The Midwife's Marriage Proposal

by Sarah Morgan

  Tom dropped to his haunches. ‘Lucy, what on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  The young woman gave a gasp and pressed a hand to her swollen abdomen. ‘Oh, Mr Hunter! I didn’t know that you’d come. I just fancied stretching my legs and we lost track of time and then I fell … I’m so sorry to be a nuisance. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to slip!’

  ‘You’re not a nuisance,’ Sally said immediately, ‘but we do need to sit you up. Lying flat can cause problems at your stage of pregnancy because the weight of the baby presses on your major blood vessels.’

  Tom was by her side and together they lifted the woman into a sitting position, propped against a large boulder.

  ‘She’s been having pains for the past half an hour,’ Lucy’s husband told them, his face drawn and anxious. ‘We never should have come on this walk but it was such a beautiful day when we started out.’

  Lucy screwed up her face and sucked in a breath. ‘Oh—the pain is terrible.’

  Tom frowned. ‘In your ankle?’

  ‘No.’ Lucy shook her head, her eyes tightly shut as she struggled with the pain. ‘I think the baby is coming.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Luce.’ Her husband spoke in a falsely cheerful tone that was supposed to hide his anxiety and didn’t. ‘It isn’t due for another three weeks and babies don’t come that quickly.’

  Lucy’s features relaxed and she opened her eyes. ‘Sorry to scare you, Mick, but it feels as though it’s coming to me.’

  Her husband glanced at Tom, horrified. ‘She’s wrong, isn’t she? It can’t possibly be coming here. That quickly.’

  ‘Babies don’t usually care too much about the venue and they don’t always care about the timing either,’ Tom said, squatting down beside Lucy and sliding a hand over her abdomen. ‘They come when they’re ready. And you’re definitely having contractions. Sally, you monitor them. I’m going to take a look at your ankle, Lucy, so that we know what we’re dealing with here. If you are in labour, we need to get you to hospital.’

  Mick looked horrified. ‘But it usually takes a long time, yes? Labour takes ages.’

  ‘Usually, but not always,’ Sally muttered, placing her hand on the top of Lucy’s uterus to feel the strength of the contraction while Tom gently removed Lucy’s boot. ‘Has everything been normal in your pregnancy?’ A gust of wind blew her blonde hair across her face and she anchored it back with her hand, contemplating the fact that she’d never had to ask these questions on a mountain rescue before. ‘Any problems at all with you or the baby?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘The baby was breech for a while but it turned about a month ago and the head has been engaged for a week. I saw Mr Hunter in clinic last week and he said everything was looking fine. Oh—’ She broke off with a gasp of pain and Sally felt the power of the contraction as the uterus tightened under her hand.

  ‘All right, Lucy, remember your breathing.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Your contractions are very frequent. How long have you been in labour? When did the pains start?’

  Lucy screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘I didn’t know I was in labour, but I was very uncomfortable in the car. We’d been to see my mum and we thought we’d stop and stretch our legs.’

  ‘Stretch your legs?’ Tom glanced up from examining her ankle. ‘You walked for an hour.’

  ‘It was just so beautiful we sort of lost track of the time, and walking helped the pain,’ Lucy muttered. ‘And it isn’t as if pregnancy is an illness. I felt fine until I lost my balance.’

  Tom looked at Sally, a question in his eyes. ‘Well?’

  ‘She’s definitely in strong labour,’ Sally said quietly, and Tom let out a breath.

  ‘All right—let’s take this one stage at a time,’ he suggested, his tone calm as he finished his examination. ‘In my opinion your ankle is sprained, not broken, but you’re certainly not going to be walking anywhere on it for a while. If you’re in labour, we need to get you to a hospital as fast as possible.’

  ‘You can get a helicopter, yes?’ Mick raked a shaking hand through his windblown hair, visibly shaken by the news that his wife was certainly in labour. ‘Something fast.’

  Lucy screwed up her face and grabbed Sally’s hand. ‘I’ve got another pain coming … Oh! I want to push—I can feel it.’

  Even Tom looked startled by her terrified announcement and Sally found herself struggling not to smile, despite the potential seriousness of the situation. She’d never seen Tom out of his depth before, but at the moment he looked seriously disconcerted.

  ‘I think you’d better unpack some of that equipment you brought, Tom,’ she suggested calmly. ‘It looks as though we’re going to need it.’

  Sally waited until the contraction had passed and then gently released Lucy’s hand so that she could assess the progress of her labour more accurately. ‘All right, I’m going to unzip your coat and see what’s going on.’

  Tom had moved to one side and was using the radio, presumably to talk to Sean at the mountain rescue base.

  Sally concentrated on the labouring woman. Because there was no doubt in her mind that the woman was about to deliver. She didn’t even need to pull on a pair of gloves and examine her. As Lucy was gripped by another powerful contraction, Sally clearly saw the top of the baby’s head.

  For a moment she felt a shaft of panic and then she reminded herself that there was no reason why a healthy woman couldn’t deliver perfectly well outdoors. She had to forget about all the potential complications and concentrate on the job in hand. Their biggest problem was just the cold.

  ‘Your baby is definitely coming, Lucy,’ she said calmly, wishing Tom would get off the radio and help. Deciding that she’d better get on with it on her own, she delved into the rucksack and removed various packs. ‘Mick, can you get a tent up, please? Something to keep the wind off. Check in Tom’s rucksack.’

  Creating a shelter wouldn’t help that much, but at least it would be better than nothing.

  Tom finished talking on the radio and strode back to her. ‘They’re sending a helicopter.’

  Sally looked at him. ‘You can’t deliver a baby in a helicopter,’ she pointed out logically, and he ran a hand over the back of his neck.

  ‘She’s that close? Seriously?’

  ‘I can see the head.’ Sally looked at him, wondering what was the matter with him. ‘I need a tent, Tom. Now. It’s not much in the way of shelter, but it will help.’

  Tom seemed to stir himself. ‘Right. A tent. Mick, I need a hand.’

  Sally left the two of them to sort out some shelter and turned her attention back to Lucy.

  ‘Don’t you worry about a thing,’ she said cheerfully. ‘We girls are going to manage this with no problem.’

  Lucy gave a hysterical laugh and caught Sally’s hand again. ‘Would you believe that I actually dismissed the idea of a home birth because they convinced me it was dangerous for my first baby? And here I am on the side of a mountain! I can’t believe this is happening!’

  ‘Well, look on the bright side, at least you didn’t climb up the mountain,’ Sally said practically. ‘And home birth is not dangerous in the right circumstances. Everything seems fine to me. The only thing we really need to worry about is the cold.’

  ‘Have you delivered babies at home before?’

  ‘I worked in Nepal for a while,’ Sally told her chattily, happy to distract her. ‘Hardly any of the women there make it to health centres of any sort, and plenty of other cultures think that home is the place to give birth. I once looked after a woman who insisted on giving birth in her garden, surrounded by candles.’

  Lucy gave a hysterical laugh. ‘But none of them chose to deliver in a howling gale on a mountainside.’

  ‘You’ve certainly picked the best view,’ Sally agreed with a laugh, grabbing the Pinard stethoscope from the rucksack and pressing it against Lucy’s abdomen. ‘This might be asking a bit much, but I want to try and listen to the baby’s heart.’

>   For a few moments all she could hear was the wind and Lucy’s gasps, and then she shifted the stethoscope slightly and there it was. The wonderfully reassuring gallop of the baby’s heart.

  ‘That’s fine, Lucy.’ She straightened. ‘He or she seems to be perfectly happy. Obviously enjoying being outdoors.’

  By now Lucy was inside the tent and she and Tom had manoeuvred a sterile sheet underneath her.

  Lucy gave a low moan. ‘I’m so scared. This isn’t how it should be …’

  ‘There’s nothing to be scared of,’ Sally said immediately. ‘You’re doing beautifully. Are you warm enough?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘I am, but what about the baby?’

  ‘Well, at the moment he’s still inside you so he’s fine,’ Sally said. ‘We’ll worry about his temperature once he’s safely out.’

  ‘You keep calling the baby he,’ Lucy gasped, and Sally smiled, aware of Tom by her side.

  ‘It’s a boy. Definitely.’ Her tone was dry. ‘Only a man could cause this much trouble.’

  Despite the tension of the situation, Lucy giggled. Tom picked up the banter. ‘You’re going to find out just what trouble is when this is over, Sally Jenner,’ he threatened, his blue eyes gleaming as they locked on hers.

  But despite his mockery and the kick of her heart, Sally couldn’t be anything but glad that he was there.

  She knew that if Lucy got into trouble, she was going to need him.

  Lucy chuckled and then groaned. ‘Don’t make me laugh—it hurts. How can you be so relaxed?’

  ‘Because there is absolutely nothing to be tense about,’ Sally replied immediately. ‘Childbirth is perfectly natural.’

  Lucy grimaced. ‘Until something goes wrong.’

  ‘That’s my line,’ Tom muttered. He glanced at Sally and she rolled her eyes.

  ‘Don’t get all pessimistic on me, please, or I’ll send the pair of you home and do this by myself.’ She opened another pack and looked at Tom again. ‘Could you draw up some Syntometrine? If you and Lucy are just going to sit there, panicking, I’ll have to give the orders.’

  He lifted a hand to show her that he’d already done it and it occurred to her that, despite everything that had happened, they were still a good team.

  Lucy gave a gasp and shifted onto all fours. ‘It’s coming … I can feel it …’

  Sally snapped on a new pair of gloves and glanced over her shoulder at Tom. ‘We’re going to need all the layers you can find, and I want a space blanket, too. OK, Lucy, the head is crowning. I want you to stop pushing if you can. That’s it, good girl. Pant now, pant—that’s it. Great.’

  She used her left hand to control the escape of the head and reduce the chances of perineal tearing. As the baby’s head was delivered she allowed it to extend and quickly checked that the cord wasn’t around its neck.

  ‘Fantastic, Lucy,’ she said, glancing at Tom to check that he was ready to give the injection with the delivery of the anterior shoulder.

  She saw the tension in his broad shoulders, the lines of strain around his eyes.

  He was waiting for something to go wrong.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ she said quietly, as much for Tom’s benefit as Lucy’s. ‘It’s fine. And this is much the nicest delivery I’ve ever done. All we have to do is keep this baby warm once it’s born.’

  She could see that Lucy’s body was doing everything it was supposed to do and there was no real reason why there should be problems. Their biggest problem was going to be keeping the baby warm once it was born.

  Somewhere in the background she could hear the clack-clack of a helicopter, but she ignored it, waiting instead for the contraction that would finish the delivery of the baby.

  Lucy screwed up her face and pushed again. Sally delivered the shoulders and finally the baby shot into her arms, yelling and bawling.

  ‘Brilliant, Lucy! You clever girl!’ Sally’s eyes filled and she quickly blinked back the tears. ‘You have a little boy.’

  Tom immediately cleared the baby’s airway and together they clamped the cord and then placed the child against Lucy’s breast, wrapping mother and child up together.

  Lucy gave a sob of disbelief. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘He seems fine, but obviously we need to keep him warm and get him to hospital as fast as possible. As soon as your placenta is delivered and you’re able to move, we’re going to load you into that helicopter.’

  Sally slid a hand over the top of Lucy’s uterus, checking that it was contracting, and moments later the placenta was delivered.

  She examined it closely and looked at Tom. ‘It seems intact to me, but we need to take it to the hospital with us.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll talk to the helicopter crew about how we’re going to do this.’

  Satisfied that Lucy’s uterus was contracting nicely and that she didn’t seem to be losing more blood than was normal, Sally turned her attention to the baby, showing Lucy how to latch him onto the breast.

  ‘Feeding will help your uterus contract and it will warm the baby up,’ she explained, smiling as the little boy clamped his jaws around the nipple and started to suck. ‘No problems there. He obviously has a natural ability. I told you he was a boy!’

  Lucy looked at her, tears in her eyes. ‘I can’t thank you enough. You were amazing.’

  ‘It was wonderful,’ Sally said honestly, glancing over her shoulder as Tom stuck his head into the tent. ‘Are we ready? The baby’s feeding.’

  ‘Great.’ He smiled at Lucy. ‘When you’re ready to move we’ll get you to the helicopter and take you to hospital. It’s a very short hop.’

  * * *

  Tom stood in the doorway of the side ward, watching as Sally helped Lucy latch the baby onto the breast.

  ‘He really is a natural,’ she murmured, a satisfied smile on her face as the baby started to suck. ‘And now you’re both safe and sound.’

  She was still dressed in her mountain rescue gear, her fair hair tangled from the wind and the drama, her cheeks flushed from the warmth of the room.

  Tom felt something shift inside him.

  She’d been fantastic.

  She’d treated every moment of what could have been an obstetric nightmare as if it had been totally normal and wonderfully exciting. As if she’d delivered hundreds of babies outside on a freezing March day.

  And she’d been in control every inch of the way.

  She’d been the one to give him instructions, acting quickly and competently as soon as she’d realized that the baby had been coming.

  He was more than impressed. He was amazed.

  At that moment Lucy glanced up and saw him. ‘Mr Hunter!’

  ‘You look comfortable.’ He walked into the room and Lucy smiled down at the nursing baby.

  ‘I am comfortable. And relieved. Thank you so much, both of you.’

  Tom smiled. ‘I’d like to say that it’s all in a day’s work, but I’d be lying.’ He ran a hand over the back of his neck and let out a breath. ‘Next time go for a walk in a town. And make it a short one.’

  Lucy chuckled. ‘I’ll try and remember that.’

  Sally stood up. ‘I’d better go and get changed. You did well, Lucy.’ Impulsively she leaned forward and hugged the young mother, and Lucy hugged her back.

  ‘Thank you just doesn’t cover it.’

  ‘I loved it,’ Sally said simply, and Tom looked at her closely, seeing the brightness of her eyes.

  Had it hurt her, seeing the baby born?

  He knew how badly she’d always wanted children of her own. Part of him was surprised that she hadn’t met someone on her travels and settled down.

  And part of him was relieved.

  He followed her out of the room just as she was tucking a tissue into her pocket.

  His insides twisted and he resisted the temptation to haul her against him. The way things were between them at the moment, she’d slap his face.

  ‘Sal?’ His voice was soft. ‘Is something wrong?�
�

  Her slim shoulders tensed and then she turned and gave him a cool smile.

  ‘Nothing at all. I’m going back to the unit now. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Wait.’ Tom caught her arm. ‘Emma said that you can start your weekend early. They’re quiet up there for once and you’re off duty in a few hours anyway. She said that you were to go home. She’ll see you on Monday.’

  She digested this and then stirred slightly. ‘Right.’ She stepped neatly away from him, removing her arm from his grasp. ‘I’ll see you Monday, then.’

  ‘How are you getting home?’

  She looked at him blankly, as if the question hadn’t occurred to her until that moment. ‘I’ve got my bike.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ he said immediately, and he braced himself for rejection as he saw her tense. ‘You must be tired. We can drop some of the equipment off at the mountain rescue base on the way past.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She turned and walked away from him, and he gritted his teeth with frustration.

  She seemed determined not to spend one single second in his company, and her casual dismissal bruised his ego more than he cared to admit.

  Seven years ago she’d adored him and hadn’t been afraid to show it.

  Now all she felt was indifference.

  Or was it? His eyes narrowed as he contemplated an alternative explanation.

  If she were truly indifferent to him, surely she’d be perfectly happy to accept a lift.

  But if she wasn’t indifferent …

  If she was finding it as hard to be near to him as he was finding it to be near to her …

  He watched her walk down the corridor, noticing the swing of her hips and the way her blonde hair swung round her shoulders.

  She was beautiful and she affected him as no other woman ever had. And there was one thing he now knew for sure.

  If he’d ever thought he’d got over Sally, he’d been fooling himself.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SALLY concentrated her attention on the rock, keeping her weight carefully balanced over her feet, as she looked for the next handhold.