Emergency Baby

‘No fishing off the company pier’ had been a maxim handed down from her brothers well before Sam had seen for herself what damage such relationships could do to a working environment. Hardly a refined pearl of wisdom but very good advice nonetheless, and Sam’s narrow brush with disaster had sealed her acceptance. When her relationship with an ED doctor had petered out somewhat acrimoniously, the time spent in that department had been uncomfortable for months afterwards.

This pretty young nurse had dragged Steve’s notes from the trolley to show Alex.

‘He had a massive haemopneumothorax. Six fractured ribs. Would you like to see the X-ray?’

‘Maybe later. So he’ll still be pretty sore, then?’

‘Mmm. The chest drain only came out today. He’s had another CT scan on his head and neck, too. Did you know there was a hairline fracture in C6/7? Just as well you guys knew how to take such good care of him.’

Sam’s attention wandered as the nurse’s dimples flashed. There was a noticeboard in the central corridor beside the main desk. Photographs and thank-you cards from patients were interspersed with notices from support groups, rules for visitors and hospital services such as the hairdressing salon and chemist.

Below the large pinboard was a long, custom-built pocket that housed a variety of pamphlets. Idly, Sam scanned the titles. There were tips for incorporating a healthy level of exercise into a daily routine— ‘Push play for thirty minutes a day’. Dietary guidelines for a heart healthy eating plan had a cute little smiley red heart with legs. More professional looking were the warning signs and self-help checks for testicular and prostate cancer, but not many had been taken.

‘So, did you get any good calls today?’ The nurse was edging the conversation into a more personal arena.

‘Nah. Quiet day for us. Sam? You ready? Steve’s in room 3.’

‘Sure.’ But Sam didn’t turn directly towards Alex because her line of vision had just connected with something interesting.

Very interesting.

‘I’ll come with you,’ the nurse announced. ‘He’s due for obs, anyway.’

Sam started to follow the pair down the corridor but then hesitated. Too quickly for Alex to notice, she turned back, pocketed one of the pamphlets and then strode a step or two to catch up.

‘How’s Bruce doing?’ she queried.

‘Really well.’ You would have thought it had been Alex who’d spoken the way the nurse’s gaze was dragged back to the man she was keeping in step with. ‘They asked to be in the same room, which is why I’ve got them both on my list. He’s been up on his crutches today.’

The men from the caving club were delighted to see their visitors and show off their progress to representatives from the emergency services that had ensured their survival. Sam happily joined in the conversation but part of her mind was still firmly captured by the light-bulb moment she had experienced back at the noticeboard.

It wasn’t a flashy brochure trying to win people over to the benefits of a low-fat diet or thirty minutes of activity every day. It was even more discreet than the testicular cancer one. Sam hoped it would have lots of information inside but the two words that had caught her eye so effectively were enough all by themselves really.

Sperm bank.

A baby bank. An anonymous donation and then a withdrawal and bingo! A ‘no-strings’ baby. Sam’s buttons had not been pushed last week by the notion of falling madly in love, getting married and settling down to raise a family. Oh, no! What Sam wanted, purely and simply…was a baby. A being she could afford to love, heart and soul. A tiny person she could guide and protect and watch grow and develop. Someone who would love her back and could provide the bond between mother and child that had been missing from Sam’s life for what felt like for ever.

It wasn’t as though she needed a man in her life. Not on a permanent basis anyway. She was perfectly happy the way she was, thank you, and who needed the angst and stress of a relationship that didn’t work out long term? The argument that a child needed a father figure didn’t hold much water, either. Sam had no shortage of suitable male role models readily available if she happened to end up raising a son.

Financially she was secure enough and Sam didn’t intend giving up her job for ever anyway. A good day-care centre would have the added benefit of solving any issues regarding a lack of siblings for her child as well.

Dammit! Sam smiled at Bruce, realising she hadn’t heard a word he’d just said and he was looking at her expectantly, waiting for a response.

‘Hmm,’ she said thoughtfully, buying some time.

‘She’d love it,’Alex declared.

They were talking about caving, Sam realised as her brain retrieved snatches of the half-heard patch of recent conversation. Steve was actually looking as enthusiastic as Bruce at the thought of taking Alex off to climb dark vertical walls and squeeze painfully through impossibly small fissures. Did these men have rocks in their heads?

Maybe if Tim—the man who hadn’t made it through the disaster—hadn’t been a new and relatively unknown club member, his death would have made enough impact to dampen that enthusiasm a little longer.

‘I reckon I’ll be fit enough in a month or so,’ Steve was saying. ‘I’ll give you a bell.’

‘We’ll find somewhere easy for your first run,’ Bruce added.

‘Hopefully somewhere away from any fault lines,’ Sam suggested.

The three men looked at her sadly. The looks were eloquent enough to tell her they were using their passion as positive energy to get through their current discomfort and the tragedy that had occurred. They didn’t need someone pulling them down, but her reaction was only to be expected. She was a girl after all.

That was quite enough to push a button that had been well honed throughout Sam’s childhood.

‘Hey, don’t get me wrong,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m in. I need to keep an eye on my partner here, don’t I? Just to make sure he doesn’t get himself into trouble.’

Two sad glances were directed at Alex now.

‘Sounds as bad as being married, mate,’ Steve muttered.

‘Worse,’ Alex said cheerfully. ‘Can’t get away from her even when I’m at work.’

Sam’s eyes widened as a sharp retort sprang to her lips but it died as the softening she detected in Alex’s smile let her know he wasn’t serious. That he didn’t want to get away from her at all.

She smiled at Steve. ‘How’s Courtney?’ she queried. ‘And the baby?’

The memory of that tiny vulnerable face and the way the baby had lain in her arms, totally dependent on her protection, gave Sam a sharp twinge of longing.

It also triggered unease. How could Steve be so keen to put himself back into a situation that had almost denied that baby one of its parents? Sam recognised the hypocrisy of the criticism instantly. Wasn’t she planning to continue what most people would consider a high-risk profession if she had a baby?

But that was different. Her passion was a career, not a hobby. And she was very good at what she did. The risks were carefully calculated. Minimal, really.

Steve was beaming proudly in response to Sam’s query. ‘He’s great,’ he said.

‘He’s noisy,’ Bruce said. ‘That kid yells its head off every time it comes in for a visit.’

‘You might see them if you wait a bit,’ Steve told Sam.

‘We need to hit the road,’ Alex said hurriedly. ‘We’re overdue to hand over our vehicle to the next crew.’

Sam couldn’t object to the reason for their departure but she was surprised by the pace Alex set as they left the ward.

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘Time to go home. I’ve got a cold beer waiting for me in my fridge.’

Sam had her doubts about that response. Not that there was a beer waiting, of course, but she had the distinct impression that Alex was moving fast in order to avoid meeting Courtney and the baby.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t looked too thrilled at having to transport that infant from the accident scene this evening, either. Was Alex developing an aversion to children or was she just overly sensitised towards them at present? Alex would think she was mad and he could well be right, but the last week had proved that fighting this desire was swimming against an astonishingly powerful tide.

On her recent days off, Sam had tried everything she could think of to either distract herself or talk herself out of the idea of having a baby. Visits home to wrangle with her brothers and to try and find something to talk about that might impress her father. Punishing sessions at the gym, one of which had included Alex as they had their regular race along the most difficult climbing wall. She had only won that by the skin of her teeth this time. They’d had another afternoon together, on a refresher course for abseiling skills, and she’d gone out one night to the pub where most of her friends from various branches of the emergency services gathered.

None of these activities were remotely connected to children. They had all been as enjoyable as they always were but the sense that something big was lacking from Sam’s life refused to go away.

It simply got bigger.

‘You’ll need fresh batteries in the life pack.’

‘Cool.’ Angus McBride hung his reflectorised, wet-weather coat behind the driver’s seat in the ambulance. ‘Anything else?’

‘Trace paper might be low. We ran through rather a lot with the arrest we went to this morning.’

‘Successful?’

‘No.’ Sam shook her head with resignation. ‘Sad case, too. Eighty-five-year-old lady was on the plane ready to go for a trip to see all her new great-grandchildren in England. It took years for the family to persuade her to make the trip and a daughter actually came out to accompany her. They were taxiing down the runway for take-off when she collapsed.’

‘And running an arrest scenario in the aisle of economy class is definitely not to be recommended.’ Alex reached past Sam to remove his kit from the back of the ambulance. ‘Which reminds me. What did you do with that code summary, Sam?’

‘Oh—I completely forgot to do anything with it.’ Sam fished in her pocket for the carefully folded strip of paper from the life pack that had recorded each stage of the arrest scenario. ‘Here it is.’

‘What’s this?’ Angus’s partner, Tom, came around the side of the vehicle at that moment and stooped to pick something up. ‘Did you drop this, Sam?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ Sam reached to grab the item but the look on her colleague’s face told her she was way too late. Tom had already spotted those two eye-catching words. Why on earth hadn’t she thought to fold the dratted pamphlet so they would have been hidden on the inside?

‘Whoa!’ Tom held the pamphlet just high enough for Sam’s reach to be inadequate, which wasn’t difficult given that his height matched that of Alex and Sam was a good six inches shorter.

‘Tom!’

Her tone attracted the attention of both Alex and Angus.

‘I know you consider yourself to be one of the boys, Sam,’ Tom said gleefully. ‘But this is going a bit far, isn’t it?’

‘What is it?’ Alex asked with interest.

‘Nothing,’ Sam growled. ‘Just something I picked up on the ward.’

Tom had opened the pamphlet and was holding it above his head to read. ‘Apparently, they’re short of donors for the sperm bank,’ he announced.

Even Angus was grinning. ‘Just how did you think you could help, Sam?’

‘By giving it to you lot,’ she retorted. ‘One of these days you might like to consider doing something useful with all those little tadpoles you waste.’

‘Hmm.’ Alex’s eyebrows rose, which seemed to accentuate a familiar mischievous glint in his dark eyes. ‘She could have a point. Think of all those fantastic genes that aren’t getting passed on.’

‘Especially yours.’ Sam was quite ready to pass this off as a joke and make sure none of these men came anywhere near guessing the real reason she had pocketed that pamphlet. ‘I was intending to leave it in your locker, as a matter of fact.’ She glared at Tom. ‘But somebody has spoiled the surprise factor.’

Angus was still smiling. ‘I think you’re right, Alex. Sam does have a point. With the way you treat your women, it’s probably the only way you’ll ever see a son and heir.’

‘Except I wouldn’t see him, would I?’ Surprisingly, Alex seemed to be giving the notion serious consideration. ‘He’d be some stranger’s kid.’

‘There might be ten of them,’ Tom suggested. ‘You’d go to a job at a kindergarten one day and half the kids would look just like you.’

‘They wouldn’t do that.’ Sam didn’t like the idea of there being an unknown number of half-siblings for any child of her own. ‘Would they?’

‘Depends how short they are on the good oil, I guess.’ Angus certainly wasn’t going to take any of this seriously. ‘Personally, if I was going to have a kid, I’d want to know about it. And I’d want to be there while it was growing up.’

A slightly uncomfortable silence fell for a moment as they all remembered that Angus had recently been dumped by the very woman he would have chosen to be the mother of his children. Alex cleared his throat and took on the task of making the atmosphere less strained.

‘I dunno,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Speaking as someone who has no intention of getting married, it seems like a socially responsible kind of thing to do. I wonder if they let you know about any kids. Send a photograph on birthdays or something.’

‘Doubt it,’ Tom said. ‘They probably wouldn’t want the sprog to know so they definitely wouldn’t want some stranger who’d insist on turning up at birthday parties.’

‘Try a private arrangement,’ Angus suggested.

‘Yeah.’ Sam didn’t want to appear silent for a suspiciously long time. ‘Put an ad in the paper,’ she said lightly. ‘“Sperm available to the right woman. No-strings baby required to preserve an exceptional gene pool.”’

‘No payment required either.’ Tom chuckled. ‘Provided the applicant has an exceptional body.’

They all laughed.

Except Sam.

She was staring at Alex as she experienced her second light-bulb moment in the same day.

He’d be perfect. Smart as a whip. Good-looking. Healthy. What more could she ask for? He wouldn’t make any claims other than genetic responsibility for the child’s best attributes and he’d probably be invited to the birthday parties in any case.

But Alex was shaking his head firmly, almost as though he could read Sam’s thoughts.

‘No way. I’d probably end up having to pay child support for triplets. I’d rather spend my spare money on beer, thanks.’ He picked up the kit he’d abandoned by his feet. ‘Speaking of which…’

‘Yeah. Have a good night.’ Tom finally held the pamphlet out to Sam. ‘Here you go.’

‘You can keep it,’ Sam told him. ‘I really don’t need it anymore.’

Turning, she caught a glimpse of Alex Henry’s back as he disappeared into the locker room. It was hard not to smile.

Everything happened for a reason, didn’t it? It had been worthwhile picking up that pamphlet, that’s for sure.

She could always go and get another one if she needed information but, with a bit of luck and some careful preparation, Sam was quietly confident that she would not need the services of a sperm bank.

Something much better might just become available.

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