Pregnant By The Single Dad Doc

When Sam had washed her hands, she and Logan did the same and then he showed her how to open up the incubator, so that Bailey and all his tubes and wires could be safely transferred over to Mum and nothing would be caught, or twisted, or blocked.

She nodded and stood by his side, aware of his closeness, listening to his sensible instructions and trying not to think too much about how close they had been and how this was going to be the first baby she’d held since Samuel.

He’d been bigger than Bailey. Full-term, almost. Bailey seemed tiny in comparison and she didn’t want to hurt him.

When the moment came she picked him up reverently, as if he was a precious Crown Jewel she was transferring to a safe, holding her breath until the transfer was done and she’d smilingly laid him in his mother’s embrace.

Sam’s face lit up with joy. ‘Hello, little man. It’s Mummy.’ She glanced up with happiness, her eyes welling with tears as she looked to Ellie and Logan with gratitude. ‘Thank you so much!’

Ellie could have stood there all day, feeling all the feelings, just watching this mother with her precious son, experiencing that moment. There was nothing else like it. Such a powerful image...a mother holding her child.

She’d had a similar moment herself, only hers had not been tinged with joy but with grief.

Feeling her own tears well up, she hurriedly blinked them away, wiping her eyes just in case.

* * *

Logan saw Ellie try to hide her tears and he was rocked to his core, fighting the urge to hold her. To comfort her. The Ellie he’d known had never been so emotional or sentimental. She’d been determined and strong, batting away the troubles of life with a confident smile on her face and a you can’t hurt me shield.

It was something he’d always admired about her—especially when her father had become sick and needed that heart transplant. He’d marvelled at her stoic attitude, amazed at her strength as her father’s health had continued to dwindle until the call eventually came to say that there was a heart for him.

Back then he would have crumbled under such similar circumstances, but thankfully his parents had been blessed with fine health. Something they were taking full advantage of now, in their retirement years, travelling the globe. The last he’d heard from them they’d been in Bali and had sent him a postcard of the beach there.

Perhaps it was this place? The NICU? It was a stressful environment for anyone to be in. No one wanted their family to need to come here. No one wanted to see babies covered in wires and needing machines to breathe for them, or tubes to feed them. He had to fight the feeling to reach out and wrap his arms around her and soothe her upset.

Trying to remember his own first day on the NICU, Logan thought back to his own emotions and feelings and recalled how apprehensive he’d been, how fragile the babies had seemed, how complicated it had all looked. Had he wanted to cry? No, but...

Then there’d been the day that Rachel was born. And he’d had to come here. Not as a doctor, but as a parent...

Perhaps instead of soothing Ellie, he ought to be toughening her up?

‘Ellie, could I have a quick word outside?’

He turned to leave, squirting his hands with antiseptic gel as he did so, rubbing the alcohol cleanser into his skin and waiting for her to join him. His heart was thudding, and he knew he’d sounded stern, but he hadn’t been able to help it. Her being here had thrown him into turmoil.

Ellie closed the door quietly behind her and looked at him questioningly.

‘I know this is a difficult place to be,’ he said, searching for the right words, not wanting to come across as harsh. ‘But it’s best for everyone if the medical staff—doctors, nurses and assistants—maintain some kind of emotional distance.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

He almost didn’t hear her whispered reply, so determined was he to make sure that she understood. ‘You can’t get attached in here. You can care—just not too much. Or a job like this could destroy you. Do you understand?’

She frowned. ‘Is that how you do it? By being emotionally distant?’

Was she referring to now? Or to the past? He couldn’t quite tell. One way it would seem like a genuine enquiry, the other like a slight. A comment on an inherent fault in his being. But he refused to apologise for either.

‘It’s the only way to survive. So why don’t you take a moment to regroup and then join me in Bay Two? There’s a case of gastroschisis I think you should see.’

He watched her go, wondering. Had he been too sharp? Too terse? He didn’t want to be. Having her back with him like this was...wonderful.

It reminded him of how much he’d missed her.

* * *

Ellie stared at her reflection in the mirror, angry at herself for allowing her weakness to escape. She wanted to blame Logan, but she couldn’t. She’d wanted him to treat her like any other medical student and he was. He was simply doing his job, and if she’d got emotional in any other ward her mentor would have advised her to maintain her distance there, too.

No. This was her own damned fault. Her own damned emotions. She slammed her hand against the sink in frustration, shaking her head, keeping eye contact with herself as she gave herself a really good telling-off.

Get a grip! You’re stronger than this. Do you want Logan, of all people, to think of you as incapable?

Nothing had ever been able to bring her down like this. Nothing!

Until Samuel. And then something had changed within her. The floodgates of emotion had opened and it seemed that now every little thing could bring her to tears. Films, books... Emotional adverts—especially all those Christmas ones that told a little story. Or the ones begging for money for starving children, or children with no clean water to drink. Something about their faces... The sorrowful music... The silent tears that spoke of a pain that couldn’t be heard. She felt it all like daggers in her heart, making her feel useless and hopeless. Weak and pathetic.

Her mum had told her she would change when she became a mum herself and she’d been right.

Ellie grabbed a couple of paper towels and dabbed at her face until it was dry. Then she took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself. To calm down. She couldn’t afford a moment like this again.

‘Right, then, Ellie. You can do this, all right?’ she said aloud, and out of nowhere came a memory of something she’d read about standing in the ‘power pose’. Wide-legged stance, hands on hips, shoulders back, chin raised. Like a superhero. How it could instil belief and confidence.

So she did that for a moment, because it was easier than having to do some kind of haka, which would have been noisier and slightly more embarrassing.

Her reflection smiled back at her.

The power pose was working.

* * *

Accepting his place at medical school had been a double-edged sword for Logan. His unconditional offer from Edinburgh had been fantastic, but it had also been difficult. Becoming a doctor was all he’d ever wanted to do. His parents were doctors, and he’d known he’d wanted to do that all his life.

He just hadn’t expected that when it happened he’d have to leave behind the woman he loved.

She’d been sitting on his bed, flicking through a magazine, completely unaware that he had momentous news to share.

‘I checked UCAS today.’

She’d looked up, dropped the magazine. Sat up straight. ‘And?’

‘I got an unconditional offer.’

Her face had lit up and she’d screamed with delight, bouncing on his bed as if it was a trampoline before jumping off and throwing her arms around him. ‘That’s amazing!’

He’d held her tightly, inhaling the scent of her hair, trying to take in every detail about her. Knowing he had to tell her the next part. The difficult part.

‘It’s Edinburgh.’

He’d felt her freeze in his arms.

She’d pulled back to look at him, confused. ‘Edinburgh? I thought you applied to colleges here in London?’

‘I did. But Edinburgh’s the one to offer me a place. Remember we went up there on the train with Mum and Dad for that interview day?’

‘But I thought that you said it was too far away?’

‘I did, but...’ And then he’d felt a small surge of anger that he was having to defend this. ‘We can still see each other. It just won’t be as often as we’d like.’

‘No. It won’t be.’

He’d looked away. Not happy to see the look of hurt on her face. He didn’t enjoy seeing her sad. ‘We can make it work,’ he’d offered, hoping that they could.

They were so young to have fallen in love, and they were being thrown by this, and he hadn’t been sure what the best course of action would be to stop her from hurting.

After he’d left—after he’d spent his first term away—he’d felt their separation more keenly. When he’d spoken to her on the phone he’d been able to hear the pain in her voice. How much she’d missed him...how much he’d missed her.

But what could he have done about it? He’d been so busy! Inundated by assignments, lectures and placements, he’d known there was no chance of him travelling all the way back to London, and no way she could come up to him either, because he needed to work.

He’d hated listening to her cry as they said goodbye each time. He’d wanted to do something to ease her pain, to try and make it easier for her, but the distance between them had made it hard. Each phone call they’d shared had been another stab wound. He hadn’t been able to wrap his arms around her. He hadn’t been able to kiss her or stroke her hair the way he usually would when she was upset.

He’d begun to think about setting her free. About whether he was being cruel to continue with the relationship, knowing that she’d be waiting for him for years. Ellie had dreams of her own. How could she follow them if she was waiting for him? He hadn’t wanted to lose her. He hadn’t wanted to walk away. What if she met someone else? But he had felt it might be the kindest thing—even if it hurt them both in the short term.

He’d called her on the phone. ‘We need to talk.’

A heavy silence. ‘About what?’

‘About us,’ he’d said, quietly. ‘I don’t think this is working. I’ve thought about this long and hard, Ellie, and I think it’s best if we...’

‘If we what?’ Her voice had sounded timid.

‘If we just stay friends.’ It had broken his own heart to say it. To cut the cord. To let her go. But he had done it for her. So she could have a life.

‘Why?’

‘It’s impossible, what we’re doing. You’re just waiting for me, Ellie, and that’s wrong. You’re waiting for me to finish med school. And even after that I’ll have to work, and being a junior doctor is long hours and overtime, day and night shifts all rolled into one. We’d hardly see each other. And then I’d be working hard to get into a specialism, so you’d have to wait for me to finish that. I can’t leave you hanging on like this—it’s not fair.’

Each word had been like a scar on his heart. He’d loved Ellie so much! But he’d had to do it.

He couldn’t expect her to wait for him. They were going to be apart for five years! And they were both so young, with so much ahead of them. It had been wrong of him to think that they could do this.

Ellie had cried down the phone, begging and pleading with him to change his mind, and although it pained him to let her go, he’d known it was the right thing for her.

When the call had finally been over, he’d put his head in his hands and just felt exhausted. He’d loved Ellie—he really had. But she needed to live her life, too. Not waste it. And he’d wanted her to be happy. Short-term pain for long-term gain, and if at the end of five years he returned home and the spark was still there then maybe they could revisit what they both wanted.

That was what he’d genuinely thought.

But five years later he’d already met Jo. And she’d been a junior doctor, like him, and she’d understood the life and was going through the same thing, and they’d just clicked, and...

And now Ellie was back and he was in turmoil. His emotions were all over the place at just seeing her.

She still had that long, wavy black hair. It concealed her face now, as she concentrated on getting a butterfly needle into the crook of the baby’s arm.

‘Adjust the angle. A little lower. That’s it.’

The needle slid into position and she attached the vacutainers to get the required blood samples.

She had steady hands. That was good. And she’d found the vein first time, which was sometimes hard to do on babies because they were so small.

He watched her finish off and cover the needle entry point with a small wad of cotton wool that she taped into position. ‘Okay, get those sent off to Pathology as soon as you’ve filled in the patient details.’

Ellie gave him a brief smile and he watched her walk away to the desk. Why couldn’t he stop staring at her? Just having her there was remarkable, but he found himself wanting to be closer. To touch her. Make sure that she was real.

He’d made the right decision in leaving her years ago—he knew he had. There’d been no other choice.

That was years ago. Nothing you can do about it now except give her the best education you can.

She looked up, caught his eye, and he gave her a brief smile. Fate had thrown them back together again, and if that wasn’t some sort of sign that this was a chance for him to make amends then he didn’t know what was.

He’d set her free once. Now he would do so again. But this time when she left in a few weeks she would thank him.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THIS IS LILY MAE BURKE. Born at twenty-seven weeks, she weighed one and a half pounds.’

Ellie gazed down at the tiny baby swamped, it seemed, by wires and tubes, wearing a yellow knitted hat that was almost too big and a nappy that seemed the same. Her eyes were covered by gauze pads and a tube was taped to her mouth, with a thinner one running into her left nostril. She looked lighter than a feather, but she was sleeping peacefully. Someone had placed a pink teddy in the far corner of her incubator.

‘What happened?’

‘Her mother went into an early labour at twenty-one weeks. They were able to stop the contractions and she went home—only to wake one night a few weeks later to find her bedsheets soaked through and with the urge to push. We couldn’t stop the labour a second time.’

‘Was it cervical insufficiency?’

‘We believe so.’

‘How’s the mother?’

‘Jeanette is here most days—you’ll probably meet her later. We’ve been getting them to do some skin-to-skin therapy, which they both seem to enjoy.’

Skin-to-skin was something Ellie wished she’d had the opportunity to do—one thing for Samuel before he...

The thought almost made the tears come, but there was no room for that here. She needed to hold it together.

Logan moved on to the next incubator. ‘This is Aanchal Sealy. A twin born at twenty-eight weeks. He’s the bigger twin and suffered from Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome. Do you know what that is?’

Ellie nodded. ‘A condition that can affect identical twins who share a placenta. One twin gets more blood volume than the other.’

He nodded. Pleased. ‘That’s right. And alongside Aanchal is her sister Devyani—the smaller twin.’

‘By how much?’

‘Two whole pounds.’

‘That’s a lot.’

‘It is. Do you know the mortality rate?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Sixty to one hundred percent. Do you know the dangers for each twin?’

She thought for a moment. Before coming here she’d tried to read a few of her textbooks and learn about some of the more common conditions she might come across. ‘Er...the bigger twin could have heart problems.’

‘That’s right. What kind?’

‘Heart failure.’ She tried to sound sure of her answers.

‘Good—you’ve been doing your homework.’

‘Did the mother have surgery before the birth to try and adjust the blood-flow?’

‘Yes, she did. An umbilical cord occlusion to try and ligate the cord and interrupt the flow of blood between the two foetuses. It has an eighty-five percent survival rate, but a five percent chance of causing cerebral palsy.’

‘Does Aanchal or Devyani have cerebral palsy?’

‘We can’t be sure just yet.’

Logan moved on to the fourth and final baby in this room.

‘And this fine fellow is Matthew Wentworth, born at thirty weeks. He’s had a few problems with his oxygen levels, so we’re keeping him in a high-flow oxygen box.’

Matthew was much bigger than the others. He almost looked healthy in comparison, but she knew that looks could be deceptive.

She looked about the room—at the equipment, the machines. It was all so overwhelming. So frightening.

Samuel had never made it to a room such as this. But she wished that he had. Because if he’d made it there he might have had a chance.

These babies—they all had a chance at life. Hope was still alive for each and every one of them, and she envied them—then felt guilty for doing so. The parents of these babies probably wished they’d never had to come here, and here she was wishing she’d had the chance to. Wasn’t that terrible?

Logan’s dark brown eyes were staring into her soul, as if trying to read her, and she had to look away. The intensity of his gaze was too much. He’d looked at her like that before, but back then she’d been able to settle into his arms, or kiss him, or squeeze him tight. Not now, though.

How did he cope with this? Seeing all these babies who could grow up with disabilities, knowing how hard their lives and the lives of their parents might be. How did he cope, knowing that? Where did he find the strength?

What if there was an emergency? What if one of the many alarms on these incubators started to sound? What then? Would she be able to stay and watch as they tried to fight for a child’s life?

I can do this. I’ve already survived the worst that life can throw at me and I’m still standing.

‘How do you do it?’ she asked him. ‘Deal with this every day?’

‘It’s my job.’

‘I know...but why choose this as a specialism?’

He looked around them at the incubators, at the babies, his gaze softening as he stared at their tiny bodies. ‘They’re so helpless, these babies. How could I ever walk away from them? Choose something else? They can’t talk—they can’t say what they need. You have to know. You have to be certain of what you’re doing and have conviction in your actions. These babies need us. Once I’d spent a rotation here I knew I wouldn’t ever want to do anything else.’

He had a faraway look in his eyes and she got the feeling that he wasn’t just talking about the babies here. He meant something else. Something she wasn’t privy to.

Would she always be a stranger in his life now? Or would her time here create a friendship between them so that they could go back to talking to each other about anything, the way they’d used to?

She’d missed him so much after he’d left for medical school. He’d broken her heart, and as well as losing her boyfriend she’d also lost her best friend. There’d been so much she’d missed telling him in the days after he’d broken it off. And she’d hated that empty feeling she’d felt inside because she couldn’t just pick up the phone and tell him what was going on in her life.

‘It’s lunch. You should take the opportunity to eat whilst you can. I’d like you to have enough strength for surgery this afternoon.’

‘I’m going into surgery?’

‘Just to observe. We’re hoping to help the gastroschisis baby get all her organs back in her abdomen, where they should be.’

She nodded. ‘That’s brilliant news.’

‘Be back for two o clock.’

Ellie decided to offer an olive branch—to try and make things less awkward. ‘You could join me? It would be good to catch up, wouldn’t it?’

She saw the indecision in his eyes. ‘Maybe another time. I have someone I need to see.’

‘Oh, right. Okay.’

And she watched him walk away.

Perhaps hoping for friendship was hoping for too much?

* * *

Logan sat opposite his daughter, smiling as he listened to her tell him about blood. Specifically how many pints there were in the body and what constituents made it.

‘Plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets...’ She listed them off, holding her fingers out in front of her as she counted and explained their jobs.

It was a topic that anyone might talk about in a hospital and not have anyone stare, but here in a small coffee shop, just down the road from the hospital, his six-year-old daughter Rachel was drawing a few looks from some older members of the community, who appeared to be a little disturbed at her topic of conversation.

He was used to it, of course. This was one of Rachel’s favourite topics. The human body and how it worked—its components and what jobs they did. It was something she’d become fascinated by ever since she’d truly begun to understand that her mother had died, and her autism had sent her down a road of trying to understand why her mother’s body had failed.

He’d found it quite morbid to begin with. Disturbing and upsetting. So he got why strangers might find it odd. But he almost found comfort in it now, the same way Rachel did, as they settled in to a familiar, reassuring conversation in which there were no surprises and Rachel could control it, knowing the outcome.

First she would talk about blood. Then she would talk about the heart. And then she would talk about what stopped a heart and specifically what happened after the heart stopped beating.

He could see so much of her mother in her features. Rachel had Jo’s eyes. Blue, like the sky on a clear, hot summer’s day. And her hair was the colour of straw—not dark, like his. Sometimes when she talked, happily chatting away about her favourite subject, he would see Jo in her and would suddenly become aware of his loss—almost as if it was fresh once again—and he would have to take a moment just to breathe and remind himself that it had been years ago.

He felt guilty about Jo. He’d loved her—he was sure of that. But had it been the kind of love he’d felt for Ellie?

Ellie was from years ago and now she’d come back into his life. Jo would never come back, but Ellie had. He wondered what she would make of Rachel? Of him being a father?

She’d asked him why he did the job he did, but he’d not been able to tell her the whole truth. That in every child he tried to save he saw Rachel. That with every baby rushed to his department he recalled what it had felt like to be a lost parent, trailing in afterwards, hoping and praying that someone had the expertise to fix his child and make everything all right.

He’d have given his own life for Rachel, so he knew exactly what all those parents felt when they walked through into The Nest. Terrified and afraid...making bargains with God. He had an insight that the other doctors in Neonatal didn’t have, and that was why he did this job. That was why he chose to be a mentor and teach medical students—because they needed more doctors who could save these tiny babies. To give these brand-new baby humans a future. To give them time to enjoy life.

He’d never expected he would see Ellie again, even though he’d moved back to London. So much had happened in their time apart he’d figured she wouldn’t want him walking back into her life. They’d be moving in different circles. London was such a vast place and he’d just assumed she would have moved on.

Back then she’d talked about travelling the globe, seeing the world, and he’d hoped that by setting her free he would have helped her do that. Yet now she was training to become a doctor. What had provoked that?