * *

  Max was already there when the orderly wheeled her into what looked like a small but quite pleasant hotel room. A nurse greeted her, holding a clipboard that no doubt held all the details Joey had given the hospital when she’d made the booking. It was all so familiar, and yet so strange.

  ‘Okay?’ Max asked, and she nodded, then shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t look at the time. I should have looked at the time when I had those other contractions.’

  ‘That’s what I’m for, remember,’ Max said, smiling at her. ‘They’re fairly regular.’

  The nurse smiled at him before turning to Joey.

  ‘You get yourself comfortable and I’ll do a quick examination of you and the baby, then you can walk or sit or lie down, you can stand under the shower, or sit in a bath—whatever makes you feel relaxed.’

  She lay on the bed for the examination, the pregnancy book dropping out of her pocket as she pulled up her top. Max grabbed it and sat down in a chair beside the bed, watching the nurse, taking note of the squiggles she was making on the chart.

  ‘You’ve not had many contractions?’ the nurse asked, when she’d checked the dilatation of Joey’s cervix.

  ‘Nine,’ Max told her, counting them in his head.

  ‘Well, you’re doing well to be three centimetres dilated. Shouldn’t be too long a job.’

  ‘Does she think that’s reassuring?’ Joey demanded of Max when the young woman had left the room.

  He smiled at her.

  ‘In my experience, doctors make the worst patients,’ he said.

  ‘And what is your experience?’ Joey asked, realising that not only would it pass the time to learn about this man but that she was actually interested.

  ‘My basic skill set consists of tropical and emergency medicine mainly,’ he said. ‘But shouldn’t we be reading the book rather than talking about me?’

  ‘Bother the book. You climb snow-covered mountains yet you’re into tropical medicine?’

  ‘I’ve climbed mountains in Africa and South America too, but I was born in North Queensland, and although the most common of the tropical diseases spreading into Australia is dengue fever, other viruses and parasitic diseases are sneaking in. It’s also useful for travel medicine, which is a growing field.’ He hesitated. ‘I have a job offer coming up later this year—a lecturing and research position at the Sunshine Coast University, and working in their travel clinic. I might...’ He hesitated. ‘I might even take it.’

  ‘Giving people jabs before they go overseas?’ Joey teased. ‘That’s tough stuff!’

  ‘And finding out what’s wrong with them when they return,’ Max retorted. ‘That’s becoming my main interest—working out how we can build a barrier of protection. People forget how easily something like the SARS virus could enter Australia and spread through the population.’

  But he realised Joey had stopped listening, as he saw her face tighten and she reached for his hand.

  ‘I think I’m better standing,’ she muttered, and he helped her up, then he stood so she could lean on him as the pain gripped her.

  Forget that she wanted conversation, he wanted to read the book. He wanted to know what to do to help her as much as he could, to ease her pain as the contractions ripped through her body.

  He waited until she relaxed again, checked the time, then suggested she might like, as the nurse had suggested, to walk.

  She nodded and strode towards the door, Max having to hurry to get there before her to open it and then slide his arm around her shoulders to give her support as she walked.

  He held her close, liking her warmth, assuming she was comfortable with his closeness as she was nestling into him, clutching him when pain struck, accepting his support.

  ‘Keep talking,’ she’d ordered, and he obeyed, rambling on about the spread of new diseases, about the recent tests of a possible AIDS/HIV vaccine and its importance, speaking briefly of his work with emergency response units, while his mind was totally focussed on the woman who leaned on his arm.

  Four passes up and down the corridor, nodding at another walking couple each time they passed, then Joey needed the bathroom, informed him she was perfectly capable of peeing by herself, and left him to flick hurriedly through the book.

  ‘Look,’ he said when she emerged, ‘you can sit backwards on a chair and rest your belly and head like this—would that be comfortable?’

  ‘Not right now!’ she told him, her grasp tightening on his hand once more while she leaned her head against the wall and rode the wave he’d been reading about. He rubbed her back, following advice he’d read and offering more.

  ‘Sigh as the pain goes up, then breathe deeply at the top, then a big sigh at the end,’ he told her, and she waited until the contraction had passed before she turned to glare at him.

  ‘I think anyone who didn’t sigh at the end would be out of her mind!’

  He smiled at her reaction but was undeterred.

  ‘You should rest in between. Sit down, lie down, whatever is best, that’s why Fiona suggests the chair. I’ll get the pillows, you might even doze.’

  To his delight she actually settled on the chair, a pillow against her belly, another under her head on the top of the chair-back.

  ‘Not bad,’ she said, albeit grudgingly. ‘Now talk!’

  Max stood beside the chair, rubbing his hands in Joey’s hair, massaging her scalp, her neck and then her back, and talking, talking, talking.

  He edited a lot of what he was saying, as the years he’d spent working in Africa had revealed illnesses and diseases that had horrified even him. Not mentioning he was due to go back to Africa in a less than a month, as one of the medical personnel involved in the AIDS/HIV research, or the on-call ERU stuff he’d been doing since the rescue in the Himalayas.

  Of course he couldn’t commit himself to this baby—not with the life he led. What had he been talking about earlier? Where that stupid marriage idea had come from, he couldn’t think.

  But the child would be his, for all it was only accidentally so.

  Could he not commit to it?

  He talked on, massaging, walking with her, torn apart by his contrary thoughts, because as well as the child, now he’d met her. Could he walk away from this woman who’d come so unexpectedly into his life?

  This very special woman...

  * * *

  At some stage night turned into day. Joey, her dark hair clinging in damp tendrils to her whitened cheeks, clung grimly to Max’s hand, sipping at the ice he offered her, accepting his ministrations as he mopped the sweat from her face, soothing her with touch and words.

  Her silence through the process staggered him. Apart from muffled groans, the occasional swear word and regular demands he talk to entertain her, she bore it all so stoically he had been suffering lumpy-throat syndrome for the last couple of hours.

  ‘Do you want to catch the baby?’

  Max was so fully engrossed in urging Joey to push he barely heard the midwife’s words, let alone made sense of them, and when he did, he could only wonder.

  He looked at Joey, saw her nod, and moved to stand beside the midwife, gazing in awe at the smear of dark hair on the crowning head, the shoulders turning as they slid out, then a tiny, slippery baby boy was in his hands, and he was trembling with the wonder of it.

  The midwife took the baby, settling him gently on Joey’s breast, her hands co
ming up to cradle the little scrap of humanity she’d carried for the last eight months.

  ‘A boy,’ she said softly, looking up at Max, her eyes as full of awe as his must be.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  She shook her head, tears now streaking down her cheeks.

  He sat beside her, his arm around her shoulders, the two of them gazing in wonder and delight at the new arrival.

  ‘You’ve a bit more to do yet, Mum,’ the midwife said, ‘but first we’ll get Dad to clamp the cord.’

  ‘Mum? Dad?’ Joey mouthed at him, smiling in spite of her exhaustion, but Max was beyond worrying about what the midwife called him. He was about to separate his baby from his mother, and a new little life would begin.

  * * *

  Checked, weighed, measured and with his mother cleaning up, Baby—

  Baby what?

  Joey was still in the bathroom when this occurred to Max.

  Hospitals always called the baby by his or her surname but Baby what? McMillan or Winthrop? Obviously Joey would be thinking McMillan—

  Did it matter?

  He knew it shouldn’t, but in his heart he knew it did. This was his baby.

  The cynic who’d obviously been resting during the labour returned to mutter a dry, ‘Oh, please!’ but Max was beyond caring what the voice was saying.

  This was his baby.

  And just thinking it brought the doubts crowding back into his head.

  Just how reliable could he be in the father stakes?

  Worse than his own father?

  Max hoped the squirmy feeling in his stomach was tiredness.

  And the nurse was already writing Baby McMillan on the card that would slot into crib and on the identity bracelet the infant would wear in hospital.

  Of course it didn’t matter, Max told himself. The baby isn’t going to know what he was called in hospital and with the baby’s surname and Joey’s the same, he wouldn’t go to the wrong mother for his feeds.

  Joey emerged from the bathroom, the dark circles under her eyes vivid against the paleness of her skin.

  ‘You need to rest,’ he said, and she found a smile.

  ‘So must you,’ she said. ‘I guess it’s been a kind of unexpected twenty-four hours for you.’

  Unexpected?

  Life-changing more like, but exhaustion had caught up with him and when she suggested that the bed was big enough for both of them to lie on, he took her up on it, settling on one side, thankful hospitals like this one now catered to fathers as well as mothers in the birthing suites.

  ‘I’ll take him to the nursery where the paediatrician will check him out. The paediatrician is due in shortly,’ the nurse told them. ‘Once he’s been, you can have the baby rooming in, probably as soon as you wake up.’

  She wheeled the baby out and Joey rolled to face Max on the bed.

  ‘I didn’t thank you,’ she said, reaching out to touch his shoulder. ‘You were wonderful. I couldn’t have done it without you.’

  He took her hand and kissed it.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for allowing me to be part of his birth.’

  And he held her hand between them on the bed and watched her eyes close as she drifted off to sleep. Fourteen hours of labour—she’d done so well he felt a pride in her that was really quite ridiculous, considering the fact that, although she’d just given birth to his son, he didn’t know her at all.

  Yet laying beside her on that bed seemed right—as if capricious fate had finally put him down in the place where he was meant to be...

  * * *

  She was sleeping deeply when he woke a couple of hours later, and he slid carefully off the bed and went out to the bathroom he’d discovered in the corridor some time during the night.

  He looked a wreck. From what he could remember of the drive, the serviced apartment he was renting wasn’t far away—across the river but probably within walking distance. He splashed water on his face and although he knew he should go back there, shower and shave and tidy himself up, he didn’t want to leave the hospital.

  Leave the baby.

  Or Joey...

  Which—and he had to agree with the cynical voice—was ridiculous.

  He was telling himself to get moving when he remembered Joey’s concern that there might be something wrong with the baby.

  How could he have gone to sleep before the paediatrician had checked the baby out?

  The nurse had given the tiny boy a good Apgar score, but the paediatrician?

  Forget cleaning up. Max went in search of his son.

  No sign of Baby McMillan in the nursery.

  He asked the first uniformed person he found.

  ‘He’s in Special Care—nothing serious, but they’ve got him on oxygen for the moment. He could have inhaled a little meconium during the birth.’

  ‘Can I see the paediatrician?’ Max asked—yes, asked, although he’d have liked to have made the question more forceful.

  ‘He’s with the baby now. I’ll take you through.’

  She led Max into a kind of glassed-in alcove off the main nursery.

  Not Intensive Care, then, was Max’s first thought, checking out the area that was set up for special care, a big comfy chair set up beside each crib.

  ‘Max Winthrop? What the hell are you going here? Last I heard you were scaling mountains in very inhospitable places.’

  Bob Jenkins had trained with Max in North Queensland, and finding Bob in charge of the baby brought immediate relief, even though Max had no idea of Bob’s ability as a paediatrician.

  ‘He’s mine,’ he told Bob, ‘and, yes, he’s Baby McMillan but he’s mine as well. Joey had a lot of fluid, and her obstetrician, who’s off holidaying somewhere, was concerned during the pregnancy.’

  ‘It’s in the notes,’ Bob told him. ‘He’s presenting okay, but I’m about to do an ultrasound just to make sure.’

  Max looked at the tiny mite in what seemed like far too large a crib. He was wearing nothing but a very small nappy—he must tell Joey—and had wires and tubes attached all over him. Nothing Max hadn’t seen before, but on a very small baby the electrodes to measure his heart rate and breathing looked enormous while the monitor strapped to his foot was probably for blood oxygen levels, not a shackle to prevent his escape.

  The size of him, the tubes and wires, caused pain in Max’s heart and it was hard to tell himself he would feel for any newborn in the same situation.

  ‘I’ll go and see if his mother is awake and come back,’ he told Bob, only too aware there’d have been no mention of him in the notes Bob had read, and his old friend must have a dozen questions—not to mention be in an ethical dilemma in case Max had no rights at all where Baby McMillan was concerned.

  Joey was still sleeping, looking so peaceful, so relaxed, a little smile on her lips as if her dreams were sweet. He should let her be. She’d need to be as strong as possible in case she had to handle any bad news.

  He hit his head with the palm of his hand, telling himself to get with it. He’d missed more nights’ sleep than he could count, so why was he getting uptight?

  Because something about this woman had cast a spell on him?

  Of course not, it was because this was not only a defenceless baby, but it was his defenceless baby, that’s why. Good grief, what was he going to be like when the kid went to school for the first time?

  And that thought made him pause!

  Was he really considering being a full-time, hands-on father?

  Would that be possible?

  Or would giving up all the work he loved doing, make him as unhappy and dissatisfied as his father had been?

  Why had he told Joey about the job offer at the Sunshine Coast? He had no intention of taking it—did he?
<
br />   He had no answer to any of the questions, just an immediate need to be with the baby while the scan was done.

  And Joey should be there as well.

  He sat on the bed beside her and gently shook her shoulder, quietly saying her name.

  Her eyes opened, hazy at first, looking up at him, smiling.

  His stomach somersaulted, and his heart leapt about like a startled deer. Even when his mind should be fully focussed on the baby.

  Of course he’d be a hopeless failure as a father.

  ‘Max?’

  Concern had wiped away the smile and as she struggled to sit up, he found some common sense and helped her, holding her around the shoulders.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he assured her, ‘but the paediatrician’s with the baby now and I thought you’d like to be there while they checked him out. They’re doing an ultrasound.’

  She all but leapt off the bed.

  ‘It’s okay—he’s waiting. I’ll take you there.’

  He put his arm around her and when she didn’t seem to mind, he left it there, guiding her back to where the portable ultrasound machine was set up beside the crib—the screen of its laptop providing the image.

  ‘Just in time,’ Bob said.

  He greeted Joey, the two of them recalling the times they’d met before, exchanging courtesies.

  ‘You’ll know all this,’ he said to Joey, ‘but I’ll run through it for the bloke you’re with, who’s more into weird diseases than neonatal problems.’

  Joey nodded, but she remained pressed against Max’s side, showing no objection to his arm around her shoulders.

  If anything, she was pressing closer.

  ‘Do you remember any of your neonatal paediatrics?’ Bob was asking him. ‘See here!’

  He pointed to what looked like two small white balloons—one bigger than the other—in the baby’s abdomen.

  ‘Double bubble,’ Joey breathed.

  ‘A sure sign of duodenal atresia,’ Bob confirmed.

  Joey reached out to touch the baby, and Max could feel the quiver of fear running through her.

  ‘But it’s easily fixed?’ he said to Bob, possibly too forcefully but wanting to offer Joey some comfort, while lessons learned long ago came rushing back into his brain.