Page 6 of A Merry Little Christmas

‘I’m packing now, and I’ll be on the first flight,’ he promised.

‘Me too,’ Astrid piped up somewhere in the background.

‘I love you,’ said Cole.

‘I love you too. Please hurry.’ Merry’s lip trembled before the screen went blank.

Olek put a hand on her back. ‘I think we should take you to the hospital.’

‘Agreed,’ said Nell.

‘We’ll take the children back with us,’ Hester offered. ‘Come on, kids.’

‘Oh crikey,’ said Fred, shaking his head. ‘I feel helpless.’

‘Snap,’ said Merry, tears trickling down her face. ‘If the baby’s coming, I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do about it.’

‘Is this my fault?’ Freya said in a small voice. ‘Because I knocked into you?’

‘No, darling, there’s no need to worry, I promise,’ Merry replied with as much conviction as she could muster.

‘Let’s go.’ Nell’s voice was firm. ‘We need to get you to a doctor and see what’s going on.’

Merry nodded, unable to speak for the second time this evening. This was not how she’d planned it. She wasn’t ready to be a mother. Not tonight. Not yet.

Chapter 2

Merry

‘PPROM?’ Merry repeated the acronym back to the doctor who was standing beside her bed, jotting notes on her records.

‘Preterm prelabour rupture of membranes,’ the doctor explained, dropping the clipboard on the bed beside Merry’s feet. ‘It’s the term we use when waters break before thirty-seven weeks of pregnancy and the mother hasn’t gone into labour.’

It was 9 a.m. and she’d spent her first ever night in hospital. It had felt interminable. Thankfully, Nell had had a phone charger in her bag yesterday, so at least Merry had been able to catch up with the shop’s social media activity and online orders while she’d been stuck on the ward all night.

Nell had also popped down to the hospital shop last night and picked up some emergency toiletries, while Olek had distracted Merry with stories of his son’s birth, which apparently had been so swift that his first wife hadn’t even had time for pain relief. She’d been glad when Nell had returned to save her from a detailed description of baby Max’s first bowel movement. The couple had left once it had been established that there was no imminent danger of Merry giving birth, but despite being shattered, Merry had barely slept. Now all she wanted was to be told she could go home and have a bath and that there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Judging by the serious expression on Dr Hill’s face, that was looking unlikely.

Merry had had a few pains last night which she’d thought might be the start of her contractions, but they’d disappeared and the nurse who’d looked after her had been confident that all she’d felt were Braxton Hicks.

‘Is that bad?’ Merry asked the doctor, making a mental note to google it on her phone as soon as he’d gone.

‘Not ideal and not without risks, but with conservative management, all should be well.’

She’d prefer something a bit more concrete than that, but before she had a chance to probe any further, Dr Hill attached a blood pressure cuff to her arm and indicated to her to stay quiet. He inflated it so much that she was almost at the point of complaint when he finally released the air, frowning as he listened to the whoosh of her blood through his stethoscope.

‘Should be well?’ she queried, once she deemed it safe to speak.

‘As long as you look after yourself and don’t do anything silly.’

‘I’ll cancel my ice-skating lessons immediately,’ Merry replied.

The doctor looked sternly at her over his glasses. ‘I assume that was a joke, but in my job, you get used to taking nothing for granted. Sex is off the menu too.’

Merry pressed her lips together to prevent herself from saying she’d been banking on that to kick-start labour. Someone in her antenatal class had said it had worked for her with her first baby. ‘What does “conservative management” mean?’

He took the stethoscope from his ears. ‘We watch and wait.’