One Night With The Italian Doc. Kate Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ theme is Christmas, Anton,’ Louise said in response. ‘I had a very tinsel-starved Christmas last year and I intend to make up for it this one. I’m doing the nativity scene this afternoon.’

      ‘Good for you,’ Anton said, and walked off.

      Louise didn’t poke out her tongue again and even if she had Anton wouldn’t have seen it because this time he very deliberately didn’t turn around.

      He didn’t want to engage in conversation with Louise. He didn’t want to find out why she’d had a tinsel-starved Christmas the previous year.

      Or rather he did want to find out.

      Louise was flaky, funny, sexy and everything Anton did not need to distract him at work. He wasn’t here to make friends—his social life was conducted well away from the hospital walls. Anton did his level best to keep his distance from everyone at work except his patients.

      ‘Hannah.’ He smiled as he stepped into the four-bedded ward but Hannah didn’t smile back and Anton pulled the curtains around her bed before asking his patient any questions. ‘Are you okay?’ Anton checked.

      ‘I’m so worried.’

      ‘Tell me,’ Anton offered.

      ‘I’m probably being stupid, I know, but Brenda came in this morning and I said the baby had moved and I’m sure that it did, but it hasn’t since then.’

      ‘So you’re lying here, imagining the worst?’

      ‘Yes,’ Hannah admitted. ‘It’s taken so long to get here that I’m scared something’s going to go wrong now.’

      ‘I know how hard your journey has been,’ Anton said. Hannah had conceived by IVF and near the end of a tricky pregnancy she had been brought in for bed rest as her blood pressure was high and the baby’s amniotic fluid was a little on the low side. Anton specialised in high-risk pregnancies and so he was very comfortable listening to Hannah’s concerns.

      ‘Let me have a feel,’ Anton said. ‘It is probably asleep.’

      For all he was miserable with the staff and kept himself to himself, Anton was completely lovely and open with his patients. He had a feel of Hannah’s stomach and then took out a Doppler machine and had a listen, locating the heartbeat straight away. ‘Beautiful,’ Anton said, and they listened for a moment. ‘Have you had breakfast?’ Anton asked, because if Hannah had low blood sugar, that could slow movements down.

      ‘I have.’

      ‘How many movements are you getting?’

      ‘I felt one now,’ Hanna said.

      ‘That’s because I just nudged your baby awake when I was feeling your stomach.’

      He sat going through her charts. Hannah’s blood pressure was at the higher limits of normal and Anton wondered for a long moment how best to proceed. While the uterus was usually the best incubator, there were times when the baby was safest out. He had more than a vested interested in this pregnancy and he told Hannah that. ‘Do you know you will be the first patient that I have ever helped both to conceive through IVF and deliver their baby?’

      ‘No.’ Hannah frowned. ‘I thought in your line of work that that would happen to you all the time.’

      ‘No.’ Anton shook his head. ‘Remember how upset you were when I first saw you because the doctor you had been expecting was sick on the day of your egg retrieval?’

      Hannah nodded and actually blushed. ‘I was very rude to you.’

      ‘Because you didn’t want a locum to be taking over your care.’ Anton smiled. ‘And that is fair enough. In Italy I used to do obstetrics but then I moved into reproductive endocrinology and specialised there. In my opinion you can’t do both simultaneously, they are completely different specialties—you have to always be available for either. I only helped out that week because Richard was sick. I still cover very occasionally to help out and also because I like to keep up to date but in truth I cannot do both.’

      ‘So how come you moved back to obstetrics?’

      ‘I missed it,’ Anton admitted. ‘I do like the fertility side of things and I do see patients where that is their issue but if they need IVF then I refer them. Obstetrics is where I prefer to be.’

      The movements were slowing down. Anton could see that and with her low level of amniotic fluid, Hannah would be more aware than most of any movement. ‘I think your baby might be just about cooked,’ Anton said, and then headed out of the ward and asked Brenda to come in. ‘I’m just going to examine Hannah,’ Anton said, and spoke to both women as he did so. ‘Your cervix is thinning and you’re already three centimetres dilated.’ He looked at Brenda. ‘Kicks are down from yesterday.’

      Anton had considered delivering Hannah last night and now, with the news that the kicks were down combined with Hannah’s distress, he decided to go ahead this morning.

      ‘I think we’ll get things started,’ Anton said.

      ‘Now?’

      ‘Yes.’ Anton nodded and he explained to Hannah his reasoning. ‘We’ve discussed how your placenta is coming to the end of its use-by date. Sometimes the baby does better on the outside than in and I think we’ve just reached that time.’ He let it sink in for a moment. ‘I’ll start a drip, though we’ll just give you a low dose to help move things along.’

      Hannah called her husband and Anton spoke with Brenda at the nurses’ station, then Hannah was taken around to the delivery ward.

      All births were special and precious but Anton had been concerned about Hannah for a couple of weeks as the baby was a little on the small side. Anton would actually be very relieved once this baby was out.

      By the time he had set up the drip and Hannah was attached to the baby monitor, with Luke, her husband, by her side, Anton was ready for a coffee break. He checked on another lady who would soon deliver and then he checked on his other patients on the ward.

      Stephanie, another obstetrician, had been on last night and had handed over to him but, though Anton respected Stephanie, he had learnt never to rely on handovers. Anton liked to see for himself where his patients were and though he knew it infuriated some of the staff it was the way he now worked and he wasn’t about to change that.

      Satisfied that all was well, he was just about to take himself to the staffroom when he saw Louise, still up that ladder, but she offered no snarky comment this time, neither were there any requests for assistance. Instead, she was pressing her fingers into her eyes and clearly felt dizzy.

      Not my problem, Anton decided.

      But, of course, it was.

       CHAPTER TWO

      ‘LOUISE…’ HE WALKED over and saw her already pale features were now white, right down to her lips. ‘Louise, you need to get down from the ladder.’

      The sound СКАЧАТЬ