A Wife for the Baby Doctor

A Wife for the Baby Doctor
Josie Metcalfe

‘Dammit, Dani—’ Josh began, but this time she wasn’t going to take no for an answer—not when it was obviously what they both wanted.

Her mind wasn’t really on what she was saying. What did conversation matter when she was finally where she’d wanted to be for so many years?

And it felt so good.

Ever since she’d first fallen in love with him she’d imagined what it would feel like when he finally held her in his arms, but this surpassed anything she’d ever dreamed. He was so tall and strong—the sort of solid bulwark that a woman could depend on to protect her when life turned rough.

‘Dani…’ he muttered, almost incoherently, and his head swooped down towards her even as he swept her up into his arms and pressed his lips to hers.

At last!

Josie Metcalfe lives in Cornwall with her long-suffering husband. They have four children. When she was an army brat, frequently on the move, books became the only friends that came with her wherever she went. Now that she writes them herself she is making new friends, and hates saying goodbye at the end of a book—but there are always more characters in her head, clamouring for attention until she can’t wait to tell their stories.

Recent titles by the same author:

SHEIKH SURGEON CLAIMS HIS BRIDE*

THE DOCTOR’S BRIDE BY SUNRISE*

TWINS FOR A CHRISTMAS BRIDE

A MARRIAGE MEANT TO BE

*Brides of Penhally Bay

Look out for the second book in Josie Metcalfe’s neonatal duet—coming soon from Medical™Romance

A WIFE FOR THE BABY DOCTOR

BY

JOSIE METCALFE

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

JOSH peered cautiously through the window in the door that barred the entrance to the unit, wary in case it was that fierce senior sister on duty.

He knew that his mother preferred to collect him from the homework club at school rather than have him walk for five minutes to the hospital on his own; knew he wasn’t really supposed to come up here to wait for her shift to end; and he definitely shouldn’t know the code to let himself into the unit, but he was so fascinated by the tiny babies she cared for that he just couldn’t resist.

‘Hi, Josh,’ called one of his mother’s friendlier colleagues, looking across at him from her position at the desk. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her welcoming smile. With Sally Nugent on duty he knew he wasn’t going to be summarily ejected tonight. ‘Your mum’s nearly finished. Go on into the staff lounge while you’re waiting for her. There might even be some biscuits left in the tin.’

His stomach was empty but it was easy to ignore it when there was the fascinating world of medicine surrounding him. He might only be nine, but he already knew what he wanted to do when he grew up.

‘Have you had any new babies in today?’ he asked, lingering beside the desk while Sally frowned at something on the computer screen.

‘Not so far,’ she said with a distracted smile in his direction, just as the phone began to ring.

Josh could only hear Sally’s side of the conversation but he could tell from the expression on her face that she was being told something serious. Usually Sally could manage to find a reassuring smile for everyone, no matter what was happening in the unit. This time he could tell from the way she suddenly went white that something very different had happened.

She clattered the phone down almost before she’d finished speaking, and instead of hurrying him through to wait out of sight in the staff waiting room—the way she normally would—she sat there for several seconds, biting her lip, apparently unable to bring herself to look in his direction.

Suddenly he felt sick with apprehension.

‘Sally?’ he prompted, hating the fact that his voice still sounded like a kid’s when he’d been the man of the house from the moment he’d been born. Had something happened to his mother? She and Pammy were all he had in the world, at least until Pammy’s baby arrived. ‘What’s the matter? What’s going—?’

‘I’m sorry, Josh,’ she interrupted abruptly, getting to her feet. ‘You’re going to have to leave the unit. Go down and wait in the main reception area.’ She started ushering him towards the door. ‘Your… There’s an emergency coming in and your…your mother’s going to need to stay on late tonight. Is there someone who can come and fetch you…to take you home?’

He knew she wasn’t telling him the truth—at least, not the whole truth—and he dug his feet in, refusing to move another inch until he had an answer to the most important question.

‘Is it Mum? Has something happened to her?’ he demanded, a strange shaky feeling starting deep inside him. It was the same feeling that he’d got the day his mother had phoned to tell him there had been an accident and she was delayed in A and E.

He’d been so convinced she’d been injured that initially he hadn’t been able to hear her telling him that she’d been nothing more than a bystander and was taking care of the victim’s children until their father arrived. He’d known then just how devastating it would be if anything were to happen to his mother or to her best friend, Pammy. The three of them had been together all his life and were the only family he had in the world.

‘Please, Sally. You have to tell me,’ he demanded hoarsely, his heart beating so fast that it felt as if it was going to choke him. ‘Has something happened to Mum? Is she ill? Hurt?’

‘No, Josh. It’s nothing like that,’ she said firmly, giving his arm a squeeze, and the fact that she met his eyes this time reassured him that she was telling him the truth. ‘Your mother’s fine, but she’s…she’s going to be very busy for a while. It would be better if you went out of the unit to wait, just until—’

The sound of the lift arriving only a few feet away had her breaking off with a soft curse under her breath, and he knew that whatever had her so jumpy was about to emerge from those doors.

There was a confused cacophony of voices and noises, with orders being snapped and vital signs being monitored by bleeping machinery. As the trolley began to emerge through the gaping doorway he could see that the figure on it was having some sort of a fit, like that boy in the top class at school who’d had an epileptic attack in the gym last term. Then he heard someone using the keys he’d pressed to unlock the door into the unit, and out of the corner of his eye saw the unit’s senior consultant stride into view.

‘Is this Pamela Dixon?’ he demanded, and Josh gasped as if he’d been winded by a punch. ‘Take her straight along to Theatre,’ the man ordered briskly after a lightning-quick assessment right there in the corridor. ‘Bloods have been taken for cross-matching, I hope?’

‘What’s wrong with Pammy?’ Josh demanded loudly, completely forgetting that he wasn’t even supposed to be there. ‘Her baby’s not coming for weeks yet. What are you doing to her?’

‘Josh…! Hush!’ He knew the feel of his mother’s arms as they encircled him from behind, even though she smelt of that awful disinfectant in the hand-cleansing gel and not the lavender soap he’d bought her for her birthday. ‘Pam collapsed while she was out shopping. Mr Kasarian is going to try to help her.’

‘But, Mum, he said to take her to Theatre and Pammy can’t have an operation,’ he insisted, looking up into eyes the same golden brown as the ones that met him in the bathroom mirror when he brushed his teeth. Suddenly everything inside him clenched tight as he realised this was the first time he’d ever seen those eyes filled with fear—the same fear that was gripping him by the throat and turning his innards to water. ‘He can’t do it! It might hurt the baby.’

He tried to step forward to stop them pushing the trolley to the other end of the department, towards the one part of the unit that he’d never been allowed to investigate, but his mother held him back.

‘Josh, you don’t understand,’ she said with a quiver in her voice. ‘Mr Kasarian has to operate. He’s trying to save Pam’s life.’

‘But…I don’t understand.’ He was having to blink hard against the hot threat of tears. ‘She was all right this morning. We had breakfast together and she said she was going to walk to the shops after I went to school. She was going to buy some things for the baby, and…and…’

The expression on his mother’s face evaporated the words off his tongue, the desperation there telling him that, no matter what he said, it wasn’t going to change what was happening now.

‘She collapsed in the shop, Josh…in the ladies’toilets… And nobody knew she was there until the cleaner heard noises in the cubicle and realised that the door had been locked for a long time.’

‘Wh-what’s wrong with her?’ His heart felt as if it was fluttering wildly against his ribs, like the little bird that he’d rescued from next-door’s cat. It was going so fast that it was making him feel quite light-headed, as if he was going to be sick. ‘What’s he going to do to her?’

‘Her blood pressure’s gone up much too high—it’s called eclampsia and that’s why she collapsed,’ she explained briefly, and he was struck that, even now, she’d remembered that he always wanted to know why things happened. ‘And the only way to make the blood pressure come down is to take the baby out of her…quickly.’

‘But, Mum, you said…’ His thoughts were such a panicky jumble that it was hard to find the words he needed first. ‘The baby…Pammy’s baby! It isn’t time for it to come out yet.’ Her face looked all blurry as he tried to put his thoughts in order, so he knew he was crying now, but he couldn’t help it. Ever since he’d been told that his mother’s best friend in all the world was expecting a baby he’d been so…so excited. And as soon as Pammy had told him that he was going to be able to help her to look after it…to feed it and protect it…it was all he’d been able to think about.