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As he took her hand Lisa realized that his face was becoming increasingly blurred and that the lights set in the ceiling were curiously fuzzy. At the same time she felt cold—very, very cold. There was no mistaking what it meant. She was bleeding seriously.

'Richard.. .?' She murmured the name as she clung to the warm hand. With all her failing strength she squeezed that hand. 'Stay with me.'

Figures moved in and out of her line of vision—blurred, white-coated figures, nurses in pale pink and blue jumpsuits. A plastic mask was fitted over her nose and mouth and a strap around her head. 'Breathe in some oxygen, Mrs Stanton. Just breathe normally.'

'Get up an IV, quick. Make it dextrose-saline,' a voice said, surprisingly loud, and Lisa felt the sting of an IV cannula going into the back of her left hand. At the same time she was aware that her clothes were being taken off and the cool pad of a stethoscope was being placed on her abdomen.

'Blood pressure cuff on. BP's a bit low,' someone said.

'Foetal heart rate slightly elevated. Circulating oxygen level OK. Fair amount of vaginal bleeding.'

'Thank God,' Lisa murmured, feeling tears of relief seep from the corners of her closed eyelids. 'Don't let anything happen to my baby.. .please.'

'We won't.' It was the voice of Dr Blair. 'Take it easy.'

'Got those blood samples?' a terse voice asked, rising above the bustle of activity around the stretcher.

'Yeah...just about.'

'I want a haemoglobin done on that blood—prothrombin-time and clotting-time. Stat. OK? Make sure the stat lab knows it's coming. And get them to do a cross-match right away. In the meantime, get me a couple of packs of the O negative. Hang them up, Stat! I want plasma too— get that up. I want to put in a second IV. Get on to the operating room.'

'We're doing that right now!'

'Get that foetal monitor going.'

'It's on.'

'I want a Foley catheter put in—continuous drainage.'

The tense male voice that had been issuing instructions addressed Lisa. 'Mrs Stanton, I'm Dr Rick Kates, the senior obstetrics resident. Who's your obstetrician at the Raeburn Clinic? Your husband told me you were booked in there.' He lifted up the plastic face mask so that she could speak.

Lisa opened her eyes, knowing that she was in serious trouble when she could not focus properly on his face. A nurse was hanging up a pack of blood.

'Dr Charles Linton.' The words came out through dry, stiff lips.

'OK, we'll contact him.' The resident bent down close to her. 'Can you tell us your due date, and whether you had an ultrasound done during the pregnancy?'

'I'm due at the end of December, the thirty-first.' she said, fighting to control the awful fear in her as she felt gushes of warm blood flowing from her body. 'Yes, I had two ultarasounds—the last one was about three weeks ago.'

'Did Dr Linton say anything to you about a placenta praevia, Mrs Stanton?'

'No.. .no, he didn't.'

'You're a nurse, I understand?'

'Yes.'

'You're aware that you're bleeding?' She nodded. 'We don't know why yet, but it looks as though the placenta is separating prematurely. When did you last have anything to eat or drink?'

'Not since...' She calculated slowly, her mind sluggish. 'Not since midday—a glass of milk, a few crackers.'

'Right! That's good, even though it means your blood sugar's probably low. We're going to have to do a Caesarean section, Mrs Stanton. We have to get that baby out. We're waiting for the staff man to get here. So far, the foetal heart rate's OK. You're doing all right.'

As the resident moved away from the side of the stretcher a nurse, holding another plastic bag of blood, took his place. 'Excuse me, Mr Stanton,' the nurse said, looking at Dr Blair, 'I just want to get in here to hang up the blood. Then we have to put in a urinary catheter, then another IV.'

'OK,' Marcus Blair said. 'I'll make myself as inconspicuous as possible, although I know my wife would appreciate me being able to hold her hand.'

Realizing that the staff had taken Marcus Blair to be her husband, and that he had obviously not corrected the assumption, her eyes sought his in mute apology. She hadn't intended him to be involved in such a way—it had just happened. There was something about him that invited trust. Many other men would have just taken off as soon as the hospital staff had taken over. There was no denying that she needed him, or someone just like him, at this moment.

As his eyes met hers Lisa acknowledged the ironic gleam in them, the slight raising of his eyebrows as he accepted the duplicity. His mouth quirked in a slight smile at the shared secret.

In moments more blood from the IV was dripping into a secondary tubing that ran into a vein. Everything was moving fast—events were out of her control, as though they had taken on a momentum of their own. In very short order, a urinary catheter had been inserted in her bladder.

'Lisa.' Marcus Blair was bending close to her, his voice barely audible. 'Is there anyone I can contact for you? Your husband? The nurses will want to know your next of kin. They'll have to know it's not me.'

'I haven't got a husband,' she said quietly, her eyes meeting his candidly. 'I'd appreciate it if you'd let my mother know.. .later, after the baby's born. I don't want her to know now.. .it's too late for her to get here... she'll worry too much. The number's in my bag, in my address book. Take my bag—here.' She handed it over. 'Keep it with you, please.'

'Sure. No one else?' he persisted.

'No.'

'What about Richard?' he said gently, in an undertone.

'What do you know about Richard?'

'You said the name more than once. Is he the father?'

He did not equivocate, and Lisa found that she was relieved. With her free hand she smoothed back damp tendrils of hair from her clammy forehead, trying to gather her thoughts into some sort of coherence. It was so much easier to talk to a stranger, anyway. After this she might never see him again, although with a piercing, poignant longing she wished that she might...

'Lisa?'

'I... Yes, he is the father. But I don't want him contacted.'

The nurse interrupted again. 'Will you take her personal belongings, Mr Stanton? Her bag, and so on?' In her hands was a large, clear plastic bag, the type used for garbage, through which Lisa recognized her blood-stained coat and her shoes.

Surprisingly she felt no embarrassment that a stranger was claiming her personal belongings as the nurse handed them over to him. She was beyond embarrassment. Indeed, she felt oddly distanced from it, as though it were happening to someone else, even though everything was registering with unusual clarity. Perhaps that was what extreme fear did to you—fear that she would lose her baby, perhaps her own life. ;

For months now she had loved that baby growing inside her with a fierce, intense love that she had not previously thought possible. With each week of the pregnancy that love had increased, together with a powerful, protective urge, so that she felt she would go through fire for the safety of that child—in spite of Richard.

Then there was a renewed flurry of activity as the staff obstetrician arrived, and Lisa was behind closed curtains so that she could be examined and asked more questions. Marcus Blair had stepped away from her.

At the end of it the obstetrician, a grey-haired, middle-aged man with a kindly face, patted her consolingly on the shoulder.

'I want to take you to the operating room, do a Caesarean section,' he said. 'So far, everything's OK, but it won't be OK very soon if we wait. I'm sorry, but there's no alternative. Sometimes these things happen, with no immediately obvious explanation.'

'I'm quite prepared for that,' Lisa said calmly, as she held the precious oxygen mask a few inches away from her face. 'I don't want anything to happen to this baby... don't want to take any risks.'

'That's my girl!' he said encouragingly, not intending to be paternalistic or patronizing, 'We'll have that baby out in no time. I'll see you again in a few minutes in the operating room. And, don't you worry, everything's under control.' With another squeeze of her shoulder he was gone, his small entourage with him.

'Show me those blood-work results as soon as you get them,' Lisa heard his voice demanding from a distance. 'And get the other units of blood right away. Get that plasma hooked up.'

Only then did Lisa feel her composure slip, feel a tightening of her throat—a moment of sheer panic.

'Marcus?' The nurses thought he was her husband so she could hardly call him Dr Blair.

'I'm here, Lisa.' Then he was beside her again, had become reassuringly familiar. Again he took her hand, covering its coldness with both his own.

'They're taking me to the operating room now,' she whispered. 'I wanted to say thank you again. You've been so kind. I've taken up so much of your time.'

'Would you say goodbye to her now, Mr Stanton?'' A nurse hurried in behind the privacy curtains. 'We're taking her to the OR right away.'

'Sure,' Marcus Blair said. 'Give me a moment.' For the nurse's benefit, no doubt, Lisa thought, he kissed her on the cheek and put his arms around her for a few brief seconds, the gesture bringing a lump of emotion to her throat. Automatically she kissed him back, allowing herself to give way to the relief of the brief welcome closeness.

'I'll be there in the recovery room when you come round from the anaesthetic—let you know whether you've had a girl or a boy,' he said softly, his cheek against hers, this stranger whom she had met fortuitously in a parking lot. It should have been Richard. How strange were the outcomes of dire need, she thought desperately, reluctant to let him go.

'How?' she whispered back.

'I'll find a way,' he said. He let her go then, pushing her back onto the stretcher and pulling the cotton blanket up over her shoulders to keep her warm. 'Good luck, and don't worry. Look at that...' He indicated the foetal monitor at the bedside, where the spiky heartbeats of her unborn child showed up clearly on the screen. 'That baby's holding its own, in spite of everything.'

'Yes...' She smiled.

'Are you sure you don't want me to contact Richard?' he persisted gently.

'Yes, I'm sure,' she said. 'You see.. .he doesn't know I'm pregnant.'

'Here we go, Mrs Stanton.' The nurse was back, brushing aside the curtains briskly with a no-nonsense finality, 'The porter's here now to take you to the OR.' She efficiently released the brakes on the stretcher. 'Won't be long now. You'll soon be holding that lovely baby in your arms.'

The stretcher began to move, a porter at one end and the nurse at the other.

'See you soon.' Dr Blair, playing the part of the loving husband, without which he might have been politely asked to leave long ago, kissed her cheek again, as though in silent response to her imploring eyes. Then the warm hand released hers for the last time.

'Thanks,' she whispered. 'Goodbye.. .Marcus.'

The porter set a brisk pace, propelling the stretcher from corridor to elevator to corridor again and then at last to the wide automatic doors of the operating suite. Lisa knew those doors so well from her professional life, a life that seemed a million years away.

With her free hand she felt her swollen abdomen under cover of the enveloping blankets. Then she felt the baby move inside her, the slow, familiar slight changing of position—the stretching of the limbs, the sudden kick of a foot—that it made every so often. Then her eyes filled with tears, tears of relief. 'We'll make it,' she said fiercely to herself. 'We'll both make it.'

Her tears were of gratitude as well to a strange man who fully understood what being a doctor really meant. The memory of his kiss would stay with her like a talisman while she waited for the anaesthetic, even though it was Richard's child she carried, Richard she loved...

Then the stretcher came to a halt in a quiet area.

'Lisa! Lisa Stanton! Isn't it?' a voice said.

A nurse bent over Lisa when she opened her eyes. They were in a small anteroom beside the main obstetrics operating room in the vast operating suite.

'Yes, it is,' she agreed weakly, lifting the oxygen mask so that she could answer. 'Leonora! Is it really you?' The woman bending over her had been a colleague.

'It's me, all right.' The nurse smiled.

'Thank God for a familiar face,' Lisa sighed. 'I.. .don't know the staff man or the resident.'

'Both new,' the nurse said briskly, pressing Lisa's hand. 'And both superb at their jobs, I might add.. .in case you doubted it. But you know that you get the best at University Hospital, don't you?'

'Sure.' Lisa smiled back. 'It's so great to see you, Leonora,' she repeated. 'Almost like the old days.'

'I noticed you stressed "almost",' the nurse said with a laugh, obviously trying to take Lisa's mind off the coming events. 'Welcome home, kid! I thought it might be you, Lisa, when they told us the name. All of five minutes
ago,' she added ruefully. 'A good thing we're in a constant state of absolute readiness, eh?'

'Yeah...' Something of her usual calmness returned. Good old Leonora, always right on the ball.

'I didn't know you were pregnant. Long time no see, and all that.'

'It's a long story, Leonora.'

'Well, you're finally on the other side of the fence, eh?' All the time she was talking the nurse was attaching monitor leads to Lisa's chest, connecting her to a monitor that would automatically show and record her body's vital signs and the level of circulating oxygen in her bloodstream.

'Don't ask me what it's like. I'd rather be where you are,' Lisa said weakly, determined not to give way to panic.

'Well, don't you worry, honey. We're going to take real good care of you. We'll chat later. Now, they said in Emergency that you hadn't signed the consent to operation form yet. I know that you understand the nature of the operation that you're about to undergo so I'll just ask you to sign right here on the dotted line.'

It took a lot of concentration for Lisa to grasp the proffered pen and to sign her name on the form that was attached to a clipboard.