girl warmly as she was wheeled in, and if he was tense he certainly wasn’t showing it. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Em’s been telling me—’ Ruby was almost asleep from the pre-meds but she was still smiling ‘—about muddles. About her work.’
‘Did she tell you about the time she helped deliver twins and the team messed up their bracelets?’ Oliver was smiling with his patient, but he found a chance to glance—and smile—at Em. ‘So Mathew Riley was wrapped in a pink rug and Amanda Riley was wrapped in a blue rug. It could have scarred them for life.’
Em thought back all those years. She’d just qualified, and it had been one of the first prem births where she’d been midwife in charge. Twins, a complex delivery, and the number of people in the birthing room had made her flustered. Afterwards Oliver had come to the prem nursery to check on his handiwork. The nurse in charge—a dragon of a woman who shot first and asked questions later—had been in the background, as Oliver had unwrapped the blue bundle.
Em had been by his side. She’d gasped and lost colour but Oliver hadn’t said a word; hadn’t given away by the slightest intake of breath that he’d become aware she’d made a blunder that could have put her job at risk. But the mistake was obvious—the incubators had been brought straight from the birthing suite and were side by side. There was no question who each baby was. Without saying a word, somehow Oliver helped her swap blankets and wristbands and the charge nurse was unaware to this day.
That one action had left her … smitten.
But it hadn’t just been his action, she conceded. It had also been the way he’d smiled at her, and then as she’d tried to thank him afterwards, it had been the way he’d laughed it off and told her about dumb things he’d done as a student … and then asked her to have dinner with him …
‘I reckon I might like to be a nurse,’ Ruby said sleepily. ‘You reckon I might?’
‘I reckon you’re awesome,’ Oliver told her. ‘I reckon you can do anything you want.’
And then Ruby’s eyes flickered closed. The chief anaesthetist gave Oliver a nod—and the operation was under way.
Lightness was put aside.
Oliver had outlined the risks to Ruby—and there were risks. Exposing this tiny baby to the outside world when she was nowhere near ready for birth was so dangerous. Em had no idea how many times it had been done in the past, how successful it had been, but all she knew as she watched was that if it was her baby there was no one she’d rather have behind the scalpel than Oliver.
He was working side by side with Heinz. They were talking through the procedure together, glancing up every so often at the scans on the screens above their heads, checking positions. They wanted no more of the baby exposed than absolutely necessary.
Another screen showed what they were doing. To Em in the background she could see little of the procedural site but this was being recorded—to be used as Rufus’s operation had been—to reassure another frantic mum?
Please let it have the same result, she pleaded. She was acting as gofer, moving equipment back and forth within reach of the theatre nurse as needed, but she still had plenty of time to watch the screen.
And then the final incision was made. Gently, gently, the baby was rotated within the uterus—and she could see the bulge that was the unsealed spine.
There was a momentary pause as everyone saw it. A collective intake of breath.
‘The poor little tacker,’ Tristan breathed. ‘To be born like that … she’d have had no chance of living a normal life.’
‘Then let’s see if we can fix it,’ Oliver said in a voice Em had never heard before. And she knew that every nerve was on edge, every last ounce of his skill and Heinz’s were at play here.
Please …
The complexity, the minuscule size, the need for accuracy, it was astounding.
Oliver was sweating. Not only was the intensity of his work mind-blowing, but the theatre itself had to be set at a high enough temperature to stop foetal shock.
‘Em.’ Chris, the chief theatre nurse, called back to her. ‘Take over the swabs.’
All hands were needed. Em saw where she, too, was needed. She moved seamlessly into position and acted to stop Oliver’s sweat obscuring his vision.
He wasn’t aware of her. He wasn’t aware of anything.
They were using cameras to blow up the images of the area he and Heinz were working on. Every person there was totally focused on the job or on the screens. Two people at once—two hearts, two lives …
She forgot to breathe. She forgot everything but keeping Oliver’s vision clear so he could do what had to be a miracle.
And finally they were closing. Oliver was stitching—maybe his hands were steadier than Heinz’s because he was working under instruction. He was inserting what seemed almost microstitches, carefully, carefully manoeuvring the spinal wound closed. Covering the spinal cord and the peripheral nerves. Stopping future damage.
The spine was closed. They were replacing the amniotic fluid. Oliver was closing the uterus, conferring with Heinz, seemingly relaxing a little.
The outer wound was being closed.
The thing was done.
Emily felt like sagging.
She wouldn’t. She wiped Oliver’s forehead for the final time and at last he had space to turn and give her a smile. To give the whole team a smile. But his smile ended with Em.
‘We’ve done it,’ he said with quiet triumph. ‘As long as we can keep her on board for another few weeks, we’ve saved your baby.’
‘Your baby’ …
Where had that come from?
And then she thought back to the teasing he’d given her when they’d first met, when they’d been working together, she as a brand-new nurse, he as a paediatric surgeon still in training.
‘Em, the way you expose your heart … You seem to greet every baby you help deliver as if it’s your own,’ he’d told her. ‘By the end of your career, you’ll be like Old Mother Hubbard—or the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Kids everywhere.’
And wouldn’t she just love that! She thought fleetingly of the two she was allowed to love. Gretta and Toby.
She did love them, fiercely, wonderfully, but she looked down at Ruby now and she knew that she had love to spare. Heart on her sleeve or not, she loved this teenage mum, and she loved the little life that was now securely tucked back inside her.
The heart swelled to fit all comers …
She thought back to Oliver’s appalling adoptive mother and she thought he’d never known that.
He still didn’t know it and they’d gone their separate ways because of it.
She stood back from the table. Her work there was done. She’d
