The Pregnancy Proposition

by Meredith Webber

  ‘Been bugging him about his attitude to your nurses?’ he said.

  Amelia, who had a host of her own questions to deal with, glared at both of them.

  ‘I don’t know why you all assume I’m in trouble. Just maybe he wants to say we’re doing a good job!’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ the others chorused. ‘That’d be likely!’

  But no amount of guessing could have prepared her for what Mac actually had to say. Amelia had been sufficiently disturbed by the summons to knock before entering.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, come in, Peterson,’ Mac growled. ‘Since when did you knock before barging in here?’

  ‘I’m not barging in,’ Amelia countered sharply. ‘I was ordered to appear. No doubt, so you could yell at me for something more relevant to work than knocking on your door.’

  Mac scowled at her.

  ‘How the hell did this start off as an argument?’ he demanded. He ran his fingers through his hair and Amelia couldn’t help remembering how silky soft it had been. ‘Sit down, Peterson. I need to talk to you.’

  His voice was gruff—almost desperate. But perhaps she was imagining that because her own inner tension had a fine edge of desperation itself. Working with Mac after what had happened nearly a fortnight earlier was driving her to distraction.

  If only it hadn’t been so good…

  Knees weakening at the thought, Amelia sat.

  And waited.

  ‘Well?’ Mac eventually said, and Amelia, thinking maybe she’d missed something while immersed in her own wayward and highly censorable thoughts, looked questioningly at him.

  ‘You haven’t asked me anything,’ she eventually managed when it seemed Mac had been struck dumb.

  ‘I know, but it’s not easy,’ he complained. ‘I’ve tried to think of ways to say it that don’t sound bad, but I can’t. The thing is, Peterson, since that night—you know the one I mean—well, I can’t help thinking how good things were between us and I wondered if you felt the same and how you’d feel about kind of regular contacts like it.’

  Amelia frowned at him as she tried to make sense of this garbled sentence.

  ‘“Kind of regular contacts”?’ she repeated faintly. ‘Are you suggesting we start going out together?’

  It didn’t seem likely but, whichever way she considered it, that’s how it had sounded to her.

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ Mac said, promptly disabusing her of that idea. ‘Not a relationship. I’m no good at relationships, I told you that. But getting together every now and then…’

  ‘Physically? As in sex? You’re suggesting you pop over to my apartment now and then for a quick—’ She couldn’t think of a polite word that covered this unbelievable suggestion but fortunately Mac had cut in anyway.

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. I mean, we enjoyed the dinner, too, didn’t we? So I thought dinner as well…’

  If the original bizarre suggestion had caused small flutters of excitement, this new embroidered version of it spurred anger to life.

  ‘Like payment for what comes after! What do you think I am? How could you possibly suggest such a thing? Get lost, Mac. Go bother someone else. I’m sure there are plenty of women willing to satisfy your libido for the price of a decent dinner, but I don’t happen to be one of them.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Peterson, you know damn well that isn’t what I mean!’ Mac exploded, but Amelia ignored him.

  She stood up and strode out of the room, with his roar of indignation continuing behind her.

  Furious both with Mac and with her physical self for being even slightly interested in his suggestion, she stormed down the corridor, grabbed her jacket and handbag from her locker, then headed for the car park.

  ‘This your car?’

  A security man was standing by her vehicle, his badge glinting in the light shed by a nearby bank of security lights.

  ‘Yes, what’s up?’ Leftover anger made the question an abrupt demand.

  ‘I heard your anti-theft alarm going and came over in time to chase a couple of young lads away. But not before they’d shoved their screwdrivers into your tyres, Nurse.’

  ‘Screwdrivers?’ Amelia echoed, bending down to confirm her two passenger side tyres were as flat as the first glance had suggested.

  ‘It’s what kids carry these days. They can break the locks on cars with them. See.’

  He pointed to the lock on the passenger door, where a deep indentation had made using a key impossible.

  ‘Damn and blast the little horrors!’ Amanda muttered. ‘I guess I’ll have to call the automobile people.’

  ‘Have you got two spares?’ the security man asked, and Amelia fought back the urge to snap at him again. Who on earth carried two spare tyres for driving around the city?

  She made do with a head shake and dug in her handbag for her mobile, then her wallet to find the card for the roadside emergency service number.

  ‘They can take it away, then—leave it at a garage where both the tyres and the door lock can be fixed.’

  Amelia nodded acceptance of the man’s summing-up and made the phone call, then unlocked the driver’s-side door and sat in the car until the tow truck arrived.

  Half an hour later, with her precious car secured on the back of the truck, she was tossing up whether to return to the hospital, where she knew she’d find a cab, or try hailing one on the street, when a voice called from behind the next row of cars.

  ‘Need a lift?’

  It had to be Mac who’d discovered her predicament!

  He’d come closer now, emerging from behind a big four-wheel drive to stand beside her and watch the truck disappear.

  ‘No, I’ll get a cab,’ she said, because standing next to Mac made her wonder if she’d been mad to refuse his earlier offer. Maybe a little of Mac would be better than nothing.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Peterson,’ he said, slinging his arm casually around her shoulders. ‘You mightn’t want to sleep with me, but we’re still colleagues so we have to get past all that. It’s just that I enjoyed it, and I thought you had, too, and now I keep seeing you naked around the department and it’s driving me nuts so I thought I’d say something. We were talking about living for the day!’

  Amelia was so flummoxed by the ‘seeing you naked’ bit, she didn’t reply, but Mac was apparently unconcerned. He removed his arm from her shoulders to unlock his car, but continued the conversation as calmly as if it were about work or the weather.

  ‘I mean, it would have been stupid if I’d been wanting it and you’d been wanting it and we were both in agonies of self-denial and not knowing it.’

  It would, indeed, Amelia thought, climbing into the car to get away from him. And she did want it—but there was no way she was going to get entangled in the kind of casual encounters Mac was suggesting. What if she got fond of him?

  Or, heaven forbid, fell in love?

  ‘It’s only a lift home,’ he said, and she was so startled by his voice interrupting her thoughts she gave an involuntary jerk and turned to stare at him. ‘Yet you’re sitting there, rammed up against the door and hugging yourself as if I was Jack the Ripper.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she retorted. ‘You on an ego trip, Mac? Why should I have been thinking about you? I was worrying about my car, if you must know.’

  It sounded OK to her and should have put him in his place, but the way his lips slid into a slow, tantalising smile suggested he could see right into her brain and knew she was lying.

  Mind you, if he could see through her clothes, maybe he could see into her brain.

  If her own brain hadn’t been turned into jelly by the smile, she might have been able to strengthen the lie, but it was the kind of smile he’d smiled at her that night—two weeks ago—and it slunk beneath her defences and started the inner dance-circus going again.

  ‘So, are you going to ask me up?’

  Once again she was startled but this time by the content of the words, not his voice. She gazed blankly o
ut the window, finally registering they’d pulled up in the visitors’ parking lot outside her building.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she managed, then realised a firm ‘no’ would have been much better.

  Especially as Mac immediately pounced on the weakness with, ‘Take your time deciding. I can wait.’

  And although she knew that later she’d think of at least a dozen clever things she should have said in response, the jelly in her head failed to provide a single syllable. She made do with opening the car door, stepping out, then leaning back in to scowl at him, and growl ‘Thanks!’ in a voice she usually reserved for really irritating telephone salespeople.

  But as he drove away, apparently unperturbed by her behaviour, she remembered the smile and felt an inner tremor that suggested an occasional dinner and night in bed with Mac wasn’t all that bad an idea.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER two more weeks of increasing sexual tension on Amelia’s part—Mac seemed totally unperturbed, or perhaps he’d found someone who liked the idea of such a ‘no-strings’ type of arrangement—she was seriously considering a transfer out of the department.

  Purely to get away from him, and so relieve the unremitting turmoil within her body.

  But he’d kept his word and had not only raised the issue of a structured career path for A and E nurses, but by some miracle had convinced Enid Biggs of its benefits, so Amelia was now busy, in what free time she had, drawing up a plan to put before the DON.

  Free time—that was a joke! Half the department had been struck down by a mystery bug, and she half suspected she’d become the latest victim, but she knew she had to get the plan to Enid before some other project came up and financial considerations might put hers on hold.

  So Amelia sat in the little room behind the admissions office, one hand clasped to her queasy stomach, and forced herself to concentrate on the list of courses already on offer within the hospital and at the local university with which St Pat’s was associated. Fate intervened before she was halfway through the list, and she was called to an emergency admission.

  ‘Four years old, history of epilepsy, two grand mal seizures both treated by the parents with rectally administered Valium but the child hospitalised afterwards. This time she fitted again on the way in.’

  Mac gave Amelia a succinct summing up of the patient as the little girl was wheeled into a cubicle, then he introduced the child’s mother, Mrs Carson.

  ‘I’ll get a drip in, and I want clonazepam, starting with 0.1 gm, but keep more at hand as I’ll increase it if she doesn’t stop.’

  Amelia produced the drug and dosage he needed, and felt a surge of pride as he calmed the anxious mother while dealing very gently but capably with the child. He talked almost constantly, not in his usual gruff manner but with a gentle assurance that calmed the tense atmosphere and must have eased the mother’s nerves.

  ‘It’s not working,’ he said a little later, when the drug had been increased as far as it was safe to use for the child’s weight. ‘I’ve sent for one of our paediatric specialists.’

  At that moment, Dan Williams, a paediatric registrar, walked into the cubicle. Mac explained his concerns, and introduced Dan to Mrs Carson.

  Dan checked the time drugs had been given, looked at the big clock on the wall then examined the child.

  ‘I’d like to anaesthetise her with a drug that will also paralyse her on a temporary basis so she doesn’t continue convulsing,’ he told Mrs Carson. ‘We’ll need to ventilate her, which only means a machine will breathe for her, and this is better done in an intensive-care unit where they have all the necessary equipment for monitoring her condition.’

  Mrs Carson nodded, but she looked upset and it was Mac who put his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Intensive Care always sounds much worse than it is,’ he assured her. ‘They’ll just use machines instead of people to keep an eye on your daughter.’

  Amelia was thinking how much she liked this caring Mac, when her stomach, which had been suggesting it hadn’t enjoyed breakfast, finally decided to reject it, and she had to rush from the cubicle, her hand clutched to her mouth, only just making the bathroom before being comprehensively sick.

  The nausea passed but she continued to feel wretched.

  ‘I really don’t want to pass this bug on to the patients,’ she said to Sally, who was on Triage again and allocating nurses to cubicles. ‘So keep me out of things unless you get really desperate.’

  Fortunately, it didn’t happen—the day turning out to be one of those miraculous occasions when no further crisis occurred, and patients were treated and either sent home or admitted like clockwork.

  Just as well, Amelia thought to herself as she collected her coat from the locker room and prepared to head home. She was no longer feeling physically sick, but she felt so tired she could have had a little sleep sitting upright in one of the locker room’s far from comfortable chairs.

  ‘Ah, Peterson. I hoped I’d catch you. Can I see you in my office for a minute?’

  Amelia turned towards Mac, who was looming in the doorway. Her heart jolted in her chest, the dances began in her abdomen and her knees showed an alarming tendency to give way.

  But as this was now a familiar reaction to seeing Mac, she managed to ignore it.

  ‘I’m really very tired. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ She hoped she didn’t sound as whiny as she felt.

  ‘No!’ he said crisply, and he turned away, obviously expecting her to follow, as docile as a lamb.

  Which she did—follow, that was. She was feeling far from docile about it, but had decided fighting with him would take more energy than she had right now.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, moving around the desk and dropping into his big office chair.

  Amelia sat, surprised to see Mac’s desk still relatively paper-free. She was only looking at his desk because it was easier than looking at him, but eventually she had to. To turn her gaze towards his long, rather elegant figure, stretched back in the chair, his hands tucked behind his head—so totally at ease she realised he must have got over the ‘seeing her naked’ thing.

  This made her own ever-increasing awareness of him even more aggravating, so she let a little of it out.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What’s so important it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?’

  Mac studied her for a moment longer, then straightened in his chair, tilting it so he was now leaning slightly forward.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’

  For a moment Amelia thought she must have heard wrong, but an echo of the question sounded in her head and disbelief outweighed tiredness.

  ‘Am I pregnant? That’s what you wanted to ask? Are you asking all the females in the department? Is it a competition of some kind? Is there a prize?’

  Amelia knew she must sound as flabbergasted as she felt, but Mac seemed unperturbed, merely continuing to study her as if she was a case that had intrigued him for some reason.

  ‘You haven’t answered,’ he pointed out, and she shook her head.

  ‘Of course I’m not pregnant. I’ve got the bug that’s going around, that’s all. How the hell could I be pregnant anyway? It’s not as if I’m in a relationship. And even if I was pregnant, I don’t see what business of yours it would be. Can I go now?’

  She felt around for her handbag, which she’d dropped onto the floor when she’d sat down, but, of course, it had hidden itself under the chair. Anxiety made her fumble but she knew she had to get out of the room before she burst into tears. It must be the debilitating effect of the virus, because she almost never cried.

  Though she sometimes got a wee bit tearful over not having children, so maybe that was it.

  Damn Mac for bringing it up.

  She found the bag and stood up, but by now he’d left his chair, come around the desk and was standing there, right beside her. Reaching out his hands towards her—resting them on her shoulders.

  She turned to stone under the touch—no, not ston
e. Stone was cold and she was fiery hot all over.

  ‘Peterson? Amelia?’

  It was the sound of her real name on his lips that made her look up—into hazel eyes that had been featuring too often in her dreams. Although now they weren’t softened by passion but anxious and concerned. Caring?

  ‘We had unprotected sex four weeks and two days ago—that’s how you could be pregnant.’

  He said it gently, as if explaining something to a child.

  ‘I know you burbled something at the time—about not being able to conceive so lack of protection not being an issue—but we’d both had too much to drink and were far too aroused by that stage to have thought rationally. Now you’re looking downright peaky, and you were sick this morning. How certain are you that you can’t conceive? Is there a physical reason it’s impossible?’

  ‘“Downright peaky”?’ Amelia echoed, twitching away from his hold and glaring furiously at him. ‘Well, thanks a lot.’

  Mac sighed. ‘Trust a bloody woman to pick the one inessential out of an important conversation and take a man up on it,’ he growled. ‘If you really want to know, I think you’re beautiful—even this morning, when you went that interesting shade of green, I still remembered you as you looked that Saturday night—a fragile, elfin beauty.’

  He realised he was now the one right off track and sighed again. ‘But that’s not the point. Your condition is. How can you be sure you’re not pregnant?’

  He watched the brown eyes darken and a worried frown draw her finely marked eyebrows together. Unable to resist, he used his forefinger to smooth at the puckered skin and felt a shiver ripple through Peterson’s slight body.

  ‘I was married for years and didn’t get pregnant,’ she said, the velvety eyes looking up into his, perhaps to see if some answer to her uncertainty might be written there. Then she shrugged, as if the physical action could remove all possibilities of pregnancy, and added firmly, ‘So of course I’m not now—it’s the bug.’

  Mac smiled.

  ‘It’s the bug, is it? But that’s you—Bug. Didn’t you tell me your brothers called you that?’