A Family for His Tiny Twins

by Josie Metcalfe

  There was a tap at the door while Nadia was still trying to find words to convey her sympathy.

  ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt,’ said a voice on the other side of the door, and a head poked round with an apologetic expression, ‘but Jenny would like you to come into the nursery. She’s not happy with something on one of the monitors.’

  Immediately, the two of them whirled away from each other to make their way as swiftly as possible into the nursery, and Nadia found herself resenting the time it took to use the hand gel and don apron and gloves.

  In the end it turned out to be nothing more than a false alarm, caused by Adam tugging on a lead and disturbing one of Amy’s sensors just enough to set it off.

  ‘If you keep doing that, young man, we’re going to have to move you to separate cots,’ Nadia warned, her heart taking longer than she would have liked to return to its normal rhythm with all that adrenaline circulating through her system.

  ‘Were going to have to separate them sooner rather than later,’ Gideon pointed out. ‘They’re small enough to share at the moment, but it won’t be long until they need more space. And then they’ll have to get accustomed to the idea that they aren’t close enough to touch each other all the time.’

  ‘But not yet,’ Nadia said quickly, even as her brain wondered what it would be like to have someone she loved close enough to touch in the dark loneliness of the night…as if that was ever going to happen. After what she’d gone through at Laszlo’s hands, it was still a struggle for her to share a lift with strangers. Whether she would ever be able to bring herself to trust a man to share her bed…

  ‘Coward!’ Gideon taunted, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he’d been reading her mind. ‘You just don’t want to have to put up with the crying when they’re separated. You want me to have to suffer it when I take them home.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely,’ she said in all seriousness. ‘They’re both still on oxygen, but if everything goes well, they’ll soon be strong enough to graduate from the nursery here to the normal paediatric area until they’re finally ready for release. Probably that’s where they’ll try to wean them off their dependence on each other…before you take them home.’

  And talking to him about the usual progression of premature babies through the unit was as close as she wanted to come to thinking about the day he and his little family would finally leave.

  Even so, at the end of her shift she paused outside the department while she tried to decide between the adult thing to do…taking the lift that would deliver her to the nearest exit to make her way home…or walking to the other end of the department so that she would make her way down through A and E, just on the off-chance that she might catch a glimpse of Gideon at the start of his next shift.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the slightly harried-looking man loitering in the corridor outside the unit, blocking her access to the lifts.

  She wondered briefly why he was there. If his wife was having a baby, there was a designated waiting area where he could pace, if he didn’t want to go into the delivery room with her.

  Then a melodic chime announced the lift’s arrival and she still hadn’t made up her mind…or had she? Was there any doubt that she was going to go the longer way, through Gideon’s domain?

  She knew she was being stupid, and was undoubtedly setting herself up for a hefty dose of heartache when Amy, Adam and their father were no longer part of her life, but there was something so liberating about reverting to the teenager she’d almost forgotten existed, the memories buried under a landslide of horror that had destroyed her innocence for ever.

  Her heart leapt into her throat, beating like a rabbit’s as terror overtook her, and her feet felt as if they were nailed to the floor as she caught sight of the man who looked so similar to Laszlo again.

  This time there was no cowed and frightened girl with him. He just seemed to be idly leaning against the wall, out of the way of all the passing traffic but with his eyes never still as they flickered over the face of each new person who entered the reception area.

  At the very last second her survival instincts kicked in and she backed swiftly into the gaping entrance of the lift to huddle out of sight in the furthest corner, where he wouldn’t be able to see her.

  Was it him? Had he caught sight of her?

  If it was him, was her disguise so poor that he’d recognised her the other day? She’d thought that changing her name, her hair colour and style and her eye colour would have been sufficient to keep her safe, but had he seen straight through it? Was he only waiting for a chance to force her to repay him the money he was owed?

  She pressed the button repeatedly and finally the doors began to swish closed even as she heard heavy feet approaching. She didn’t dare to peer around the entrance to see who wanted to join her in the isolation of the brushed-steel box. She was too terrified that it was Laszlo. If he got into the lift with her…

  At the very last second she saw a hand—a male hand—reaching out towards the rapidly closing gap between the doors and whimpered with relief when it failed to stop them shutting him out.

  To her horror, the lift barely began its ascent when it slowed for the next floor.

  She was trembling from head to foot by the time the doors began to slide open, revealing several members of staff surrounding a gurney filled with a large patient and an enormous amount of life-support equipment.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she whispered, suddenly aware that it could take several minutes for them to get themselves organised in the limited space…time she couldn’t afford to waste if Laszlo was on his way.

  Fear lent wings to her feet as she sped along the corridor to the next bank of lifts, deliberately ignoring the training that told her to ‘walk briskly without running’.

  It felt as if it took for ever, but it couldn’t have been many minutes before she was outside the main hospital building and hurrying to lose herself in the anonymity of the people thronging the pavement.

  Once inside her little bed sit she threw the door bolts top and bottom and turned both keys, but still didn’t feel safe.

  If she was honest with herself, she’d known that renting a room on the ground floor had never been a good idea, but she hadn’t been able to resist the fact that she could look out on the tiny patch of garden that had been filled with spring blossoms the first time she’d seen it. Now she was overwhelmingly aware of just how vulnerable she would be to someone determined to get in.

  Not that she had much worth stealing…just the bare minimum of clothing in a tiny space that boasted nothing more than the most basic furniture. Even so, she found herself reaching for the soft-sided bag on top of her wardrobe and systematically folding and packing everything that she couldn’t bear to leave behind just in case it was Laszlo and she had to leave.

  Her hand hovered briefly over the loose floorboard that hid the cash she’d squirrelled away whenever she could, but she left it there for the time being, concentrating on her task as she spread the rest of the hangers out in the wardrobe to make the fact that she’d taken a number of items out look less obvious. She did the same in the chest of drawers, just taking enough underwear and essentials for survival, knowing that if she did have to leave in a hurry, she probably wouldn’t want to be carrying anything too heavy.

  Nerves made it difficult to eat, even though she knew the importance of giving her body the fuel it needed to be strong, and fear made it almost impossible to sleep, her eyes flicking open with every sudden sound, her heart pounding until she identified the source and subsided back onto the pillow.

  Nadia was absolutely exhausted by the time she was due to leave for work next morning, and sad beyond belief that she would have to leave the hospital before Amy and Adam were strong enough to go home. She didn’t want to go—just the thought of it was breaking her heart. But there was no way that she could allow Laszlo to take her back to the existence she’d only just escaped with her life.

  She waited
nervously for the lift, glad that there was someone else waiting with her until she saw the same man she’d bumped into as she’d been leaving the department the previous day. He looked almost as dreadful as she felt, and she wondered if his wife was having a particularly difficult labour.

  Hopefully, it wouldn’t result in a baby that needed a place in the unit. When she left, it would leave them very short of specialist staff, especially if someone else was taken ill.

  She should really have phoned in this morning, making an excuse not to come to work at all, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Her colleagues deserved better, as did her patients, and she couldn’t bear to just leave. After all, it might not even have been Laszlo.

  Worry that she was taking a risk by not running while she had a chance, guilt at the fact that she would be abandoning her little charges was also mixed with anger that the situation was being forced on her, but she was too exhausted to maintain either emotion. All she really cared about was spending as much time as possible with Amy and Adam, and with Gideon when he arrived at the end of his shift.

  No, she wasn’t going to think about Gideon, or she would have to admit just how much he had come to mean to her, in spite of the fact that there was absolutely no possibility that they could ever be together.

  The red phone rang just five minutes before Gideon was due to finish his shift and the information that the ambulance crew was bringing in a paediatric arrest wouldn’t let him leave, no matter how his heart sank.

  The baby was mottled and blue as the paramedic strode in, carrying it, and the paediatric resuscitation team that the senior nurse had called down arrived on the scene almost unheard over the distraught mother’s screaming.

  Unfortunately, this was a well-practised drill, and every member of the team started to perform their part of the resuscitation attempt in spite of the fact that they all knew the probable outcome. This was obviously a cot death and they would go through the motions just in case the baby could be revived, but their efforts were more for the sake of the parents, so that they could be certain while they grieved that everything possible had been done to bring their child back to them.

  ‘He’s six months old,’ murmured one of the team, but he didn’t look up. They all had their parts to play and as the baby’s heart had stopped beating so long ago that there was no possibility of finding a vein, his job was to get an interosseous line into the bone in his little blue leg so that fluids could be administered.

  The needle looked big and ugly and Gideon felt queasy when he felt the sudden pop that told him he’d positioned it correctly, glad that he wasn’t the paediatric registrar in charge of directing all this effort. He’d done his part, hooking up the fluids and administering the drugs that had been drawn up ready for him, but all he could think of was the fact that Adam and Amy were even more vulnerable than this baby. It was all too easy to imagine himself standing there like those desperate parents while something similar was done to one of his babies.

  The child looked like a rag doll as the chest compressions continued inexorably, the warning sound of the monitors and the mother’s hysterical tears so heart-rending that he just wanted to shout at everyone to stop and leave the tiny child with at least some dignity. Nobody wanted to be the one to utter the dreadful final words in front of his mother, but surely they had done enough to prove that he wasn’t coming back?

  ‘Stop!’ someone shouted, and for an awful moment he wondered if it was him. ‘Please, just stop it. Stop it,’ the baby’s mother sobbed as she suddenly rushed forward and began pushing them away from her child. ‘Don’t hurt him any more.’

  No one had the heart to point out that he was beyond feeling pain, but Gideon was aware of an overwhelming feeling of relief when the paediatric registrar nodded and they could begin to remove all the monitors and lines they’d put in just twenty minutes ago.

  As if he was watching something through soundproof glass, Gideon saw the senior nurse wrap his little body in the pretty blanket that had somehow survived the journey with him, and handed him to his mother.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry…so sorry,’ she wailed as she hugged him to her chest and rocked him, and Gideon knew he couldn’t stay in the room a moment longer.

  There was nothing more he could do and it was already beyond the end of his shift. The only place he wanted to be was up in the nursery with his own precious babies.

  ‘What is the matter?’ Nadia demanded, and Gideon suddenly realised that he must have been staring at Adam and Amy in silence for some long while.

  For a moment he contemplated shrugging the question off, the way he had during his marriage, but then realised that Nadia was nothing like Norah. She would actually understand how recent events were affecting him.

  ‘We had a cot death come in, right at the end of the shift,’ he said, remembering to keep his voice low enough that the other adults in the nursery couldn’t hear their conversation. Parents dealing with babies with such a tenuous hold on life didn’t need to hear about others who had lost that hold.

  ‘You weren’t able to do anything?’ The way she said it told him she already knew the answer.

  ‘He’d probably been dead for at least an hour before he was brought in,’ Gideon said. ‘There was no chance of resuscitation, but…’

  ‘But you all had to look as if you were making the effort, for the sake of the parents,’ she finished for him, and his heart warmed a little from its melancholy state when he realised that she did understand. ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Six months.’ He sighed heavily. ‘He was a beautiful boy, obviously well cared for and loved, and his parents…they were devastated.’

  ‘And all you could think about was these two here,’ she said, and placed a consoling hand on his arm.

  Gideon froze, staring down at that innocent contact.

  In all the weeks since he’d first met her, he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that she’d voluntarily touched him, and every time the electric sensation it caused on his skin seemed to grow stronger.

  And she could feel it, too, if the way she quickly pulled her hand away was anything to go by, especially as she was now absently rubbing her palm against the side of her scrubs as though to try to wipe the sensation away.

  That was something he needed to think about, as was the fact that he’d never noticed before that she wore contact lenses. He’d already noticed that she coloured her hair, but hadn’t liked to mention the fact in case she was one of those people who went grey early. Actually, he found it rather endearing that a woman who seemed to care so little for high fashion and the usual feminine fripperies should take the trouble to darken her hair and get rid of the necessity for glasses.

  ‘Have you started to make plans for taking Amy and Adam home?’ Nadia asked suddenly, clearly uncomfortable with his prolonged scrutiny. ‘Will you have a nanny to live in your home or will you take them to a child minder while you are at work? Or bring them to the crèche?’

  As a change of direction, she couldn’t have chosen anything more complicated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. It was his turn to feel uncomfortable, especially when her eyebrows rose like that.

  ‘But it will only be weeks now before they will be ready!’ she exclaimed. ‘You must have some idea how you will manage.’

  ‘When Norah and I decided to start a family, she couldn’t wait to be a stay-at-home mother until the children were old enough to start school, so there was no need to think about the alternatives.’ He dragged his fingers through his hair as if that might stir up a few brain cells.

  She made an impatient sound. ‘But once you knew that you were going to be on your own, surely you must have thought about how you were going to manage?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ he admitted with a glance down at the pair of them lying so peacefully asleep. His heart swelled with a potent mixture of fear and love. ‘When they first arrived, I couldn’t believe that either of them would survi
ve long enough to come home. It still feels a bit like tempting fate, to make too many decisions. I’d rather wait until their weight gets closer to their target.’

  ‘And then you will hope that you find the perfect solution all in a matter of days?’ she challenged. ‘That will not do. You must interview people to make certain that they will treat your babies the way you would want them to be treated. You must find someone you can trust with them.’

  ‘Oh, I know the perfect person for the job,’ he said with a meaningful look in her direction. ‘Unfortunately, she already has a job she loves. Anyway, on an A and E doctor’s salary, I wouldn’t be able to afford her.’

  Her eyes widened in disbelief and he was shocked to see tears well up in her eyes.

  ‘That is a wonderful compliment,’ she said huskily. ‘And if things were different, I would love to be there to see the two of them grow up, but…’

  ‘But what?’ He’d been nearly as surprised to hear what had come out of his mouth as she had. He certainly hadn’t intended saying anything quite so…so provocative, but now that he’d broached the idea, he couldn’t seem to think about anything else. Nadia would be the perfect person to look after Adam and Amy. He only had to watch the gentle attention with which she took care of them to know that.

  ‘But…’ She hesitated a moment as though debating whether she should really speak her mind. Then, when her shoulders went back and she stared him straight in the face, he knew her decision was made. ‘Gideon, what you and those babies really need is a wife to be a mother to them. That might take a little time to find, so for now you need to choose someone who will take proper care of them until you can find her.’

  It was his turn to be speechless.

  Whatever he’d thought she was going to say, it certainly hadn’t been that.

  ‘I’ve been married,’ he pointed out when he finally managed to put two words together. ‘It’s not something I want to do again in a hurry.’