St Piran's: Tiny Miracle Twins. Maggie Kingsley

they’d better warn him to back off or they’ll have the nurses’ union on their doorstep.’

      Megan would do it, too, Brianna thought, seeing the fury in her friend’s face, and it was the last thing she wanted. It was hard enough for her to deal with Connor’s reappearance in her life without having the staff in Admin gossiping about it after they’d been told all the facts, and she would have to tell them all the facts.

      ‘Megan, it’s got nothing to do with the nursing staff, or the unit,’ she said unhappily. ‘It’s me. It’s to do with me. You see, Connor Monahan and I…We know one another.’

      Her friend gazed at her blankly for a second, then a look of horrified realisation appeared on her face.

      ‘Oh, lord, he’s not an ex-boyfriend of yours, is he?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Brianna, I’m so sorry, what a nightmare for you.’

      ‘A nightmare, for sure.’ Brianna nodded. ‘But you see…’ She took a deep breath. ‘The trouble is, Connor isn’t an ex-boyfriend. He…he’s my husband.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      ‘BUT Mr Brooke said yesterday—after Amy’s operation—that she might need another operation,’ Naomi Renwick said, her eyes dark with fear. ‘He said he wouldn’t know for the next seventy-two hours whether he’d successfully removed all of the infection, so you’d be keeping a very careful eye on her.’

      ‘Which I would be doing whether Amy had been operated on or not,’ Brianna replied, wishing the ever-pessimistic consultant to the darkest reaches of hell. ‘Naomi, your daughter is doing very well. We have no reason to think she will require another operation—’

      ‘But if she does…She’s so little, Sister, so very little, and if she needs another operation…’

      ‘We’ll deal with it just as we’ve dealt with all the other problems Amy has faced since she was born a month ago. Naomi, listen to me,’ Brianna continued, as Amy’s mother made to interrupt. ‘I can’t give you any guarantees—no one can, but, please, please, don’t go looking for bridges to cross. Amy’s temperature’s normal, her colour’s good. In fact,’ she added, ‘just look at her.’

      Naomi Renwick gazed down into the incubator where her daughter was vigorously kicking her little legs despite the fine line of sutures across her stomach, and her lips curved into a shaky smile.

      ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ she said, and Brianna nodded.

      ‘She is, and right now she’s in the best possible place, getting the best possible care, so hold onto that, OK?’

      Brianna hoped Naomi Renwick would, but she wished even more, as she turned to discover Connor standing behind her, that her husband would dog some other nurse’s footsteps, if only for a little while.

      Twenty-four hours, she thought as she began walking down the ward, all too conscious he was following her. Just twenty-four hours ago her life might not exactly have been perfect, but at least she hadn’t felt permanently besieged. Now she felt cornered, under attack, and it wasn’t just by his presence, or his continual questions about the unit. It was the way he managed to somehow incorporate so many barbed comments into what he was saying that was wearing her down, little by little, bit by bit.

      ‘How many incubators does the NICU at Plymouth have?’ he asked, and she came to a weary halt.

      ‘Twelve,’ she replied, ‘which is double our capacity, but their hospital covers a far greater area and population than St Piran’s, so it’s bound to be bigger.’

      ‘I also notice from your ward clerk’s files that every baby has a primary carer,’ he continued. ‘That doesn’t seem to be a very efficient system in terms of time or personnel.’

      ‘Not everything can be measured in terms of time management, or personnel distribution,’ she said acidly. ‘Especially the care of very vulnerable babies.’

      ‘I see,’ he said, but she doubted whether he did as she watched him type something into his state-of-the-art phone, which could probably have made him a cup of coffee if he’d asked it to.

      Figures, statistics had always been his passion, not people, and he didn’t seem to have changed.

      ‘Connor—’

      ‘Does this unit normally have quite so many unused incubators? ‘ he asked, gesturing towards the two empty ones at the end of the ward.

      ‘There’s no such thing as “normal” in NICU,’ she protested. ‘We’ve had occasions when only three of our incubators have been in use, times when we were at full capacity, and last Christmas we were so busy we had to send babies to Plymouth because we just couldn’t accommodate them. It was tough for everyone, especially the families.’

      ‘It would be.’ He nodded. ‘Christmas being the time when most families like to be together.’

      And you’ve missed two with me. He didn’t say those words—he didn’t need to—but she heard them loud and clear.

      ‘Things don’t always work out the way we planned,’ she muttered, ‘and babies can’t be expected to arrive exactly when you want them to.’

      ‘Not babies, no. Grown-ups, on the other hand,’ he added, his eyes catching and holding hers, ‘have a choice.’

      And you chose to walk away from me. That was what he was really saying, and she swallowed painfully.

      ‘Connor, please,’ she said with difficulty. ‘This is a good unit, an efficient unit. Please don’t make this personal.’

      His eyebrows rose. ‘You think that’s what I’m doing?’

      ‘I know it is,’ she cried. ‘Look, I can understand you being angry—’

      ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ Rita interrupted, looking anything but as she joined them, ‘but I’m afraid we’ve had a complaint about your car, Sister Flannigan.’

      ‘A complaint?’ Brianna echoed in confusion, and Rita smiled.

      A smile that was every bit as false as the sympathetic sigh with which she followed it.

      ‘You’ve parked it in the consultants’ side of the car park today instead of the nurses’. Easily done, of course, when you’re stressed—’

      ‘I’m not stressed—’

      ‘Of course you are, my dear,’ Rita declared, her face all solicitous concern, but her eyes, Brianna noticed, were speculative, calculating. ‘How can you possibly not be when you’re doing two jobs?’

      ‘Sister Flannigan has two jobs?’ Connor frowned, and Rita nodded.

      ‘Our nurse unit manager returned to Spain a few months back, and, as Admin haven’t yet appointed his replacement, Sister Flannigan has had to temporarily step into the breach, which is probably why we’re not as efficient as we should be.’

      ‘I can’t say I’ve noticed any inefficiency on Sister Flannigan’s part,’ Connor replied, attempting to walk on, but Rita was not about to be rebuffed.

      ‘Oh, please don’t think I’m suggesting Sister Flannigan is inefficient—’

      Yeah, right, Rita, Brianna thought angrily, and this is clearly payback time because I chewed your head off yesterday.

      ‘But when you’re as much of a perfectionist as I am,’ the ward clerk continued, all honeyed sweetness, ‘I do like everything to be just so.’

      ‘Which makes me wonder why you’re still standing here,’ Connor declared, ‘and not back in your office, dotting some i’s and crossing some t’s.’

      The ward clerk’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a second, then she clamped her lips together tightly.

      ‘Well,