Page 61 of Prognosis So Done

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - 0500 HOURS

Harriet lay awake,crying silently into her pillow as a desert dawn broke gently over the harsh landscape outside. Megan came by every now and then to check on her and ask if she needed any pain relief. She refused. The pain was hardly anything compared to what it had been before she’d collapsed.

And nothing compared to the pain in her heart.

In fact, she welcomed the vague incisional discomfort. At least it was a reminder that, ever so briefly, she had actually been pregnant because there was nothing else to show for it. No trace that a baby – Gill’s baby - had been growing inside her.

Just the pain and eventually, she supposed, a scar.

Trying to get her fuzzy head around the fact that she’d actually conceived was almost too much in her weakened state. How could she not have known? She knew enough as a nurse to know that the contraceptive pill wasn’t infallible, that there was a small failure rate.

But how could she not have known?

She’d always thought she would just...know. The minute – no, the second - it happened. That her desire for a baby was so strong, so visceral that she’d be totally in tune with her body’s signals. That something inside her would know the exact moment egg and sperm joined and started to multiply.

Apparently not.

She thought back to her cycle, trying to work out when she had conceived. The two-day lurgy she had caught initially had probably been the culprit. She’d been about mid-cycle when she’d arrived two months ago so she had obviously ovulated when the Pill’s influence had been interrupted because of her illness.

Which meant she must have fallen almost immediately

afterwards. She thought back to the time when Gill had knocked on her door the night after her symptoms had abated. She had felt wrung out and had spent most of the day in bed, sleeping. He had spent fifteen hours operating and had looked as done in as her.

But he had made her get up and have a shower and brush her teeth and put on clean pyjamas. You’ll feel better. That’s what he’d said, and he’d been right. He had changed the sheets for her and brought a tray of tea and a mountain of hot buttered toast and ordered her to eat it.

Which she had. Most of it anyway and he’d finished the rest.

He’d also helped himself to her shower and had come out with her towel slung low on his hips and asked her if she fancied some company. Just sleep, he had assured her as they were both exhausted. She’d nodded because he’d been such a sight for sore eyes and she didn’t have the energy or desire to turn him away.

And they had slept. For about five hours. But then she had woken to his hand on her hip and his stubble on her shoulder and she had wanted him. And it had been as if he had known, too, because he’d stirred, kissed her shoulder and she had turned in his arms and they had made love.

And had been doing it ever since, despite their supposed irreconcilable differences!

Harriet forced her mind away from replaying images of their two months together. It hadn’t resolved anything and she’d probably been exceedingly foolish to have ever thought it would. She did a quick calculation to banish the self-recriminations. She must have been about seven to eight weeks along, which fitted the time frame for a ruptured ectopic perfectly.

She gingerly felt her abdomen. It was still so hard to

believe. She had been pregnant for almost the entire time she

had been here, and hadn’t known. There had been none of the

usual symptoms of which newly pregnant women complained.

No nausea, no breast tenderness, no debilitating tiredness, no funny cravings.

If only she had known! But how could she have? She’d had two periods while she’d been here. Looking back, they hadn’t been typical — a little lighter and shorter than normal but not

noticeably so. She hadn’t really thought about it, had put it

down to a different time zone screwing with her cycle which was quite common in her line of work.

Being pregnant had never occurred to her. Never!

She knew that you could still have a cyclic bleed if you were pregnant and taking the Pill and could only assume that this was what had happened to her. Why hadn’t she questioned a scant period instead of just being relieved and grateful?

Harriet felt the hot sting of tears in her eyes again. It just wasn’t fair to learn of her baby and lose it all in the space of two hours. Why couldn’t she have had some time to savour the new life growing inside her? To be happy and joyous as all mothers-to-be were? To walk around with the delicious secret like she was the only woman in the world who had ever managed the miracle of new life.

But, then, how would she have handled Gill? Would she have told him or kept it from him? Could she have borne it if he had stuck to his guns and rejected their baby?

---