St Piran's: Tiny Miracle Twins

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‘It’s a boy?’ Connor said, his voice sounding slightly constricted, and Josh frowned at him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘The baby’s father?’

‘I’m Connor Monahan, the hospital auditor.’

‘Which doesn’t explain why you’re here, so I suggest you go and audit something. OK, I wants sats, a ventilator, an umbilical line and a cardio-respiratory monitor,’ Josh told his staff. ‘And a face mask—the tiniest we’ve got.’

‘BP low, heart rate too high,’ one of the A and E nurses declared. ‘This baby is going to go into shock if we’re not careful.’

‘Not on my watch, he won’t,’ Josh said grimly. ‘Where’s that umbilical line?’

‘Josh, can’t you hurry up and stabilise him?’ Brianna said, her eyes fixed anxiously on the baby boy. ‘He needs the resources we have in NICU.’

‘Agreed, my beautiful colleen,’ Josh replied as he began to insert the umbilical line, ‘but, as you know very well, stabilising can’t be rushed. Poor little mite,’ he continued as he checked the cardio-respiratory monitor. ‘He can’t be more than a couple of days old, which means his mother must need medical attention, too.’

‘Yes—yes—whatever,’ Brianna said quickly, ‘but hurry, Josh, please, hurry.’

‘This respiratory distress thing,’ Connor said, ‘can it be cured?’

Josh looked round at him with irritation.

‘Why the hell are you still here? Run out of departments to audit already?’

‘I asked a question, and I’d like an answer,’ Connor declared, his voice every bit as hard as Josh’s, and a small smile curved the A and E consultant’s lips.

‘Are you quite sure you’re not the baby’s father? OK—OK,’ Josh continued as Brianna threw him an impatient look. ‘Yes, Mr Monahan, RDS can be cured. Premature, and very underweight, babies often don’t produce enough surfactant in their lungs to help them breathe, but we can give it to them artificially through a breathing tube.’

‘But only in NICU,’ Megan declared as she swept into A and E, pushing an incubator, ‘so can we have a little less chat and a lot more action?’

‘I’m simply answering Mr Monahan’s question, Megan,’ Josh answered mildly, but the paediatric specialist registrar was clearly not about to be placated.

‘A question we don’t have time for,’ she retorted.

‘Oh, I always have time for questions,’ he countered. ‘I don’t always give the right answers—’

‘Now, there’s a surprise—not,’ Megan replied, her voice cold. ‘Perhaps if you spent less time—’

‘Look, could the two of you park whatever problem you have with one another and concentrate on this baby?’ Brianna exclaimed, then flushed scarlet when she saw Megan’s hurt expression and Josh’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said that—I’m just…’

‘Worried.’ Josh nodded. ‘Understood. OK,’ he added as he carefully lifted the baby boy and placed him gently into the incubator, ‘this tiny tot is good to go.’

Brianna instantly began pushing the incubator out of A and E towards NICU but it didn’t make her feel any better. She’d hurt Megan, she knew she had, and it wasn’t as though she hadn’t known Megan and Josh had some sort of history so to say what she had.

‘Megan, I’m sorry,’ she murmured when they reached the unit and Chris began hooking the baby to their monitors. ‘What I said—’

‘Forget it,’ Megan interrupted tightly. ‘OK, I want an ultrasound scan, more X-rays and the ophthalmologist.’

‘Do you want me to check the sats again?’ Brianna said uncertainly. ‘Josh’s staff did them in A and E, but…’

‘Double-check them. Josh’s staff aren’t specialists, we are.’

‘He is going to be all right, isn’t he?’ Connor asked as he hovered beside them. ‘That doctor in A and E—the one who was flirting with Brianna—seemed to think he would be.’

‘The doctor’s name is Josh O’Hara, and he wasn’t flirting with me,’ Brianna said swiftly, seeing Megan’s head snap up. ‘He was just being pleasant.’

‘Was he indeed,’ Connor murmured dryly, and Brianna could have kicked him for the dark shadow that suddenly appeared in Megan’s eyes.

‘Look, Connor, why don’t you wait outside?’ she said abruptly. ‘All you’re doing is getting in the way.’

‘I’ll stay,’ he said firmly, and, when she turned back to the baby with a shrug, he took a shallow breath.

He couldn’t leave, and it wasn’t just because he was genuinely concerned about the baby Brianna had found. When she’d almost collided with him outside the hospital he’d been unable to believe what she’d been carrying. The little form so motionless, the shock of thick black hair…For a moment it was as though the last two years had never happened, and then he’d blinked, had seen Brianna’s blue uniform, and the two years had rolled back again, bringing with them all the old pain and heartbreak.

He’d told himself that all he wanted from her was answers. He’d told himself she deserved to be punished for what she’d put him through, but he’d seen the pain in her eyes when that A and E consultant had been examining the baby. She was still in her own private hell, just as he was, and lashing out at her wasn’t the solution, not if he wanted her back. And he did want her back, he realised, feeling his heart twist inside him as he saw her gently touch the little boy’s cheek, because without her…Without her he had nothing.

‘Shouldn’t the police be alerted?’ he said. ‘If this baby is only days old, won’t his mother need help, too?’

‘Good point,’ Megan declared. ‘Did you see anyone hanging about the car park, Brianna?’

‘To be honest, I wasn’t looking,’ she replied.

In fact, Brianna thought with dawning horror, if Jess hadn’t turned up when she had, she would probably have been halfway up the motorway by now, and God knows when this baby would have been found.

‘Damn,’ Megan muttered. ‘Chris, could you try paging Mr Brooke again, see if we can track him down?’

‘There’s something wrong?’ Brianna said, her eyes flying to the baby in the incubator, and Megan shook her head.

‘“Wrong” is too strong a word. I’d just be a lot happier if this little chap wasn’t quite so inactive. Jess said he was crying when you found him, and yet now…’

‘Maybe he’s just cold? ‘ Brianna suggested hopefully, and Megan frowned.

‘Maybe, but I’d really like Mr Brooke to take a look at this little one. Which reminds me,’ she continued, ‘we can’t keep calling him “little chap” or “little one”, until his mother comes forward.’

‘How about Patrick?’ Chris suggested. ‘It’s March the seventeenth soon, St Patrick’s Day, and you’re Irish, Brianna, so I vote we call him Patrick.’

Brianna stared down at the baby boy in the incubator. He was so small, so very small, scarcely 5 pounds in weight, and, gently, she adjusted the pulse oximeter taped to his little foot.

‘Harry,’ she said softly. ‘I’d like…I want to call him Harry.’

She heard Connor’s sharp intake of breath, knew what he was thinking, but she didn’t turn round, didn’t acknowledge him, and Chris shrugged.

‘Personally, I still like Patrick, but, as you found him, Brianna, if you want to call him Harry, then Harry he is.’

Just until his mother comes forward, Brianna told herself as she carefully slipped a hat over the baby’s head to make sure he didn’t lose any more heat. He would only be Harry until his mother claimed him, she knew that, and the mother would come forward, she was sure she would, but until then…Until then she would make sure this little Harry always had someone to care for him, to watch out for him.

It was a very long afternoon. Mr Brooke might eventually have arrived, and announced that in his opinion little Harry was most definitely suffering from respiratory distress syndrome, but he departed again with the observation that he also couldn’t rule out the possibility of bronchopulmonary dysplasia.

‘Remind me never to be on a sinking ship with that man,’ Brianna observed with feeling, and Megan laughed.

‘Yeah, he’s a regular little ray of sunshine, isn’t he?’ She glanced down at her watch, and gasped. ‘Hey, shouldn’t you have been off duty hours ago?’

‘I know, I just wanteds…’ Brianna shrugged helplessly. ‘I wanted to stay until I was sure little Harry was OK.’

‘Well, in the time-honoured hospital jargon,’ Megan replied, ‘he’s doing as well as can be expected, and to be honest that’s about as much as we can expect in the circumstances.’

‘How old do you think he is?’ Brianna asked, and Megan frowned.

‘I’d say a day—two days at most. We’re still waiting for the results of the scans to confirm his gestational age, but I don’t think he’s premature, just very small, which would suggest his mother probably wasn’t eating properly.’

‘And she’s out there somewhere, needing help.’ Brianna sighed. ‘And I don’t have the faintest idea what she looks like. If I’d only kept my wits about me, looked about before I rushed her son into the hospital…’

‘Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it—Jess didn’t see anyone either,’ Megan replied, then glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. ‘How’s it going with Connor?’

Brianna grimaced. ‘What do you think?’

‘At least he seems to have finally left for the day,’ Megan observed, ‘or maybe he’s just annoying the hell out of the staff in some other department. Whichever it is, I’d cut and run if I were you. And, yes, I’ll phone you at home if there’s any change in Harry,’ she continued as Brianna made to interrupt, ‘so go, will you? ‘

Brianna laughed and nodded, but, as she turned to leave, she paused.

‘Megan, what I said this afternoon in A and E…If I could take it back, I would. If I could reverse the clock, I’d do it in a minute. What I said was so thoughtless—’

‘But correct,’ the paediatric specialist registrar interrupted. ‘Josh and I should have been concentrating on little Harry. It’s just. I’m afraid the two of us only have to be in the same room together now and…’ She smiled a little unevenly. ‘Let’s just say it’s not good.’

Brianna knew exactly what Megan meant as she left the unit and drove home, but the trouble was she didn’t even have to be in the same room with Connor for her nerves to be on edge. Even when she got home to her cottage in the small fishing village of Penhally, and had changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, she couldn’t relax, couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Diversion, she thought as she picked up a book, only to just as quickly discard it. If she’d reached home at her normal time she would have gone for a walk on the beach to try to calm herself, but it was too dark for that now. What she needed was something—or someone—to channel her thoughts elsewhere, so, when her doorbell rang, a little after nine o’clock, she hastened to answer it. With luck it might be Jess who sometimes stopped by to discuss how the parents of a baby in NICU were—or weren’t—coping, and they could have a cup of coffee, and chat, but it wasn’t Jess on her doorstep, it was Connor.

‘If you’re here to talk to me about the unit,’ she said quickly, ‘it’s late, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired.’

‘I haven’t come to talk to you about the unit,’ he replied, putting out his hand to stop her as she began to close the door on him. ‘I’ve come to see you.’

And he had a suitcase with him, she noticed with dawning dismay. A suitcase that could only mean one thing.

‘Connor, you can’t think…’ She dragged her gaze away from the suitcase, and back to him. ‘You’re not expecting to move in here with me, are you? ‘

‘I figured it was stupid to keep staying in a hotel when you have a house within easy driving distance of St Piran, so I checked out of my hotel this evening.’

‘But you can’t,’ she protested. ‘People will talk. They’ll say—’

‘That a husband is living with his wife?’ he suggested, and she flushed, and regrouped hurriedly.

‘But won’t your impartiality be compromised if you stay with me?’ she exclaimed. ‘I know you would never shut down an NICU but people could think—might suggest—I had exerted undue influence upon your report.’

‘Then people would be wrong, wouldn’t they?’ he replied smoothly. ‘So, are you going to leave me standing on the doorstep, or let me in?’

He’d backed her into a corner. Her only way out would be to tell him the truth, that she didn’t want him in her home, prodding and poking at old wounds, but though he had asked her for honesty she knew she couldn’t be quite that honest with him.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said in defeat.

‘Nice house,’ he observed as he followed her down the narrow hallway into her sitting room, having to duck to avoid hitting his head on the old oak beams across the ceiling. ‘Very…compact.’

‘Tiny, you mean,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is, but I like it.’

‘And this is where you’ve been living for the last two years?’ he said, putting his suitcase down by the coffee table, and she nodded.

‘I lived in nurses’ accommodation at the hospital for a few weeks when I first came to Cornwall, but I wanted somewhere to call home so I rented this.’

‘You have a home,’ he reminded her, ‘in London. Our flat.’

But it isn’t mine, she thought. It never was mine, but I don’t think I’ll ever get you to understand that.

‘Would you like something to eat?’ she said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘I was just about to raid my kitchen.’

‘That would be nice.’

She didn’t know if it would be nice, but eating something would certainly be preferable to them simply staring at one another in awkward silence for the rest of the evening, or, even worse, talking about things she didn’t want to talk about.

‘Chilli, lasagne or beef casserole?’ she asked as she went into the kitchen and opened the freezer.

‘Lasagne was always my favourite.’

It had been. She couldn’t recall how many times she’d made it for him in the past but that had been then, this was now.

‘Lasagne it is,’ she said, and, as she placed it in the microwave, she prayed he would eat it quickly so she could retreat to the safety of her bedroom.

But he didn’t eat quickly. In fact, he seemed to be in no hurry at all.

‘This is lovely,’ he declared as he forked some lasagne into his mouth. ‘Every bit as good as I remember.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said, pushing her own lasagne around the plate without enthusiasm. ‘Would you like some wine to go with your meal?’ she continued, half rising to her feet, only to sit down again as he shook his head. ‘Connor…’ Get it out, she thought, just say it. ‘Why have you really come?’

‘Because we need to talk, and there’s never any opportunity at the hospital.’

Which was fair enough, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

‘That doctor at the hospital,’ he continued, ‘the A and E one who was flirting with you—’

‘How many times do I have to tell you he wasn’t flirting with me? ‘ she interrupted with a huff of impatience. ‘Josh is from Ireland, as you and I are, and the way he talks…It’s just his style. He does it with every woman he meets, whether she’s nine or ninety. And anyway,’ she added for good measure, ‘he’s married.’