Midwife's Baby Bump

Tristan and the medical student stepped away as the nursing team prepared the baby to be transferred to Neonatal Intensive Care. He was pleased that the stunned-deer expression had slowly disappeared from the young man’s face and he appeared more at ease. After agreeing that Jon could scrub in on the arterial switch repair surgery, he invited the student to accompany him to visit with the parents once the mother had been released from Recovery and returned to the maternity unit ward. It was equally important to Tristan that the bedside manner of medical students was developed at the same time as their technical skills.

Tristan then headed to Neonatal ICU to brief the nursing team before he went back to his office to finalise some paperwork and grab some lunch. He had an afternoon of hospital rounds and consults, so he needed to eat something substantial.

Flick paced the corridor outside Tristan’s office nervously. She had taken a break after she’d visited a new mother in MMU with Sophia. Flick loved shadowing Sophia and was learning so much about the spectrum of roles within midwifery but that day she felt removed from what was happening. She hadn’t liked the feeling of not being in the moment during the birth. It was what she loved more than anything but that day her mind and her heart were weighed down by what she needed to say to Tristan.

This was her career and she would not allow Tristan to take that away from her. She would get through her personal issues because she loved what she did. She loved it all—the antenatal care, the birth and the postnatal assistance. She wanted to be a community midwife and spend more time in the field in the future.

But first she had to speak with Tristan. She had made her decision after two weeks of deliberation. She couldn’t delay it any longer.

Finally, after taking a deep breath, she knocked on his door.

‘Come in,’ Tristan called, trying to swallow a mouthful of his sandwich as he checked his incoming emails, some of them spam from pharmaceutical and medical supply companies.

Flick’s legs were shaking like leaves in the breeze as she entered his office. She looked across the room at the man who had made love to her on that fateful night and she knew immediately that there was no regret in her heart. No anger. And definitely no blame, as she had willingly invited him into her bed.

‘Flick.’ He was stunned and his voice didn’t mask his surprise at seeing her in his office. She looked even more beautiful. She had a glow, he thought as she stood before him in her shapeless hospital scrubs. He knew underneath she had the most gorgeous body but her beauty went so much deeper than that. She had a wonderful, warm spirit and the fact they couldn’t be together ate him up inside.

It took less than a minute, with Flick standing so close, to realise that his feelings for her were real and that made it so much harder to keep his distance. It tore at him that he couldn’t act on his feelings, to cross the room and kiss away the last three months. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t let it happen. He needed to stay in control. She deserved so much better than the problems he could bring into her life.

Resolutely he knew he must deal professionally with whatever hospital matter she had come to discuss and then pretend she had never been within his arms’ reach.