EMMA liked the way the roster worked in the maternity department at Glenfallon Hospital.
Nursing staff were rotated in a loosely structured but regular triangle between Labour and Delivery, postpartum and clinic duties, which kept their skills honed in all aspects of a pregnant woman’s care, from early prenatal visits through until the new mother went home with her baby.
This week, Emma was back in Labour and Delivery, and they were busy. It was the season for ‘New Year babies’—all those conceived, with planning or by accident, thanks to the relaxed atmosphere of the turning calendar nine months earlier.
Liz Stokes’s baby didn’t fall into that category—he was probably the result of the real-estate sales slump all through January!—but on Tuesday evening he announced his intention of arriving with the New Year babies, regardless.
At thirty-eight and a half weeks, Liz was now permitted to get up to shower every day, and her labour began while she was standing beneath the hot water. Pete was called in at once, and after examining Liz he decided not to attempt to halt the labour. The baby was within the full-term range now, and he’d told Liz that he wanted to schedule her on Thursday in any case.
Liz remained in her room for a little longer, and was then wheeled across to Labour and Delivery and parked temporarily in the corridor leading to the obstetric operating theatre. She seemed pleased to see Emma there.
‘I’m glad it’s you.’
‘You won’t see very much of me,’ Emma answered. ‘You’ll be under general anaesthesia.’
‘Yes.’ Liz frowned. ‘I know that’s what Dr Croft and I decided weeks ago. I was nervous about being awake, but…is it too late to change my mind?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Emma said. ‘It’s up to Dr Croft and the anaesthetist. And what about Warren? Is he going to be here?’
‘He should be on his way in. That’s one of the reasons I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been talking to a couple of other Caesarean mothers—I’ve met a few over the past couple of months!—and they’ve said how wonderful it was to be aware and clear-headed during their Caesareans, so that they could see the baby straight away. And Warren couldn’t be there if I had a general, could he? He’d have to wait outside.’
‘That’s the rule, yes.’
‘I think Warren would like to be there. We didn’t plan this baby, we were very unsure at first, but now that he’s almost here…’ She got a little teary and shaky, and another contraction came, gripping her forcefully.
‘Let me talk to the doctors,’ Emma said.
The anaesthetist hadn’t arrived yet, but Pete was at the nurses’ station, talking to someone on the phone. His sister? Emma wondered. She heard him mention the girls. This was the first time she’d seen him since Claire’s surprise visit yesterday. Her cold had dried up markedly, but her discomfort wasn’t physical, it was mental.
Should she tell Pete about Claire, and what she’d said?
Not now, obviously. The fact that she could legitimately put it off gave her a sense of reprieve that shamed her.
Instead, as soon as Pete had finished on the phone, Emma asked him what he thought about Liz’s change of heart.
‘I expect Clive will be OK with it,’ he said. ‘I’m OK with it, too, but I’ll call in Gian instead of Alison, and I’ll assist, instead of tackling it myself. With a conscious patient, I want this to go as smoothly as possible. Gian’s had a lot more experience with complete placenta praevia than I have, and the ultrasound ten days ago confirmed that this one’s going to be tricky.’
‘You can say no, Pete, and insist on the general. Some doctors would.’
‘Liz has had a rough time,’ Pete answered. ‘I’d like to give her this, since she wants it. It’s a sign of how far she’s come. She wasn’t at all sure about this baby.’
‘Yes, she just said something about that.’
‘And she and Warren both pretended to themselves for a long time that he wasn’t going to change their lives.’
‘She’ll be pleased.’
‘Here’s something I read when I was studying for my obstetrics diploma, Emma,’ he said. ‘A guy called Dr Tyler Smith said it in 1847, in a lecture that was published in The Lancet. He said that he hoped the day would come when “the lives of the mother and child shall never come into collision; when the painful thought of sacrificing or risking the one for the safety of the other shall never arise; and when there will be no difference between British or Continental, Catholic or Protestant action—the efforts of both being always exerted to save, and never to destroy.” Don’t you think that’s nice?’
‘You memorised it.’
‘Because I thought it was so resonant. And what Smith wanted so much has happened. We’re at that point now, in this country. At the time he was practising, Liz and her baby would probably both have died. As an outside chance, we might have saved one of them. Odds on the baby, not the mother. Today, our biggest choice is over which kind of anaesthetic to use.’
‘You’re giving me a chill down the spine, Pete.’
He grinned. ‘Too frightening at this time of night?’
‘No, too close to making me cry.’
‘Never want to do that,’ he said softly. ‘Never, Emma.’
She looked at him, bathed in the heat of her awareness, but couldn’t answer. Didn’t want to tell him that he already had made her cry. She’d cried because of him last night. They’d had such a warm, comfortable evening, sitting beside each other at the cinema on Saturday, laughing in the dark. They’d come so close to a kiss, talking and teasing each other in the aisle while the credits had rolled. And then they’d parted on a couple of halting, awkward phrases beside her car.
Claire had shown up two days later with guns drawn, as if even such an innocent evening together was a betrayal and a threat.
That night, Emma had cried. For the mess. For her own foolishness. For the fact that Pete might need her in his life, but couldn’t take what she most wanted to give.
Now, a day later, the evidence that he wanted to kiss her—and do much more than kiss her—was back, rich and simmering in the air like the smell of fresh-made chocolate. With Claire’s entreaty, it seemed further from reality than ever.
Emma was glad there was no time to dwell on the moment. Liz’s surgery took precedence.
With the higher than usual risk of a major bleed, due to the position of the placenta, Liz had given two units of her own blood several weeks earlier. This blood had been stored, and could be given back if necessary—an autologous blood transfusion, it was called.
After Emma had worked over her for a few minutes, Liz had a drip in the back of her hand and a catheter in place. Clive Anderson had arrived, and Gian Di Luzio was on his way.
‘They’re both OK about the epidural,’ Pete told Emma as they scrubbed.
Warren Stokes stood beside his wife’s wheeled bed, rocking back and forth on his heels and looking nervous. A contraction came, and Liz gripped his hand, panting and a little panicky. ‘Hurry up!’ she said. ‘I’m scared. What if the baby starts pushing down? It’s all blocked off down there, and he hasn’t got anywhere to go.’
She was wheeled into the operating theatre a few moments later, and again she looked and sounded panicky. ‘Maybe I should have had the general,’ she said. ‘How gory will this be?’
‘Not at all, for you,’ Pete reassured her. ‘We’ll put up a screen of surgical drapes. All you’ll see is the baby, as soon as he’s out and we can show him to you. Does he have a name yet?’
Dr Anderson had prepared the cannula for the epidural, and Emma knew Liz would shudder if she saw it. The question about a name provided a good distraction.
‘Ben,’ Liz said. ‘We’re going to call him Benjamin James.’
‘Warren, can you sit here, right beside Liz’s shoulder?’
‘Liz,’ said Clive, ‘I’m going to get you to turn onto your side and curl up tight so your backbone is nice and clear for me.’
Dr Di Luzio entered unobtrusively. He threw a quick smile at Kit, then introduced himself to Liz. He and Pete nodded easily at each other, too. The two men were friends and got on well, Emma knew, which always made for a better atmosphere during surgery. She liked the sense of respect between them—part of Pete’s essential nature, she was sure. He had an ability to inspire confidence and trust.
The drapes were set up as they waited for the anaesthesia to fully take hold.
‘No more contractions!’ Liz said on a breath of relief. ‘This is amazing!’
‘Can you feel this, Liz?’ Clive asked.
‘No. I can’t feel anything.’
‘This?’
‘No.’
‘That’s good.’
The baby—Ben—was out in ten minutes, and he took a hearty breath and began to cry as soon as he felt the air on his skin and the light piercing into his eyes. Liz laughed and cried at the same time, and Warren just kept saying, ‘Wow!’
The placenta was trickier than the baby. A syringe of oxytocin attached to Liz’s drip line helped the uterus to contract, but the poorly positioned placenta wouldn’t come away cleanly at first, and there was some heavy bleeding. If either Gian or Pete were concerned, they didn’t let it show, speaking as easily and calmly as ever.
‘We have blood, don’t we?’ Gian said briefly at one point.
‘Two units,’ Pete answered.
‘Always good to know.’ The obstetrician used the cautery to seal off a couple of stubborn vessels, and finally the placenta came away fully. During all this, Liz and Warren were too absorbed in their baby to realise that there was any drama, and it was soon over.
‘That’s nice now,’ Gian commented, speaking of Liz’s uterus. ‘That’s the way we want to see it, starting to tone up.’
‘We’ll have to take Ben away now, Liz,’ Kit said.
‘I’m not stitched up yet, am I?’ she asked, frowning.
‘No, that’ll take another half an hour, and you’ll see your baby in Recovery. You can even try him on the breast then, if you want to. Congratulations! He’s perfect! Come on, little man…’
‘It wasn’t so bad. I’m glad I had the epidural. Oh, it all seems worth it now! All of it! He’s so beautiful!’
‘That was a good piece of work in the end, wasn’t it?’ Pete said.
‘Are you still here?’ Emma said blankly.
It was five past eleven, the night nurses had taken over and she’d come down the stairs to find Pete standing in the foyer of the building, scuffing his heels on the floor like a bored ten-year-old.
‘By the time I was finished,’ he said, ‘It was almost eleven and I realised you’d be going off. Thought I might as well wait.’ His gaze fell on her face briefly, then flicked away. ‘See if you wanted coffee. I’ve never thanked you properly for all the work you did the other week, and I haven’t said how much I enjoyed the movie with you on Saturday.’
‘It was fun. The movie, and the garden.’
‘That’s not the point. You wouldn’t do a garden for anyone who asked, just because it was fun. You did it for me, Emma, and you did it for other reasons.’
‘Good ones,’ she said awkwardly.
‘I hope so. I don’t know.’ He looked down at her, frowning. ‘So, do you want coffee on your way home? The girls are at Jackie’s tonight.’
If there were good reasons to say no, Emma couldn’t remember what they were—not when Pete was looking at her like that, not when she felt this way. They’d managed, until now, to keep within the boundaries they’d wordlessly set for themselves. Why should tonight be different?
‘A quick one,’ she said. ‘And we can make it my place, if you like. Can’t really claim that your place is on my way home.’
‘I don’t care where we go,’ he answered. ‘Or what we do.’
As long as we’re together.
He didn’t say it, but it seemed so clear.
‘Neither do I…’ Emma’s heart gave its usual giddy lurch in her chest, and she wanted his company so badly that she almost felt ill.
The hospital was so quiet at this time of night. Barring emergencies that didn’t impinge on this wing of the building at the moment, visitors and most doctors had gone home. The two of them were alone.
‘My place, then,’ she added shakily.
They left the building together and walked in the direction of the car park, not talking. Pete put his arm around her, drawing her close to his side, and for a moment she let her head dip onto his shoulder, with her chin tilted upwards a little, so that her forehead was pressed against the warmth of his neck. If she’d lifted her face just a little more, she could have pressed her lips to the same spot.
It felt too good. She lifted her head again and slid out of the circle of his arm. He let her go without protest, as if he hadn’t wanted more. They both knew quite definitely, however, that he had.
He followed behind her car, through streets empty of traffic, and for some reason they both laughed when they got out of their cars in her driveway at the same time and met on her front path.
‘Why is this funny?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. It really isn’t. Not at all.’
‘It isn’t,’ he agreed. ‘But we’re laughing anyway.’
Just nerves, or something. Awareness. Stretched emotions, at breaking point and ready to snap.
They both sobered quickly, locked gazes and looked away again almost at once, as they so often did. Suddenly, Emma understood that tonight was different from all the other times they’d spent together.
Jessie and Zoe weren’t here. There were no distractions, no safe havens to retreat to. There were no crowds of movie-goers around them, and she knew they weren’t going to talk about gardens tonight.
‘Come in, Pete,’ she said, unlocking her front door and stepping inside. He followed her, shadowing her body closely. ‘Coffee, wasn’t it?’ The hallway was dark, and she reached for a light that was too dim and too golden to drain the intimacy of night from the atmosphere.
‘Whatever,’ he said.
‘Think I’m all out of whatever.’
‘Then I’ll just have what you’re having.’ They went down the corridor towards the kitchen, Emma leading the way.
She looked back at him and drawled, ‘Nothing very rugged. Milo, made with hot milk. Are you game for that?’ Her voice wobbled.
She moved to take the single step down to the sunroom, adjacent to the kitchen, but he reached out and held her arm, keeping her in place so he could step closer. ‘Hey, are you OK?’
‘A bit tense. Tired, I suppose. It’s late.’
And Claire turned up here just yesterday, begging me not to do this.
‘This was a mistake, wasn’t it?’ Pete said, almost as if she’d spoken aloud.
‘I—I think so.’
She hadn’t turned on any more lights, and the glow from the front hall barely reached this far. His face was shadowed as she looked up at him, but she could tell how intently he was watching her. Just the look in those brown eyes had the power to heat her to melting point.
‘My fault,’ he said. ‘I wanted to talk. Claire is back.’
‘I…uh…heard. I mean, I know.’
‘I’m not letting her have the girls yet,’ he ploughed on. ‘I’m not sure why she didn’t stay longer. She says she’s fine now, and I know from her mother that she’s taking her medication, but—’
‘Can we please, please, not talk about Claire?’ Emma begged desperately. ‘I know we don’t, very often…’
‘No, we haven’t.’ He stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. ‘I wouldn’t have thought—’
‘I’m sorry. I know. We hardly have at all. I know you need to. Perhaps more than we have. More than…I’ve let you, or something. I kept telling myself you wouldn’t want to. That you’d want a break from thinking about it. I was protecting myself, not you, wasn’t I? Kidding myself completely, I think.’
‘Haven’t noticed you doing very much of that,’ he said softly, but she ignored him.
‘And I know I’m a “friend”. You should be able to talk to me about anything you like, trivial or important. But tonight I really, really don’t want to talk about Claire.’
‘Ah, you’re right,’ he rasped harshly. ‘Oh, hell!’
‘I think…perhaps…after all…you should just go.’
‘No.’ His eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘That’s wrong. That’s not what we need. You’re right. Let’s leave Claire out of it tonight. I want to talk about us, Emma. That’s what we really need to talk about. It’s time. It’s way past time for this…’
He didn’t talk, though. Didn’t say anything more at all.
Instead, he brushed his knuckles against her neck, pushing her hair over her shoulder. He bent closer, his mouth steady and serious as he watched her lips, his face impossibly close now.
She pressed her lips together, then lapped her tongue between them, grazed her top teeth across her lower lip and waited, suddenly helpless, imprisoned by the hot depth of his eyes. She could see each silky lash, each agate-like segment of pattern in his golden brown irises.
His kiss came seconds later, and she’d wanted it for so long that it was impossible to turn her head away, impossible to do anything but sigh against him, wind her arms around him, feel him and want him even more powerfully than she’d wanted him all the times when they hadn’t touched.
She loved him. Pointless to pretend any more. Pointless to reassure herself that she had any form of protection in place against her feelings, any limits, any boundaries. She loved him. It was all very simple. Or it could have been, in other circumstance.
The heat between them built like fire through dry wood, faster than the power of the mind to grasp. The touch of his mouth was urgent and full and he held her as if he would never be able to have enough of her, as if his desire for her had been surging towards this moment for weeks, and as if he was utterly certain that hers had, too.
He was right, of course. It had.
‘Emma…’ Pete’s voice rasped in his throat. ‘I knew it would be like this. I knew you’d feel like this.’
‘Oh, Pete.’ She almost sobbed his name, and pressed her mouth feverishly against his, hungry to taste him. She could already feel his arousal, hot and insistent, the wanted proof of his need.
‘You knew it, too, didn’t you?’ he demanded.
‘Yes.’
‘Knew how much I wanted this…’
‘Yes, of course I did. As much as I want it, too.’ She was shaking, and could tell that he was as well. The muscles of his arms wrapped like iron bands around her, humming with tension.
‘I kept kidding myself that it didn’t have to happen,’ he said, stealing sweet, swift, ravenous kisses from her at every word. ‘And that if it didn’t happen, we were OK. We weren’t in trouble, or in danger, or doing the wrong thing.’
‘So did I.’
‘Tonight, to hell with all that, I just…don’t…care…’
He deepened and steadied the pressure of his mouth, parted her lips and tasted her once more, held her hips then moved his hands upwards, claiming every part of her that he touched, branding her with sensations she knew would belong uniquely to her feelings for him forever.
‘Yes. I know.’
‘This is nowhere near enough.’
‘No.’
They both tried to make it enough, however, straining against each other, pulling at clothes to gain access to living skin. His back was a warm sheet of muscle and bone, while the skin at his sides, below his arms, was supple and tender. His hands found the weight of her breasts and held them like coveted prizes through the fabric of her uniform. Her nipples tightened and jutted like cherry stones.
‘I want to go to bed with you,’ he said, his breath a hot flood against her neck, combing through her loosened hair. ‘Tonight. Now.’
‘Mmm…’ Not yes, or no, just a sound of passion and need that he’d dragged out of her.
‘I’m so tired of holding back on this, pretending we’re friends, and that that’s enough. It isn’t. Friendship is so insipid when I feel like this and sense it in you. It isn’t anywhere near enough, it hasn’t been, ever since you came back from Paris, and I don’t care about anything that might be in the way.’
And I care too much, she realised. About him.
Her heart was free, and it was virgin ground.
His wasn’t. He couldn’t love her. He wasn’t free to. Not yet. Legally, morally, practically, he wasn’t yet free.
And he might never be.
Only yesterday, his wife had come here to ask Emma not to let this happen.
‘No…’ she said feebly.
‘Emma…it’s so right. I want to show you…’
‘No. Why are you doing this?’ She spoke with her mouth still ravaging his between every word, and her arms still wrapped around him. He didn’t even seem to hear. Hardly his fault, after the signals she’d sent out through every touch and every response. He found the zip at the back of her dress and slid it down.
The uniform dropped from her shoulders and fell in a pool around her feet. He cradled her breasts again, with only the lace of her bra as a barrier, then he dropped his hands to stroke the tops of her thighs, sending new tendrils of sensation coiling to her core.
Suddenly she was far too close to tears. She found the strength to pull away from him, wrapped her arms across her tingling breasts and forced steadiness into her voice, making it sound harsh.
‘Why have you done this tonight of all nights?’ she repeated. ‘It’s not fair! We managed not to for so long, and the fact that we hadn’t…kissed…that we hadn’t admitted to any of this, in words or in touch, was the only thing that made it possible. It isn’t possible any more, Pete, now that we’ve started this. You’re married.’
‘Not for much longer.’
‘I know things have been terrible with Claire lately, but your bed’s hardly cold.’
‘The final papers should be through in a few weeks. We separated a year ago. No, actually, it’s longer. We tried again because of the girls—Claire wanted to—but it didn’t work. And it’s been over in our hearts even longer than it’s been over on paper.’
‘It isn’t over. That’s such a classic line. Pete, you need to know—’
‘Are you suggesting I’m two-timing you in some way? Surely you can’t be! Emma, I’m not!’
‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just believe—feel—that a marriage isn’t truly over until it’s legally over, with everything decided. It’s a moral issue. Partly. But it goes beyond that, too. You own a house together. You have two daughters. Have you worked out a property settlement? A custody arrangement?’
‘It matters, Pete. Those things aren’t just details. Claire’s illness isn’t an excuse, it’s a further impediment, and it’s important. You can’t know what you’re going to feel about me when it’s all settled.’ She pressed her hands to her face. ‘She came to see me yesterday.’
‘She? Claire? Claire did? She only got back—’
‘Yes, I know.’ Emma reached down and dragged her uniform back up her body, struggling with the zip. Pete neither helped nor hindered her. ‘The friend of hers who we ran into at the cinema…alerted her, I guess is the word.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She asked me not to let this happen. Said she wasn’t being catty, just pathetic. She said she needed more time, and she didn’t think it was fair to the girls to have you distracted by…well, this.’
‘So you’re in cahoots now, the two of you, both of you deciding on my behalf that it shouldn’t happen.’ His shoulders had stiffened even further. ‘That’s rich! Isn’t it possible I could make that judgement for myself?’
‘That’s not—No, I don’t mean it like that. Neither did she. I wish this hadn’t happened! I wish I’d thought this through, seen it coming, and been stronger.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Easy for you!’ She threw the line at him, hardly thinking about its meaning, and he seized on it.
‘Lord, do you think that’s true?’ He was very angry now. ‘Really? That this is easy for me? In any way? That I’ve done this lightly? That I held off at first, and then let this flare at last? I haven’t done any of it lightly. I’ve thought about this.’
‘With so much else to think about as well?’
‘Yes! And I care about how you feel, Emma.’ He hadn’t said, I care about you, she noticed. Just ‘I care about how you feel.’ Crucial difference. She didn’t blame him for it, it was simply a fact.
‘Then help me!’ she said. ‘Can we possibly go back?’
‘Pretend we never touched? Pretend we don’t feel like this, and that we haven’t talked about it, admitted to it? No, of course we can’t! And I don’t want to.’
‘This is a refuge for you. You’re still e-mailing me. If you tell me there’s some substance behind this, some kind of promise, I won’t believe you, because it can’t be true. It can’t! Not yet. Not with where your head and heart are placed right now. Not with Claire—how she is, and what she said. You’ve got so much still to work out, and to take care of.’
‘Might it not help me to do that if you were around? Dear lord, don’t I have the right to have anything for myself?’ Pete’s voice shook.
‘I have been around!’ she retorted. ‘As a friend! That was the way to do this. That was the only way to make it work. To make the right space between the past and the future. You’ve made it impossible now!’
‘You kissed me back, Emma,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t forget that. You very definitely kissed me back.’
She laughed, a twisted, complex little sound. ‘Yes, I did. I’ll take my share of blame for that, don’t worry. It doesn’t change anything. It just shatters our pretence even more thoroughly. We shouldn’t have done this. And we shouldn’t have pretended that friendship was innocent, and possible. It never was. Friendship was never on the cards!’
‘Certainly seems like it isn’t now,’ he said. His voice was tight, and so was his face. She couldn’t read him, couldn’t gauge the depth of his anger, or its exact source. ‘I should go,’ he finished.
‘That’s all that’s left, I think,’ she agreed.
‘I wanted to tell you about Claire coming back,’ he said. ‘Didn’t realise you already knew. That’s what I wanted to talk about, to tell you she and I might be able to push things through a little faster now. Decisions. Arrangements.’
‘I hope it works out for you, Pete, and for her.’
‘Most of all, for the girls.’
‘Yes, of course.’
He stepped back. ‘Was this the point we were always going to get to, no matter how we handled it, Emma? A realisation that the timing was completely wrong, and the ramifications too huge?’
‘I don’t know. I’m starting to think so.’
Pete nodded, but didn’t speak, just began to walk towards the front door. When he reached it, he turned slightly. ‘I’ll see you.’
‘Yes, I’m quite sure you will! More than either of us wants right now, perhaps!’
‘No clap of thunder when we first met, and now there’s no neat, clean goodbye.’
‘It’s—it’s all right. We’re reasonable people. We’ll deal with it,’ she said.
There was night-time, after all. Bed, with a pillow to cry into, and a back garden, with paths to pace restlessly on a moonlit night. He need never know about any of that.
‘Goodnight, Emma,’ he said, and opened the door.
She closed it for him seconds later.