The Honourable Maverick / The Unsung Hero Read Online Free PDF Page A

them wanting to know where you were last employed? Without talking to people there?’
    Ellie looked away again. ‘Yeah…I know.’ Defeat darkened her words. ‘I keep thinking and thinking about it and it’s going round and round in my head and I just keep hoping I’ll think of something that might work. Some way out.’
    She gave him a quick glance and he could see that her eyes shimmered with tears. ‘And I can’t. I just have to take one day at a time and think about what I need to do
today.
For the next few hours, even.’
    ‘What you need to do today is to make sure that everything’s OK with you and your baby.’
    Her nod was resigned. ‘I’ll go and see a doctor tomorrow, I promise. I’ll find a midwife.’
    ‘And you’ll have the baby in a hospital?’
    She shook her head. ‘I
can’t.
What if Marcus found out? What if he got the chance to do a DNA test or something and got evidence that it
is
his baby? He’d take it away from me.’
    Ellie was gripping the table now. She pushed herself to her feet. ‘I’m
not
going to let that happen. Not to me and especially not to this baby.
My
baby.’ She turned away with the obvious intention of leaving.
    ‘Hey…my baby, too…kind of.’ Max was on his feet. He had to stop her going. If she left, he’d have no way of helping her and he’d taken on a responsibility back then when he’d claimed paternity. OK, it had been pretence and he could give it up now but oddly it seemed to be getting stronger.
    Ellie got halfway across the room as she made a direct line for her small overnight bag that still sat near the door. But then she stopped abruptly. She put her arms around herself again and then, to Max’s horror, she doubled over with an agonised cry of pain. It was then that he saw the dark stain on the legs of her jeans.
    Had her waters broken?
    He was by her side in an instant. Holding her. Helping her to lie down, right where she was. He was touching her and when he took his hand away, he saw the unmistakable smears of blood on his fingers.
    ‘Don’t move, Ellie,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be all right. I’m just going to call for an ambulance.’

CHAPTER THREE
    T HE wail of the ambulance siren still echoed in his head as Max followed the stretcher carrying Ellie into the emergency department of Dunedin’s Queen Mary hospital.
    The sound had been the consistent background to a blur of activity that he had orchestrated from the moment Ellie had collapsed on his floor. He had been the one to place the large-bore IV cannula to allow vital fluids to be administered to counteract the blood loss. He had inserted a second line when it had become apparent that her blood pressure was already alarmingly low and her level of consciousness was rapidly dropping. It was Max who kept an eye on the ECG monitor to see what effect the blood loss might have on her heart rhythm and increased the level of oxygen being given as the reading of circulating levels slowly deteriorated.
    This was far worse than any complication he might have imagined her encountering on an international flight. She would have been in trouble if this had happened only hours ago on a short domestic hop. Or outon the street before she had knocked so unexpectedly on his door.
    She was in trouble anyway.
    So was the baby.
    Not that he could afford to worry about the infant just yet. He knew that the mother’s condition was the priority. He had dealt with such cases in his department more than once. Ruptured ectopic pregnancies. Uterine ruptures. Trauma. But this wasn’t some unknown woman who’d been rushed into his department by an ambulance with its siren wailing urgently.
    This was Ellie and he’d promised her she was safe now.
    ‘Antepartum haemorrhage,’ he told the startled-looking triage nurse as the stretcher burst through the electronic doors into a brightly lit department.
    ‘Max! What on earth are you doing here?’
    He ignored more than one head turning in his direction.