CAROL MARINELLI - Their Secret Royal Baby

‘Elias...’ Mandy put her head around the curtain. ‘I need you.’

‘In a moment,’ Elias said.

‘I have a two-year-old convulsing...’

He just stared at the baby.

‘Elias,’ Mandy called loudly, on her way to Resus.

He looked over at Beth, who was being comforted by Valerie. A midwife was looking after her too but for a brief moment she glanced at him.

‘Elias!’

His name was called again and an emergency bell sounded and there was nothing he could do for his baby.

Even if he told them that she was his, he would just be asked to step aside.

And so he did what, as a doctor on duty, he had to do.

‘I’ll be back...’ he said to Beth, but she wasn’t looking at him now. She was in the third stage of labour and about to deliver the placenta while looking over anxiously at the crowd of experts around her baby.

His.

He allowed himself to acknowledge it then.

The baby was his.

CHAPTER THREE

ELIAS HAD GONE.

She could hear him being urgently summoned and understood that he had no choice but to leave.

Actually, no, Beth didn’t understand anything.

It was twelve twenty-nine and less than half an hour ago she had been standing in the street, wondering what to do.

Now she was a mother and no one could tell her how her baby was.

She heard the odd word.

‘Surfactant.’

‘Struggling.’

‘Grunting.’

‘CPAP.’

‘I want her on the Unit,’ someone said.

Beth lay back, shivering under a blanket, as a midwife checked her blood pressure and listened to what was being said.

‘There are no cots. She’ll have to go to St Patrick’s.’

There were voices with no names and she felt dizzy as it dawned on her they were talking about transferring her baby.

‘You’re not taking her to another hospital.’ She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘It’s okay,’ the midwife said. ‘We’ll get you over there as soon as we can.’

‘I want to be with her.’

An IV had been inserted and Beth couldn’t even remember it going in.

‘Her blood pressure is ninety over fifty,’ the midwife called, then spoke to Beth. ‘What’s your normal blood pressure?’

She couldn’t answer.

Beth tried to explain that she’d been told at her checks that her blood pressure was on the low side but she couldn’t remember the numbers and there were little dots swimming before her eyes. Her lips had gone numb.

‘I’m just going to lay you flat,’ the midwife said, and Beth felt her head drop back. ‘Take some deep breaths.’

Again.

The only noise she could hear was the heart monitor on her baby and it sounded fast, though she wasn’t crying now and hadn’t been for a while.

Beth lay there trembling at the shock and the speed of it all.

A man who said he was a neonatologist came and told her that her baby was about to be transferred and that NICU was the best place for her now.

‘Can I go with her?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘We’ve got a lot of equipment and staff that will be travelling with her.’

‘I’ll not get in the way. I’ll just sit.’

He didn’t wait to explain further that she was in no fit state to sit.

‘Can I see her?’ Beth asked, but her baby was already being moved out and all she got was a tiny glimpse of red hair and the sight of tubes and machines and then she was gone.

It was very quiet in the cubicle after she left.

Mandy came in with another flask of IV fluid and it was checked with the midwife. ‘I’ve ordered an ambulance for you, Beth. It might be a while, though, they have to deal with emergencies first.’

Thankfully it was only fifteen minutes or so before she was being moved onto a stretcher.

The midwife would escort her and all that was left to do was thank Mandy, who gave her a smile.

‘I’ll ring before I leave in the morning and find out how your baby is doing. Do you have a name for her?’

‘Not yet,’ Beth said.

She’d had a couple in mind. Eloise was one, because it was close to her baby’s father’s name.

Beth could see Elias working away in Resus as she was wheeled past.

She was taken out into the night and loaded into an ambulance where she could hear the controller speaking over the radio.

It was a ten-minute ride through dark streets and soon she was being taken through corridors and then in an elevator up to the maternity ward. As she was wheeled along a corridor she could see signs for the NICU further along and knew her baby was there.

‘How is she doing?’ Beth asked as she was moved onto a bed.

‘As soon as we hear anything, we’ll come and let you know.’

She was told that over and over again.

Beth had never felt more scared and helpless in her life.

Neither had Elias.

At times he had questioned if he was a good doctor or there by default.

He had, of course, had the very best education at a top English boarding school.

And after his time in the military he had studied medicine at Oxford.

Everything had been, his friends had ribbed him at times, handed to him on a plate.

Tonight Elias had found out that he was a doctor.

A real one.

And a very good one at that, because somehow he’d just shoved his personal torment aside.

Delivering a premature infant when it wasn’t your specialty was scary at best.

But delivering that infant when you were sure it was your baby had had his heart racing so fast it had surely matched the baby’s rate at times.

Having then to tear himself away, having to focus on work when everything precious to him was in that room had proved agony.

Yet Elias knew that the neonatologist, even if he received a devastating personal call, would carry on working on the baby until a replacement arrived.

That was the position he had found himself in.

Oh, had Elias declared a personal interest in these two patients then the staff might have understood him stepping back.

But that would have helped no one tonight so he had pushed through as best he could.

His head felt as if it was exploding and he felt sick in his guts as he walked into Resus, where a mother was sobbing as her two-year-old convulsed.

Elias gave that two-year-old his focus.

He administered the right medication and asked all the right questions.

‘He was sick last night when he went to bed,’ the child’s mother said. ‘I thought that it was just a cold...’

‘He has a very high fever,’ Elias told her.

The little boy had stopped convulsing and now lay crying and confused as Elias sat down on the resuscitation bed.

‘Hello,’ he said to the little boy, who was disoriented and fretful. ‘Your mum is here...’ He nodded for her to come around the bed so that the little boy could see her. ‘My name is Elias, I’m a doctor at the hospital...’ And then he said what was important again. ‘Your mum is here.’

And he needed to be over there.

With his baby’s mum.

Yet he thoroughly examined the child, carefully looking at his throat and ears and listening to his chest.

He did what he had to do.

He was peripherally aware that his baby had been transferred because as Valerie came into Resus to get some equipment the doors had opened and he had seen an incubator being wheeled out.

He took some bloods and then filled out the forms for the blood work and ordered a chest X-ray for the child as he thought that he might have pneumonia.

And then he went to speak with the paediatrician but when he saw Roger, Elias asked if he could have a word.

‘I’ve just been informed about a family emergency,’ Elias told him.

Roger could see how pale Elias was and didn’t doubt that he was struggling to hold it together. ‘I’ll call in Raj,’ Roger said immediately.

He picked up the phone and did just that. ‘He’s on his way but it might be half an hour until he arrives.’

Elias nodded. ‘Thanks.’

He would have to stay until Raj got there.

The department was busy and Elias could not wait idly. He went and examined an overdose case that had just arrived.

He mixed up some activated charcoal for the patient to drink but then he saw Mandy running through an IV.

‘How’s the baby?’ he asked, and she made a wobbly gesture with her hand.

‘They sped her off to St Patrick’s.’

‘And how’s the mother?’

‘She went in a separate ambulance. Poor woman, she was down in London for work. It must be terrifying to be so far from home.’

Mandy looked at Elias and saw his grey complexion. ‘I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had bad news but you’ll still have to fill out paperwork for them before you go. They’ll need a number for the baby.’

‘Sure,’ Elias said, because the little girl would need to be added to the system quickly as she had been transferred to another hospital.

He gave the overdose the activated charcoal to drink. Her boyfriend was with her and Elias explained the importance of finishing the bottle.

‘It looks awful, I know,’ he said, ‘but it doesn’t really taste of anything. Make sure she drinks it all. Any problems, press this bell. The medics should be down soon to admit her.’

Elias moved to the nurses’ station and took out the other paperwork that was waiting to be filled in.

Elizabeth Foster.

He saw that she was now twenty-three and that she lived in Edinburgh, though when he had met her Beth had lived in Dunroath, a small fishing village on the east coast of Fife.

And she had put Rory as her next of kin.

He knew that was her ex.

Maybe they were back together?

Perhaps the baby wasn’t even his.

Elias knew that she was, though, and not just from the dates.

Beth had made a comment on the night they had met about being a ‘daughter of the manse’.

He hadn’t known what it had meant then.

He knew what it meant now—her father was a minister and very strict.

Elias guessed that these past months would have pretty much been hell for her.

He wrote up his patient notes.

Presented to Accident and Emergency department at 29/40 gestation.

And he wrote about the rapid delivery and all that had happened and that she had been transferred to St Patrick’s for postnatal care.

And then he went to the other patient that required a signature.

There were rather a lot of forms to fill in when it came to a new life.

Baby Foster.

Born 29/40 weeks gestation.

Precipitate labour, rapid delivery.

One-minute Apgar score: 7

His hand was shaking as he wrote because the ramifications were just starting to hit him.

Not just that he had become a father.

The second in line to the throne had just delivered the third in line to the throne.

The palace always announced the delivering doctor.

He could see the headlines and the chaos the press would make of the circumstances tonight.

All this he was starting to envision but not quite, because all he could really see in his mind’s eye was the sight of the baby. Her tiny head and flaccid limbs. The little tufts of red hair and that she had been struggling to breathe. How her eyes had closed and her nostrils had flared as her tiny mouth had blown bubbles.

What the hell was he doing here?

Elias was closer to tears than he had ever been in his life and panic was building as he placed his head in his hands.

‘Are you okay?’ Roger checked.

He too knew how hard it was to work when you had just been informed of a personal crisis.

‘Not really,’ Elias said, and he took a steadying breath and told himself that Beth and the baby were in good hands—but he needed to see that for himself.