‘I MAY join you?’
Had he been watching for her that she’d barely left her apartment when Carlos appeared by her side? A shiver ran down Marty’s spine, not because he might have been watching but because of the way his voice curled into her ears.
She turned to look at him in daylight—to see if a night’s sleep had softened the hard angles of his face. If anything they were sharper, while the skin beneath his eyes was darkly shadowed. The man looked more strained than he had the previous day.
Not that dark shadows under his eyes made any difference to her internal reaction to the man. Looking at him caused more tremors along her nerves than listening to him.
Determined to hide these wayward reactions, she went for professional.
‘Didn’t sleep much?’ she diagnosed, and saw a flicker of a smile.
‘The hotel is comfortable, but there was much to think about, and air-conditioned air—how do people sleep in it?’
Marty took it as a rhetorical question and didn’t try to explain that for a lot of people it was the only way they could sleep in the hot, humid summer.
The major question was, why was he here?
Had his sleepless night convinced him of his responsibilities?
Could he be interested enough in his daughter to be visiting her at seven in the morning?
‘You’re going to the hospital?’
‘I am.’
Maybe everything would work out for Emmaline! But Marty had barely registered her delight for the baby when he squelched it with his next statement.
‘I arranged things when I spoke to the administrator. For the next month I will be working there. Not for money, but for useful things to take back with me—equipment the hospital no longer uses because it has been superseded. No equipment is too old-fashioned for us as long as it works.’
The information about the equipment was interesting and she’d have liked to ask what kind of things he found most useful, knowing there were store-cupboards full of obstetrics gear that no one ever used tucked away at the hospital.
But something he’d said at the beginning of the conversation needed following up before she started donating old bedpans.
‘Working at the hospital? I’m sure if you asked they’d give you whatever they didn’t need anyway, so why would you want to work? Haven’t you heard of holidays?’
And shouldn’t you be spending your time getting to know your daughter—making arrangements for her care?
‘I try to work at other hospitals whenever I’m on leave, but not only in the hope of getting some useful equipment. My specialty is surgery and I have plenty of accident experience but there is always a time when I realise how little I know and when I wish I’d learnt more of other specialties. Your own field, obstetrics, is one of my weaknesses. Oh, I can do the basics but in Sudan I’m not needed for basics. There, the women look after each other and have good midwives, so mainly I’m needed for emergencies and this is where I fail my patients.’
‘You can hardly be held responsible for failing patients with complicated obstetrics problems,’ Marty told him. ‘Even obstetricians do that at times.’
‘I should know more,’ he said, refusing her excuses. ‘So, at the hospital I will work in the A and E Department and take the obstetrics patients, assisting, of course, a specialist such as yourself.’
Great! Flickering along her nerves she could put up with if it only happened occasionally, and was time-limited—like for a day or two! But a month? When he’d be around all the time?
Maybe she’d get over it.
She sneaked a look towards him, catching his profile as he turned to watch a pelican skid to a landing on the river’s surface, and knew she probably wouldn’t get over it. Whatever was happening inside her body was getting worse, not better, which was weird to say the least, because she wasn’t sure she even liked the man.
‘And Emmaline?’ she asked, knowing if anything was going to put her off him, his attitude to his child surely would.
‘I will have a month to think about the situation. As you said, the doctors want to keep her in for another fortnight, so the need to do something isn’t urgent. At the moment—well, at the moment I don’t know.’
His voice told her the subject was closed, but this was Emmaline, so as far as Marty was concerned it had to be reopened.
‘Don’t know if you want her, or don’t know what to do with her?’ she persisted.
‘How could I want her? I knew nothing of her existence! And a baby—it is impossible to fit a baby in my life. But she is my responsibility and I will make such arrangements as I see fit!’
‘She’s a child, not a responsibility!’ Marty muttered, forgetting that muttering was out.
And he did hear her, for he turned towards her, his face harsh with anger.
‘You are wrong, Marty Cox, and you are allowing emotion to cloud your thinking. A child must be the greatest responsibility a person can have.’
‘You’re right as far as that goes,’ Marty conceded, ‘but surely a child is a responsibility that should be considered with love, not just as a duty. Emotion has to come into it.’
‘Never!’ he argued, his deep voice rolling out the word with such certainty Marty frowned at him. ‘Emotion clouds too many issues—it makes us stupid, that’s what emotion does. A parent would be neglectful if he allowed emotion to sway the decisions or arrangements he makes for his child. He would be irresponsible.’
Was that true?
Should emotion be set aside in responsible decision-making?
Surely not, when how you feel about something at a gut level should always count in a decision. And wasn’t gut-level thinking emotion?
But, then, how could she, who had no child, argue that point?
‘As you say, you have a couple of weeks,’ she said lamely.
They walked on in silence, Marty perturbed enough by his ‘emotionless arrangements’ idea to barely notice the way her body was behaving.
Would his arrangements include putting the baby up for adoption?
How would she fare in the ranks of adoptive parents? A single parent who worked full time? There were so many childless couples out there, and those who could be full-time parents—social workers would surely favour such families for a healthy little baby like Emmaline. And shouldn’t she have been on a list?
Her mother would love a grandchild and she’d be happy to mind her while Marty worked.
But surely there was that list of hopeful adoptive parents—a list without the name Marty Cox even at the bottom…
Private adoptions?
She’d read of them, but did they really happen?
She glanced at the man again, but trying to read his face was like trying to read a blank sheet of butcher’s paper.
‘You are concerned?’
She’d turned away so had to look back at him.
‘Concerned?’
‘You sighed.’
‘I never sigh!’
‘Never? Not in the dead of the night when sleep won’t come and your thoughts are too confused to be sorted into shape? Not even when people’s stupidity creates problems for themselves and others? Why would you not sigh?’
‘Because it’s defeatist!’ Marty snapped, remembering something her mother had told her when she’d been very young and had probably been sighing about the unfairness of fate. ‘Why bother sighing, when you could be doing something about whatever is wrong? And if you can’t do anything about it, then again, why sigh? It doesn’t achieve anything.’
‘But it does release some tension or emotion, does it not?’
‘So does Tae Kwon Do, and it has the benefit of keeping you fit at the same time.’
‘But you can hardly kick out at your opponent in the operating theatre,’ Carlos said, and Marty, hearing something in his voice, turned to see a slight smile on his face.
He was teasing her!
And she didn’t like it one bit!
Did she really never sigh, or had she simply been making conversation?
Carlos studied his companion as she strode along, her eyes focussed on the path ahead of them, her thoughts who knew where?
Her slight figure moved briskly—a no-nonsense woman, this Marty Cox—no-nonsense, like her name. No-nonsense hair, cut short to hide, he suspected, a tendency to curl. No-nonsense muddy blonde, not highlighted as so many women wore their hair these days. It feathered around her neat head, a lighter colour at the tips, where it brushed against the almost translucent skin on her temples.
And though slim, she had curves in all the right places, and his body had already registered an attraction.
Not that she’d respond!
No-nonsense through and through would be his judgement, except that her eyes belied it. He remembered them slanting towards him as he’d asked a question—a greenish, bluish colour with gold pinpoints around the pupils. Dreamer’s eyes!
He shook his head. The sleepless night could be blamed for this fantasy, although not for the attraction he felt towards this woman. Had Natalie’s princess-like beauty captured Marty’s imagination, prompting her deep compassion, her involvement? Was that why she’d taken so much interest in Natalie’s baby?
Natalie’s baby?
He hadn’t thought of the baby that way before.
And wouldn’t again if he could help it—the idea distasteful somehow.
As the forthright Marty Cox had pointed out, Emmaline was his baby.
But Emmaline?
A fantasy name from the forthright woman?
She was indeed an odd mix.
She was also unclipping her pager from the waist of her jeans.
‘Hospital—A and E,’ she said briefly, picking up the pace of their progress, taking strides that seemed too long for such a petite woman.
He paced beside her.
‘What is your usual procedure with a page? Do you phone in?’
‘I would if I was at home, but we’re only minutes away now, so I’ll be there almost as soon as a phone call. The specialist on night duty must have his hands full for A and E to be paging me.’
They crossed the road and she led the way through a back entrance into the emergency department, lobbing her small backpack onto a shelf behind a manned desk by the door and grabbing a folded scrub suit to pull on over her clothing.
Then, as she thrust her arms into the sleeves, she turned towards him and smiled.
‘Well, get yourself ready. We’re on!’
Her smile wasn’t at all forthright. It was sweet, and slightly shy, as if unrelated to her confident manner and brisk words.
He glanced towards her, hoping she’d smile again, but she was talking to the nurse behind the desk, explaining about the page.
‘Oh, it must be the woman in the car they want you for,’ the nurse said. ‘Her husband’s driven into the laundry bay out the back. Let me check.’ She leafed through some notes on her desk then explained, ‘Full term, breech presentation, feet already out.’
‘At least someone had the sense not to try to move her,’ Marty replied, then she turned to Carlos. ‘Out this way. Have you delivered a breech? Normally it would have been picked up in prenatal care but a lot of women still don’t bother with it—or with much of it. When they present here in early labour and we realise it’s a breech, we’d do an ultrasound to work out foetal weight, a flat-plate abdomen X-ray to determine if the head is normally flexed or hyper-extended, and we’d do a clinical evaluation of the woman’s pelvis. Quite often, if there’s time, we can turn the baby. If the baby’s too big, or the pelvis is too small, or the head is in the wrong position, we’d consider a Caesar, but with the legs, and by now possibly the body, already delivered, we have to go ahead with a vaginal delivery.’
‘I remember the danger in a breech is in the delivery of the head, but you will do this in the car?’
She was snapping on a pair of gloves, but she smiled again, as if pleased he knew that much.
‘I imagine if you’re doing it back in Sudan it could be in far worse circumstances than the back of a car.’
‘Sometimes,’ he conceded, ‘although where I work there is now a hospital of sorts—the people themselves built it for me, with a thatched roof and mud brick walls, and the people are accepting it and coming if they need help.’
They reached the car and found a nurse kneeling at the open rear door, with a wheelchair, a gurney and several onlookers clustered nearby. The nurse stood up to make room for Marty.
‘FHR is strong, the feet showed then retracted but are well out now. I know theoretically about gentle traction on the feet, legs and pelvis in a breech delivery, but what’s gentle?’
She introduced Marty to the woman and her husband.
‘You’ve done just fine,’ Marty assured the nurse, squatting down so she could say hello to the woman and introduce Carlos, explaining who they both were and what she had to do, then taking hold of the protruding legs and body and slipping the forefinger of her left hand along the baby’s back so she could rotate his torso while his shoulders came free.
‘It’s a gentle pressure,’ she explained to Carlos. ‘We wait for a contraction, then use a finger to get the shoulder blades free. You’re doing really well,’ she added to the mother. ‘This isn’t your first?’
‘It’s her fifth,’ the father replied. ‘We had all the others at home but this was a new midwife and she felt the baby was in the wrong position and couldn’t turn it so told us to come to the hospital, then, while we were stopped at traffic lights, this happened. My wife had to push and I saw the feet!’
‘They’ll both be fine,’ Marty assured the man, who had obviously been prepared to deliver his child head first but had panicked at seeing feet. She was also reassured herself. After four children the woman’s pelvimetry should be flexible enough to expand to release the head. She turned her attention back to the labouring woman. ‘You’re the boss, so we’ll wait until you’re ready to push again then rotate him so his arms follow each other out.’
She turned to check the instrument tray, seeing the Piper forceps on it, should she need them to help deliver the head. She’d prefer not to, but if the baby’s head was hyper-extended, they’d definitely be needed.
‘Now,’ the woman gasped, while her husband, who was supporting her, leaned forward over her labouring body to see what was happening.
The arms came free and Marty continued with her instructions to Carlos who stood, bent almost double, beside her.
‘Now, with two hands, the left one underneath, you use your forefinger again, only this time you slip it into his mouth to keep his head flexed. Then with the next contraction, we pull down, then lift and pull at the same time. Wait for the push, then—bingo! One brave little boy comes backwards into the world.’
She held him while the nurse wiped his face and gently suctioned his nose and mouth, then handed the baby, who was squalling lustily, to the mother, took a soft towel from the nurse to cover him, then helped move mother and child to a wheelchair so she and the infant could be formally admitted to hospital.
‘You don’t do an Apgar score straight away?’ Carlos asked, and, still smiling about the successful delivery, she turned towards him.
‘He cried—that’s enough for me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s more important for his mother to hold him—to see for herself that he’s OK. We’ll still get the first Apgar done within a minute—or pretty close to it. Then another at five minutes, but, really, with healthy babies that’s stuff to put on charts.’
Their patient was wheeled into one of the trauma rooms in A and E to await the third stage of her labour, and for her new son to be checked out and his birth documented for posterity. But first things first. Marty clamped the cord in two places then handed a pair of surgical scissors to the father so he could cut the cord.
‘A son!’ the man said, touching the cheek of the baby who was held to his wife’s breast.
‘A son!’ Marty heard Carlos echo, and, turning, saw a look of wonder in his eyes, and although she experienced this same sense of miracle each and every time a new child was born, she had to wonder if he would have felt differently towards Emmaline if he’d been present at her birth.
Or if she’d been a boy?
‘Please, no drugs,’ the woman said, as Marty gently massaged her abdomen to encourage expulsion of the placenta.
‘Providing everything is OK, I’ll go along with that,’ Marty assured her. ‘But you’ve had a difficult labour and there could be damage to the uterine wall. I won’t make any promises at this stage.’
The woman seemed satisfied with this, though it was with reluctance she gave up the baby to be checked, weighed, cleaned and dressed.
‘A fine little boy,’ Carlos said, when the woman had been admitted—for observation only, Marty had assured her—and the two of them were having a cup of coffee in the staffroom.
The remark reminded Marty of his earlier exclamation and suspicion made her ask, ‘Would that have made a difference? To you, I mean? Would it have been different if Emmaline had been a boy?’
He looked genuinely puzzled.
‘Why would you think that?’
Marty shrugged.
‘Preconceived ideas of Latin men, I suppose. Where are you from? Italy?’
‘Spain,’ he snapped. ‘And on behalf of all so-called Latin men I find your assumption offensive.’
‘Do you?’ Marty said, challenging him with her eyes. ‘I’ll retract the Latin bit, if you like, but don’t tell me that most men wouldn’t prefer at least their firstborn to be a son.’
‘Nonsense!’ Carlos exploded, so genuinely upset she knew she’d been wrong. So wrong that she held up her hands in surrender.
‘OK, I apologise, but from where I sit it was an easy assumption to make. Do you know what Marty’s short for? Martina! And, no, I’m not named after a tennis star, but after my father, Martin, who’d wanted a son and when I arrived, the firstborn, named me after himself anyway. I’d like to think that some malign fate is working on the situation but I know it’s something to do with his chromosomes. Three marriages and five half-sisters later, he’s still without a son. His attitude has skewed things for me.’
She was talking too much again, but the man made her nervous in a way she’d never felt before. She drained her coffee and stood up. She wasn’t due on duty for another three-quarters of an hour and it felt like the day was already half-over.
‘I have patients to see on the ward then a list of out-patient appointments. Have you met whoever you’ll be working under in A and E?’
‘Anxious to be rid of me?’ Carlos asked.
‘Anxious to get to work,’ Marty retorted, although her habit of getting to work an hour or two early had only begun with Natalie’s admission. Since Emmaline’s birth, she’d been coming to work earlier and earlier, checking the baby first, then tackling paperwork, so she could free up small pockets of time later in the day to spend with the newborn infant.
‘Not up to the NICU?’ Carlos said, as Marty stood up and moved towards the sink with her coffee mug.
Marty spun towards him.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Exactly what I said! If you were not in the habit of visiting Emmaline before you started work each morning, I have seriously misjudged you.’
‘And is that good or bad—this misjudgement thing?’
He held up his hands as she had earlier.
‘It is neither. I have spoken clumsily. I am trying to say that I appreciate what you have done, and realise you have grown attached to the baby. I have nothing against you continuing to visit her. In fact, I would appreciate it.’
‘Why?’ Marty demanded. ‘Because you have no intention of providing involvement yourself? Because working here is more important to you than getting to know your own baby? A few dozen scalpels, some old autoclave machines and a clutch of crutches for some people in Sudan are more important than your own flesh and blood?’
She took a deep breath, hoping it might calm her down, then added, ‘You’re right, I have been coming early and, yes, my first visit was usually to either the ICU or latterly the NICU, but the baby’s father is here now, so she doesn’t need me.’
‘You called her “the baby”,’ Carlos said, the accusation in his voice mirrored in his eyes. ‘So, having provided her with a bond, you’ll now drop her—even drop the name you gave her? Well, I won’t. I’ll call her Emmaline and tell the nurses and doctors to do the same, and your friends will use the name and you will be the loser.’
He stood up and followed her path, carrying his cup to the sink.
‘But Emmaline will also lose,’ he continued. ‘She will miss your company, your touch, your voice, and maybe have a setback—develop one of the complications so prevalent in low birth weight babies.’
He put down his cup and stood looking down at her.
‘Is this fair to Emmaline? You may not like me, Martina Cox, but would you jeopardise that baby’s health because of personal antagonism?’
It was a great exit line, Marty had to admit. She was still staring at the empty doorway minutes later. All she’d wanted to do was give him a clear field to get to know his child, and the wretch had twisted things around so she was the bad guy in this scenario.
Could Emmaline suffer a setback if she no longer visited the NICU? Right on cue, her mind conveniently produced a list of all the things that could beset such infants—hypoglycaemia, pulmonary insufficiency, apnoea and bradycardia—not to mention SIDS.
She’d have to work out a programme so she could visit Emmaline at unexpected times when Carlos was unlikely to be there, and though this would eventually make it harder for her to separate from Emmaline, at least she’d be sending home a well and contented infant.
She’d worry about her own contentment at a later date.
This would have worked if Carlos hadn’t also chosen one of Marty’s unexpected times to visit his daughter. Or maybe someone had contacted him to tell him it was feeding time, for he was holding Emmaline in his arms, peering down into her crinkled face, a look of bemusement on his usually impassive features.
Marty backed down the corridor, right into Sophie, who was heading for the unit.
‘He looks as if he’s holding an unexploded bomb,’ Sophie remarked, nodding towards the tall man with the little pink bundle clutched gingerly to his chest.
‘I think he might see her in those terms,’ Marty replied. ‘He feels she’s already wreaked havoc in his life, he’s just not sure when the next upheaval will take place.’
‘Right about now,’ Sophie predicted as a nurse approached with a feeding bottle. But although she proffered it to Carlos, he shook his head, handing back the baby with the tense arms of a man who was indeed holding a bomb.
‘That’s no way to bond with her,’ Marty snorted, and was about to stride into the room and tell him so, but Sophie held her back.
‘He has to do it in his own way and in his own time, Marty,’ Sophie reminded her friend. ‘You can’t force someone to love their child. Love’s organic—it needs time and nurturing in order to grow.’
Sophie spoke with the conviction of a woman deeply in love and Marty forbore to point out it had taken Gib and his new bride all of three weeks to decide they were made for each other, all of six weeks before they’d married.
But Sophie’s words were comforting in a very different way, confirming Marty’s belief that what she was feeling towards Carlos was a purely physical reaction and nothing whatsoever to do with love.
‘I’d better go,’ she said to Sophie, as Carlos moved towards the public exit from the NICU.
‘You won’t stay and feed her?’
Marty felt the ache in her chest that could only be alleviated by cuddling that small bundle in her arms, but the nurse would cuddle Emmaline and talk to her as she fed her and what was that, if not human interaction? It was during the time between feeds and changing that Emmaline needed company…
‘I’ve got to wean myself away from her,’ Marty explained, and Sophie, understanding, gave her a hug.
But avoiding Carlos was less easy. She had barely finished a planned Caesarean delivery of triplets when she was called to A and E—an ambulance bringing in a teenager with severe abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding.
Marty beat the ambulance, but not by much, and wasn’t surprised to find Carlos by her side as the attendants wheeled the young woman, looking childlike in her green and white checked school uniform, into the trauma room.
‘Regan Collins, fifteen, BP 120 over 65, pulse 90 and firm, temp 99.3, severe cramps and bleeding,’ the ambo recited as he handed over the paperwork. ‘We have her on fluid replacement but haven’t done anything for the pain.’
‘Because she could be pregnant,’ Marty murmured under her breath to Carlos.
She stepped forward and introduced herself to Regan, who looked as if she needed a hug more than medication.
‘You’ll be OK,’ Marty reassured her instead. ‘We’ll take a look at you and see what’s what.’
The girl grasped her hand and squeezed it tightly, fever-bright eyes looking pleadingly into Marty’s.
‘You won’t tell Mum,’ she begged, and Marty’s stomach tightened. She hated these situations—hated being the one who had to break her patient’s confidence.
‘You’re a minor, Regan, and you were at school when this happened. The school will already have contacted someone in your family.’
‘But I could just be sick—she needn’t know what it is,’ the girl said desperately, still clinging to Marty as if she held the promise of salvation.
‘Well, I can’t tell your mother what it is if I don’t know,’ she told Regan. ‘So how about I examine you and we take it from there?’
‘Mum can’t know,’ Regan wailed, then burst into noisy sobs.
Now Marty did hug her, gathering the girl’s upper body in her arms and holding her close, making soothing noises as she patted Regan’s back.
She used her free hand to smooth dark strands of hair back from the girl’s face, while an errant thought flashed through her mind. Would Emmaline’s hair stay black?
It was none of Marty’s business.
‘Hush now,’ she said to Regan, when the storm of tears appeared to be subsiding. ‘We’ll sort it out.’
But Regan’s head moved against her chest, denying this as an option, her drama-filled adolescent mind certain this was the end of life as she had known it.
‘You can’t, nobody can,’ Regan cried, confirming Marty’s thoughts, but the teenager allowed herself to be lowered back on the trolley so Marty could examine her, questioning her gently all the time.
When did she last have a period? Were they regular? Did she have a boyfriend? Was she having regular sex? Using protection?
Beside her, Marty could feel Carlos all but squirming—it was obvious why he hadn’t become an O and G specialist! But when he murmured, ‘I could never ask Sudanese women these questions,’ she understood.
‘Maybe a female nurse could,’ she suggested, as she completed a gentle internal examination of the patient.
‘It’s all Rosemary’s fault!’
Marty looked across at Carlos and smiled but he was looking slightly ill and so anxious Marty felt she should be reassuring him as well. He obviously didn’t know that once teenagers starting blaming someone else, they were back in control.
‘Why?’ Marty said, and Regan started crying again.
But this time Marty continued about her business, asking Carlos to take some blood to go to the lab. ‘We’ll do beta HCG as well as the usual tests, and blood typing in case we need to operate,’ she told him, knowing he’d know enough to realise the test for human chorionic gonadotropin would tell them if Regan was pregnant.
Or had been!
Palpating Regan’s stomach, Marty found it to be soft, with no discernible lumps or masses, although Regan moaned with pain when Marty pressed on the uterus.
‘We’ll do an ultrasound now.’
‘Rosemary said she knew how to get rid of a baby.’
Images of olden times—of back-yard abortions and quack remedies to bring on a miscarriage—flashed through Marty’s head while her chest tightened with anxiety for the young woman—barely out of childhood—and the damage she might have done to herself.
But when she said, ‘How was that?’ her voice was gentle and contained, and Regan, taking heart apparently from Marty’s tone, admitted to exactly what Marty had been dreading.
‘With a knitting needle.’ The words were little more than a breath of sound but the thought of the damage Regan might have done herself made Marty shudder. Although in early pregnancy, with the foetus so tiny, it was unlikely any amount of poking would have caused the miscarriage.
Regan began to cry again, but this time defensively.
‘I had to do something! My mum would have killed me.’
‘Instead of which you could have killed yourself if you’d got septicaemia or bled to death before someone realised you were in trouble,’ Marty told her.
She wanted to say more—to wag her finger at the girl and yell a little. Say things like, ‘Surely you’ve heard of safe sex? Surely by your age you know something about birth control. The pill?’ but angry though she was about what she felt was the stupidity of teenagers, she knew now wasn’t the time for a lecture. Later on she’d have to counsel the girl on just these things, but if Regan was angry and resentful towards her, she wouldn’t listen.
The ultrasound revealed early pregnancy, now interrupted by this episode of blood loss.
‘I need to take you into Theatre for a small operation to have a look in there and clean things up. We call it a D and C, dilatation—opening up your cervix—and curettage, scraping around your uterine walls.’
‘That’s gross!’ Regan protested, then she brightened. ‘But it’ll get rid of the baby.’
‘We’re not doing it to “get rid of the baby”, as you so bluntly put it,’ Marty retorted. She was finding it more and more difficult to maintain sympathy for this self-focussed young woman. ‘We’re doing it to minimise the risk of infection and, far from being gross, it could well save your life.’
Regan must have picked up on Marty’s mood, for a tear slipped from one eye and slid down her cheek.
‘I’ve been stupid, haven’t I?’ she quavered.
‘Very!’ Marty agreed, but she gave the girl a warm hug. ‘And although in the end things will be OK again, they’re going to get worse right about now because we need your mother’s permission to do the op.’
Carlos waited for the teenager’s reaction, sure there’d be more histrionics. The more he’d seen of this particular patient, the more sure he’d become that he’d leave any O and G work, particularly with teenage patients, to whatever other medical or nursing staff he could beg or bribe to take over.
But the girl surprised him by accepting that her mother would have to know, although she looked pale, and so young Carlos felt his heart ache with sympathy for her. Then he thought of another girl—even younger—a baby girl high above them in the hospital.
He’d been beginning to think that, with sufficient help, he might be able to bring up a child, but no way would he be able to handle this kind of thing. Was it because she was a woman that Marty seemed a natural at it? Or was it her training that she’d been firm when she needed to be firm, while her underlying compassion came through in even her sternest words?
A nurse came in to tell Marty Regan’s mother was here, and Marty nodded, then told the nurse with them to contact Theatre to make arrangements for the minor op and for an anaesthetist to meet them there. She turned to Carlos.
‘Will you go with Regan and the nurse to Theatre?’
This was colleague-to-colleague conversation, so why did he notice her eyes as they met his when she asked her question? And notice how fine her skin was—smooth, lightly tanned and unblemished except for a small freckle just above her lip on the left hand side?
In days gone by, women with such a mark would have darkened it to make a beauty spot, drawing their admirers’ attention to the full lips beneath it.
‘Carlos?’
Had he not answered her?
Had the sleepless night confused his mind to the extent he was distracted by a freckle?
‘Of course,’ he said, and saw a slight smile flash across Marty’s face.
She suspected he was thinking of Emmaline—which he had been earlier.
‘Keep Regan here a few minutes while I talk to her mother,’ Marty suggested, as another nurse and an orderly came into the small trauma room.
Carlos moved to stand beside the girl while the nurse attached the drip to the small stand on the trolley and readied the patient for her move. Then Marty returned with an anxious, harried-looking woman, who rushed towards her daughter, caught her in her arms, and scolded her and hugged her all at once.
‘Stupid, stupid girl! You know we can talk about anything, yet you didn’t tell me. Honestly, Regan, sometimes I wonder if all your brains are in your toes. But you’ll be all right, pet. The doctor will fix you up and everything will be fine, but I tell you, if you ever, ever pull a stunt like this again, I will personally kill you then cut you into tiny pieces and feed them to the dog!’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Regan sobbed into her mother’s shoulder. ‘I was so scared.’
‘Of course you were,’ her mother whispered brokenly, crying now as much as her daughter. ‘All the silly stuff I told you about my getting pregnant too early and the struggle I had to keep you. Of course you didn’t want to tell me.’
Carlos watched and listened with a sense of wonder and discovery, as if he’d sailed into foreign seas—or landed on a planet called ‘Women’—and was learning firsthand just how different this world was. For these two were angry and upset yet obviously deeply loving towards each other in spite of the other emotions—the mother accepting, concerned, forgiving and nurturing all at once.
He could never handle that role for Emmaline…
It was obviously something only women could do…
He glanced towards Marty, who’d stood back and watched the reunion with that small shy smile on her face.
She already loved his baby…
‘Moving time, people,’ she said briskly. ‘Ms Collins, you can come with us up to the next floor. There’s a waiting room there where you can get tea or coffee. Do you have to let anyone know you’re here?’
The woman shook her head, gave her daughter one last pat, then stood back so the professionals could do their job.
‘She obviously loves her daughter very much,’ Carlos murmured to Marty as they fell in a small distance behind the procession. ‘So why was Regan so concerned?’
This time Marty’s smile was just for him.
‘It’s complicated,’ she said.
‘That I had realised,’ he assured her. ‘But how? Why?’
‘It’s a lot to do with expectations,’ Marty explained. ‘For some reason they seem to grow exponentially with love. Because these two are very close, Regan feels far worse about disappointing her mother than she would if perhaps she had a less involved and caring mother. Her mother has probably always told her she can talk about anything with her, and Regan believes that, but she also feels that her mother would be disappointed in her if she found out Regan wanted to have sex with her boyfriend, so to avoid hurting her mother she didn’t tell her.’
She smiled again, this time less shyly, and added, ‘That probably doesn’t make a jot of sense to you but, believe me, in the spider’s web of mother-daughter relationships, it’s near to normal.’
They’d reached the theatre and Marty was once again all business.
‘I’d have suggested you do it for practice,’ she said to Carlos, ‘but given how the haemorrhage happened, I’d better see what’s happening in there. If we leave a bit of tissue, she could end up with infection, and if there’s damage to the uterine wall, I’ll need to fix it.’
More than happy to be left on the sidelines, Carlos moved to stand beside the anaesthetist, who was questioning Regan about her health and explaining what she was about to do, inserting a mild sedative into the drip, attaching an oxygen mask, talking quietly and reassuringly as she worked.
Female anaesthetist, female surgeon—a woman’s world again. Was he more aware of it because in Sudan he’d seen less of the women? Their husbands brought the children for attention, or brought their wives and explained their conditions, wary about letting a man touch—or even look at in some cases—their women.
