things go—but this is quite a big tear. It means that right now your baby isn’t getting enough oxygen and nutrients from the placenta, and the baby’s heartbeat is getting slower.’
‘Is my baby going to die?’ Courtney asked, her eyes wide with panic.
‘We’re going to do our best to keep your baby safe,’ Ella said.
‘And the safest thing for me to do is to deliver the baby now through an emergency Caesarean section,’ Oliver finished.
‘But it’s too early for me to have the baby!’ Courtney said. ‘I’m only thirty-four weeks—there’s another six weeks to go yet.’
‘The baby’s going to be small,’ Oliver said, ‘but I promise you at thirty-four weeks Baby Saunders will manage just fine. I’m going to give you steroids to help mature the baby’s lungs.’
‘Like bodybuilders use?’ Courtney asked.
‘No, they’re corticosteroids, like the ones the body produces naturally or people with asthma take to help with their airways,’ Ella explained. ‘Babies born before thirty-seven weeks sometimes have trouble breathing because their lungs aren’t developed fully. The steroids help the lungs develop so the baby doesn’t have breathing problems.’
Oliver didn’t chip in; he was enjoying watching Ella in action. She was so good with patients, explaining things simply in terms they could understand.
She’d be a good mum, too, he thought wistfully. But would she give him the chance to be a good dad?
He shook himself. Now wasn’t the time. Their patient had to come first. But he’d try to find a good time for him and Ella to talk. They really, really needed to talk about the baby—and about them.
‘What happens is we give you an injection,’ Ella continued, ‘and the steroids go through your bloodstream and through the placenta into the baby’s body and lungs. And as well as being able to breathe better, the baby can suck better and take in more milk.’
‘So the baby won’t have side-effects?’ Courtney asked.
‘No, and neither will you,’ Ella reassured her.
‘But Ryan isn’t here yet. He can’t miss our baby being born,’ Courtney said, a tear running down her cheek.
‘I’ll try him again,’ Ella said, and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m just going to put a butterfly in the back of your hand so we can give you any drugs we need, and then I’ll call him myself—Mike said he was in a meeting so they left a message, but I’ll make sure I actually speak to him.’ She smiled at Courtney. ‘I know this is really scary, but you’re in the best place.’
Once Ella had put the line in, cross-matched Courtney’s blood and set up continuous foetal monitoring for the baby’s heartbeat and Courtney’s contractions, she went off to call Courtney’s partner.
‘I can’t believe this is happening. I wish I’d stopped work last week instead of trying to keep going a bit longer,’ Courtney said.
‘Hey, it could’ve happened anyway,’ Oliver said. ‘You might have slipped on your front doorstep, or when you were taking Alex out to the park.’ He sat next to her and held her hand. ‘There is something else I need to talk to you about, Courtney. With an abruption like this, it’s possible that you might lose a lot of blood—we can’t tell from the scan how much blood you’ve already lost. That’s why Ella cross-matched you, so we can make sure we can sort that out and give you more blood if you need it. But if I can’t stop the bleeding once I’ve delivered the baby, I might have to give you a hysterectomy.’
Courtney looked dismayed. ‘You mean—like someone who’s near the menopause?’
‘Sort of,’ Oliver said. ‘I know you’re very young and you might want to have more children, so I’m hoping it’ll all be straightforward. But I do need to prepare you for the worst-case scenario too—because if that happens then a hysterectomy might be the only way I can save your life.’
‘So this abruption thing could kill me as well as the baby?’
‘That’s the very worst-case scenario,’ Oliver stressed. ‘In most cases it’s fine. But I do need you to sign a consent form just in case the very worst happens.’
‘I…’ Courtney shook her head, looking dazed. ‘It’s a lot to take in. This morning I was planning to work for another month, and now I’ve fallen when I got off the bus I might die and so might the baby.’
‘Very, very worst-case,’ Oliver said. ‘But that’s why I want to deliver the baby now, to give him or her the best possible chance.’
‘There isn’t really a choice, is there?’ she asked miserably. ‘All right. I’ll sign your form.’
By the time she’d signed the form and Oliver had administered the steroids, Ella came back into the room, smiling. ‘I’ve spoken to Ryan. He’s on his way now and he says to tell you he loves you and everything’s going to be all right.’
A tear trickled down Courtney’s face. ‘Even though I nearly killed our baby?’
‘You did nothing of the sort. It was an accident,’ Ella reassured her. ‘And your man will be here really soon. He says to tell you he’s going to make the world speed record for getting across town.’
Courtney’s lower lip wobbled, but she tried her best to smile.
‘So what happens now is the anaesthetist is on her way. She’s going to give you an anaesthetic, and then Oliver will make an incision here—’ she sketched the shape on Courtney’s tummy ‘—so he can deliver the baby.’
‘Can Ryan be there?’ Courtney asked.
‘If he does that world speed record,’ Ella said with a smile, ‘then he can be there and he can cut the cord. I’ll be there, too, to look after Baby Saunders. Once I’ve checked the baby over, you can both get to see him or her and have a cuddle.’
‘What if—if it’s the worst-case scenario?’ Courtney asked, a catch in her voice.
‘Then I’ll take Ryan off to one side with the baby so Oliver can sort everything out. But he’s the best surgeon I know. You’re in good hands.’
If only she had as much confidence in him personally as she had in him professionally, Oliver thought. Though part of it was his own fault. He’d held back from her. If he told her about Justine, then maybe she’d understand why he was having a hard time getting his head round the fact that he was going to be a dad—and why he needed to feel that he was in control of everything. But then again, letting her close enough to meet his family had backfired.
This whole thing was a mess.
But doing the job he did, seeing how important family was to the women he helped to give birth and their partners… It was beginning to make him realise that he wanted this, too. He didn’t want to be just a dad. He wanted to be a partner, too. He wanted to be loved for who he was.
But what did Ella want? Could they make a go of things together? Could they become a family, the kind of family that he hadn’t grown up in but suspected that she had?
