Page 22 of Welcome to the Cornish Country Hospital

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Danni had promised Roxy she’d be as quick as possible when she’d gone to make the call to the maternity unit to let them know her patient would need to go up to labour and delivery as soon as possible. True to her word, she was back with Roxy in less than five minutes, arriving in her cubicle just ahead of Esther and Duncan.

‘Have they given you anything for the pain, darling?’ Duncan was immediately at his partner’s side, his face a picture of concern. He didn’t look like the sort of man who’d immediately assume the worst of the person he so clearly loved. But the past could damage you in a way that was hard to ever fully undo. His ex had cheated on him, which made the prospect of someone else doing that seem far more likely, no matter how hard Duncan might have tried to fully trust Roxy.

‘They’ll give me some pain relief when I get up to the mat… the ward.’ Roxy bit her lip and Danni moved to the other side of the bed. She could see Esther out of the corner of her eye, and she silently willed her to stay with them too. Esther might be tiny but, if Duncan did kick off, she’d know the right thing to say to somehow make it better, or at the very least not to make the situation even worse. Roxy turned towards Danni, the pleading look back in her eyes and, when Danni raised her eyebrows, Roxy gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head. She needed help to get the words out, otherwise the midwives could be down in A&E before she’d even broken the news to Duncan.

‘They’re going to be moving Roxy to another department soon.’ Danni glanced at her patient, who gave a more certain nod this time. ‘She needs to go to the maternity unit. She’s in labour and based on the frequency of the contractions, the baby’s arrival could be pretty imminent.’

‘Pregnant? She can’t be.’ Duncan’s face was a mask and, other than the widening of his eyes, his reaction was impossible to read as he turned to face Roxy. ‘You’re not, are you? You can’t be!’

His voice had risen on every word, and Roxy nodded. ‘I am and it’s yours. I promise, something must have happened to stop the vasectomy from working and I—’

‘How long have you known?’ Duncan’s tone was just as difficult to interpret as his expression. Danni couldn’t imagine how hard this was for Roxy, because even she was holding her breath.

‘Six months.’ They were two such tiny words, but the timespan they encompassed suddenly seemed like forever. Just imaging Roxy keeping something like that to herself for six months, out of fear about how Duncan might react, made tears spring up in Danni’s eyes. The fact she’d been keeping a secret of her own for over seven years suddenly seemed like nothing in comparison. This was a whole new life, and nothing in the world could stop this secret from finally being uncovered. There was a force bigger than any of them about to bring it kicking and screaming into the world.

‘I can’t believe you went through all of that on your own. Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?’ There was no hiding what Duncan was feeling any more. He was crying as he folded Roxy into his arms.

‘I didn’t know if you’d believe me about the baby being yours.’ Her voice was muffled by his embrace, but there was no mistaking the next sound, or its cause, as another contraction took over and Roxy let out a low moan.

‘Sounds like we’re in the right place!’ Bobby, one of the midwives, who Danni had met during her orientation training, grinned as he came into the cubicle, followed by a second member of the maternity team. They hadn’t even had the chance to introduce themselves, when Lucas suddenly arrived too.

‘I’d recognise the sound of the pain caused by a broken shoulder anywhere.’ Looking up as he said the words, he met Danni’s eye and she shook her head.

‘Wrong cubicle and you’ve clearly been on the surgical team for too long!’ Esther caught hold of her fiancé’s arm and laughed. ‘Everyone knows nothing trumps childbirth, but I’ll show you where your patient is. Good luck, Roxy.’

‘Maybe we should have asked him to stay on anyway.’ Bobby grinned again as Esther and Lucas disappeared. ‘Because when my wife was in labour for the second time, she very nearly pulled my arm out of the socket.’

‘Fair’s fair.’ The other midwife nudged him in the side and smiled at Roxy. ‘I’m Jess, and this is Bobby. We’ll take you along to the maternity unit and get you checked over properly, but I hear the contractions are coming quite regularly.’

‘It certainly feels like it.’ Roxy’s voice was quiet, as if she still couldn’t believe it was okay to admit what was going on.

‘Roughly every five minutes since she got here.’ Danni laid a hand gently on Roxy’s shoulder, choosing her words carefully. ‘It’s all been a bit of shock, though, so Roxy hasn’t had the usual antenatal checks.’

‘We get a lot more of that than you might imagine.’ Jess smiled in a way that was bound to help convince Roxy it would all be okay, because it certainly had that effect on Danni.

‘You’re going to be the best mum, and I’m going to get to be a dad again.’ Duncan’s eyes were still wide with wonder, but there didn’t seem to be any question in his mind that he was the father. ‘I can’t believe I’m getting the chance to do this with the love of my life.’

‘That’s always a good place to start.’ Bobby laughed, but he looked like a man who knew a thing or two about the toll that sleepless nights could have on any relationship, no matter how strong. Yet watching Roxy and Duncan leave for the midwifery unit, Danni somehow knew they were going to make it. There might be some tough conversations to come about why Roxy had kept the pregnancy a secret for so long, but the way Duncan looked at her, it was obvious he didn’t just believe her, she was the centre of his world too. Only one person had ever looked at Danni like that, but the trouble was, he looked at her best friend like that too.

12

Danni’s shift had finished, but before she headed up to see Connie, she needed a coffee from the hospital shop. It hadn’t been a particularly busy shift, at least not by A&E standards, but she felt drained all the same. Sometimes her mind just seemed more determined to overthink things than others. She’d spent a lot of the shift thinking about Duncan and Roxy, and wondering how they’d got on, which made her wonder if she’d ever have that – not just a partner, but a family of her own. Almost eight years had gone by with her waiting on the sidelines of life, in the hope that Esther might decide she didn’t want Lucas after all. But the truth was, that was never going to happen. And, even if it did, Danni getting involved with him afterwards would mean they couldn’t salvage their friendship.

No one wanted their best friend having a relationship with their ex-fiancé. There were too many messy feelings involved. Not that Esther had ever shown any sign of wanting to end things. Lucas was the only person who’d ever given an indication that things might not be as perfect as they seemed. It had only been a handful of times, and it was almost a cliché – a version of the wholemy partner doesn’t understand mesort of line. But each time he’d looked into Danni’s eyes and told her that no one would ever get him the way she did. When she’d next see Lucas and Esther together, still looking every inch the perfect couple, her confused little heart would soar and sink all at the same time. Esther for her part had never expressed any doubts and, if things ended when she didn’t want them to, the messy feelings left behind would be like a hand grenade having gone off.

Now she was back to standing on the sidelines of her own life. But she really did want a family of her own. She wanted someone holding her hand, marvelling at the fact that the two of them were going to have the adventure of parenthood together. She just had to hope that the online dating would at least help with the possibility of finding someone to do that with – someone who wasn’t Lucas.

Danni was just mulling over whether a family-size bag of Maltesers might be in order, when a voice behind her made her jump.

‘Are you going to eat all of those by yourself?’ There was a teasing tone to Lucas’s voice, but for some reason she felt the need to explain why she was holding two bags of chocolate in her hand.

‘They’ve got a two for one offer on Maltesers, but one’s for a patient.’ She hated the way her body reacted to his proximity, like it was crying out for his touch. Her eyes swept over him, searching for something that might change the way she felt, but knowing deep down it wouldn’t matter if he had spinach in his teeth, toilet paper stuck to his shoe, or even if his hair suddenly fell out overnight. The physical attraction had been instant, but what she felt for him now had built up over so many shared moments together. She wouldn’t have got through some of the early training without him and he’d joked all the time about her being his work wife, until it had almost felt like she really was his other half. Except he went home to Esther every night, leaving Danni with a gap in her life whenever he wasn’t around. So as physically attractive as Lucas was, it wouldn’t matter if that changed.

‘I’ve told myself that story before, or that I’m buying one bag for a colleague, but I always end up eating both.’ Lucas laughed and placed a hand on her shoulder, his fingers stretching towards her collarbone, making her body jolt as they made contact with her skin. ‘Tough day?’

‘Quite quiet, but you know what those days are like. There’s too much time to think.’ They exchanged a look and she felt it again: that connection with him she didn’t have with anyone else in the world. He understood her so well, because he’d been through it too. He’d lostbothparents to cancer in quick succession. His mother when he was fourteen, and his father just a year after he and Esther had started dating. Danni had gone to the funeral and, when Lucas had got up to speak, he’d credited Esther and Danni for getting him through the darkest days of his life. It was the first time he’d told Danni that he loved her, by announcing publicly how much he loved the two women sitting in the fourth pew from the front, and how grateful he was that they’d come into his life. He hadn’t separated them out, or explained to anyone who might not already know that one of them was his girlfriend and the other one was… what? A colleague? A friend? A work wife, who’d never be the real thing? She’d wrapped the words around her all the same:‘I love you so much.’ And she’d played them on repeat in her mind countless times, in countless imaginary scenarios. He’d said it since, in the way that friends did. Sometimes at work, sometimes in front of Esther, but it had never been quite as powerful as the way he’d said it at his father’s funeral.

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