Hot Single Docs: The Playboy's Redemption: St Piran's: Rescuing Pregnant Cinderella / St Piran's: Italian Surgeon, Forbidden Bride / St Piran's: Daredevil, Doctor...Dad!. Carol Marinelli
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was overreacting because now she felt completely normal.
‘Izzy.’ Discreet as their exit had been, Gus must have noticed because he joined them outside, just as another contraction hit.
‘They’re not strong,’ Izzy said as Gus placed a skilled hand on her abdomen.
‘How far apart?’ Gus asked, and it was Diego who answered.
‘Six, maybe seven minutes.’
‘Okay.’ Gus wasted no time. ‘Let’s get you over to the hospital and we can pop you on a monitor. I’ll bring the Jeep around.’
‘Should we call an ambulance?’ Diego asked, but Gus shook his head.
‘We’ll be quicker in my Jeep and if we have to pull over, I’ve got everything we need.’
‘I’m not having it,’ Izzy insisted, only neither Diego nor Gus was convinced.
It was a thirty-minute drive from Penhally. Diego felt a wave of unease as Izzy’s hand gripped his tighter and she blew out a long breath. He remembered his time on Maternity and often so often it was a false alarm, the midwives could tell. Izzy kept insisting she was fine, that the contractions weren’t that bad, but he could feel her fingers digging into his palms at closer intervals, could see Gus glancing in the rear-view mirror when Izzy held her breath every now and then, and the slight acceleration as Gus drove faster.
His mind was racing, awful scenarios playing out, but Izzy could never have guessed. He stayed strong and supportive beside her, held her increasingly tightening fingers as Gus rang through and warned the hospital of their arrival. A staff member was waiting with a wheelchair as they pulled up at the maternity section.
‘It’s too soon,’ Izzy said as he helped her out of the Jeep.
‘You’re in the right place,’ Diego said, only he could feel his heart hammering in his chest, feel the adrenaline coursing through him as she was whisked off and all he could do was give her details as best as he could to a new night receptionist.
‘You’re the father?’ ahe asked, and his lips tightened as he shook his head, and he felt the relegation.
‘I’m a friend,’ Diego said. ‘Her...’ But he didn’t know what to follow it up with. It had been just a few short weeks, and he wasn’t in the least surprised when he was asked to take a seat in a bland waiting room
He waited, unsure what to do, what his role was—if he even had a role here.
Going over and over the night, stunned at how quickly everything had changed. One minute they had been dancing, laughing—now they were at the hospital.
The logical side of his brain told him that thirty-one weeks’ gestation was okay. Over and over he tried to console himself, tried to picture his reaction if he knew a woman was labouring and he was preparing a cot to receive the baby. Yet there was nothing logical about the panic that gripped him when he thought of Izzy’s baby being born at thirty-one weeks. Every complication, every possibility played over and over. It was way too soon, and even if everything did go well, Izzy would be in for a hellish ride when she surely didn’t deserve it.
They could stop the labour, though. Diego swung between hope and despair. She’d only just started to have contractions...
‘Diego.’ Gus came in and shook his hand.
‘How is she?’
‘Scared,’ Gus said, and gave him a brief rundown of his findings. ‘We’ve given her steroids to mature the baby’s lungs and we’re trying to stop the labour or at least slow down the process to give the medication time to take effect.’
‘Oh, God...’ Guilt washed over him, a guilt he knew was senseless, but guilt all the same. However, Gus was one step ahead of him.
‘Nothing Izzy or you did contributed to this, Diego. I’ve spoken with Izzy at length, this was going to happen. In fact...’ he gave Diego a grim smile ‘...an ultrasound and cord study have just been done. Her placenta is small and the cord very thin. This baby really will do better on the outside, though we’d all like to buy another week or two. I knew the baby was small for dates. Izzy was going to have an ultrasound early next week, but from what I’ve just seen Izzy’s baby really will do better by being born.’
‘She’s been eating well, taking care of herself.’
‘She suffered trauma both physically and emotionally early on in the pregnancy,’ Gus said. ‘Let’s just get her through tonight, but guilt isn’t going to help anyone.’
Diego knew that. He’d had the same conversation with more parents than he could remember—the endless search for answers, for reasons, when sometimes Mother Nature worked to her own agenda.
‘Does she want to see me?’
Gus nodded. ‘She doesn’t want to call her family just yet.’
When he saw her, Diego remembered the day he had first met her when she had come to the neonatal ward. Wary, guarded, she sat on the bed, looking almost angry, but he knew she was just scared.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ Diego said, and took her hand, but she pulled it away.
‘You don’t know that.’
She sat there and she had all her make-up on, her hair immaculate, except she was in a hospital gown with a drip and a monitor strapped to her stomach, and Diego wondered if she did actually want him there at all.
She did.
But how could she ask him to be there for her?
She was scared for her baby, yet she resented it almost.
Nine weeks.
They’d had nine weeks left of being just a couple, which was not long by anyone’s standards. Nine weeks to get to know each other properly, to enjoy each other, and now even that nine weeks was being denied to them.
How could she admit how much she wanted him to stay—yet how could she land all this on him?
‘I think you should go.’
‘Izzy.’ Diego kept his voice steady. ‘Whatever helps you now is fine by me. I can call your family. I can stay with you, or I can wait outside, or if you would prefer that I leave...’
He wanted to leave, Izzy decided, or he wouldn’t have said it. The medication they had given her to slow down the labour made her brain work slower, made her thought process muddy.
‘I don’t know...’ Her teeth were chattering, her admission honest. Gus was back, talking to a midwife and Richard Brooke, the paediatric consultant, who had just entered the room. They were all looking at the printout from the monitor and Izzy wanted five minutes alone with Diego, five minutes to try and work out whether or not he wanted to be there, but she wasn’t going to get five minutes with her thoughts for a long while.
‘Izzy.’ She knew that voice and so did Diego, knew that brusque, professional note so well, because they had both used it themselves when they bore bad tidings. ‘The baby is struggling; its heartbeat is irregular...’
‘It needs time to let the medication take effect.’ Izzy’s fuzzy logic didn’t work on Gus. He just stood over her, next to Diego, both in suits and looking sombre, and she felt as if she were lying in a coffin. ‘We want to do a Caesarean, your baby needs to be born.’
Already the room was filling with more staff. She felt the jerk as the brakes were kicked off the bed, the clang as portable oxygen was lifted onto the bed and even in her drugged state she knew this wasn’t your standard Caesarean section, this was an emergency Caesarean.
‘Is there time...?’ She didn’t even bother to finish her sentence. Izzy could hear the deceleration in her baby’s heartbeat, and knew there wouldn’t be time for an epidural, that she would require a general anaesthetic, and it was the scariest, out-of-control feeling. ‘Can you be there, Diego?’ Her