Saved by Their Miracle Baby

by Alison Roberts

  Not that Abby felt remotely hungry but the offer was too good to turn down because it would provide what she needed far more than food and that was the company of the man she loved. The father of the baby she loved and who now, finally, had a name that they had chosen together and it made it feel as if they were even more of a family. A family that couldn’t be together for more than fractured moments but every one of those moments felt too precious to waste right now.

  ‘I’d love that,’ she told Noah. ‘I’ll go and pack up my stuff in the ward. Come and find me when you’re ready to go home.’

  * * *

  Home...

  That’s what it felt like, following Abby through the front door of her apartment. A comfortable, familiar space that he liked to be in. With a person he liked to be with. It was good to have something to do as well. To put a meal together from the wealth of supplies he found in both the fridge and the freezer.

  ‘Someone’s been shopping for you. And they cleaned up the food we left in the oven the night that... Leo decided he was going to arrive early.’

  It felt strange to say their baby’s chosen name aloud again. Who would have thought that a name could be powerful enough to change something that felt huge. Scary even... Just three letters but it made his son more real, somehow. A small person with a name that reflected his courage.

  ‘Lisa’s been in and out.’ Abby told him. ‘She had to come and get things I needed, like fresh clothes. And I wanted something to go in Leo’s incubator right from the start so it didn’t look quite so clinical. I’d bought that lion lovey blanket ages ago to give to Amy but then I kept it because I thought it was so cute. I hid it away because... I don’t know...maybe I knew how much I wanted to have a baby one day.’

  She hadn’t planned on having one this soon, though, had she? Or with someone who couldn’t give her the kind of love she absolutely deserved. There was a heavy feeling in Noah’s chest, like a stone that was gradually getting bigger, but he tried to ignore it and stay cheerful. Supportive.

  ‘Maybe we should go with a lion theme for his nursery?’

  ‘It might be a good idea in your house. To go with that jungle of a garden you’ve got out the back.’

  This made where he was feel less like home. There was a jarring note to be found in thinking about separate living arrangements that needed to be made but...that was the way things were, wasn’t it? As much a part of what they were dealing with as the fact that he couldn’t offer what he felt he should be able to offer to the mother of his child.

  Abby was coping somehow so Noah had to follow her example, that was all there was to it. He mentally added finding a landscape gardener to the list of things he needed to get organised. He would give the go-ahead to start the alterations to his new house in the next few days as well, he decided, as he collected the plans still scattered on Abby’s kitchen table. The more he had to supervise, or better yet to do himself, the easier it would be to cope with the stress of what the next days or weeks might throw at them. And the better he could cope, the more he would be able to do to support Abby.

  He only had to catch her gaze to see just how she needed him right now, no matter how bravely she was facing up to this new challenge in her life. This had to be the hardest part so far, being forced to be away from her baby, unable to reassure herself by listening to the steady beat of those monitors or the touch of his hand. She still looked far too pale. Too stressed. Too...scared.

  He went to her and crouched down a little, putting his hands on the wheels of her chair so that he wasn’t looking down at her.

  ‘How ’bout curling up on the couch for a bit? I’ll go out and see if I can find some chips and gravy and mushy peas at the local chippie and we’ll have a picnic on the coffee table.’

  There was something warm in those gorgeous, soft, hazel brown eyes now. Gratitude that he was trying to do something that might make her feel better? No...it was more than that. It reminded him of the way she’d looked when he’d gone into the NICU this evening—when little Leo had been holding onto her finger. It was a look of love, that’s what it was, and the longing to be able to feel that and gift it back to her was so strong it was actually a physical pain.

  Or maybe the pain was coming not from a longing for something that he couldn’t have but because he was hitting that barrier so hard. The one that made it impossible to feel that kind of love again because the flip side of that coin was a loss that was too unbearable to risk. Whatever...his heart was aching. For himself but more for Abby, and without thinking Noah offered his arms. It was a reflex action, wasn’t it—to find something physical to do in order to strengthen whatever protection was needed from something emotional? Abby, surprisingly, accepted his silent offer to carry her to the couch so that she didn’t have to make the effort of moving and transferring herself. She lifted her own arms and wrapped them around his neck as he lifted her body.

  Holding Abby in his arms hadn’t been his brightest idea, though. To feel the shape of her body against his, the warmth of her skin—the scent that was uniquely Abby’s—was too much of a reminder of how close they had been back in the days when it had seemed safe because they had only been “good friends”. But nothing was really safe, was it? And he might be doing his best for both Abby and his son at the moment but Noah felt like a failure.

  They both needed more from him and he simply didn’t have it to give. And this wasn’t fair. On any of them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, as he put Abby gently down on the soft cushions of the couch. It had been this couch where they’d made love that first time, which only made the memories stronger and increased the guilt that he’d made a serious error of judgement that was going to affect the lives of other people as well as himself. Abby deserved so much more than Noah could offer.

  ‘What for?’

  Noah had already turned away, fishing in his pocket for his car keys. He looked back just long enough to meet her gaze.

  ‘Everything,’ he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  YOU COULD GET used to almost anything.

  Like having to tap the sole of your baby’s foot when the apnoea alarm sounded to warn that he’d stopped breathing for too long. Like making the most of the small things that you could do to help the nursing staff care for your baby, such as washing his face with the softest of muslin cloths or changing a disposable nappy that looked too big even though it was far smaller than any newborn size you could buy in a supermarket.

  You could even get used to the roller-coaster of the hope that came with good news and the despair and fear that seemed to follow—sometimes only hours later. Things could change in a heartbeat—as they had today when Leo’s apnoeic episodes had increased in frequency to the point that the decision had been made to go ahead with the surgery to correct his heart defect.

  But even in a downward swoop of this journey, there could be a sudden, unexpected lift. A moment of pure joy, in fact. Like right now, when Abby was being allowed to actually hold Leo for the first time as they disconnected some of his monitors or changed them to a portable version so that he could be taken up to Theatre where his neonatal cardiology team were already preparing for his arrival.

  “Holding” wasn’t quite the right word for what she was doing, Abby thought. She had undone the buttons on her shirt and the nurses had lifted her precious baby from the incubator, expertly juggling wires and tubes to prevent tangling, to place him onto her bare skin. He was just above her breasts, on his tummy with his arms and legs spread out and even his tiny fingers and toes splayed.

  ‘He looks like a little tree frog,’ Abby whispered. She touched his head with her finger so gently she could almost feel the individual hairs of the fluff covering his scalp. ‘But you need to channel your inner lion, sweetheart. We’ve got stuff to get through today.’

  ‘He’s going to be fine.’ Noah was right beside her. ‘Did you under
stand everything they said about the procedure?’

  ‘Not really,’ Abby admitted. ‘My training only included a fairly basic cardiac course and... I’m not sure it would help to know more. The idea that they’re putting things into Leo’s heart is terrifying enough.’

  She was touching her baby’s back now. Feeling the tiniest bumps of his spine. She could feel his heartbeat against her skin and it was all too easy to imagine just how tiny his heart was. How on earth could anyone repair something so small?

  Of course Noah was confident. His whole life was spent operating on structures that were just as tiny. It was his passion but Abby couldn’t understand why he wanted to talk about the procedure now, when he could be sharing the joy of this small miracle of being able to touch Leo properly for the first time. To count those tiny fingers and toes and touch the tip of his nose and marvel that something so small could be so utterly perfect.

  But that was precisely why Noah was seeking an escape, wasn’t it? This felt like the hardest challenge Abby had ever faced but it had to be harder for Noah and she had to factor in that heartache to the emotional battle between joy and fear that was currently tumbling inside both her head and her heart as she soaked in every second of being this close to their baby.

  ‘But maybe it would help,’ she found herself saying. ‘If you tell me again.’

  If nothing else, Leo could listen to his father’s voice for a few minutes. And Abby could stroke his soft, downy skin at the same time, to try and let him know just how much he was loved.

  * * *

  It was like being able to find a new handhold or somewhere to put your foot to take some of the weight that was threatening to make it impossible to climb this cliff and could send you tumbling God only knew how far or what was at the bottom.

  This handhold was no more than a piece of paper and a pen but it provided something that Noah could focus on and, while he could still see their baby sprawled against Abby’s much paler skin, it was only in the periphery of his vision and that was much easier to cope with.

  His sketch was rapid but accurate enough to be useful and he was explaining at the same time as drawing the diagram.

  ‘So this is the heart. You’ve got the two ventricles there, and the two atria on top and you’ve got these arteries, here... This is the pulmonary artery that takes deoxygenated blood from the right ventricle to the lungs and that’s the aorta that takes the oxygenated blood from the left ventricle to the rest of the body. With me so far?’

  He could see Abby’s nod but she wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was firmly on Leo and she was touching one of his cheeks, softly tracing the outline of one of the strips of tape holding a tube in place—the nasogastric tube that was allowing him to be fed some of his mother’s milk now, which was a step forward from only having intravenous nutrition.

  ‘Before a baby’s born, the lungs aren’t going to be providing oxygen because they’re full of fluid so the ductus arteriosus is an extra blood vessel that lets most of the blood go straight to the aorta and bypass the lungs. After birth, it closes up and becomes a ligament rather than a blood vessel. That’s why it’s a common problem with premmie babies and, if it’s big enough, it can present significant issues, like it has with Leo.’

  Noah paused to take a breath. He’d just made this suddenly so much more personal by using Leo’s name instead of explaining something in terms of babies in general.

  ‘But they’re not going to cut his chest open, are they?’ Abby’s question was only a whisper but he could feel her fear hovering in the air between them.

  ‘No. And he’ll be sedated so he’s not going to feel any pain. They’ll make a very small incision to put a catheter into an artery in his groin and make sure it gets to exactly the right place in his heart by using X-rays to follow it. They can take measurements and pressure readings and then they can thread in another catheter that has a closure device on it. They position that and implant the device and it fills up the blood vessel and seals it shut.

  ‘Then they take out the catheter, close the incision and make sure that there’s no bleeding from the entry site. I’m not sure how long it will take and he’ll need to go into a recovery area afterwards for close monitoring so it might be a while before you’re back in here and able to hold him again.’

  One of the nurses looked up from where she was adjusting settings on the incubator. ‘It’s nearly time to tuck him up again,’ she said gently. ‘His oxygen sats are dropping a bit. We’ll probably get the call to take him up to Theatre soon, anyway.’

  Abby was nodding. It looked like her lips were pressed together too tightly to let her say anything. She bent her head, just enough to touch the top of Leo’s head with her lips and it seemed to startle him because he lifted his arms. One of the miniature miracles of a hand had come even closer to Noah and, without thinking, he lifted his own hand to touch it—as if he wanted to check that something so small and perfect could be real. He touched it just with the very tip of his forefinger on the palm of his son’s hand but, almost instantly, Leo closed his hand and gripped Noah’s fingertip in a tiny, determined little fist.

  Noah froze.

  It felt like time froze as well and the whole world stopped turning for a heartbeat. And then another and another.

  That, oh, so tiny hand was touching way more than Noah’s fingertip. It was reaching inside his body. Into his heart. It was touching those walls he’d built so carefully to protect his heart and that touch was all it took for them to crack and begin to crumble. He could feel the cracks widening so that what was behind them was about to escape. A tsunami of...feeling...

  Feeling the joy and hope and dreams of loving someone so much.

  But also the fear that came with knowing what it would be like to have it all snatched away from you.

  He could drown in that tsunami. But, even if he didn’t drown, he would be swept off his feet and be unable to be strong for Abby while she faced up to her own fears as she waited for Leo to come out of Theatre. He caught her gaze at that moment, while his finger was still being held, and what he saw in her eyes was the final push on those walls.

  He couldn’t do this.

  He couldn’t not do this...

  Noah had no idea what might have happened if his pager hadn’t sounded right then. The loud sound was enough to startle Leo again and he let go of Noah’s finger as the nurse carefully scooped him up from Abby’s chest to put him back in his incubator.

  ‘I...ah... I have to get this...’ The pager message had come with a priority of something urgent.

  Abby simply watched him as he got to his feet and moved towards a phone at the nurses’ station to make an internal call. Noah’s legs felt as if his whole body had been shaken by something and he could feel Abby’s gaze following him. A curious gaze. Maybe a hopeful one? Was she wondering if she’d really seen what she’d thought she’d seen when his son had been holding his finger? That moment when he’d realised that it was only his own fear that was holding him back from loving someone absolutely. Not just Leo but Abby as well. Especially Abby...

  The phone call was from the emergency department and Noah listened only for a very short time.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

  A few rapid steps back towards Leo’s corner of the NICU where he was being settled for when the call to transport him to Theatre came through. Abby had just put his woolly hat back on his head.

  ‘I have to go,’ Noah told her. ‘I’m sorry. There’s an emergency in ED. Someone’s come in having split their hand in half with a circular saw.’

  If there’d been anything like hope in Abby’s gaze, it faded now into something very different. Resignation, maybe. Sadness? Or perhaps it was simply determination.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘Go. That person needs you.’

  So did Abby and Leo. But Noah went—because he had to.


  Because he needed to. Because this urgent summons was giving him the chance to escape and get to higher ground in the last moments before that tsunami arrived. A chance to take control back and, if he couldn’t repair those protective walls in his heart, he could at least stay out of an overwhelming wash of emotions. He had to, because if that wave caught him, he might not be of any use to anyone and letting that happen would not only be selfish, it would be completely unacceptable. Someone was waiting for him in ED. Someone who was probably desperately hoping that Noah could help stop their injury from turning their world upside down for ever.

  And he could do that. Or as much as it was possible to do and maybe, by doing that, he could save his own world from falling apart as well.

  * * *

  This waiting room was the loneliest place ever.

  Lisa and Hugh were on their way to the hospital but they’d been in central London this morning, choosing Amy’s first cot because, at nearly seven months old, she had grown too big for her bassinet and now they were caught in a traffic jam that didn’t look like it was going to clear anytime soon.

  Abby didn’t know where Noah was. Probably scrubbing up for some incredibly long and challenging surgery to save his patient from losing his hand. The only thing that really mattered to her right now was that he wasn’t here.

  She was alone.

  More alone than she’d ever been in her life. She’d followed Leo’s incubator as far as she was allowed—to the theatre anteroom where a specialist paediatric anaesthetist would be sedating her tiny baby so that he could undergo a procedure that might well be perfectly safe but it still seemed unbearably invasive, especially for a baby who wasn’t even developed enough to be able to breathe on his own.