Their Special-Care Baby

She could hardly believe her pregnancy was over before it had even been remembered.

Then he said something even more frightening. ‘It worries me you haven’t asked about your other child.’

Desiree watched his lips move but the words seem to come from a long way off as she wondered what her tiny daughter looked like.

He spoke again. ‘Do you remember I said you were a widow with another child? You have a twelve-month-old. Shall we bring Sophie to you? They have her down in the children’s ward for observation.’

She tore her thoughts away from the picture of her tiny baby and looked at him blankly.

He explained again. ‘Your other daughter? You told me to keep her safe when we first met.’

The other baby? What else had she forgotten? Had another child been mentioned? Perhaps. ‘You may have said that before but I don’t remember.’

Desiree frowned as she tried to remember. She had heard a baby crying in the wreckage. Had that baby been hers? ‘I heard her cry.’

How could she not recall her own flesh and blood? Was that possible? It didn’t make senses. What if it was a mistake, or a conspiracy, or a bad dream? ‘I wish I remembered.’

The first of his revelations rose to stun her again. ‘I can’t believe I was married and don’t remember.’

Stewart grimaced at what a marriage it would have been, unless Sean had changed a lot. He watched her struggle with all the information and worried that he’d burdened her with too much, too soon.

She tilted her head towards him and her grey eyes seemed to peer inside his soul as she sought answers.

He blinked and looked away, not sure what had just passed between them and not willing to pursue the thought. This was fanciful imagining and unlike him.

He fought against a sudden stirring of emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel for many years. Especially when he looked down at her fingers as they disappeared inside his bigger hand. He wondered why she had decided not to wear her wedding ring.

Something had shifted, something that shouldn’t have shifted with this woman who was related by law, and who was the last woman he wanted to be attracted to. There was nothing he could do about that now except ignore any such emotion and help her as much as he could.

Stewart glanced across at his mother, sitting patiently against the wall as she knitted. She had the glazed look of sudden tiredness she seemed to feel more often. He’d been a fool to bring her but she’d so wanted to be here when Desiree woke up.

He never knew when Leanore would lapse into one of those turns that kept her in bed for days and she deserved to at least meet her daughter-in-law.

There were so many ways his mind wanted to go but he could only do one thing at a time. ‘We’ll go now, Mother.’

Leanore blinked and looked at him brightly, and he knew she had lost her space in time for the moment. ‘Where will we go?’

‘Home, darling. Desiree is tired.’

Leanore creased her brow. ‘Desiree who?’

Stewart sighed and squeezed his mother’s shoulder gently. ‘We’ll leave Desiree to rest for a while and see Children’s Ward about bringing your granddaughter up here after she wakes up.’ He saw the moment her memory returned and he smiled as his mother nodded.

He looked at Desiree, her eyes now drooping with fatigue. ‘Sleep now. We’ll bring Sophie to you later this afternoon. After tea I’ll take you to the neonatal intensive care, or NICU as they call it, to see your new daughter, if it is all right with your doctor.’

Desiree nodded tiredly but there was one thing she had to do. ‘Before you leave, would you pass the backpack, please?’

‘We’ll see you later, Desiree.’ Stewart laid the backpack gently in her lap and then turned his mother’s wheelchair towards the door.

‘Later,’ he said, and she closed her eyes as they left the room.

Desiree’s head ached quietly but the pain was overshadowed by the enormity of losing who she was and what was in her past.

Lost memories of a twelve-month-old baby and dead husband and now the reality that she risked losing a baby she only fuzzily remembered being pregnant with. It was all too much.

It was a nightmare and surely she would wake up soon.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE didn’t feel like a Desiree. She felt like a Jane or a Mary. They were safe, kind, reassuring names. You’d have to be exotic to be called Desiree and she didn’t feel exotic. But maybe that was the knock on the head too. Maybe she’d shortened her name to something easy or used her middle name?

She must ask Stewart if she had a middle name.

Desiree looked around the sterile hospital room. The walls were pale green, a soothing colour, but she didn’t feel soothed. The bed was electric and the furniture wooden, not metal, but there was nothing homey or reassuring to help her state of mind, except the flowers from a woman she didn’t know.

Her hand fell to the soft kid of the backpack on her lap and she frowned at the chic but drab leather.

She couldn’t imagine choosing it. Maybe the bag had been a gift from her husband. A man she couldn’t remember, and therefore couldn’t mourn.

A man living estranged from his family if some of Stewart’s comments were anything to go by.

Inside, an eye-make-up pack revealed a mirror and she flicked it open to stare into the tiny frame to see her face.

A stranger looked back. A very pale stranger who looked more like a plain Jane then a Desiree! Grey eyes, ordinary-looking mouth and nose, with an extraordinary bruise on one cheek. Dark mop of hair with blood congealed in the fringe. Not a good look and hardly reassuring. She snapped the mirror shut and pushed it down to the bottom of the bag as if to erase what she’d just seen.

Desiree pulled a soft leather wallet from the satchel and unclipped it.

Loose change and no paper money at all? That seemed strange. No driver’s licence—maybe she didn’t drive. A collection of gold and platinum credit cards all in the name of Mrs Desiree Kramer, a health card and a private health insurance card. A train ticket to Sydney—lot of good that had done her.

One sleeve of the wallet held a photo of a baby, obviously her unremembered daughter, Sophie. Tears welled. How could she have forgetten her own baby?

‘I’m sorry I don’t remember you, Sophie,’ she said to the photo.

She ran her fingers over her stomach and desolation hit her again. Except for the slight softness that could have been recently stretched skin, she couldn’t tell she’d been pregnant.

Perhaps she hadn’t shown much at nearly seven months. What sort of pregnancy had it been? Had she been sick or well? Excited to be having another baby or too sad after the loss of her husband to be in tune with her foetus?

Instinctively she touched her breasts and both felt tender. She guessed she’d figure out the breastfeeding as she went along, even though there would be no poster-perfect pictures of her new babe at the breast for a long time to come. Hopefully she’d breastfed Sophie and it would come back to her.

She guessed there might be many weeks before her baby would be strong enough to feed normally.

Desiree shook her head in despair. How did she accept that she was a widow of a man she couldn’t remember? Or the mother of a child in the paediatric ward? Plus the dreadful knowledge that her premature baby was fighting for her life on another floor?

All this when she hadn’t even recognised her own name—it was too much. She dragged her hands over her eyes and squeezed her fingers into her eye sockets, as though the pressure would bring back visions from her past life.

All it did was increase her headache and circulate stars.

Her fingers fell to pluck at the bag again. ‘I don’t feel like Desiree Kramer,’ she said, out loud this time, and the horror of having no memories to anchor in reality burst in her chest like a cave full of bats exploding from their perches.