Their Special-Care Baby
Fiona McArthur
Saving a child…finding a familyWhen an unknown woman is dragged from the wreckage of a train crash, her final words before losing consciousness are a plea for the life of the baby inside her.Dr. Stewart Kramer knows he must do all he can to save this baby–he believes it to be his late brother's child.But as the baby's mother recovers, Stewart finds himself crossing professional boundaries. He discovers that she has depths only he can appreciate. Very soon both mother and child have crept into his heart.
Their Special-Care Baby
Fiona McArthur
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated in memory to my mother,
Catherine, whose beautiful smile and
“Hello Darling” will always warm my heart.
CONTENTS
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 ONE
STEWART KRAMER leant on the over-track bridge and waited for the Brisbane train to come into view. He contemplated the fierce Australian sun as it shimmered off the entwined silver rails on the track and tried not to think about other things he should have been doing instead of cleaning up after his late brother.
As a child he’d imagined he might work on the railway, anywhere away from Sean. Stewart was distracted by a commuter train that pulled in and then headed back into Sydney.
A swarm of passengers flowed around him as they crossed the coathanger-shaped pedestrian bridge then surged down the stairs to road level.
Desiree’s train had been delayed, luckily, because a tiny set of twins had put his own arrival back an hour while his team had worked to stabilise them in the unit. He had a gut feeling about the larger twin that he’d follow up if his registrar hadn’t already, but his thoughts were interrupted by the loudspeaker warning of the Brisbane train’s impending arrival.
Desiree’s latest mobile text message had suggested his newly acquired sister-in-law and baby niece were travelling in the second carriage from the driver’s and he began to think of moving down to help her with the pram. No doubt she would be as helpless and fashion-brained as all his brother’s women had seemed in the past.
No matter. He would look after them, and the new baby on the way. Even in death his older brother had left wreckage for Stewart to clean up.
He still couldn’t believe that Sean was dead, despite the fact that his brother had danced with danger for so many years on the darker side of life and had then suddenly left a widow and children. Sean could have been so much more.
He wondered briefly if Desiree was her real name or the stage name she’d chosen before she’d married Sean.
The blue inter-city express suddenly appeared around the bend and Stewart straightened. The train seemed to be making up for its tardiness with an extra burst of speed as it passed the departing commuter train. The flyer resembled a blue ribbon in the wind as it streamed towards him and Stewart pushed himself off the rail and forced some enthusiasm for his new family.
Stewart glanced again at Desiree’s train, and at the edge of his vision a silver freighter continued to ease smoothly onto the track in front of the oncoming express as if it had all the time in the world.
Seconds slowed and the initial scream of brakes from the express did nothing but pierce the air with fruitless warning before the trains collided.
The explosion of two great forces meeting with a scream of metal on metal shrieked into the morning routine like an invasion from hell. Smoke and debris shot skywards confirming the sight his brain had dismissed as impossible.
Instinctively Stewart closed his eyes as the horrific scene grew to a pile-up of carriages he’d only imagined seeing as a child on his father’s miniature line. This was no young boy’s accidental manoeuvrings—this was adult folly of criminal proportions.
Stewart’s mind recoiled at the thought of the damage such twisted metal would make on frail human flesh as he turned and scanned the bridge to gauge the fastest way to the tracks.
Adrenalin surged as his heart pounded in his chest and he took the stairs three at a time down to the platform. Somewhere in the wreckage his sister-in-law and niece would be lying, along with many others.
Stunned commuters stared without comprehension up the track at the jumble of carriages. A black pall of smoke hung in the morning sunlight and slowly, piercingly, a lone woman facing the catastrophe began to scream as Stewart vaulted down onto the track and began to sprint up towards the wreckage.
More bystanders must have joined him from the platform because he could hear the echo of running feet on the track behind him or maybe it was his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. Then everything seemed to slow as he came abreast of the devastation.
The engine on the freighter lay buried beneath the smashed driver’s cab of the express and there was no way of sighting either driver. Stewart barely paused as he hurdled over debris and made his way to the first of the passenger carriages.
Common decency and the doctor in him forced him to stop and render what assistance he could, despite his brain knowing what he would find.
He peered through a rent in the side of the carriage and the scene inside would haunt him for ever.
Instinctively he narrowed his line of sight from the grand scale of destruction to find the nearest body, but without equipment the twisted metal didn’t allow his entry and he scanned the faces he could see for any sign of life. Nobody moved, not even a twitch, so he eased back to try the next carriage as a young man appeared at his shoulder.
‘This carriage will have to be left for the rescue workers. We can’t get in and we’ll be more useful to those we can reach.’ The young man swallowed and nodded.
A group of half a dozen commuters had arrived and Stewart directed them to the end carriages. ‘Just help the walking wounded. Don’t move anyone until the emergency workers arrive. Watch for power lines.’
Stewart closed his eyes and sent a prayer of thanks as a wail of sirens filled the air, assuring him that he wouldn’t be in charge of this horror.
He saw tragic events and terrified parents in his paediatric consultancy work but to face this shocking reality made him wish for a nice simple premature twin birth and his team.
He dreaded what he would find in carriage two as he skirted hot metal and clambered towards the opening between the carriages. What he inhaled was smoke, and a fire was the last thing they needed. Given the blasting heat of the day, he should have expected it.
A paramedic, the first of a strong contingent alighting beside the tracks, sprang from his vehicle and touched Stewart’s arm. ‘I’ll take over, sir.’
Stewart glanced at the man in mid-stride but didn’t falter. ‘I’m a doctor. I’ve a relative on this train. I’d like to stay.’
When she woke, she could hear the weak cry of a baby as the acrid tendrils of smoke began to fill the carriage.
The infant cried again. A baby? A sudden jolt from her rounded tummy and then a pain squeezed her abdomen rock hard beneath her searching fingers, but she couldn’t connect the thoughts. There was something about a baby.
The pain eased and instinctively she looked for the crying infant, but when she tried to move she realised her arm was caught.
She lay on her side under several pieces of luggage and a broken seat with her cheek against the cold glass of the window.
It took a few moments to realise the window lay where the floor had been. The carriage—she must be in a train—resembled a stacked bonfire and something was burning.
Even then fogginess about the sequence of events distanced her from the horror. All her instincts focussed on the baby’s cry despite the smoke and the noise of people shouting and the creaking of hot metal.
The woman tried to move her arm but her whole system seemed sluggish. Or maybe she was faint because, apart from a pounding pain in the side of her head, blood squirted impressively under her broken watch. By the size of the increasing pool beside her arm she knew that wasn’t normal.
Fuzzily she watched the puddle grow until her thoughts sharpened and slowly she dislodged the broken seat rail where it pinned her wrist. Strangely, it didn’t hurt at all. She felt for the deep gash and slid her fingers over the site, wincing at the return of feeling. The urge to lie down, to invite the blackness that hovered at the edge of her mind to settle over her and fall asleep, ached like a suppressed yawn inside her.
With more pressure from her fingers, the rhythmic pulse of blood slowed to a trickle and somewhere in the fog of her brain she became conscious that if she let go there was a strong chance she would bleed to death. The thickening smoke made her cough and other fears crowded her mind.
Lost for the moment, from time, place of origin or destination, the woman knew she didn’t want to die.
There was another reason she had to live but right at that moment she couldn’t pin the incentive, just concentrated on the fact that live she would.
The baby cried weakly again and she turned her head. There was someone else who needed her but she had to stop the bleeding from her wrist or she wouldn’t be any use.
She threaded the thin pink pashmina from around her neck and thought fuzzily what a pretty colour it was. She wadded one end of the soft fabric and wrapped the other end awkwardly around her wrist and tucked it in as tightly as she could. The blood seeped through but not as fast as she’d expected.
Then she pushed herself upright so she could crawl forward over the wreckage. She winced at the lance of pain from her damaged arm as she began to search for the crying baby.
Low moans and weak cries began to drift from beyond the door of her carriage and a few strong shouts suggested help was on the way.
Her carriage seemed ominously silent but she couldn’t remember how many people had been seated. She hoped the silence was due to the lack of passengers.
‘Come on, baby, cry again,’ she muttered, glancing around, then almost toppled off a seat that wasn’t as balanced as she’d thought it was.
The baby cried weakly again and the woman’s arm caught on a small leather backpack with a for mula bottle spilling from a rip. She knew the bag belonged to the baby, she couldn’t remember why, but it seemed important so she slid the pack over her shoulders and continued her search.
Then she saw her. The baby lay pinned in her pram, seat belt fastened and her frightened little face screwed up. She looked about a year old.
‘Well, hello, there, little one. It looks like you had the best seat in the house.’ Her voice cracked as the chill of deep coldness encased her.
The baby whimpered and blinked. Her bright blue eyes were damply lashed and the woman smiled when the infant gave a wobbly grin and held out her hands.
The resilience of children, she thought longingly, as she dug for more strength. There was no way she’d be able to lift the carriage seat that trapped the pram but maybe she could ease the baby from the restraint and drag her out.
The difficulty would be to juggle a baby with one arm while she crawled.
She sat back on her heels and fumbled to undo the top two buttons on her shirt. She lifted the hem of her stretchy knitted shirt and struggled to inch the baby inside next to her skin until the infant was tucked tummy to tummy against her body with her little face popping out under the neckline of her shirt. The woman’s neck and shoulders ached with the weight but the baby seemed to like it.
When she began to crawl again each movement seemed harder than the last and the weight hanging under her enticed her to lie down and sleep. The infant clung like a small limpet with her frightened whimpers goading her rescuer on.
She crawled clumsily towards the crazily angled steps of the carriage but the smoke became so acrid the steps seemed much further than she’d anticipated. Her strength ebbed as she coughed.
An old lady lay crumpled, eyes open, staring sightlessly past the window. She didn’t blink. Her purple hair looked incongruous at an awkward angle. With sudden clarity, she realised the woman was dead.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled to the woman as she crawled past and the fog thickened inside her head. Blood pulsed from her wrist again and when a man’s face appeared above her he seemed to fade in and out of focus.
His eyes were incredibly blue and incredibly kind as he reached towards her with strong arms, and she prayed the baby would be safe now. As she lifted her face to his, she knew she could go to sleep now. He wouldn’t let them die.
Relief blossomed until a huge ripping pain burst from low down in her stomach and the fear of what else could be happening made her lift her face to his.
‘Save my baby,’ she whispered, and then she felt herself lifted from the carriage as if she were a feather.
Stewart had never seen such willpower to live before and he saw plenty of life-and-death struggles in his work.
In that first moment, when she’d hovered on the edge of losing consciousness, the woman’s eyes had glowed, fierce with determination as she’d dragged herself across the wreckage of the carriage through the smoke. How she had navigated the carriage while weighed down with a dangling infant and her life seeping away through the blood-soaked material around her wrist, he could only guess. But she had and had still saved enough energy to demand that he save them.
He knew he would be able to recall her expression any time he closed his eyes. Stewart couldn’t believe she had survived the carnage. ‘Desiree?’
He lifted her in his arms when she collapsed against him and turned to place her gently on the ground behind him.
Her pulse was thready and far too fast from loss of blood. ‘She’s critical. I need to find her injuries. We’ll triage the baby so I can get to the mother.’
He eased the shocked baby from Desiree’s shirt and tried not to see the family resemblance as he placed the baby gently beside her mother for assessment.
Time was important and he needed to do this without emotion—and do it quickly.
The infant had no external bleeding, no obvious limb deformity or head injury. Possibly some abdominal tenderness and tautness, he thought as he ran his fingers lightly over the baby’s stomach, but nothing immediately life-threatening—unlike the mother.
He passed his niece to a paramedic, who passed her into another waiting pair of hands, then moved to crouch over the unconscious woman.
Stewart rested his fingers on Desiree’s throat to feel her carotid pulse. Her heartbeats fluttered frantically beneath his fingers and his own pulse leapt. ‘She needs fluids then blood, urgently, or we’ll lose her.’
The paramedic had already opened his kit to assemble the equipment while Stewart briefly ran his hands over Desiree’s temple and scalp, then quickly down her body, grimacing at the small but unmistakable bulge of her stomach, before clamping his hand around the blood-soaked scarf on her wrist.
Heaven knew what condition the unborn baby would be in.
‘This seems to be the only bleeder, but it’s arterial, plus a lump on the side of her head.’ The paramedic shone a small torch, and with his free hand Stewart lifted heavily lashed eyelids one at a time to allow the man to shine the light into her pupils.
‘The reaction is sluggish but present on both sides,’ the paramedic said as he taped the intravenous cannula and line into place on Desiree’s arm.
‘We need to get her transported and transfused.’ Stewart reached down and gathered Desiree up in his arms. ‘She’s dragged herself across a carriage so I doubt I’ll do any more damage if I lift her onto the stretcher. Are you able to transport them together?’
‘No problem if you take the infant. I’ll keep the fluids going.’
As Desiree was transferred into the ambulance Stewart could see that haemorrhagic shock had set in. They hadn’t even been able to measure her blood pressure and wouldn’t know if she had sustained organ damage from the near exsanguination.
For the moment he just prayed that her heart wouldn’t stop with the loss of blood. He willed the rapid spike of her heartbeat to continue across the monitor screen as the sirens screamed and they hurtled towards the hospital.
The premature contractions had well and truly progressed by the time they realised she was in labour.
CHAPTER TWO
THE room swam and it was hard to focus. Distant throbbing in her arm forced her eyes open. A vaguely familiar backpack rested on the shelf opposite and she stared at it until the blurred lines firmed and stopped their dance.
There was something comforting about having that much control of her vision again.
Then she noticed the serene-faced older lady in the wheelchair. The lady knitted sedately with her bright blue eyes fixed like a white-feathered bird watching her young.
‘Hello, Desiree. You’re awake.’ She knitted with incredible speed without reference to the garment.
Desiree? She looked around but there were only two of them in the room. Desiree?
The lady smiled and allowed her words to sink in before explaining. ‘I’m Leanore, your mother-in-law. See, I remembered.’
She looked so pleased. ‘Stewart said I haven’t met you before, which is such a relief because I don’t remember you. It’s such a pain when your brain goes, dear.’
Desiree blinked at the word usage and then moistened dry lips and nodded weakly to Leanore. She cast around for a reason to be lying in a bed surrounded by flowers but couldn’t find one.
It seemed Leanore wasn’t the only one whose mind had gone. ‘Where am I?’ Fragments of memory and the crawl from the train crash came back. The man’s eyes. She remembered the baby’s cries.
‘Where’s the baby?’ Desiree’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat at the end of the sentence to calm the semi-hysterical note she could hear in her own voice.
Leanore concentrated and then recited as if she’d been coached. ‘You’re in St Somebody’s Hospital, in Sydney.’ The lady frowned and then shook her head. ‘No. Can’t remember the name of the place.’ She shrugged and moved on. ‘The little girl is fine, Stewart said. I remember that. I’m sure that’s what he said. He’s just ducked out for a minute and will be right back. Apparently it’s a miracle you both survived.’
A sad expression crossed the old woman’s face. ‘Your little girl is my granddaughter and she looks just like my darling Sean. I remember he is dead. Now, that’s one of those things I’d gladly forget.’
A flutter of panic, like a child’s balloon caught by the wind, rose in a bubble in Desiree’s chest.
‘She’s a little girl, not my little girl.’ Desiree began to cast more frantically around in her memory. ‘I’m sure she’s not my child. I don’t think. I don’t remember…’ Then it struck her. ‘Anything!’
The woman’s eyes darkened with compassion. ‘I know. Horrible, isn’t it? My son said you mightn’t. Don’t worry. At least your mind will all come back. I’m getting dottier by the day.’ Leanore chewed her lip, upset at causing distress. ‘I’ll call my son, shall I?’
The old lady felt for the bulky necklace around her neck and pressed the centre. She tilted her head at Desiree and winked. ‘He makes me wear this and I’m not to stand up unless he’s here. He’s a good son.’
Desiree had no idea what the lady was talking about but she felt as if she’d woken in a farce. Who was her wheelchair companion and what kind of place was this?
A train crash? She remembered the baby but surely it wasn’t her baby? She didn’t have a baby. Or did she? Perhaps somewhere in the past she may have been pregnant.
Frantically her eyes darted around the room as she tried to force memories that wouldn’t come. Who was she? How could she have had a baby if she didn’t remember? How long had she been here?
The blankness of the past rose like nausea in her throat and crowded her already crowded mind until it was all too much. The room swirled as her eyes closed and with relief she allowed the room to fade away until she floated like a balloon again.
‘The lady was awake but she didn’t know me.’ The voices were distant but she couldn’t respond.
‘She will remember, Mother. You’ll have to wait a little longer to be a mother-in-law. Desiree lost a lot of blood.’ The man’s voice was gentle, as if he found the whole scenario disturbing, and there was something about his compassionate tone that cut through the airiness in her brain and grounded her again.
She opened her eyes reluctantly. The owner of the voice was tall and dark-haired with kind eyes. She registered that his eyes were as blue as his mother’s and there was something reassuringly familiar about his strong face.
The brightness of his doctor’s white coat made her blink.
Stewart Kramer stared intently at the ghostly pale woman lying back on the pillows. It was a miracle she had lived, he thought. Dark smudges lay under her eyes and her bruised cheek was swollen and purple from the accident.
She confused him. Desiree didn’t have that flashy racehorse quality about her that had consistently seemed Sean’s type and her obviously fierce will would not have sat comfortably with Sean’s need to dominate.
This woman had curves in abundance and her dark waves of hair lay softly against her cheek. Maybe Sean had acquired a more genuine taste in women because there was a lot about Desiree that made Stewart think more of wholesome warmth and strength of character than fashion magazines and the fast lane.
Desiree’s grey eyes glistened with tears but she blinked them away as he watched her grapple with her situation. Inexplicably Stewart had to fight against the urge to scoop her up and cradle her head on his shoulder.
No doubt the urge would be to do with the horror of when he’d first seen her surrounded by those who had died and the gritty hold she’d maintained on her life despite her massive blood loss.
Desiree eased higher in the bed and closed her eyes briefly, and Stewart presumed she felt light-headed.
‘You seem vaguely familiar,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘Maybe you know the answers to some of my questions?’
Stewart tried to imagine what it would feel like to wake up after such an event.
His mother, with her illness, lived in confusion every day to some degree, and he thanked God for her unfailing good humour. He didn’t fancy the idea for himself. ‘I’ll try, but I’m a paediatrician here, not your doctor.’
She looked at him with those big silver-grey eyes, eyes shadowed with pain and bewilderment, and a sudden twist of jealous rage against his careless brother stunned him with the raw emotion. It wasn’t Sean’s fault the train had crashed so his sentiment didn’t make sense.
It was just that she seemed so different to what he’d imagined Sean’s wife would be like. Sean had never cared for real people. What the hell had she been doing with Sean? He wanted to throttle the truth out of his brother but it was too late now. So too was being unexpectedly affected by meeting Desiree.
He ground his teeth and forced the useless emotions back into a deep cave in his chest and sealed the door. When he spoke his voice sounded coldly clinical, even to his own ears. ‘You have amnesia, probably retrograde, involving memory from the time prior to the blow to your head.’
‘When will I remember?’ Her voice shook, and with compunction he reached out and covered her fingers. Her hand was soft and defenceless under his.
‘In the accident you were knocked unconscious for a short time. Goodness knows what you hit on impact. With the swelling near your brain your memory could take hours to return or even months.’
She watched him as if he had all the answers and Stewart felt inadequate for the first time in a very long time.
‘Will my memory definitely come back?’ she asked, and he felt the weight of her need as if it were his obligation to make her world right.
That was the rub. ‘In the majority of amnesia cases, most of the patient’s memory does come back in time.’
‘So reassuring,’ she murmured ironically, and turned her head away from him on the pillow. Strangely, she left her fingers curled safe in his, though. Stewart found himself absurdly touched by her trust.
He left the silence between them and it built until she turned back to face him. There was resolution on her face that he could only admire and the urge to comfort her returned with force. What was it about this woman that made it so easy to read her thoughts? What was it about her that made him want to read them? The concept elbowed for room in his own crowded mind.
She cleared her throat. ‘So you can tell me anything you like and I have to believe you until my memory returns?’ she said.
He had to applaud her dry sense of humour because he doubted he’d be up to jokes in Desiree’s position.
He glanced at Leanore and his mother stared vaguely out the window, sidetracked in confusion caused by her tumour. He did it for Leanore every day.
At least he was practised at orientating lost people. ‘So it appears. You will just have to sue me for any incorrect answers.’
Desiree had no choice but to trust him for the moment. She steeled herself for the question she dreaded the answer to. ‘Who is Desiree?’
Obviously this was not the question he’d expected, by the lift of his dark brows. Well, it was the one she needed an answer to the most, and she held her breath as she waited.
‘You.’ He’d said it gently but the answer still slammed into her. ‘Your name is Desiree Kramer.’ She winced as she exhaled.
She’d been afraid of that. Desiree Kramer? No bells rang, no recognition sparked. So it was true. She couldn’t even remember her own name.
He enunciated slowly, as if she were a slow learner. ‘Desiree Kramer, lately of Queensland, and newly arrived in Sydney.’
Desiree screwed her nose up and shook her head. ‘And you are sure my name is Desiree? Not something simpler or plainer?’
‘Desiree, I’m afraid, but we could call you anything you like if that would make you more comfortable.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’ She sighed and accepted what she had been afraid of. It was incredibly hard, not having a past to call on.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was not my intention.’
She gathered her frayed composure around her. ‘I’m sorry for snapping. Do I know you?’ Her voice had wearied, and she’d closed her eyes again.
‘I’m your brother-in-law. Stewart Kramer.’
Startled, her eyes flew open. ‘I have a sister?’ She didn’t remember that!
‘You married my brother. I don’t know your family.’
She shook her head at this new information and her whole body stiffened in the bed. No way. ‘I’m not married.’
‘No.’ Stewart agreed. ‘You are a widow with a twelve-month-old child.’
She barely heard his second pronouncement because the first one had blown her away. ‘I mean,’ Desiree enunciated slowly and clearly, ‘I have never been married.’
Stewart shrugged slightly. For some reason his voice had cooled and she wondered if it had been her or his brother that had annoyed him. This was all too much but he had more to share and he was her only link to reality.
She tried to concentrate as he went on when all she wanted to do was sleep.
‘You married last April. Your husband, my brother, died in a car accident on New Year’s Day, eight weeks ago.’
Now she was a widow? Her heart was turning somersaults in her chest and she felt sick. ‘There’s no memory of anything beyond waking up a short time ago.’ She fought against rising panic and stared around the walls of the room, as if the secret of her lost life could be found there.
She felt abandoned, confused, and at the mercy of these people she didn’t recognise. She heard the shake in her voice but there was nothing she could do about it because she was doing well to avoid lapsing into hysterics.
She shook her head and then grimaced at the discomfort. Maybe she should worry about all this later. She didn’t think she could do it now. ‘Whatever. I can’t remember anything. My head hurts.’
She shut her eyes and then opened them again. This had to be a big mistake. ‘Do I know you well? Are you sure you’re right?’
She hadn’t fazed him. How could he be so calm when her whole past life had disappeared? His voice was even and unruffled as he went on. ‘Except for the accident, we’ve never met. Your identification was in the backpack.’
She glanced at the bag on the shelf again. ‘How do you know it’s my backpack?’
‘It was on your back when I found you.’
‘You were there?’
She nodded and then stared at him. His kind blue eyes kindled a flame of recognition and a strange feeling of comfort and safety finally seeped into her.
He was a good man. She felt it, so she supposed she’d have to believe him and trust in his word. As she looked into his eyes, a strange, deeper recognition began to shimmer between them, and she couldn’t look away.
She remembered. He had been there in the wreckage. ‘So it was you and not a dream.’
He cleared his throat and his hand tightened on hers. ‘It’s a miracle you can remember anything. The scene was chaotic.’
‘I don’t remember much, but I remember…’ Her eyes widened and she remembered the pain in her stomach. Her voice dropped to a whisper as the ache of realisation hit her. Her baby. ‘I was pregnant!’
She pulled her hand out of his hold and slid her fingers slowly under the covers to her flat stomach. It was then she felt the loss of her baby within. Her rounded stomach had gone, replaced by emptiness, and she hadn’t been awake to know.
Her hand returned above the sheets and searched for his. ‘Did I lose my baby?’
‘No.’ He let that answer seep in slowly.
Desiree didn’t understand. ‘What month is this?’ She swallowed the ball of fear and grief in her throat and prepared herself for the worst. Tears pricked her eyes as she sucked in her flat stomach. My poor baby.
With her fingers clutched around his, a small measure of comfort warmed the sudden coldness of her soul.
‘No, your baby is alive but it is the twenty-sixth of February, so she has some growing to do,’ he said.
She paused before she looked at him again, afraid that if she saw his face he would retract that tiny hope she’d heard him correctly.
His fingers tightened their grip on her hand. ‘After the accident you went into premature labour. We didn’t know you were in labour until just before she was born.’
Desiree remembered the pain in stomach. ‘You said she. I had a girl?’
‘We estimate your daughter was born eleven weeks early but she is stable at the moment. She will need to stay in a large hospital like this one, if all goes well, for the next few months. She’s in our neonatal intensive care two floors down.’
Her daughter was alive. There was hope. ‘Eleven weeks is very early. I’m sure of that.’
‘Your daughter is breathing for herself and seems to be adapting to the outside world well, considering she wasn’t ready for us—and you had lost a lot of blood. She weighed just over a kilogram and is a fighter.’
He smiled and Desiree remembered his eyes again from the train crash. How could she remember that and not her own name? But there was something infinitely reassuring about sharing that one memory at least.
‘Your daughter has already shown she has the will to survive, like her mother.’ There was no mistaking he admired her baby for that. ‘And she is in the next best place to grow.’
Desiree’s heart pounded. She had a baby daughter. ‘When can I see her?’
He produced a digital print of a tiny baby in a humidicrib and passed it over to her. A thin red-faced skinned rabbit looked back at her.
A lost baby, a lost pregnancy, a baby she would have dreamed of meeting in a wondrous birth surrounded by people who loved her. Too many losses to cope with. Tears welled as she thought of her daughter alone, in a crib, and she couldn’t be with her. ‘When…?’
‘Perhaps you can see her this evening. You’ve only just regained consciousness. I’m not your doctor, but he’d agree it’s too soon to go riding around the hospital, even in a wheelchair.’
She sagged back. Even that small exertion had tired her.
‘We are taking good care of your daughter and she is stable at the moment.’
She could hardly believe her pregnancy was over before it had even been remembered.
Then he said something even more frightening. ‘It worries me you haven’t asked about your other child.’
Desiree watched his lips move but the words seem to come from a long way off as she wondered what her tiny daughter looked like.
He spoke again. ‘Do you remember I said you were a widow with another child? You have a twelve-month-old. Shall we bring Sophie to you? They have her down in the children’s ward for observation.’
She tore her thoughts away from the picture of her tiny baby and looked at him blankly.
He explained again. ‘Your other daughter? You told me to keep her safe when we first met.’
The other baby? What else had she forgotten? Had another child been mentioned? Perhaps. ‘You may have said that before but I don’t remember.’
Desiree frowned as she tried to remember. She had heard a baby crying in the wreckage. Had that baby been hers? ‘I heard her cry.’
How could she not recall her own flesh and blood? Was that possible? It didn’t make senses. What if it was a mistake, or a conspiracy, or a bad dream? ‘I wish I remembered.’
The first of his revelations rose to stun her again. ‘I can’t believe I was married and don’t remember.’
Stewart grimaced at what a marriage it would have been, unless Sean had changed a lot. He watched her struggle with all the information and worried that he’d burdened her with too much, too soon.
She tilted her head towards him and her grey eyes seemed to peer inside his soul as she sought answers.
He blinked and looked away, not sure what had just passed between them and not willing to pursue the thought. This was fanciful imagining and unlike him.
He fought against a sudden stirring of emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel for many years. Especially when he looked down at her fingers as they disappeared inside his bigger hand. He wondered why she had decided not to wear her wedding ring.
Something had shifted, something that shouldn’t have shifted with this woman who was related by law, and who was the last woman he wanted to be attracted to. There was nothing he could do about that now except ignore any such emotion and help her as much as he could.
Stewart glanced across at his mother, sitting patiently against the wall as she knitted. She had the glazed look of sudden tiredness she seemed to feel more often. He’d been a fool to bring her but she’d so wanted to be here when Desiree woke up.
He never knew when Leanore would lapse into one of those turns that kept her in bed for days and she deserved to at least meet her daughter-in-law.
There were so many ways his mind wanted to go but he could only do one thing at a time. ‘We’ll go now, Mother.’
Leanore blinked and looked at him brightly, and he knew she had lost her space in time for the moment. ‘Where will we go?’
‘Home, darling. Desiree is tired.’
Leanore creased her brow. ‘Desiree who?’
Stewart sighed and squeezed his mother’s shoulder gently. ‘We’ll leave Desiree to rest for a while and see Children’s Ward about bringing your granddaughter up here after she wakes up.’ He saw the moment her memory returned and he smiled as his mother nodded.
He looked at Desiree, her eyes now drooping with fatigue. ‘Sleep now. We’ll bring Sophie to you later this afternoon. After tea I’ll take you to the neonatal intensive care, or NICU as they call it, to see your new daughter, if it is all right with your doctor.’
Desiree nodded tiredly but there was one thing she had to do. ‘Before you leave, would you pass the backpack, please?’
‘We’ll see you later, Desiree.’ Stewart laid the backpack gently in her lap and then turned his mother’s wheelchair towards the door.
‘Later,’ he said, and she closed her eyes as they left the room.
Desiree’s head ached quietly but the pain was overshadowed by the enormity of losing who she was and what was in her past.
Lost memories of a twelve-month-old baby and dead husband and now the reality that she risked losing a baby she only fuzzily remembered being pregnant with. It was all too much.
It was a nightmare and surely she would wake up soon.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE didn’t feel like a Desiree. She felt like a Jane or a Mary. They were safe, kind, reassuring names. You’d have to be exotic to be called Desiree and she didn’t feel exotic. But maybe that was the knock on the head too. Maybe she’d shortened her name to something easy or used her middle name?
She must ask Stewart if she had a middle name.
Desiree looked around the sterile hospital room. The walls were pale green, a soothing colour, but she didn’t feel soothed. The bed was electric and the furniture wooden, not metal, but there was nothing homey or reassuring to help her state of mind, except the flowers from a woman she didn’t know.
Her hand fell to the soft kid of the backpack on her lap and she frowned at the chic but drab leather.
She couldn’t imagine choosing it. Maybe the bag had been a gift from her husband. A man she couldn’t remember, and therefore couldn’t mourn.
A man living estranged from his family if some of Stewart’s comments were anything to go by.
Inside, an eye-make-up pack revealed a mirror and she flicked it open to stare into the tiny frame to see her face.
A stranger looked back. A very pale stranger who looked more like a plain Jane then a Desiree! Grey eyes, ordinary-looking mouth and nose, with an extraordinary bruise on one cheek. Dark mop of hair with blood congealed in the fringe. Not a good look and hardly reassuring. She snapped the mirror shut and pushed it down to the bottom of the bag as if to erase what she’d just seen.
Desiree pulled a soft leather wallet from the satchel and unclipped it.
Loose change and no paper money at all? That seemed strange. No driver’s licence—maybe she didn’t drive. A collection of gold and platinum credit cards all in the name of Mrs Desiree Kramer, a health card and a private health insurance card. A train ticket to Sydney—lot of good that had done her.
One sleeve of the wallet held a photo of a baby, obviously her unremembered daughter, Sophie. Tears welled. How could she have forgetten her own baby?
‘I’m sorry I don’t remember you, Sophie,’ she said to the photo.
She ran her fingers over her stomach and desolation hit her again. Except for the slight softness that could have been recently stretched skin, she couldn’t tell she’d been pregnant.
Perhaps she hadn’t shown much at nearly seven months. What sort of pregnancy had it been? Had she been sick or well? Excited to be having another baby or too sad after the loss of her husband to be in tune with her foetus?
Instinctively she touched her breasts and both felt tender. She guessed she’d figure out the breastfeeding as she went along, even though there would be no poster-perfect pictures of her new babe at the breast for a long time to come. Hopefully she’d breastfed Sophie and it would come back to her.
She guessed there might be many weeks before her baby would be strong enough to feed normally.
Desiree shook her head in despair. How did she accept that she was a widow of a man she couldn’t remember? Or the mother of a child in the paediatric ward? Plus the dreadful knowledge that her premature baby was fighting for her life on another floor?
All this when she hadn’t even recognised her own name—it was too much. She dragged her hands over her eyes and squeezed her fingers into her eye sockets, as though the pressure would bring back visions from her past life.
All it did was increase her headache and circulate stars.
Her fingers fell to pluck at the bag again. ‘I don’t feel like Desiree Kramer,’ she said, out loud this time, and the horror of having no memories to anchor in reality burst in her chest like a cave full of bats exploding from their perches.
Panic fluttered with larger and larger wings until she thought her throat would close.
Desiree fought the emotion as she clutched the bag tightly between her fingers. She breathed in and out grimly until she’d fought down the panic.
You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine, she told herself. Everything would work out—and whether it was the white coat or the kind eyes, she did trust Stewart, her new brother-in-law.
She trusted the sweetness in the face of the obviously forgetful Leanore.
Most importantly, she and both her daughters had survived.
Four hours later, Desiree’s new mother-in-law, pushed in her wheelchair by Stewart, returned with a nurse who steered a portable cot into the room.
A little girl stood clutching the rails with her tiny feet planted determinedly into the mattress as she swayed with the movement. Enormous blue eyes stared tremulously at the grown-ups.
Desiree’s eldest daughter looked chubby and alert but decidedly lost. Why wouldn’t she feel lost? Her own mother couldn’t remember her!
When the nurse lifted Sophie and placed her on the bed beside her, Desiree had to admit she felt better with the weight and feel of the little body against her. She gathered Sophie into her arms and hugged her.
Sophie had eyes like her uncle’s and grandmother’s. She stared up at Desiree, and then her little face dimpled and she grinned toothily. Unconsciously, Desiree hugged her close again.
‘Well, that’s the first smile we’ve seen the wee thing give since she came in.’ The nurse nodded complacently at the picture in front of her.
Leanore smiled mistily and Stewart lifted one sardonic eyebrow. ‘Well, Sophie remembers you.’
‘I wish I remembered her.’ Desiree spoke softly and brushed the baby’s cheek with wondering fingers. Her daughter’s skin was downy soft and far too pale.
The children’s ward nurse bustled forward. ‘She won’t drink for us. I’ve brought a bottle up with me. Maybe she’ll take some milk from you.’
Desiree stared down into the bright little eyes. Sophie? She tried the name out. No bells rang, nothing about the little face or her name was familiar, but Desiree couldn’t doubt that she was at ease with the toddler.
Sophie latched onto the teat immediately and Desiree smiled as she looked down into the trusting face below her as the level of milk in the bottle rapidly receded towards the teat. At least she could do something right for her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. I have forgotten you for the moment, but I’ll look after you.’
‘And we’ll look after you.’ Leanore rubbed her hands with delight at the picture in front of her. She turned to her son. ‘They will come home to us? Won’t they, Stewart?’
‘Of course.’ There were unexpected misgivings in his tone and Desiree shot him a glance.
Something was bothering him and Desiree didn’t welcome the added stress of wondering what his problem was. The last thing she needed was another undercurrent she didn’t understand.
‘I’m sure I will be able to look after my daughters and myself quite well without your help.’ She hoped the pure bravado didn’t show.
He shook his head decisively. ‘You’ll have enough on your plate, travelling to Neonatal each day. You’ll need help and we’ll give it to you.’
His voice was flat. ‘You moved here to live with us. I’m sure even Sean would agree to you accepting our help especially now.’ He included his mother in a glance. ‘We’re glad to finally have the opportunity to meet you and Sophie.’
‘We live quite close to the hospital and have plenty of room. Stay at least until we’re sure you won’t suffer any other health setbacks. You could stay longer, of course.’
He produced a final inducement. ‘It would be easier for Sophie if she didn’t have to come to the NICU all the time with you.’
She couldn’t dispute any of his rationales, or an identity she couldn’t remember. It just didn’t feel right to lean on them so heavily.
Stewart went on. ‘Remember that Leanore is Sophie’s grandmother and she has been denied access since her granddaughter’s birth.’
‘What do you mean, denied?’ Desiree frowned at the censure in his voice. Had she prevented Leanore seeing her granddaughter? Had her husband—and she had let him? She didn’t like Stewart’s tone or the inference she had hurt his mother.
He avoided a direct answer and softened his tone. ‘My mother wants to get to know her grandchild.’ Suddenly it was Leanore who wanted to look after them, which was at odds with his caring eyes. Desiree wondered if he had reservations for another reason.
Why had he changed?
She removed the empty bottle from her daughter’s mouth and sat her up to burp her again. Sophie blew a bubble at her and Desiree kissed her cheek. Thank goodness her daughter was too young to know she had been forgotten by her own mother.
Desiree’s eyes narrowed with the effort of pinpointing her greatest concern, but she was interrupted by Sophie’s wind.
They all smiled at the third loud burp but despite the surface amusement something wasn’t right. Not just in this room but with her whole world.
So many things were out of kilter she had no way of diagnosing the most worrying feature.
It was too exhausting to worry about things she couldn’t change for the moment, so she rested back and just savoured the weight of Sophie in her arms. Her head ached.
Later that evening Stewart pushed Desiree’s wheelchair into the neonatal intensive care unit, and strangely Desiree felt less adrift than she had since she’d woken up.
She was so terrified for her baby but not overwhelmed by Neonatal Intensive Care, which was strange.
The beep and hum of the equipment, the bustle of medical and nursing staff, the parents beside most cribs and the tiny patients in their plastic cocoons and open cots all seemed to make sense. Maybe she’d been in one of these places before.
Then again it could have been because Stewart was there. He was so solid and concerned, uncomfortably attractive, but she was trying to ignore that with all she had on her plate, but most of all he seemed so patiently kind.
‘It’s a pretty daunting place,’ said Stewart as he nodded to a nurse, ‘but, believe me, you will get used to it.’
Desiree allowed his words to wash over her as she glanced around. She wasn’t daunted by the place, just that her daughter was here, and she wondered about that. Was it because she’d just been in a train crash? Had her senses been so overloaded by new situations that she was immune for the moment?
At least in this unit there was ordered chaos and Stewart was the boss. She had some control with her access to him.
She obeyed the sign and washed her hands. Almost as if she knew where her daughter was, she looked ahead to the furthermost cribs, home to the most critical patients. Stewart pushed the wheelchair forward.
‘She’s up this way,’ Stewart said, as they passed alcoves of four cribs at a time, each bay seeming to utilise more equipment than the last. Some babies were tiny, some less so, and some were in ordinary Perspex cots.
Desiree’s daughter lay tiny and exposed, her red shiny skin translucent, her miniature hands smaller than the top of her mother’s finger and her bald head smaller than Desiree’s palm.
The reality of her daughter’s struggle hit her. Her baby should be safe within her uterus, not exposed to pain and fear in the bright lights, fluctuating temperatures and noise of a neonatal nursery.
Desiree felt tears well into her eyes and she swallowed to clear the lump from her throat. ‘She’s so fragile. So beautiful,’ she said in a whisper.
Stewart smiled warmly at the crib and then at Desiree. ‘She is very beautiful. I’m glad you think that. A lot of people can’t see the beauty in a premature baby. They look so different to the image most people have of newborn babies.’ He shook his head at the unenlightened. ‘She is a miracle of creation.’
Stewart crouched down and slipped his arm around Desiree’s shoulder and hugged her gently as they peered into the crib.
Somehow Desiree knew he would do that for any new mother confronted by a tiny skinned rabbit of a baby, but she was glad of even that small comfort. More than glad—she was in desperate need of strong arms around her.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ he went on. ‘Her skin is only a few cells thick and very delicate. Her tiny veins are so clear under her skin the vessels look like lace. At the moment we’re using the umbilical vein for intravenous access, which is what the contraption stuck to her tummy is about.’
There was an ice-cream-stick bridge of balsa and strapping taped to her baby’s soft belly that supported a long tube connected to the IV stand and fluids.
He pointed to the thicker red tubing that sealed each of Desiree’s daughter’s tiny nostrils. ‘She’s managing well on CPAP, which is the name we give this nasal continuous positive airway pressure that keeps her lungs inflated.’
He checked to see that she was following his explanation. ‘A tiny amount of air stays in the lungs to stop the lung surfaces sticking together like wet paper.
‘Whenever she doesn’t breathe, the machine breathes for her, as necessary. But she’s doing most of it herself.’
They both looked at the diminutive face disfigured by the thick tubing.
Stewart lowered his voice. ‘I know the tubing does stretch her nostrils and make them look larger than they are but there are disadvantages for throat intubation of infants as well.’
Desiree found herself checking the monitors and glancing over the intravenous fluids and she felt reassured by the numbers. She still had trouble grasping that this was her baby connected to these leads and monitors, but surely ‘reassured’ seemed a strange thing to be in the circumstances.
Had she been here or somewhere like this before?
Had Sophie been born prematurely as well? Could she be as familiar with this equipment as it all seemed?
Her heart pounded with the thrill of excitement at the thought of a breakthrough in her memory block.
Surely most parents wouldn’t feel this comfortable with such a bombardment of technology around their tiny precious baby. She must have loads of experience with such a place or been there before.
Stewart broke into her thoughts as he introduced a third person. ‘This is Gina. Gina is one of your daughter’s primary carers. She’s a neonatal nurse.’
‘Hello, Gina.’ Desiree forced herself to smile at the tall girl who was caring for her daughter and tried not to think she looked as if she should still be at school.
The young nurse stood up from her stool beside the crib where she’d been recording observations and shook Desiree’s hand.
Gina grinned at Desiree. ‘Your daughter has a very determined will. Dr Kramer says she takes after her mother.’
Desiree smiled and glanced at Stewart before looking back at her daughter. It warmed her that he thought that and it had been good of him to say so.
She still couldn’t believe her baby was here to see in front of her eyes when she could barely remember her pregnancy. ‘Can I touch her?’
Stewart answered. ‘Absolutely. But remember if you touch her charts, or a phone, or anything, you need to wash your hands before you open the door again. The humidicribs are perfect places for germs to grow and she’s very susceptible at the moment.’
Desiree nodded and gently opened the crib door and stroked the top of her daughter’s tiny hand. ‘She’s so tiny but perfect.’
‘I think so,’ Stewart agreed, and there was no doubting his sincerity.
Desiree knew her daughter was in good hands. ‘So what have you done for her so far?’
Stewart glanced at Gina. ‘Very determined.’
He looked back at Desiree with a smile. ‘Are you ready for this?’
Desiree glanced at her baby. She had to be. ‘Yes.’
Stewart nodded. ‘OK. She has respiratory distress syndrome because of her tiny lungs and her sudden arrival but we are treating that with the CPAP I mentioned earlier.
‘Her lungs did not have enough of a substance called surfactant in the air spaces. We gave her a dose of surfactant when she came down to us and that helps the stiffness of her immature lungs so she can inflate them and maintain the expansion she needs to breathe.’
Desiree nodded. That was clear so far. ‘So how long will she stay on CPAP?’
‘Only a few days or possibly more than a week, depending on how much help she needs.’ Stewart glanced at the oxygen saturation monitor screen and nodded at the reading. ‘The amount of oxygen present in your daughter’s skin at the moment is ninety seven per cent, which is great. We don’t need one hundred per cent and would prefer your baby’s levels stay a little under that because of the risk of damage to her eyes.’
Desiree didn’t want to think about damage to eyes. ‘What about infections? What if she does get one? You said she is at risk.’
‘Your daughter is having forty-eight hours of antibiotics intravenously for the risk of infection from her birth. Her skin swab cultures have been clear so far and that medication should stop tomorrow.’
She would pray that everyone washed their hands properly. She could feel herself becoming paranoid already. Was this what premature babies did to you?. She tried to think of something to divert her mind away from the image of other people’s dirty hands going near her daughter and germs colonising happily in the crib. ‘What about food?’
‘The fluids that are dripping into her umbilical vein keep her hydrated and with enough glucose for energy. Gina will discuss tiny tube feeds of breast milk a little later with you.’
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