Hot Single Docs: The Playboy's Redemption. Carol Marinelli
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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 eyes swung from Diego to Gus. ‘Can Diego be in there?’
For a general anaesthetic, partners or relatives weren’t allowed to come into the theatre, but the NICU team were regularly in Theatre and after just the briefest pause Richard agreed, but with clarification. ‘Just for Izzy.’
‘Sure,’ Diego agreed, and at that moment he’d have agreed to anything, because the thought of being sent to another waiting room, knowing all that could go wrong, was unbearable, but as he helped speed the bed the short distance to Theatre, Diego also knew that if there was a problem with the babe, he wanted to be the one dealing with it. This was no time for arrogance neither was it time for feigned modesty—quite simply Diego knew he was the best.
The theatre sister gave Diego a slightly wide-eyed look as she registered he was holding hands with her emergency admission, whom she recognised too.
‘Diego’s here with Izzy,’ the midwife explained. ‘Richard has okayed him to go in.’
‘Then you’ll need to go and get changed,’ came the practical response. ‘You can say goodbye to her here.’
And that was it.
Diego knew when he saw her again, she would be under anaesthetic.
Izzy knew it too.
‘I’m glad you’re here...’ She was trying not to cry and her face was smothered with the oxygen mask. ‘You’ll make sure...’
‘Everything is going to be fine.’ His voice came out gruffer than he was used to hearing it. He was trying to reassure her, but Diego felt it sounded as if he was telling her off. ‘Better than fine,’ he said again. His voice still didn’t soften, but there wasn’t time to correct it. ‘Thirty-one-weekers do well.’
‘Thirty-two’s better.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Diego said. ‘And it is going to be okay.’
He couldn’t give her a kiss, because they were already moving her away.
He turned to Gus, who as her GP would also have to wait outside the operating theatre, and exchanged a look with the worried man. ‘Go and get changed, Diego,’ Gus said, and his words shocked Diego into action. He changed his clothes in a moment, then put on a hat and made his way through to Theatre.
‘Diego!’ Hugh, the paediatric anaesthetist greeted him from behind a yellow mask. ‘Extremely bradycardic, ready for full resus.’
‘Diego’s here with the mother.’ Brianna was there too, ready to receive the baby, and her unusually pointed tone was clearly telling her colleague to shut the hell up.
The surgeon on duty that night had already started the incision, and Diego knew the man in question was brilliant at getting a baby out urgently when required, but for Diego the world was in slow motion, the theatre clock hand surely sticking as it moved past each second marker.
‘Breech.’ The surgeon was calling for more traction. Diego could see the two spindly legs the surgeon held in one hand and for the first time in Theatre he felt nausea, understood now why relatives were kept out and almost wished he had been, because suddenly he appreciated how fathers-to-be must feel.
Except he wasn’t the father, Diego told himself as the baby’s limp body was manoeuvred out and the head delivered.
This baby wasn’t his to love, Diego reminded himself as an extremely floppy baby was dashed across to the resuscitation cot.
He never wanted to feel like this again.
He never wanted to stand so helpless, just an observer. It would, for Diego, have been easier to work on her himself, yet he was in no state to.
He could feel his fingertips press into her palms with impatience as Hugh called twice for a drug, and though the team was fantastic, their calm professionalism riled him. Richard was fantastic, but Diego would have preferred Megan. Megan pounced on tiny details faster than anyone Diego had seen.
‘She’s still bradycardic,’ Diego said, when surely they should have commenced massage now.
‘Out.’ Brianna mouthed the word and jerked her head to the theatre doors, but he hesitated.
‘Diego!’ Brianna said his name, and Diego stiffened in realisation—this wasn’t his call, only it felt like it.
Brianna’s brown eyes lifted again to his when Diego would have preferred them to stay on the baby, and he knew he was getting in the way, acting more like a father than a professional, so he left before he was formally asked to.
‘THAT’S it, Izzy...’ She could hear a male voice she didn’t recognise. ‘Stay on your back.’
She was under blankets and wanted to roll onto her side, except she couldn’t seem to move.
‘You’re doing fine,’ came the unfamiliar voice. ‘Stay nice and still.’
‘Izzy, it’s all okay.’
There was a voice she knew. Strong and deep and accented, and she knew it was Diego, she just didn’t know why, and then she opened her eyes and saw his and she remembered.
‘You’ve got a daughter.’ His face was inches away. ‘She’s okay, she’s being looked after.’
And then it was fog, followed by pain, followed by drugs, so many drugs she struggled to focus when Diego came back in the afternoon with pictures of her baby.
‘She looks like you,’ Diego said, but all Izzy could see were tubes.
‘Are you working today?’
Diego shook his head. ‘No. I just came in to see you.’ And he sat down in the chair by her bed and Izzy went to sleep. He flicked through the photos and tried very hard to only see tubes, because this felt uncomfortably familiar, this felt a little like it had with Fernando and he just couldn’t go there again.
He certainly wasn’t ready to go there again.
There was a very good reason that a normal pregnancy lasted forty weeks, Diego reflected, putting the photos on her locker and heading for home—and it wasn’t just for the baby. The parents needed every week of that time to prepare themselves emotionally for the change to their lives.
He wasn’t even a parent.
* * *
It was Tuesday night and a vicious UTI later before anything resembling normal thought process occurred and a