The Fiancée He Can't Forget

She swiped the tears from her cheeks surreptitiously while she pretended to stifle a yawn. ‘Sure. I could do with a break from this tedious admin. I’ll just log off and I’ll be with you. What’s her name?’

‘Helen Kendall. She’s in the assessment room.’

Amy found her sitting on the edge of the chair looking worried and guilty, and she introduced herself.

‘I’m so sorry to just come in,’ Helen said, ‘but I was worried because I’ve been really overdoing it with the move and I’m just so tired,’ she blurted out, and then she started to cry.

‘Oh, Helen,’ Amy said, sitting down next to her and rubbing her back soothingly. ‘You’re exhausted—come on, let’s get you into a gown and into bed, and let us take care of you.’

‘It’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have let him talk me into it, we should have waited and now the baby’s going to be too early,’ she sobbed. Oh, she could understand the guilt all too well, but thirty-four weeks wasn’t too early. Not like eighteen weeks …

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said with a calm she didn’t feel, ‘and thirty-four weeks is quite manageable if it comes to that. It may well not. Come on, chin up, and let’s find out what’s going on.’

She handed Helen a gown, then left her alone for a few minutes to change and do a urine sample while she took the time to get her emotions back in order. What was the matter with her? She didn’t think about her baby at all, normally. It was seeing that picture of Daisy’s baby, and thinking about Matt again—always Matt.

She pulled herself together and went back to Helen.

This was her first pregnancy, it had been utterly straightforward and uncomplicated to this point, and there was no reason to suspect that anything would go wrong even if she did give birth early. The baby was moving normally, its heartbeat was loud and strong, and Helen relaxed visibly when she heard it.

‘Oh, that’s so reassuring,’ she said, her eyes filling, and she was still caressing her bump with a gentle, contented smile on her face when Ben arrived.

‘OK, Helen, let’s have a look at this baby and see how we’re doing,’ he said, and Amy watched the monitor.

The baby was a good size for her dates, there was no thinning of Helen’s uterus as yet, and her contractions might well stop at this point, if she was lucky. Not everyone was.

She sucked in a breath and stepped back, and Ben glanced up at her and frowned.

‘You OK?’

‘Just giving you a bit more room,’ she lied.

He grunted. It was a sound she understood. Matt used to do the same thing when he knew she was lying. Maybe they were more alike than she’d realised.

‘Right, Helen, I’m happy with that. We’ll monitor you, but I’m pretty sure they’re just Braxton Hicks’ and this will all settle down. We’ll give you drugs to halt it if we can and steroids to mature the baby’s lungs just to be on the safe side, and then if it’s all stable and there’s no change overnight, you can go home tomorrow.’