‘Sí. Tiny green peppers, not chilli peppers. They are roasted soft, flavoursome, and that touch of coconut is very tasty.’
He watched her face as she tried the different dishes, eating slowly. Savouring. Concentrating. Serious. As if learning the tastes. Cataloguing. She made him smile. There was nothing wrong with just enjoying her company while she was here.
He would really like to see her laugh again, like they had that one night in Australia.
‘Where does the word tapas come from?’ Cleo asked.
It was as if she needed to understand everything with her curiosity. She made him curious as to why she was like that. ‘Tapas is the word for a lid.’ He gestured with his hand so she understood. ‘A small empty plate that the barman would put on top of the beer glass to stop flies from landing on the rim of the glass.’
He leaned towards her. ‘They say that one day, a barman put a piece of meat on top of the empty plate, to eat with the beer, which the patrons enjoyed.’
He shrugged. ‘The story goes that then different things were placed on the plate on top of the glass and so a sophisticated tapas culture grew in Spain.’ He spread his hands. ‘The best is in Barcelona.’
She laughed and he congratulated himself just a little smugly on drawing her out.
‘You think Barcelona has the best of everything.’
‘Of course.’
She shook her head. ‘So, what are those?’ she asked, pointing at a dish.
‘That is my favourite. Cured duck breast with fresh figs, rosemary and honey.’
She looked intrigued. He pointed.
‘That is Iberian pork fillet with pears.’ A wave of his hand towards the shellfish. ‘You must recognise the oysters.’
She nodded. ‘The Iberian coast surrounds you, so seafood should play a strong part in your tapas menus.’
A sudden loud squealing of tyres followed by a crash from the street below made Felipe hurriedly rise from his chair, muttering, ‘Excuse me.’ He crossed to the window to pull back the curtains. His grandmother’s usually peaceful street lay in chaos. Tables and chairs from the footpath outside the café on the corner had been flung around and a car was buried nose first in the doorway of the café.
Alba appeared beside him. He turned to her. ‘Call the police and the ambulance. I will go down to see if I can help.’
Cleo appeared at his shoulder. ‘I’ll come with you.’
His first instinct was to decline, to protect her from the chaos below, but of course she was a trained nurse with valuable medical skills. He would need help until the emergency services arrived and together they had the skills to benefit any accident victim.
And she was calm. It seemed to him that she was always calm. ‘Thank you.’
When they reached the lift it had returned to the ground floor and he cursed. It was not a fast lift. ‘Let us take the stairs.’
She nodded with instant agreement and he glanced at her shoes, which were low-heeled and sensible. Sensible like her, he thought, and after the pampered women he’d been exposed to for so many years he knew why that drew him so much.
On the ground floor, they crossed the street and saw a small crowd had gathered and voices were being raised.
Felipe pushed through them with Cleo behind him. ‘I am a doctor,’ he said. ‘Was anyone on the chairs?’ Perhaps under the car? ‘Has anyone been hurt apart from the people in the car?’
‘No, a woman and man. In the car,’ someone offered.
Thank God the chairs had been empty, Felipe thought. He crossed himself because earlier there had been children there. Steam rose from the fractured radiator of the car but despite the loudness of the impact it didn’t look too bad.
A man stumbled from the driver’s side of the car and almost made it to the passenger side before he crumpled to the ground groaning and holding his head. Blood trickled down his face beneath his fingers.
Felipe moved towards him and turned to Cleo. ‘There is a woman in the car. I think perhaps she is in need of a midwife.’
‘No, no, no.’ The woman’s cries could be heard more clearly now. ‘The baby is coming.’ No doubt about the cry this time.
He opened the passenger door and spoke gently to the labouring woman. ‘Are you hurt? Apart from being in labour?’
The woman settled briefly as her contraction eased. ‘No. I am not hurt.’
‘I am a doctor and I will be with you shortly. This woman she is llevadora—a midwife. I must help your husband.’
The woman struggled to get out of the car to see to her husband then leaned back in her seat, sobbing. ‘Idiota! He drove too fast when I said the baby was coming.’
Felipe turned. Where was Cleo?
‘Soy enfermera,’ he heard her say quietly. I am a nurse. The onlookers parted.
The younger woman’s frantic gaze latched onto Cleo and something she saw in Cleo’s calm gaze seemed to allow her some relief.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CLEO ARRIVED BESIDE the car at the same time as the next contraction caught the woman. She moaned and pushed at the same time.
Cleo had no doubt birth was imminent, which she considered a good thing after an accident like this.
Trauma to the uterus and/or rapid deceleration could be silently dangerous for pregnancy. The placenta could shear from the wall of the uterus and cut off the blood supply to the baby. Or the mother could bleed badly and yet feel no pain. No, she wasn’t going there. They would have a healthy baby born.
‘Are you hurt?’
The woman held her stomach, glanced down at it, but shook her head. She glared in the direction of her husband. ‘Idiota!’ she said again, and then sighed. ‘I hope he is not badly hurt.’
‘Perhaps just a little bit hurt,’ Cleo said, and suppressed a smile.
The woman shook her head but she smiled. Until the next contraction and the woman bore down again. She heard the small grunt and Cleo looked for a place to ease the birth.
She met the woman’s eyes and gestured to the road. ‘Can you move out of the car?’ she asked, thinking giving birth might be awkward in the car.
The woman shook her head. Cleo didn’t want to move her either, really, in case something else was hurt. It was unlikely, but the impact hadn’t been near the fuel tank and she had no doubt if they needed to exit the area swiftly Felipe would tell them so in no uncertain terms.
The woman grunted again.
Cleo pulled the husband’s jacket from beside her feet onto the road and knelt on it. ‘I’ll try to push the seat back, but can you help me do that?’ She gestured to help explain what she meant.
Cleo leaned down to push the small bar under the seat and the woman gave a small jerk with her body backwards and thankfully the seat slid easily and created some room in front of the woman, except for a large, soft overnight case jammed next to her feet.
It would have to be enough. Felipe was busy with the bleeding man, who appeared to have a shoulder injury as well. The woman leaned forward with her hands on her knees and breathed.
Cleo had nothing to wash her hands with, no gloves, no towels. But they had a conscious and alert mother. It could have been worse. The woman could slide forward to the edge of the seat. That would work. She was more worried the baby would be compromised than she was about the awkwardness of the actual birth, but she had Felipe there, too. Hopefully, soon emergency medical help would arrive. ‘I am Cleo. What is your name?’
‘Elena.’ A downward grunt of late labour. ‘Not how I was supposed to have my baby.’
‘No.’ Cleo smiled warmly. ‘Is this your first?’
‘No. Third.’ An experienced mother, then. A bonus.
They could do this together. ‘Elena,’ she said slowly, ‘some babies are impatient. Yours is one such. May I put your bag behind you to lean against so you can sit forward at the edge
of the seat? To make room for the birth?’
Elena grunted again and Cleo squeezed the bag out of the small space while Elena shuffled forward on the seat.
Felipe edged in quietly beside her. ‘I’ll push it in while you help her stay forward.’ With relief she nodded, and he spoke quietly to Elena while they both helped her move forward and he pushed the bulky bag down with the other hand until the woman sat perched at the edge of the seat with the bag supporting her back.
‘Like a birthing stool,’ Cleo said with a slight smile.
Elena grimaced. ‘Though it is better.’
Cleo touched Elena’s arm gently. ‘If you have your baby here now, I believe all will be well. Then the ambulance will come and take you all to the hospital.’
Elena said something too fast to understand but Cleo didn’t need all the words. She understood the word ‘idiot’ again and had the feeling Elena’s husband was in serious trouble with his wife! But first the baby.
‘It will be soon.’ She spoke calmly. ‘Can you lift up so I can remove your underwear? Pantaloons?’ She hoped that was the right word. The contraction had eased but Elena was panting, her eyes glued to Cleo’s. She nodded quickly and reached up to the small handgrip above her head and lifted her bottom.
With a discreet shuffle under the voluminous skirt Cleo managed to hook the pair of knickers and slide them down Elena’s legs. She left one side on at the ankle.
Felipe said beside her, ‘I have phoned Alba to send down some washcloths and towels.’
‘And my handbag.’ She did have handwash in there, but it would be too late to use it before the birth. And one pack of gloves. But there was a twin pack of small plastic disposable cord clamps because she never knew which country she’d end up in or when a baby would decide to come. Not that she had scissors to cut the cord with. ‘And scissors.’ Though perhaps she’d wrap the placenta for the hospital to separate it from the baby later.
She asked Elena for the scarf she had around her neck. ‘For the baby.’ Elena stared and then nodded and tore the colourful cashmere scarf off her throat.
Felipe spoke rapidly into his phone and the two women settled themselves more comfortably. The scarf was handed to Cleo. She heard Felipe behind her instructing the crowd to turn their backs and form a circle to give privacy to the two women.
Elena’s face contorted and as her breaths were expelled she said loudly, ‘The baby is coming.’
Cleo discreetly lifted her skirts. She couldn’t help the smile that grew at the sight of the dark bulge of the baby’s head. The mother was always right.
She nodded calmly. ‘Sí. Your baby is coming. All is good.’
Felipe murmured beside her and Elena nodded sharply and gripped the edge of the seat. The sound of a mother bearing down became unmistakable in the silence of the small space.
A gush.
A splash as more waters escaped. Poor car.
The birth of the head and then a tumble of damp limbs. It was over very quickly.
The rush of a tiny body into Cleo’s waiting hands, which were suddenly heavy, though the baby lay still in a frozen moment after birth.
But there was tone in the small limbs. Rapid birth would cause a baby some shock. And was to be expected under the circumstances.
‘He is stunned. Give him a moment.’ Calmly Cleo leaned forward with the scarf and brushed it over the baby, wiping it firmly in long strokes. She crooned to it. ‘Nice big breath, baby. You can do it.’
The limbs tensed, pale eyelids quivered and blinked, and his neck stiffened.
The newborn coughed and first a weak cry broke the silence and then a louder one. His eyes opened in round surprise.
Cleo heard the sudden expulsion of breath behind her as Felipe exhaled in relief. She heard the mother’s gasp as she reached for her baby, and the murmurings from the small crowd that had gathered, though after one quick glare from Felipe they didn’t turn around to look.
In the distance she heard the wail of an ambulance. But the sound of the escalating baby’s cries was the best of all sounds.
‘You are very clever, Elena,’ Cleo said to the mother as she lifted the other woman’s blouse to expose the skin of her soft abdomen and laid the still-connected baby across her warm belly.
The umbilical cord was short and unless she cut it, Cleo couldn’t lift the baby higher onto his mother’s chest.
Felipe murmured in Spanish and the amusement in his voice was tinged with relief.
The father had crawled to where they were, inside the circle of turned backs, and leaned his head against the door of the car.
Alba pushed through the onlookers with towels and Cleo’s handbag.
‘Mare de Déus!’ she exclaimed at the scene. And dropped the towels beside Cleo and waved the handbag uncertainly.
Cleo turned to Felipe. ‘My hands are no use like this.’ They were wet and bloody, though she’d wiped them on the scarf when she’d dried the baby.
Now she reached for a clean towel and wiped the part of the baby she could get to. She laid another fresh towel across the infant and mother to keep them warm.
She turned her face Felipe’s way. ‘There’s a small black purse in the zipped compartment at the back of the bag. Can you open it and remove the cord clamps, please?’
He shook his head in disbelief. Said something to the new mother. Cleo didn’t bother translating, and Elena and her husband laughed weakly through their tears. The husband stared in awe at the baby then with immense gratitude at Cleo.
‘What did you say?’ Cleo asked Felipe.
‘I said how many people do we know who carry such things as these in their handbags?’ He held up the see-through sterile packet of two blue plastic cord clamps.
‘And they’re even the right colour,’ Cleo said matter-of-factly. Elena moaned in surprise as an unexpected contraction rolled over her and Cleo soothed her, murmured about the afterbirth and a short time later bundled up the placenta in one of the towels and tucked it next to the baby.
When all was done, she felt the mother’s belly, and thanked her lucky stars that the rock-hard uterus she felt beneath her hands was contracting and healthy. They didn’t need to battle a haemorrhage as well as a birth in the front seat of a small vehicle.
Felipe tore open the sterile packet so she could reach over and take out one of the cord clamps.
She eased baby away from mother for a moment so she could see the infant’s belly, clicked the little clamp shut over the thick cord an inch above the baby’s skin and the next clamp half an inch further towards the mother’s end of the cord.
‘I don’t have scissors, but the ambulance will. I didn’t need the clamps if I’m not cutting the cord but it’s safer to do it in case someone accidentally stretches the cord and it breaks or the placenta somehow ends up below the baby. I’ve seen a baby’s blood volume compromised like that before.’
Felipe stared at her. Then shook his head.
Cleo narrowed her eyes. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FELIPE COULD NOT help but stare at her. This woman he had left on Sunday morning, mere days ago, who had reappeared in his life like a breath of fresh air. She knelt on the road, smiling at a stranger. As calm as if Elena had just given birth in a labour ward suite.
‘I’m looking at you. So composed. Matter-of-fact about this moment.’ He shook his head. ‘I have seen many births as a student doctor but none as reassuring as this emergency with no one for back-up.’
She smiled at him. Her face was softer than he’d ever seen, as if she were totally content with her world.
Inside himself something shifted. A fracture of time, a blending of past and present, so that at this moment he remembered the velvet of her skin beneath his hands and yet could study now the curve of her cheek as she bent over the mother and
murmured to her.
The scent of new baby and blood, burnt rubber and the press of bodies was in his nostrils, and yet there was a lightness to the moment he could not believe. She was amazing. Something else shifted. The urge to fight for her, to rise above the obstacles lying between them, stirred in his chest. Was there any possibility of a future with this woman? Because he wanted her for his own.
His hand clenched. He had wronged Cleo when he had walked away from her without giving them a chance. He remembered the generous giving of her lovemaking, her full attention when he had been speaking of his past, how incredible their connection had been. But he’d still walked away.
She broke into his thoughts softly. ‘I had you here for back-up.’
‘Sí.’ In this instance. He hoped he would have been of use if needed, but once before he had been unsuccessful when attending childbirth. He winced as a painful memory suddenly returned to haunt him. One that had changed the course of his work because briefly, years ago as a student doctor, he, too, had considered working with mothers and babies.
He’d tried to resuscitate an infant he’d helped to birth but it had not gone well and the baby had died. No matter that later the autopsy had proved the baby had lacked a functioning heart. The trauma of it had been enough for him to know that the life and death stakes of working with newborns in Obstetrics was not for him.
His Cleo had stepped up and taken the braver path. He had taken the path of caring for people at the other end of life—when no one expected miracles. But that was good, too, because it was his passion now and all was as it should be.
His brow furrowed. He hadn’t thought of that infant in years. He hadn’t thought of a lot of the things that now dominated his mind when he was around this woman.
Enough. Later. ‘Here comes the ambulance.’ She did not understand just how extraordinary she was. He was realising again how much that intrigued him.
The ambulance wailed to a stop with the onlookers now standing back, and very swiftly Elena and her baby were safely bundled inside the large vehicle.
Second Chance in Barcelona Page 11