Page 174 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

‘I’m taking you to hospital,’ he said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘HOSPITAL?’SIENA’SVOICEwas a protest. ‘In heaven’s name, why? I’m perfectly all right! I haven’t got a twinge or anything! Absolutely nothing that might be even the start of a contraction! Not a real one, anyway. I’ve had the Braxton-Hicks false ones from time to time, but that’s perfectly normal.’

He was gunning the engine, heading back on to the road.

‘Vincenzo, please! This is quite unnecessary. The hospital will only send me away again! They haven’t got room to keep a load of pre-labour women hanging about till their due dates!’

His response was to speed up and throw a glance at her.

‘Phone your midwife,’ he said.

It was not a suggestion.

Her brow furrowed, but she fished her phone out of her handbag, flicked into her contacts file and hit speed dial. As she waited to connect, she pressed her free hand over her abdomen. A thought struck her, and her frown deepened. When had she last felt any movement?

A moment later her midwife was answering.

And when she hung up, a couple of minutes later, Siena felt fear like ice in her veins...

Vincenzo’s grip on the steering wheel was whitening his knuckles. In his head, one word was stabbing:

Damnable.

That was what he’d called the situation. And now, with that single announcement by Siena, the word had been wiped out of existence. Totally overridden.

He dropped his eyes to the sat nav screen. Twenty miles still. Twenty miles to drive as fast and as smoothly as he could. Whether he broke the speed limit or not he neither knew nor cared. If the police stopped them—well, maybe he’d get a blue light escort to the hospital...

He’d glanced at Siena as she hung up from the midwife. Her face had been pale. He’d asked her to put the call on speaker phone, and the midwife had been very good. Not alarmist, but insistent.

‘We need to check you out at the hospital,’ she’d said. ‘Phone again when you are closer.’

What she had not said was what she was going to be checking. But Vincenzo knew perfectly well. What had immediately stabbed in his head—what could be happening...

Placental abruption—the separation of the placenta from the uterine wall...and how dangerous that is...

A knife twisted inside him and his grip on the steering wheel tightened again. More than anyone, he knew that childbirth could be dangerous...

He depressed the accelerator further. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

He heard her swallow, but she said, ‘Fine. I feel fine. It’s just that—’ Her voice changed. And he could hear the thread of fear in it now. ‘Vincenzo, I can’t feel the baby moving—and the towel I’m sitting on feels damp.’

‘I’ll get you there.’ His voice was grim.

The miles passed with punishing resistance, and without the sat nav he’d have been lost. It took them right to the hospital turning. Without wasting time parking, he steered straight to the entrance for the maternity unit, pulled up short. Siena had phoned the midwife again, and was on the phone to her now.

‘She says she’ll be in the lobby—you should grab a wheelchair. They’ll take me straight up.’

Her voice was shaky.

He launched himself out of the driver’s seat, hazard lights flashing, saw a row of wheelchairs under a shelter and grabbed one, coming round to Siena’s side of the car. She was already opening the door and he helped her out, helped her into the wheelchair, hurried her through the automatically opening doors.

A woman in scrubs was hurrying towards them.

‘You made good time—well done.’ She nodded at Vincenzo. ‘We’ll take over now—get your car parked and come on up. You can be there for the examination—we don’t know what’s happening yet.’

Then she turned her attention to Siena and pushed her across the lobby, clearly hurrying.

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