and Oliver hadn’t used protection, the night of the Hallowe’en masked ball. But she’d thought it wouldn’t matter.
Of course she wasn’t pregnant. She couldn’t be.
As for the fact that her bra felt a bit too tight and her breasts felt slightly sore... That was purely psychological. Her imagination was simply running riot and coming up with other pregnancy symptoms. There was no way this could be a miracle baby. No way at all.
But, now she thought about it, her period was late. A quick mental count told her that it was two and a half weeks late. She hadn’t had time to notice because they’d been so short-staffed and busy in the department lately. Actually, that was probably the reason why her period was late in the first place; she’d been rushed off her feet and working crazy hours, so it wasn’t surprising that her menstrual cycle was protesting.
‘Ella O’Brien, you’re being a numpty,’ she told herself crossly. ‘Of course you’re not pregnant.’ All the same, during her break she took one of the pregnancy test kits from the cupboard. Just to prove to herself once and for all that she was being ridiculous, and then she could get on with the rest of her life.
She peed on the stick, then waited.
A blue line appeared in the first window, to show that the test was working properly.
And then, to her shock, a blue line appeared in the second window.
But—but—this couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. How could she possibly be pregnant?
She sat there staring at the test, in turmoil, emotions whirling through her.
The test result was clear: she was expecting a baby. The one thing she’d been told would never happen, by specialists she’d trusted absolutely. From what they’d said, the odds were so stacked against her falling pregnant, she’d have more chances of winning a huge prize on the lottery.
Though in some ways this felt better than winning the lottery. A baby. The gift she’d never dreamed she’d ever be able to have, except from the sidelines. Although she’d smiled and been genuinely pleased whenever one of her cousins or one of her friends had announced she was pregnant, a tiny part of Ella had mourned the fact she’d never know the joy of being a mum. And now she was actually going to be a mum. Have a baby of her own. For a moment, sheer joy flooded through her. Despite almost impossible odds, she was going to have a baby. A Christmas miracle.
But then panic took over. What about her career? She’d already lost a lot of ground during her studies, thanks to the combination of her dyslexia and the pain of the endometriosis. Some days, the pain had been so debilitating that she hadn’t been able to sit through lectures, and she’d had to borrow notes from friends instead of recording the lectures, and struggled as the words danced across the page. Even when her doctor had finally found some medication to help deal with the pain, things hadn’t got much better, because then she’d had the ruptured cyst...
She’d worried that if her tutors knew the truth about her illness, they’d make her drop the course. They knew about her dyslexia and they’d already given her so much help, letting her record lectures so she could listen to them and absorb the knowledge that way. She couldn’t possibly ask for yet more help. It’d be greedy and selfish. Ella almost gave in to her parents’ suggestion to forget all about being a midwife and go home to Ireland. But then she’d had a work placement and she’d loved working on the ward so much. It had made her more determined to follow her dream of being a midwife, so she’d struggled on and scraped through her exams.
And she was always aware that she should’ve done better as a student, that her grades had let her down. It drove her to work harder on the ward, to prove to everyone round her that she was better than her exam results said she was. All the way through her medical career, she’d asked to use computer software to dictate notes rather than rely on her terrible handwriting, she’d used coloured lenses in her glasses so she could manage with bright paper or a screen, and she’d asked colleagues to proofread her notes—because she’d never, ever put a patient at risk by not double-checking that everything in the notes was absolutely correct. And, even though people weren’t supposed to discriminate against you at work if you had a medical condition, Ella had always felt the need to work extra hard, just to prove that her dyslexia wouldn’t make any difference to her ability to do her job.
But going on maternity leave in six months’ time would have a huge impact on her career. She’d lose experience and study time. And what would happen when her maternity leave had ended? Juggling work and still managing to spend a decent amount of time with the baby, as a single parent, was going to be tricky. Arranging childcare to fit round her shifts would be tricky, too.
Though she wasn’t the baby’s only parent.
And that was something else that worried her.
There was only one man who could be the father, because she’d only ever slept with Oliver.
Once.
How, how, how had she managed to get pregnant? Then again, how many times had a young mum-to-be cried on her shoulder that it had been the first time she’d had sex and she’d been so sure you couldn’t get pregnant if it was your first time?
But, that night, Ella had told Oliver it was safe not to use a condom. Her doctors had been so sure that she couldn’t have children—that her Fallopian tubes were so badly damaged that she probably wouldn’t be able to have children even with the help of IVF—that she really had believed it was safe not to use a condom.
And now here she was: single, and pregnant with Oliver’s baby after a one-night stand. How on earth was she going to tell him about the baby?
She had absolutely no idea what Oliver would say or how he’d react to the news. Since the night of the ball, things between them had cooled considerably. She wasn’t sure which of the two of them was the more embarrassed about what had happened. He’d really reacted badly once he’d realised that she’d been a virgin. Working together had been awkward, and both of them had made excuses to avoid work social events where the other might be there.
Things had cooled even more when it turned out that Oliver had got the job as Assistant Head of Obstetrics. Although he wasn’t directly Ella’s boss, he was very much her senior. The last thing she wanted was for him—or anyone else at Teddy’s—to think that she’d slept with him in an attempt to boost her career. She’d never do anything like that.
At least Oliver wasn’t dating anyone else, as far as she knew, so that was one less complication to worry about. But how did you tell someone that you were expecting his baby, when you weren’t even in a relationship with him and you had no idea how he’d react?
She couldn’t even begin to frame the right words.
She knew she wasn’t going to get a happy-ever-after, where Oliver went down on one knee with a hand clutched to his chest, declared his undying love for her and asked her to marry him. Though she wasn’t naive enough to expect that. And if he did ask her, she certainly wasn’t going to marry a man who didn’t love her, just for the baby’s sake. That wouldn’t be fair to any of them.
But Ella did want Oliver to be involved with the baby. She’d had a really happy childhood. She’d been an only child, but her parents had both come from big families and she’d had plenty of cousins around, so it had been almost as good as having siblings. She wanted that for her baby, too: that feeling of being loved and wanted, of being part of a family. And, even though she wasn’t expecting
