Fiona McArthur - A Month To Marry The Midwife

Sam stared after her. She was at least twelve feet away now and he gave himself a stern talking-to. Have coffee, and then be normal. He would try. No—he would succeed.

* * *

Poor man. Ellie glanced at the silent, mysterious coffee machine that Myra worked like a maestro and tried to work out how much instant coffee from the jar under the sink, where it had been pushed in disgrace, would equate to a double shot of coffee. She didn’t drink instant coffee. Just the weak, milky ones Myra made for her from the machine under protest. Maybe three teaspoons?

He’d looked so cosmopolitan and handsome as he’d said it—something he said every day. She bit back another snuffle of laughter. Classic. Welcome to Lighthouse Bay. Boy, were they gonna have fun.

She glanced back and decided he wasn’t too worthy of sympathy because it was unfair for a man to have shoulders like that, not to mention a decidedly sinful mouth. And she hadn’t thought about sinful for a while. In fact she couldn’t quite believe she was thinking about it now. She’d thought the whole devastation of the cruelty of men had completely cured her of that foolishness.

She was going to have to spend the next month with this man reappearing on the ward. Day and night if they were both called out. The idea was more unsettling than she’d bargained for and was nothing to do with the way the ward was run.

The jug boiled and she mixed the potent brew. Best not to think of that now. She needed him awake. She scooped up two Anzac biscuits from the jar with a napkin.

‘Here you go.’ Ellie put the black liquid down in front of him and a small glass of hot milk she’d heated in the microwave.

He looked at it. Then at her. She watched fascinated as he poured a little hot milk into the mug with an inch of black coffee at the bottom.

He sipped, threw down the lot and then set it down. No expression. No clues. She was trying really hard not to stare. It must be an acquired taste.

His voice was conversational. ‘Probably the most horrible coffee I’ve ever had.’ He looked up at her. ‘But I do appreciate the effort. I wasn’t thinking.’ He pushed the cup away. Grimaced dramatically. Shook his whole upper body like a dog shedding water. ‘Thank God I brought my machine.’

She wasn’t sure what she could say to that. ‘Wow. Guess it’s going to be a change for you here, away from the big city.’

‘Hmm...’ he murmured noncommittally. ‘But I do feel better after the shock of that.’

She grinned. Couldn’t help herself. ‘So you’re ready for the walk around now?’

He stood up, picked up the biscuits in the napkin, folded them carefully and slipped them into his pocket. ‘Let’s do it.’

Ellie decided it was the first time he’d looked normal since he’d arrived. She’d remember that coffee trick for next time.

‘So this is the ward. We have five beds. One single room and two doubles, though usually we’d only have one woman in each room, even if it’s really busy.’

Really busy with five beds? Sam glanced around. Empty rooms. Now they were in with the one woman in the single room and her two-day-old infant. Why wasn’t she going home?

‘This is Renee Jones.’

‘Hello, Renee.’ He smiled at the mother and then at the infant. ‘Congratulations. I’m Dr Southwell. Everything okay?’

‘Yes, thank you, doctor. I’m hoping to stay until Friday, if that’s okay. There’s four others at home and I’m in no rush.’

He blinked. Four more days staying in hospital after a caesarean delivery? Why? He glanced at Matron Swift, who apparently was unworried. She smiled and nodded at the woman.

‘That’s fine, Renee, you deserve the rest.’

‘Only rest I get,’ Renee agreed. ‘Though, if you don’t mind, could you do the new-born check today, doc, just in case my husband has a crisis and I have to go at short notice?’

New-born check? Examine a baby...himself? He glanced at the midwife. Who did that? A paediatrician, he would have thought. She met his eyes and didn’t dispute it so he smiled and nodded. ‘We’ll sort that.’

Hopefully. His father would be chortling. He could feel Ellie’s presence behind him as they left the room and he walked down to the little nurses’ alcove and leaned against the desk. It had been too many years since he’d checked a new-born’s hips and heart. Not that he couldn’t—he imagined. But even his registrars didn’t do that. They left it to Paediatrics while the O&G guys did the pregnancy and labour things.

‘Is there someone else to do the new-born checks on babies?’

‘Sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘You’re it.’

He might have a quick read before he did it, then. He narrowed his eyes at the suspicious quirk of her lips. ‘What about you?’

Her hair swished from side to side. He’d never really had a thing for pony tails but it sat well on her. Pretty. Made him smile when it swayed. He’d faded out again.

‘I said,’ she repeated, ‘I did the online course for well-baby examination but have never been signed off on it. One of those things I’ve been meaning to do and never got around to.’

Ha. She thought she was safe. ‘Excellent. Then perhaps we’d better do the examinations together, and at least by the time I leave we’ll both be good at them. Then I can sign you off.’

She didn’t appear concerned. She even laughed. He could get used to the way she laughed. It was really more of a chortle. Smile-inducing.

The sound of a car pulling up outside made them both pause. After a searching appraisal of the couple climbing out, she said, ‘The charts are in that filing cabinet if the ladies have booked in. Can you grab Josie Mills, please?’

When he looked back from the filing cabinet to the door he could hear the groans but Swift was already there with her smile.

He hadn’t seen her move and glanced to where she’d stood a minute ago to check there weren’t two of her. Nope. She was disappearing up the hallway with the pregnant woman and her male support as if they were all on one of those airport travellators and he guessed he’d better find the chart.

Which he did, and followed them up the hall.

Josie hadn’t made it onto the bed. She was standing beside it and from her efforts it was plain that, apart from him, there’d be an extra person in the room in seconds.

Swift must have grabbed a towel and a pair of gloves as she came through the door, both of which were still lying on the bed, because she was distracted as she tried to help the frantic young woman remove her shorts.

In Sam’s opinion the baby seemed to be trying to escape into his mother’s underwear but Swift was equal to the task. She deftly encouraged one of the mother’s legs out and whipped the towel off the bed and put it between the mother’s legs, where the baby seemed to unfold into it in a swan dive and was pushed between the mother’s knees into Swift’s waiting hands. The baby spluttered his displeasure on the end of the purple cord after his rapid ejection into a towel.

‘Good extrication,’ Sam murmured with a little fillip of unexpected excitement as he pulled on a pair of gloves from the dispenser at the door. Could that be the first ghost of emotion he’d felt at a birth for a long while? With a sinking dismay it dawned on him that he hadn’t even noticed it had been missing.

He crossed the room to assess the infant, who’d stopped crying and was slowly turning purple, which nobody seemed to notice as they all laughed and crowed at the rapid birth and helped the woman up on the bed to lie down.

‘Would you like me to attend to third stage or the baby?’ he enquired quietly.

He saw Swift glance at the baby, adjust the towel and rub the infant briskly. ‘Need you to cut the cord now, John,’ she said to the husband. ‘Your little rocket is a bit stunned.’