Pregnant with the Boss's Baby
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Sue MacKay
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Chapter One
‘THAT WAS TOO close for comfort.’ Nurse Tamara Washington watched the paediatric intensive care team wheel their tiny patient towards the lift and PICC.
‘Every parent’s worst nightmare,’ Conor agreed as he dropped onto a chair at the emergency department’s work centre. ‘At one point I didn’t think we’d get him back.’
The baby had stopped breathing while being examined to find what was causing his dangerously high temperature.
‘But you did. We did.’ Sometimes it astonished her that they were able to revive someone so young and small. Always it shook her up. Today... Today it had been hard to hold her emotions in. Too close, too frightening. What-ifs played in her head as she stared at the man typing in notes on the baby’s file. He needed to know.
‘Have I grown a wart on the back of my head?’ Conor asked in that Irish lilt that tightened her toes, and a whole lot of other areas of her body.
‘Can you spare me a few minutes at the end of the day?’ Tamara’s chest clenched as her reluctant question came out. A few minutes that would change Dr Maguire’s quiet, easy life for ever. No matter which path he took in response to the lightning bolt she had to deliver.
‘Sure.’ He tossed her a negligent eyebrows-raised glance. ‘What’s bugging you? More stuff about med school?’ He’d been more than patient with her over the application, and must think she was a pain in his gorgeous backside with her continual, often repetitive questions.
Tamara glanced around Auckland Central Hospital’s ED, the place in which she felt most at home, and definitely most confident. This was where she knew her stuff.
‘That’s me. Crossing the “t”s and dotting the “i”s before I finally push “send”.’ Not even a reputed university had been going to get the better of her. These days she checked everything, over and over.
‘Those “t”s and “i”s will be so crossed and dotted they’ll be unrecognisable.’ Conor gave her one of his dynamic, tummy-tingling smiles.
Except her stomach was far too tense to tingle. ‘Today’s the day I finish with it.’ Literally. Trash-bin finish. Training to become a doctor was the dream she’d been working towards all year. The dream she was so invested in had turned to dust over a thin blue line on a plastic stick. Two test kits, different brands, same result. No argument.
Tamara’s left hand pressed, oh, so gently on her unhappy tummy while her teeth worried her bottom lip. At least her mouth was better occupied doing that than spewing out any of the thoughts mashing her up on the inside. This being in charge of her life was full of pitfalls, all of them deep and dangerous. It was her life, right? Sometimes she wondered.
Conor cut through her worry. ‘As long as the shift doesn’t run over too much, let’s go to the local for a drink and food.’
‘No.’ Nausea swamped Tamara at the thought of greasy pub food. As for alcohol, forget that for a while. Sweat saturated the folds of her baggy scrubs. Since the first tweak of nausea on waking last Friday morning she’d been in a terrible state, gutted at the abrupt about-turn in her well-laid-out, Tamara-controlled plans. Of course she’d fought the obvious, denied the deepening despair, knowing she’d lost another round in life’s plans for her.
‘Why not?’ Conor looked bemused.
He hadn’t spent the weekend fighting the inevitable. No, that started for him later today. ‘Can we stick to your office?’ So you can vent in private. ‘I won’t take up much of your time. Promise.’
His kingfisher-blue eyes widened briefly. ‘This is about your application for university?’ As head of this emergency department, Conor had backed her all the way when she’d decided to start studying extramurally with the goal of entering med school next year.
‘For the absolute last time.’ No doubt there.
‘Right, my office when we’re done with headaches and broken bones.’
His thick brogue wrapped around her, softening her heart when it needed to be steel, making her feel all mushy about him despite not wanting to feel anything for him. A sexy man with a whole lot more going for him, he was hard to ignore. They’d shared one night in his bed—with devastating consequences. No denying the tingle in her thighs and lower belly whenever he turned all Irish on her, though. But that was about the sex they’d shared. He’d been hot, and imaginative, and very, very good. Phew, her cheeks were warming at the memories. Of the sex. Nothing else. Sometimes she still pinched herself to make sure she hadn’t imagined it. Now she had the evidence. No more pinches.
The strident sound of the buzzer from the ambulance bay curtailed any further discussion as Conor leapt up from the chair. ‘Here’s our guy.’ A car-versus-truck victim. Possible flail chest injury.
Hurrying after the only man Tamara had been intimate with in years, her gaze automatically scanned Conor’s longish black hair at the back of his neck, remembering how she’d run her fingers through the glossy waves. That had been then. Today was a whole new ball game. Learning she was carrying his baby was going to knock Conor off his impeccable stride.
Tamara heard the paramedic begin to give Conor her report on their latest stat one patient, and pulled on her professional face, straightened her back into its now usual, though false, don’t-fool-with-me, ramrod-straight line and pushed aside any thoughts not related to work.
‘Impact to the chest from the steering wheel, suspected broken ribs and perforated lungs.’
Conor interrupted the woman. ‘Tamara, take over debrief. I’m getting this guy into Resus and the radiology technician onto him now.’ Calm belied the urgency of Conor’s statement; the only giveaway to his concern a thickening of that mouth-watering drawl. He was already rushing the stretcher towards Resus, a second ambulance officer with him moving as fast.
Time was running out if their man had a flail chest. With broken ribs tearing holes in the lungs on every breath, the guy would simply run out of oxygen in very little time.
‘How long since the accident happened?’ she demanded of the paramedic, worried about the man’s chances of survival.
‘Approximately fifteen minutes ago. Just around the corner on Grafton Road. We were already on the road, heading to another accident, when the call came through. It was a load-and-go the moment we figured out what might be his major injury.’
‘Good on you for not hanging around, checking him out.’ Seemed something was on their patient’s side. ‘What else have you got?’
As the paramedic listed the other injuries Jimmy Crowe had sustained, Tamara couldn’t help sighing with relief. She was going to be busy for the next hour, so her mind would stay shut down on everything else.
‘Tamara, we need oxygen happening,’ Conor called as she ran into Resus. ‘ASAP.’
‘Onto it.’ Tamara shoved the paperwork into another nurse’s hands. ‘Kelli, can you read these obs out to Conor?’ Reaching for the gas, she mentally crossed her fingers they weren’t too late and that some oxygen would do its job.
She and Kelli worked in unison with Conor to get Jimmy’s bleeding and breathing under some sort of control. A cannula was slid into the left arm to allow for essential fluids to enter the man’s bloodstream.
Michael, a registrar, joined them. ‘A steering-wheel injury?’
Conor nodded. ‘Yes.’
Tamara wiped blood from the man’s mouth. ‘This could back up the lung-damage theory.’
‘Stand back, everyone,’ the radiology tech called from behind his portable unit. Whizz, click, whizz. Angles were changed, more images taken. Even before he’d finished Conor demanded, ‘What’ve we got?’
‘Give me a minute.’
‘We haven’t got a minute.’
Tamara understood Conor’s impatience. Their patient’s life depended on what the X-rays showed.
The images appeared almost immediately on the screen and Conor studied them with the intensity of a specialist determined not to lose his patient. ‘Fractures to the right side of his rib cage but no ribs pushed in at the front. There’s some displacement at the front, and two ribs have broken off the sternum, but they’re not causing further damage to the lungs.’
From beside him Tamara also peered at the images. The tightness in her shoulders did not ease. ‘I think our man’s very lucky.’
‘On count one, yes. But from my observations so far there’s probably a skull fracture, likewise with the right elbow, where, going by the amount of blood leakage, the artery is torn, plus internal injuries to deal with.’ Conor had already called for someone to get onto the lab to come and take a blood sample for cross-match. He turned to the guy from Radiology. ‘I need pictures of his pelvis and arms while you’re at it. Flick them all straight through to the radiologist.’
‘No problem.’
‘His spleen’s damaged,’ Conor reported later after a call from the radiology department. ‘Wonder what caused that? And the other injuries below the ribs,’ he pondered aloud as he snatched up the phone again. ‘I’m getting the surgical team on standby up to speed.’
‘The corner of the other vehicle must’ve pushed the side of the car inwards,’ Tamara commented.
‘How’s that oxygen flow?’ Conor demanded as he held the phone to his ear. ‘What’s his sat level?’
Everyone worked quickly and thoroughly, doing their damnedest to save the man’s life. When they finally stepped away to let the orderly take Jimmy to Theatre, where surgeons were scrubbed and waiting, Tamara felt exhaustion roll through her. ‘That was crazy.’ But what they were used to. Except she didn’t usually feel so tired afterwards.
Tiredness and nausea. Not normal for her. But they were for pregnancy. The towel she was unfolding dropped to the floor. It was so unfair it was incomprehensible. Oh, like life hadn’t been inconsiderate before? Hadn’t blown up in her face in the past?
On the far side of the room Conor was talking through a yawn. ‘I hate impact injuries. They’re often extreme and messy, let alone hard to stabilise.’ Why was he tired? Had a busy weekend between the sheets, had he?
A twinge of regret tightened her already tight stomach. Jealousy didn’t suit her, and was irrelevant as they were only friends and colleagues. Conor liked the ladies, nothing new there. She’d been quick to walk away after that fantastic night in his bed, being wary of any more involvement with him. Even then her heart had sent her a warning: Beware, Conor’s dangerous to your determination to remain single.
She watched him rubbing his lower back as he stretched up onto his toes, swivelling his neck left then right. His gaze caught hers as he continued, ‘Vehicles of all kinds are so damned dangerous.’
Her breath hitched in her throat as she locked eyes with him. A look like this one had led to her predicament. A night on the town with colleagues and kapow! One of those lingering, across-heads-of-people-dancing looks and she’d known they’d have to connect up. And reciprocal knowledge had been blinking out at her from Conor’s eyes. No denying something had to happen between them. And it had. Her mouth watered at the memories of the hottest night she’d ever experienced. And he was looking at her like that now. Her gut tightened. It would be so easy to follow through on the promise in those eyes.
Problem. They were at work. It wasn’t happening again. She was about to turn his world upside down. How many more reasons did she need?
‘Hello, Tamara. Anyone home?’ Conor waved at her, stopping those distracting thoughts. Not that he looked any more comfortable than she was.
What had they been talking about? Vehicles and danger. ‘Enough to put me off driving.’ Tamara dragged her eyes forward, away from the promise, avoiding that toned body, and focused on the bed she needed to strip. The muscles his scrubs were hiding were lean and strong and sexy.
She’d been rambling on about driving when she didn’t own a car. That eye-lock had a lot to answer for. ‘Being bowled off my bike would be a bigger mess, I reckon.’ The bike on her back porch that had a thick layer of dust covering it and spiders’ nests between the spokes of the wheels sitting on flat tyres.
‘You ever going to ride that thing again?’ Kelli asked with a hint of amusement from the other side of the bed.
Not in the foreseeable future. Her hand touched her tummy before she realised where she was and jerked it away. People around here had eyes in the back of their skulls. ‘I doubt it. I’m such a wimp. Since that day I rode into a grass-covered ditch and got tossed into the field, I keep thinking about splatting onto the road.’ She shivered. The media had been chasing her for a comment on her ex’s latest crime that had been exposed. It was lucky she’d got away with three stitches in her arm where a broken bottle hidden in the grass had sliced her. ‘I know a warning when I see one.’
Not with Conor, she hadn’t. His easy manner and take-me-or-leave-me attitude had added to the compelling physical need he’d stirred up within her over that dance floor. He’d been the first man since Peter. The first kiss, first sex, first sleepover. Sort of like getting back in the saddle, only more frightening because she’d understood how hard the fall could be.
At least with Conor it had only been about the great sex, and one night had not led to others. In fact, he’d seemed relieved when she’d leapt out of bed the following morning, hauled on her clothes, and declared, thanks, but got to go. He hadn’t seen the fear of wanting more from him that she’d struggled to hold at bay until she’d got away. The fear made harder to hide when he’d done an about-face and invited her to breakfast at a classy café near his apartment. Almost as if her rejection had piqued his interest. When, in desperation, she’d declined, he’d insisted on walking her to the bus stop. All part of his charm, and utterly dangerous in its temptation.
‘Incoming severe asthma attack,’ the triage nurse called as she slammed the phone back in place. ‘ETA ten minutes.’
‘No rest for the wicked.’ Conor grinned. ‘Or even the slightly bad.’
‘We can’t complain that the day’s dragging,’ Tamara retorted. Her day was taking for ever to tick by, yet at the same time three o’clock was charging at her full speed. How would Conor react? Would he storm out, shouting that she was a liar or a con artist? Or would he pat her on the head and say good luck and goodbye?
‘What is up with you today? You’re very distracted.’ Conor studied her from his six-foot-plus height. ‘Come to think of it, you’re looking peaky.’
‘I’m fine,’ she snapped, and headed to a cubicle where she could hear a middle-aged woman with a suspected broken ankle groaning. Peaky? Right. Of course she was peaky. She’d tossed up her breakfast that morning, hadn’t she? At least it’d happened before she left home and not on the bus, or, worse, not here where some nosy parker would notice quicker than wildfire ignited dry tinder and come up with the wrong cause. Or the right one.
‘Tamara, I want you on the asthma with me,’ Conor called after her.
‘No problem,’ she lied. Ask someone else.
‘In a better mood.’
Tamara nearly leapt into the air. She hadn’t heard him coming closer. ‘Don’t sneak up on me,’ she growled as her heart thumped loud enough for the whole department to hear.
‘Whoa.’ His hands were up, palms towards her. ‘Maybe you need to take a quick coffee break. Get some caffeine into your system. Something’s got your knickers in a twist and it’s not a good look in ED.’
He was right. When wasn’t he? On a long, raggedy indrawn suck of air she managed, ‘Sorry. I had a restless night. Seems it’s catching up with me.’ As if she could have slept when the truth had been leaching into her mind, pushing aside her dreams, taunting her. No wonder her head was beginning to pound like there was a band of bongo drummers in there. She never did well on less than eight hours’ sleep. Something she’d planned on getting used to once she started her medical training.
Now she was readjusting, learning the new phrase—once she became a mother.
‘Your mood anything to do with what you want to talk to me about?’
Too shrewd for your own good, Dr Maguire.
‘No. Yes. Sort of.’
‘Bring me a coffee when you get yours, will you?’
In other words, she wasn’t getting away without a caffeine fix. Sorry, baby. Don’t take any on board, or you’ll be buzzing all afternoon. ‘Three sugars?’ She arched an eyebrow at him.
‘For you, not me.’ He flipped a smile in her direction before reaching for another patient form, that earlier tiredness now tugging at his mouth.
Damn that smile. It could undo all her resolve to be firm with him. ‘Looks like you need the caffeine more than I do,’ Tamara muttered as she headed for the kitchenette. Tea for her. It might be less aggressive on her system. See, getting used to there being a baby growing inside.
Her knees gave out on her and she buckled against the wall as very real fear overcame her. Her dream was going up in smoke before she’d even pushed ‘send’ on that application. Becoming a mother was not part of the plan, had only been a remote, ‘not likely to happen in this lifetime’ kind of dream. But not any more. Not in her current situation. How was she going to cope? It wasn’t as though she’d had a good role model in her mother. While Dad had been the steady influence, Mum had always been a little off kilter, doing things without thought to time or place or other people. Like hopping on a flight to Melbourne for the fashion show and not telling Dad where she was until she’d landed. Dad had shrugged, said that’s your mother for you, and taken her out to dinner at a five-star restaurant. She’d been six at the time. Which parent would she follow? She knew which one she wanted to be like, but wasn’t sure of her capabilities.
‘Tamara? What’s going on?’
Conor could be so nosy. She shuffled her body up the wall until she stood upright, not quite ramrod straight, and eyeballed him. ‘Having a wee kip on the way to get those drinks.’
‘You think you should be at work? You’re not exactly on form today.’
‘Have I made any mistakes? Looked incapable of doing my job?’
‘Not yet.’ Conor studied her for a long moment. No heated connection going on now. ‘Take thirty. Get something to eat to go with that coffee.’ Her face must’ve given her away because his hand went up, palm out. ‘No argument.’
When he took her arm and led her into the tiny space that was the staff kitchenette she had no choice other than to go with him. Putting up a fight was a waste of time and energy that was best saved for other more important issues.
‘Here.’ Conor removed a brown paper bag from a cupboard and placed it on the bench. ‘Cheese scone from the café. Get it down you.’ Then he reached for the coffee.
A warning rose from her tense gut. No way. Food would have to wait. ‘Th-thanks. Tea for me.’ And this was the woman who had taken control of her life and refused to let anyone or anything tip her off track again? Tamara reached for the bag, tore it open and broke off a tiny corner of the scone. Shut up, stomach. Whose side are you on, anyway? And she popped the morsel into her mouth and chewed. And chewed. Swallowed. Take that. She took another small bite, and locked eyes with Conor. ‘Just what I needed,’ she agreed around a wave of relief that her stomach was supporting her. However briefly. For now she was back on track.
‘I’ll hand that asthma over to one of the junior doctors, then we’ll take our drinks to my office and have that talk you asked for.’
‘What? Now?’ She tipped sideways, grabbed at the bench. ‘It can wait.’ I’m not ready.
‘Something’s up and it’s affecting you. Best we sort it and get on with the day. Finish making those drinks, will you?’ Conor shot out the door, leaving her shaking.
On autopilot she spooned coffee into one mug, dropped a tea bag into another, added sugar and boiling water to both. Stirred. It’s too late to do a runner. Time to face the facts.
‘Ready? Good.’ Conor swooped back into the small space, picked up both full mugs in one hand and took her elbow in the other. ‘Let’s go.’
And then they were there, Conor’s office door clicking shut behind her, and the air all hot and heavy. Tamara sank onto the closest chair, gripped her hands between her knees and stared at the floor. She should’ve dug into the back of her wardrobe and found something half-decent to wear for this, instead of looking like the frump she hid behind. But then he’d have known something was up.
She heard the mugs being placed on the desk, Conor’s chair being pulled out, his knee clicking as he sat down. She felt his eyes on her, his bewilderment boring into her. Her skin chilled, and the moisture evaporated from her mouth.
Slowly lifting her head, she nearly leapt up and ran. There was so much concern radiating out at her from across the desk it undermined all the lessons on men she’d learned from her ex. Could Conor care about her that much?
‘Start at the beginning.’ Conor’s soft voice flowed over her, tightening already tight muscles and jangling nerve endings.
There was no beginning. No ending. Only the facts. Her spine couldn’t straighten to ramrod straight. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth. Her heart squeezed in on itself so hard pain shot out in all directions. ‘I’m pregnant.’
He rocked backwards in his chair, those beautiful eyes widening with disbelief. Or was it shock? She couldn’t read him clearly. Gone was the open-faced, cheerful, friendly man everyone adored.
Might as well go for broke, put it all out there. In a strangled whisper, she told him, ‘You’re the baby’s father.’
Then she waited for the axe to fall. And waited and waited. The silence was stifling. The walls came closer, squeezing the heavy air around her, suffocating her.
Say something, Conor.
