“Could I fire you with a kiss? Do you believe I could do it?”

He was standing above her, his body throbbing, taunted by the languorous look in her eyes.

“You’d hardly want to,” she said, and although she spoke lightly, he guessed she, too, was trapped by a sudden shift in the atmosphere in the room. “I mean, look at me—your archetypal plain Jane! I’m jeans and T-shirt, not high fashion—short and dumpy, not slim and willowy.”

“You’re a woman, and I’m a man,” he said, determined to prove his point, although somewhere deep inside he was distressed she should make light of her appearance. “Sometimes that is all it takes.”

He took her hand and drew her to her feet, not forcing her, but allowing no resistance, and then made the kiss a reality, his lips claiming hers with an arrogance that took her breath away.

Dear Reader,

While I was writing A Father by Christmas—I love writing Christmas books!—I found myself more and more interested in an unborn baby who was a very minor player in the book. Before I realized what had happened, I knew I had to write another book so I could find out more about the baby. Imagine my delight when I realized that the father was a very sexy Spaniard—perfect hero material. But would such a gorgeous hunk ever fall in love with Marty, who wasn’t very beautiful, or very tall, but who had taken the baby into her heart and would obviously make the perfect mother for the little girl? I had my doubts, but love is a wondrous thing and when these two were thrown together, and forced to fight for the baby’s welfare, even fight for her life, magic happened and they turned into perfect partners, in life, in work and in love.

Wasn’t that convenient?

Meredith Webber

The Spanish Doctor’s Convenient Bride

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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MEDITERRANEAN DOCTORS

Let these exotic doctors sweep you off your feet….

Be tantalized by their smoldering good looks, romanced by their fiery passion and warmed by the emotional power of these strong and caring men….

MEDITERRANEAN DOCTORS

Passionate about life, love and medicine

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘MOZART would be good for all the babies in the NICU,’ Marty protested. ‘I’ve picked out melodies everyone knows so the parents would enjoy it too. Besides, Emmaline is used to it. It’s what I’ve played for her all along.’

Sophie Gibson touched her friend lightly on the shoulder.

‘She’s not your baby,’ she gently reminded Marty. ‘In fact, she’s not even called Emmaline.’

‘But you’ve got to admit she looks like an Emmaline, doesn’t she?’

Marty put her hand through the port of the humidicrib and touched the wild black hair poking up from beneath the stockingette cap on the head of the tiny baby. Emmaline’s cherub face was screwed up as if sleeping required the utmost concentration, her little fists tucked up against her chin, ready to take on anyone who bothered her.

Or who messed with her Mozart!

‘She looks like a baby,’ Sophie said, then turned, smiling, as she heard her husband’s voice.

‘Glad you’re both here,’ Alexander Gibson said quietly. ‘Sophie, Marty, I’d like you both to meet Dr Carlos Quintero. He’s the baby’s father.’

Gib’s eyes sought out Marty, and she hoped the sick despair that squeezed her stomach wasn’t written on her face.

Stupid to have grown attached to Emmaline—stupid, stupid, stupid!

‘Carlos, this is Sophie Gibson, second in charge of the neonatal intensive care unit, and Marty Cox, the obstetrician who took care of Natalie during the time she was in on life support in the intensive care unit.’

The dark-haired, deeply tanned stranger bowed his head towards the two women, but Marty sensed his eyes, hidden beneath hooded, jet-fringed lids, were on Emm—the baby.

Then he lifted his head and eyes as dark as his lashes—obsidian stones in his harsh-planed face—met Marty’s.

‘I will wish to speak further to you,’ he said, his deep, accented voice, though quiet, carrying easily around the room.

Presence, that’s what he has, Marty thought, although she doubted presence was the reason for a sudden fluttery feeling in her chest.

‘Of course,’ she agreed, as easily as possible given the fluttery stuff going on. ‘Any time. Well, not quite any time, but we can make a time.’

She was chattering, something she only did when she was nervous, and of course Emmaline’s father suddenly turning up would make her nervous.

Wouldn’t it?

‘Why not now?’ Sophie suggested. ‘You’ve just come off duty.’

Marty fired a ‘some friend you are’ glance towards the neonatologist, and wondered just how bad she, herself, looked. Flat hair from the cap she’d been wearing in the delivery room, a too-large scrub suit billowing around her slight frame.

And you’re worrying because? her inner voice demanded.

‘You’d probably prefer to spend time with the baby right now,’ she mumbled at the stranger, who cast a look towards the crib then turned back to Marty.

‘Not at all. Now would suit me if it is convenient for you.’

Marty looked helplessly towards Sophie, who had to hide the smile, while Gib made matters worse by suggesting they use his office, which had a super coffee-maker and comfortable armchairs in which they could sit.

‘You know how to work the coffee-machine,’ he reminded Marty as she dragged her reluctant body out of the NICU, far too aware of the tall dark stranger following behind her.

‘Talk about a cliché!’ she muttered to herself as this description of Carlos whoever flashed through her mind.

‘I am sorry?’

She turned and shrugged.

‘No, I’m sorry. Talking to myself. Bad habit.’

‘And one I also have,’ the polite doctor informed her. ‘Though, in my case, I am often the only person who understands me.’

‘You can say that again!’ Marty told him, turning to smile as she added, ‘Though there are times when even I don’t understand me.’

‘Ah!’ He returned her smile, brilliant white teeth flashing in his dark face, deep lines creasing the tanned cheeks and crinkling the skin at the corner of his eyes. ‘But that is more than a language problem, is it not?’

Still getting over the effect of the smile—which had stuck her feet to the floor and made her stomach swoop in a wild roller-coaster simulation—she had no idea what to say to this fairly acute observation.

She settled on a lame ‘Gib’s office is through here’ and led the way along the corridor and into the comfortable room. At least, while she busied herself at the coffee-machine she wouldn’t have to look at this Carlos—wouldn’t have to see the silver strands in his night-dark hair, or the smooth tanned skin stretched over hard muscle in his arms, or the way his fine-boned nose seemed to direct the eye towards sinfully shapely lips.

And how come she’d noticed that much? She who looked on men as necessary adjuncts to the continuation of the species and, at best, useful friends who could reach the highest shelves in the supermarket or lift things down from on top of cupboards?

She shook her head as the espresso machine delivered its final drops into the two small cups, took a deep breath and turned back to find the man studying the photos of some of Gib’s patients that adorned the walls of his office.

‘You call these before and after photos?’ he said, turning as she put the coffee cups on the low table. ‘I have never done much neonatology. It is amazing to think these small babies can grow into such sturdy children and healthy-looking teenagers.’

‘They get the best possible start in this NICU,’ Marty told him. ‘With Emmaline—I’m sorry, with your baby we weren’t sure how premature she was, but her birth weight was 1500 grams, which put her into low birth weight category. So she’d have gone there rather than the other nursery anyway. In the NICU she can be watched every minute of the day in case any of the things that beset premmie babies crops up.’

Had he noticed her slip?

He didn’t mention it, settling himself in a chair near the table and spooning sugar into his coffee.

‘Emmaline?’ Dark eyebrows rose as he said the word and Marty squirmed with embarrassment.

‘I know it’s silly, but I’ve kind of known her, you see, right from when Natalie was admitted. I was called to consult in A and E when she was brought in after the accident, and then when the decision was made to keep her on life support for the baby’s sake, I was the obstetrician in charge—but Gib’s already told you that part. The hospital couldn’t track down any relatives, which meant Natalie had no visitors so there was no one to talk to the baby. I used to visit, and talk to it, and play music—’

‘Mozart?’

So he had heard her conversation. She really should learn to argue more quietly. But playing Mozart had been little enough to do for the baby and the brain-dead woman who had been carrying her, so she tilted her chin and defended her actions.

‘Did you know a researcher once had a group of adolescents take a test, then played some Mozart for them, then had them take a parallel test and every one of them did better? I don’t know if it made any difference to the baby, or to Natalie, but it’s beautiful music. I love Bach—probably more than Mozart—but I thought he might be too complex for the baby, so stuck with a lot of the piano concertos—’

She stopped abruptly as embarrassment coiled and writhed like something alive inside her.

‘Of course, my musical tastes are nothing to do with what you want to know, which was—’

Marty had no idea where the conversation had begun, so she picked up her coffee and took a gulp. Quite dreadful—she’d forgotten to put sugar in, or was too muddled to have given it a thought.

‘Emmaline,’ he repeated, and she felt embarrassment heat her body as she remembered.

‘I didn’t name her right away. I called her “the baby” or just “baby” when I visited for the four weeks Natalie was in the ICU, but then, when I delivered her, she was a tiny scrap of humanity with this wealth of black hair.’ She smiled. ‘I’d had a doll with hair like that when I was young and she was Emmaline, so the name just sort of stuck.’

‘Emmaline Quintero!’ He spoke as if tasting the name on his tongue, and Marty, wondering if there was a word that would convey the ultimate in mortification—mortifiedest?—rushed into speech again.

‘You don’t have to call her Emmaline, of course you don’t. You’ll have your own name for her, a family name maybe—your mother’s name—a favourite, or you could call her after Natalie.’

Big mistake! The man’s face became a mask of nothingness, all expression wiped away—black eyes boring into Marty’s, lips thinned and tight as he said coldly, ‘I think not.’

Do not apologise, Marty’s inner voice ordered, but she was beyond help from within and had already rushed into a confused bout of ‘sorrys’.

‘The decision to keep Natalie on life support? That was yours?’

Thankfully, Carlos’s question cut across her stumbling apologies and Marty was able to grasp the lifeline of a purely medical question.

Although why was he questioning the decision?

Refusing to think about the implications of that one, Marty explained.

‘Actually, in the absence of any relative that we could contact, the hospital ethics committee made the decision. They went on the advice of the neonatologist—Sophie was the one consulted at the time—and my judgement of the stage of the pregnancy. It was deemed advisable, for the baby’s sake—’

‘What was that judgement?’

Marty was prepared to accept his interruption—after all, the man had stuff he wanted to know—but the cold, hard voice in which he interrupted—she didn’t like that one little bit.

‘My judgement of the stage of pregnancy?’ she queried, her voice as cold and hard as his—all compassion gone. Two could play this game. ‘I measured fundal height, and used ultrasound to estimate the length of the baby and head circumference. But although these measurements are fairly close in the first and second trimester, by the third, beginning at twenty-eight weeks—’

Too much information now—he’d know all this medical detail—but he didn’t interrupt so she kept going.

‘They can be out by as much as three weeks, and that’s plus or minus. The man who was in the car gave no help apart to say she was pregnant when she moved in with him so the closest we could get was twenty-eight to thirty-one weeks. Natalie was tall and slim so it was also possible the pregnancy could have been further along than that—a possibility that became a probability when Em—the baby—was delivered.’

‘Dios! Call the baby Emmaline if you wish. Anything is better than this stumbling every time she’s mentioned.’ He glared at Marty, as if defying her to disobey his order, then demanded, ‘So, if anything, Natalie was further into her pregnancy than your initial assessment—that is what you’re saying?’

Marty nodded, feeling sorry now for Emmaline who had this disagreeable man for a father.

‘And the man said she was pregnant when she returned to him?’

‘I don’t know about “returned”. He said she was already pregnant when she came and that’s all he’d say.’

‘Oh, she returned, for sure,’ Carlos told her, enough ice in his voice to make Marty shiver.

There was a long silence, then he added, ‘So this Emmaline, she is mine!’

He ground out the words with such evident regret—distaste almost—Marty let fly.

‘You make it sound as if she’s an albatross hung around your neck by some malign fate. She’s a baby—she’s not to blame for being born. You’re a doctor—you of all people know how conception happens. Actually, ten-year-old kids know how it happens these days. But it was up to you. If you didn’t want a child, you should have done something to prevent it.’

She was glaring directly at him so caught the flash of something that might be humour in his eyes, then he smiled as he said, ‘And do you always think of the possibility of conception when you make love with your partner? Or is the easing of the urgent need the priority of both mind and body?’

The smile, though as coolly cynical as the words, confused her to the extent she forgot to breathe, then, angry at her reaction, she snapped at him.

‘I don’t have a partner!’

Oh, hell! Mortification all over again because that wasn’t the issue—her personal life was none of Carlos Quintero’s business.

Fine, dark eyebrows rose again and the jet-black eyes seemed to penetrate her scrub suit to scan the body hidden beneath it.

Infuriated beyond reason, Marty stood up, grabbed the empty cups off the table and carried them across the room. This man wasn’t interested in his wife, or how she’d died. His only concern—hope?—had been that maybe the baby wasn’t his.

Callous, arrogant wretch, with his insinuating remarks and come-to-bed eyes scanning her body!

‘It is not for myself I regret Emmaline,’ he said, and Marty’s wrath, which had been building up nicely, dissipated instantly. He’d used her name! ‘It is she I am thinking of. The life I lead—it is no life for a baby, yet it is work to which I am committed. This is hard, you see, for me now to have a baby and to know what best to do with it.’

‘Her,’ Marty corrected automatically.

‘Her!’ he repeated obediently.

Carlos watched the woman’s shoulders slump and knew he’d won a reprieve. He, who hated above all things to be dependent on another person, needed help—help to understand what had happened, and where things stood—help to work out what to do next. And one thing was clear—this woman had the baby’s—Emmaline’s—interest at heart and for that reason, he guessed, she might be willing to help a stranger.

She returned to her chair, though he could read her reluctance in the way she moved and her distrust in the way she held her body. One of those women to whom their job is their life, he guessed, though her attachment to the baby was strange—professional detachment usually went hand in hand with such dedication.

‘Do you know any details of the accident?’ he asked, steering the conversation away from the baby in the hope she might relax a little.

‘Only that it was single vehicle—apparently the car careened off the road on a curve and struck a tree—and Natalie was breathing on her own when the ambulance arrived. She stopped breathing when she was moved and they revived her twice at the site then put her on life support to bring her to the hospital. Foetal heart rate was stable throughout the examinations, and tests at the hospital showed no damage to the amniotic sac or the placenta and, as far as we could tell, no damage to the foetus.’

‘And the man?’

He saw the woman’s quick glance—clear, almond-shaped, hazel eyes sweeping across his face—before she replied.

‘Multiple fractures to both legs, some contusions and concussion, I think a ruptured spleen but nothing life-threatening.’

A shame, Carlos thought, then dismissed the thought as petty and unworthy. It wasn’t Peter Richards’s fault Natalie had loved him. Although, if he’d not broken off their engagement, sending her scurrying to Europe to forget him, the beautiful blonde would never have crossed Carlos’s path and this entire, unsatisfactory mess could have been avoided.

Though he wouldn’t use the words ‘unsatisfactory mess’ to this fiery little obstetrician!

Marty—as strange a name as Emmaline!

‘So he was hospitalised here?’

Marty nodded, though the look on her face suggested she was no more fond of Peter Richards than he was.

‘You didn’t like him?’

‘I didn’t know him, but I do know, once he was mobile, he never visited her, to sit with her and talk to her. I know she’d been ruled brain-dead but no one knows if on some deep level such people might feel comfort or support. He should have done it for his own sake if nothing else—having survived the accident that killed her—but he didn’t even come to say his goodbyes. She lay there, all alone, and so beautiful it hurt to look at her.’

Carlos saw his companion’s lips tighten to a thin line as she described what she saw as Peter Richards’s shortcomings. But she was right, Natalie had been beautiful. So beautiful she’d bewitched him, and he’d pursued her with an ardour and determination he’d never felt before, though beautiful women hadn’t been lacking in his life.

Anger stirred briefly—directed not at Peter Richards for his behaviour, or at Natalie for not loving him, but at himself for his folly in wanting her anyway, then he dismissed it, for the matter at hand was the baby.

A tap on the door, then a nurse popped her head around the jamb.

‘Dr Quintero, I’m about to change the baby and feed her. Would you like to see her? Hold her?’

He could feel Marty’s eyes on him but refused to look her way.

‘Not this time,’ he said, then felt obliged to make an excuse. ‘I have flown halfway around the world through too many time zones and am tired enough to maybe drop her.’

The nurse disappeared and he was unable to avoid turning back to Marty, who watched him, one mobile eyebrow raised in his direction.

‘What can I do with a baby?’ he demanded, so irritated by her attitude he was practically growling.

‘Bring it up?’ she suggested, and now he did growl.

‘You know nothing of my life. You sit there, so prim and righteous, passing judgement on Peter Richards, passing judgement on me. I work in Sudan, among people who lose their babies every day, so wretched is their existence. Children die because I cannot save them, because they have had nothing but stones to eat, and their mothers are so malnourished they cannot feed them. They might walk as long as six days to seek treatment for themselves or their children, then leave our small, makeshift hospital and walk back home again. That is my life!’

Marty was sorry she’d prodded. Like most people, she was overwhelmed with helplessness when she considered the death and destruction in famine- or war-ravaged countries. But that didn’t alter the fact that Emmaline was this man’s child. His responsibility.

‘So this baby doesn’t count?’ she persisted, and he stood up and paced around the room, a tall, angry stranger with a face that might be carved from teak, so strongly were his bones delineated beneath his skin, so remote the expression on those graven features.

‘I will deal with the baby!’ he said, after several minutes of pacing. ‘I come because a message reaches me—my wife is injured, dying perhaps. Do you think she told me she was pregnant before she left me? Do you think I would have let her go, carrying my baby? The baby is news when I reach the hospital. What am I supposed to do—summon up a carer for a baby out of thin air? Make plans for what school she will attend?’

‘I’m sorry!’ This time Marty’s apology was heart-felt. ‘I didn’t realise you hadn’t known. It must have been terrible for you—to arrive and learn you had a child. Most people have nine months to get used to the idea—to make plans. But you don’t have to decide anything immediately. Sophie wants to keep Emmaline in for at least another fortnight. At best, she was a month premature and her birth weight was very low, so she’s vulnerable to all the complications of both premmie and low birth weight infants.’

‘But so far, has had none of them?’

‘She was jaundiced after two days but that’s common enough and phototherapy cleared it up. Gib told you she’s five days old?’

Carlos nodded.

‘I assume Natalie’s deteriorating condition made a Caesar necessary earlier, possibly, than you would have liked?’

‘Her organs were shutting down,’ Marty agreed. ‘Life-support machines can only do so much. For Emmaline’s sake, it was advisable to operate.’

‘So now we have a baby.’

Marty would have liked to correct him—to say he had a baby—but he’d spoken quietly, as if moving towards acceptance, and she didn’t want to antagonise him again. In the meantime, she was missing Emmaline’s feeding time and a subtle ache in her arms reminded her of how much she’d been enjoying her contact with the little girl—and how unprofessional her behaviour was to have allowed herself to grow so attached.

She’d chosen to specialise in O and G rather than paediatrics so this didn’t happen—so she wouldn’t be forever getting clucky over other people’s children. In O and G you took care of the woman, delivered the baby, and after one postnatal check the family was gone from your life, or at least until the next pregnancy.

But with Emmaline it hadn’t worked that way, and all the up-till-then successfully repressed maternal urges had come bursting forth and Marty, doomed to childlessness, had fallen in love with a tiny scrap of humanity with a scrunched-up face, a putty nose, let-me-at-them fists and jet-black hair.

Misery swamped her, providing a partial antidote to the flutters she still felt when she looked at Emmaline’s father.

Get with it, woman, the inner voice ordered, and Marty tried.

‘I should be going,’ she said, standing up, acting positive and in control, but still waiting until his pacing took him away from the door before heading in that direction herself.

Just in case the antidote wasn’t working…

He moved a different way, blocking her path.

‘I’ve kept you from your dinner. Do you have far to go to your home?’

Politeness?

Or did he want more from her?

Positive! In control!

‘Dinner can wait,’ she said lightly, waving her hand in the air in case he hadn’t picked up the nonchalance in her voice. ‘And, no, my home’s not far. Walking distance actually. I live in an apartment by the river in a parkland area called South Bank.’

Explaining too much again, but the antidote wasn’t working—not at all—and the man’s proximity—his body standing so close to hers—was affecting her again, making her feel shaky and uncertain and a lot of other things she hadn’t felt for so long it was hard to believe she was feeling them now.

‘South Bank? The hospital administrator to whom I spoke earlier was kind enough to book me into a hotel at South Bank. You know of this hotel?’

Only because it’s across the road from my apartment building! How’s that for fickle fate?

‘I know it,’ she said cautiously.

‘Then, perhaps you will be so kind as to wait while I collect my backpack then guide me on my way.’

He was a visitor to her country so she could hardly refuse, and to flee in desperate disorder down the corridor might look a tad strange.

‘Where’s your backpack?’

‘It is in the office on the ground floor, behind the desk where people enquire about patients or ask for directions. A kind woman on the desk offered to look after it for me.’

‘Of course she would,’ Marty muttered, then she remembered this man had super-sensitive hearing and was wise to mutterings. She’d better stop doing it forthwith.

‘I’ve got to change so I’ll meet you in the foyer,’ she suggested, leading the way out of Gib’s office and along the corridor to a bank of staff lifts. ‘If you turn left when you come out on the ground floor, you’ll find the information desk without any trouble.’

Positive! In control!

She was moving away, intending to sneak a few minutes in the NICU before changing—not one hundred per cent in control—when his hand touched her shoulder and she froze.

‘Thank you,’ he said, though whether his gratitude was for her directions, her explanations or her kindness to his daughter, Marty had no idea. He’d lifted his hand off her shoulder almost as soon as it had touched down, and then stepped into the lift and disappeared behind the silently closing doors.

They collected his backpack and she led him out of the hospital, into the soft, dark, late January night. Humidity wrapped around them as they walked beneath the vivid bougainvillea that twined above the path through the centre of the park, while the smell of the river wafted through the air.

Usually, this walk was special to Marty, separating as it did her work life from her social life—if going to the occasional concert, learning Mandarin and practising Tae Kwon Do could be called a social life.

But tonight the peace of the walk was disturbed by the company, her body, usually obedient to her demands, behaving badly. It skittered when Carlos brushed his arm against her hip, and nerves leapt beneath her skin when he held her elbow to guide her out of the path of a couple of in-line skaters. If this was attraction, it was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, and if it wasn’t attraction, then what the hell was it?

She was too healthy for it to be the start of some contagion, but surely too old, not to mention too sensible, to be feeling the lustful urges of an adolescent towards a total stranger.

‘This is my apartment block and your hotel is there, across the road.’

Given how she was reacting to him, it was the sensible thing to do but as she stood there, banishing this tired, bereaved, confused man to the anonymity of a hotel room, she felt a sharp pang of guilt, as if her mother was standing behind her, prodding her with the tip of a carving knife.

‘You’ll be OK?’ she asked, then immediately regretted it. He couldn’t possibly be all right after all he’d been through. But he let her off the hook, nodding acquiescence.

‘I will see you again,’ he said, before shifting the weight of his backpack against his shoulders and crossing the road to the hotel, a tall dark shadow in the streetlights—a man who walked alone.

She turned towards her apartment building, free to mutter now, castigating herself for feeling sorry for him, but also warning him, in his absence, that the ‘seeing you again’ scenario was most unlikely.

Emmaline had a family now—there’d be no need for her to provide that special contact all babies needed. Emmaline’s father was best placed to do this for her and it was up to him to decide where the little one’s future lay.

Her heart might ache as she accepted these truths, but it was time to be sensible and make a clean break from the baby who had sneaked beneath her guard and professionalism, and had wormed her way into her heart.

She rode the lift up to her floor, then opened the apartment door, walking through the darkened rooms to stand on the balcony and look out at the river, reminding herself of all the positives in her life—a job she loved, a great apartment, interests and friends—but neither the river nor her thoughts filled the aching emptiness within her, and she hugged herself tightly as she went back inside to find something for her dinner.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I MAY join you?’

Had he been watching for her that she’d barely left her apartment when Carlos appeared by her side? A shiver ran down Marty’s spine, not because he might have been watching but because of the way his voice curled into her ears.

She turned to look at him in daylight—to see if a night’s sleep had softened the hard angles of his face. If anything they were sharper, while the skin beneath his eyes was darkly shadowed. The man looked more strained than he had the previous day.

Not that dark shadows under his eyes made any difference to her internal reaction to the man. Looking at him caused more tremors along her nerves than listening to him.

Determined to hide these wayward reactions, she went for professional.

‘Didn’t sleep much?’ she diagnosed, and saw a flicker of a smile.

‘The hotel is comfortable, but there was much to think about, and air-conditioned air—how do people sleep in it?’

Marty took it as a rhetorical question and didn’t try to explain that for a lot of people it was the only way they could sleep in the hot, humid summer.

The major question was, why was he here?

Had his sleepless night convinced him of his responsibilities?

Could he be interested enough in his daughter to be visiting her at seven in the morning?

‘You’re going to the hospital?’

‘I am.’

Maybe everything would work out for Emmaline! But Marty had barely registered her delight for the baby when he squelched it with his next statement.

‘I arranged things when I spoke to the administrator. For the next month I will be working there. Not for money, but for useful things to take back with me—equipment the hospital no longer uses because it has been superseded. No equipment is too old-fashioned for us as long as it works.’

The information about the equipment was interesting and she’d have liked to ask what kind of things he found most useful, knowing there were store-cupboards full of obstetrics gear that no one ever used tucked away at the hospital.

But something he’d said at the beginning of the conversation needed following up before she started donating old bedpans.

‘Working at the hospital? I’m sure if you asked they’d give you whatever they didn’t need anyway, so why would you want to work? Haven’t you heard of holidays?’

And shouldn’t you be spending your time getting to know your daughter—making arrangements for her care?

‘I try to work at other hospitals whenever I’m on leave, but not only in the hope of getting some useful equipment. My specialty is surgery and I have plenty of accident experience but there is always a time when I realise how little I know and when I wish I’d learnt more of other specialties. Your own field, obstetrics, is one of my weaknesses. Oh, I can do the basics but in Sudan I’m not needed for basics. There, the women look after each other and have good midwives, so mainly I’m needed for emergencies and this is where I fail my patients.’

‘You can hardly be held responsible for failing patients with complicated obstetrics problems,’ Marty told him. ‘Even obstetricians do that at times.’

‘I should know more,’ he said, refusing her excuses. ‘So, at the hospital I will work in the A and E Department and take the obstetrics patients, assisting, of course, a specialist such as yourself.’

Great! Flickering along her nerves she could put up with if it only happened occasionally, and was time-limited—like for a day or two! But a month? When he’d be around all the time?

Maybe she’d get over it.

She sneaked a look towards him, catching his profile as he turned to watch a pelican skid to a landing on the river’s surface, and knew she probably wouldn’t get over it. Whatever was happening inside her body was getting worse, not better, which was weird to say the least, because she wasn’t sure she even liked the man.

‘And Emmaline?’ she asked, knowing if anything was going to put her off him, his attitude to his child surely would.

‘I will have a month to think about the situation. As you said, the doctors want to keep her in for another fortnight, so the need to do something isn’t urgent. At the moment—well, at the moment I don’t know.’

His voice told her the subject was closed, but this was Emmaline, so as far as Marty was concerned it had to be reopened.

‘Don’t know if you want her, or don’t know what to do with her?’ she persisted.

‘How could I want her? I knew nothing of her existence! And a baby—it is impossible to fit a baby in my life. But she is my responsibility and I will make such arrangements as I see fit!’

‘She’s a child, not a responsibility!’ Marty muttered, forgetting that muttering was out.

And he did hear her, for he turned towards her, his face harsh with anger.

‘You are wrong, Marty Cox, and you are allowing emotion to cloud your thinking. A child must be the greatest responsibility a person can have.’

‘You’re right as far as that goes,’ Marty conceded, ‘but surely a child is a responsibility that should be considered with love, not just as a duty. Emotion has to come into it.’

‘Never!’ he argued, his deep voice rolling out the word with such certainty Marty frowned at him. ‘Emotion clouds too many issues—it makes us stupid, that’s what emotion does. A parent would be neglectful if he allowed emotion to sway the decisions or arrangements he makes for his child. He would be irresponsible.’

Was that true?

Should emotion be set aside in responsible decision-making?

Surely not, when how you feel about something at a gut level should always count in a decision. And wasn’t gut-level thinking emotion?

But, then, how could she, who had no child, argue that point?

‘As you say, you have a couple of weeks,’ she said lamely.

They walked on in silence, Marty perturbed enough by his ‘emotionless arrangements’ idea to barely notice the way her body was behaving.

Would his arrangements include putting the baby up for adoption?

How would she fare in the ranks of adoptive parents? A single parent who worked full time? There were so many childless couples out there, and those who could be full-time parents—social workers would surely favour such families for a healthy little baby like Emmaline. And shouldn’t she have been on a list?

Her mother would love a grandchild and she’d be happy to mind her while Marty worked.

But surely there was that list of hopeful adoptive parents—a list without the name Marty Cox even at the bottom…

Private adoptions?

She’d read of them, but did they really happen?

She glanced at the man again, but trying to read his face was like trying to read a blank sheet of butcher’s paper.

‘You are concerned?’

She’d turned away so had to look back at him.

‘Concerned?’

‘You sighed.’

‘I never sigh!’

‘Never? Not in the dead of the night when sleep won’t come and your thoughts are too confused to be sorted into shape? Not even when people’s stupidity creates problems for themselves and others? Why would you not sigh?’

‘Because it’s defeatist!’ Marty snapped, remembering something her mother had told her when she’d been very young and had probably been sighing about the unfairness of fate. ‘Why bother sighing, when you could be doing something about whatever is wrong? And if you can’t do anything about it, then again, why sigh? It doesn’t achieve anything.’

‘But it does release some tension or emotion, does it not?’

‘So does Tae Kwon Do, and it has the benefit of keeping you fit at the same time.’

‘But you can hardly kick out at your opponent in the operating theatre,’ Carlos said, and Marty, hearing something in his voice, turned to see a slight smile on his face.

He was teasing her!

And she didn’t like it one bit!

Did she really never sigh, or had she simply been making conversation?

Carlos studied his companion as she strode along, her eyes focussed on the path ahead of them, her thoughts who knew where?

Her slight figure moved briskly—a no-nonsense woman, this Marty Cox—no-nonsense, like her name. No-nonsense hair, cut short to hide, he suspected, a tendency to curl. No-nonsense muddy blonde, not highlighted as so many women wore their hair these days. It feathered around her neat head, a lighter colour at the tips, where it brushed against the almost translucent skin on her temples.

And though slim, she had curves in all the right places, and his body had already registered an attraction.

Not that she’d respond!

No-nonsense through and through would be his judgement, except that her eyes belied it. He remembered them slanting towards him as he’d asked a question—a greenish, bluish colour with gold pinpoints around the pupils. Dreamer’s eyes!

He shook his head. The sleepless night could be blamed for this fantasy, although not for the attraction he felt towards this woman. Had Natalie’s princess-like beauty captured Marty’s imagination, prompting her deep compassion, her involvement? Was that why she’d taken so much interest in Natalie’s baby?

Natalie’s baby?

He hadn’t thought of the baby that way before.

And wouldn’t again if he could help it—the idea distasteful somehow.

As the forthright Marty Cox had pointed out, Emmaline was his baby.

But Emmaline?

A fantasy name from the forthright woman?

She was indeed an odd mix.

She was also unclipping her pager from the waist of her jeans.

‘Hospital—A and E,’ she said briefly, picking up the pace of their progress, taking strides that seemed too long for such a petite woman.

He paced beside her.

‘What is your usual procedure with a page? Do you phone in?’

‘I would if I was at home, but we’re only minutes away now, so I’ll be there almost as soon as a phone call. The specialist on night duty must have his hands full for A and E to be paging me.’

They crossed the road and she led the way through a back entrance into the emergency department, lobbing her small backpack onto a shelf behind a manned desk by the door and grabbing a folded scrub suit to pull on over her clothing.

Then, as she thrust her arms into the sleeves, she turned towards him and smiled.

‘Well, get yourself ready. We’re on!’

Her smile wasn’t at all forthright. It was sweet, and slightly shy, as if unrelated to her confident manner and brisk words.

He glanced towards her, hoping she’d smile again, but she was talking to the nurse behind the desk, explaining about the page.

‘Oh, it must be the woman in the car they want you for,’ the nurse said. ‘Her husband’s driven into the laundry bay out the back. Let me check.’ She leafed through some notes on her desk then explained, ‘Full term, breech presentation, feet already out.’

‘At least someone had the sense not to try to move her,’ Marty replied, then she turned to Carlos. ‘Out this way. Have you delivered a breech? Normally it would have been picked up in prenatal care but a lot of women still don’t bother with it—or with much of it. When they present here in early labour and we realise it’s a breech, we’d do an ultrasound to work out foetal weight, a flat-plate abdomen X-ray to determine if the head is normally flexed or hyper-extended, and we’d do a clinical evaluation of the woman’s pelvis. Quite often, if there’s time, we can turn the baby. If the baby’s too big, or the pelvis is too small, or the head is in the wrong position, we’d consider a Caesar, but with the legs, and by now possibly the body, already delivered, we have to go ahead with a vaginal delivery.’

‘I remember the danger in a breech is in the delivery of the head, but you will do this in the car?’

She was snapping on a pair of gloves, but she smiled again, as if pleased he knew that much.

‘I imagine if you’re doing it back in Sudan it could be in far worse circumstances than the back of a car.’

‘Sometimes,’ he conceded, ‘although where I work there is now a hospital of sorts—the people themselves built it for me, with a thatched roof and mud brick walls, and the people are accepting it and coming if they need help.’

They reached the car and found a nurse kneeling at the open rear door, with a wheelchair, a gurney and several onlookers clustered nearby. The nurse stood up to make room for Marty.

‘FHR is strong, the feet showed then retracted but are well out now. I know theoretically about gentle traction on the feet, legs and pelvis in a breech delivery, but what’s gentle?’

She introduced Marty to the woman and her husband.

‘You’ve done just fine,’ Marty assured the nurse, squatting down so she could say hello to the woman and introduce Carlos, explaining who they both were and what she had to do, then taking hold of the protruding legs and body and slipping the forefinger of her left hand along the baby’s back so she could rotate his torso while his shoulders came free.

‘It’s a gentle pressure,’ she explained to Carlos. ‘We wait for a contraction, then use a finger to get the shoulder blades free. You’re doing really well,’ she added to the mother. ‘This isn’t your first?’

‘It’s her fifth,’ the father replied. ‘We had all the others at home but this was a new midwife and she felt the baby was in the wrong position and couldn’t turn it so told us to come to the hospital, then, while we were stopped at traffic lights, this happened. My wife had to push and I saw the feet!’

‘They’ll both be fine,’ Marty assured the man, who had obviously been prepared to deliver his child head first but had panicked at seeing feet. She was also reassured herself. After four children the woman’s pelvimetry should be flexible enough to expand to release the head. She turned her attention back to the labouring woman. ‘You’re the boss, so we’ll wait until you’re ready to push again then rotate him so his arms follow each other out.’

She turned to check the instrument tray, seeing the Piper forceps on it, should she need them to help deliver the head. She’d prefer not to, but if the baby’s head was hyper-extended, they’d definitely be needed.

‘Now,’ the woman gasped, while her husband, who was supporting her, leaned forward over her labouring body to see what was happening.

The arms came free and Marty continued with her instructions to Carlos who stood, bent almost double, beside her.

‘Now, with two hands, the left one underneath, you use your forefinger again, only this time you slip it into his mouth to keep his head flexed. Then with the next contraction, we pull down, then lift and pull at the same time. Wait for the push, then—bingo! One brave little boy comes backwards into the world.’

She held him while the nurse wiped his face and gently suctioned his nose and mouth, then handed the baby, who was squalling lustily, to the mother, took a soft towel from the nurse to cover him, then helped move mother and child to a wheelchair so she and the infant could be formally admitted to hospital.

‘You don’t do an Apgar score straight away?’ Carlos asked, and, still smiling about the successful delivery, she turned towards him.

‘He cried—that’s enough for me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s more important for his mother to hold him—to see for herself that he’s OK. We’ll still get the first Apgar done within a minute—or pretty close to it. Then another at five minutes, but, really, with healthy babies that’s stuff to put on charts.’

Their patient was wheeled into one of the trauma rooms in A and E to await the third stage of her labour, and for her new son to be checked out and his birth documented for posterity. But first things first. Marty clamped the cord in two places then handed a pair of surgical scissors to the father so he could cut the cord.

‘A son!’ the man said, touching the cheek of the baby who was held to his wife’s breast.

‘A son!’ Marty heard Carlos echo, and, turning, saw a look of wonder in his eyes, and although she experienced this same sense of miracle each and every time a new child was born, she had to wonder if he would have felt differently towards Emmaline if he’d been present at her birth.

Or if she’d been a boy?

‘Please, no drugs,’ the woman said, as Marty gently massaged her abdomen to encourage expulsion of the placenta.

‘Providing everything is OK, I’ll go along with that,’ Marty assured her. ‘But you’ve had a difficult labour and there could be damage to the uterine wall. I won’t make any promises at this stage.’

The woman seemed satisfied with this, though it was with reluctance she gave up the baby to be checked, weighed, cleaned and dressed.

‘A fine little boy,’ Carlos said, when the woman had been admitted—for observation only, Marty had assured her—and the two of them were having a cup of coffee in the staffroom.

The remark reminded Marty of his earlier exclamation and suspicion made her ask, ‘Would that have made a difference? To you, I mean? Would it have been different if Emmaline had been a boy?’

He looked genuinely puzzled.

‘Why would you think that?’

Marty shrugged.

‘Preconceived ideas of Latin men, I suppose. Where are you from? Italy?’

‘Spain,’ he snapped. ‘And on behalf of all so-called Latin men I find your assumption offensive.’

‘Do you?’ Marty said, challenging him with her eyes. ‘I’ll retract the Latin bit, if you like, but don’t tell me that most men wouldn’t prefer at least their firstborn to be a son.’

‘Nonsense!’ Carlos exploded, so genuinely upset she knew she’d been wrong. So wrong that she held up her hands in surrender.

‘OK, I apologise, but from where I sit it was an easy assumption to make. Do you know what Marty’s short for? Martina! And, no, I’m not named after a tennis star, but after my father, Martin, who’d wanted a son and when I arrived, the firstborn, named me after himself anyway. I’d like to think that some malign fate is working on the situation but I know it’s something to do with his chromosomes. Three marriages and five half-sisters later, he’s still without a son. His attitude has skewed things for me.’

She was talking too much again, but the man made her nervous in a way she’d never felt before. She drained her coffee and stood up. She wasn’t due on duty for another three-quarters of an hour and it felt like the day was already half-over.

‘I have patients to see on the ward then a list of out-patient appointments. Have you met whoever you’ll be working under in A and E?’

‘Anxious to be rid of me?’ Carlos asked.

‘Anxious to get to work,’ Marty retorted, although her habit of getting to work an hour or two early had only begun with Natalie’s admission. Since Emmaline’s birth, she’d been coming to work earlier and earlier, checking the baby first, then tackling paperwork, so she could free up small pockets of time later in the day to spend with the newborn infant.

‘Not up to the NICU?’ Carlos said, as Marty stood up and moved towards the sink with her coffee mug.

Marty spun towards him.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Exactly what I said! If you were not in the habit of visiting Emmaline before you started work each morning, I have seriously misjudged you.’

‘And is that good or bad—this misjudgement thing?’

He held up his hands as she had earlier.

‘It is neither. I have spoken clumsily. I am trying to say that I appreciate what you have done, and realise you have grown attached to the baby. I have nothing against you continuing to visit her. In fact, I would appreciate it.’

‘Why?’ Marty demanded. ‘Because you have no intention of providing involvement yourself? Because working here is more important to you than getting to know your own baby? A few dozen scalpels, some old autoclave machines and a clutch of crutches for some people in Sudan are more important than your own flesh and blood?’

She took a deep breath, hoping it might calm her down, then added, ‘You’re right, I have been coming early and, yes, my first visit was usually to either the ICU or latterly the NICU, but the baby’s father is here now, so she doesn’t need me.’

‘You called her “the baby”,’ Carlos said, the accusation in his voice mirrored in his eyes. ‘So, having provided her with a bond, you’ll now drop her—even drop the name you gave her? Well, I won’t. I’ll call her Emmaline and tell the nurses and doctors to do the same, and your friends will use the name and you will be the loser.’

He stood up and followed her path, carrying his cup to the sink.

‘But Emmaline will also lose,’ he continued. ‘She will miss your company, your touch, your voice, and maybe have a setback—develop one of the complications so prevalent in low birth weight babies.’

He put down his cup and stood looking down at her.

‘Is this fair to Emmaline? You may not like me, Martina Cox, but would you jeopardise that baby’s health because of personal antagonism?’

It was a great exit line, Marty had to admit. She was still staring at the empty doorway minutes later. All she’d wanted to do was give him a clear field to get to know his child, and the wretch had twisted things around so she was the bad guy in this scenario.

Could Emmaline suffer a setback if she no longer visited the NICU? Right on cue, her mind conveniently produced a list of all the things that could beset such infants—hypoglycaemia, pulmonary insufficiency, apnoea and bradycardia—not to mention SIDS.

She’d have to work out a programme so she could visit Emmaline at unexpected times when Carlos was unlikely to be there, and though this would eventually make it harder for her to separate from Emmaline, at least she’d be sending home a well and contented infant.

She’d worry about her own contentment at a later date.

This would have worked if Carlos hadn’t also chosen one of Marty’s unexpected times to visit his daughter. Or maybe someone had contacted him to tell him it was feeding time, for he was holding Emmaline in his arms, peering down into her crinkled face, a look of bemusement on his usually impassive features.

Marty backed down the corridor, right into Sophie, who was heading for the unit.

‘He looks as if he’s holding an unexploded bomb,’ Sophie remarked, nodding towards the tall man with the little pink bundle clutched gingerly to his chest.

‘I think he might see her in those terms,’ Marty replied. ‘He feels she’s already wreaked havoc in his life, he’s just not sure when the next upheaval will take place.’

‘Right about now,’ Sophie predicted as a nurse approached with a feeding bottle. But although she proffered it to Carlos, he shook his head, handing back the baby with the tense arms of a man who was indeed holding a bomb.

‘That’s no way to bond with her,’ Marty snorted, and was about to stride into the room and tell him so, but Sophie held her back.

‘He has to do it in his own way and in his own time, Marty,’ Sophie reminded her friend. ‘You can’t force someone to love their child. Love’s organic—it needs time and nurturing in order to grow.’

Sophie spoke with the conviction of a woman deeply in love and Marty forbore to point out it had taken Gib and his new bride all of three weeks to decide they were made for each other, all of six weeks before they’d married.

But Sophie’s words were comforting in a very different way, confirming Marty’s belief that what she was feeling towards Carlos was a purely physical reaction and nothing whatsoever to do with love.

‘I’d better go,’ she said to Sophie, as Carlos moved towards the public exit from the NICU.

‘You won’t stay and feed her?’

Marty felt the ache in her chest that could only be alleviated by cuddling that small bundle in her arms, but the nurse would cuddle Emmaline and talk to her as she fed her and what was that, if not human interaction? It was during the time between feeds and changing that Emmaline needed company…

‘I’ve got to wean myself away from her,’ Marty explained, and Sophie, understanding, gave her a hug.

But avoiding Carlos was less easy. She had barely finished a planned Caesarean delivery of triplets when she was called to A and E—an ambulance bringing in a teenager with severe abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding.

Marty beat the ambulance, but not by much, and wasn’t surprised to find Carlos by her side as the attendants wheeled the young woman, looking childlike in her green and white checked school uniform, into the trauma room.

‘Regan Collins, fifteen, BP 120 over 65, pulse 90 and firm, temp 99.3, severe cramps and bleeding,’ the ambo recited as he handed over the paperwork. ‘We have her on fluid replacement but haven’t done anything for the pain.’

‘Because she could be pregnant,’ Marty murmured under her breath to Carlos.

She stepped forward and introduced herself to Regan, who looked as if she needed a hug more than medication.

‘You’ll be OK,’ Marty reassured her instead. ‘We’ll take a look at you and see what’s what.’

The girl grasped her hand and squeezed it tightly, fever-bright eyes looking pleadingly into Marty’s.

‘You won’t tell Mum,’ she begged, and Marty’s stomach tightened. She hated these situations—hated being the one who had to break her patient’s confidence.

‘You’re a minor, Regan, and you were at school when this happened. The school will already have contacted someone in your family.’

‘But I could just be sick—she needn’t know what it is,’ the girl said desperately, still clinging to Marty as if she held the promise of salvation.

‘Well, I can’t tell your mother what it is if I don’t know,’ she told Regan. ‘So how about I examine you and we take it from there?’

‘Mum can’t know,’ Regan wailed, then burst into noisy sobs.

Now Marty did hug her, gathering the girl’s upper body in her arms and holding her close, making soothing noises as she patted Regan’s back.

She used her free hand to smooth dark strands of hair back from the girl’s face, while an errant thought flashed through her mind. Would Emmaline’s hair stay black?

It was none of Marty’s business.

‘Hush now,’ she said to Regan, when the storm of tears appeared to be subsiding. ‘We’ll sort it out.’

But Regan’s head moved against her chest, denying this as an option, her drama-filled adolescent mind certain this was the end of life as she had known it.

‘You can’t, nobody can,’ Regan cried, confirming Marty’s thoughts, but the teenager allowed herself to be lowered back on the trolley so Marty could examine her, questioning her gently all the time.

When did she last have a period? Were they regular? Did she have a boyfriend? Was she having regular sex? Using protection?

Beside her, Marty could feel Carlos all but squirming—it was obvious why he hadn’t become an O and G specialist! But when he murmured, ‘I could never ask Sudanese women these questions,’ she understood.

‘Maybe a female nurse could,’ she suggested, as she completed a gentle internal examination of the patient.

‘It’s all Rosemary’s fault!’

Marty looked across at Carlos and smiled but he was looking slightly ill and so anxious Marty felt she should be reassuring him as well. He obviously didn’t know that once teenagers starting blaming someone else, they were back in control.

‘Why?’ Marty said, and Regan started crying again.

But this time Marty continued about her business, asking Carlos to take some blood to go to the lab. ‘We’ll do beta HCG as well as the usual tests, and blood typing in case we need to operate,’ she told him, knowing he’d know enough to realise the test for human chorionic gonadotropin would tell them if Regan was pregnant.

Or had been!

Palpating Regan’s stomach, Marty found it to be soft, with no discernible lumps or masses, although Regan moaned with pain when Marty pressed on the uterus.

‘We’ll do an ultrasound now.’

‘Rosemary said she knew how to get rid of a baby.’

Images of olden times—of back-yard abortions and quack remedies to bring on a miscarriage—flashed through Marty’s head while her chest tightened with anxiety for the young woman—barely out of childhood—and the damage she might have done to herself.

But when she said, ‘How was that?’ her voice was gentle and contained, and Regan, taking heart apparently from Marty’s tone, admitted to exactly what Marty had been dreading.

‘With a knitting needle.’ The words were little more than a breath of sound but the thought of the damage Regan might have done herself made Marty shudder. Although in early pregnancy, with the foetus so tiny, it was unlikely any amount of poking would have caused the miscarriage.

Regan began to cry again, but this time defensively.

‘I had to do something! My mum would have killed me.’

‘Instead of which you could have killed yourself if you’d got septicaemia or bled to death before someone realised you were in trouble,’ Marty told her.

She wanted to say more—to wag her finger at the girl and yell a little. Say things like, ‘Surely you’ve heard of safe sex? Surely by your age you know something about birth control. The pill?’ but angry though she was about what she felt was the stupidity of teenagers, she knew now wasn’t the time for a lecture. Later on she’d have to counsel the girl on just these things, but if Regan was angry and resentful towards her, she wouldn’t listen.

The ultrasound revealed early pregnancy, now interrupted by this episode of blood loss.

‘I need to take you into Theatre for a small operation to have a look in there and clean things up. We call it a D and C, dilatation—opening up your cervix—and curettage, scraping around your uterine walls.’

‘That’s gross!’ Regan protested, then she brightened. ‘But it’ll get rid of the baby.’

‘We’re not doing it to “get rid of the baby”, as you so bluntly put it,’ Marty retorted. She was finding it more and more difficult to maintain sympathy for this self-focussed young woman. ‘We’re doing it to minimise the risk of infection and, far from being gross, it could well save your life.’

Regan must have picked up on Marty’s mood, for a tear slipped from one eye and slid down her cheek.

‘I’ve been stupid, haven’t I?’ she quavered.

‘Very!’ Marty agreed, but she gave the girl a warm hug. ‘And although in the end things will be OK again, they’re going to get worse right about now because we need your mother’s permission to do the op.’

Carlos waited for the teenager’s reaction, sure there’d be more histrionics. The more he’d seen of this particular patient, the more sure he’d become that he’d leave any O and G work, particularly with teenage patients, to whatever other medical or nursing staff he could beg or bribe to take over.

But the girl surprised him by accepting that her mother would have to know, although she looked pale, and so young Carlos felt his heart ache with sympathy for her. Then he thought of another girl—even younger—a baby girl high above them in the hospital.

He’d been beginning to think that, with sufficient help, he might be able to bring up a child, but no way would he be able to handle this kind of thing. Was it because she was a woman that Marty seemed a natural at it? Or was it her training that she’d been firm when she needed to be firm, while her underlying compassion came through in even her sternest words?

A nurse came in to tell Marty Regan’s mother was here, and Marty nodded, then told the nurse with them to contact Theatre to make arrangements for the minor op and for an anaesthetist to meet them there. She turned to Carlos.

‘Will you go with Regan and the nurse to Theatre?’

This was colleague-to-colleague conversation, so why did he notice her eyes as they met his when she asked her question? And notice how fine her skin was—smooth, lightly tanned and unblemished except for a small freckle just above her lip on the left hand side?

In days gone by, women with such a mark would have darkened it to make a beauty spot, drawing their admirers’ attention to the full lips beneath it.

‘Carlos?’

Had he not answered her?

Had the sleepless night confused his mind to the extent he was distracted by a freckle?

‘Of course,’ he said, and saw a slight smile flash across Marty’s face.

She suspected he was thinking of Emmaline—which he had been earlier.

‘Keep Regan here a few minutes while I talk to her mother,’ Marty suggested, as another nurse and an orderly came into the small trauma room.

Carlos moved to stand beside the girl while the nurse attached the drip to the small stand on the trolley and readied the patient for her move. Then Marty returned with an anxious, harried-looking woman, who rushed towards her daughter, caught her in her arms, and scolded her and hugged her all at once.

‘Stupid, stupid girl! You know we can talk about anything, yet you didn’t tell me. Honestly, Regan, sometimes I wonder if all your brains are in your toes. But you’ll be all right, pet. The doctor will fix you up and everything will be fine, but I tell you, if you ever, ever pull a stunt like this again, I will personally kill you then cut you into tiny pieces and feed them to the dog!’

‘Oh, Mum!’ Regan sobbed into her mother’s shoulder. ‘I was so scared.’

‘Of course you were,’ her mother whispered brokenly, crying now as much as her daughter. ‘All the silly stuff I told you about my getting pregnant too early and the struggle I had to keep you. Of course you didn’t want to tell me.’

Carlos watched and listened with a sense of wonder and discovery, as if he’d sailed into foreign seas—or landed on a planet called ‘Women’—and was learning firsthand just how different this world was. For these two were angry and upset yet obviously deeply loving towards each other in spite of the other emotions—the mother accepting, concerned, forgiving and nurturing all at once.

He could never handle that role for Emmaline…

It was obviously something only women could do…

He glanced towards Marty, who’d stood back and watched the reunion with that small shy smile on her face.

She already loved his baby…

‘Moving time, people,’ she said briskly. ‘Ms Collins, you can come with us up to the next floor. There’s a waiting room there where you can get tea or coffee. Do you have to let anyone know you’re here?’

The woman shook her head, gave her daughter one last pat, then stood back so the professionals could do their job.

‘She obviously loves her daughter very much,’ Carlos murmured to Marty as they fell in a small distance behind the procession. ‘So why was Regan so concerned?’

This time Marty’s smile was just for him.

‘It’s complicated,’ she said.

‘That I had realised,’ he assured her. ‘But how? Why?’

‘It’s a lot to do with expectations,’ Marty explained. ‘For some reason they seem to grow exponentially with love. Because these two are very close, Regan feels far worse about disappointing her mother than she would if perhaps she had a less involved and caring mother. Her mother has probably always told her she can talk about anything with her, and Regan believes that, but she also feels that her mother would be disappointed in her if she found out Regan wanted to have sex with her boyfriend, so to avoid hurting her mother she didn’t tell her.’

She smiled again, this time less shyly, and added, ‘That probably doesn’t make a jot of sense to you but, believe me, in the spider’s web of mother-daughter relationships, it’s near to normal.’

They’d reached the theatre and Marty was once again all business.

‘I’d have suggested you do it for practice,’ she said to Carlos, ‘but given how the haemorrhage happened, I’d better see what’s happening in there. If we leave a bit of tissue, she could end up with infection, and if there’s damage to the uterine wall, I’ll need to fix it.’

More than happy to be left on the sidelines, Carlos moved to stand beside the anaesthetist, who was questioning Regan about her health and explaining what she was about to do, inserting a mild sedative into the drip, attaching an oxygen mask, talking quietly and reassuringly as she worked.

Female anaesthetist, female surgeon—a woman’s world again. Was he more aware of it because in Sudan he’d seen less of the women? Their husbands brought the children for attention, or brought their wives and explained their conditions, wary about letting a man touch—or even look at in some cases—their women.

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