by Tina Beckett
Adeline spoke up. “A midwife. Someone you’d trust to deliver your niece or nephew, Adem.”
A beat went by. Then two. Suddenly it dawned on him what they were getting at. “You two are...?”
Basir’s resulting smile stretched from ear to ear. “Yes. We’re going to have a baby.”
Adem got up from his desk and came around to where his brother had also got up and caught him in a tight hug. “Congratulations.” He included Adeline in his smile. “Both of you.”
“Thank you. After three years, the time just seemed right, you know?” she said.
He didn’t know. Not at all. But for once, he wished he did.
Adem didn’t see himself having children any time soon. Or later. While he was happy for his brother, the only emotion that came up when he thought of children was dread. Maybe because in the midst of an unhappy home, he’d taken on so much responsibility at a young age. In some ways he felt like he’d already raised one child. And the weight of doing what was best for his brother had almost crushed him emotionally.
But he wouldn’t change it for the world, especially after seeing the obvious joy on Basir’s face. But doing it again?
He didn’t think so.
“What does Dad think?” He hoped his father would be happy for them, rather than weigh it in terms of how it would affect his business.
“I haven’t told him yet, but I think he’ll be happy. Even if he always did think you’d be the first one to give him a grandchild.”
Shock rolled up his spine. Why on earth would his father think that? “I don’t...”
“You’re the oldest, Adem. It’s that whole duty thing.” His brother said the words as if the reasons were obvious. And maybe they were to Basir, or even his dad, but not to him.
“I’m nowhere near that point.” He said the words with a smile he didn’t feel. “But I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you.”
“So back to the midwife question?” Adeline’s soft voice came through. “As you know, this is where we come for treatment. Or would we have to go to the Queen Victoria?”
Adem went back around his desk and carefully sat down. Yes, back to the midwife question. “You would come here, of course. And all of the midwives here are...”
Basir shook his head. “We don’t need all of them. Just one. Someone who makes you feel cared for and special.”
Even though his brother was speaking in general terms and not referring to Adem personally, the same face kept flashing in his mind.
She didn’t make him feel special. It hadn’t been what he was looking for the other night. He’d needed sex, and she’d offered it.
His jaw tightened. It hadn’t been like that at all, and he knew it. But to play it off as anything else was crazy.
And Carly was one of the best midwives at the clinic.
So did he send his brother to someone else to make it more comfortable for himself? Or did he tell Basir the truth? That he’d trust Carly with anyone. Look at Naomi. Someone else might have just told them to go to sleep and see if they felt better in the morning.
Not Carly. She’d met them at the hospital and had taken an interest in her patient every step of the way.
Still he hesitated before taking a deep breath. “Yes, there’s a midwife at the clinic who is exceptional.”
“What’s her name?”
“Carly Eliston.” He glanced at Adeline. “How far along are you?”
“Six weeks. We wanted to have it confirmed before saying anything to anyone. And we want to give it a few more weeks before we tell Dad.”
Adeline was referring to his and Basir’s father, since hers passed away just before their wedding three years ago.
“I can understand that. Let me talk to Carly and see what her schedule looks like. If she can take on another patient, I’ll give you her number.”
One of Carly’s strengths might prove to be a thorn in Adem’s side. She took such a personal interest in her patients that it was doubtful that Adem would be able to stand on the sidelines and out of the way.
But he would have to try.
“Is there a chance she’ll say no?”
“I don’t know. It depends on how many patients she has.” Not to mention how she felt about taking on one of his family members. Maybe she wanted nothing to do with him and would say no.
As someone who’d protected his brother for years, that didn’t sit well. But he’d have no choice but to accept whatever decision Carly made.
“We can understand that. Maybe if you could contact them in order of skill.”
“I’ll do that and let you know.” Suddenly he wanted them out of his office so he could think.
“What was the name of the person you like the most?”
Hell. Why did he have to put it that way?
“Carly Eliston. And I don’t like her the most. Just said that she gave excellent care.”
Basir’s head tilted and he looked at him funny. As if he’d heard something behind the words. Something Adem had almost certainly not meant.
At least, he hoped he didn’t.
“That’s what I meant.”
Adem stood again, ready to end this impromptu meeting. “Congratulations again. I’ll get in touch with Carly and let you know.”
In reality he was supposed to see her today, when he did the coiling procedure on Naomi. He could talk to her then.
Or he could lie and ask someone else completely, saying that Carly was busy.
For his own peace of mind?
He already knew he wouldn’t do that. When it came to peace of mind, his was normally the one sacrificed for the good of his brother. And he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
Even if the next nine months turned out to the longest he’d ever endured.
* * *
Naomi was getting her surgery. Thankfully she’d continued to do well, but since her blood pressure had crept up a bit, the decision had been made to go with Adem’s suggestion and place a coil in the bulging vein and cut off its blood supply.
Dressed in surgical gear and paper booties, Carly was already in the surgical suite when Adem swept into the room, hands held up so that a nurse could snap gloves on his freshly scrubbed hands. “Is everyone here?”
He glanced her way with an inscrutable expression, but didn’t address her. Something in her chest twinged.
Did he regret asking her to be in the room? She’d held Naomi’s hand as they’d administered the anesthesia drugs, the woman’s eyes struggling to remain focused on hers, a slight flare of panic appearing before her lids flickered and finally closed. It made her throat clog. Even though Carly had never faced anything like this, she could imagine the things that might fill her mind as she was wheeled into the room: Would she ever see her husband again...would her baby be okay...would she be normal?
Just before Adem had come in, Carly had leaned over the sleeping woman and said, “I’m right here, Naomi. I’m not leaving, no matter what.”
And if Adem asked her to?
Why would he? They’d seen each other in passing at the clinic over the last couple of days, but other than being there when the surgical team met, he hadn’t gone out of his way to speak to her. If anything, it seemed almost like he was avoiding her.
Or maybe it was that she was avoiding him.
Which she was.
Raphael Dubois was on call at the hospital, if they needed him. And the neonatal ward was ready as well, Esther having told Carly to call her at the first sign of trouble—even before the call officially went to the NICU. They were as prepared as they possibly could be.
Adem moved to the table and gave the go-ahead for the contrast dye and imaging to start. He then made a small incision in Naomi’s femoral artery and proceeded to feed the catheter through the opening. The process seemed to take forever as he stared at the
screen where the aneurysm was now in sharp focus, a rounded bowl that looked like some kind of strange fruit that was attached to the tree by a stem.
“Preparing to enter the location. I’ll need the microcatheter in a moment.”
From what she’d understood from the meeting, he would thread another smaller catheter up through the one he was using now. It contained a thin platinum coil that would fill the aneurysm and cause the blood to clot, effectively cutting off its blood supply and preventing it from rupturing.
“Okay, I’m in place.”
The surgical nurse next to him passed him the instrument, and Adem fed it through in the same way he’d done with the original catheter. The process was painstaking and seemed to take forever, even though Carly had been told to expect a couple of hours of standing. The standing wasn’t the problem. It was that with each ticking second, there was the possibility that something could go terribly wrong.
No different than any birth she’d assisted.
That wasn’t exactly true. This was dealing with a part of the body that was much harder to fix if a mistake was made.
And yet while there were lines of concentration clearly visible on his face, Adem’s hands were remarkably steady and his breathing even and regular. Just like always.
How did she know what his breathing normally looked like?
She closed her eyes for a second to stop that image from forming.
She knew what it looked like. Intimately.
And right now, Adem gave off a vibe of confidence. She could remember times when she’d been worried about a patient’s welfare and had had to mask those emotions, wall them off from both the patients and herself—so that she could do her job. Without that ability, she might as well throw in the towel and quit.
It was probably the same with Adem.
“Here we go, people.”
She assumed that meant that he was getting ready to put the coils in place. With a flick of his thumb, a hair-thin fiber appeared on the screen and began making a series of what looked like loop-the-loops that quickly filled the defect.
“Giving the electrical charge...now.”
The electricity caused the coiling material to separate from the catheter, allowing it to remain in place once the instruments were retracted.
He surprised her by not pulling out immediately after that happened, but remained in place, staring at the screen with narrowed eyes.
Kind of like he’d stared at her, when he strained within her, staying exactly where he was for what seemed like a long, long time.
Oh, God. She put her hand to her throat. Where had that come from?
Very grateful to the mask that shielded most of her face, she swallowed several times, struggling to coil her emotions and shove them back in their container. But unlike the endovascular procedure Adem had almost completed, they weren’t cooperating nearly as well.
A couple more deep breaths, though, and she was back in control. And as she glanced at the screen, she saw that the aneurysm seemed less “bright,” although she wasn’t sure if that was the right word.
Adem must have thought so as well, because he said, “I’m happy with the placement and how it looks. Getting ready to move out.”
The process of withdrawing the catheters was a whole lot quicker than the time it had taken to position them. But that made sense, since he’d had to find the perfect path that would take him to the heart of the problem.
And her perfect path? The one that would take her to the heart of the problem with Adem?
Well, she was still trying to find it.
“Placing the closure device.”
He must have seen her head tilt, because a few minutes after pressing what looked like a plunger in the area on Naomi’s leg, he glanced at her. “I’m closing the incision I made in the artery with a collagen plug. It’s faster than manual compression and allows her to become ambulatory more quickly. It dissolves in a few weeks.”
Okay, that was interesting.
“Thanks for the explanation.”
A nurse assisted in clearing away the tubing from the procedure and Adem nodded at the anesthesiologist. “Let’s wake her up.”
“Okay. Reversing now.”
While a couple of the nurses continued to organize the room, Adem watched Naomi’s face. When her eyes flicked open, Carly saw him take a deep breath. Maybe he hadn’t been quite as unruffled as he’d seemed. That was good, because she just now realized how tight her own muscles had been.
She’d always thought Adem was a skilled surgeon, but watching him perform that surgery had made her heart swell with admiration. Maybe because Naomi was her patient and she was glad of the outcome. But she had a feeling it was more than that.
The anesthesiologist came around and murmured to the patient and then removed the endotracheal tube. “How are you feeling?”
Naomi’s eyes tracked to his face. “Did it work? Baby?”
The croaked words made Carly’s chest tighten. She wasn’t concerned about her comfort or even attempting to answer the question. Even though she probably wouldn’t remember these next moments due to the amnesic effect of the medication, her first semiconscious thoughts were for her child.
Adem put his hand on her shoulder. “It worked perfectly, and your baby is fine. We’re going to wheel you back to recovery in a minute and let you get some rest. I’ll let Douglas know how things went, and he can come see you in just a little bit.”
Naomi looked past him and found her. A slight smile appeared, and she nodded.
Maybe Naomi would remember, after all.
She was so glad she’d stayed. So glad she hadn’t let her personal feelings over what had happened with Adem deflect her from doing what she thought was right. And being here with Naomi had been the right thing to do. One of those cases when, like her patient, she put her own comfort to the side and worried about someone other than herself. “I’ll go wait with her until her husband is allowed in.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll head over to the clinic afterward.”
“Okay. I have one more surgery here, and then I’ll be over as well.” He smiled. “And I left your missing item on your cubicle desk. And later, I need to talk to you when you have a minute.”
Her missing item. The hairbrush.
She wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to tell her that, or why her heart had picked up the pace when he said he needed to speak to her. She was just going to ignore her reaction, though, and keep on ignoring it until it became second nature and that crazy night of Glass Panels, the London Eye and her Lost Hairbrush faded into the past. After all, there was nothing she could do to change it. Any of it. And she wasn’t sure she would if she could.
So why not just enjoy the memory for what it was: a thrilling night that, in the end, changed nothing.
CHAPTER FOUR
“MY BROTHER IS expecting a baby and needs a midwife.”
Carly wasn’t sure what words she expected to hear, but those were not them.
She’d gone from elation after Naomi’s surgery, to fear that he wanted to rehash what was already over and done with: that night at his flat.
Blinking, she tried to catch up with reality. “Your brother?”
“Yes. I should have said he and his wife haven’t been assigned a midwife yet. They’re expecting their first child.”
“The brother who’s working with your dad?”
Adem gave a slight smile. “That’s right. He’s the only brother I have.”
“Oh...yes. I should have remembered that.” Being around him again was bringing all those feelings from the other night back to the forefront. Not good. Not good at all. Hadn’t she vowed she was going to keep things professional from now on? “You want me to take them on as part of my patient load?”
“I do. They’re already patients o
f the clinic. If you have space, that is.”
Suspicion crowded her thoughts. Was it odd that right after she’d spent the night with him, he suddenly wanted her to be his sister-in-law’s midwife?
“May I ask why?”
He frowned, leaning against the white wall of the clinic foyer. “Do I need a reason?” His head tilted as if realizing something. “Ah. You think the other night might have had something to do with it. I can assure you it didn’t. If anything, it made me think carefully about whether or not to recommend you to them.”
And that thought horrified her even more. Had that night been that awful? “I don’t really understand what that has to do with anything.”
“I don’t want to make things any more awkward than they already are. For either of us.”
Okay, he had her there, because things had been awkward. For her at least, and a little part of her was glad that it was for him as well. That he hadn’t been able just to brush it aside as if it had never happened. “Okay, that’s understandable.”
“If you don’t want to do it, I’ll understand.”
Since she’d just said she didn’t know what that night had to do with anything, she’d be a hypocrite if she suddenly didn’t want to have his brother and his wife as patients. “You might, but I wouldn’t. Of course I will. I’d like to meet them, if I could. Sooner rather than later. You know I like to follow my patients for as much of the pregnancy as possible.”
“I know. Which is why I told them about you.”
He had? A warmth infused her that had nothing to do with Adem’s future niece or nephew. “I’m flattered.”
“Believe me, it has nothing to do with flattery. I just know they’ll get excellent care.”
“Because of Naomi?”
“Not just her. I’ve watched you with your patients. While I personally think you might get a little too emotionally involved with them, I also know that it means that nothing will get by you.”
“Thank you. I think.”
He laughed. “It was a compliment.”
She couldn’t hold back an answering smile. “I wasn’t quite sure.”