Page 13 of The Midwife By the Sea

Elena nodded and Hope positioned the stethoscope in her ears, carefully replacing the other end at the point where she’d heard the heartbeat, her body sagging with relief as she watched Elena’s face morph into a smile, the tears still flowing but for a different reason this time.

‘She’s really alive.’

‘She is, but we need—’ Hope’s words were stolen by the return of Esther, alongside Adriana Zeman, the obstetrician she’d requested – and a tall, good-looking man, with reddish-brown hair, and a warm, encouraging smile, who she immediately recognised as her biological father.

‘I don’t want you in here.’ Elena curled into a ball, wrapping her arms around her body, all of the openness to help that she’d tentatively begun to display disappearing in an instant.

‘It’s okay, Elena, I promise,’ Hope said. ‘This is my friend Adriana, she’s one of the consultants in the maternity department and she’s been working at St Piran’s since she moved here from Slovakia.’ There was no time for Hope to worry about whether the doctor might take offence at her words, she needed to do all she could to reassure Elena and hope that Adriana understood. They were far from being friends, but Adriana had certainly been welcoming and had insisted that Hope call her by her first name, instead of referring to her as Ms Zeman, as many consultants would have done. Despite that, Hope had no right to share personal information about her, but she hoped the connection to Slovakia might just be enough to allow Elena to trust that it really was okay.

‘Si zo Slovenska?’ Elena looked towards Adriana, who nodded, and Hope could only guess that the woman was checking whether what she’d been told was true.

Adriana responded in Slovakian and as the two women started to talk, Tomáš moved closer to Hope, dropping his voice to almost a whisper. ‘Our languages aren’t the same, but I understand enough to know that Adriana wants to help, and I think Elena might let her.’

For a moment, all Hope could do was hold her breath again, willing this to have been the right move, but as relief finally flooded Elena’s face, the whole atmosphere in the room seemed to change.

‘She’s going to help me, thank you, thank you.’ Elena turned towards Hope, who managed a nod, but she was afraid that if she said anything else, she might cry. She needed to allow Adriana and Joe to get on with their jobs now, and she was almost certain that having any more people than needed in the room would put Elena at risk of becoming overwhelmed again. She knew she needed to step outside, but she was going to have to force herself to do it. Not just because she wanted to be certain that Elena and her baby were really okay, but also because the chance to meet her biological father was tantalising close. Now wasn’t the time, she could accept that. The hardest part was that she didn’t know when or if that moment would ever come.

Hope should have gone straight home after she left the emergency department, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave until there was an update about Elena. She told herself that was why she’d left a note with one of Esther’s colleagues, asking him to pass it on once she was free. The note had been short and simple, telling Esther that she would be going for a coffee and would be outside the Friends of St Piran’s shop for the next half an hour or so, just in case Esther had the chance to come and update her on what was happening. She suspected Adriana would want to move Elena to the maternity department as quickly as possible, which should be the end of Esther’s involvement, but she had no idea what Joe’s involvement would need to be from a mental health perspective. If he needed to go with Elena when she was moved, Hope’s chance to meet him and speak to him would have slipped away and it was hard to envisage a situation when she’d have an excuse to talk to him again. There was too much risk of him thinking it was strange, if she followed him to the maternity department when her shift had already finished. But if she waited until she was next back in work, it was unlikely someone as senior as Joe would still be supporting Elena. That’s why it had felt as though it was now or never.

Whenever anyone had been crass enough to ask whether the fact that she hadn’t been raised by her ‘real’ parents bothered her, Hope’s first reaction had been a desire to lash out physically, because she hated the idea of anyone considering Dave and Alison Masterson as anything other than her real parents. That’s what they were, in every sense that mattered, and biology came so far down the list it felt almost negligible. She’d always resisted the urge to lash out, somehow, and once the white-hot rage had died down, she’d sometimes attempt to answer the question. First would come her forthright assertion that Dave and Alison were her real parents, and then her assurance that she didn’t miss her biological parents being involved in her life, as you couldn’t miss what you’d never had. She’d always believed that to be true, and meeting Laura hadn’t changed her mind.

Her biological mother was a nice woman, but she didn’t feel like any kind of mum to Hope. She had her hands full with three young boys, and with a husband who was a pastor of a conservative church, Hope had the feeling that Laura didn’t want to assume any kind of role that would publicly identify her as Hope’s biological mother. She had no regrets about finding her, but there’d been no burning desire from either of them to make arrangements to meet up again, although they’d agreed to stay in touch and Laura had said the door was always open if Hope wanted to visit again. The boys – her half-brothers, she supposed – had been lovely and lively, but a million miles away from feeling like her siblings. That label belonged to Tabby, Annie and Bea, and was born out of a lifetime of shared experiences, memories and in-jokes that only they understood. The meeting between Laura and Hope had been enough for both of them to know the other was okay and happy. There was nothing negative about the experience and at times it had been emotional, but Hope hadn’t needed it to fill a gap, because there’d never been one.

It was why she was struggling to understand how disconcerting it had been to finally come face to face with Joe. Maybe it was because she knew she couldn’t tell him who she was, and the sense of unfinished business was what was making it feel like all of a sudden there was a void opening up inside her, waiting for the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle to be slotted into place.

‘You look done in. It’s obviously been one of those days.’ Gwen Jones headed up the team of volunteers at St Piran’s and Jess had introduced Hope to her during her first week in the job. She’d told Hope that Gwen had been a midwife for fifty years before her recent retirement and that there was nothing worth knowing about either midwifery or hospital life that she didn’t know. As Gwen handed over the latte that Hope had ordered, it was pretty clear she hadn’t forgotten how tiring life as a midwife could be.

‘It has a bit.’ Hope gave her a half smile, wondering if it was wrong to say any more, but she needed to offload to someone who might be able to help her understand why the case she’d just dealt with had left her feeling so weighed down by emotion. ‘Does it ever get easier, working with women and babies you might not be able to help?’

‘If it does then you’re in the wrong job.’ Gwen turned around and lifted a slice of cake onto a plate with some tongs.

‘I didn’t order?—’

Gwen cut off her protestation before she could even get it out. ‘You need it. Trust me. The days when I thought I was going to lose a baby – or even worse, when I did – are all still stored up here.’

She tapped one side of her head with her forefinger. ‘I can still picture the moment and remember how it felt. It’s part of the job, but that doesn’t make it any easier.’

‘It doesn’t.’ Hope frowned. ‘And I froze up a bit, almost couldn’t bring myself to check for the baby’s heartbeat.’

‘But you did.’ Gwen waited until Hope nodded and then pushed the cake even closer towards her. ‘That takes more bravery than most people will ever understand. You did your job, and you were there for that woman and her baby when they needed you. That’s all that matters.’

‘I didn’t feel in the least bit brave.’

‘Ah well, you’ll have to take it from me that you were and, even after the toughest of days, I can promise you that cake will make things feel better.’

‘Thank you. How much do I owe you?’ A tiny bit of the unease that Hope had been feeling started to lift, but then Gwen shook her head.

‘My treat. I’m always going to miss midwifery, but it’s nice to be a small part of it, even if it’s only doing what I can to raise the spirits of those of you still in the thick of it.’

‘Thank you so much.’ Hope forced a smile, but the unease had been squashed by guilt. She shouldn’t have been so affected by Elena’s case, especially as the baby’s heartbeat had been strong and steady. And she hadn’t been honest about what else it was that had affected her so badly, but she couldn’t tell anyone about that. Least of all someone like Gwen, who seemed to know everyone in the hospital. The news would probably reach Joe before Hope had even swallowed her last mouthful of cake. She felt like she was lying to everyone by omission and that she’d garnered Gwen’s sympathy on false pretences. God knows how people had affairs, because all this duplicity was making her feel awful.

Taking a seat at one of the tables, Hope tried to concentrate on reading an article on her phone about continuous professional development programmes for midwives, but every time she spotted someone out of the corner of her eye walking down the corridor, she looked up in case it was Esther or Joe.

After forty minutes, Gwen had brought over another drink, without Hope needing to order it, and had briefly squeezed her shoulder. The action forced Hope to tightly shut her eyes, in order to stop tears from leaking out. She couldn’t have explained them away, not even to Gwen. It would have seemed like an overreaction after dealing with a mother-to-be who, as far as she knew, was doing well.

She should leave soon. She told herself that again as she stirred sugar into her second latte. Esther wasn’t going to come. She was probably tied up with patients and, even if she did eventually have time to act upon the message Hope had left, she wouldn’t expect her to still be sitting waiting outside the coffee shop. It would have seemed like very odd behaviour for someone who’d been due to go home after the end of her night shift hours before. On the tiny chance that Esther did come looking for her, the last thing she wanted was for Joe’s wife to think of her as odd, or to start to wonder why on earth she’d wait around for so long. She wouldn’t put two and two together, that was impossible, but it might make her wary of Hope, and that was a very uncomfortable thought. She wanted Esther and Joe to like her, even if she could never tell them why it was so important to her that they did.

Then suddenly, there they were, walking along the corridor towards her.