One Tiny Miracle... (8 page)

‘Well, she had a good first night—she’s a restless little thing, aren’t you, Willow?’

‘Willow?’ Ben smiled, because it was the perfect name for her.

She looked so much better than yesterday. Tubes and machines didn’t scare Ben. If anything, they reassured him. She was a lovely pinky-red now, and pushing up against the side of the incubator as if she was trying to dig a little hole to climb into.

‘I’m just going to change her sheet—do you want to hold her up?’

It would have been appropriate for Ben to help, rather than just stand and watch—and the most natural thing would surely be to just hold her up as the nurse changed the bedding, except, feeling awkward, he declined. ‘No, thanks…’ He knew he looked arrogant, but it was a price he was willing to pay, so instead he just stood there and watched as the special care nurse changed the bedding, then wrapped bunny rugs into an oval and wrapped them like a little cocoon to help Willow settle. She was a scrap of a thing really, all spindly arms and legs and with a little pink hat covering her dark hair.

She was cute, but no cuter than any of the others he’d
seen as he’d made his way over to her. They could have taken him to any baby and told him that it was Willow and he wouldn’t have known any different.

And then she opened her eyes.

Even though she couldn’t possibly be doing it, he felt as if she was staring right at him, just as she had in the ambulance. He stared back at her for a moment, and then once again it was he who looked away first.

‘Thanks…’ He gave a brief smile to the nurse. ‘Thanks for letting me see her. It’s good to know she’s doing well.’

B
EN
dropped in on Celeste while she was still a patient and occasionally he saw her in the canteen and stopped for a chat and got an update as to how well Willow was doing.

She was doing
so
well.

Every day Celeste saw progress.

And not just with Willow. The ice was thawing with her mother too. She made the journey every other day, initially to see her granddaughter, but bringing in vital supplies for Celeste, then not so vital supplies and sometimes the occasional treat.

It was also Rita who provided an unlikely source of comfort as her milk supply steadily dwindled.

‘The more you stress about it, the worse it will be,’ Rita said firmly as Celeste sat in tears on the breast pump she hated so much, but at three weeks of age, Willow was only taking the tiniest of feeds from her mother before she became exhausted, and had to be gavage fed through a little tube that ran from her mouth to her stomach. Celeste was struggling to produce enough milk and
hated the bland room where she would sit for ages, only to produce a paltry couple of millilitres.

‘It’s important that she gets my milk.’ Celeste gritted her teeth. The lactation consultant had said so.

‘It’s more important that she gets fed.’ Rita refused to back down—she was tired of the pressures that were being placed on her daughter and frustrated on her behalf. ‘I couldn’t feed you either, Celeste. I had to put you on the bottle when you were four days old.’

‘And look how I turned out.’

The weight had fallen off her, sitting there, often teary, jangling with nerves, huge black rings under her eyes thanks to endless two-hourly feeds, broke and a single mum to boot. It was actually her first vague attempt at a joke with her mother in ages and for a moment Rita didn’t get it. Then, as she opened her mouth to carry on with her lecture, she did, catching her daughter’s eyes and starting to giggle, as did Celeste.

‘You turned out just fine,’ Rita said when the giggles had faded and the tears that were never very far away these days filled Celeste’s eyes. It was the nicest thing her mother had said to her in a very long time. ‘Go and get some lunch.’ Her mum took the feeble offerings of milk, stuck one of Willow’s ID labels on the bottle and popped it in the fridge. ‘I’ll finish up in here. You go and have a little break.’

Except it didn’t feel like a break.

Celeste far preferred the safe routine she had established. Living in the small mothers’ area, she was happy with her spartan room and evenings spent chatting with other anxious mothers. Her days were filled with
feeding Willow or expressing her milk, gaining confidence with Willow under the nurse’s watchful eye and taking for ever to choose what to order from the parents’ menu cards that came round once a day. Only every now and then her mother insisted that she ‘take a break’. And Celeste loathed it.

There really wasn’t much to do.

The hospital
gardens
were a misnomer, the gift shop had long since sold out of her favourite toffees and she’d read each and every magazine at least twice. She’d popped into Emergency a couple of times, but it had always been at the wrong time, the department full and busy, and she’d sat awkward and alone in the staffroom. But mostly she loathed the canteen, where the best way she could describe herself was an ‘almost but not quite’.

Almost a member of staff.

Almost a patient.

Almost a mother.

Except she had no uniform.

No ID tag on her wrist.

And no baby beside her.

Worse, her colleagues, if they were there, waved her over and after a couple of moments updating them on Willow’s progress, Celeste sat toying with her yoghurt, listening as Deb raved about the wild weekend she’d had and Meg moaned at length about her stint on nights that was coming up.

And then she saw him.

Pushing his tray along as he chose his lunch, Belinda was by his side, dressed in a tight black skirt and red stilettos, her raven curls tumbling down her back as she
laughed at something he was saying, and Celeste felt something twist inside her.

Belinda was so ravishing, so sexy and confident and clever and just…so much better suited to Ben.

She was quite sure that if they weren’t already together, it was only a matter of time.

‘Celeste!’ So deep in thought was she that Celeste hadn’t even noticed that her colleagues were clearing up the table. ‘Did you hear us?’ Meg laughed at her absent-mindedness. ‘We’ve got to get back—you drop in any time.’

‘I will.’

‘And I’m sure you’re not thinking of it yet, but when you feel ready, you come and talk to me. Try not to let too much time pass without coming back…’

‘I won’t.’ She said her goodbyes and sat alone, glad of the break. Belinda and Ben wouldn’t come over. Registrars didn’t generally sit with the nurses, well, in the staffroom they did, of course, but not in the canteen. Meg had unsettled her—of course it was way too soon to be contemplating returning to work, but in a couple of months’ time, that was exactly what she would be doing—it was just impossible to comprehend from this vantage point.

‘How are you?’ Celeste was slightly taken aback by the warmth in Belinda’s voice, and even more surprised when she put down her tray and joined her. ‘How’s Willow?’

‘Marvellous.’ Celeste blushed slightly as both Belinda and Ben joined her.

‘Do you have any idea when you’ll get her home?’ Belinda pushed.

‘A week or two,’ Celeste said, ‘if she keeps on doing well.’ But she’d lost her audience, Belinda excusing herself to answer her pager and suddenly it was just Celeste and Ben.

‘You’ll be starting to pack up.’ Celeste dragged her mind to something that wasn’t about Willow. ‘It’s just a few weeks till you move into your new house now.’

‘Actually, it’s this weekend,’ Ben said. ‘The vendor was more than keen for a quick settlement and I’m all ready to move in.’

‘Oh.’ She was stirring an empty pot of yoghurt. ‘I was going to come home for a few hours on Sunday—the nurses are insisting I take a night off. I was going to pop over and say thank you properly…’

‘I won’t be there,’ Ben said, and then there was a pause. ‘Of course, I’m only down the road.’ Except it wasn’t the same.

They were friends, but mainly by proximity, and though she didn’t want to rely on Ben, on anyone really, there had been a certain comfort to be had knowing he was just a few doors down.

‘Have you got my phone number?’ Ben asked. Celeste shook her head and he scribbled it down. ‘Here it is.’ Ben handed her a card. ‘You call if you need anything.’

‘Thanks.’ She pocketed it as Belinda returned, but they both knew she wouldn’t use it. Oh, they’d stop and chat perhaps if she was walking on the beach, but there would be no dropping round, no dinners in front of the television. Just as he was moving so too had she—she was a mother now, which, by his own admission, rendered her off limits to Ben.

Belinda said something that made him laugh and then they tried to include her in the conversation, but it didn’t work. She hadn’t read a newspaper in weeks, so she wasn’t exactly up on current events, hadn’t been anywhere except the special care unit, which meant she hadn’t a clue about the new seafood restaurant Belinda was raving about. She was just so out of the loop that it was like watching a foreign film. Celeste was so busy reading the subtitles, she missed out on the humour and laughed too late, and by the time she’d worked out what was being said, they had already moved on.

‘I’d better get back…’ She was about to add ‘to feed Willow,’ but it was a detail they didn’t need. The entire focus of her life was just a conversation filler to them. ‘Good luck with the move.’

‘Thanks.’

It was a relief to move.

To be away from her—even if it was just down the road—made him safe. There could be no dropping over, no hearing the baby cry as he walked past the unit.

Celeste got under his skin.

From the very first moment he had seen her on the beach she had entranced him—and every now and then, when she was around, somehow he forgot his rules.

But closing the door on the unit for the last time, there was a pang of something—a wave of homesickness almost for the weeks he had spent there, despite the argumentative neighbours and the lack of air-conditioning. It hadn’t all been bad, Ben thought as he picked up his sunflowers, which now were up to his shoulders in
height, and loaded them in the back of the hire truck, along with the rest of his belongings.

It had almost passed as home.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you…’ Ben was instantly awake, but as it was only his first night in his new home he struggled to find the light. He could hear the panic in her voice and it had him searching for his jeans the second it was on. ‘My car won’t start, and I can’t get a taxi for an hour…’

‘Wait outside,’ Ben instructed, not asking what the problem was, because clearly there was one—Celeste would never ring at two a.m. otherwise. ‘I’m on my way.’

Used to dressing for an emergency dash to the hospital, he was in jeans, T-shirt and running shoes in less than a minute. Another two had his car out of the garage and down the street, and she was there outside the units, waiting for him.

She’d got so thin. Even in these last few days the weight had fallen off her and she was as white as a sheet in the glare of his headlights. He pulled open the car door and she jumped straight in.

‘Thank you. You’ll be sorry you gave me your phone number,’ she gasped.

‘I’m not sorry at all—I’m glad you rang.’ He could hear that she was trying not to cry, trying to stay calm, and he didn’t push her with questions, just drove and let her speak and tell him the bits she wanted to.

‘The car wouldn’t start,’ Celeste explained. ‘I think it’s the battery.’

‘Don’t worry about that now.’

‘They said that she’s had a couple of apnoea attacks…they haven’t happened in a while.’

‘Okay…’ He forgot to indicate at the roundabout and cursed himself for his error as a car angrily tooted—hell, he did this drive most nights when the hospital called him in. He
had
to concentrate.

‘Her temperature’s high as well, so they’re doing bloods…’ He didn’t answer, just stared at the road as she talked nervously. ‘I told them to ring…’ She gulped and then managed to continue. ‘I mean, I told them that they were to ring me for anything. So maybe it’s not that serious…’

He doubted it.

Despite trying not to worry about Celeste, Ben was. He’d seen her toying with her yoghurt, seen her dramatic weight loss, her nervousness—and she’d practically told him that the nursing staff had insisted she have a night off, so they wouldn’t be calling her in the middle of the night for nothing.

‘She was doing so well!’ Celeste insisted, even though he wasn’t arguing. ‘I wouldn’t have left her otherwise.’ God, when did the fear stop? Celeste asked herself. When did you stop living in constant worry?

Get past the first trimester.

Get past thirty weeks.

Get her blood pressure down.

Get past a hellish labour.

Get past those first terrible few nights in Special Care.

Her leg was bouncing up and down, jiggling away.

When did it stop? When did she get to live without fear?

They were at the hospital and he could have just
dropped her off, only of course he didn’t, so they parked in the emergency doctor spot and he used his swipe card to get them in the back way, without having to go through Emergency.

‘How is she?’ Celeste was shaking so much as she went through the hand-washing ritual. The unit was brightly lit even at night, but some of cots were covered in blankets to simulate night.

Not Willow’s.

She seemed to have more tubes and people around her than she had on the night after her birth and Celeste was glad when the charge nurse came straight over and brought her up to date.

‘She’s stable, Celeste.’ Her voice was kind and firm and Ben’s arm around Celeste helped, just this quiet strength beside her as she took in the news. ‘Willow gave us some cause for concern a couple of hours ago—she had an apnoeic episode, which isn’t unusual here, but she hasn’t had one for a while, then she had another, and she started to struggle a bit with her breathing. Now she’d had some blood gases and we’ve put her back on CPAP, and the neonatologist has taken blood cultures…’

‘Has she got an infection?’

‘There are some patchy areas on her X-ray,’ the charge nurse replied, ‘so we’ve started her on antibiotics.’ They were walking over to her cot and Celeste felt her heart tighten when she saw Willow, seemingly back where she’d started, all wired and hooked up and struggling so hard to breathe.

All Ben wanted to do was turn and run, but instead he stood with his arm around Celeste and stared at the
machines instead of the baby. At every turn he was pulled in closer, dragged further into a world where he didn’t want to belong.

‘She’s been fine…’ Celeste sobbed when she saw her, the only relief being that Bron, her favourite nurse, was the one looking after her. ‘She was going to be moved to the nursery next week…’

‘It’s just a setback,’ the charge nurse said firmly. ‘Remember when you first came to the unit and we explained that these little one have ups and downs. Well, Willow has done exceptionally well…’ On she went about roller-coaster rides and all the rest of the spiel that Celeste was sick of hearing and had dared to think might be over now. All she felt was that she was back at the start again, especially when she was told she couldn’t pick Willow up.

‘Just hold her hand for now,’ Bron said. ‘We’re trying to keep her quiet.’

And with that she had to make do.

‘Here’s Heath coming now. You’ve met him,’ Bron said.

‘He’s not her doctor,’ Celeste pointed out.

‘No, he’s the consultant on call tonight. Have a seat in the parents room and I’ll get him to come and speak with you.’

‘Are you the father?’ Heath asked Ben as he came up to them.

‘No, just a friend,’ Ben explained. Then they could see Heath wasn’t listening to him as the charge nurse was urgently summoning him back to the cots again.