The Surrogate's Unexpected Miracle

It was weird, all right. And disturbing on a level that Luke hadn’t expected. Maybe it was because this was happening so soon after he’d been standing in the home it had taken so many years for him to find.

Had his own mother looked at him like that in the minutes after he’d been born?

No. He’d always known the answer to that.

This time it was easier to look away. To try and focus on the paperwork.

Surely no mother could ever look at her child like that and then simply hand him to strangers when life got tough and never even try to see him again? Had it even occurred to his mother that the scars of being abandoned and finding himself unwanted would be there for the rest of his life?

The paediatrician arrived and Luke gave him a verbal handover. He still had the notes to write up on the baby’s early resuscitation as well.

The new arrival looked at Ellie, who was now breastfeeding the infant, and he was smiling.

‘I think we can get them up to the ward before we examine baby properly. He’s looking pretty happy.’

Anne, the O&G registrar, had joined them. She was nodding. ‘I’ll leave the repair of the episiotomy until then, too. I’ll see what rooms we have available and order a transfer.’

Within minutes, the transfer had been arranged. The bed, with the baby still cradled in Ellie’s arms, was being wheeled out of the resuscitation room and staff members were already busy cleaning up. Luke heard the metallic clang as the forceps and other instruments he had used were dropped into a container to be sent for sterilisation. Blood stained towels and drapes were going into the contaminated linen bag and a cleaner began mopping the floor. A new bed was outside, waiting to take centre stage in a room that would have no evidence of the life and death drama that had just occurred.

Another one would probably take its place very soon but this one was over. Any odd personal connection he might have felt needed to be dismissed. He had done his job and whatever lay ahead for Ellie and her baby was none of his business.

Well, it wasn’t quite over yet. With a sigh, Luke picked up the clipboard. He could finish this paperwork in the office and, if he was lucky, it would be done before he was needed elsewhere. He didn’t want to be here, tying up loose ends like this, when his shift finished late in the evening.

* * *

A visitor was the last thing Ellie was expecting at this time of night.

It was after ten p.m. and she was propped up on her pillows, in the soft glow of the night light in her private room, and she was doing nothing more than being in the moment. Listening to the soft snuffles and squeaks coming from the tiny bundle in the plastic bassinet that was within touching distance of her bed. Trying to absorb this momentous change in her life.

She thought the soft tap on her door would be one of the nursing staff, coming to check that everything was okay and that she was ready to try and get some sleep. When Luke Gilmore stepped into her room, she was too astonished to even say hullo.

‘Is this a bad time? They told me on the desk that you’d just finished a feed and would probably still be awake.’

Ellie was still staring at him. It was obvious she was still awake so there didn’t seem to be anything that needed to be said. She could feel a puzzled frown creasing her brow.

Why was he here? Most emergency department doctors—especially locums—didn’t have the time or the interest in following up their cases. They treated them and moved them on, job done. There were always more to take their places.

But it was nice that he wanted to check up on them. Ellie’s lips curved into a smile, which was taken as an invitation to come into the room, but then the smile wobbled.

Had he come to have a go at her for what had been said in a moment of both physical and emotional agony? When this whole, sorry story of her attempt to be a surrogate mother had looked as if it was about to end in disaster?

He didn’t look as if he was angry about anything. Closing the door softly behind him, Luke stepped towards her bed, stopping to gaze down at the sleeping, snuffling baby.

Ellie found herself gazing at him. There was something about those rather craggy features and that shaggy hair that seemed very familiar. Had he worked in the same hospital as her in the past, maybe? Way back, when she was newly qualified and too focused on doing her job well to take much notice of staff members in other departments?

‘I hear he passed his paediatric check with flying colours.’

‘Mmm.’ Ellie found both her voice and another smile. ‘He’s perfect. A good weight, too, even though he was four weeks early. He’s almost seven pounds.’

She was still trawling through dim memory banks.

Luke Gilmore...doctor...

Or not yet a doctor?

‘Oh, my God...’ Ellie breathed. ‘You’re Lucas Gilmore, aren’t you?’

Startled eyes met her own. ‘Ah...yes. But I haven’t been called Lucas in about fifteen years. By anyone other than my parents, that is...’

‘You went to Kauri Valley District High School?’

His face had gone very still. He didn’t say anything but he was frowning—as though he was searching his own memory banks as he stared at her face.

‘I went there, too. You won’t remember me—I was a couple of years behind you. But we shared the school bus every day. You lived on the coast, didn’t you? Near Moana Beach?’

Uninvited, Luke sank to balance his hip on the end of Ellie’s bed, one arm over the base board, his fingers touching the clip of the board that held her observations chart.

‘No way... Wait...I do remember you. You always sat up the front. You had really long plaits.’

The thought that he’d noticed her at all on a crowded bus made Ellie feel suddenly shy. She would have died if she’d known it at the time. Lucas Gilmore—Kauri Valley high school’s bad boy—aware of her existence? It would have been scary. And...thrilling?

‘You always sat right at the back,’ she heard herself saying. ‘With all the cool kids.’

‘The ones who got into trouble, you mean?’

There was something intense in his glance now. Did he want to know how much Ellie knew about the kind of trouble he’d been in as a kid?

Okay, she knew quite a lot. Ellie could almost hear an echo of her mother’s voice.

‘Stay away from that Gilmore boy. He’s bad news. Nothing but trouble...’

She wasn’t about to say anything now, though. He’d clearly turned his life around. He was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. A doctor who’d just saved the lives of both herself and her baby.

There was a flash of something like relief on Luke’s features as she shrugged his comment away. She could sense the tension ebbing away from his body. Or maybe she could feel it, as the mattress dipped with his settling weight.

‘You were always with another girl who always wore hats.’

Ellie nodded. ‘Ava. My best friend. Her hair was never the same after all the chemo she had and it took her a long time to get used to it.’

‘Chemo? What for?’

‘Leukaemia.’

‘Did she survive?’

‘Oh, yeah... And her hair came back even better than ever. Turned out that she’d never be able to have kids, though.’

The sudden stillness in Luke’s face told her that he’d put two and two together with remarkable speed. Almost as though he was reading her mind.