Christmas-Eve Baby (5 page)

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut to close out the images, but they wouldn’t be banished, and she knew her father had seen it because they’d called him immediately to ask if he knew why she might be there, and he’d arrived while they had been in Resus, fighting for her life, and had insisted on going in. It must have been hideous for him, but it didn’t change the facts. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she told Ben yet again.

‘I was in charge. I know I wasn’t a consultant then, but I was the most senior person in the department that day, and so the responsibility rested with me.’

‘You’re not God.’

‘No. So I needed to be more careful, because I don’t just know everything, but things are different now that I’m a consultant and actually have some say. It couldn’t happen now. All patients are intercepted on their way into the department by the triage nurse, people waiting are checked at regular intervals, and I insist on being constantly alerted to what’s happening in my department. I can’t let it happen again.’

‘Ben, you didn’t let it happen. You weren’t negligent.’

‘Maybe not. But I can see where your father’s coming from, and I wouldn’t want a man I thought was responsible for the death of my wife, no matter how indirectly, being the father of my grandchild.’

‘Well, he’s going to have to get over it,’ she said firmly, ‘because you are the father—unless we just aren’t going to tell him?’

‘That’s not an option, Lucy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘This baby may not have been planned, but it’s mine, and I fully intend to be involved in its life. And I can’t do that in secret. I can’t, and I won’t, so, come what may, your father has to know.’

But how? She had no idea, but at least now Ben was in the picture. One down, one to go, she thought.

But then he went on, ‘I know you’ll say it’s too soon, and you’re probably right, but I intend to look after you and my baby for the rest of your lives, so get used to the idea.’

She sat up straighter, absently massaging the bump. ‘Out of a misplaced sense of duty? No, Ben. It has to be more than that. I agree, I can’t stay here, but I’m not moving in with you any more than I’m moving in with my father. I don’t want to be someone’s duty. I’m sick of duty. I want love for my baby. And for me. Nothing else.’

‘It will be love.’

‘It will. From me, for a start. But we’re part of a package, the baby and I, and we’re both equally important, and I’m not going to do anything hasty. You and I haven’t seen each other for months, and that was a one-off. You weren’t even ready to carry on seeing me because things were too difficult. Well, if they were difficult before, they’re much worse now, and I’m not going to do anything until I’m sure the time is right.’

‘Right with who?’

‘With me—with you—with my father.’

His jaw tensed, the muscle working, and he turned away. ‘OK. So—you need accommodation. Somewhere we can have some privacy so I can share my baby with you without causing any of you unnecessary grief—is that what you’re suggesting? That we duck around, grabbing a few minutes together every now and then when your father and the rest of Penhally Bay aren’t looking? No. It’s my baby, Lucy, and I’m damned if I’m going to be ashamed of it. Your father can just learn to deal with it, and the rest of this flaming community can just learn to mind their own business.’

She stared at him, then with a choked laugh she turned away, picked up the tray and stood.

‘If you imagine for a moment that’s going to happen, Ben Carter, you’re in cloud cuckoo land,’ she said, and, taking the tray through to the kitchen, she dumped it down and brushed off her hands. ‘We’d better get back to the surgery.’

‘I thought Dragan was going to phone you.’

‘So did I, but he’s obviously been held up. There’s a lot we can achieve without him, so let’s get on with it.’ And without waiting for him to reply, she picked up her coat, slid her arms into it and headed for the door.

T
HERE
was no sign of Nick, thank goodness. Ben had been in suspense, waiting for him to appear, but he noticed the silver Volvo was gone, so maybe he could relax for now. Not for ever. He knew that, but if they were going to have a confrontation, he’d rather it wasn’t in a crowded surgery in front of half of Penhally Bay’s insatiably curious residents.

There was no sign of Dragan Lovak either, and Ben wondered if Kate had sent him off on a wild-goose chase or told him that they’d gone for lunch and to take his time. If Lucy was right, that wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

Whatever, Lovak wasn’t there to keep them on the straight and narrow, and he had to force his attention back to the Penhally Bay surgery’s MIU and away from the smooth, firm protrusion that was his child.

‘Have you had a scan?’ he asked abruptly, and Lucy stopped talking and turned and looked at him in frustration.

‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’

He opened his mouth to deny it, then shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’m finding it a bit hard to focus.’

She sighed and reached out a hand, but then thought better of it and withdrew it. ‘Look—are you busy tonight? I’ve got
a surgery from five to six-thirty, but I’m not doing anything later. If you’re free, perhaps we could talk then? Deal with some of your questions?’

He nodded, a little shocked at how eager he was to have that conversation—a conversation about a child that until a very short while ago he hadn’t even known existed. ‘Of course.’

‘And for now,’ she said, her voice gently mocking, ‘do you think you could keep your eyes on my face and concentrate on what I’m saying about our minor injuries unit?’

‘Sure.’

He nodded, swallowed and tried to smile, but it was a feeble effort and he just wanted to fast-forward to the evening and get the hell out of there.

‘Come and see what we have,’ she said, and led him into the room in question. It was about twice the size of a consulting room, on the upper floor, and not ideal. He forced himself to concentrate.

‘It needs to be bigger and it could do with being on the ground floor,’ he told her without preamble.

‘We know that. We’re looking at funding for expansion.’

He nodded.

‘In the meantime, this is what we have and what we do. There’s a room next door where we do minor surgery, but it really is minor and very non-invasive—skin lesions, ingrowing toenails and the like. It’s more of a treatment room, it’s not a proper theatre, although of course we use sterile techniques, but I don’t think we can realistically create a dedicated theatre environment either in there or anywhere else in a general practice setting. It simply isn’t called for, but it’s adequate for what we do surgery-wise. And this room is where we do all our minor injury stuff that we handle at present.’

‘Such as?’

‘Oh, all sorts. If I tell you the areas that we can currently cover and where I feel the holes are in our provision, maybe you can give me some advice on what we’d need both short and long term to improve that?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. Right. Well, in the summer, we get tourists, of course, who as well as coming for medical treatment come to the MIU with things like stings, sprains, cuts and fractures. You’d be surprised how many people travel without a first-aid kit.’

He chuckled. ‘No, I wouldn’t. We get them all the time.’

‘Of course you do. I forgot,’ she said, smiling at him and dragging his mind away from medicine and onto something entirely more interesting.

‘Then all year round but particularly in the warmer months we have surfers with all their associated injuries—scrapes on rocks, collisions with their own surfboards and with others, the odd weaver fish and all the other touristy things, and we get anyone who needs more than the basic first aid the lifeguards give on the beach, but our baseline local population is farmers and fishermen and their families, so we have a lot of work-related injuries. I’ve lost count of the number of tetanus shots I’ve given in the last year. We do a lot of needlework, obviously—cuts and tears, many of them dirty, so we have a certain amount of debriding to do. Some have to come to you because they’re too extensive and need plastics or specialist hand surgery, for example. And we have fractures, lots of simple undisplaced fractures and dislocations that with X-ray we could deal with here if we had plaster facilities. They’d still need the care of the orthopaedic team for
anything more complex, of course, but there are so many little things we could sort here locally.’

He nodded. ‘I agree. The medical emergencies are still going to have to come through us, but from the point of view of straightforward physical injury you could take a lot off us.’

He looked around the room, noting the two couches, the chairs and trolleys and screens, the bench along the side with pretty much the same equipment you would find in a practice nurse’s room or one of the cubicles in his A and E department, but for the most part that was all that would be necessary.

‘What about resuscitation equipment?’

‘Standard GP stuff for an isolated rural practice. We’ve got a defib and oxygen and a nebuliser, of course, and 12-lead ECG and heart monitor…’

She rattled off a list of things they had and things they wanted, leaving nothing out that he felt would be in any way useful or necessary, and he was impressed.

‘You’ve done your homework,’ he said softly, and she stopped and stared at him, giving an exasperated sigh.

‘Did you really think we’d get you over here to talk this through if we hadn’t? I want this to work, Ben. We need it. We’re too far from St Piran. Some of the injuries we see—if we had better facilities so we could just treat them here, at least initially… That journey must be horrendous if you’ve got a fracture. It’s not so much the distance as the roads—so narrow, so twisty, and lots of them are rough. The main road’s better, but reaching it—well, it doesn’t bear thinking about, not with something like a spinal injury or a nasty compound fracture. We have to fly some of our surfers out just for that reason, because they’d have to come to you, but for the others—well, it’s just crazy that we can’t do it. There’s certainly the demand.’

‘I’m sure. You know, if you weren’t about to be taking maternity leave, it would make sense for you to come and spend some time in the department. Catch up on your X-ray, diagnostic and plastering skills.’

‘I could do that anyway—well, not the X-ray, not until the baby’s born, but the rest. I’m going to be coming back to work—I can’t afford to stop— And don’t say it!’ she ordered, cutting him off before he could do more than open his mouth.

So he shut it again, shrugged his shoulders and smiled wryly. ‘So where are you going to site the X-ray machine?’ he asked. ‘Bearing in mind that the room needs screening on all six sides?’

‘Out on the end of the sea wall?’ she suggested, eyes twinkling, and he chuckled.

‘Nice one. Not very practical, though. Do you have a spare room?’

She laughed wryly. ‘Not so as you’d notice. In an ideal world, as Kate says, it would all be on the ground floor, but down in the old town like this it’s difficult. The sides of the cove are so steep, so all the houses are small and on top of one another. The only way around it would be to build it up out of the town, and that’s not where it’s needed.’

‘Unless you sited it up near the church, halfway between the old town and the beach. Handier for the tourists and all the people staying in the caravan park, and no harder for the people you serve who don’t live right in the centre and have to come by car anyway.’

‘Except that when we tried to sound them out we couldn’t get planning permission and, anyway, any site up there which they’d allow development on would have such stunning sea views it would be worth shedloads and we couldn’t afford it,
so it’s academic. This is what we have, Ben. And there’s room to extend at the back—behind the stairwell there’s an area of garden which isn’t used for anything except sneaking out in breaks and having a quiet sit down out of earshot of the locals. And we’re so busy that that isn’t really an option in the summer, and in the winter—well, frankly it’s not very appealing, so really it’s dead space.’

‘Can I see?’

‘Sure.’

She led him downstairs, snagging her coat from the staffroom on the way, and they went out the front and round the side, between the boatyard and chandlery and the end of the surgery building. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to an area that was behind the waiting room and stairs.

He nodded approval, running his eyes over it and measuring it by guesswork. ‘It’s ideal. It’s big enough to make a proper treatment area for suspected fractures and house the X-ray facilities, and you could put further accommodation on top—a plaster room, for instance, and somewhere for people to rest under observation. And you’d still have the existing room upstairs which you could use for other injuries, cuts and such like, jellyfish stings, weaver fish—you name it. Or you could relocate one of the consulting rooms currently downstairs upstairs to that area and use more of the downstairs space for those things, so you’ve got all your injuries together. And weren’t you talking about physio? That probably needs to be downstairs…’

She started to laugh, and he broke off and scrubbed a hand through his hair ruefully. ‘OK, so it’s not big enough for all that, and it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, but I don’t see what else you can do. If you want to do this properly, you’ll have
to compromise. And you’ll have to sell it to the people who’ll be compromised.’

‘Except my father doesn’t want me involved, because I’m going to be on maternity leave. He thinks he should be doing it, but it’s not his area of expertise, and I really wanted to oversee it, to make sure it works,’ she said softly, the smile fading from her eyes and leaving a deep sadness in its place.

And Ben felt guilty—hugely, massively guilty—because all he’d done by taking Lucy back to his house and making love to her had been to cause her even more grief to add to the emotional minefield that was her life. ‘It’ll work, Lucy. I’m sure it will—and by the time you come back to work it’ll be ready for you to commission.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said, but she didn’t sound it.

She shivered, and he frowned and turned up her coat collar, tugging it closer round her. ‘You’re cold. Come on, let’s go back inside and jot some of this down, do a few doodles…’

‘I’ve done some. I’ll show you. And we can have tea.’

The universal panacea. He smiled. ‘That would be good. Come on.’

She led him back inside, shivering again and realising that she’d let herself get chilled. It wasn’t cold—in fact, it was incredibly mild overall—but the wind was blustery today and cut right through her.

‘Kate, is it OK to use your room still?’ she asked, leaning over the counter and smiling a greeting at the receptionist, Sue.

Kate put her hand over the receiver and nodded. ‘Sure. Go on up. Oh, and Dragan’s on his way in—he’s bringing Melinda. She’s been bitten by a dog. That’s why he’s been held up. He asked if you could see her. I think she needs suturing.’

‘Oh. Right. Can’t Dad see her, or Marco?’

‘No. Your father’s gone over to the house to meet the agent, and Marco’s got a clinic, so if you wouldn’t mind fitting her in?’

‘No, sure. Send them up. I’ll use the treatment room upstairs,’ she said, and felt the tension draining out of her at the news that her father had gone out and wasn’t about to pop out of the woodwork at any moment and cause a scene.

She headed for the stairs, still thinking about her father and not really conscious of the extra effort it took to mount them now that she was pregnant, but evidently Ben noticed because as she arrived at the door of the staffroom he asked, ‘How long are you planning to work?’

His voice had a firm edge to it and she looked up at him questioningly.

‘Today? Till six-thirty.’

‘In your pregnancy.’

‘Oh.’ So he was doing the proprietorial father bit, was he? ‘Till I have the baby,’ she said defiantly, and then, before he could argue, qualified it with, ‘Well, as long as I can, really. I’ll cut out house calls soon, especially if the weather gets bad, and I’ve already stopped doing night calls. That’s one of the advantages of being a pregnant woman in a practice of three single men—they’re so busy fussing over me and taking work off me I have to fight them for every last patient!’

His mouth twitched, and he gave a soft laugh. ‘And I bet you do.’

‘Absolutely. I don’t need to be pandered to,’ she told him firmly. ‘I’m pregnant, Ben, not sick.’ She filled the kettle and switched it on, made them two mugs of tea and picked them up. ‘Can you get the doors, please?’ she said, and he duti
fully led her through into Kate’s room and shut the door behind them.

She plonked the mugs down on Kate’s desk, took the plans of the surgery from the drawer in the filing cabinet and smoothed them out, then laid her tracing-paper alterations over the top. ‘Right, this is what I’d thought could be done,’ she said, and launched into her explanation.

He couldn’t fault it.

She knew just what she wanted and, apart from a very few suggestions, there was nothing she’d planned he wouldn’t have been more than happy with in their situation.

He told her so, pointed out the few changes he’d make, and they did some little scribbles on the tracing paper, then she sat back and rubbed her tummy and winced.

‘Braxton Hicks?’ he guessed, and she nodded.

‘Yes. It’s beginning to drive me mad. Every time I sit still for any length of time I get them, over and over again. I swear I don’t need any more practise contractions. My uterus is going to be so toned up by the time I give birth it’s ridiculous.’

‘I suppose you’re sure of your dates?’ he said, and then immediately regretted it because she glared at him as if he’d lost his mind.

‘As there was only the one occasion,’ she snapped, ‘it would be hard to miscalculate.’

‘Three, if I remember correctly,’ he murmured.

‘Three?’

‘Occasions,’ he said, and she coloured and turned away with a little sound of frustration.