The Surrogate's Unexpected Miracle

by Alison Roberts

  These were the eyes of a desperate woman. A mother...

  ‘Please,’ she whispered... ‘Please can I hold my baby?’

  * * *

  It had been that sound that had done it.

  The cry from that tiny human that had been nestled within her body for so many months had taken the world as Ellie knew it and tipped it upside down. It had entered her ears but gone straight to her heart and captured it in the fiercest imaginable grip.

  For a long, long moment, caught in what felt like a very disapproving stare from the doctor who’d just delivered her son, she thought that she was facing an impenetrable barrier. Someone who had no intention of letting her close to that tiny being she could just catch a glimpse of behind the solid figure of this new doctor.

  But Sue was picking the baby up now.

  ‘Apgar score is ten at five minutes,’ she said, unable to keep a grin off her face. She was wrapping the baby in soft towels. ‘He’s looking great. I think we could let Mum have a bit of skin contact, until our paediatrician arrives, don’t you think?’

  Luke’s response was a huff of sound that seemed indecisive but the anticipation of holding her baby against her own skin was so overwhelming that Ellie’s breath escaped in something that sounded like a sob as she lay back and held her arms out.

  ‘The placenta’s delivered.’ The young registrar was sounding a lot more confident now. ‘Seems intact and the bleeding’s almost stopped. Let’s prop you up a bit so you can hold your baby.’

  Ellie had barely registered the last contractions as she watched the frantic efforts to save her son. Everything was all right now, though. She wasn’t about to bleed to death and the baby’s perfect Apgar score meant that he had come through this crisis with flying colours. With pillows being layered behind her, she was more than ready to accept the precious bundle that Sue was bringing towards her.

  But why was this new doctor in her department still staring at her as if she was asking for something she really didn’t deserve?

  He’d called her sweetheart only minutes ago.

  Before helping her deliver her baby. Before he’d saved her life. Before he’d even properly begun to start saving the life of that baby.

  And then something filtered into her brain. An echo of her own voice...

  ‘But he’s not my baby... And now nobody wants him...’

  Oh, God...had she really said that?

  No wonder he thought she was crazy. Or some kind of monster.

  But Sue was beside her now and everybody else in this room and whatever tasks they were attending to ceased to exist as far as Ellie was concerned. Sue was unwrapping the tiny body of her baby, and another nurse was helping to remove the oversized tee shirt Ellie had been wearing. And her bra.

  And there he was. In her arms and snuggled against her bare chest, while Sue arranged some soft, fluffy blankets around them both for warmth and as much privacy as was possible, given the surroundings.

  Ellie couldn’t even lift her head to smile her thanks. Her baby’s eyes were open and he was staring up at her and nothing could have induced her to break that astonishing eye contact.

  ‘Hullo, you...’ she whispered. ‘I’m Mummy.’

  The wash of emotion was like nothing Ellie had ever experienced. Something was changing in her body at a cellular level and she would never be the same person she’d been only minutes ago.

  Who knew that love could be this powerful? So huge...and every bit of it was for this tiny little human.

  Had she really believed she could have given him to someone else?

  This baby was a part of herself and she would fight to the death if necessary to protect him.

  It was the baby who finally broke that intense eye contact. His head bobbed against the arm it was cradled by and his tiny mouth opened and closed against the skin of Ellie’s breast. Instinctively, she adjusted her position, which brought her nipple within range of the baby’s mouth. And then she watched, in astonishment, as the baby found what it was seeking and latched on to her nipple as though he’d done it many times before.

  Ellie’s jaw dropped. ‘He did that all by himself.’

  ‘He’s a genius.’ Sue smiled. ‘Oh...where’s my phone? We’ve got to get a photo of this.’

  But Ellie had closed her eyes by the time Sue had fished her phone from the pocket of her scrub pants and she could feel a tear escape and roll down the side of her nose. And then another.

  This feeling—the silky new born skin against her own, the shape of those tiny limbs within her arms and, most of all, the tug of that tiny mouth against her breast—was too much.

  It felt like pure joy...

  * * *

  Luke had rather a lot of paperwork to do to document this emergency delivery that had happened on his watch. Someone had given him the forms on a clipboard and he had a pen in his hand but he hadn’t written a word, yet.

  He kept looking sideways. From where he was standing, beside the trolley they’d used to resuscitate this baby, he could see the back of the baby’s head nestled in the crook of Ellie’s arms.

  And he could see Ellie’s face.

  She had no idea he was watching her. Luke doubted that she was aware of anything other than the baby she was holding.

  They seemed to be staring at each other. Locked in a conversation that was so utterly private that Luke felt uncomfortable observing it.

  So he looked away.

  Eleanor Thomas, someone had filled in under the personal details on the form. Thirty-two years old. Thirty-six weeks pregnant.

  He had to look back. It was none of his business that there was something weird going on. A surrogate pregnancy?

  Who for?

  Why?

  And what had gone so wrong that she’d claimed that nobody wanted this child now?

  It certainly didn’t look as if nobody wanted him.

  Ellie looked, for all the world, as if she was in the middle of a personal miracle. Mesmerised by the face of her child. As though this baby was being bathed in as much love as it was possible for any person to bestow.

  It was weird, all right. And disturbing on a level that Luke hadn’t expected. Maybe it was because this was happening so soon after he’d been standing in the home it had taken so many years for him to find.

  Had his own mother looked at him like that in the minutes after he’d been born?

  No. He’d always known the answer to that.

  This time it was easier to look away. To try and focus on the paperwork.

  Surely no mother could ever look at her child like that and then simply hand him to strangers when life got tough and never even try to see him again? Had it even occurred to his mother that the scars of being abandoned and finding himself unwanted would be there for the rest of his life?

  The paediatrician arrived and Luke gave him a verbal handover. He still had the notes to write up on the baby’s early resuscitation as well.

  The new arrival looked at Ellie, who was now breastfeeding the infant, and he was smiling.

  ‘I think we can get them up to the ward before we examine baby properly. He’s looking pretty happy.’

  Anne, the O&G registrar, had joined them. She was nodding. ‘I’ll leave the repair of the episiotomy until then, too. I’ll see what rooms we have available and order a transfer.’

  Within minutes, the transfer had been arranged. The bed, with the baby still cradled in Ellie’s arms, was being wheeled out of the resuscitation room and staff members were already busy cleaning up. Luke heard the metallic clang as the forceps and other instruments he had used were dropped into a container to be sent for sterilisation. Blood stained towels and drapes were going into the contaminated linen bag and a cleaner began mopping the floor. A new bed was outside, waiting to take centre stage i
n a room that would have no evidence of the life and death drama that had just occurred.

  Another one would probably take its place very soon but this one was over. Any odd personal connection he might have felt needed to be dismissed. He had done his job and whatever lay ahead for Ellie and her baby was none of his business.

  Well, it wasn’t quite over yet. With a sigh, Luke picked up the clipboard. He could finish this paperwork in the office and, if he was lucky, it would be done before he was needed elsewhere. He didn’t want to be here, tying up loose ends like this, when his shift finished late in the evening.

  * * *

  A visitor was the last thing Ellie was expecting at this time of night.

  It was after ten p.m. and she was propped up on her pillows, in the soft glow of the night light in her private room, and she was doing nothing more than being in the moment. Listening to the soft snuffles and squeaks coming from the tiny bundle in the plastic bassinet that was within touching distance of her bed. Trying to absorb this momentous change in her life.

  She thought the soft tap on her door would be one of the nursing staff, coming to check that everything was okay and that she was ready to try and get some sleep. When Luke Gilmore stepped into her room, she was too astonished to even say hullo.

  ‘Is this a bad time? They told me on the desk that you’d just finished a feed and would probably still be awake.’

  Ellie was still staring at him. It was obvious she was still awake so there didn’t seem to be anything that needed to be said. She could feel a puzzled frown creasing her brow.

  Why was he here? Most emergency department doctors—especially locums—didn’t have the time or the interest in following up their cases. They treated them and moved them on, job done. There were always more to take their places.

  But it was nice that he wanted to check up on them. Ellie’s lips curved into a smile, which was taken as an invitation to come into the room, but then the smile wobbled.

  Had he come to have a go at her for what had been said in a moment of both physical and emotional agony? When this whole, sorry story of her attempt to be a surrogate mother had looked as if it was about to end in disaster?

  He didn’t look as if he was angry about anything. Closing the door softly behind him, Luke stepped towards her bed, stopping to gaze down at the sleeping, snuffling baby.

  Ellie found herself gazing at him. There was something about those rather craggy features and that shaggy hair that seemed very familiar. Had he worked in the same hospital as her in the past, maybe? Way back, when she was newly qualified and too focused on doing her job well to take much notice of staff members in other departments?

  ‘I hear he passed his paediatric check with flying colours.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Ellie found both her voice and another smile. ‘He’s perfect. A good weight, too, even though he was four weeks early. He’s almost seven pounds.’

  She was still trawling through dim memory banks.

  Luke Gilmore...doctor...

  Or not yet a doctor?

  ‘Oh, my God...’ Ellie breathed. ‘You’re Lucas Gilmore, aren’t you?’

  Startled eyes met her own. ‘Ah...yes. But I haven’t been called Lucas in about fifteen years. By anyone other than my parents, that is...’

  ‘You went to Kauri Valley District High School?’

  His face had gone very still. He didn’t say anything but he was frowning—as though he was searching his own memory banks as he stared at her face.

  ‘I went there, too. You won’t remember me—I was a couple of years behind you. But we shared the school bus every day. You lived on the coast, didn’t you? Near Moana Beach?’

  Uninvited, Luke sank to balance his hip on the end of Ellie’s bed, one arm over the base board, his fingers touching the clip of the board that held her observations chart.

  ‘No way... Wait...I do remember you. You always sat up the front. You had really long plaits.’

  The thought that he’d noticed her at all on a crowded bus made Ellie feel suddenly shy. She would have died if she’d known it at the time. Lucas Gilmore—Kauri Valley high school’s bad boy—aware of her existence? It would have been scary. And...thrilling?

  ‘You always sat right at the back,’ she heard herself saying. ‘With all the cool kids.’

  ‘The ones who got into trouble, you mean?’

  There was something intense in his glance now. Did he want to know how much Ellie knew about the kind of trouble he’d been in as a kid?

  Okay, she knew quite a lot. Ellie could almost hear an echo of her mother’s voice.

  ‘Stay away from that Gilmore boy. He’s bad news. Nothing but trouble...’

  She wasn’t about to say anything now, though. He’d clearly turned his life around. He was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. A doctor who’d just saved the lives of both herself and her baby.

  There was a flash of something like relief on Luke’s features as she shrugged his comment away. She could sense the tension ebbing away from his body. Or maybe she could feel it, as the mattress dipped with his settling weight.

  ‘You were always with another girl who always wore hats.’

  Ellie nodded. ‘Ava. My best friend. Her hair was never the same after all the chemo she had and it took her a long time to get used to it.’

  ‘Chemo? What for?’

  ‘Leukaemia.’

  ‘Did she survive?’

  ‘Oh, yeah... And her hair came back even better than ever. Turned out that she’d never be able to have kids, though.’

  The sudden stillness in Luke’s face told her that he’d put two and two together with remarkable speed. Almost as though he was reading her mind.

  ‘That’s who you were being a surrogate for?’

  Ellie nodded. She had to bite her lip to push back the wash of loss. Ava had been such a big part of her life for ever and now she had gone and it was going to leave a gaping hole.

  ‘Wow...’ She listened to the deep breath that Luke took and then let out in a long sigh as he pushed his fingers through that mop of sun-streaked hair. The front locks immediately flopped down onto his forehead again. ‘That’s an incredible thing to do for a friend. Huge...’

  There was a long silence. It had to be obvious that she was struggling to keep herself together right now. Most strangers would have probably realised they were intruding in something very personal and made some kind of apology and then an excuse to let her have some time to herself or an offer to find someone she wanted to talk to. But Luke just sat there quietly. Absorbing her struggle. Offering his company and what felt like...empathy?

  ‘It’s all gone so terribly wrong,’ she found herself whispering into the silence. ‘Her husband walked out on her a couple of weeks ago. The marriage is over. And now Ava’s gone, too. Just gone...’ She had to stop and take a very shaky breath. ‘And I can’t really blame her. She’s devastated and, as she told me, it’s not really her baby. It was my egg. And now...now it’s my baby and...and I have no idea what I’m going to do...’

  Luke’s frown had deepened but he was still listening. Nodding very slowly. ‘And the father?’

  ‘Marco? I don’t think he’s coming back. Apparently he said he’d never really wanted a baby in the first place.’ Ellie’s voice was stronger now. She was on much more solid ground. ‘And I don’t want him to.’

  An eyebrow quirked under that shaggy fringe but Ellie saw the subtle lift of the corners of Luke’s mouth. He liked what he was hearing, she realised, and that made her want to say a whole lot more.

  ‘I thought I could do it, you know? Donate an egg and carry a baby for someone else. I thought I could hand him over the minute he was born and then just be...I don’t know...a kind of auntie, I guess. We’d planned to tell him eventually. When he was old enough to understand.’

>   ‘But...?’

  ‘It was when I heard him cry...’ Again, Ellie had to stop talking to try and deal with the flood of emotion but, this time, it wasn’t anything to do with loss or grief. This was joy, pure and simple. ‘That was when I knew that this was my baby. That I could never give him away. That he’s...he’s the most important thing in my life now...’

  Ellie had to scrub away an errant tear but it didn’t matter. Luke looked as though he was blinking back some extra moisture in his own eyes. And his voice sounded a bit rusty when he spoke again.

  ‘Have you given him a name?’

  Ellie sniffed inelegantly and then smiled. ‘I had the best dad in the world. He was a forestry worker and got killed in an industrial accident when I was only six but I’ve never forgotten how much he loved me. How much I loved him. His name was James but everyone called him Jamie.’ She had to use the fingers of both hands to wipe her cheeks this time. ‘So that’s what I’m going to call him. Jamie.’

  As if he’d heard his name, the baby stirred and started to cry. Ellie turned and leaned towards the bassinet but then froze, unable to stop her gasp of pain. It wasn’t just the stitches in a very tender place. Her whole body felt bruised and battered right now.

  ‘Let me...’

  Luke got to his feet in a smooth movement that was both relaxed and confident. He picked up the swaddled bundle of baby but he didn’t immediately hand him to Ellie. He stood there, holding the baby in his arms, patting him gently as he smiled down at the tiny face.

  ‘Hi, Jamie,’ he said softly. ‘Welcome to the world...’

  Jamie hiccupped and then stopped crying. Luke stopped patting and started rubbing the baby’s back, his hand looking huge against the small bundle.

  ‘You made a bit of a dramatic entrance,’ Luke continued quietly, still smiling. ‘You had us a bit worried there for a while, mate.’

  Ellie was lying back on her pillows as the pain subsided. There was something about watching this big man holding her tiny baby that was doing funny things to her heart and making her want to cry all over again.