Alison Roberts - Her Baby Out of the Blue

‘And you’ve let him take up a cubicle space in Emergency for that whole time?’

Mandy flushed. ‘He was so…I…’

Jane could feel her lips pressing themselves into a thin line. He’d smiled at her, hadn’t he? Of course Mandy would have melted under a smile like that, especially when it belonged to a tall, more than slightly disreputable-looking young man with a mop of unruly black curls and a cute baby in his arms.

Why was he here with a baby?

Jane made the mistake of taking a second glance. She didn’t know him and she certainly wasn’t a friend. For whatever reason, this man had lied in order to see her and now he was sitting there, taking up valuable space in a busy department with the most unrepentant smile she had ever seen. Charming, maybe. Irresponsible, definitely.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she muttered. ‘Fine. I’ll talk to him.’

She’d talk to him all right. He was going to get an earful of just how busy clinicians in this hospital were. How short-staffed nurses were. How unhelpful it was to take up space that could be used by someone who genuinely needed it.

Just who did he think he was?

What did he think he could possibly have to say to her that would justify the kind of arrogance he was displaying? Demanding to see her .

He was still smiling as Jane marched into the cubicle. She didn’t bother pulling the curtain.

‘Hi.’ He stood up, adjusting the burden he held carefully.

Jane said nothing. He had three seconds, max, to say something that might get him off the hook. And if he didn’t manage that, he was going to feel the brunt of every frustration and extra bit of pressure she’d been under for the entire week. Jane was drawing in a long, slow breath. Ready to let loose.

‘Meet Sophie,’ the stranger said, holding out the bundle in his arms. ‘Your daughter.’

‘ EXCUSE me?’

Jane whisked the curtain shut behind her. Mandy was watching but hopefully she had been too far away to hear that extraordinary introduction. She turned back to what now felt like a small space. There was a narrow bed and a single chair beside it. A baby’s car seat with a handle was on the floor beside the chair and it had a bag inside it with what looked like a nappy poking through the zip. The rest of the space was taken up by a very large man holding a very small baby. Jane glared at the man.

‘ What did you just say?’

‘This is Sophie,’ the stranger repeated patiently. At least he spoke more quietly this time. Maybe Jane’s horrified whisper had made him realise his mistake.

‘Sophie McKenzie,’ he continued. ‘I’m Dylan McKenzie. My older brother was Josh and he was married to—’

‘Izzy,’ Jane finished for him, her tone hollow.

A tiny silence fell in which the name seemed to hang in the air despite the busy sounds from outside the curtain. A patient groaning in the next cubicle. A child shrieking a little further away. The rattle of an IV trolley going past and the general paging system requesting a doctor in Resus 1 immediately.

Izzy. Jane’s best friend. At times wild, always passionate, the life of any party. The person she’d loved enough to go way further than an extra mile for. Her fellow student, flatmate…the sister she’d never had.

Dylan was watching her. He had dark blue eyes, Jane thought irrelevantly. And black hair and fair skin. Irish colouring but his accent was Scottish. Josh had been Scottish, too. Working abroad as a registrar when he’d met Izzy and they’d fallen madly in love.

‘The love of my life,’ Izzy had said more than once. ‘My soulmate. This is death-till-we-part stuff, Janey.’

The expression in those dark blue eyes looked horribly like…sympathy.

‘Where is she?’ Jane’s voice came out sounding strange. A kind of soft croak. She knew, dammit. This was why the emails had stopped and the phone messages hadn’t been returned. She still had to ask. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I’m so sorry.’ The accent became stronger as his voice dropped. ‘But Izzy died. A month ago now.’

Jane gasped. A moment ago all those sounds around them had been quite intelligible. A familiar cacophony Jane was so used to she could just pick what she needed to hear from it. Now those sounds became a buzz that pressed in on her ears like waves. Rushing in and then receding. She had no idea she was swaying on her feet until she felt her arm gripped firmly.

‘Sit down,’ came the command.

Jane sat on the uncomfortable wooden chair beside the bed.

‘Put your head down,’ the voice continued. ‘Should I call someone for you?’

‘N-no!’ The buzzing receded enough for Jane’s mind to grasp something solid. The knowledge that this was very personal.

Private business.

She put a hand over her eyes. Took a breath and then another. Then she dropped the hand and looked up.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dylan said again.

He meant it. If he hadn’t had a baby in his arms, Jane was sure he would have hugged her. Not that she would have welcomed a hug from a complete stranger, of course. She stared at him for a moment longer. Why did she have the ridiculous disappointment that he was holding that baby, then?

‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that you’d better tell me everything.’

‘That’s why I’m here.’

Jane gave her head a tiny shake. ‘No, not here.’

He looked over his shoulder, as though he could see through the curtain to the noisy, crowded area it screened. ‘Fair enough. Where?’

‘My office, I suppose.’

‘Now?’

‘Do you have the time?’

A hint of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth and for a moment his whole face lightened. ‘I’ve travelled all the way from Edinburgh for this, hen. I’ve all the time in the world.’ He raised a black eyebrow. ‘More to the point, have you the time?’

‘I’ll find it.’Jane stood up carefully, trying to push back the devastating news she had just received. Not Izzy. Oh, God ! She couldn’t deal with it just yet. Thank goodness her training and her job enabled the kind of self-control she needed rather badly right now. ‘Come with me.’

Mandy was still watching from behind the triage desk. She stared at Jane.

‘Are you all right, Dr Walters?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is there anything…?’

Mandy was clearly disconcerted. Did she look that awful? Jane pulled off the disposable hat and ran her hand over her head to check that her hair was still mostly confined in the neat braid. The nurse’s gaze slid past her to Dylan, who had the baby on one arm and the car seat and bag in his other hand. ‘Your backpack…?’

‘Could I leave it with you just for now?’

Mandy was getting one of those killer smiles. Jane could tell by the way the nurse breathed out in what looked like a soft sigh. ‘Sure. It’s out of the way in the ambulance bay locker.’

‘There is something you could do, Mandy.’ Jane was pleased to hear her voice sounding almost normal. ‘Page my registrar and tell him to start the ward round without me. I’ll catch up with the post-ops later. For anything urgent, I can be paged.’

It was quite a walk to Dr Walters’s office.

A silent walk apart from the occasional greeting directed at the woman half a step ahead of Dylan.

‘Dr Walters.’

‘Jane! How are you?’

She acknowledged the greetings but her step never wavered. Her back was straight, her gaze fixed on a point well ahead of them and her stride determined enough for Dylan’s long legs to move at a comfortable pace.

He stole more than one sideways glance. This Jane Walters was considerably more pale than she had been when he had first set eyes on her, but was that the only indication she might be upset? Were her features always this set?