The Midwife's Longed-For Baby

He stood up and moved to her side, gripping the cot sides on the edge of the bed as he stared down at her ashen face. A bruise was coming out on her cheekbone, blue against the pale skin, and he swallowed hard. ‘Yes, it’s me, Liv. Is that OK, or do you want me to leave?’

‘No, stay with me, please?’ Her hand fluttered, and he reached down and slipped his fingers through hers and they curled around his and clung.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, aware of how gruff his voice sounded but unable to do anything about it.

She shrugged slightly, and winced. ‘Sore?’ she said, sounding weak and tired and nothing like his Liv. ‘I’ve got a banging headache and everything’s feeling a bit tender. Sam said I was lucky not to break anything, but it doesn’t feel lucky from where I’m lying.’

‘It’s lucky,’ he said fervently. ‘Trust me, it’s lucky. I watched that car hit you, and for a minute there—well, whatever. If I hadn’t followed you—’

‘Nick, it wasn’t your fault I stepped out in front of it.’

‘Don’t, Liv. I don’t want to think about it. It’s all I can see as it is, and it was my fault, I should have listened to you and let you go.’ He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a long, lingering kiss to the back of her fingers. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, anything I can get you?’

‘A taxi?’ she joked weakly. ‘Not that I can go anywhere. They cut my clothes off.’

He frowned. ‘They had to, Liv. They had no idea what injuries you had, and anyway, hitting the tarmac won’t have done them any good. And as for the taxi, you’re going nowhere,’ he said firmly. ‘Sam’s talking about admitting you overnight for observation and I think it’s a good idea.’

‘No-o. I don’t want to stay in,’ she moaned softly. ‘It’s so noisy here. I just want my own bed.’

‘OK. Maybe later. I’ll talk to Sam,’ he murmured to stall her, although he knew darned well what Sam would say, and so, apparently, did she.

‘My parents used to do that,’ she said, her voice tailing off. ‘I’ll ask your father. I’ll see what your mother says. All stalling tactics. The answer never did change...’

Her lids drifted down, her lashes coming to rest against her bleached skin, and as her hand relaxed he laid it down gently, let his breath out on a slow, silent huff and lowered himself onto the chair again, never taking his eyes off her.

* * *

She’d get better a lot quicker, Liv thought, if they’d only leave her alone to sleep, but she knew why they were doing it, and it was reassuring in a mildly irritating way.

The nurses came intermittently to do her obs, and after a while Nick told them not to bother, he’d do them. It meant he had to touch her, to feel the pulse beating in her wrist, to check her pupils with a pen light, and although he was doing exactly what the nurses had, somehow his touch was different.

Not quite so clinical as theirs, lingering a little longer than was strictly necessary, and his voice was quiet and soothing but also filled with an emotion that he either didn’t or couldn’t disguise. And when she had to stare into his eyes so he could test her pupil reflexes, there was a tenderness there that made her want to cry.

A nurse brought him a cup of tea at one point, and a couple of times Sam popped his head round the curtain, glanced at her chart and exchanged a few words with them, asked her questions, made her squeeze his hands, push against him, wiggle her toes, shone a light in her eyes to check her pupil reflexes and accommodation, but all of it with an appropriate clinical detachment which just made Nick’s touch all the more obviously different.

It was weird having him there with her. He was so gentle, so quiet and unobtrusive, and yet even when he was sitting silently beside her, she was aware of him with every battered cell in her body. She’d been so desperate to get away from him that she’d nearly died, and now that seemed ridiculous because she actually wanted him there, crazy though it was.

Because she still loved him, despite the lie? Maybe even because of it—because of the fact that he hadn’t, after all, slept with Suzanne.