Fiona McArthur - The Midwife's Baby

Of course, she couldn’t sleep after that.

Elsa woke and gratefully Georgia fed her and stroked her hair and began to feel the peace she’d dreamt of when her child was safely born.

She tried to imagine how she would have felt if Max hadn’t been there and she’d been alone when Elsa had been born. If Elsa hadn’t been fine. It didn’t bear thinking about.

Then the cold ice of fear in the base of her stomach reminded her there were other things to be afraid of. What if Sol came back and tried to take Elsa, as he’d threatened? Could she keep her baby safe? Could Max help her keep her baby safe? It was a dangerous thought.

The next morning Dr Sol Winton stepped out of the lifts on the maternity floor and no one tried to stop him. The quality of his suit and the half-exposed stethoscope poking out of his pocket ensured that nobody questioned he belonged there.

He inclined his head at two nurses and his slow smile brought the colour to both their cheeks. The gilt-ribboned chocolate boxes screamed money and he placed one box on the nurse’s desk and kept one in his hand.

‘I’m looking for my wife. Georgia Winton?’

‘Certainly, Doctor. She’s in room four, down the corridor on the left.’

‘Thank you. Enjoy the chocolates.’

He set off as if sure of his welcome. A tall, well-dressed, charming man, who drew the eyes of women and exuded authority.

When he entered the room only the baby was there wrapped up in a bunny rug in the Perspex cot. A name card tucked into the end read, ‘Elsa, baby of Georgia, five pounds two ounces.’

He reached across and stroked the baby’s cheek and her downy skin was silky soft beneath his finger.

MAX FROWNED and strode quickly down the corridor as he saw the man enter Georgia’s room.

He knew most of the consultants across the hospital but not this one. Some latent protective instinct raised the hairs on the back of his neck and all he could think about was that Georgia might need him.

His suspicions firmed at the sight of the man bent over Elsa’s cot.

Max loomed in the doorway. His voice came out low and hard. ‘Can I help you?’

Sol straightened slowly and he lifted his chin. ‘No. I don’t think so. Thank you.’

The man smiled but something about his phoney amusement increased Max’s own wariness and disquiet.

Max moved to one side of the doorway to allow a free exit from the room—though only if the man left Elsa in her cot.

‘Are you a friend of Georgia’s?’ Max enquired politely, yet the hint of steel suggested it wasn’t a frivolous question and he required an answer.

‘I’m more than that.’ Sol smiled gently. ‘Are you her doctor?’

‘You could say that.’ Max looked up as Georgia opened the bathroom door and his instincts firmed as her eyes widened and then closed for a second as if her worst nightmare had come true.

Her hand hovered over her mouth. ‘Sol?’ She shook her head but no further words came.

‘My dear wife.’ Sol smiled.

Georgia shook her head again and the words burst out in a vehement whisper. ‘I’m not your wife.’

Sol smiled again, and from the outside he looked quite pleasant yet something made Max take a step closer to Georgia in support.

Sol ignored him. ‘You’ll always be my wife. But I do see this is not a good time so I’ll leave you. Our daughter is beautiful.’ He placed the chocolates squarely on the bedside table.

‘Good day.’ He turned nonchalantly and sauntered away.

Georgia belted the robe as she rushed to Elsa to check she was fine. ‘Thank God you were here.’

Fighting back tears, she looked at Max. ‘Did he try to take her?’ She lifted and hugged Elsa to her as she sank onto the bed as if unable to support the weight on her legs. Her hands shook violently.

Max didn’t know what to do to comfort her.

‘No. He didn’t pick Elsa up. He just looked at her.’ What the hell was all that about? Max thought, and he glanced at the door through which Sol had disappeared. He’d love to ask the sleaze but he’d gone and Georgia needed him.

Max sat down beside Georgia on the bed and slid his arm around her shoulders. She quivered under his arm like a new lamb.

‘I’ll put safeguards in place. Your ex-husband won’t be able to get to you if that’s what you want.’

She shook her head and shuddered as she wrapped her arms around her baby. ‘I don’t want to stay here.’

Max squeezed her shoulders. ‘Where do you want to go?’ Her distress affected him in a way he hadn’t expected and he’d like to have shaken the truth out of the other man.

Georgia’s free hand was at her throat. She could barely speak because of the panic she was trying to control. ‘I was afraid this would happen. There is something I need to explain. Something I haven’t told anybody.’

She hesitated with reluctance to dwell on the whole distressing nightmare but it had to be spoken of. Her reluctance had almost cost the ultimate price. Elsa.

Sol would take her baby if he possibly could. He’d threatened her in those silky tones of his and the thought terrified her, made her sick to her stomach, and now it grew to epic proportions, like a phobia about spiders—except her phobia was all about Sol.

Even what he had done to her before was nothing to this fear that he might take her baby, and even though a tiny spark deep in her brain whispered she was being irrational, she had no control over the dread that was rising in her throat.

Georgia drew a deep breath and her voice sounded weak and strained even to her own ears.

No wonder Sol could smile.

And no doubt Max would hear the paranoia too but there was nothing she could do about that except try and master it at a later time when she had time to regroup. At this moment she just needed Max to understand.

She hadn’t progressed to why that seemed so important at this moment.

‘Before I met Sol I was happy in my work, a senior midwife in my unit and studying for my master’s in midwifery.’

Max nodded. ‘Harry said you were well respected and then you became sick—is that right?’

‘In the end I began to think I was sick. I need to start the story before then.’

She closed her eyes for a second to gather her thoughts. ‘I met my husband, the new senior consultant at our hospital, Sol Winton, and he swept me off my feet. He promised nothing would change, and marriage would only enhance my full life, and that he couldn’t live without me.’

She laughed without amusement. ‘I was flattered. I’d passed thirty waiting for Mr Right. I’m no raving beauty and he was distinguished, handsome, and I’d begun to think I’d missed out on love and marriage and children. He caught me at a vulnerable time and I thought I loved him.

‘In truth I was married for two years to a man who wanted to own me, body and soul, and rule my life down to the smallest degree.

‘In the beginning I believed his excessive protectiveness was because he treasured me but I soon realised it was because he felt I was his prized possession and he was training me to jump.’

Georgia drew a shuddering breath and her shoulders shook until Max edged back closer and leant against her. ‘You OK?’

The tremor stopped and she nodded. ‘I don’t like to go over it but I have to so that you’ll understand.’

Max shook his head. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

‘I have to,’ she said with resolve.

‘OK.’ Max pressed harder against her as if he knew she needed that support.

She felt strangely safer with Max’s hip and shoulders touching hers, which was ridiculous but it helped her to go on. ‘I tried to make Sol see that marriage wasn’t a power game and I needed to be my own person, but my charming ex-husband, the highly esteemed obstetrician, informed everyone I was a paranoid depressive. That’s not an easy thing to dispute if you have reason to be unhappy.’

‘That would explain what Harry said about your marriage getting you down.’

‘Harry mentioned it, did he?’

She saw the look on Max’s face and sighed. ‘This is what I meant about disputing people’s opinions. Sol made it seem I protested too much.’

Max frowned. ‘It’s OK. I believe you. Go on.’

‘I was a professional woman with a career and friends before Sol. But he became more and more demanding. He isolated me from my friends and began to dictate my daily routine. He would change it at a whim.’ She clutched Elsa to her as she remembered.

‘He cancelled my appointments with my uni, pulled my shifts so that when I turned up, cases had been replaced by another midwife, and that was when I realised people had begun to talk. He’d arranged a visit to a psychiatrist and circulated that I suffered from an anxiety-driven mental illness. The saddest thing was that I almost began to believe him, but I kept telling myself it was his problem, not mine, and refused to take medication. Finally I left him.’

‘Leaving was a good thing.’ Max nodded.

‘I left him for a year but I had to stay at the hospital because they were paying for my master’s. The day the divorce papers hit Sol’s desk he upped his campaign to win me back but I knew I would never go back to him. That was when he finally realised it wasn’t just another extended game.’

She laughed without humour. ‘Sol wanted me back, and had everyone at work on his side, and then he threatened my best friend’s credibility over a drug order that he’d tampered with. He’d moved on to blackmail.’

‘So prove it.’

‘It was her word and mine against Sol’s, and he said he’d drop his case if I went back to him.’

‘You went back?’ Max leaned forward incredulously.

‘I thought I had it all worked out. I prepared safeguards against any problems. I was going to stay with him until she was safe. Stay only until she couldn’t be charged.’

She looked away so he couldn’t read her face. She didn’t mention the horror of what Sol had forced her to endure and that she doubted she’d ever want to make love with a man again.

She didn’t mention the fact that she woke up at night in a lather of sweat and a pounding heart. Or that now she had an even bigger fear. ‘Well, in the end, she wasn’t charged. I left again. Later I found out I was pregnant.’

Max raised his eyebrows. ‘Why didn’t you discredit him?’

‘Sol is a powerful man. People believe him.’ Georgia could feel palpitations in her chest and unconsciously she rested her hand there. He’d said he would take her baby at birth. He’d said he would if she didn’t come back.

All the old fears and uncertainties and even unreasonable guilt that she’d heaped on herself began to surface and she fought to keep them away. She needed to conquer this. Elsa needed her to conquer this. ‘It seemed easier just to leave and never go back.’

Max muttered an oath under his breath.

She went on because the sooner she did so, the sooner she could stop thinking about those horrible few weeks.

‘Sol had been here to tell Harry I was depressed and paranoid. He covered himself in case I told them what he was really like. He is very plausible and dangerous.

‘When Harry suggested I move in with them, I decided it would be good for my baby to know family because she would never know her father if I could help it.’ She kissed the top of her daughter’s head.

She could see Max was trying to understand and at least he was trying. It was more than a lot of other people did.

Max squeezed her shoulder. ‘We’ll all help you feel safe again.’