WHAT?
Surely he hadn’t heard correctly?
For a split second, Lucas froze, completely distracted from what he was about to do.
Nobody wanted this baby?
One of the department’s senior nurses, Sue, was right beside him.
‘This was a surrogate pregnancy,’ she told him quietly. ‘But I have no idea what’s gone wrong.’
Lucas couldn’t give a damn about what might have gone wrong. There was a knot in his chest that felt like anger.
He knew what it was like to be an unwanted child. To face a world where you were not worth enough for anybody to want you.
No more than a blink of time had passed but Lucas snapped back to reality.
‘Give him to me,’ he snapped.
Picking up the limp bundle, he carried it to the trolley that had been hastily prepared with neonatal resuscitation gear. He gently laid the tiny body onto the sterile drapes. The miniature mask seemed to cover half the face as he delivered puffs of oxygen. He put his hands around a chest that felt alarmingly fragile, positioning both his thumbs on the sternum. Gentle but rapid compressions. Sue had followed him and picked up the mask. One puff, three compressions. One puff, three compressions.
You can do it... Come on... Fight...it’s worth it, I promise...
Only Luke could hear the words in his head. Or were they coming from his heart?
Someone’s going to love you...
There weren’t any words that came with his next thought—it was just a flash of sensation that came from nowhere.
I love you...
He shook off the bizarre notion. Getting emotionally involved in this unexpected case wasn’t going to help anyone. He needed to think ahead. Professionally. Intubation as the next step... IV access through the umbilical cord...chasing up that specialist paediatric consult...
And then the miracle happened. He felt the tiny body move between his hands. He paused the compressions and felt the push of that little ribcage against the pads of his thumbs as the baby took its own first breath.
And then another. That tiny face scrunched itself into an angry expression and the third breath was enough to provide the power for a warbling sound. The next effort was much more convincing.
This little guy was a fighter, after all.
And then Luke heard another cry from a very unexpected direction. From behind him.
From this new mother who didn’t want this baby.
He could feel his face tightening as he turned. His heart hardening.
And then he saw her face.
Propped up on her elbows, Ellie must have been watching this whole resuscitation effort and she had definitely heard those first sounds of a new life awakening.
Her hair was a tangle of blonde knots around a face that was pale enough to suggest she had lost a concerning amount of blood. And those eyes...
Huge, dark blue pools that were telling him something very different than the last words he had heard her speaking—that this wasn’t her baby and that nobody wanted him.
These were the eyes of a desperate woman. A mother...
‘Please,’ she whispered... ‘Please can I hold my baby?’
* * *
It had been that sound that had done it.
The cry from that tiny human that had been nestled within her body for so many months had taken the world as Ellie knew it and tipped it upside down. It had entered her ears but gone straight to her heart and captured it in the fiercest imaginable grip.
For a long, long moment, caught in what felt like a very disapproving stare from the doctor who’d just delivered her son, she thought that she was facing an impenetrable barrier. Someone who had no intention of letting her close to that tiny being she could just catch a glimpse of behind the solid figure of this new doctor.
But Sue was picking the baby up now.
‘Apgar score is ten at five minutes,’ she said, unable to keep a grin off her face. She was wrapping the baby in soft towels. ‘He’s looking great. I think we could let Mum have a bit of skin contact, until our paediatrician arrives, don’t you think?’
Luke’s response was a huff of sound that seemed indecisive but the anticipation of holding her baby against her own skin was so overwhelming that Ellie’s breath escaped in something that sounded like a sob as she lay back and held her arms out.
‘The placenta’s delivered.’ The young registrar was sounding a lot more confident now. ‘Seems intact and the bleeding’s almost stopped. Let’s prop you up a bit so you can hold your baby.’
Ellie had barely registered the last contractions as she watched the frantic efforts to save her son. Everything was all right now, though. She wasn’t about to bleed to death and the baby’s perfect Apgar score meant that he had come through this crisis with flying colours. With pillows being layered behind her, she was more than ready to accept the precious bundle that Sue was bringing towards her.
But why was this new doctor in her department still staring at her as if she was asking for something she really didn’t deserve?
He’d called her sweetheart only minutes ago.
Before helping her deliver her baby. Before he’d saved her life. Before he’d even properly begun to start saving the life of that baby.
And then something filtered into her brain. An echo of her own voice...
‘But he’s not my baby... And now nobody wants him...’
Oh, God...had she really said that?
No wonder he thought she was crazy. Or some kind of monster.
But Sue was beside her now and everybody else in this room and whatever tasks they were attending to ceased to exist as far as Ellie was concerned. Sue was unwrapping the tiny body of her baby, and another nurse was helping to remove the oversized tee shirt Ellie had been wearing. And her bra.
And there he was. In her arms and snuggled against her bare chest, while Sue arranged some soft, fluffy blankets around them both for warmth and as much privacy as was possible, given the surroundings.
Ellie couldn’t even lift her head to smile her thanks. Her baby’s eyes were open and he was staring up at her and nothing could have induced her to break that astonishing eye contact.
‘Hullo, you...’ she whispered. ‘I’m Mummy.’
The wash of emotion was like nothing Ellie had ever experienced.
