Page 27 of Twin Surprise for the Italian Doc
And she still had the power to make sure she never had to face that kind of painful disruption to her life.
‘Don’t ask again, Kate.’ Her voice came out in a kind of hiss. ‘Because I’m never going to tell you.I’m never going to tell anyone,especiallythe father. And I couldn’t anyway because I don’t have his address. I barely remember his name. And...oh,God... I’m going to be sick again...’
* * *
The morning sickness gave life an edge of misery that made the following weeks seem very long but then it began to wear off and life suddenly seemed much brighter.
On the work front, Georgia’s fears ofbeing demoted to a paper-pusher proved unfounded. Her ‘light duties’ were actually going to be an opportunity she’d quietly dreamed of being offered. There would be no more lifting patients or putting herself into dangerous rescue situations but she would still be able to use every skill she possessed as a paramedic. She would be challenged, in fact, because she was going to be working alone attimes. Given a fully equipped SUV that had everything an ambulance had apart from any stretchers, she could be sent first to a scene to assess and start treatment. Or she could be dispatched as backup to provide the kind of interventions and drugs a less qualified crew could offer.
She was going to get all the excitement and satisfaction her job was capable of delivering, without any of the drudgery.No hard physical challenges and no long transport journeys taking perfectly stable patients to a hospital while radio traffic announced the dispatch of available crews to far more exciting-sounding calls.
Her new duties would have been more than enough to restore her zest for life as the misery of constant nausea receded but there was another bright spot that was getting steadily larger. Evenbefore the morning sickness had kicked in, Kate and Luke had finally managed to connect and their relationship had deepened steadily. Now it seemed believable that her best friend had found exactly what she had been searching for. The One. Which was just as well because Kate had, shockingly, broken her own rules, had had unprotected sex with Luke and—astonishingly—become pregnant as easily as Georgiahad herself.
Was it really only a few months ago that they were both passionate career women in their mid-thirties who’d been facing the prospect of futures that might not deliver the extra dimension of having a real family?
Okay, things weren’tperfect...
Single parenthood was not really anybody’s dream. For most people, it was something that you coped with when you had to. When the fairy-taleconcept of family hadn’t worked out for whatever reason.
But Georgia didn’t see it that way.
The best times in her childhood and adolescence had been when she’d felt safe with her mother. When they’d found a new place to live and knew it could be months before her father tracked them down and made another attempt to separate them. When, at best, the police or social services would come knockingat their door and there would be court appearances or the like to deal with.
At worst, it had been when Georgia had had to start looking over her shoulder all the time in case she was being followed. Or walk home from school with the fear that she might not find her mother still alive when she got there.
Georgia knew she could do more than cope with single parenthood. Without the threat of interference,she could ensure that the lives of her children were full of joy. And love. And that they would always feelsafe.
She also believed that everything would work out for Kate. That she and Luke had the foundations for a perfect life together.
Georgia was quite convinced about this. Until that grey, wet day when she received the dreadful news that Kate had had an accident. That she’d been hit bya car as she’d run across a busy road.
That, while she’d been lucky enough not to receive any injuries more than a concussion, she’d lost her baby.
It was one of the hardest things Georgia had ever had to do, walking into that hospital room to bring fresh clothes and take Kate home. It felt like a giant spotlight was aimed at her belly to advertise her continuing pregnancy and rub salt intowhat had to be the rawest wound ever.
‘I’m so, so sorry, Katy.’
But Kate brushed off her sympathy.
‘It’s not that big a deal, you know? I’d barely had time to get used to the idea anyway.’
And that was apparently all that Kate wanted to say about the subject. At home for the next couple of days, all she wanted to do was sleep. Georgia took time off work to watch her friend and make sure therewere no signs of a more severe head injury that had been missed. That first night, she actually lay on Kate’s bed beside her, waking her every so often just to check her level of responsiveness and listening to the pattern of her breathing as she slept again.
It hurt that she was being shut out. She knew how she’d felt even in the midst of the initial shock of learning that she was pregnant.That it was a miracle. Little beings were forming inside her belly. Her babies. She’d barely had time to get used to the idea either, but she already loved them enough to fight to the death to protect them.
But Kate had apparently been practising hiding her real feelings about Luke for a while now. Did she think that if she gave in to the grief she had to be experiencing now, it might not stopthere? That she would confess she’d broken the rules of that stupid ‘pact’ they’d made at medical school to marry each other if they were both still single when they were thirty-five? That shehadfallen in love and that Luke would call the whole thing off? She was pushing Luke away right now as well and that felt so, so wrong. They had found something very special between them and they shouldbe fighting to protect it. This crushing blow should be bringing them closer together, not pushing them apart.
Georgia desperately wanted to help but she couldn’t interfere, could she?
There was a barrier here that she had created herself because she hadn’t wanted Kate to interfere with her own life by trying to influence her decisions. Because she hadn’t ever shared the trauma of her own childhood.She hadn’t told Kate that Matteo was the father of her babies. She hadn’t even told her yet that she was carrying twins.
She certainly couldn’t tell her that now, in the wake of her own loss that had to be devastating, even if Kate didn’t want to admit it.
That barrier had just become a whole lot more solid.
The mess had just got a whole lot messier.
Something her mother had once quoted cameback to her in the quiet hours of that night.
