Sydney Harbour Hospital: Evie's Bombshell (17 page)

Finn shut his eyes as her kisses soothed and healed. It reminded him of the time she’d tried to offer him solace after he’d lost a patient on the table and for a moment in the operating theatre’s change room they’d stood like this, fully dressed, her cheek to his back, him drawing comfort from her simple gesture.

‘Evie …’

‘I hate it that you were hurt,’ she whispered, her lips brushing his skin. ‘That you had to go through all that. That your brother was taken from you.’

He opened his mouth to tell her it was a long time ago but it felt as raw right now as it had back then. ‘There wasn’t anything I could do,’ he murmured.

Evie squeezed the tears from her eyes. She’d expected him to say nothing, to clam up. The anguish in his voice was unbearable. She kissed his back. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘I know.’

And then she circled back to his front and kissed him with every ounce of passion and compassion she’d ever owned. And then they were on the bed, stroking each other, caressing, kissing and teasing as if they were getting acquainted all over again.

And when they could take it no more Finn looked down at Evie, stroked her belly and said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you …’

And she hushed him, rolling up on top of him and Finn had never seen anything more beautiful than Evie pregnant with his child, her hair loose, her full breasts bouncing, her belly proud as they moved in a rhythm that was slow and languorous and built to a crescendo that was so sweet Finn knew the sight of Evie flying on the crest of her orgasm would be forever burned into his retinas.

She collapsed on top of him, spent, and he didn’t know how long they lay there but at some stage she shifted and he pulled her close, fitting her back against his chest, curling around her, his hand on her belly, kissing her neck, all to the hum of a phenomenal post-coital buzz.

And then he felt the baby move.

And the buzz evaporated.

He waited for something. A bolt of lightning or a beam of light, a trill of excitement—but he got nothing. Life, his own DNA, moved and shifted and grew right under his hand and he felt … nothing.

Panic rose in him. Shouldn’t he feel something?

Other than protective? And an overwhelming urge to provide?

Shouldn’t he feel love?

Evie, oftentimes oblivious to the baby’s movements due to their frequency and this time due to a heavy sexual fog, only became aware of them as she felt Finn tensing around her. She felt him about to withdraw and clamped his hand against her.

‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. ‘It’s just the baby moving.’

But it wasn’t okay and Finn pulled his hand away, eased back from her, rolled up, sat on the side of the bed, cradling his head in his hands.

Evie turned to look at his back, the scars affecting her as deeply as they had just moments ago. She scooted over to where he sat. Her fingers automatically soothed the raised marks and he flinched but didn’t pull away, and she kissed each one again as she had earlier. ‘What is it Finn? What are you worried about?’

Finn shut his eyes. He wanted to push her away but her gentleness was his undoing. ‘Something died in me the day I got these scars, Evie. The day Isaac died. I don’t think I’m capable of love.’

He heard her start to protest and forced himself to open his eyes, forced his legs to work as he broke away to stand and look down at her, gloriously naked, her belly full of his baby.

‘I’m worried I’m not going to love him.’

Evie smiled at him gently. ‘Of course you will. That’s what parents do.’

Finn shook his head and the sadness in his eyes cut her even deeper than his scars had.

‘Not all of them, Evie.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

EVIE DRAGGED HERSELF through the next few days. She hadn’t seen Finn since he’d picked up his clothes and left the other night and there was a small part of her that was beginning to despair that she might never be able to reach him.

But after three punishing day shifts in a row she was too exhausted to care when she crawled into bed at eight-thirty and turned off the bedside lamp. Her feet ached, her back ached and she wanted to shut her eyes and sleep for a week.

She’d worry about Finn tomorrow.

Except that wasn’t to be.

Evie woke from a deep, dark sleep with a start several hours later, a feeling of dread pushing against her chest. Her heart was racing. Something was wrong but for a moment she couldn’t figure out what.

As she lay in the dark, the luminous figures on the clock telling her it was two-thirteen a.m., she slowly became aware of a feeling of wetness. She reached down, her hand meeting a warm, wet puddle. Had she wet herself?

Before she could apply any logical thought process, a spasm that caused her to cry out and clutch at her belly, pulsed through her deep and low.

Was she bleeding?

The pain eased and panic drove her into a sitting position as she kicked off the sheet and reached for the light, snapping it on. The bed was saturated, clear liquid soaking into the sheets and mattress, her wet pyjama pants clinging to her legs.

Her pulse hammered madly at her temples as she tried to think.

Clear. Not blood. And a lot of it.

Not urine. Too much. She hadn’t the bladder capacity for more than a thimbleful for what seemed for ever.

Another pain ripped through her and she gasped as it tore her breath away and she suddenly realised it was amniotic fluid in the bed.

Her membranes had ruptured.

And she was in labour.

The spasm held her in its grip for what seemed an age and Evie failed miserably at doing all the things she knew you were supposed to do during a contraction—stay calm, breathe deeply—by intermittently crying and then holding her breath to try and stop herself from crying.

She collapsed on her side, reaching for the phone on the bedside table as soon as she was able, quickly stabbing Finn’s number into the touchpad. It rang in her ear and she hoped like crazy that he had the same special powers that every other doctor who spent half of their lives on call possessed—the ability to wake to a ringing phone in a nanosecond.

He picked up on the third ring but she didn’t give him a chance to utter a greeting. ‘Finn!’ she sobbed. ‘It’s Evie. My membranes have ruptured. I’m contracting.’ As if to prove her point the next contraction came and she almost choked as she doubled up, trying to talk and gasp and groan all at the same time. ‘The baby … is coming … now!’

‘I’ll be there in one minute.’

But she didn’t hear him as the phone slipped from her fingers and she curled in a ball, rocking and crying as the uterine spasm grabbed hold and squeezed so tight Evie felt like she was going to split open.

It was too early. The baby would be too small. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t ready. The baby wasn’t ready.

She heard Finn belting on her door a minute later and she cried out to him but the contractions were coming one on top of the other, paralysing her. She just couldn’t get up and open it. She was conscious of a loud crash and Finn calling out her name, his voice getting closer and closer, and she cried out to him again and suddenly he was stalking into her bedroom.

Finn was shocked at the sight that confronted him. Evie—strong, competent, assured Evie—curled up in a ball on the bed, her pyjama pants soaking, her face and eyes red from crying, a look of sheer panic on her face.

He threw himself down beside her. ‘Evie!’

‘Finn,’ Evie sobbed clutching at his shirtsleeve, her hand shaking. ‘Help me,’ she begged. ‘It’s too early. Don’t let our baby die.’

The words chilled him, so similar to the words Isaac had used as he’d reached out a bloodied hand to Finn.

Finn! Finn! Help me. Don’t let me die
.

Words that had haunted him for a decade. The promise that he’d given haunting him for just as long. One he hadn’t been able to keep in the middle of hell, injured as he’d been and with precious medical help too far away.

But he could make a promise right here and now that he could keep. Last time he’d been powerless to help.

But not this time.

‘I won’t,’ he promised. ‘I won’t.’ He was damned if he was going to let down another person he cared about.

He stood and dragged the light summer blanket that had fallen off the end of Evie’s bed away from the mattress and wrapped it around her then scooped her up as she moaned in pain and sobbed her heart out.

There was no point in ringing an ambulance—he could be there in three minutes at this hour of night.

He strode out the door he’d damaged trying to get in and pulled it shut behind him—he’d get the lock fixed later. The lift arrived within seconds and a minute later she was ensconced in his car and he was driving out of the garage. He dialled the emergency department and got the triage nurse.

‘This is Finn Kennedy. I’m three minutes out with Evie Lockheart, who has gone into premature labour at twenty-eight weeks. I need the neonatal resus team there stat.’

He hung up and dialled another number, zoning Evie’s anguish out, doing what he had to do, drumming his fingers on the steering-wheel as he sped through a deserted red light.

The phone was picked up. ‘Marco? It’s Finn Kennedy. Evie’s gone into labour. I’m two minutes out from the hospital. The baby is coming now.’

Whether it was that particular note of urgency one doctor recognised in another or the background noise of Evie’s distress, Finn wasn’t sure, but Marco’s ‘I’ll be there in ten’ was all he needed to hear before he hung up.

He glanced at Evie and reached for her hand. ‘Everything’s ready. The neonatal team will be there and Marco’s on his way. We’re a minute out.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Hold on, okay?’

Evie squeezed back as contractions battered her body. She knew she was a snivelling mess, she knew she shouldn’t be, that she should be calm and rational and confident in modern medicine and the stats on premmie births, but fear pounded through every cell, rendering her incapable of reason.

Right now she was a mother. And she was terrified.

Finn screeched into the ambulance bay fifty-five seconds later. Mia and Luca were there with two nurses and a gurney, and they had a hysterical Evie inside in a cubicle within a minute. The neonatal team was already there, a high-tech cot with its warming lamps on ready to accept the baby, and Finn suddenly felt superfluous as the team went into action around him.

He felt lost. Outside his body, looking down. Usually in an emergency situation in a hospital setting
he
was the one in control. But not now. Right now he could do nothing but just stand around helplessly and watch.

Just like with Isaac
.

‘Finn!’

Evie’s wretched wail as she looked around for him brought him back to the present, to the trilling of alarms, to the hive of activity.

‘I’m here,’ he said, stepping closer, claiming a position near her head, reaching for her searching hand. They weren’t in the dirt in the middle of a battle zone and she wasn’t dying. They were at Sydney Harbour Hospital with as good a medical team around them as anywhere in the world and she wasn’t dying. ‘I’m right here.’

The curtain snapped back and Marco entered, and Finn knew everything was going to be fine. ‘Well, Evie,’ Marco said in that accented way of his, ‘this is unexpected but don’t worry, you are in very good hands.’

Evie was grateful Marco was there but the feeling was swept away by a sudden overwhelming urge to push. She half sat forward, dislodging two monitoring electrodes and causing a cacophony of alarms to go off. ‘I need to push,’ she said, the noise escalating her panic to full-scale terror.

Marco nodded. ‘Don’t push, Evie,’ he said calmly as he snapped on a pair of gloves. ‘Pant. Let me just check you.’

Evie gritted her teeth. ‘I … can’t …’ she groaned as her abdomen contracted of its own accord.

Finn leaned in close to her ear, kissed her temple and said, ‘Yes, you can, Evie. Yes you can. Here, do it with me,’ he said, as he panted.

Evie squeezed his hand harder, fighting against the dictates of her body, trying hard to pant and be productive and not let the panic win.

‘Okay, the baby is crowning,’ Marco said.

‘No,’ Evie pleaded. ‘No, no, no.’ She turned to Finn, clutching their joined hands to her chest. ‘It’s too soon, he’s too small.’

‘And he’s in the best place,’ Finn said, hoping it was the right thing to say, the thing she needed to hear. He wished he could take the fear and anguish from her eyes. That he could take her physical pain and bear it for her. ‘And we’re all going to fight for him.’

‘Okay Evie, let’s meet your son,’ Marco said.

Evie cried and shook her head, still trying to stop it, to hold inside her the precious baby who needed more time, but the urge coming over her again couldn’t be denied and although she didn’t assist, she couldn’t fight it either, and because the baby was so small he slipped out into Marco’s waiting hands in one smooth movement.

‘Got him!’ Marco exclaimed, as he quickly clamped and cut the cord and passed the still newborn into the warmed sterile dressing towel held by the neonatologist.

‘He’s a good size,’ Marco said, looking up at Evie.