Page 24 of West Wing to Maternity Wing!

‘So this is all about the baby? Nothing else?’

‘I can’t let it be.’

The heavy silence pressed in on them as they stared at each other in the dimly lit room.

Lincoln wanted to storm out. He didn’t need this. Six years of wishing you could see someone again, talk to them. And this was it.

Someone who pretended things weren’t happening. Someone who tried to put a cap on their emotions. Someone who wouldn’t face up to the facts between them. Someone who wouldn’t even give him a chance. Enough was enough.

The headache was pounding in her ears. The breath in her chest started to tighten. Zachary started kicking, as if he could feel it too. Her head was swimming and heat started to creep over her body. What was this?

Blackness crept into the edges of her eyes. She blinked twice. Had some lights just gone out? Then panic crept across her chest. Her legs starting to buckle underneath her. ‘Lincoln…’

He looked upwards just as she crumpled to a heap on the floor—too late to save her from smacking her head on the thick wooden planks. ‘Johnny!’

He turned her on her left hand side, making sure her airway was clear and checking her pulse. ‘Get me an ambulance!’ His hands fell to her abdomen, feeling the little life inside pushing against him.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut as guilt engulfed him. This could be a dozen different things, but he knew right now which one it would be—eclampsia. The headache, she’d said she had a headache and he hadn’t listened. She’d been checked that morning at the hospital, but this was new, this was a different complaint and one that could be a sign of eclampsia. One that should have made him take her straight back to hospital.

Instead he’d been too self-absorbed. Too worried about developing a relationship with her that would meet his own needs. Too worried that she wouldn’t tell him how she felt. He’d been angry. Shouted at her, probably raised her blood pressure.

He’d promised to look after her baby. He’d promised her a safe delivery.

Her body started to twitch. The first signs of a seizure. What had he done? Lincoln watched as things started to slip through his fingers—like the grains of sand on the beach.

He lifted his head. ‘Where the hell is that ambulance?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

LINCOLN shifted his position, his aching limbs objecting to the firm hard-backed chair. Was it possible his body was getting used to no sleep?

A little grunt came from under his chin. Baby Carson wriggled in the strip of cloth currently cocooning him against Lincoln’s bare chest. It was almost as if the baby could hear the steadying beat of Lincoln’s heart and was trying to get closer to it. He could feel the heat from his body wrap around the little figure, currently nestled under his shirt. He, better than anyone, knew that kangaroo care offered a huge range of benefits for pre-term babies—normalising temperature, heart and respiratory rate, decreasing stress, reducing risks of infection and promoting earlier discharge for premature babies. As a neonatologist he was a huge advocate for the technique. But he’d never actually done it himself. He’d never actually been the one sitting in the dead of night with a three-pound baby strapped to his chest. He swallowed the lump in his throat. He had to do this. He had to do this for Amy.

Cassidy Yates touched his shoulder. ‘How you doing, Linc?’ She sat down in the chair next to him, her blonde hair pulled backwards in a bun, her eyes lined and tired.

He moved forward to speak, but a little squeak from the baby made him shift back to his original position. ‘Is something wrong?’ His voice was strained. Please let Amy be okay.

Cassidy shook her head. ‘There’s no change, Linc. She still hasn’t woken up.’ Cassidy gave a sigh. ‘It’s only been forty-eight hours.’ A tight smile appeared on her face. ‘She’ll wake up today. I know she will.’

The words hung in the air between them. Both of them hoping they’d be true.

Lincoln brushed his hand against hers. ‘This is my fault, Cassidy, not yours. I was the one who took her out to dinner. I was the one she got into a fight with. I didn’t even realise she had any other symptoms.’ He moved his hand back and ran it through his hair. ‘If I’d been paying enough attention…’

‘Stop it, Linc. I was her obstetrician. I should have admitted her.’

Lincoln shook his head. ‘But why? You’d monitored her every day. There had been no change in her symptoms. What reason could you have for admitting her?’

Cassidy sighed. ‘Good old-fashioned instinct. I knew this wasn’t going to turn out well. I let Amy down.’

Lincoln looked at the little bundle under his chin. He reached up and stroked a gentle finger across the top of the baby’s soft fontanel. The first few sprigs of dark hair were just starting to appear.

Cassidy leaned forward in her chair, staring at Linc with her weary eyes. ‘I told her to phone me as soon as any other symptoms appeared. How long did she have that headache, Linc? Why didn’t she phone me?’

Because of me. Guilt tightened across his chest. Cassidy hadn’t slept in the last two days. She was worried sick. She felt guilty—as if she’d made a mistake. But she hadn’t. He had.

Deep down he knew why Amy hadn’t phoned. She hadn’t been focusing on her symptoms. She’d been fixated on the fact that she thought something was happening between Lincoln and Cassidy. She’d been jealous. And it had affected her relationship with her obstetrician.

Lincoln cringed. He couldn’t believe it had come to this.

Seeing Amy lying on the floor of the restaurant, seizing, had been the single most terrifying moment of his life. Never had a five-minute ambulance journey seemed so long.

And the E.R. events that had followed had felt like an out-of-body experience. For once, he hadn’t been in control. He’d watched as they’d put her on monitors, inserted IVs and catheters, and stabilised her. Once the seizure had been under control, a quick confab with Cassidy and the anaesthetist had resulted in a rapid trip to Theatre and an emergency Caesarean section.

Two hours after he’d brought her in her son had been screaming in his gloved hands in the operating room.

And then he’d made the biggest decision of his life. Because that’s when it hit him. Like a lightning bolt. He loved her.

And he couldn’t be the baby’s doctor. No matter what he’d promised Amy, he couldn’t be the neonatologist her child needed.

He’d too much emotional investment in this. And it would ruin his objectivity.

Yes, he could stand on the sidelines and discuss clinical decisions with the surrounding physicians but he had to step back. He had to take himself out of the equation. Because he didn’t feel like a doctor around Amy’s son. He felt like a parent.

But the one thing Amy had asked him to do was be her son’s doctor. And chances were she would never forgive him.

Cassidy stood up again. ‘I’m going back to ICU. She’s going to wake up today. I want to be there.’ Her voice was steady and determined, but Lincoln didn’t know if she was trying to convince him or herself.

His hands cradled the little baby next to his chest. In most cases kangaroo care was carried out by the mother. But in this case, while Amy was unavailable, it seemed the most natural thing for him to be doing.

But he’d had no idea it would feel like this. The feel of the tiny translucent skin against his, the feeling of the little body warming against his, had swamped him. All this time he’d only really thought about Amy. He hadn’t really brought her son into the equation. And now he was here, front and centre, and for the first time in his life Lincoln hadn’t been able to distance himself into professional mode. He hadn’t been able to sit on the sidelines and watch. He’d had to make sure he was in the middle of it all. No one else was allowed to carry out care for the baby.

; And it would be easy right now to pretend this was all about guilt, and that he felt he owed it to Amy to look after her little boy. If that was how he felt, he could have stayed in doctor mode, in clinical mode, and done the best job that he could. But it wasn’t how he felt. He could see Amy in this baby. And all the feelings he felt for her, whether he’d vocalised them or not, seemed to be intensified into this tiny body. Who could have known it could feel like this?

He’d often heard parents talk about being swamped by their feelings. But he’d never experienced it. Not like this. And he couldn’t even begin to explain it. He had no genetic connection to this child. He had no parental rights. Amy could wake up today and tell him she never wanted to see him again. And he knew all of that. But it didn’t change how he felt.

He shifted the little feeding tube currently taped to the side of the baby’s nose. Amy had wanted to breastfeed her baby, so they’d used some of the breast milk available in the NICU, but so far Junior hadn’t responded to cup feeding or finger feeding and with a premature baby time was of the essence, so they’d had to resort to placing a small tube down into his stomach. So every few hours Lincoln got a small syringe and fed Amy’s son tiny amounts of breast milk. Anything to help him.