He frowned. There was something familiar about them and then he recognised Emma’s brothers, the ambulance officers he’d seen nearly every day, bringing people into Emergency, in civilian clothes.
‘What’s happened?’ He indicated two beds side by side in the little ward and both men lay down with relief. Tammy covered them with light sheets before she began to check observations. Emma avoided his eyes.
He watched her twist her hands as she glanced from one blond-haired man to the other and not once did she look at him. ‘I think it’s dengue.’ She spoke to the curtain behind his head and he resisted the urge to move into her line of sight. He needed to concentrate on what she was saying, not how she was saying it.
‘You know Russell and Craig, my brothers. Seamus and the boys fish together once a week. It seems some mosquitoes have been sharing the dengue from before Seamus came down with it. When I came home this afternoon I found them like this, waiting for me. I’m hoping it isn’t the fever but they’ve both got sky-high temperatures.’
Gianni expected it was. He’d seen a few cases that week and he could make a good guess. He looked at Emma, drank in the sight of her, and thankfully she seemed healthy if a little pale. ‘And you? Are you well?’
She nodded. ‘So far. I’ve been using repellent every day since Seamus came in.’
‘Good.’ Gianni nodded, relieved. ‘I, too. We will have to remind those not doing so.’ He felt Russell’s pulse. ‘I’m inclined to agree about their symptoms, but we’ll do bloods, of course. We will have the results after lunch. Perhaps you would ring Andy as Medical Director, and he can get onto the media to remind the public about using repellent if he decides. It seems we have an epidemic. We will look after your brothers.’
She nodded, relieved to have something to take her mind off her siblings and the other problem she’d buried deep and wasn’t facing, and dialled Andy’s number. Before she could get back to see how they fared, another woman and her father came in, complaining of the same symptoms.
By the time Andy arrived, Gianni had assessed three more people with similar symptoms. His dark sculpted face turned grave, and Emma watched as he explained to the senior medical officer about the new cases.
Emma stayed to help Tammy, and both women assessed, treated and transferred patients to the new dengue ward in a previously closed section of the hospital. Always in the back of her mind was the awareness of Gianni. Dark head bent over a frail, grey-haired lady, his capable hands cradling a small child’s ankle, his flashing smile as he shook hands on a patient’s departure. So tall and caring and clever with his diagnoses, and his orders so clear and concise that working as a nurse beside him could have been a pleasure if it wasn’t for the spectre of her secret that hung between them.
She’d avoided him for a week and what had that solved? Nothing. When the rush was over this time she didn’t try and slip away without seeing Gianni.
She smiled ruefully at his surprise when she waited for him at the door. ‘It’s good to finally see you, Emma.’ Gianni raised his black brows. ‘I thought you had moved to another planet.’
She gave a strangled laugh. So he’d noticed she’d avoided him. ‘I seemed to just miss you all the time.’
‘That is what I thought,’ he said sardonically. So he hadn’t been misled. ‘Why don’t you come in and say hello to Louisa?’ he suggested as they walked out the front of the hospital. ‘Tell her about our day. Is your daughter home from school yet?’
‘Grace visits her other grandmother tonight.’ And Emma’s brothers in hospital meant no visitors would drop in. With all that had happened, that seemed too much to bear. She was over being alone with her thoughts.
She didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’ll pop in and see her. Thank you.’ And Louisa would be there to chaperone, she reassured herself. She’d come to the conclusion her weakness for Gianni was worse than the dengue, and she was vibrantly aware of how little a dose of Gianni she needed before her symptoms of infatuation could get out of control.
Darned shame she couldn’t find a repellent for that, though the worry of the secret that lay between them was a pretty good deterrent to getting up close and personal.
A week had passed since that momentous afternoon, and she’d arrived at a semblance of calm—in the way of an ostrich—and decided to wait before any decisions were made about sharing her news with anyone. Especially Gianni.
And on Wednesday she’d gone for the last counselling visit because it had already been scheduled and she’d forgotten to cancel. The blood had been taken but the results would be held until the time she might screw up her courage for the truth. Though the confirmation of her pregnancy made her less keen for a decision.
None of that was for discussion, and she’d be careful. This was just a supervised visit to see how Louisa was.
They crossed the lawn, both intent on their own thoughts, and Emma broke the sombre silence. ‘So how is Louisa?’ The poignant memories of their first walk to the kitchen seeking the widow settled over them like mist and dampened the afternoon sunshine.
‘I think she’s okay. She smiles, mostly at my appetite, which is apparently much greater than her late husband’s. I must admit she is gifted with food and we are sharing recipes.’ He shrugged. ‘I think my coming here even for a short while has been an excellent thing for both of us. I feel more settled than I have for a long time.’
Emma turned her face and poked her tongue out at the idea that at least he was feeling settled, then looked back at him with assumed calm.
He patted his barely discernible stomach. ‘And well fed.’ He shrugged his impressive shoulders, and she tried not to remember the feel of them under her hand. ‘My life revolved around my work,’ he said, then gestured to the lake. ‘And this is a whole new setting. Although without the fever patients, it would be more relaxing.’
She had to smile at that and glanced at the vista over the lake. The view shifted her thoughts, thankfully. She had a sudden memory of the lyrebird’s song to them that morning with Gianni, and the peace from that moment stole over her.
‘I like the people here,’ he went on, and she returned to the present. ‘Even the sick and their families are warm and friendly.’
His words reminded her of his wonderful manner with patients, and how good she believed he’d be with birthing mums. ‘You haven’t even had a chance to be with us for a birth yet, have you?’
He shook his head. ‘When this craziness with the dengue settles, I hope to have the chance to see you at your work, if I can catch you.’ He glanced at her. ‘Hopefully I’ll get the time before I leave.’
She needed to remember he was going. ‘When do Angus and Mia get back?’
His eyes crinkled with his affection for Angus and his wife, and she was surprised at how the ache in her heart pierced deeper. ‘They make me smile to see them together.’ He shook his head at some memory he didn’t elaborate on and then remembered her question.
‘Sorry. A little over two weeks. They wish to spend a week in Paris before they come back. They tried to convince Louisa to meet them there. But she will not leave.’
‘Paris. Mia will love that.’ She guessed Gianni had seen Paris and a lot of other places she hadn’t visited. He was in a different league from her. Travel wasn’t on Emma’s agenda. Especially now.
Maybe in twenty years. When her ‘children’ were grown. Oh, God. If she didn’t have the gene…
She couldn’t imagine such a time but the moment was coming when she needed to face that fear and find out once and for all. But she couldn’t do it now.
When they entered the kitchen Louisa looked up with a warm smile at her unexpected visitor. ‘Emma. How lovely to see you.’ She looked at Gianni and shared her smile with him. ‘And how was your day, young man?’
Emma stifled the urge to laugh. ‘Young man’ made him sound like a schoolboy and he was far from that, though the smile he gave Louisa gave a glimpse of the carefree boy he must have once been.
&nbs
p; ‘We must be fed,’ he whispered to Emma, and Gianni moved to the kitchen table and held the chair for Emma, who had no choice but to sit. To Louisa he said, ‘My day has been busy, like every day since your stepson left. I think it is a conspiracy to get all of his work out of the way before he returns.’
Obviously Gianni and Louisa had no problem communicating. This was a different side to the man she knew. Where had this playfulness come from?
‘Tut. To earn your keep. As you should.’ Louisa winked at Emma and turned back to the stove. ‘Now, I’ve just boiled the jug and have scones, fresh from the oven.’
‘I will be fat,’ Gianni stated as he reached for a scone.
‘Pshew.’ Louisa looked at Emma. ‘He runs every morning along the lake.’ She looked at the pile of scones. ‘I’ll bundle up a few for you to take home, Emma. Keep them in the freezer for guests. Those brothers of yours are always dropping in at your house.’
The conversation turned to Russell and Craig’s admission to hospital and the prospect of further cases to come. The health department was sending out an assessor and relief staff were coming in.
Half an hour passed swiftly and Emma realised that, apart from work, she’d needed a dose of the outside world, and conversations other than those repeating in her brain. Slowly, in Louisa’s kitchen, she began to feel less desperate and disconnected. She hadn’t realised how alone she’d felt in the last week rushing from work to home, obsessed with dodging Gianni.
It was good to sit beside him, buffered by Louisa, having a normal conversation and not living in dread. It was good to see the everyday side to him that Louisa saw.
‘It’s a crisis for a small hospital like ours,’ Emma was saying when the phone rang.
Louisa shoed Gianni away from it as he went to stand. ‘Have your tea,’ she said.
She answered the phone herself then she looked across at them. ‘Yes. Gianni’s here and actually Emma is, too. You want her?’ She handed the phone to Emma. ‘It’s Montana.’
Gianni watched Emma’s face, having missed her with an aching need that grated with a rawness he hadn’t expected. Now he could see her he felt more settled. Then he saw her frown and glance at him. He hoped Montana’s call was not going to take her away from him now that he had finally managed to capture her company.
‘I’ll come straight away,’ she said, and Gianni frowned. There must be something wrong.
‘Montana needs a quick hand. A post-partum haemorrhage with a birthing mum.’
‘I will come, too,’ he said, but he was speaking to Emma’s back and he hurried to catch her as she strode swiftly across the grass to the rear of the hospital where the little birthing centre was situated.
When they arrived Montana had removed the new mother from the bath and returned her to bed. It would be hard to tell the extent of a bleed in the bath but from the little he’d seen of her, Montana was no careless attendant and would have moved swiftly at any deviation from normal.
The woman’s husband, Trent, sat with his shirt off and his new baby skin to skin against his chest. A blanket lay across his shoulders as he looked on helplessly. Calmly Montana massaged the woman’s belly to encourage the uterus to contract.
Post-partum haemorrhage, most often due to the failure of the uterine muscle to clamp down on the richly blood-vesselled bed inside the uterus, could bleed at an alarming rate. The husband certainly looked alarmed, and Gianni could well imagine thoughts that would run through a man’s brain as his wife seemed to be in such danger in front of him.
Like watching a woman die from snakebite miles from any help. Gianni had watched Maria’s life slip away, but there was little risk of that here with what was available, so he nodded with empathy to the man as he passed him. ‘All will be well.’
The woman, Elise, appeared pale and shocked, and Gianni swiftly inserted the second intravenous cannula that Montana offered him, and took the bloods for the clotting factors and cross-matching she wanted.
Emma loaded and hung the Syntocinon flask, the drug most often used to help the muscles of the uterus contract, and gave ergometerine as a separate injection. Montana continued to rub Elise’s uterus though the skin of her belly, and gradually the flow slowed to a trickle and finally stopped completely.
Gianni and Emma’s eyes met with relief and Emma slid the blood-pressure cuff over Elise’s arm while Montana took the woman’s pulse as she looked at Gianni. ‘It started slow, so wasn’t too bad before we got out of the bath, but it flowed once we made it to the bed.’
‘Pulse is ninety-eight.’ She stripped off her gloves and brushed the hair out of her eyes. ‘Thanks for coming, both of you.’
‘No problem. It’s always easier with more hands,’ Emma agreed, and let the cuff down. ‘BP’s eighty-five on forty-five, but that should pick up now the other fluids are running in.’ Elise smiled feebly and Emma glanced at the woman’s husband. ‘You okay, Trent?’ Emma knew them both from antenatal classes.
He wiped his face shakily with his hand and glanced down at the baby snuggled into him. ‘I guess. I just won’t look at the blood. And this little bloke seems happy. You guys are amazing. I’m glad we decided to have our baby here and not at home.’
Emma smiled. ‘The midwife would have had the same gear in her kit, but it’s easier to get help here, certainly.’
Trent nodded. ‘I could see Montana had it under control, but more hands do it quicker.’
‘And that’s enough excitement for today,’ Montana said, ‘so we’ll keep a good eye on Elise to make sure she doesn’t do anything else interesting.’ She and Emma tidied up around Elise and re-checked her observations before they unglued her new son from his father’s chest and shifted him onto his mother.
Gianni stood back and watched the calm and unhurried arrangement of baby and mother and glanced around the now tidy room. This was such a different birth setting from those he had seen in Italy. Very quiet. Very understated with technology, yet prepared, in case help was needed. They’d obviously practised their emergency drills to work so seamlessly and swiftly. He would enjoy learning more about the way the centre, and especially one midwife, worked. He hoped he’d have the chance.
He glanced at Emma as she watched the mother attach her baby to the breast and was surprised to see such a broken look on her face. His heart clenched at the raw pain he could see, and unconsciously he moved closer to her, but as soon as he shifted the spell was broken. She cast him a glance of pure panic and turned away.
Montana thanked them; it was time for them to go, and they left her and the new parents to enjoy their baby. Gianni regretted that the fragile truce between Emma and himself had somehow been severed. He had the impression she would run from his side if she could.
Once they reached the path outside the hospital grounds he lifted his hand to stay her and she flinched, a reaction that sent the pain from her aversion shooting through him. What was this? What had happened? ‘Emma?’
‘I have to go,’ she said hurriedly, and turned, and as he’d feared she would, she fled. Gianni watched the distance between them grow rapidly, and with increasing suspicion he allowed the wheels in his mind to begin to turn.
Her daughter was away and she would be alone. Perhaps tonight was a good time for Emma and him to talk.
Emma knew Gianni would come. Would find her while she was by herself. She contemplated briefly visiting Montana or Misty so that he wouldn’t speak to her while her defences were down. Because that was what had happened today.
She bunched the hair on the back of her head into her fists and closed her eyes. It was all so complicated and tragic, and she was sick and tired of the endless circles that had been spinning in her head for a week.
Of the subterfuge of avoidance, which had been difficult enough while she’d had birthing women but would be impossible when she had to work in Emergency.
It was time to be open. She wasn’t a coward and despite the complications he might prove to add, she felt she had no right to keep
Gianni in the dark about his own child. She’d just needed time to get it straight in her own head first.
It might have been easier if she didn’t like and admire Gianni. If like was all it was. She was so aware of him. So attuned to his thoughts and his moods and his intentions that she suspected there was more than like involved. But she couldn’t love him. Had promised herself she wouldn’t fall in love. Had been so sure little harm could come of letting down her guard once. Well, she knew better now.
When Emma opened the door, Gianni couldn’t help notice the skitter of panic in her blue eyes and wondered how he had caused such negative emotion in this woman, the last person he wished to hurt. It seemed there was a lot for them to discuss.
But he would go if she wished. ‘Will you speak with me, Emma?’
‘Come in,’ she said, though the words didn’t echo her actions because she didn’t step back immediately to allow entry. Perhaps it was too much to ask. He hesitated but then she did move away from the door and turned and walked from him into the house. Immeasurably relieved, he followed.
He’d been under the impression they’d agreed to think only good things of what had lain between the two of them but something was wrong. Something had changed.
Emma stopped in the family room and turned to face him but didn’t sit down as she hovered indecisively in the middle of the room. ‘Why are you here, Gianni?’
‘Why?’ He tried to understand her mood. The mixed signals she sent and the emotions in her blue eyes. He realised that reading unspoken sentiment from women was not something he was skilled at. ‘Because something is wrong. Why are you afraid of seeing me? Talking to me? Afraid of me?’
She sighed and he heard the weight of exhaustion in her voice. She sounded so tired. What was wrong with Emma? Was there some other medical condition he knew nothing of?
She lifted her hand and held her throat. ‘I’m not afraid of you, Gianni. At times when I’m with you I feel the safest I’ve ever felt.’
Midwife in the Family Way Page 8
