The Midwife's New Year Wish

by Jennifer Taylor

  ‘I’m sure Lara will come round to the idea,’ Katie said soothingly, mentally crossing her fingers. ‘A lot of mums get it into their heads that they’re going to do this or that and find it difficult to adjust their ideas when the time comes. Fortunately, most forget their disappointment once they have their babies in their arms.’

  ‘Your middle name doesn’t happen to be Pollyanna, does it?’ He grinned at her, his hazel eyes so full of warmth that an answering warmth flowed through her body.

  ‘How did you guess?’ she said lightly because she was terrified he’d notice her response. ‘I’m one of the world’s optimists, although I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad. Looking on the bright side all the time has a tendency to drive everyone around you crazy.’

  ‘Well, you certainly don’t drive me crazy, Katie. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I wish some of your optimism would rub off on me. I could certainly do with looking on the bright side for a change.’

  Nick couldn’t believe he’d said that. Normally, he steered clear of discussing his own feelings but there was something about Katie that broke down the barriers he’d erected between himself and the world. He seemed to respond to her on a different level than with anyone else and it was scary to face that fact. It was a relief when the delivery room door opened and Lara’s boyfriend appeared.

  Nick went to meet him, deliberately focusing all his attention on the current situation rather than the way he’d been behaving recently. It was certainly grim enough to warrant it yet he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t aware of Katie when she came to join them. It took a vast amount of effort to blot out the signals whizzing to his brain, messages about how warm her skin felt when their arms brushed, how delicious the scent of her shampoo smelt. It was as though every cell in his body was suddenly conscious of every cell in hers and it was hard to behave as though everything was normal when it most certainly wasn’t, only he didn’t have a choice.

  ‘Lara told me what you said, Doctor, about the baby being all jammed inside her and that the only way for it to be born is for her to have a Caesarean section,’ John said in a shocked voice.

  ‘That’s right. Believe me, I would never advocate a section unless there was a valid reason for it and, in this instance, there is,’ Nick said firmly because he couldn’t afford to start wavering about work or anything else. ‘Bluntly, both the baby and Lara could die unless we do something soon.’

  John blanched. ‘In that case I don’t think we have much choice, do we? She’ll have to have the operation.’

  ‘Yes.’ Nick clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Everything is ready so now we just need Lara’s signature on the relevant form and we can get this over with.’

  ‘Give it to me and I’ll make sure she signs it for you,’ John offered immediately.

  Nick glanced at Katie, trying desperately to ignore the spasm that passed through him when he saw the relief in her soft grey eyes. ‘Can you get the paperwork sorted out then scrub up? I’d like you to assist me again if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Nick left her to deal with it but his heart was heavy as he made his way to Theatre. The relief he’d seen on Katie’s face had mirrored his own feelings so perfectly that it felt as though another bond had been forged between them and he knew how dangerous it was to think like that. His contract at Dalverston was for three months, with an option to stay a further three months if he and the management were happy with the arrangement.

  He’d been planning on staying the full six months because Dalverston’s obstetric department was renowned for its high standards and the experience he gained there would be invaluable to him. Now, however, Nick realised that he would have to alter his plans. There was no point making his life even more difficult when every minute he spent with Katie only seemed to increase his awareness of her so he would leave at the end of the initial three months and just hope that he wouldn’t do anything foolish between now and then.

  Larry, the anaesthetist he’d worked with the previous day, was already in Theatre when Nick arrived, and he grinned when he saw Nick coming through the door. ‘Not you again! How come you managed to draw the short straw and ended up working all over Christmas?’

  ‘Just lucky, I guess,’ Nick replied lightly, trying to clear his mind as he started to scrub up. He knew what he had to do and now he must stick to it, no matter how difficult it might prove to be.

  ‘You and me both. Makes you wonder if we’ve done something really wicked in a former life, doesn’t it?’ Larry observed cheerfully.

  Their patient arrived just then so there was no time for any more chit-chat. Nick went straight into Theatre while Larry set about anaesthetising Lara in readiness for the operation. She was having a general anaesthetic and it didn’t take long to give her the premed before she was wheeled into Theatre and transferred to the operating table.

  Katie followed her in and Nick nodded to her then determinedly turned his attention to the task at hand. This was what he was here for and everything else was inconsequential. As he made the first incision, Nick experienced a rush of relief because now he knew exactly what he was doing.

  He was saving a life—possibly two—and that was all he’d wanted to do since Mike had died. Maybe Katie did arouse a wealth of emotions inside him but he would deal with them the only way he knew—by blocking them out. It wasn’t worth all the heartache to let himself hope for anything more than he had, certainly wasn’t right to wish that Katie could become a permanent part of his life. He’d known her only a couple of days and it was far too early to start thinking along those lines.

  The night finally came to an end and Katie had to admit that she was relieved when it was time to go off duty. Although it hadn’t been a particularly busy night, it had been a stressful one. Fortunately, the Caesarean had been textbook-perfect and Lara was now sleeping peacefully in a side room while her baby—a healthy little boy—was in the nursery, none the worse for his ordeal. Katie popped in to see him before she left, smiling when she heard him crying lustily in his cot. There certainly didn’t seem to be much wrong with his lungs, although it could have been a very different story if Nick hadn’t persuaded the parents to see sense.

  She sighed as she let herself out of the nursery and walked to the lift. In the space of thirty-six hours Nick had saved the lives of two mothers and their babies. There was no doubt that he was a highly skilled doctor but she found it hard to understand him as a person. He seemed such a contradiction—joking one minute, serious the next—that it was difficult to slot him into any sort of category. Maybe she should just accept him as he was but she’d feel easier if she understood him better.

  Katie went to her room and got ready for bed, but once again she found it difficult to settle. She finally fell into a light doze around eight o’clock but was awake again by eleven and knew there was no hope of going back to sleep after that. She got dressed then decided to make herself some breakfast for a treat. There was a kitchen on each floor and, although the facilities were basic, she could at least rustle up some bacon and eggs for herself.

  She had just started frying the bacon when footsteps in the corridor made her turn round and her heart jolted when she saw Nick standing in the doorway. He was dressed in frayed jeans and a bobbly old sweater and there were dark circles under his eyes, but none of that mattered a jot. He was so drop-dead gorgeous that her insides suddenly started melting with lust and it was scary to feel this way after what had happened between her and David.

  She’d always known what she wanted from life—marriage, a family and the kind of relationship that lasted a lifetime. David hadn’t wanted any of those things but she’d allowed the physical attraction she’d felt for him to blind her to that fact so it was doubly alarming to have to deal with these feelings for Nick. It took every scrap of effort she could summon not to let him see how worried she felt when he grinned at her.

  ‘There ought to be a law against people frying bacon at this
time of the day.’ He groaned. ‘It’s nothing short of torture to be woken up by that delicious smell!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Katie cleared her throat, hoping he couldn’t tell how edgy she felt. ‘I thought I’d make myself some breakfast for a treat. Normally, I make do with a piece of toast when I’m on night duty.’

  ‘Me, too. I have all these good intentions about cooking for myself but usually I’m too tired to bother. Thank heaven for staff canteens is all I can say.’

  ‘That must be a first.’ She laughed, feeling some of her tension ease when it soon became obvious that he hadn’t noticed anything odd about her behaviour. ‘I’ve never heard anyone extol the delights of canteen food before.’

  ‘No? Then they must never have had to eat some of the meals I’ve been served over the years.’ He grinned at her. ‘If it walks, crawls, flies or swims then I’ve probably eaten it.’

  ‘Oh, yuck! I don’t think I want to hear any more. Some things are definitely best kept to yourself.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He chuckled, his hazel eyes alight with laughter, and, despite her good intentions, Katie felt her heart start to bounce around inside her chest like a ping-pong ball. ‘I could give you my recipe for iguana stew, if you like. It’s quite tasty, actually, so long as you make sure that you remove all the claws before you dish it up.’

  ‘Stop it! I’m not listening to you!’ She put her hands over her ears but he wasn’t deterred.

  ‘But I was going to tell you how to make cockroach pudding next,’ he said, trying—and failing—to look suitably hurt. ‘Are you sure you don’t want the recipe?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ she retorted, glaring at him.

  ‘It’s up to you, of course.’ He sighed reproachfully. ‘I just never imagined you’d have such a closed mind, Katie.’

  ‘It’s not my mind I’m concerned about but my poor stomach,’ she returned tartly, flipping over the bacon before it started to burn. ‘I hate to disillusion you but I like my food to come all nicely packaged from the supermarket. That way I know exactly what I’m eating.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do! Iguana stew and roach pudding are two treats I’ll happily pass on.’

  She lowered the heat under the pan then looked at him curiously. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to start delving into Nick’s past but she couldn’t resist finding out more about him. ‘How come you’ve eaten all those things, anyway? Surely it wasn’t out of choice?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t, but it’s amazing what you’ll eat when you’re really hungry,’ he said dryly, sitting down at the table. ‘I do a lot of work for that aid agency I told you about so I spend quite a bit of time abroad each year. Most of the places we work have very few resources so we share whatever supplies we have with the local people. Once all our canned and dried goods run out we have to eat whatever’s available until the next lot arrives. Sometimes it takes just a few days to get a shipment through but at other times it can take weeks, hence the rather unusual menus.’

  He tipped back his chair and smiled at her, and Katie felt her heart perform another of those crazy bouncing acts, tumbling about inside her chest so that she felt quite giddy.

  ‘You mentioned something about India,’ she said, desperately trying to appear as though nothing was happening—no mean feat in the circumstances. ‘Was that where you were before you accepted this post?’

  ‘Uh-huh. I think I told you that I was helping to set up a new maternity unit there?’ He carried on when she nodded. ‘The area where we were working is very remote so the women there have had to rely on the village midwives in the past. Birth control is virtually unheard of so most women have umpteen pregnancies during their lifetimes and, sadly, a large percentage of them end as stillbirths.’

  ‘How awful! It’s easy to forget that there are still many parts of the world where there’s no proper antenatal care available, isn’t it? We’re lucky in the UK because every single woman here has access to a range of facilities to help her during her pregnancy.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s even more heartbreaking when you think that in many of the poorer countries it’s the small things that make such a huge difference—staff who understand about the dangers of infection, for instance. Just drumming it into people that they must wash their hands and keep everything clean can work wonders.’

  ‘So that was part of your remit, was it? Setting up a code of good nursing practice?’ she asked in surprise, because she wouldn’t have expected a doctor as highly skilled as Nick to involve himself in anything so basic.

  ‘Amongst other things, yes. Good nursing practice is absolutely vital. You can have the best facilities in the world but they’re not worth a red cent if people don’t appreciate the dangers of not following the basic rules of hygiene. We were very selective about who we chose to work in the new unit once it was completed but I think we managed to get a good team together in the end. Now all we can hope is that it will make a difference to the local people’s lives.’

  ‘Do you monitor the situation or just leave it to the local staff once you’ve set everything up?’ she asked, lifting the bacon out of the pan and putting it on some kitchen paper to drain while she fried the eggs. She broke two into the pan in case Nick decided to join her for breakfast then had to take a deep breath because the thought of them sharing breakfast was a little too intimate for some reason.

  ‘We usually appoint a local physician to oversee the project,’ he explained. ‘Shiloh also sends someone out to do spot checks every so often.’

  ‘Shiloh?’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘You don’t mean Shiloh Smith, do you?’

  ‘Yes. Why? Do you know him?’

  ‘Oh, yes! He’s married to one of my best friends—Rachel Hart,’ she exclaimed. ‘She used to be the sister on the children’s ward until she left to have a baby.’

  ‘Of course! I’d forgotten that Rachel used to work at Dalverston General.’ He grinned at her. ‘Small world, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Katie agreed, smiling back. There was a moment when their eyes met and her breath caught because it felt as though she and Nick were suddenly communicating on a whole new level. It was as though they had a direct line into each other’s thoughts and it was a shock to experience this kind of closeness with him. She took a half-step towards him then stopped when he suddenly stood up.

  ‘Well, pleasant though it’s been, chatting to you, this isn’t getting my car cleaned. It’s in a real state after the drive up from London so I thought I’d better make the effort and wash it.’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t suppose you know where I can find a bucket, do you? I’ve hunted through all the cupboards upstairs but I couldn’t find one anywhere.’

  ‘I…um…Yes, of course.’

  Katie turned away and went to the broom cupboard but her hands were shaking as she opened the door. Had Nick felt that moment of closeness, too, and was that why he’d broken the spell?

  She sensed it was so and she couldn’t help feeling hurt by his deliberate rejection. She quickly crouched down and scrabbled through the contents of the cupboard because she didn’t want him to see that she was upset. If Nick didn’t want to foster a closer relationship with her that was his choice.

  ‘Will this do?’ she said, dragging out an old bucket and showing it to him.

  ‘Yes, that’s great. Thanks.’ He took it from her and went to the sink. Turning on the tap, he filled the bucket with hot water and added a dollop of dish detergent then glanced round. ‘Sorry to be a pest, but I don’t suppose you’ve got a sponge in there as well, have you?’

  ‘I’ll have a look.’ Katie delved into the cupboard again and spotted a rather ragged sponge wedged into a back corner. She picked it up then let out a shriek when a huge black spider ran over the back of her hand.

  ‘What’s the matter? Katie, what have you done?’ Nick hauled her to her feet so fast that she had to clutch hold of his arms to stop herself falling over.

  ‘I�
��m all right. It was just a spider. It ran across my hand when I picked up the sponge.’ She shuddered convulsively and he laughed softly.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re scared of spiders? I don’t believe it. No elf worth her salt is afraid of spiders!’

  ‘Well, this particular elf is!’ she shot back, glaring up at him—only somehow her scowl ended up getting sidetracked along the way.

  Katie felt a shiver of excitement dance its way down her spine when she saw the light in Nick’s eyes. He was staring at her as though she was the most wonderful sight he’d seen in a very long time, and she couldn’t begin to explain how that made her feel. When his head started to dip she could feel her heart pounding because she just knew he was going to kiss her…

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘OH, YUM! Is that bacon I can smell frying?’

  Katie nearly jumped out of her skin when Mel came bounding into the kitchen. She dredged up a smile as Nick quickly released her but she was trembling when she turned to her friend. ‘It is. I might have known your taste buds would lead you here. D’you want some?’

  ‘Please—so long as I’m not interrupting anything?’

  Katie flushed when she saw the speculation on Mel’s face. ‘Of course you aren’t. Nick was just about to go outside and wash his car. Weren’t you, Nick?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He lifted the bucket out of the sink and grinned at them. Katie felt a knot of pain grip her heart because he didn’t seem upset about the sudden interruption. Had she misread the situation, perhaps?

  ‘It’s my least favourite job, too, but as Katie has very kindly found me a bucket, I’ve no excuse now not to get it done.’ He dropped the sponge into the soapy water then saluted them smartly. ‘Farewell, sweet ladies. ’Tis a far, far better thing I do now, etcetera, etcetera.’