Tina Beckett - Midwives On-Call At Christmas

She clicked on another that flashed by on the top of her screen. This time it was a beautiful two-bedroom flat well out of her price range. A large, spacious flat with original polished floorboards like Jacob’s and the same bay-style windows dressed with the kind of curtains she’d imagined for his house.

She pressed the delete button quickly. She was being stupid. Even her house search reminded her of him.

She scribbled down the details of the tiny one-bedroom flat. She’d phone the agent later. How much space did she really need anyway? As long as the place was heated and didn’t suffer from damp it would be fine. It had the essential ingredients. It was near Freya’s school and it would be a place to call their own.

A tiny shiver crept down her spine. It had always been her intention to find somewhere for her and Freya to stay. She’d allowed herself to be distracted by Jacob. She’d let herself be influenced by him when he’d told her everything she’d looked at was unsuitable. In a few short weeks, she and Freya had become comfortable in his home.

The sharp man she’d met on her first day had all but vanished. Once you scratched beneath the surface with Jacob Layton there was so much more. He was just good at hiding all the stuff that was really important. His sense of humour, his warmth, his vulnerability and his strength.

‘Bonnie? Can you come and give us a hand? We’ve just been phoned. We’ve got a woman who is thirty-two weeks pregnant with twins coming in by ambulance. They think the babies are in distress.’ Karen, one of the junior midwives, was at the door.

Bonnie clicked the window on the computer to close it and stood up quickly. ‘No problem, Karen.’ She walked out of the office and across to the treatment room to wash her hands and put on an apron. ‘Which room are you preparing?’

Karen glanced over at the whiteboard. ‘Room 3, I think. That’s the biggest. I’ll go and page the on-call obstetrician.’

Bonnie felt her stomach flip over. One of the obstetricians was off sick. There was every chance Jacob would now be on call.

She finished the final checks in the room just as the ambulance crew wheeled the patient in. ‘Hi, Bonnie. This is Eleanor Brooks. She’s thirty-two weeks pregnant with twins. Hasn’t felt well the last few days and fainted in the street around thirty minutes ago.’

Bonnie moved over to the side of the bed and grabbed the edge of the sheet as the paramedic pulled Eleanor over on the patient slide board.

‘Hi, Eleanor, I’m Bonnie, the sister in the labour suite. Let me help you off with your jacket and we’ll see how you’re doing.’

Eleanor gave a nod and shrugged her shoulders out of her jacket, letting Bonnie pull it away as she lay back against the pillows. Her colour was poor and it only took Bonnie a few seconds to wind the blood-pressure cuff around her arm and start to inflate it.

Karen appeared again with the paperwork and spoke in a low voice for a few minutes with the ambulance crew.

‘Eleanor, is there someone I can phone for you?’

Eleanor nodded towards her bag. ‘My mobile is in there. My husband is John, but he works offshore on the rigs. You might not be able to get him. My mum’s number is in there too. She lives in Cambridge.’

Karen glanced in Bonnie’s direction; Bonnie gave her a silent nod. ‘Is your husband up in Aberdeen?’ She was calculating in her head how long it would take to helicopter him back from the rigs to the mainland, and then down to Cambridge. She blinked at the reading on the screen from the BP cuff. Karen’s eyes widened.

‘Have you seen your community midwife lately, Eleanor?’

Eleanor’s blood pressure was unusually high. Any woman with a twin pregnancy was normally monitored quite closely. Eleanor shook her head. ‘I had an appointment last week but she was off sick, and this week I wasn’t feeling well enough to go, so I missed it.’

Karen scribbled a little note on the paperwork. ‘I’ll go and make these calls, chase up the obstetrician and arrange for Eleanor’s notes.’

Bonnie gave a nod. ‘Eleanor, can you tell me how you’ve been feeling this past week?’

‘Awful.’ The one-word answer said everything.

‘Did you call your midwife for some advice?’

Eleanor sighed. Her eyes were half closed; it was obvious she was tired. Her legs and ankles were puffy. Bonnie bent over and gave the skin a gentle squeeze between her fingers, the imprint of her fingers clearly denting the skin.

‘I didn’t want to bother my midwife. I thought I’d feel better in a day or so. Everyone’s had a viral thing lately. I was sure I had the same.’

Eleanor moved uncomfortably, ignoring Bonnie at her ankles and taking a little gasp of breath as she pressed her hand against her right-hand ribs.

‘Eleanor? Are you having pain?’

Eleanor grimaced and nodded. The pain was too high up to be a labour pain, but it could indicate something else. The pain seemed to pass quickly and she relaxed a little. ‘I’ve been tired. Really tired. But that’s normal for twin pregnancies, isn’t it? I’ve been feeling a bit sick too. I’ve had a headache for the last few days. I actually vomited twice yesterday—I’ve never done that before. And usually I’m peeing all the time, now I’m hardly peeing at all.’

Alarm bells were going off in Bonnie’s head. Eleanor was showing some signs of pre-eclampsia. It wasn’t that unusual in twin pregnancies, but Eleanor’s condition seemed to be taking a dangerous turn.

She put her hand on Eleanor’s arm. ‘I know I’ve just got you into bed. But do you think you could manage to give me a urine sample? I know you said you’re hardly peeing right now, but if you could squeeze something out that would be great.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘I’m also going to call the phlebotomist to take some bloods.’

Eleanor gave a little sigh and swung her legs around while Bonnie brought a commode into room. Right now, she didn’t even want Eleanor walking into the separate bathroom. She wanted to monitor her at all times.

Karen came back into the room as Bonnie was helping Eleanor back into bed. She pressed the button on the blood-pressure monitor again. Karen held up some foetal monitors. ‘I thought you might want me to attach these? And Sean is outside.’

Bonnie nodded as she wheeled the commode towards the door. ‘Will you stay here until I get back?’ Karen gave the tiniest nod of her head. They were both aware of the seriousness of the situation.

It only took Bonnie two minutes to dipstick the small sample of urine and put the rest in a collection bottle for the lab.

Once she’d washed her hands she went back outside. But Sean wasn’t alone. He’d been joined at the desk by Jacob.

Her stomach flipped over. This was work. He couldn’t avoid her—no matter how much he tried to.

Sean turned to face her. ‘Can you give me an update?’

Bonnie nodded. Aware that Jacob still wasn’t really looking at her.

‘Eleanor Brooks is thirty-four. She’s thirty-two weeks pregnant with twins. I’ve not seen her notes, but I’m assuming her pregnancy has been unremarkable up until now. She collapsed in the street earlier today. She has upper-right-quadrant pain, pitting oedema in her ankles, her blood pressure is one-sixty over one-ten. Pulse eighty-seven. I’ve just tested her urine and it’s positive for protein.’

She watched as Sean scribbled some notes. ‘There’s more. She’s had a headache the last few days, vomited twice yesterday and she’s been very tired.’

Jacob frowned. ‘Hasn’t she seen a midwife at any point?’

Bonnie felt automatically defensive. ‘She should have. She was last seen three weeks ago. The week after that, her midwife was sick, and last week she felt too unwell to attend. She didn’t call in to speak to the midwife as she thought she just had a virus.’