A Marriage Meant To Be

Callie sat herself out of the way and put her rucksack on her lap, wrapping both arms around it as she watched the paramedic check Steph’s vital signs again and note his findings on the case notes he’d started.

‘Just a few questions, Stephanie. The usual things, all right?’ he said with pen poised. ‘I need your name, address, date of birth and the name of your next of kin so we can notify them where we’ve taken you.’

Callie saw the youngster’s tension return full force.

‘My name’s Stephanie…Smith and I’m fifteen,’ she said tersely.

‘And?’ Mike encouraged, even though it was obvious she’d given a false surname.

‘And I’ve got no address and no family to notify,’ she said with a stubborn expression on her face that told Callie it would be useless to try to push her any further. The paramedic threw her a concerned glance over Steph’s head but he obviously thought the same thing if his resigned sigh was anything to go by.

‘Stephanie, that can cause problems for us,’ he said gently.

‘Why should it? I can take care of myself,’ she said belligerently.

‘You probably can,’ he agreed, ‘but according to the law, if you’re under sixteen we have to have the permission of a parent or guardian to treat you.’

‘That’s easy, then. Just stop the ambulance and I’ll get out, then you won’t have to worry about getting sued.’

‘Steph, sweetheart…’ Callie began, not really knowing what to say. She’d often had to start treating youngsters before she could get parental consent—a victim of a car crash or a child in status asthmaticus couldn’t wait for paperwork. Hopefully, Steph’s condition wasn’t life-threatening, but if it were…from the little that the youngster had told her on the coach, she was feeling too bitter at the moment to be willing to contact her family, and without a surname there was no way of tracking them down behind her back.

But if the alternative was watching a fifteen-year-old with a potential head injury disappear onto the streets without a penny to her name…

She unzipped a pocket on her rucksack and fished out the purse buried deep inside, out of the way of light-fingered passers-by.

‘Here. Will this help with the paperwork?’ she asked as she offered her hospital ID card.

She saw Mike’s eyebrows shoot up when he read it and was uncomfortably aware that in her jeans and jumper she didn’t look much like the professional photo he was looking at. But apart from that speculative look in her direction he confined himself to copying the relevant information on Steph’s form.

‘A and E,’ their driver announced cheerfully, although Callie would have bet that he’d been listening to every word going on in the back and would be grilling Mike later.

‘We hope you enjoyed your journey,’ he said as he opened the double doors at the back of the vehicle, sounding just like a holiday tour guide, ‘but sincerely hope you won’t be travelling with us again.’

‘Tony, you idiot,’ scolded one of the nursing staff waiting to receive them. ‘What have you brought for us this time?’

‘Two lovely ladies,’ he announced cheerfully, as he and Mike flipped the lock to release the wheels and slid the trolley smoothly out onto the apron and through the doors of the emergency department with Callie in their wake.

‘This is Stephanie,’ Mike said as soon as his hands were free to consult his clipboard. ‘She’s fifteen years old and approximately twenty-eight weeks gestational. She was mugged and fell, hitting her head on the pavement. Brief loss of consciousness but her obs are now all within normal ranges with pupils equal and reactive. No obvious breaks but the start of a lovely big egg on the back of her head.’

‘Are you her mother?’ the young nurse demanded, and Callie was so taken aback by the unexpected question that she hadn’t managed a word before Steph butted in.

‘No. She’s my friend,’ she announced fiercely, reaching for Callie’s hand and clinging to it. ‘She was there when it happened and I want her to stay with me.’

‘That won’t be a problem as long as she doesn’t get in the way,’ the young nurse said kindly, and Mike had to stifle a chuckle when he caught Callie’s eye. He opened his mouth, obviously intending to tell the team about her qualifications, but Callie gave her head a sharp shake, hoping he would keep the information to himself. Now was not the time to end up answering an inquisition about why she was so far from home.

She was also feeling overwhelmed by such familiar surroundings, having trouble coping with the fact that even though everything was so similar to St Mark’s, there was one huge difference—there was no chance of coming out of the cubicle and seeing Con’s familiar figure walking towards her with that sexy smile deepening the dimples either side of his mouth.

Not that she’d seen much of that sexy smile over the last few weeks and months. She hadn’t felt much like smiling, either, but in her case it had been because she’d been mourning the death of the baby that would have made her life complete. She’d thought Con had been mourning, too. It had taken blunt words to open her eyes to the true state of affairs between them.

A very junior registrar came in a few minutes later and was doing very well until he caught sight of what Mike had written on Steph’s case notes. Suddenly he became all fingers and thumbs and started second-guessing himself over every little thing until Callie couldn’t stand it any more.

‘I’ll just go out and make a call while you’re organising the ultrasound scan, shall I?’ she suggested, taking pity on the poor man’s nerves.

‘You won’t go away, will you, Callie?’ Steph demanded, looking younger than ever swathed in a voluminous hospital gown.

‘I promise,’ Callie said with an encouraging smile. ‘But I need to do something about my accommodation. We aren’t all getting free beds for the night.’

‘But you will come back, won’t you?’ she said, sounding as uncertain as a little child left for the first time in an unfamiliar place, but clearly hoping that no one would be able to hear the pleading in her voice.

‘As soon as I’ve made my calls,’ Callie reassured her, and slipped out of the cubicle.

‘Can you direct me to a phone I can use to call out of the hospital?’ she asked one of the women at the reception desk, having chosen her for the kindly way she’d spoken to the last person to approach her. ‘And do you have any sort of directory of organisations in this area who provide sheltered accommodation for runaways or pregnant girls?’

The woman blinked at the question, but Callie would have to give her points for the fact that her smile never wavered neither did her eyes stray towards Callie’s waistline.

‘I’ve got some telephone numbers on a database on the computer. I could call them for you, or would you like me to print them out?’

‘Could you print them out, please? Until my friend has finished having her tests, she won’t know when she’ll be released.’

‘I wouldn’t wait till then before you make contact,’ she advised softly, as the printer started chattering, beckoning Callie to the far end of the reception desk to give them some semblance of privacy for their conversation. ‘There’s an excellent YMCA but they’re always so heavily over-subscribed and only take people in on a night-by-night basis, so there’s no continuity. There’s only one official residential centre in town, and that takes the girls up to six weeks after the birth, so they rarely have any beds free.’ She paused a moment in thought then wrote something on the paper. ‘This one I’m adding at the bottom of the list is still trying to start up at the moment—they’re struggling financially, so they won’t have the same number of carers. It’s a private one, not officially on the hospital list yet. A friend told me it’s being set up by a woman whose teenage daughter ran away from home when she discovered she was pregnant, and then died.’

Callie thanked her for the information and set off for the phone. She could only imagine the feelings of guilt that were driving the poor woman to set up some sort of refuge, but directing Steph to somewhere that could fold before the end of her pregnancy might not be the best course.

Fifteen minutes later she had to admit that she was out of options and started to dial the number written on the bottom of the list in the receptionist’s neat script. The sight of the woman’s surname startled her for a moment and brought back one of her worst memories from the time she had been doing her rotation in Obs and Gyn.

‘Yeah?’ said a bored voice when the phone was answered, the sound barely audible over the racket going on in the background.

‘Is that The Place to Go?’ Callie asked, wondering if she’d misdialled.

‘Yeah,’ said the same bored voice.

‘Is Mrs Keeley there?’

‘Who? Oh, you mean Marian. Nah. She had to take Jess to ’ ospital. ’Er waters broke,’ she offered, with the first glimpse of real emotion in her voice.

‘Which hospital did they go to?’ Callie asked over a superstitious shiver when she heard the woman’s first name. What were the chances that there were two people called Marian Keeley who had each lost a pregnant teenage daughter? What were the chances that she would be the one who had provided the spark that had made Callie decide between specialising in Obs and Gyn and A and E?

‘She’s taken ’er to City. It’s where we all go when it’s time,’ said the laconic voice on the other end of the line. ‘Can I take a message? I dunno when she’ll be back, mind. Babies can take hours to be born sometimes. And it can hurt a lot, too,’ she added with an audible edge of fear to her voice.

‘That’s why they give you gas and air to breathe,’ Callie said matter-of-factly. ‘To take the pain away.’

‘You’ve got kids?’ she interrupted, almost eagerly.

‘No, but I’m a—’

‘Well, what would you know about it, then?’ the girl snapped, and Callie was left with the dial tone burring in her ear.

‘That went well,’ she muttered wryly as she replaced the receiver and made her way back towards the curtained cubicles.