The Midwife's One-Night Fling

by Carol Marinelli

  She had meant to get another one, but she was always running out of time in between work and Richard. Still, after her shift today she had two days off. She would get on with sorting out the flat then.

  God, imagine being here without him, Freya thought as she sat on the Underground and looked at the endless faces that refused to acknowledge her and the eyes that flicked away the second the mistake of eye contact was made.

  * * *

  It was another busy late shift, and close to the end of it she turned at the sound of her name.

  ‘Freya. There’s a phone call for you. Private.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Very deliberately, Freya had left her mobile in her locker. The only people she could think of who might call her at work were her parents.

  Tentatively she picked up the phone. ‘Freya Ross speaking...’

  ‘Freya?’

  If ever the sound of your own name could drench you in ice, it did then to Freya. There was a begging tone in the voice that sounded like a final grab for a rescue rope.

  It wasn’t her mother, it was Alison, and Freya knew only too well the inflection of her friend’s voice when it was laced with fear.

  ‘I didn’t want you to find out from anyone else,’ Alison said, ‘but Aunt Shona’s already put something on social media and I’d rather you heard it from me...’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I’ve had a bleed,’ Alison said. ‘I’m having tests, and Dr Campbell says that I might I have an abrupt—’ She stumbled over the word.

  ‘An abruption.’

  This might well be serious and Freya felt sick.

  And angry.

  And scared.

  But she held in her fears as Alison spoke again.

  ‘They’re not sure where the bleeding is coming from, but apparently I have an irritable uterus and they’re monitoring how the baby is faring.’

  ‘Are they looking to deliver?’ Freya asked, and knew her voice had that odd, distant note she saved for Alison these days.

  ‘Not at this stage,’ Alison said, ‘but they’re monitoring me, and might transfer me from Cromayr to Edinburgh, if needed. Freya, I’m so scared.’

  ‘I know you are, but sometimes bleeds happen. It doesn’t necessarily mean—’

  ‘Freya!’ Alison interrupted. ‘Can you come?’

  Her request was unexpected. Welcome, yet unexpected. They were best friends, and yet somehow Freya had felt Alison might want her to stay away this time.

  ‘Of course I’ll come,’ Freya said. ‘I’ve a couple of hours to go on this shift and then I’m off for a couple of days. I’ll turn my phone on now and you can call me if anything changes. If you’re transferred, tell Callum to let me know and I’ll come straight in to see you at Edinburgh. I’ll be there in the morning.’

  ‘Is everything okay, Freya?’ Stella asked as she hung up the phone.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘My best friend’s pregnant and she’s had a bleed and has been admitted. She lost a baby last year, so I’m going to head home at the end of my shift. I’ll take the train.’

  ‘Do you need me to take a look at the off-duty?’

  ‘I should be fine. I’ve got a couple of days off.’

  ‘Well, the night staff will be arriving soon, and there’s enough of us on if you want to go.’

  As their conversation was ending Richard arrived at the desk. He dealt with some questions that Stella had for him, and then the first chance he could Richard spoke to Freya. ‘I shouldn’t be too much longer,’ he said. ‘If I run a little over can you wait in the staff room?’

  Oh, right, Freya thought. Their talk. He wanted to speak to her, and Freya was quite sure that it was about the end of them.

  ‘I can’t come over tonight,’ she told him. ‘Alison’s had a bleed and she’s asked me to go and see her. Stella’s letting me go early, so I’m just about to go home and pack and then I’m heading to Euston.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ Richard asked.

  ‘It sounds as if it’s under control,’ Freya said. ‘And if there are any further issues then she’ll be transferred to Edinburgh. I think she’s just terrified...’

  ‘And needs a friend?’

  ‘I guess... Or maybe she doesn’t understand what’s happening and wants me to translate what’s been said.’

  ‘I’m quite sure they’ve told her exactly what’s happening,’ Richard said. ‘If you can give me half an hour to sort out some cover, I’ll drive you.’

  Freya shook a head. ‘It’s fine. I’ll just go home and pack a few bits—the Tube’s just as quick.’

  ‘I meant that I’ll drive you up to Scotland.’

  She’d thought he’d meant he would drive her to Euston.

  ‘Sorry?’ She frowned, unsure if she was hearing things right. ‘Don’t be daft. You’re back on in the morning, and you’re first on call.’ Freya knew his roster as well as her own. ‘We wouldn’t even get there until then.’

  ‘It’s not daft at all,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll sort it out. Just give me some time to arrange cover.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘Freya, in the same way I’d do it for them, my colleagues will cover for me when it’s urgent.’

  He could not know how much those words meant to her.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Freya checked.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  This was unlike anything Freya was used to. She was the fixer. The one who sorted things. Even as she had hung up the phone on Alison she had already been mentally working out the off-duty roster and the train times to Edinburgh.

  And yet here was Richard, calling on colleagues and rearranging his schedule.

  Stella was marvellous too and, unasked, swapped around her next set of days off, so that she had four days off in a row.

  ‘Though if Kelly is swapping her weekend with you, then I’ll need you back for an early on Monday.’

  Freya nodded. ‘That would be great,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  She had a quick shower in the staff changing rooms, and by the time she came out Richard was ready.

  ‘All done.’

  Richard made it sound like a simple feat had been achieved. He didn’t burden her with the drama of it, he simply sorted it, and within the half-hour they were driving towards her flat.

  There wasn’t a hope of him getting a parking spot, but he said he’d drive around while she packed.

  ‘Wait on the pavement for me,’ Richard said.

  He drove around and in the end he did find a spot, beside a small café. He ordered two coffees and four pastries and then headed back to her street. She was waiting for him, dressed in jeans and a long baggy jumper with an overnight bag beside her.

  Richard negotiated the car through the traffic and filled her in with what he’d achieved while she’d been in her flat.

  ‘I booked myself a room at the Tavern.’

  ‘Why?’ Freya frowned.

  ‘Well, given your cottage is being rented out, I didn’t want you to have to go to the bother of explaining me to your parents.’

  ‘No,’ Freya said, ‘the last tenants are gone.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right—it’s on the market.’

  Except it wasn’t on the market. Because Freya had decided against it, given that she knew she was coming back once her London contract was finished.

  But she couldn’t deal with telling him that tonight, Freya thought. She would save it for when she was summarily dumped.

  Yet it didn’t feel like the end of them, Freya thought, still more than a touch stunned that Richard had changed his busy schedule just to make things easier on her.

  ‘The satnav estimates that we’ll be there at seven,’ Richard told her. ‘Maybe call when we get closer and check that she hasn’t been transferred?’

  ‘I will.’ Freya nodded. ‘I’ll pop in and see her when I get there, if she’s still in Cromayr Bay, though I might have to wait until visiting hours if she’s been tr
ansferred to Edinburgh.’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough,’ Richard said.

  They chatted idly for the first couple of hours, but then she decided to be brave and address what he had said this morning. ‘You said that you wanted to talk to me?’

  ‘It’s nothing that can’t keep.’

  ‘We have five hours to go,’ Freya pointed out.

  But Richard shook his head. ‘It’s nothing that can’t keep,’ he said again.

  Perhaps he didn’t want a hysterical crying female in the car as he drove, Freya pondered, although she was determined to at least pretend to take it well.

  She looked over to him and her heart skipped, as it always did. Yes, she’d sworn to take it well—it was what they had agreed on after all. But she would miss him so.

  Richard turned the conversation to his work, and she could not know, just how rare that was—because usually he didn’t discuss such things in depth with someone he was seeing.

  Generally it was just a case of replying, ‘Busy day,’ to any enquiries about work.

  Not tonight, though.

  ‘I just signed off on Dominic performing epidurals,’ Richard said. ‘That’s going to make things a lot easier.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘He’s brilliant,’ Richard mused.

  ‘Have you told him that?’ Freya both smiled and yawned as she asked the question.

  ‘Not yet.’ He glanced over. ‘Why don’t you try and get some sleep?’ he suggested. ‘I’ll wake you when we stop for petrol.’

  ‘Okay, then I can drive when you get tired.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Freya rested her head against the window and very soon was drifting off.

  Occasionally she stirred, but there was just the radio playing and the lulling sound of a car eating up the miles.

  When she finally woke she glanced at her phone.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, no news is good news,’ Richard said. ‘We’re coming up for the border—we’ll stop after that.’

  And there it was, the blue and white flag of Scotland as they crossed the border, and it felt both odd and nice to be doing it with Richard. It was good to be home.

  The motorway stop was efficient.

  She went and bought them something to eat while he filled up the car. ‘Why don’t you get flowers here for your friend?’ he suggested.

  Freya bought a gorgeous orchid, and a bunch of flowers for herself, and soon they were back in the car for the last leg. They were just merging onto the motorway when he let out a curse.

  ‘What?’ Freya said, looking around, assuming a car had cut them up or was driving too closely behind them.

  ‘I forgot to get condoms.’

  Freya was shocked, because she’d been expecting to be dumped but then she smiled. ‘We do have shops in Cromayr Bay.’

  ‘I know. But I’ve never run out of supplies or not had any to hand...’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘God, no. I wouldn’t leave it to someone else. There would be little Richards everywhere...’ He gave a shudder at the very thought.

  ‘I’m the same,’ Freya said.

  She didn’t leave that type of thing to anyone else either, and kept right on taking her Pill regardless.

  The hills were dotted with wind turbines, but rather than soothe her as they drew closer to their destination Freya found she was nervous.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to her,’ Freya admitted as they neared the stunning Queensferry Crossing. ‘I was so hoping that what happened last time was just a one-off.’

  He glanced over. ‘She’s had a bleed—it could just be a scare,’ he pointed out. ‘Did the same thing happen last time?’

  ‘No...’ Freya shook her head and then sighed. ‘It’s not just the baby I’m worried about. Things have been a bit strained between us. I don’t know how to be with her.’

  ‘Just be yourself.’

  Freya let out a laugh that was so close to tears it was almost a sob. ‘I don’t think she needs my anxiety right now. I’ll just keep things calm and point out that this type of thing...’ She halted, because when she had tried to say that to Alison on the phone, Alison had suddenly cut in and asked her to come.

  ‘Can you stop being a midwife?’ Richard asked.

  ‘I’m trying to. We’re really close, but I just don’t know how to be around her lately. I keep saying the wrong thing, or not saying what I know I should. It’s ironic, really, when I’ve been taught, and I’m well-versed on how to deal with grieving mothers.’

  ‘Well, you can be trained to the back teeth, but it’s very different when it’s a private grief. No one always knows what to say,’ Richard said. ‘You try, of course, and then you find out that it wasn’t the right thing at the right time, or it was the right thing but at the wrong time.’

  He was speaking about himself, Freya realised. ‘Did you lose someone?’

  Richard nodded. ‘Marcus—the guy I’m considering working with—his son died a few years ago. He came in at nine in the evening with meningococcal and was dead by sunrise the next day.’

  ‘Were you working at the time?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked over again and saw the slight dismissal in her eyes that told him he couldn’t understand what she’d been through. Richard had stayed quiet on the subject before, because that was when he had still been determined to keep things light between them. When Freya had still just been his way of getting away from things for a while.

  He wasn’t trying to get away from things now, and so he spoke on. ‘For a long time I wished to God that I had been working.’

  She looked at him. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘But I do,’ Richard said. ‘For close to a year, nearly every day I wished that I’d been on call that night and been the one dealing with him.’

  He thought back to that time, and to the hopelessness and anger he had felt.

  ‘I convinced myself that had I been on then I’d have picked things up sooner. In my God-like moments—’ he gave a black smile ‘—the moments when I’m able to control the world, I decided that had I been there I could have changed the outcome. But in the end I worked out that no matter how much I wanted things to have been different, there are some outcomes that can’t be changed.’

  ‘No...’ She had never really thought of it like that.

  ‘Just stop for a moment and imagine that you hadn’t been on that night.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Freya said. ‘I still have nightmares about it.’

  ‘I know you do,’ Richard admitted.

  He’d never mentioned it, but he had felt her panic sometimes as he’d held her through the night. She would sit up for a moment, and then eventually settle back to sleep. It had felt like a private thing—something she perhaps didn’t want him to have seen—and so he had left it. Because they weren’t supposed to have the kind of relationship where you noticed things like that.

  But he wasn’t leaving things unsaid now.

  ‘Suppose you were a teacher, or you worked in a shop, or even on one of the other wards and you hadn’t been there that night...’

  ‘But I was there.’

  ‘Just stop,’ he said again. ‘Just take yourself out of the picture. Suppose you hadn’t been on duty that night—how would you have felt?’

  ‘I can’t take myself out of the picture, Richard. I was there.’

  They stopped talking about it then, because some sights were just too beautiful not to pause and take them in.

  The dark sky had turned to grey, with soft blushes of pink starting to emerge, but now, as they approached the crossing, they were bathed in gold and pink and it felt as if they were driving through fire.

  ‘That’s stunning,’ Richard commented.

  ‘I know,’ Freya said. ‘I never tire of it. I can see the bridges from my bedroom. It’s a sight to behold.’

  She rang and found out that Alison hadn’t been transfe
rred and they arrived in Cromayr Bay along with the morning. Freya directed him along an easier route than the satnav recommended, and soon they were pulling into the parking area near the ambulance bay.

  ‘I’ll try not to be too long,’ she said.

  ‘Take your time,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll be asleep.’

  It was nice not to be running up the corridor harried after two train journeys and weighed down with an overnight bag. Instead Freya had on lipstick and was carrying a huge orchid as she made her way up the corridor. And, no, she did not need a red arrow to find her way.

  Laura, the Matron, greeted her warmly. ‘Things are looking better,’ she said as Freya approached, putting her at ease straight away. ‘We were going to transfer her last night, in case the baby needed to be delivered. It’s still an option, of course, but everything has settled down and Dr Campbell thinks for now she can stay here. Any further bleeding, though, and she’ll be off to somewhere with a NICU.’

  Freya let out a breath of relief as Laura took her through.

  ‘She’s going to be so pleased to see you.’

  And Alison was.

  Sitting up in bed, strapped to a CTG monitor, she was having a cup of tea. She put it straight down and then promptly burst into tears when she saw her friend.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Freya said, and gave her a cuddle.

  She could hear the rapid bleep of the baby’s heart and it was just the sweetest sound in the world. Especially now, today, here with her friend.

  ‘I am so sorry to drag you up here. Especially now that things seem fine. But when they mentioned delivering me I just panicked.’

  ‘Of course you did.’ Freya said. ‘But it sounds like things have settled down?’

  Alison nodded.

  ‘These things happen,’ Freya said. ‘It doesn’t mean it’s related to what happened with Andrew and that it’s going to happen again.’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling me—and the sensible part of me knows that,’

  ‘But you’re not thinking with your head?’

  ‘No.’

  They spoke for a good hour, but still Freya felt more midwife than friend—though by the time she was heading off Alison seemed a lot calmer.