Carol Marinelli - The Surgeon's Miracle Baby

“Daniel, there’s something I need to tell you.…”

Don’t do this, Louise!

Daniel didn’t say it, but his head was screaming it, warning her with his eyes to please not go there.

“He needs to be fed.” He tried to keep his voice steady, light even, to pretend somehow that he hadn’t heard her words. “And I really ought to get to the hospital.”

“Daniel, please, there’s something you really need to know.”

Please, don’t do this!

It was the one thing he couldn’t take—to have Louise try to appease him with a story that he knew could never be true.

“I’m trying to tell you something, Daniel!”

“Maybe I don’t want to hear it.” His voice came out way too sharp and he struggled to control it.

“I’m talking about your son!”

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COVER

TITLE PAGE The Surgeon’s Miracle Baby Carol Marinelli www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

COPYRIGHT

‘HE’LL be OK at the crèche, won’t he?’ Louise stared into the carry seat at her sleeping son, watching as a gummy smile flickered over Declan’s face, his eyelids flickering as he dreamed milky dreams, utterly oblivious to the hellish guilt that was racking his overwrought mother.

‘He’ll be fine,’ Maggie groaned, snuggling into her dressing-gown and nursing a large mug of tea as she stood in the hallway of the tiny third-floor flat they were sharing. ‘It’s his mother I’m more worried about. You’ll end up in my ward with me taking care of you if you don’t lose some of the guilt!’

Which was surely a joke, but given that Maggie was a psychiatric nurse, it wasn’t in the best of taste!

‘It’s normal to be anxious on the first day in a new job,’ Louise said defensively. ‘And it’s my first day back at work since I had him—I’m still breast-feeding, remember.’

‘As if I could forget! I heard that blessed breast pump going all night—you’ve got enough milk in that cool bag to feed the whole crèche.’ Maggie’s joking façade faded as she saw the anguish on her friend’s face.

‘He’ll be fine,’ she said gently, putting down her mug on the hall table and pulling Louise into a hug. ‘He’s going to be ten minutes down the corridor from you, being loved and fussed over in the hospital crèche while his mummy’s earning lots of lovely money.’

‘I know.’ Louise sniffed. ‘To tell the truth, it’s not just Declan I’m worried about—I feel as if I’ve forgotten everything I know.’

‘It’ll all come back the second you set foot on the ward.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Louise asked dubiously.

‘I promise,’ Maggie said assuredly. ‘And at the end of the day you’re a casual nurse—they’re hardly going to be expecting you to run the show and you can just ease yourself in gently. Remember, a little more than a year ago you were a senior RN on a high-dependency unit in one of London’s busiest hospitals. Childbirth can’t have scrambled your brains that much!’

‘Were you nervous?’ Louise asked. ‘I mean, when you came here to Melbourne and had to start all over again?’

‘No,’ Maggie answered, then laughed. ‘But I’m a psychiatric nurse, remember! People are the same whatever side of the globe you’re on. Go!’ she said, picking up the car seat and handing it over to Louise. ‘Do you want a hand to get down the stairs?’

‘No, thanks.’ Louise shook her head but after bypassing the out-of-order lift and struggling down the stairwell with car seat, nappy bag, handbag and baby, she wished she hadn’t been quite so proud! Strapping Declan into the back of the car, Louise climbed into the driver’s seat, flicked on her lights and glanced at the clock on the dashboard, guilt layered on guilt as she saw that it was only six-thirty in the morning and that she’d dragged her sleeping babe up. She was so grateful to Maggie for being there.

Mad Maggie! They’d met a couple of years back on the other side of the world. Louise had been starting out on the adventure of a lifetime—a working holiday in the UK. She had been working a night shift in a busy London teaching hospital and Maggie had been on the surgical ward, specialling a psychiatric patient who had attempted suicide. Chatting, as night nurses invariably did, they’d hit it off immediately.

Both adored shoes but hated pedicures.

Both had credit limits on their cards that would make most mortals faint with shock.

And both were holding out for Mr Perfect.

‘Mr Really Perfect,’ Louise had elaborated, peeling open a box of chicken snacks at some ungodly hour and hoping that the carbohydrate rush would see her through to the morning. ‘Someone who will still make my knees knock when I’m fifty.’

‘Someone rich,’ Maggie had sighed, ‘someone who can afford my liposuction and Botox when I’m fifty!’

It had turned out that Maggie had been looking for a new flatmate and Louise had fitted the bill.

How times had changed.

Nearly two years later, it was Maggie now on a working holiday.

Maggie who had landed in Melbourne and had borrowed Louise’s spare room in her small rented flat for a few nights, which had turned into a few weeks!

And it was Maggie waving her off as she stepped out into the world on her first day as a working, single mother.

‘SORRY, what was your surname again?’

‘Andrews,’ Louise repeated, her bag over her shoulder, standing awkwardly as everyone else sat and trying not to blush as a very pretty but clearly irritated nurse relayed her details down the telephone to the nursing co-ordinator in front of the entire handover room. She was already feeling self-conscious enough in her new navy uniform, with new navy shoes and newly trimmed long dark wavy hair tied back with a new navy hair tie and now, and to make her feel even more self-conscious, the charge nurse seemed far from pleased to see her.

‘Hi, Kelly, it’s Elaine here on ASU. I’ve got a Louise Andrews here from the hospital bank—she says that she’s booked to work here for the next four weeks to cover Del’s sick leave, but Del was rostered for a late shift today.’ The longest pause ensued, the night staff yawning loudly, no doubt keen to get handover out of the way so they could head for home, while, in contrast, the day staff chatted happily, sipping their coffee and catching up on news—clearly in no particular rush to get out on the ward and start working.

‘How can she possibly be down for four weeks of early shifts?’ Elaine’s surprised voice snapped everyone to attention. ‘Since when did Del only work early shifts? If the bank nurse is supposed to be covering for Del, surely she should just take over her roster.’