Special Deliveries: Her Gift, His Baby: Secrets of a Career Girl / For the Baby's Sake / A Very Special Delivery. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ on IVF. She’s determined to be a single mum, she’d already started her treatment when we met.’

      ‘Oh, Ethan.’

      ‘I was giving her the shots.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because she’s petrified of needles and I didn’t fancy her then, or maybe I did.’ He shook his head. ‘Kate, I don’t even think I want kids, you know it broke Caitlin and I up. But even if I could somehow wrap my head around that, I mean even if I’d met Penny and she already had a child …’ He pulled a face. ‘I don’t know, Kate. I can’t walk around watching her get bigger with someone else’s child.’

      ‘Ethan,’ Kate said. ‘You know Carl and I were both having problems.’ She was very careful not to say too much, but he knew that they had both been having problems, that all three of their children were Carl’s in everything but genes.

      ‘I get that,’ Ethan said. ‘But I bet Carl took a bit of time to get his head around it, and I bet he said a few things while he did that he wished he could take back now.’

      And Kate stayed silent, because her brother was right—it had taken a lot of talking and a lot of soul searching before Carl had come round. ‘And that was with two people who both desperately wanted kids and I don’t even know that I do. I just walked in on the end of Penny’s decision and I’m supposed to be fine with it? Well, I’m not and I’ll tell you this much. I can’t even …’ He shut his mouth. He wasn’t going to discuss everything with his sister and he couldn’t explain properly, even to himself, the strange possessiveness that had gripped him when he’d almost slept with Penny.

      ‘What do you want, Ethan?’

      ‘Penny,’ Ethan said. ‘But I want time with Penny. I want to get to know her some more, it’s still early days. I don’t want to start something with someone who has a baby on board and be the one holding the sick back when I didn’t cause it.’ He looked at his sister. ‘Selfish?’

      ‘Honest.’

      ‘And I’m angry too.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      ‘Ethan?’

      ‘It really doesn’t matter,’ Ethan said, even though he hated it when others did that. ‘Because it’s not relevant now.’

      They couldn’t carry on talking as they were being called for. The engines were still and he stood there as Phil’s ashes were scattered. He looked at his aunt and uncle, who had been so strong at the funeral, celebrating his life, weep as the wind carried away the last thing they could do for him.

      Only it wasn’t just Phil that Ethan was thinking about as they stood in silence on deck. He wanted Penny to be happy, he was pleased for her, just terribly disappointed for them. Maybe he could do it, maybe he would wrap his head around it in a few months’ time, but he felt as if there were a gun to it now and he looked at the ashes sinking into the waves and he was crying.

      Not a lot and he didn’t stand out, there wasn’t a dry eye on board. He had every reason to be choked up, but he was, Kate knew, shedding a tear for other reasons too.

      Penny didn’t mind working nights, and she was actually glad that Ethan was on leave because she just wanted a pause to sort out how she felt about him. She wanted the hormones to calm down so she could look at things a bit more objectively. Not that she’d had even a moment to think about Ethan tonight; the place had been busy from the start of her shift and she was trying to put an NG tube down a very restless patient.

      ‘Come on, Mia, swallow,’ Penny said. ‘You need this.’

      ‘I don’t want the tube.’

      ‘Then you have to drink the charcoal.’

      Mia had taken an overdose and to stop the tablets from being absorbed further, she had to be given a large drink of activated charcoal. It looked terrible, it was black and chalky, but as Penny and Vanessa had told the patient over and over, it actually didn’t taste too bad. It was all to no avail, though—despite a lot of coaxing they’d only managed to get half the liquid into Mia.

      ‘If you can let me put this tube down your nose and into your stomach, we can put the rest of it down and you won’t have to taste it,’ Penny said, ‘and then you can have a rest, but it’s imperative that you have the charcoal.’

      ‘I can’t.’ The poor girl was upset already—after a huge row at her boyfriend Rory’s house she’d stupidly swallowed some pills and when she’d got home her parents had thought she’d been drinking. When Mia had finally admitted what she had done, before calling the ambulance, there had been another row for Mia with her parents shouting at her, even as the paramedics arrived.

      They’d started shouting again when Rory had arrived at the hospital, when most of all Mia needed calm, and Penny was doing her best to ensure that Mia got it, but first she had to get the charcoal in.

      ‘Do you want Rory to come in?’ Penny suggested. ‘He offered before.’

      Mia nodded and Penny called the young man in. At eighteen Rory was very mature and he held both Mia’s hands as Penny got ready to have another go at putting the tube down.

      ‘Big breath,’ Penny said, ‘and then start to swallow when the tube hits the back of your throat.’

      Except she didn’t swallow. Instead, Mia vomited all over Penny’s gown, so much so that it soaked through to her clothing.

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Penny said soothingly as Mia started sobbing her apology. ‘Let’s give it another go.’

      The cubicle looked as if someone had been playing with a black paintball and the staff and patients didn’t look much better either, but finally the tube was in. Penny checked its position, relieved that the tube was in the right spot.

      ‘Right, let’s get the charcoal in and then you can have a rest.’ The medication was poured down and Penny had a word with the intern, Raj, before she headed to the changing rooms. She was incredibly tired and couldn’t wait for the couple of hours till the end of her shift.

      Penny kept a spare set of clothes at work, but it was five a.m. and she was past caring so, rarely for her, she pulled some scrubs off the trolley, filled the sink with water to try and soak her shirt, and it was as she did so that Penny felt it—a cold feeling down below. She wanted to be imagining things, wanted to be wrong, so she dashed to the loo, but as she pulled down her panties it was confirmed that, no, she wasn’t imagining things.

      ‘Please, no,’ Penny begged as she sat with her head in her hands, trying to tell herself it was normal, just some spotting, that it wasn’t her period she was getting.

      Penny couldn’t stand to call it a baby; it was the only way she had been able to get through it last time. So she told herself that it was just a period, said over and over to herself that most women wouldn’t have even have known that they were pregnant at this stage.

      Except Penny knew that she fleetingly had been.

      ‘Penny!’ She heard Vanessa come into the changing room.

      ‘Can СКАЧАТЬ