A Family for His Tiny Twins

by Josie Metcalfe

  Gideon blinked, suddenly realising that he had been sitting there following her every move as she smoothed her clothing over her slender hips and tidied away the remains of the lunch she’d shared with him so generously.

  ‘I should go and see the babies…Adam and Amy,’ he corrected himself swiftly when she frowned at him.

  ‘You should sit here for a moment,’ she countered. ‘I don’t want you collapsing all over my little patients.’ She paused a moment beside him, and for a second every nerve stood to attention when he thought she was going to reach out and touch him.

  ‘Gideon,’ she said softly, twining her fingers together almost as if she was having to stop herself making contact, and for one crazy moment he almost wished that she would lose the fight. It seemed as if half a lifetime had passed since anyone had touched him with concern and he almost ached for the feeling that someone cared.

  ‘You know that I would tell you immediately if there was something wrong with your babies?’ she continued, snapping him out of his mental ramblings with a jerk. ‘You know that you can trust me to look after Amy and Adam?’

  He felt at a disadvantage sitting there, having to look up at her earnest expression and trying to read her honesty. He’d thought that he’d known the woman he’d married, that he could trust her. Otherwise he’d never have made her his wife. And look how that had turned out.

  Could he trust his instincts when they were telling him that Nadia was very different, that she was someone he could trust with the lives of the only children he was likely to have?

  ‘I’ll sit here for a little while longer,’ he conceded, common sense briefly overriding his obsessive need to be close to Adam and Amy. If he hadn’t convinced himself that something would go wrong if he wasn’t there with them, he probably wouldn’t have hurried up the stairs like that and made a fool of himself by collapsing in front of Nadia.

  ‘Finish your tea and relax,’ she advised. ‘We’ll see you later.’

  Against his will, Gideon found himself following her with his eyes as she left the room, and he couldn’t help noticing how quietly she moved, with the elegant poise of a dancer.

  Did she dance? he wondered idly as he let his head fall back. He could imagine that she would be good at it, her body lithe and fit and her height…He guessed she would be about half a head shorter than him, and if she was wearing heels, that would make her the perfect height, the perfect height for him to wrap his arms around, her legs the perfect length to mesh with his as they stepped rhythmically together and her mouth just perfect for him to tilt his head and share a kiss at the end of the dance…

  Nadia pushed the door open a crack and gave a nod of satisfaction when she saw Gideon was still fast asleep.

  The sign she’d stuck on the door—‘Let sleeping doctors lie’—had made the rest of the staff smile, and they’d all been quite happy to share the spare kettle in Caitlin’s office on a temporary basis.

  She’d actually been surprised that her ploy had worked quite so well. She hadn’t expected him to do much more than sit down for the length of time it took him to eat a final sandwich and finish his a mug of tea. The fact that he’d actually succumbed to his exhaustion and was still sleeping more than two hours later was more than she’d hoped for.

  Perhaps, when he woke, he’d be more amenable to the idea of going home to sleep properly in his own bed and let his body return to a more normal existence.

  ‘You may as well come in,’ Gideon grumbled in a voice still husky with lingering sleep.

  ‘You’re awake!’ she exclaimed, and realised that she wasn’t certain whether she was disappointed that he hadn’t slept longer or pleased that he was awake enough to speak to her.

  ‘No thanks to you,’ he pointed out with a scowl. ‘What did you put in those sandwiches? Or was there something in the tea?’

  ‘No! Nothing!’ she exclaimed, stung that he would think her capable of drugging him. ‘I would not do this to you, even though I knew you needed to sleep.’

  ‘Hey! Calm down, Nadia, that was a joke,’ he soothed, clearly surprised by her reaction. ‘I fully realise that I was so tired that all it took was sitting down in a quiet place for me to fall asleep. What I don’t understand is how you managed to keep everyone out of here long enough for it to happen.’

  ‘That was easy,’ she said, going back to reach out to peel the sign from the outside of the staffroom door and handing it to him. ‘So, why did you wake up? I know that no one came in here, and the telephone was unplugged so it would not ring.’

  ‘Ah, but you forgot about mobile phones,’ he said, holding up the little gadget with a grimace. ‘The human resources department has ways of tracking us down, especially when they want to inform us that we’re not entitled to paid leave unless we prove that we’ve satisfied all the relevant criteria and filled in all the forms…in triplicate.’

  ‘And what did you say to them?’

  ‘Nothing repeatable, initially,’ he admitted, and she could imagine that he wouldn’t be the most even-tempered of people when he came up against mindless bureaucracy, especially if he was woken from a sound sleep. ‘Then I told them that I was spending time with my children while they’re in Intensive Care.’

  ‘And?’ She knew from his expression that there was more, and wondered when she’d begun to be able to read him in this way. She didn’t usually allow anybody close enough to form that sort of bond.

  ‘And they informed me that it was fraud to claim time off to be with non-existent children, because they had no record that I have any children, just a wife.’

  ‘And you told them…?’ She perched on the arm of the nearest chair, actually finding that she was enjoying listening to his account, fascinated to see yet another side of the man.

  ‘I told them that it was time that somebody in their department actually earned the salary they were being paid, and updated their records with the information they’d been given—firstly, that I’ve been divorced for several months and, secondly, that I am now the father of two babies currently residing in an incubator in this hospital.’

  ‘And so you were woken from the first sleep you have had in too many days by someone wasting your time,’ she said crossly.

  ‘That seems to be what you get when the hospital is staffed by more administrative staff than doctors and nurses added together,’ he grumbled. ‘You know, we were actually allocated several extra nurses on A and E, to speed up the treatment of the more minor cases and free up the senior staff to deal with the more serious injuries and illnesses. But by the time they’d appointed someone to check up to see whether the hospital was getting value for money out of the new staff, and that they were actually speeding up the treatment of patients, and then appointed someone to work as their secretary, and someone to collate all the statistics and someone to go to the meetings to report back to the next level of bean-counter, and so on and so on, they’d actually spent all the money that should have gone to pay the nurses’ salaries and had to sack the nurses in order to save the money to streamline the operation of A and E. But, of course, all the new administrative staff kept their jobs!’

  ‘You are joking!’ Nadia knew that bureaucratic interference in the day-to-day and minute-to-minute running of hospitals was actually causing more problems than it was solving, but she hadn’t realised that things had become this chaotic.

  ‘Not by much,’ Gideon said darkly. ‘I’m more and more convinced that they could sack fifty per cent of the administrative staff and the only difference it would make to the running of the hospital would be that there would be less paperwork and more time to treat patients…Oh, and we’d have all the money we could ever want to employ all the doctors and nurses we needed.’

  ‘And yet, as bad as it gets, you would not change your profession,’ she said, not even needing to make it a question. She already knew that he was the sort of person to whom dedication to duty would be paramount.

  ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘Being a d
octor is all I’ve ever wanted to do, but…’ He sighed.

  ‘But?’ she prompted.

  ‘But I have to admit that the stupidity of the current system, where watching the clock matters more than treating our patients the way they need to be treated, is really getting me down.’

  ‘Do you see any way of changing things to make them better?’ Her memories of the system in her own country were so harrowing that, as bad as it could be here, it would always be better than what she’d come from.

  ‘Honestly? No,’ he said shortly. ‘Not unless the hospitals can escape from the stranglehold of the politicians, and as I can’t see that happening any time soon, I must admit I’ve seriously thought about joining the thousands of doctors and nurses who’ve emigrated to somewhere they’re valued properly…like Australia, for example.’

  He yawned widely, then apologised. ‘I’m sorry, but I tend to get very grumpy when I’m tired.’

  ‘And, as you’re a doctor, you’re tired most of the time, so that means…’ She left the logical end of the sentence open, surprised that she’d actually dared to tease him but delighted when he laughed aloud at the inference.

  ‘So you think I’m grumpy all the time?’ he challenged.

  ‘Not all the time,’ she corrected him seriously. ‘Only when you’re tired.’

  ‘And getting woken up like that by HR didn’t help. How long was I asleep? Ten minutes?’

  ‘More than two hours,’ Nadia corrected him, and nearly laughed aloud at his look of shock.

  ‘Two hours!’ he exclaimed in disbelief. ‘And you’re in here…What’s happened? Something’s happened to the babies…to Adam and Amy.’

  ‘Nothing’s happened,’ she said soothingly, but she should have known that mere words wouldn’t convince him. He was halfway to the door already. ‘Gideon, please. Calm down,’ she pleaded, and grabbed his arm as he strode past her.

  He stopped as suddenly as if he’d walked into a brick wall and she only realised what she’d done when she saw that he was staring at the place where her hand touched the naked skin of his arm.

  It felt hot, or was it her hand that felt hot against him, hot enough to sizzle, almost as if there was an electric charge between them?

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, and snatched her hand away, rubbing her palm against her tunic to try to dispel the strange lingering sensation. ‘I just wanted to reassure you that your babies are fine, that they’re asleep and their oxygen sats have remained within acceptable limits for nearly six hours now.’

  He looked almost as shaken as she felt and those stunning green eyes that were usually so clear had a slightly bewildered expression in them.

  ‘They’re asleep?’ She saw the tension slowly seep out of his shoulders then drain out of his face, leaving him looking more tired than ever.

  ‘Peacefully.’ She nodded. ‘And that’s what you should be doing, properly in your own home.’

  ‘I know, but…’ He shook his head and she could imagine how torn he was feeling…how desperate she would be feeling if they were her babies and she was being told to go away and leave them without her. It was bad enough having to switch off her protective instincts at the end of her shift when they weren’t her own.

  ‘How far away from the hospital do you live?’ she asked as an idea started to form in her head. ‘More than half an hour?’

  ‘Ten minutes…less if I run,’ he corrected her. ‘Why?’

  ‘And I already know that you have a mobile phone otherwise you would still be asleep now,’ she continued. ‘So, if you were to give me your number, and I were to promise that I will phone you if there is a problem with Amy or Adam…?’

  She could see that he was weighing up her offer, and crossed her fingers in the secrecy of her pocket that he would agree to the suggestion, for the sake of his own health.

  ‘You would promise?’ he asked, those beautiful eyes darkly serious.

  ‘I would promise,’ she repeated solemnly, then waited for his decision.

  Knowing how desperately he’d fought to stay awake to be with his tiny son and daughter, she was touched beyond measure when he said softly, ‘All right. I’ll trust you,’ and began to hunt for a pen to write his phone number down.

  ‘Promise me you will get some sleep,’ she said as she took the piece of paper from him, careful not to let their fingers touch and hoping he didn’t notice her caution.

  ‘All I can promise is that I’ll try.’

  Sleep was a long time coming, in spite of the fact that Gideon was totally exhausted.

  Part of the problem was that his brain just wouldn’t slow down, endlessly replaying the events that had led up to his current situation.

  Not that he needed to relive the demise of his ill-fated marriage. That had been painful enough the first time around, with Norah’s increasing desperation to have a child completely overshadowing all the good parts of their relationship. When even IVF hadn’t worked, the realisation that she would never be able to conceive or carry a child of her own had been a bitter blow, especially to someone who had waited eagerly all her life to become a mother.

  He’d understood her reluctance to adopt a child that bore no blood relationship to either of them, even though he didn’t share her concern to the same extent, and when she’d decided that surrogacy had been the way she wanted to go, he’d been quite happy to agree if it would give her the family she wanted so desperately.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t realised just how bad her depression had become after that final diagnosis had destroyed the last of her hopes.

  By the time they’d contacted various agencies and begun the process that would hopefully result in a successful pregnancy, not only had she changed her mind about the surrogacy but she’d also decided she no longer wanted to be married to him.

  He didn’t think he’d ever forget the irony of opening an envelope containing the divorce papers while answering the phone to be told that the surrogate mother’s pregnancy test had come back positive. But even that news hadn’t changed Norah’s mind.

  The discovery, at the twelve-week scan, that there were two babies had filled him with a dizzying mixture of elation and terror.

  The fact that multiple pregnancies carried far greater risks for mother and children was his initial concern, as were the logistics of bringing up twins as a single father working long hours in the stressful world of A and E. But as far as he was concerned, that was easily balanced by the joy that flooded through him at the thought that he would have two babies to shower all his love on, two babies who would give him cuddles and smiles.

  To the surrogate mother, the news had been nothing more than a reason to double the amount of money she’d demanded for her services, and he’d been completely unsurprised to learn that once she was out of danger she hadn’t once asked about the fate of the children she’d sheltered inside her body, even though half of every cell in their bodies contained her genes.

  ‘You’re on your own, mate,’ he announced to the four walls of his bedroom, deliberately saying the words aloud. ‘If those two little scraps ever survive the next few weeks, you’re going to be all they’ve got in the world.’

  And that certainly hadn’t been his intention when he’d embarked on the process.

  Having been shuffled around the fostering system for most of his childhood, he’d always believed that children deserved two parents to give them the security they needed. Of course, there were thousands of single parents who did a magnificent job of raising their children, but he’d always thought that any children he fathered would be within the bounds of a traditional two-parent family.

  For Adam and Amy that wasn’t going to happen. In fact, with a total lack of female relatives—of relatives of either gender, as far as he knew—it looked as if the closest the pair of them was going to get to being mothered was during their time in the unit, with Nadia and the other dedicated staff taking care of them so carefully.

  Nadia.

  Just thinking about he
r was enough to bring a smile to his face.

  She’d seemed such a quiet and unassuming person when he’d first met her…but, then, he had been in shock with the premature delivery of the twins and not taking much notice of anything beyond their scrawny little bodies.

  Well, she certainly hadn’t been quiet and unassuming today.

  He chuckled aloud at the way she’d torn a strip off him when he’d nearly passed out at her feet. And not all those words had been in English, so heaven only knew how salty her language might have been if he’d understood all of it.

  She’d been devious, too, sitting him down in a reasonably comfortable chair with something to eat and a warm drink, knowing that his exhaustion would make him predisposed to sleep. If it hadn’t been for that call from Human Resources, he might still be sleeping there, watched over by the same fiery little dragon who was taking care of his babies.

  He remembered the way those hazel eyes of hers had lightened, glimmering with shards of gold when he’d made her laugh, and was surprised to feel the same tingle of electricity shimmering through him that he’d noticed when she’d put her hand on his arm.

  ‘Strange,’ he whispered, wondering sleepily whether it was something to do with static electricity. It certainly wasn’t something he’d noticed before when he’d been in the unit. But, then, he hadn’t touched her before…not skin to skin…

  Skin to skin…? That was the wrong thought to have when he was trying to get to sleep, especially when he could all too easily picture the creamy perfection of her slender arms and her flawlessly symmetrical face. It was too easy to imagine what her willowy body would look like without the concealing tunic and trousers…to picture the way she would turn to him with that smile she always bestowed on his babies…to feel the gentle touch of her hands on his body even as he was exploring hers…

  ‘Damn!’

  Gideon swore as the strident sound of his phone dragged him out of one of the most sexually explicit dreams he’d ever had. He didn’t think he’d been this aroused since…since making love had become nothing more than a means of trying to give Norah the baby she’d wanted.