“Hopefully, it won’t be long before you don’t need help with your breathing,” Nadia murmured. “Maybe by then we’ll have found out whether the two of you have inherited your daddy’s gorgeous green eyes and…”
A soft sound behind her had Nadia glancing over her shoulder straight into the eyes in question, these ones sporting a definite gleam of amusement.
“Gorgeous green eyes?” Gideon repeated teasingly, and Nadia felt the wash of heat sweep up from her throat and into her face.
“I…” She had to stop to clear her throat, as her brain frantically searched for something to say that would minimize the embarrassment of the situation. “I always talk nonsense to the babies so I don’t give them a shock when I touch them.”
His raised eyebrow told her he didn’t buy her garbled excuse. Then he laughed, and those gorgeous green eyes crinkled at the corners.
She couldn’t help smiling back, but she absolutely refused to think about the strange squiggly feeling that she got deep inside when he looked at her that way.
Dear Reader,
I come from what we in Cornwall sometimes call “a long family,” with brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces galore. At the last big family get-together there were nearly sixty of us in four generations!
Every one of them is gorgeous—not a duff one in the pack. But somehow there is something extra special about the most recent delivery—twins.
It was soon after I learned that they were on their way that I did some research and learned of all the possible problems that carrying and delivering twins could cause, and suddenly Gideon’s story was born.
But it could never be just Gideon’s story, no matter how perfect his tiny babies were. Their little family wouldn’t truly be complete without Nadia in it—if only she wasn’t so afraid to trust him with her battered heart.
It was fascinating writing about these two as they learned about each other and slowly gained the confidence to trust each other, eventually falling in love and forming the perfect family.
Enjoy their journey as much as I did!
Josie Metcalfe
A FAMILY FOR HIS TINY TWINS
Josie Metcalfe
A FAMILY FOR HIS TINY TWINS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
HE WAS way beyond tired and should have been in bed and sound asleep hours ago, but the fear inside him wouldn’t let Gideon close his eyes.
It was totally irrational, he knew, but somehow he was convinced that if he so much as took his eyes off those two tiny bodies for an instant, one or both of them would stop breathing.
‘Twenty-six weeks!’ he murmured in disbelief, shaking his head at how unbelievably tiny they were.
How could this have happened? The pregnancy had been progressing perfectly normally, as far as he had known.
Normally?
Ha! That was a joke.
Absolutely nothing about the existence of these babies had been normal, right from the first. And now there was the minute-by-minute danger that their tiny lungs would just be too underdeveloped to take the strain, or their hearts would fail, or, worst of all, they would suffer a catastrophic cranial bleed and never know the joys of a healthy normal life.
‘Dr West?’ said a quiet voice at his side, the soft hint of an accent telling him that it was the nurse who’d been taking special care of his babies since they’d been brought into the unit. What was her name? Nadine? Natalie? No, Nadia. That was it—a name with a touch of the exotic, like her accent and the slight tilt to the corners of her eyes.
‘Yes?’ He glanced up into those soft hazel eyes, but quickly returned his gaze to watching the all but naked bodies sharing the isolette.
There was so much about them that reminded him of the utter vulnerability of baby birds, newly hatched from their shells, their skin so thin and so nearly transparent that he could swear that he could see every one of their veins through it.
‘You need to take a break,’ Nadia said, and he was almost amused by the edge of authority she tried to infuse into the words. It must be more difficult than usual for her to try to hand out orders when the person she was speaking to was a doctor in the same hospital, even though they didn’t work in the same department.
‘I’m all right,’ he insisted, and realised that his voice sounded almost rusty from disuse. How long had he been sitting here, beside the clear plastic cot that held the fragile remnants of so many of his dreams?
‘You are not all right,’ she insisted in her turn. ‘Dr West…’ She paused with a huff of annoyance. ‘What is your name? I cannot keep calling you Dr West every time I want to speak to you, not for all the months you are going to be visiting the unit.’
Months! He nearly groaned aloud.
The thought that this torment would last that long was too much to contemplate at the moment. It was almost a relief to be asked a question about something as ordinary as his name. Not that it was an ordinary name, thanks to his mother’s sense of humour. While other parents chose to honour relatives or even geographical places with a namesake, he had been named after a certain book in the bedside drawer of the hotel where he’d been conceived.
‘Gideon,’ he said bluntly with a brief glance up at her delicate features just in time to see a swift frown pleat her forehead. ‘But most people just call me Doc or West.’
‘Gideon,’ she repeated slowly, totally ignoring the alternatives he’d offered, and it was almost as if she were tasting the word…trying his name out in her mouth.
A totally inappropriate jab of awareness struck him, the first in such a long time that he couldn’t remember when the last time had been. It had certainly been long before Norah had walked out on their marriage.
‘I have never met anyone with this name before,’ she said with a sudden smile. ‘It’s unusual…but strong. I like it.’
To his surprise, he found himself returning the smile, somehow feeling as if he’d just managed to reconnect with the world around him.
‘Gideon, listen to me,’ she said, her expression returning to the look of concern she’d been wearing earlier. ‘You know that this situation isn’t going to get better in one day, or even one week. Here, in this unit, is not like your department. In A and E you maybe see a patient for five minutes or, at most, a few hours before you send them home or admit them to one of the wards. Here, a patient can be with us for months, and the journey will be hard…very hard. So, it is important for the parents to take care of themselves properly so that they don’t become sick, because, we need you to be strong enough to help us to take care of your babies.’
‘So, if it’s important for me to be here for the babies, why are you trying to make me leave?’ He knew he was probably being argumentative for the sake of it, but that was what fear and exhaustion seemed to be doing to him…turning a normally rational man into one who picked a fight because of a totally irrational fear that his babies would die if he wasn’t there.
‘Because you need a break,’ she said firmly, obviously having no intention of backing down. ‘You need some food and to stretch your legs. And you need a shower and a change of clothes.’
That startled a brief burst of laughter out of him.
‘I look and smell that bad?’ he challenged, and was fascinated to see the swift wash of a blush sweep into her cheeks.
‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I only—’
‘It’s too
late to apologise now,’ he said as he forced himself to straighten up out of the torture of the plastic chair. ‘You’ve wounded my feelings. I shall go and find some clean clothes.’
‘And don’t come back until you’ve had some sleep, too,’ she said as he started to make for the door of the unit, even as he tried to keep those two precious little bodies in sight right up to the last second.
‘That will be the hardest part,’ he admitted quietly, surprised to hear himself voicing his fears to someone who was little more than a complete stranger. ‘I won’t be able to sleep until I’m sure they’re safe…that they’re not going to die.’
‘Then you are going to be one very tired man,’ she pointed out. ‘It could be weeks or even months before we can be certain of that.’ But he somehow knew that she understood what he’d been saying and sympathised.
Nadia was relieved that the monitor attached to the smaller of her two new charges didn’t go off until their father was out of earshot.
‘Otherwise I would never have got him out of here, would I, little man?’ she murmured as she swiftly checked each of the myriad leads that coiled away from the tiny bodies.
‘Aha!’ she exclaimed softly as she disentangled one of them from the grasp of a minute hand as gently as possible, always remembering that when they were this premature their skin was as fragile as wet tissue paper. ‘So, little girl, you wanted to see how quickly I would react when you pulled your brother’s sensor off, did you? Well, I spotted it right away, so you needn’t think that I’m going to let you get away with that trick a second time.’
She applied a thin strip of adhesive tape to the offending monitor to make absolutely certain that it couldn’t happen again when their father was there. Otherwise, as tightly wound as he was, she might end up having to resuscitate him.
‘Not that it would be a hardship,’ she whispered, more to herself this time. He was a good-looking man with his dark hair and startling green eyes, and when he’d smiled…
She shook her head sharply to banish such crazy thoughts. Apart from the fact that he was a married man with two vulnerable babies, she wasn’t interested in how good-looking any man was. She had barely survived her last encounter with one, and had no intention of risking that again any time soon.
That man had also been the reason she’d moved to a city as large as London and changed her name, hoping that she would never be found among so many millions.
In her own country, to have tried to earn her living in such a job as this would have made her easily traceable, especially for someone with Laszlo’s connections. Here, because she’d been willing to study and work so hard, she’d been able to gain more and more qualifications. Now she’d achieved her dream and was looking after the tiniest patients imaginable, smaller even than her own daughter had been when she’d been born.
If she had been living here then, would little Anya have been saved? She smiled sadly at the pointless question because, of course, if she’d been living here, her daughter wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
‘So, now you are just a sad memory, my precious girl,’ she whispered, heartbroken as ever by the fact that she didn’t even have a photograph as a memento. ‘And now I take care of other babies in your name so that their mothers and fathers will not know my heartache.’
‘What do you find to talk about all day?’ Staff Nurse Jenny Barber asked, her blue eyes as inquisitive as ever as she tried to come to grips with all the finer details of her new placement. ‘Every time I look across at you, you’re saying something to them. Do you really think they’re listening?’
‘I’m sure of it,’ Nadia said with quiet certainty. ‘There are few mothers who do not talk to their unborn child, and for many of those whose babies have to come here, it is impossible for them to be with their child all the time. So I talk to them so they will not forget that there is someone here who cares for them, even if my voice is not the one they are accustomed to.’
‘You don’t think that there’s so much noise in here—with all the monitors and so on—that it’s just one more sound to bombard them?’
‘Not if I use the right tone to my words,’ Nadia replied, as ever keeping that tone soft and gentle so that she didn’t startle the babies with sharp or sudden noises. Their hearts were working hard enough already, without having to cope with sudden spikes as their systems were flooded with adrenaline with each shock.
‘How are they doing?’ asked Josh Weatherby, the unit’s consultant, even before he’d finished scrubbing and gloving and tying on a disposable apron.
‘Good, so far,’ Nadia confirmed, and had to stifle a smile when she saw that his hair was ruffled and his shirt less than perfectly tidily tucked into the waistband of his suit trousers.
Obviously, something had finally happened between him and the newest doctor on the unit’s team. And about time, too. It had been almost painful seeing the way he and Dani Dixon had been surreptitiously watching each other with longing in their eyes while trying to behave in a properly professional manner.
She stifled a brief pang of envy for their happiness, but she’d known for a long time that she would never experience such feelings for herself—her past had made certain of that.
‘Hmm,’ Josh murmured as he studied the latest figures and test results. ‘These would definitely have been much better at twenty-six weeks gestation if they hadn’t been twins. And we’re going to have the usual problem stabilising their oxygen levels because there just wasn’t enough time to get any steroids into the mother.’
‘Have you heard how the mother is doing?’ Nadia was always concerned about the women who developed eclampsia…not just because of their clinical condition but because it could sometimes be days before they could be stabilised enough to be able to see their babies for the first time. Inevitably, that could cause problems with bonding with their children.
‘Not so good, immediately after the birth. For a while it looked as if they were going to have a serious problem with her blood pressure, because it stayed dangerously high. But it’s started to come down now.’
It fascinated Nadia to watch the way he could hold a conversation without breaking his concentration on what he was doing to one of their patients. And, for a man, he had beautiful hands. Long-fingered, almost slender, but so deft and sure in everything they did.
She was surprised to realise that she’d noticed that Gideon West’s hands were a similar sort of shape. Elegant and lightly tanned and with neatly trimmed, scrupulously clean nails, they were the sort of hands that would be a pleasure to watch, whatever they were doing, but especially when the time came to cradle one of his little babies.
‘Is something wrong?’ demanded a husky voice, and there was the man, in person.
Nadia turned and frowned when she saw him standing there, once more tying on a disposable apron.
He’d obviously showered and changed his clothes in the short time that he’d been away from the unit, and he’d even had a shave, but she doubted that he’d paused long enough to have anything to eat or drink and she didn’t need to look at the shadows under his eyes to know that he definitely hadn’t had any sleep.
‘Nothing major to report,’ Josh said easily as he straightened up from the cot, ‘apart from all the usual complications from the fact that they’ve arrived too early.’
‘And your wife’s blood pressure has started to come down,’ Nadia added cheerfully. ‘Were you able to go in to see her after you’d had your shower?’
‘She’s not my wife,’ Gideon said bluntly, and her shock at his apparently offhand manner must have shown on her face because he continued. ‘She was a surrogate, paid to carry a child for my wife and me, and had absolutely no interest in the pregnancy other than as a means to make money.’
‘But…’ Nadia couldn’t imagine any woman not becoming attached to the child she was carrying. She certainly hadn’t been able to, even considering the circumstances of Anya’s conception. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t h
ave assumed,’ she said, not believing for a moment that he was as unfeeling as he was trying to appear and wondering why there had been no mention of his wife in all the hours that he’d spent beside their children. Surely she should be here, sharing his concern for the welfare of their new family.
‘Well, whatever the circumstances, you don’t need to worry about her,’ Josh said with a reassuring smile in Gideon’s direction. ‘They’re taking good care of her up in ICU, so you can concentrate on these two. But don’t forget to pace yourself, West. You need to get as much sleep as you can because you won’t get much once you take the babies home, not for at least the first year.’
‘If I ever get to take them home,’ Gideon said as he gazed down at the frail little bodies curled up together in the single cot. ‘When they look like this…so desperately vulnerable…it’s hard to believe that they could ever survive.’
‘We’ve brought smaller ones than this through,’ Josh told him proudly. ‘And Nadia is our most experienced nurse, so we’re giving them the best possible chance.’
It was embarrassing to be spoken of in this way, but she doubted that Gideon had even heard what Josh had said, his whole concentration fixed on the strange jerky movements that one of the babies had started to make.
‘What’s happening? What’s the matter with her?’ he demanded sharply, and Nadia smiled reassuringly.
‘Relax, Gideon,’ she said gently, for the first time in her life struck by the urge to reach out to a man with a soothing hand. ‘It’s only an attack of hiccups,’ she explained, and was delighted to hear that he was able to laugh at himself for panicking.
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