‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do! Trust me, I’ve never meant anything more in my life!’
Then a voice, shrill with excitement, reached them from the stairs. ‘They’re coming up the road!’
‘Thanks, Gran!’ Heath shouted back, the relief on his face almost palpable. He turned to Ottilie. ‘It’s going to be all right. You’ll have everything you need now.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Ottilie said. ‘Zoe, I really need to push!’
‘Heath…’ Zoe ordered. ‘You can stay there for a minute, but be on standby for me.’
As the baby’s head began to show, Zoe readied herself for quick action. Exactly as she’d suspected, the cord was wrapped around the infant’s neck, but as soon as she was able, she looped it free and gently pulled it clear. With one last gasp of effort, the baby slid out, and Ottilie lay back on the bed as Zoe deftly cleaned them up.
‘There’s no crying,’ Heath said.
‘Give him a second…’
‘Him?’ Heath asked, but further enquiry was cut short by a fierce wailing that announced to the world someone new had arrived.
‘Can you take him?’ Zoe asked Heath.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, I…’
There was too much blood. No afterbirth, and blood that oughtn’t be there. Ottilie seemed woozy, out of it, barely looking at her newborn son, and every instinct in Zoe fired her into action.
‘Ottilie!’ she called, clicking her fingers in the air. ‘Ott, are you with us?’
She got no reply, but a second later there were heavy footsteps on the stairs and a paramedic team at the door.
‘She’s haemorrhaging,’ Zoe snapped, and a well-rehearsed routine began. In that moment, Ottilie ceased to be Zoe’s friend and colleague because there was no room for sentimentality.Personal stakes led to muddled thinking, and Zoe needed to be clear-headed because even the tiniest mistake could be costly.
‘What? Zoe, what’s going on?’
Heath’s question registered, but it was somewhere beyond Zoe’s main focus, and her answer was vague. When the immediate danger was over, she might regret shutting him out, but for now, she could only think about her patient.
‘Sorry, there isn’t time,’ she replied, barely even looking at him. ‘Stay with her.’
Heath didn’t say another word, and as the paramedics came to her aid with drugs, specialist equipment and spare hands, Zoe worked quickly to stem the flow of blood.
‘Don’t do this to me, Ott…’ she muttered. ‘Don’t you dare!’
3
Zoe had left Ottilie, Heath and the baby in hospital, feeling she’d done her best and that they’d be fine with the expert care the team at the neonatal unit could give. As she walked out of the department and into the car park, Alex was already waiting to pick her up.
‘Was it rough?’ he asked through an open window as she approached the car.
‘What you mean is I look rough and so it must have been?’
‘No, I didn’t…Sorry, it wasn’t meant to sound that way. I only meant…well, you look tired.’
‘I am. There were complications, like I told you on the phone – nothing I couldn’t handle. But some births take it out of you more than others. And it was Ottilie…I suppose I was more stressed than I would usually be. I mean, I try not to be, but it’s hard to help it when it’s so close to you personally.’ She let out a long breath. ‘Seems to be a theme in my life at the moment. People who are close to me with complicated births that I have to be in charge of. First Georgia and now Ottilie. Please have a word with Billie, won’t you? Ask her if she could possibly keep hers simple for me.’
‘Come on. Let’s get you back to Hilltop. Billie’s trying out her new clay oven, and you look as if you could do with some pampering.’
Zoe would like to have gone home, but she didn’t want to offend him or hurt Billie’s feelings, particularly as it seemed the effort they were going to was for her benefit. They were trying to care for her, to show her what she meant, and she could hardly be churlish about that, no matter how she wanted to lie in a dark room and collect her thoughts. And so she nodded and smiled. ‘Sounds lovely. I’ll have to pick up my own car from outside Ottilie’s house first, so if you can drop me off, I’ll meet you up there.’
