The Greatest Gift by Rachael Johns

Author:Rachael Johns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises, Australia Pty Ltd

Chapter Twenty-two

Jasper hadn’t wanted to leave Claire all alone in that god-awful place, but he’d been ushered out and led to another part of the hospital. Once there, Nick and Constable Morrissey led him to a tall woman with long brown hair tied back off her face. Her uniform and the little upside down watch thing clipped to her shirt told him she was a nurse. She introduced herself with a warm sympathetic smile and her hand brushed gently over his arm as she did so, but her name went in one ear and out the other.

All he heard was, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your wife.’

‘Claire. Her name is Claire,’ he said.

‘Yes, Claire.’ Her expression of pity still etched onto her face, she dropped her hand and turned to a woman behind a reception desk. They exchanged a few words and then she opened a door with some kind of security card and indicated for them to go through ahead of her.

Morrissey stayed behind in the waiting room but Nick accompanied them a little further. It suddenly became clear to Jasper where they were—the ward for sick and premature babies. He couldn’t remember the proper term but on either side of a long corridor were rooms with glass windows and inside those rooms were lots of tiny little box things with babies inside.

He stopped walking and struggled to catch his breath. They were taking him to see the baby.

‘You’ll have to stay out here I’m afraid.’

Jasper heard the nurse speaking and hope lifted his heart—he didn’t want to see the baby, he just wanted to go back to Claire—but then he realised she was speaking to Nick.

‘It’s only immediate family and medical staff allowed in with the newborns,’ she said, then looked to Jasper. ‘I’ll show you your little girl in a moment, but first I need you to wash up.’

She steered him over to a sink just outside one of the glass rooms. ‘Wash your hands right up to your elbows with the soap and then rub this sanitiser on. We want to limit all risk of infection.’

He found himself doing as he was told, telling himself that deep down he owed it to Claire to go and see the baby. It was what everyone would expect him to do.

Moments later, the nurse opened the door and ushered him into a room filled with little baby boxes, the whir and beep of machinery, a couple of medical staff and a few people he guessed were new parents.

‘Here she is,’ the nurse announced, holding Jasper’s arm as she positioned him in front of one of the little boxes.

He gazed down at the tiny red-faced human, naked except for a miniature nappy and the tubes coming out of its nose.

He vaguely registered the nurse speaking. ‘Isn’t she a doll? Your little miracle. She weighed one point five kilograms but she’s doing well considering she’s only thirty weeks. I’d say this one’s a fighter. This is a heated incubator because she’s unable to regulate her temperature yet.

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