LITMIR.BIZ

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ANN BLACK was used to chaos. As she arrived at her fifth case of the day—a home birth—that was exactly what she found. Chaos.

      Daphne’s birthing coach—who was also her husband—was on the ground beside the bed, out of commission. The woman’s mum was doing her best to calm her daughter, but the shaky voice and panicked expression said she was in over her head.

      Taking a deep breath, Jess waded into the fray, her training kicking in. A senior midwife at Cambridge Royal Hospital, she wasn’t called out to many home births, but she’d followed Daphne through two successful deliveries in as many years. When she’d begged Jess to see to this one as well, she hadn’t had the heart to refuse. All had gone well with the other two, so she’d expected the same with the third.

      Except it wasn’t.

      Daphne gripped the bed, panting in quick breaths. Hurrying over to her, Jess gave her mum’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and asked her to see to Daphne’s husband. Then she focused all her attention on her patient.

      “I’m going to check you, love. Give me just a moment.” Snapping on her gloves to measure her patient’s dilation, she found instead the baby had crowned—head pressed tight against her fingertips.

      Alarm bells flashed through her system, but she suppressed them. Jess had learned to school her features into bland indifference—no matter what she was faced with. So much so that the hospital often asked her to step in when there was a particularly tense or emotional situation. She somehow had the ability to defuse them.

      Maybe because she had plenty of practice doing just that in her own family. Especially with her sister. Only it didn’t always work, as she’d learned the hard way.

      “How long have you been like this?” Jess grabbed several towels from the stack of clean ones Daphne had readied at her bedside and laid them just below the woman’s bum.

      “Hours.” The word was accompanied by another moan.

      Since Jess had only gotten the call fifteen minutes ago, she knew that wasn’t true, but it probably did seem like hours to someone who was scared and alone. Well, she wasn’t alone, but she might as well be.

      This baby was coming much faster than the others had. Jess had left the hospital as soon as Daphne’s husband rang her, but somewhere between then and now things had taken a turn, and Rick had fainted dead away. No wonder he’d panicked. Jess had always been here for this part of the delivery. He’d probably locked his knees and sent his blood pressure plummeting until he passed out.

      She prayed the baby was still okay.

      “You know how to do this by heart, Daphne. Your baby is almost here, so I need you to grab your legs and bear down on your bottom.”

      More panting. “I don’t know if I can. Hurts so much more than the others.”

      Jess didn’t stop to ask where the other two children were; hopefully they were with someone and not wandering around the house alone. She’d tackle that problem after she handled this one.

      If she was good at one thing, it was taking things as they came at her—dealing with one task at a time in the order of urgency. And right now, they needed to get this baby out.

      “You can do it, love, absolutely you can.” She helped Daphne get into position and told her to wait for the next contraction and then push. Jess’s phone was on the table next to her, the hospital’s number already on the screen ready to be dialed at the touch of a button.

      “It’s here.” Daphne groaned … or maybe the sound came from her husband, Jess wasn’t sure, but her patient began bearing down as Jess counted in slow measured tones.

      “Perfect. Take a breath and push again.”

      The baby’s head slowly emerged, the characteristic shape from compression very much evident in this little one, which made her again wonder how long he or she had been stuck in the birth canal.

      As soon as she delivered the baby’s head, she instructed her patient to stop, while she continued to support the neck and prepared for the hardest part of the delivery: the shoulders.

      Daphne had buckled down to work, her earlier panic gone as she concentrated on the job at hand.

      “Okay, let’s go at it again.”

      The first shoulder appeared, and Jess maneuvered it, easing it out. Then came the second. A little rotation to the left. There! Both were out. “One more good push, Daphne, and we should have it.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman’s mother guiding Daphne’s husband to a nearby chair. She called over, “Rick, put your head between your knees. Daphne is doing fine.”

      Her patient pushed again and, as she’d suspected, the baby—a girl—slipped right out and into her waiting hands. The newborn cried without any stimulation, making Jess go slack with relief.

      “You’ve got a baby girl. Congratulations.” Still holding the newborn, she used the tips of her fingers to pick another towel and draped it over Daphne’s chest. She then placed the baby on it. “Love on her for a minute, while I cut the cord.”

      With no one to hand her any instruments, she reached into her bag and found clamps and scissors in sterile packages and ripped them open. She then clamped and cut the cord and delivered the afterbirth.

      As soon as everyone was stable, and Rick was back on his feet and standing beside his wife looking rather sheepish, she pressed the dial button on her mobile. Daphne and the baby would need to be checked.

      Expecting one of the nurses to answer, she tensed for a second when a low masculine drawl brushed across her ear. “Cambridge Royal Hospital, Dean Edwards here.”

      Dean Edwards. Special Care Baby Unit doctor and one of the hospital’s most eligible bachelors. Definitely its most notorious from all of the whispered love-’em-and-leave-’em tales that floated through the hospital’s corridors.

      Forcing her voice to remain absolutely level and calm even though her pulse had rocketed through the roof, she informed him of the situation and that she was arranging for transport to take the family to hospital. She asked that someone be there to meet them when they arrived.

      “Will you be arriving with them?”

      She hesitated, tempted for some strange reason to say yes. Shaking herself free of the urge, she said, “I have somewhere else to be, but I’ll make sure they get off without any problems.”

      “I’ll be waiting.” The words sent a strange shiver through her. Almost as if he’d be waiting for her.

       Ridiculous. Back to reality, Jess.

      She still had her mum and dad’s anniversary party to get through as soon as she left here. The last thing she needed was to be mooning over Dean Edwards. Besides, she needed all her wits about her, because the party meant she would be facing her twin sister, who she’d only seen a handful of times since Abbie’s wedding day.

      The day Abbie had married Jess’s fiancé.

      “You’re still after him aren’t you? You’d love it if something happened and we broke up.”

      Jess stood there in shock as her sister’s furious words poured over her.

      After him? The familiar accusation ripped open old wounds and laid them bare.

      Hadn’t it been the other way around six years ago? Martin had been Jess’s fiancé, until Abbie—just like with everything else—had decided she wanted what her sister had.

      “Just stop it, Abbie. I’m not up to it tonight.” The pounding in her temples attested to that fact.

      “Well, that’s too bad. Because I have a few things I want to get off my chest, and since we’re both here …”

      Jess took a breath and reminded herself that they were at their parents’ thirtieth anniversary

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