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She tried to stop the image forming inside her head but it was already there, indelibly, for the rest of her life.
The tears began again as she remembered how grey and still her baby had been when he’d finally been born.
He’d been perfect. Absolutely perfect in every way, with ten tiny fingers and toes each with the most minute nail already there and growing. She would never know whether he’d inherited Con’s deep blue eyes or her own grey ones or whether he would have the mischievous dimples that punctuated her husband’s cheeks whenever he smiled.
Not that he’d been smiling much in the last four months and twenty-three days. It seemed as if they’d both forgotten how to do that when they’d seen that precious little image on the screen and realised that the heart had no longer been beating.
The memory was still so painful that she could barely draw breath, her own heart feeling as though some alien force was crushing it inside her chest. What right did it have to beat when her baby’s didn’t? Why was it that even the youngest teenage girl could manage to get pregnant, seemingly with even the most meaningless of sexual encounters, while she…she couldn’t carry a child for the man she’d loved from the first moment their eyes had met, the only man she’d ever loved.
No more crying, she told herself, suddenly remembering that she mustn’t do anything to draw too much attention to herself. Concentrate on something else—except there wasn’t much else to look at in the barren wasteland of a bus and coach depot other than the people in the queue waiting to get on.
She hastily dragged her eyes away from the young woman struggling to fold up her baby’s pushchair single-handed with the child cradled in the other arm. She wouldn’t allow herself so much as a glimpse of the perfect little face so she would have no idea if it was a girl or a boy, if it was about the same age that her…
No! Concentrate on the two girls chattering brightly together. Were they friends setting off for a day’s shopping in the next big town or was this just the most convenient way for them to get to and from work each day?
The two older women in front of them were talking equally animatedly. Were they friends taking the trip together or were each of them like her previous garrulous companion, lucky to have found someone equally inclined to chat?
And the cadaverous young man with the tattoo sprawling up one side of his grubby neck? It was all too easy after spending time as an A and E doctor to spot the fact that he was a drug addict, but whether he was using illegal Class A drugs or had gone onto a methadone programme was more difficult to tell at first glance. The ravages of what he’d been doing to his body weren’t.
Then, in front of him, there was the white-faced young woman obviously trying hard not to cry as the stern-faced man spoke to her through a mouth thinned by a mixture of anger and exasperation. It must be hard for him to keep his voice down so the rest of the queue couldn’t hear what he was saying. He looked like the sort of man used to having his orders obeyed without question.
Apparently unaware that the passengers already on the bus had a bird’s-eye view of those waiting to join them, the man took out his wallet and grabbed several high-denomination bills, folding them twice, neatly, before he tried to press them into the girl’s hand.
Initially, she refused to take them, shaking her head fiercely, and the revulsion on her face was a far clearer indication of what was happening than any words she was saying. But, of course, the older man had made up his mind and with a few terse words denied her objections and thrust the money into her hand before he abruptly turned on his heel and strode away.
And then it was time for them to board and Callie watched out of the corner of her eye to see where each of them ended up.
Thankfully, the young woman with the baby decided to sit somewhere near the front. Callie didn’t know if she could have borne it if she’d chosen to sit beside her for the next hour or two. She wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation of looking and longing and…
The two young women chattered their way towards the back of the coach, leaving a trail of perfume in their wake, unlike the cadaverous young man. She was uncomfortably aware of holding her breath as he stood for several seconds beside the empty seat next to her, but he, too, passed on down the coach.
It was the white-faced young woman who finally slid herself into place beside her and it was only then that Callie saw what hadn’t been visible while the youngster had been part of the queue. She was pregnant.
Callie drew in a sharp breath as the shock hit her, and closed her eyes while she battled against the jealous tears with the realisation that she seemed to be showing about the same as she had, just before…
‘It’s not catching, you know,’ the young woman snapped with an attempt at bravado that was completely destroyed by the wobble in her voice.
‘Unfortunately,’ Callie muttered, even as she felt guilt that her reaction had made the young woman feel uncomfortable.
‘You…what?’ Her garishly painted mouth fell open and eyes heavily outlined with kohl grew wide. ‘Did you say…unfortunately?’
‘Yes,’ Callie admitted uncomfortably, wishing she’d either kept her mouth shut or stuck to a simple apology for her apparent disapproval. Now she was going to have to make some sort of explanation even though she knew it was going to hurt more than ripping a scab off a wound that had barely started healing. ‘I lost my baby nearly five months ago. I was just over halfway through the pregnancy.’
‘Oh…! I’m sorry if it makes you…Look, would you rather I asked someone else to swap seats with me?’ she asked earnestly, revealing a far more considerate side than the initial belligerent attitude would have suggested.
There was a sudden rumble of sound as the driver started the engine and an explosive hiss of air as he released the brakes to start the next stage of the journey.
‘It’s too late now,’ Callie said, resigned to a companion who was managing, in her early teens, to do what she, a mature professional, couldn’t do with all the expertise of her health service colleagues behind her. ‘You can’t go changing seats while the coach is moving. If the driver had to brake suddenly you might injure the baby if you hit something.’
The youngster stared at her in surprise then she pressed trembling lips together and Callie was startled to see that her eyes were swimming with tears.
‘I’m sorry. Did I say something to upset you?’ Callie was suddenly concerned that she must have inadvertently hit a sensitive nerve.
‘No. It’s just…You said that as if you actually care what happens to it…to the baby,’ she said in a choked voice.
‘Of course I do. Anybody would,’ Callie said, knowing that this wasn’t the time to talk about her own desperate longing for a child.
‘Not everybody,’ she snapped bitterly, then suddenly seemed to remember that they were surrounded on all sides and lowered her voice so that her words would be masked by the sound of the other voices around them and the rumble of the coach itself. ‘My stepfather gave me money for an abortion even though he knows it’s too far along. He said if you pay enough money any doctor would do it.’
‘Most doctors wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole even if you offered them the moon on a silver platter,’ Callie said quietly. In her days on Obs and Gyn she’d seen botched abortions go horribly wrong. ‘And why would you want to abort the baby when there are so many people desperate to adopt?’
‘I don’t want to give it away,’ she said fiercely, a protective hand curving over her noticeably swollen belly even as she lost her battle with the tears. ‘But I’ve got no way of keeping it, have I? Not at my age. I’m still at school and a Saturday job won’t pay enough to find somewhere to live.’
‘What about your mum? Won’t she help you?’
‘Not her!’ she said, bitterness and devastation combining corrosively in those two words. ‘She kicked me out when she found out. She would have killed me if she knew it was his…my stepfather’s.’
Callie thought it would have been more to the point if the mother had killed the stepfather who’d been having sex with her underage daughter, but now wasn’t the time to voice those sentiments. She fished a packet of paper hankies out of her pocket and offered them to her companion.
‘Listen, we’re going to be sitting together for at least an hour. Shall we introduce ourselves? I’m Callie,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘Steph…Stephanie,’ she said, and blew her nose furiously. ‘I didn’t want to cry, not over them.’
‘Hey, don’t knock crying. Sometimes it’s good to let some of the emotions out.’
‘It doesn’t solve anything, though—like, what am I going to do when the coach arrives at the depot? I’ve got nowhere to go and no one to ask.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Callie said, surprising herself.
‘You…what?’ Steph blinked. ‘You’re kidding! You’re a grown-up and grown-ups always know where they’re going and what they’re going to do.’
‘Newsflash, Steph. Grown-ups are just as mixed up as anybody else. They’ve just had a bit more practice at hiding it.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘SO, WHERE do we go?’ Steph said when the two of them had been reunited with their luggage.
Callie almost smiled when she realised that they had both opted for almost identical rucksacks in which to carry their worldly belongings.
‘First, we need to find somewhere to stay the night,’ Callie said, looking out at the rapidly darkening sky beyond the enormous doorway to the coach terminus. They’d managed to outrun the threatened bad weather so far, but it didn’t look as if it would be long before they’d get soaked if they hadn’t found somewhere. ‘That might be a good place to start,’ she suggested, pointing to the internet café on the other side of the road.
‘Uh, I don’t think the café will stay open all night,’ Steph said uneasily. ‘I’ve got a bit of money to find a cheap hotel or something. I told you my stepfather gave it to me for the abortion but I reckon it was a bribe, too, so I wouldn’t tell Mum it’s his.’
Callie chuckled. ‘I’m far too old to want to spend the night sitting in a café,’ she said. ‘I was actually going to go on the internet and see what I can find around here without having to march up and down in the dark.’
‘You can do that?’ Steph marvelled with all the arrogance of the very young for those they consider too ‘past it’ to cope with modern technology, and Callie suddenly felt as old as Methuselah’s grandmother.
‘Let’s find out,’ she suggested, and they set off into the chilly evening.
They reached the other said of the road and Callie was just stretching out a hand to open the door when there was the sound of running feet approaching. Before she could even shout a warning their malodorous fellow passenger had barged into Steph, sending her slamming into the pavement as he made off with her rucksack.
‘Steph! Are you all right?’ Callie demanded, as she dropped to her knees beside the dazed youngster.
‘Callie…?’ she quavered, clearly shocked. ‘What…? My bag!’ she gasped, and started to struggle against Callie’s hold. ‘It’s got all my money in it.’
‘Steph, stay still!’ she warned. ‘You hit your head pretty hard when you went down. Let me check you over before—’
‘But he’s stolen my bag,’ she insisted. ‘He’s getting away.’
‘Sweetheart, he’s gone. We’ll never find him,’ Callie said gently, while she held both of Steph’s shoulders to try to stop her from moving. ‘Now, please, let me check your head to see if there’s any damage.’
Perhaps it was the calm insistence in her voice that finally got through the young girl’s distress, but with tears already leaking out of the corner of her eyes and running into the too-black hair she stared up at Callie with a beaten expression in her eyes.
‘Oh, Callie…What am I going to do now?’ she whispered.
Behind them Callie heard the shop door open and looked back over her shoulder to see a gangling young man looking down at them.
‘I saw what happened and phoned for an ambulance. The police are on their way, too,’ he said. ‘Should I make her a cup of tea? That’s supposed to be good for shock, isn’t it?’
‘Thanks for making the call to the emergency services, but it’s better not to give her anything to eat or drink until she’s been checked out, just in case anything’s broken,’ Callie explained, as she performed a swift primary survey.
It was light enough, there on the pavement where the lights from the shop shone brightly, to see that Steph’s pupils were equal and reactive to light and she didn’t seem to have broken anything. There was a painful place where the back of her head had met the ground and the start of a goose egg, but she didn’t even seem to have broken the skin, let alone be losing any untoward fluids.
‘Can you remember what happened to you?’ she asked gently, and Steph threw her an old-fashioned look.
‘Callie, I haven’t got concussion or amnesia. I’ve been mugged and had all my stuff nicked and I’m all alone in a city I’ve never visited before with nowhere to stay for the night. Oh, and I can remember the date and who’s the prime minister.’
Callie chuckled when she saw the face Steph pulled. ‘Not your type?’ she teased. ‘Well, I don’t think you’ve done yourself any major damage, but for the baby’s sake I think you ought to be checked over in the hospital.’
‘Hospital!’ she wailed over the sound of an approaching ambulance. ‘I don’t need to go there, do I? You said you couldn’t find anything wrong.’
‘Hey, Steph, look on the bright side. In the hospital it’ll be warm and dry and they’ll give you a bed to lie on.’
‘Hey, classic!’ she scoffed wearily. ‘I get mugged and lose all my money so I can’t afford even a cheap hotel but, gee, guess what? The mugger injures me so I get a bed for the night.’
Callie hoped her smile was reassuring but when she went to step aside to allow the paramedic to do his job Steph grabbed for her hand and held on tightly.
‘You won’t leave me, will you? Not until…’ Her face fell as she suddenly realised that she had no idea what was going to happen to her.
Callie’s heart went out to her, especially when she heard the tremor in her voice when she was answering the handsome young paramedic’s questions.
‘I’ll stay with you if you want me to,’ she offered, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘I haven’t got anywhere else I need to be in a hurry.’ Nowhere she needed to be for the rest of her life, if the truth be told.
‘Are you sure?’ Steph asked, seeming painfully young in her insecurity; definitely not old enough to be thrown out to fend for herself in a strange city.
‘I’m sure these nice young men won’t mind if I come for a ride with you,’ she said firmly, meeting the eyes of Mike, the good-looking young paramedic, with an authority learned the hard way during many hours of duty in a busy hospital A and E department. ‘Especially given the fact that you’re pregnant. They like pregnant mums to be calm and happy.’
‘We certainly do, Stephanie,’ he said with a broad smile, generously taking the hint without an argument. ‘So you just settle yourself back and enjoy the ride in our luxury limousine.’
‘Limousine!’ she scoffed with a dismissing glance around the functional interior. ‘Where’s the plush carpeting and the mini-bar?’
‘Hey, don’t knock it,’ Mike protested. ‘I cleaned that floor myself, just before we came out to get you, and we’ve got lots of things in here that you don’t get in a mini-bar—such as oxygen on tap.’ He gently adjusted the mask over her face as he teased her and Callie could already see some of Steph’s tension easing.
Her own anxiety had reduced the moment she’d seen how competent the ambulance crew was. Now she just needed to be certain that neither her young travelling companion nor her unborn baby had suffered any hidden injuries and she could go on her way.
Except she couldn’t really do that with a clear conscience, knowing that Steph was now without any funds whatever. Yes, she would have a free bed for the night, tonight, but after that? What resources were there for underage pregnant girls in this city? Were there any hostels or refuges? The ideal situation would be a purpose-built home where she could stay while she waited out the rest of her pregnancy, preferably with counsellors available to tell her about the options available to help her to decide whether to keep her baby or give it up for adoption.
Perhaps she would be able to find out that sort of information while she waited for the A and E staff to check Steph over. She spared a longing thought for St Mark’s, where such local gems had been collated onto the hospital database so that it would be readily to hand. Unfortunately, neither she nor Stephanie would be going back to that area again, at least not for the foreseeable future.
‘Right, ladies, hold tight and we’ll be on our way,’ the driver called as he started the powerful engine.
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.’