Which was far easier said than done. The world seemed to be crying out for healthy pink babies but a handicapped child with special needs would take months, years even to place.
If ever.
‘What about the father?’
Again Corey hesitated. Handing her a wad of notes, he gave a small shrug.
‘What father?’
His two words said it all.
Glancing down at the patient notes, she read quietly for a moment. Patrick really had had a difficult start to life. Not only was he born eight weeks before nature intended, with major health problems, he had succumbed to several of the obstacles premature babies faced. His immature lungs had meant he had required forty-eight hours on a ventilator but he had been weaned off that now and was breathing with the help of continuous positive air pressure, a direct, measured flow of oxygen, commonly known as CPAP, but his marked jaundice was still proving to be a major problem and Lydia rummaged through the unfamiliar order of this hospital’s files, trying to verse herself on Patrick’s relevant issues.
‘Here.’ Taking the notes, Corey turned to the back of the folder, locating the blood results for her in a second, not even acknowledging the quiet murmur of thanks Lydia imparted as she studied the blood-work closely. Despite the intensive phototherapy to correct his jaundice, Patrick’s serum bilirubin was still rising and her forehead puckered in concentration as she plotted his results on the graph before her. If they couldn’t get the levels down, Patrick would need an exchange transfusion to remove the toxic blood and replace it, which would hopefully prevent organ damage.
Corey was obviously thinking along the same lines. ‘It’s an uphill battle at the moment, but we’ll get another blood result around midday and hopefully there will be some improvement.’ His eyes moved back to the little baby and they stared for a solemn moment at their small charge, watching the almost transparent abdomen rising painfully up and down with each rapid, exhausting breath, his face grimacing with the pain and effort of merely staying alive.
‘Do you ever just want to take them home?’
‘Heavens, no!’ Her response was immediate, a sort of knee-jerk reaction, an instant erection of the barriers Lydia created just to survive her work. But even as the words left her lips Lydia realised how awful she must have sounded, watching the tiny headway they had made disappear in a puff of smoke. As Corey’s eyes narrowed, she realised he hadn’t actually expected an answer, that he had been talking more to himself than to her. ‘I mean…’ Swallowing hard, Lydia gave a helpless shrug. How could she tell him she was having enough trouble getting her head around the fact she’d be bringing her own child home from hospital in a few short months, let alone someone else’s? ‘I just try not to get too involved.’
When he didn’t respond she pushed on regardless, trying to somehow rewind, to wipe the slate clean without revealing too much of herself. ‘It’s sad and everything, awful actually…’ Her voice trailed off, realising how awful she was sounding, as if she had a plum in her mouth, hating the sound of her own voice as she reeled off a few more platitudes while knowing it was useless.
Unfeeling bitch.
She could almost feel him punching out the letters as he labelled and pigeonholed her, but as Dr Browne and his entourage swept into the ward the rather uncomfortable conversation was left behind as Corey gave a small eye roll. ‘Ready for the off?’
The ward round took for ever. Dr Browne was rather old school and even Lydia was slightly taken aback by the in-depth discussions at the cots, sure the barrage of scenarios he detailed wouldn’t be very comforting for the anxious parents. After a rather gruelling hour it was a rather washed-out Lydia who finally sat down at the nurses’ station, simultaneously clicking away at the computer and wrestling with a mountain of notes to write up the ward round findings and formally prescribe new courses of treatment as the junior doctors set to work on the barrage of tests and drug charts that needed completing. Looking up, Lydia noted Corey quietly making his way around the unit, talking in turn to each of the parents, presumably answering the multitude of questions the ward round would have thrown up and hopefully clarifying a few issues.
He was good, she had to admit it. Most NUMs would be dashing off to a meeting or holing themselves up in the office by now, but Corey had barely left the shop floor all morning.
He was good-looking. too.
Where that thought had appeared from Lydia had no idea. For the last few months she had wandered the world in a curiously asexual state, too focused on her own troubles to register irrelevancies like looks, gender, emotions. Now suddenly here she was, five months into the most nauseous pregnancy in history, sworn off men for the next millennium at the very least, staring across the ward at a man she knew absolutely nothing about and who, more to the point, was probably gay! Giving herself a mental shake, Lydia dragged her eyes back to her notes, trying to cross-reference some lab results on the computer as she filled in the patients’ history in her vibrant purple scrawl. Even though she was a registrar, even though she probably wrote the blessed word five times a working day, as she stumbled through the mental block that the spelling of the word ‘diarrhoea’ eternally produced she found her eyes drifting back to him.
Very good-looking, she mentally reiterated, in a rugged sort of way. Dark curls that needed a cut coiled on the back of a very thick neck, and the set of his wide shoulders made him look more like a rugby player than a neonatal nurse, which, however politically incorrect, begged a question in itself which Lydia answered this time in a nano-second.
Corey Hughes was definitely not gay.
He looked up then, a slightly confused smile crinkling his eyes as he caught her staring. An extremely unbecoming blush whooshed up Lydia’s cheeks as he made his way over.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked, frowning in concern as Lydia fanned her cheeks with a prescription chart.
‘Everything’s fine. It’s just a bit hot in here.’
‘Did you want something?’
She was about to say no but, remembering she’d been caught staring, Lydia forced a hasty question. ‘I’m trying to get into the computer to see if Patrick’s labs are back. I haven’t had much luck.’
‘Have you used the right password?’ Coming round to her side of the desk, Corey peered over her shoulder, leaning forward and tapping away as Lydia sat rigid, staring at the back of his very large hands and trying and failing not to check for a wedding ring.
Absent, as was her pulse for a second as Corey’s arm brushed her cheek.
‘You’re already in,’ he said, bemused. ‘Did you type in the correct UR number?’
‘That must be it.’ Lydia flushed even more as Corey tapped away and Patrick’s results appeared on the screen. ‘They’re still not back.’
‘They won’t be till lunchtime.’ Corey frowned. ‘I already told you that.’
‘So you did.’
He obviously wasn’t one for small talk. He made his way back across the ward and resumed whatever it was he had been doing as Lydia stared helplessly at the screen, cheeks flaming, heart pounding, trying to ignore the delicious lingering waft of his after-shave, stunned at the response he’d elicited from her, curiously irritated at her body’s rather unloyal response.
She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake.
Wasn’t that supposed to exalt her to some sort of nun-like status?
Wasn’t her libido supposed to vanish with her waist line?
Not that it made a scrap of difference. From the black looks Corey flashed at her every now and then, from the rather terse way he addressed her, this was one relationship that was clearly set to stay professional.
Oh, well, Lydia sighed, pulling out her hair tie at the end of a long and exhausting day, snapping the folders closed and flicking off the light in the cupboard