Staying the Night

Carol Marinelli

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Copyright

Chapter Ten

‘THAT’S it, Izzy…’ She could hear a male voice she didn’t recognise. ‘Stay on your back.’

She was under blankets and wanted to roll onto her side, except she couldn’t seem to move.

‘You’re doing fine,’ came the unfamiliar voice. ‘Stay nice and still.’

‘Izzy, it’s all okay.’

There was a voice she knew. Strong and deep and accented, and she knew it was Diego, she just didn’t know why, and then she opened her eyes and saw his and she remembered.

‘You’ve got a daughter.’ His face was inches away. ‘She’s okay, she’s being looked after.’

And then it was fog, followed by pain, followed by drugs, so many drugs she struggled to focus when Diego came back in the afternoon with pictures of her baby.

‘She looks like you,’ Diego said, but all Izzy could see were tubes.

‘Are you working today?’

Diego shook his head. ‘No. I just came in to see you.’ And he sat down in the chair by her bed and Izzy went to sleep. He flicked through the photos and tried very hard to only see tubes, because this felt uncomfortably familiar, this felt a little like it had with Fernando and he just couldn’t go there again.

He certainly wasn’t ready to go there again.

There was a very good reason that a normal pregnancy lasted forty weeks, Diego reflected, putting the photos on her locker and heading for home—and it wasn’t just for the baby. The parents needed every week of that time to prepare themselves emotionally for the change to their lives.

He wasn’t even a parent.

It was Tuesday night and a vicious UTI later before anything resembling normal thought process occurred and a midwife helped her into a chair and along with her mother wheeled her down to the NICU, where, of course, any new mum would want to be if her baby was.

‘We take mums down at night all the time,’ the midwife explained, when Izzy said the next day would be fine. ‘It’s no problem.’

Except, privately, frankly, Izzy would have preferred to sleep.

Izzy knew she was a likely candidate for postnatal depression.

As a doctor she was well versed in the subject and the midwives had also gently warned her and given her leaflets to read. Gus too had talked to her—about her difficult labour, the fact she had been separated from her daughter and her difficult past. He’d told her he was there if she needed to talk and he had been open and upfront and told her not to hesitate to reach out sooner rather than later, as had Jess.

She sat in a wheelchair at the entrance to NICU, at the very spot where she had first flirted with Diego, where the first thawing of her heart had taken place, and it seemed a lifetime ago, not a few short weeks.

And, just as she had felt that day, Izzy was tempted to ask the midwife to turn the chair around, more nervous at meeting her baby than she could ever let on. Diego was on a stint of night duty and she was nervous of him seeing her in her new role too, because his knowing eyes wouldn’t miss anything. What if she couldn’t summon whatever feelings and emotions it was that new mums summoned?

‘I bet you can’t wait!’ Izzy’s mum said as the midwife pressed the intercom and informed the voice on the end of their arrival. Then the doors buzzed and she was let in. Diego came straight over and gave her a very nice smile and they made some introductions. ‘Perhaps you could show Izzy’s mother the coffee room.’ Diego was firm on this as he would be with any of his mothers. If Izzy had stepped in and said she’d prefer her mum to come, then of course it would have happened, but Izzy stayed quiet, very glad of a chance to meet her daughter alone.

‘I already know where the coffee room is,’ Gwen said, ‘and I’ve already seen the baby.’

‘Izzy hasn’t.’ Diego was straight down the line. ‘We can’t re-create the delivery room but we try—she needs time alone to greet her baby.’

Which told her.

‘You know the rules.’ He treated Izzy professionally and she was very glad of it. They went through the handwashing ritual and he spoke to her as they did so.

‘Brianna is looking after her tonight,’ Diego said. ‘Do you know her?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘She’s great—she was there at the delivery. I’ll take you over.’

Nicola, Toby’s mother, was there and gave Izzy a sympathetic smile as she was wheeled past, which Izzy returned too late, because she was already there at her baby’s cot.

Brianna greeted her, but Izzy was hardly listening. Instead she stared into the cot and there she was—her baby. And months of fear and wondering all hushed for a moment as she saw her, her little red scrunched-up face and huge dark blue eyes that stared right into Izzy’s.

Over the last three days Diego had bought her plenty of photos, told her how well she was doing and how beautiful she was, but seeing her in the flesh she was better than beautiful, she was hers.

‘We’re just giving her a little oxygen,’ Brianna explained as Diego was called away. ‘Which we will be for a couple more weeks, I’d expect…’ She opened the porthole and Izzy needed no invitation. She held her daughter’s hand, marvelling that such a tiny hand instinctively curled around her index finger, and Izzy knew there and then that she was in love.

‘She looks better than I thought…’ Izzy couldn’t actually believe just how well she looked. Her mum had been crying when she’d returned the first day from visiting her granddaughter and Richard, the consultant paediatrician, had told her that her baby had got off to a rocky start.

‘She struggled for the first forty-eight hours, which we were expecting,’ Brianna said calmly, ‘but she picked up well.’

Diego had said the same, but she’d been worried he’d just been reassuring her, but now she was here, now she could see her, all Izzy could feel was relief and this overwhelming surge charging through her veins that she figured felt a lot like love.

‘Now, would you like to hold her?’ Brianna said to Izzy’s surprise. ‘She’s due for a feed, but she needs it soon, so would you like to give her a cuddle first?’

She very much would.

Brianna brought over a large chair and Izzy sat, exhausted, then got a new surge of energy.

‘Open up your pyjama top,’ Brianna said

‘It’s popping open all the time…’ Izzy said, staring down at her newly massive breasts that strained the buttons.

‘Your skin will keep her warm and it’s good for both of you.’

She hadn’t expected so much so soon. Her dreams had been filled with tiny floppy babies like ugly skinned rabbits, yet her baby was prettier and healthier than her photos had shown. Brianna was calm and confident and then there she was, wearing just a nappy and hat and resting on her chest, a blanket being wrapped around them both, skin on skin, and Izzy at that moment knew…

She knew, as far as anyone could possibly know, that the doom and gloom and the shadow of PND was not going to darken her door.

She could feel her baby on her skin and it was almost, Izzy was sure, as if all the darkness just fell away from her now, as pure love flooded in.

A white, pure love that was tangible, that was real. All the fears, the doubts, the dark, dark dread faded, because she had never been sure, really, truly sure that love could win, that love would come, that it would happen.

But it just did.

Diego witnessed it too.

He had seen many moments like this one, both in NICU and in the delivery room, and it was more something he ticked off his list than felt moved by—especially in NICU, where bonding was more difficult to achieve. Only it wasn’t a list with Izzy, because it did move him, so much so that he came over and smiled down as he watched.

It crossed so many lines, because he didn’t want to feel it, and also, as Gwen came over, Diego realised he had sent her own mother away.

Yet he was here.

‘She’s a Ross all over, isn’t she?’ Gwen said, and Diego saw Izzy’s jaw clench as her mother stamped her territory on her granddaughter and told her how it would be. ‘There’s nothing of him in her.’

Of course, Henry’s parents begged to differ when they came two days later to visit.

They had been in France, trying to have a break, after the most traumatic of months, and had cut their holiday short to come in and visit what was left of their son.

It was an agonising visit. Emotions frayed, Henry’s mother teary, his father trying to control things, telling Izzy their rights, blaming her at every turn till she could see clearly where Henry had got it from! And, that evening, as soon as they left, Izzy sat on the bed with her fingers pressed into her eyes, trying to hold it together, wondering if now tears would come.

‘Bad timing?’ Izzy jumped as heard footsteps and saw Josh, the new consultant, at her door. ‘I’ll come by another time.’

‘I’m fine.’ Izzy forced a smile. ‘Come in.’

‘You’re sure?’ he checked, and Izzy nodded.

‘I’m sorry to mess up the roster.’

‘That’s the last thing you should be worrying about,’ Josh replied, just as any boss would in the circumstances, and it was going to be an awkward visit, Izzy knew that. A guy like Josh didn’t really belong in the maternity ward with teary women. ‘Ben’s on leave, but he rang and told me you’d be stressing about details like that, and could I come up and tell you that you’re not to worry about a thing and that if there’s anything we can do for you, you’re to ask.

‘Is there anything,’ Josh pushed, ‘that we can do for you now?’

‘I’m being very well looked after. I’m fine, really, it’s just been a difficult evening.’ She waited for a thin line from Josh about the baby blues, or something like that, but he just looked at her for a long time before he spoke.

‘I’m quite sure this is all very difficult for you,’ Josh said.

And he was just so disarmingly nice that Izzy found herself admitting a little more. ‘Henry’s parents just stopped by. They’ve gone to see the baby.’

‘Henry’s your late husband?’ Josh checked, and Izzy nodded.

‘I’m sure you’ve heard all the gossip.’

‘I don’t listen to gossip,’ Josh said, ‘though Ben did bring me up to date on what happened before you came back to work, just so that I would know to look out for you. You know Ben’s not into gossip either, but he felt I should know—not all of it, I’m sure, but he told me enough that I can see you’d be having a tough time of it.’

His directness surprised her. Instead of sitting stiffly in the chair and making painful small talk, he came over and sat on the bed, took her hand and gave it a squeeze and a bit of that Irish charm, and Izzy could see why he was such a wonderful doctor.

‘Henry’s parents blame me,’ Izzy admitted. ‘They thought our marriage was perfect, they think I’m making it all up.’

‘They probably want to believe that you’re making it all up,’ Josh said wisely.

‘They were in tears just before, saying what a wonderful father Henry would have been, how a baby would have changed things, would have saved our marriage, if only I hadn’t asked him to leave. They don’t know what went on behind closed doors.’

‘They need to believe that you’re lying,’ Josh said. ‘But you know the truth.’

‘A baby wouldn’t have changed things.’ With his gentle guidance Izzy’s voice was finally adamant. ‘Babies don’t fix a damaged marriage. That was why I had to leave. I can’t even begin to imagine us together as parents. A baby should come from love…’

‘Do you want me to call Diego for you?’ Josh said, but Izzy shook her head.

‘He’s already been to visit,’ Izzy said. ‘He’s on a night shift tonight. I can’t ring him for every little thing.’

‘Yes,’ a voice said from the doorway, ‘you can.’ There stood Diego, but only for a moment, and she dropped Josh’s hand as he walked over.

‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Josh smiled and stood up. ‘Now, remember, if there’s anything we can do, you just pick up that phone. Even if it’s just a decent coffee, you’ve got a whole team behind you twenty-four seven. Just let us know.’

Izzy thanked him, but she sat there blushing as he left and waited till the door was closed.

‘Nothing was happening.’ Izzy was awash with guilt. ‘I was just upset, so he held my hand—’

‘Izzy!’ Diego interrupted. ‘I’m glad Josh was here, I’m glad you had someone to hold your hand.’

Yet she still felt more explanation was needed. ‘Henry would have had a fit if he’d—’

‘Izzy! I’m not Henry—I don’t care how many times I have to say it—I’m nothing like him.’

And he wasn’t.

She leant on his broad chest and heard the regular beat of his heart, felt the safe wall of his chest and the wrap of his arms, and if she didn’t love her so, it would be so easy to resent her baby—because nine weeks of just them would have been so very nice.

‘I’d better go.’ Reluctantly he stood up. ‘I’ll drop by in the morning and let you know what sort of night she had.’

‘Tilia,’ Izzy said.

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