The Doctor's Baby Surprise - An Accent Amour Medical Romance

by Gill Sanderson

  ‘Just change the subject,’ he said tersely.

  There was a pause. ‘I’ll change the subject. Remember the year when you were a houseman at St Mark’s Hospital in London? Your first job after you graduated?’

  Now this was getting serious. He tried to calm himself, make sure that his voice was careless. Difficult when she was bringing up memories he had tried to keep buried for so long. ‘Sure I remember. I worked harder then than I’ve ever worked in my life.’

  ‘Quite so. Now, I know you aren’t the greatest of correspondents, but I hardly had a letter from you for two entire years.’

  ‘I told you, I was working too hard.’ He could hear his voice shaking and willed himself to stay cool.

  ‘Weren’t we all? But I still wondered—’

  ‘Carly, drop it.’

  There was silence in the car again for a while, but then Carly persisted. ‘Toby, what happened?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘You’d better tell someone some time,’ she told him gently. ‘You might think you can keep it hidden, but it’s eating you up inside.’

  Now they had, in effect, their own clinic, Annie and Toby were left to organise their own timetables. They weren’t constantly at the beck and call of the registrars and the consultant. It was promotion of a sort and they both liked it.

  Next morning they both had appointments lists. Annie didn’t see Toby before she started work, and wondered how he might react after her outburst yesterday. She had thought about it, asked herself if she should feel guilty about what she had said. Then she had decided that there was no need to feel guilty. It was right that he should know exactly what her emotions had been. She felt better for telling him. She felt that a corner had been turned in their relationship. Now they could progress. And she wanted to progress.

  She met him first in the corridor at the midmorning break. Even though his smile was perhaps a bit cautious, he gave her his usual cordial greeting.

  ‘Got your note about Heather Cross,’ he said when she had smiled back. ‘I can easily make time this afternoon. Shall we go to see her together?’

  ‘That’d be great.’ She decided to be completely honest. ‘I’m just lost. But I’d like it if we could decide what’s wrong ourselves, instead of referring it upstairs.’

  ‘Me, too. Say, two o’clock, go in my car?’

  ‘Two o’clock suits me fine.’ Good. Annie felt better. Yesterday’s scene had been… well, she knew it wouldn’t be forgotten, but for the moment it would not be referred to. Probably the best thing. Then she remembered that Toby had been going to see Jack and Miranda. She hadn’t heard from her friend for a while. ‘How’s the happily engaged couple?’ she asked.

  ‘Happily planning their wedding. I stayed with them for a while then we all went over to see my mother.’

  ‘How is she?’

  Annie knew that Carly, Toby and Jack were devoted to their mother. She was dying of brain-stem cancer. When they’d found out about it, Carly and Toby had arranged their training so they could be near her.

  Perhaps other people wouldn’t have noticed. But Annie had spent a lot of time looking at Toby’s face, often when he had not been aware of it. And she saw the wince of pain as he mumbled, ‘Well, she’s not too bad. She comes and goes, you know.’

  In a gentle voice she said, ‘Toby, I know you, I know all your family. I’m concerned. Give me an honest answer. How is your mother?’

  He sighed. ‘She’s slipping away. She knows it, we all know it. She’s accepted it. I don’t think that we have.’ She watched as the sadness was quickly masked by his usual cheerful expression. ‘Now, I haven’t had coffee for at least an hour and I—’

  She interrupted him. ‘You know, you don’t have to move into the cheerful Toby, always happy act. You are entitled to feelings and you’re entitled to show them.’

  For a moment she thought she’d reached him. ‘It’s the way I cope,’ he said simply. ‘So, two o’clock, my car, we’ll go and see Heather Cross. Will you phone the midwife, see if it’s all right with her?’

  ‘No problem.’

  And there was no problem. ‘It’ll be good to see Toby again,’ Mary said. ‘Is he as lovely as ever?’

  ‘Will he ever change?’ asked Annie with a wry smile.

  Mary let them into Heather’s house and Toby said, ‘I’ve not seen you for a couple of months, Mary. How’s Ben getting on in his new school? I remember you were a bit doubtful about it.’

  Mary smiled happily. ‘Ben’s doing fine, I was silly to worry. I’ll tell him you were asking. Now, Heather’s looking forward to seeing you both. I think she gets a bit bored, just lying here all day. Usually she’s one of the world’s workers.’

  Mary led them to the living room. As the day before, Heather was lying on the couch, she sat up and turned as they walked in, then she saw Toby and turned even faster. And then she grimaced with pain.

  Toby walked forward, put an arm round her shoulders and eased her backwards. ‘Just take it easy, Mrs Cross. I’m Dr Sinclair. We’ve come here to have a quick look at you, see if we can do anything about this pain. I know that so far you’ve had the best of care from Mary here but let’s see if we can find out exactly what’s wrong.’

  He was good, Annie thought as she watched a much calmer Heather lie back on her couch, asking Toby to call her by her first name. A smiling Toby could make anyone relax. She remembered how he’d used the same technique on her… but, no, it wasn’t a technique. It was just Toby himself.

  There was a few minutes’ chat. Toby then examined Heather and after a while agreed with Mary and Annie that mother and baby seemed to be doing fine and he couldn’t find anything organically wrong.

  ‘We can’t send you for a scan or an X-ray,’ he told Heather, ‘as they might harm the baby. So tell me more about this pain.’

  ‘It started about week twenty-five,’ Heather recalled. ‘Everything had been fine until then. It happens when I’m walking usually, this sudden biting pain, down here, the baby bit. And inside my thighs and sometimes over the lower bit of my back. It’s got so bad that I have to sleep down here, I just can’t get upstairs. I’m lying here and I don’t want to. My husband is so good. He comes home and he does everything for me.’

  Tears formed in Heather’s eyes. ‘I’ve asked Mary here and she says it’s all right so long as I’m comfortable with it. But I can’t let my husband make love to me. I want to but I just can’t get my legs apart.’

  Suddenly, Toby looked alert. ‘Tell me exactly what it feels like when you walk.’

  ‘It feels as if there’s bones grinding. And sometimes there’s a sort of… of… ‘

  ‘Clicking?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ Heather asked.

  Toby nodded. ‘Diastasis symphysis pubis,’ he said. ‘Don’t get alarmed. The name is the worst thing about it. You and the baby are both safe. There’s going to be no long-term problems.’

  He pointed to Heather’s hips. ‘Your two hip bones nearly meet here. They’re joined together at the front by strong cartilage, called the symphysis pubis. When you are pregnant the cartilage relaxes a bit—about two or three millimetres—so the baby’s head can get through more easily. But sometimes it relaxes too much—and all the other joints get strained. It’s a mechanical thing.’

  ‘So what do I do?’

  He smiled reassuringly. ‘First of all, don’t worry. But you have to take things easy. If you walk upstairs, take one step at a time. We’ll give you painkillers and Mary here will fit you with a pelvic support garment. Even crutches might help. I’ll send you a few very easy exercises to do.’

  ‘And having the baby will be all right?’ Heather was still anxious, although it was obvious that Toby’s confident manner had calmed her.

  ‘Now we know what’s wrong, we can take precautions. You have to find the most comfortable way of giving birth. For example, you might try it on all fours. You’re not to try to get your legs too far apart—Mary will
measure you to find out what is comfortable.’

  ‘And will I be all right afterwards?’

  ‘You’ll have to take things easy for six months or so. No straining or heavy lifting. But then you should be back to normal.’

  Heather smiled, relief clearly visible in her face. ‘That’s wonderful. I feel so much better. Now I know there’s a cause and that there’s no long-term danger, I can put up with it.’

  ‘We’ll make you more comfortable,’ Toby promised. ‘And if Mary doesn’t mind, Annie and I would like to drop in to see you now and again.’

  ‘That would be lovely. Can I stagger to the kitchen and make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘We’ll do it ourselves,’ said Toby.

  ‘I learned something there,’ Annie said as they drove off in Toby’s car. ‘Thanks for the lesson, Toby.’

  ‘I like working with mothers and children,’ Toby said. ‘I like it when all is going well or I can give good news.’

  To Annie’s surprise she saw that his face was bleak rather than elated. ‘I like it too,’ she said. ‘And, since you’ve just given someone good news, why are you looking so gloomy?’

  He didn’t answer for a while. Then he turned off the main road, turned again and stopped. Annie blinked. They were in a cul-de-sac, a quiet shaded spot near the top of a tiny hill, and in front of them was a vista of trees. It struck her as the kind of place that lovers might visit in the evening.

  To her surprise he reached over, took one of her hands, and held it in both of his. She was so shocked that she didn’t try to pull it away. What was he doing?

  ‘I want to say something about what you said to me yesterday,’ he said. ‘Although I suspect you’re not very keen to talk about it.’

  ‘I meant what I said and now I realise that I had to say it,’ said Annie slowly. ‘But now it’s over and I’m happy to forget it. After all, we do work well together. And what are you doing, holding my hand?’

  Toby didn’t answer for a moment, just looked puzzled, as if he didn’t actually know the answer to her question. Gently, he squeezed her hand and she had to admit to herself that she liked it. But then she pulled it away.

  ‘We’re friends,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t friends hold hands?’

  ‘Not if they used to be lovers. Anyway, you have lots of female friends to hold your hand—lots of lovers, in fact. You apparently need that rich variety.’

  ‘I’ve not been out with anyone since I left you, Annie.’

  This surprised her. ‘Not one? Why not?’

  He didn’t seem to know what to reply. Then, ‘I just can’t get interested.’

  ‘What, you? The great lover? Can’t get interested?’

  She watched him struggle for a while. For the first time ever she found him at a loss for words. Eventually he said, ‘I think I might have made a big mistake when I finished with you,’ he confessed. ‘I think that you and me might have had… something going.’

  ‘Might have had something going? Toby Sinclair, that is the most feeble declaration of love I’ve ever heard.’ She thought a moment, wondered if she was going to get angry. But she knew that would do her no good and now she was curious. “‘You and me might have had something going?’” she quoted. ‘I thought we had a lot of something going. But you stopped it. Why Toby?

  She unclipped her safety belt, leaned across so their faces were close together. ‘I told you yesterday but you seem to have forgotten already: Toby, you hurt me and it’s not going to happen again. I still think you’re attractive—I’m one of many, aren’t I? Don’t worry, I’m going to fight it.’

  She slammed back in her seat, stared at the wooded horizon. ‘It hurt because it seemed pointless. I knew you felt what we had: we were good for each other. Now even you talk about us having something going. Well, what went wrong?’

  He thought a moment and then said, in an almost abstracted way. ‘Can you believe I was thinking of you? That I was doing what I thought best for you?’

  ‘You have a funny way of showing it. But you could try to convince me.’

  Once again he reached over for her hand, and once again she let him take it. He lifted it to his lips, kissed it gently. Then he sighed. He put her hand back in her lap, reached to turn on the car engine. What discussion there was to be was over, Annie realised.

  ‘You just can’t believe me when I say that I was trying to be kind?’ he asked as they backed out of the little cul-de-sac.

  ‘It’s a bit hard to,’ she told him.

  That evening Miranda called round. She had left a few things stored in the flat and wanted to pick them up. As Calvin was in London, the two women settled down to drink red wine and gossip. There was a wedding to be planned.

  Of course, however, the conversation soon turned to Toby. ‘How are you getting on with Toby?’ Miranda asked.

  Annie sighed. ‘Sort of all right. But, Miranda, there’s something I don’t know about him. He’s… What is he really like?’

  Miranda frowned. ‘I thought things were going well. I was concerned because I know, even though you tried to hide it from me, that you were hit pretty hard when you parted.’

  ‘Things are going well! Quite well, anyway. It’s just that sometimes… I feel that underneath that happy big smiling exterior there’s another Toby that I don’t know. Perhaps a sad Toby. I feel I’m missing something.’

  ‘I could ask Jack,’ Miranda offered, and picked up the phone.

  ‘No, don’t do that! I don’t want to pry and I don’t want to upset the family.’

  ‘I’m family now,’ Miranda pointed out. ‘Well, nearly family. And so I’m entitled to pry. In fact, I know that Jack worries about Toby—far more than he ever does over Carly. He says he’s not the lad he remembers—but Carly is just the same.’

  She tapped in a number. ‘Hi, Jack, it’s me. Look, family secrets. I’m talking to Annie. You know she’s working with Toby? Well, they’re getting on well enough, but Annie feels she’s missing something, something that’s making him unhappy. Any ideas?’

  Annie watched as Miranda listened for quite a while, then said goodbye to Jack and switched off her phone.

  ‘First of all—don’t need to tell you but this is for your ears only.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, there’s something interesting. Jack says that Toby and Carly are twins but are very different. Carly is usually open with her feelings, but Toby has always been much less so. That happy exterior is him all right—but it’s also a show. And it’s got worse—or better, I don’t know. He used to be much more serious, but a couple of years ago things changed. There were fewer visits from him, plus fewer letters and phone calls. After that: Toby the clown.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘No one knows. Something seems to have given him a shock. It might be that he knew his mother was getting ill—but Jack doesn’t think that it’s that. Possibly he’s just grown that way—people do change, you know.’ Miranda shrugged. ‘I’d like to help him. He helped me and Jack get together.’ She stood, reached over to hug her friend. ‘But now I’d better go. Been good seeing you. And, whatever you do, don’t get hurt again.’

  Annie’s tone was firmer than she actually felt. ‘I won’t. There’s absolutely no chance of that.’

  There was still half a bottle of red wine left. Annie poured herself another glass, kicked off her shoes, and stretched her legs along the couch. Interesting, what Miranda had said. Toby had changed a couple of years ago, really changed. His family had seen little of him.

  Of course, there could be all sorts of reasons. Annie remembered the hectic time of her own exams when social life, friends, family had all seemed to take second place to the all-important work. And she knew Toby was a worker. But why had he changed? She wondered if she could find out.

  She took a mouthful of red wine then closed her eyes and thought about him. Tall, athletic Toby, always smiling, always—nearly always—kind. Easy to talk to, far too easy to fall in love with, as
she’d found to her cost.

  And he was such a good doctor. She thought of their work in the clinic together, how he put people at ease, how astute he could be when diagnosing. And he was inexhaustibly patient.

  Why was her glass empty? She poured herself more wine.

  She remembered sitting on this very couch with him—yes, and drinking red wine—how they had watched a DVD together. They had both agreed at the end that it was a lovely story but that the characters could have hurried things along a little. ‘They both know what’s going to happen,’ Toby had pointed out, ‘and they both want it to happen. So why hang about?’

  ‘Putting things off a bit prolongs the pleasure,’ she had said primly. ‘It’s like unwrapping a present. You do it slowly.’

  It had been an idle, self-indulgent evening. They had both had a hard-working week, had seen little of each other. All they’d wanted had been to be together, to do nothing very much. He had brought round a couple of bottles of wine and she had ordered an Indian takeaway. And after eating they’d watched the film.

  Annie remembered that night with a special clarity. Suddenly she’d been aware that she hadn’t felt tired any more. She had been half sitting, half lying on Toby’s lap. His arms had been round her, supporting her and, when he’d wanted to, he’d eased her to him and kissed her. So far, just gentle, reflective kisses. But then had come a kiss of a different kind. And she had looked up into his smoky eyes and known that the kiss had been almost a question, and that the answer had to be yes. Her arms had tightened round him. She had pressed her body against his, an unspoken answer to an unspoken question.

  And then they went to bed. And, no, they didn’t have sex; they made love. Although nothing was said, she knew it, felt it. She knew that he loved her too.

  Four weeks later he finished with her and the happiest weeks of her life turned into the most miserable.

  Annie reached for the bottle. Her glass was empty. Then she blinked. The bottle was empty too. She had finished it. So much for wandering down memory lane. Thinking about Toby had caused her to…

  Then it came crashing down on her, a realisation that was shocking in its certainty. How could this have happened? For the last few weeks she had been congratulating herself that she had finally got over the pain of parting from Toby. They had started a new relationship; they had become friends and were working well together.