Anger boiled up inside him again, but he subdued it.
“I’m trying to convince Sophie to have an abortion, but at this point she insists she’s having the child,” he said stiffly. “In that case, a private adoption seems reasonable. I’ll be doing my best to convince her of that option.” He hadn’t really made up his mind, but he said it anyway.
Adam nodded, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, his blue eyes troubled. “Look, if it’s a case of adoption, Peggy and I want to raise the baby. None of us could sleep nights thinking it was being raised by strangers.”
Luke wasn’t sure he could himself, but he didn’t say so. Adam waited, and when Luke didn’t comment, he said, “This is Jason’s kid as much as Sophie’s, Luke. I think you’re making a big mistake, not allowing him to see her, to take responsibility.”
Luke’s fists balled, and his voice was hard as steel. “There’s to be no contact whatsoever between them. Nothing will change my mind about that. You can remind Jason that if he were one year older, I’d charge him with statutory rape.”
Adam got to his feet “Damn! I wish you’d stop being such a hard-ass about this, Luke. Jason’s young, he’s made a serious mistake and he knows it. I’m not making excuses for him, I just figure we’ve all made mistakes in our lives. You’re dead wrong not to let the kids face this together. It would do that boy of mine a lot of good to support Sophie during her pregnancy, to be there when the baby’s born.”
“Not in my lifetime.” Luke gritted out the words between clenched teeth.
Adam shrugged helplessly and shook his head. “Okay, it’s your call, but it seems to me Sophie needs all the support she can get right now, and all of us would help out however we could if you’d only let us.”
Luke didn’t reply.
Adam shook his head in frustration. “By keeping them apart you’re letting Jason off the hook, you know.”
“I won’t have him around my daughter, and that’s final.”
“Then I guess there’s not much left to say.” Adam sighed. “You change your mind at anytime, let me know.”
The door closed behind him, and Luke was pathetically grateful when the phone rang, summoning him to the hospital to deliver a baby.
Morgan was sleeping too deep even for dreams when the phone began to ring. Usually, she was awake and alert in an instant, but this time she couldn’t manage it. She finally got her hand around the receiver and mumbled a groggy greeting.
“Morgan? It’s Luke. I’m over at St. Joe’s, one of my patients just delivered.”
Why the heck was he waking her up to tell her that, she wondered in irritation. She squinted at the bedside clock. One forty-five.
“Morgan, they’ve just brought Tessa Hargraves up from Emerg. Apparently she’s had some sort of, ummm,” he hesitated, then added, “Some sort of accident.”
Morgan came fully awake and made a shocked sound in her throat. “Is she bad?”
“She’s not badly injured, but when she arrived her membranes had already ruptured and her cervix is dilated seven centimeters.” Concern was evident in the tone of his voice. “She’s in advanced active labor and there’s strong indication of fetal distress.”
Morgan’s heart thumped, and sick dread made her stomach hurt.
Chapter Six
“Please, Luke, tell her I’ll be right there.”
Morgan could hear his voice as he added something, but she dropped the phone, shoving her legs into jeans and pulling on the shirt she’d worn the night before as her frantic mind tried to make sense of too few facts.
An accident. Probably a motorcycle accident, damn that stupid, irresponsible Dylan!
Not badly hurt, but in premature labor, too far advanced to stop with drugs.
Morgan added swiftly in her head. The baby was thirty weeks. It should be safely past the age of viability, but she knew from ultrasound that the fetus was small—IUGR—intrauterine growth retardation. Tessa’s baby needed more time in the womb.
Luke had said there was fetal distress.
They’d need a miracle.
She tore down the stairs and into the garage, and within moments she was in the Jeep, speeding like a demented race-car driver through the quiet Vancouver streets.
At St. Joe’s, she ignored the ancient, slow elevators and tore up the stairs. Bursting through the wide doors leading to the delivery rooms, the first thing she heard was the muffled sound of someone screaming hysterically from one of the case rooms, and she knew in her heart it was Tessa.
“Delivery Room 4. Dr. Gilbert’s with her.” Juliet, the labor room nurse, was always the epitome of calm, but now her huge liquid eyes were somber in her exotic, dark-skinned face. There was no need for her to ask why Morgan was there. All the nurses knew Morgan. The obstetrical team were like her family, and of course they knew all about Tessa.
Feverishly impatient, Morgan pulled on her gloves and opened the case-room door on a scene of controlled chaos. She waited as Juliet tied on her surgical gown, barely able to tolerate the necessary delay. From where she stood she could already see that the monitor showed fetal deceleration, which meant that delivery had to be imminent. The baby was in trouble, and it had to come out fast
Tessa was hysterical, in the throes of a contraction, wailing as she thrashed around on the short delivery bed. Two nurses, also Morgan’s friends, were doing their best to calm her, and Luke was positioned between her widespread legs.
A neonatal specialist, Aaron Landry, hovered nearby.
Morgan hurried to the table and bent over to whisper to the girl. She’d learned long ago that whispering to patients often forced them to focus outside, instead of being totally caught up with what was happening inside their pain-ravaged bodies.
“Tessa,” she breathed. “Tessa, sweetie, I’m here. Now calm down, it’s gonna be okay. We’re all here to help you, but you have to concentrate and do your job, too. Remember how we talked about this?”
Morgan’s whispering at last did the trick, and Tessa turned her head toward her, her eyes wild and pupils dilated, but at least she stopped struggling.
Morgan smiled at her reassuringly, stroking the girl’s hair and assessing the damage the accident had done. There was a shallow cut on Tessa’s forehead oozing blood, and the thin, bare arm closest to Morgan was scraped raw, with gravel imbedded in the cuts.
What troubled Morgan was Tessa’s left eye. The tissue surrounding it and the temple area were already discoloring, but there was no sign of gravel or scraping on her cheek. The eye looked as though it had connected with a fist.
“My baaby, my baaaby. It’s too sooon.Pleeease do something, Morgan, pleeease,” she keened, and Morgan’s heart contracted with pity and love.
“Just work with us here and do as we say. We’re all going to help, honey,” Morgan instructed her in a calm voice, forcing a reassuring smile. “Keep your eyes open now and stay focused,” she said. “That’s a good girl. Breathe through this contraction. Breathe, breathe....”
Morgan guided Tessa with her own breaths.
“Head’s presenting. Next contraction will do it. You’ve got to push when I say, Tessa,” Luke urged, and the words were barely out of his mouth when the next contraction began.
Tessa’s eyes bulged with pain and panic and strain, and Morgan continued to talk quietly into her ear.
“That’s it sweetie. Push into your bum now as if you’re having a big BM. Good girl. Push now, push....”
“Push, push, push.” The entire team joined in the litany, and with deceptive slowness, the tiny head appeared, rotated, paused, and then in one bloody rush, Tessa’s daughter was born.
She was alive but impossibly tiny, flaccid and grey, dangerously still. Luke clamped the cord with deft fingers and handed her swiftly to Aaron, but Morgan had seen enough babies to know when there was little hope. This little girl was flat.
A Code 333 went out, the emergency code that meant a baby was dying, and Aaron raced with her to an adjoining room whe
re specialists would try everything medical science had to offer in an effort to save her.
Tessa was frantic. “Is she okay? Where did they take her? Why didn’t she cry? Is my baby okay, Morgan? Please, please let my baby be okay.”
Tessa’s agonized voice tore at every single nerve cell. Morgan struggled to keep her tone optimistic. “We’re trying, honey. We’re doing everything we can.”
But at last Aaron came back in and shook his head, and the silence in the room brought an agonizing, endless scream from Tessa. She knew her baby was gone.
Morgan was the one who tenderly bathed the tiny body, dressed her in a white sleeper, wrapped her in a soft blanket and took her in to Tessa.
Morgan had also performed the nurse’s painful task of taking pictures of the baby, recording hand and footprints, snipping a lock of the silky fair hair. The pain in her heart was terrible, but she damped down her own sorrow, wanting only to do whatever she could for Tessa and for the precious little girl that would never grow.
At first, Tessa was frightened when Morgan brought the baby in, but Morgan laid the small, still bundle in Tessa’s arms and encouraged her to look at her daughter, knowing that Tessa needed to hold her, even give her the name she’d chosen, Kyla Jean. Tessa couldn’t properly grieve for a baby she’d never seen or held, and Morgan knew that grieving was essential if the girl was to recover from this tragedy.
With shaking fingers Tessa drew the blanket back and looked down at her daughter’s face. Ever so slowly, she laid her on her lap and unwrapped the blanket.
“She’s beautiful, just the way I knew she’d be,” Tessa said, and Morgan’s heart felt as if it were breaking.
The nurses kept holy water, and together Morgan and Tessa stroked a few drops across Kyla’s minute forehead, naming her. The pastor from Morgan’s church would come and formally baptize her, but the private little ceremony was comforting.
Morgan stayed at Tessa’s side while the girl held her baby. Tessa didn’t cry. Instead, she examined Kyla’s tiny, perfect hands and feet, admired the shock of golden hair on her well-shaped skull.
Morgan noted that Tessa didn’t once ask for Dylan or even mention him. Morgan had slipped out for an instant and asked Juliet to see if Dylan had been with Tessa when she was admitted to Emerg. Juliet confirmed that there’d been no sign of him. Tessa had been brought in alone, by ambulance.
When Tessa as last agreed to allow Juliet to take away the baby, Morgan sat holding the girl’s hand as she gradually succumbed to the mild sedative Luke had ordered. She still didn’t cry, and as the drug took hold, Morgan finally risked asking the necessary questions.
She stroked the girl’s hair and forehead with gentle hands, her voice soft.
“What happened tonight, honey? Dr. Gilbert said you had an accident. Did you fall from the motorcycle?” Morgan needed to know the truth. “Can you tell me how it happened, Tess?”
Tessa nodded, her eyes fluttering shut, and Morgan felt her shudder. “I fell, not off the bike, though. Down these cement steps, at the side of the theater. Dylan was having a smoke there.”
Morgan gently touched the puffy eye, now turning black and blue. “And is that how you got this, falling down the steps?”
Tessa hesitated, tears at last sliding out from beneath her closed lids before she slowly nodded, and Morgan, sick at her soul, knew she was lying.
“Dylan hit you, didn’t he, sweetie?” Morgan had to make Tessa acknowledge the awful truth.
Tessa’s face crumpled and now the tears began in earnest. “We...had a fight. He didn’t mean for me to fall, I know he didn’t. He kept saying he was sorry.” She sobbed weakly, and Morgan tenderly used a cold cloth on her eyes and cheeks, but she was filled with such a tremendous fury her hands trembled.
Tessa at last slid into exhausted sleep, and Morgan made her way to the staff lounge and slumped down on the old couch, gradually allowing the utter exhaustion and the terrible sorrow she’d held at bay for hours to finally claim her. The events of the past few hours had been painful beyond belief, and she’d had to subdue her own feelings so as to comfort and help Tessa.
Now, those suppressed emotions rose to the surface, and Morgan began to tremble. The memory of the perfect, delicate little baby’s body brought a sob to her throat, and she bent forward, head on her knees, and opened her mouth wide, crying aloud for the baby who’d never had a chance to live.
She sobbed and gulped and choked, aware that she was making a terrible noise and not caring. After a long while, the pain eased a tiny bit and the trembling subsided.
Her eyes were still streaming and she needed to blow her nose. She lifted her head to look for a box of tissue and realized Luke was standing just inside the door. She hadn’t heard him come in, and she didn’t have energy enough to even care whether or not he’d witnessed her grief.
Silently, he reached into his trousers pocket and handed her an ironed and carefully folded white linen handkerchief.
Too drained to politely refuse, Morgan took it and wiped her eyes. It didn’t seem right to blow her nose on such pristine splendor, but she did anyway, twice.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice thick and hoarse with crying, her words catching in her throat. “I’ve lost them before, but this is the worst I’ve ever had to go through. It...it feels like losing my own baby. Oh, Luke, I never get used to it. Do you?”
He didn’t ask what she meant. His face was somber, and he shook his head slowly. “No. I never do, either. I can’t believe anyone could. Losing a baby, or a mother, is my worst nightmare. What happened in there is our worst nightmare, all of us.”
He sank down on the sofa beside her, hands clasped between his knees, head bent so his dark hair fell forward.
“She...she was such a beau-beautiful baby, such a perfect little girl, wasn’t she?” Morgan could feel sobs rising inside her all over again, and she pressed a hand to her mouth to try to choke them back, but they erupted anyway, and she cried helplessly, hands pressed to her burning face.
“She was beautiful. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Morgan. Bloody hell, I’m so sorry.”
Through the choking sobs and the tears, she felt his strong hand on her back, rubbing clumsily back and forth in a soothing rhythm, and her devastation was so great that she turned instinctively toward him, aching for simple human comfort. She rested her head on his shoulder and let her heartbreak run its course, using his handkerchief to blot her eyes and blow her nose again.
That was when she realized with utter shock that she wasn’t the only one crying. She was so surprised her own tears dried, and she lifted a tentative hand to touch his wet, rough cheek.
Luke Gilbert, cool, remote, always composed, was struggling to maintain some remnant of control, but his eyes were streaming, the muscles in his throat and jaw working feverishly to subdue what he was feeling.
He swore viciously and screwed his eyes shut, and then a wordless sound of utter agony burst from his throat as he buried his face in his hands.
His desolation pierced Morgan like an arrow. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, the natural healer in her needing to give comfort, to ease the awful pain that must have given rise to that terrible sound, this awful grief.
She could feel his entire body trembling convulsively, and then his strong arms came around her in one quick desperate motion, sweeping her close against his chest and holding her there, clutching her so hard she could barely breathe.
For an instant, she was enveloped in an embrace familiar to her from countless half-remembered dreams. He smelled clean, of hospital soap and some pleasant kind of aftershave. He was all corded muscle and sinewy strength. She felt the quivering of nerves tensed to withstand the barrage of emotion, and she was aware of a raw physical power in his large body that the elegance of his clothing concealed.
He gained control of himself at last. For one long, heart-stopping moment, she felt him press his face into her hair. Unable to resist, she raised a hand and touched his cheek, noting the
faint roughness of his beard, the elegant bones beneath the skin.
At her touch, he disengaged himself gently and pulled away. He leaned against the back of the sofa, head tipped back, eyes closed. He drew in a long, shuddering breath, then blurted, “Morgan, my daughter, Sophie, is pregnant, just like Tessa was.”
Morgan couldn’t have been more surprised. She gaped at him, unable to say a word, and he continued in a flat, ragged tone. “She’s about Tessa’s age, only a baby herself, and... Oh,damn it all, Morgan, damn it to hell, I simply don’t know what to do! I’m alone with her, I’m bloody useless as a parent.” Anguish tinged his voice. “She isn’t even speaking to me at the moment, I don’t seem to be able to say anything to her that doesn’t cause a row.”
Morgan continued to stare at him, stunned speechless. When she found her voice, she could only stammer, “Oh, L-Luke, I’m s-so awfully sorry.” Suddenly many of his actions took on a whole different meaning. “How...how far along is she?” The practical query masked the waves of shock and shame Morgan was feeling over the way she’d judged him.
“Fifteen weeks.”
“Fifteen weeks. Nearly four months,” Morgan repeated, feeling stupid. She couldn’t seem to make her brain work; she couldn’t think what to say to help him. Over the past weeks, she’d constructed an elaborate, harsh persona for Luke in her imagination, trying to talk herself out of the emotions he aroused in her. Now, in these few moments, he was demonstrating how very wrong she’d been.
She was ashamed, mortified at her own selfish interpretation of what she now realized must have been a superhuman effort on his part to conceal terrible anxiety.
“Four months, so there’s still time for an abortion. Is she considering that option?” Morgan detested the procedure but had to acknowledge the practical necessity in certain cases.
Luke shook his head. “I suggested it, of course.” He shrugged helplessly. “She refused point-blank. She won’t hear of it. She insists she wants to have the child.”
The Baby Doctor Page 6
