that character may be fiction but I’m not. This is reality and the hospital is chronically short of staff. And even if I have to put up with weeks of being stuck in minors until the cast comes off, that’s what I’m going to do.’
An hour later she was still lying there wide awake, her brain going round and round the same scene, even now unable to believe that her sister could have wanted to harm the infant she was carrying. It was hard to drift off to sleep when all she could see in her mind’s eye was the harsh glare of the headlights bearing down on her.
‘Did I do the right thing in promising not to press charges?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Should I have made some sort of formal complaint so that, if at some time in the future something should happen to the babies, they’ll investigate Zara first?’
That hadn’t been the right thing to think about as she was trying to sleep. She felt sick at the very thought of something or somebody hurting them.
But what would she be able to do about it once they were born and she’d handed them over? On that day she would officially become their aunt rather than their mother and would have no legal say in what happened to them.
A feeling close to panic started to fill her and for several mad moments she imagined herself grabbing her passport and slipping out of the country. There was a whole wide world out there and in almost every country there were people crying out for doctors to treat their sick and injured. Surely she would be able to find a way to support herself and the two precious lives inside her?
Then she imagined how Dan would feel, knowing that somewhere in the world there were two children bearing his genes and he’d never seen them … beyond a fuzzy ultrasound picture.
Just the idea of the man she loved gazing longingly at that image year after year was enough to bring the hot press of tears to her eyes and she knew she couldn’t do it to him.
So, what was she going to do?
A strange sensation deep inside drew her attention away from that insoluble conundrum and she pressed her hand over the firm curve, remembering with a smile the way Dan had placed his hand over hers.
Oh, yes, he was going to be such a good father to this little pair. Kind and gentle and endlessly patient and …
What was that?
She froze into complete stillness and concentrated, aware that all the textbooks said it was far too soon but …
‘There it is again!’ she exclaimed aloud when she felt the faint fluttering, hoping it was something more than gas travelling through her gut.
When she felt it for a third time she was certain and wanted nothing more than to whoop with delight, no matter that it was pitch dark outside and everyone else in the flats was probably fast asleep.
But she couldn’t just lie here in the dark and savour it all alone. She had to share the news with someone else or it wouldn’t feel as if it was real. She had to speak to …
‘Dan? Did I wake you?’ she asked apologetically when he answered the phone.
‘No. I’m in bed but I haven’t gone to sleep yet. What’s the problem? Is something wrong?’
‘No. Nothing’s wrong,’ she reassured him quickly. ‘It’s just that I was lying there and … and …’ Suddenly, it felt so wrong to be telling him such momentous news when he was on the other end of the telephone. These were his babies, too, and he should have been here with her to feel …
‘There is something wrong,’ he said decisively. ‘I can hear you crying.’
There was the sound of a crash on the other end of the line and some muttered words that were probably unprintable, then he was back with her again.
‘I’m coming over,’ he announced in a don’t-argue-with-me voice. ‘I’ll need you to drop a set of keys down to me out of a window, because you’re not to come all the way down those stairs again.’
‘Drive safely,’ she said, worried about his state of mind, but he’d already broken the connection.
Suddenly, she remembered that he didn’t live more than a few streets away and in that powerful car of his it would only take minutes to get there.
‘Keys. Keys,’ she muttered as she heaved herself out of bed, briefly registering that round about the time that she finally had her bulky cast removed it would also be the time when her pregnancy made moving about more difficult.
‘So, this is what my life is going to be like for the next few months,’ she grumbled, then subdued a shriek of horror when she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door.
‘Talk about the wreck of the Hesperus,’ she moaned as she dragged a brush through the tangles put there by her restlessness. At least she wasn’t having to do it with her injured arm. If she’d dislocated her right shoulder she would have been strapped up and completely out of action for several weeks yet.
And as for what she was wearing … this old T-shirt hadn’t just seen better days, it had seen better years, and was so worn out that it really was translucent in places.
Before she could strip it off, she heard the deep purr of one of the more expensive makes of car outside the front of the house and her heart did a crazy little tap-dance at the knowledge that Dan had arrived.
‘The keys! What did I do with …? Ah!’ She pounced on them and hobbled over to the window, steadying herself against the furniture. ‘Catch!’ she called in a stage whisper as she lobbed them in a gentle arc towards him, then fastened the window as fast as she could and went back to changing her clothing.
He must have taken all four flights two at a time because he was already at her front door and fitting the key to the lock before she’d pulled a fresh, slightly less disreputable T-shirt on while balancing on one leg.
‘Very fetching!’ he teased, and she knew he’d caught sight of one of the packet of thongs she’d bought with him the morning after her accident.
‘A gentleman wouldn’t have looked, and if he accidentally caught sight of something he shouldn’t, he certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it,’ she said sternly.
‘Whatever made you think that I was a gentleman?’ he said with one of those cheeky grins that never failed to turn her inside out, right from the first time she’d met him.
Oh, how hard it had been, day after day, forcing herself to keep a strict distance between the two of them and making herself treat him the same as all the other A and E staff.
‘So, tell me,’ he said as he guided her back to the side of her bed, the rumpled covers mute evidence of her lack of sleep. ‘What had you so upset that you were crying?’
‘I wasn’t upset,’ she denied, then had to blink as her eyes began to fill with tears again. ‘I was lying in bed and I was resting my hand on the bump—’
‘You do that a lot,’ he interrupted seriously, once more resting his much longer, much broader hand over hers. ‘I’ve seen you doing it around the department, and when you’re sitting having a break you sometimes stroke your hand backwards and forwards and round and round.’
