with professionals. I guess the standards here are not what I’m used to.’
‘Excuse me?’ She couldn’t help herself. There was no way she going to let anyone accuse her of being unprofessional. It was the biggest slight that someone could say to a nurse or midwife.
But it seemed that Harry was off on a rant. He kept his voice low, so that no one else in the unit could hear. ‘Why does Billy still have a feeding tube in situ? In order for Francesca to anaesthetise him, she needs to ensure his stomach is empty. His feeding should have stopped a few hours ago.’
Now Esther wanted to shout at him, but just at that moment a voice answered at the end of the phone. ‘Lab,’ came the weary response.
Something inside Esther panged. Whoever was working there was obviously every bit as tired as she was. ‘It’s Esther from NICU. Can I chase bloods for a baby that’s going to Theatre?’
There was a sigh and murmur of consent. She replaced the receiver and turned to face Francesca, completely ignoring Mr Entourage. She wasn’t even prepared to use his name right now.
‘If you refresh the screen in around five minutes Billy’s bloods will be available. One of the machines was down for a few hours this morning but it’s back up and running now. Billy’s bloods had already been in the system. They’re just waiting for his clotting factor.’
Francesca gave a nod. ‘Perfect.’
Esther looked at Harry’s screen. He was looking at the cardiac echo that had been taken yesterday. Billy needed his surgery, badly.
She moved alongside Harry. ‘I have many skills, Mr Beaumont, but mind reading isn’t one of them. Like I said earlier, if you’d given us notice of Billy’s procedure, then we’d have made sure his feeds were stopped in good time. As it was, his tube dislodged last night and had to be replaced. Billy already had a few hours without sustenance, while his tube was re-sited and then checked. His feed only started again in the last hour.’ She braced herself and turned her head towards him. ‘And for me, unprofessional is a surgeon sweeping into a NICU with an entourage of twelve people with no regard for the patients or parents who are already in a stressful environment. For a surgeon with your apparent experience, I’d expect better.’
Harry was trying his absolute best to keep his temper in check, but this midwife was trying his patience in every possible way. It didn’t help that she had a cheek to be angry at him, or that when she was clearly annoyed she spoke so quickly he had to concentrate to make out a single word that she said. Her Scottish accent was fierce. A bit like she was.
By rights she should probably have fiery red hair to match. But she didn’t. She had dark hair that was up in a ponytail, and her skin looked as though it had once been tanned but was now strangely pale. He couldn’t possibly ignore the dark circles under her blue eyes, or the dirty scrubs she was wearing. He wasn’t quite sure what all this meant—apart from the fact she was looking after the baby he was due to take to Theatre.
Harry had spent his life in and out of NICUs across the world due to his surgical speciality. There weren’t many people that wanted to work on such tiny hearts and veins—particularly when the tissues were so fragile and these little lives could literally be on a knife edge.
What the staff in the NICU at the Queen Victoria clearly didn’t know was that he was the new visiting surgeon, which meant that, where possible, babies with heart conditions would be brought here for him to operate on. For those who were too sick to travel any distance, he would still go to them. But having a semi-permanent base with a team around him would be good. He’d hoped to find professional colleagues he could trust and rely on. But first impressions of this midwife weren’t exactly good.
There was no way he wanted her watching Billy postsurgery.
But what annoyed him most of all was the way she’d quickly and determinedly told him to get his staff out of ‘her’ NICU.
And she’d been right. They always tried to reduce the amount of close contacts that prem babies had. It was important. Their immune systems were often not fully developed, and most humans were walking petri dishes.
People could be carrying bugs for days without any signs or symptoms. Something that caused a mere sniffle in an adult could be deadly to a premature baby. It might be a teaching hospital but even he wouldn’t expect any NICU to let in that many students and trainees. He’d been in such a hurry to get in here and see his patient, and been so swept away by the enthusiasm of the staff at his side, that he hadn’t stopped to think. And Harry didn’t make mistakes like that. So being called on it was embarrassing.
‘You must have known Billy was going to Theatre today,’ he said briskly to the midwife.
She gave him a weary look that told him she was getting very bored by all this. ‘I hoped you might show your face today. I hoped that Billy wouldn’t have to wait another day for surgery. I was told that you were supposed to turn up today, but no one knew when. I look after both baby and mum, and if you’d communicated a little better, there was also the chance I could have prepared mum more for his surgery today.’
She put her hands at the back of both hips, leaned backwards and winced as if she’d touched something painful.
‘Blood results are in,’ said Francesca in a manner that could only be described as deliberately distracting. It was clear she was trying to break the tension between them. ‘His blood gases are a little lower than I would have liked. But not anything I wouldn’t have expected.’ Francesca gave a little sigh and Harry felt a rush of sympathy for her. They’d worked together for a long time. She was a great anaesthetist. It took great skill to manage these tiny babies in Theatre and he depended on her completely. Francesca’s chair scraped on the ground as she stood up. ‘I need to sound his chest. Let me wash up first.’
He followed her over to the sink in the treatment room, completely sidestepping Esther and washing his hands too. He needed to prioritise this baby, not the midwife who looked as if she could currently fall asleep on her feet.
As he stepped back his arm brushed against hers and she jerked away. But not before he noticed how hot she was. ‘Do you have some kind of infection?’
She looked shocked. ‘What?’
‘You’re burning up. What’s your temperature?’ His arm swept out across all the cribs in the NICU. ‘If you have anything respiratory you’re putting the lives of all these babies at risk.’
‘I don’t have anything respiratory,’ she snapped. ‘My chest is clear as a bell.’
For one strange second he realised that her words had made him look exactly at her breasts hidden under her scrubs. He turned back to Francesca. ‘We should see this baby on our own.’
Esther stepped into his path. ‘No, you won’t. I know Jill, his mum, best. She needs support. She trusts me.’
Harry glared at her and she held up her hands. ‘Okay, I won’t touch Billy, right now. I’ll run down to A&E when you’re done and get a clean bill of health. But you don’t see him without me.’
Harry pressed his lips together, stopping himself from just getting into a pointless argument. ‘Only speak to mum, then,’ he reiterated.
She gave
