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MIDWIVES ON-CALL
Welcome to Melbourne Victoria Hospital—and to the exceptional midwives who make up the Melbourne Maternity Unit!
These midwives in a million work miracles on a daily basis, delivering tiny bundles of joy into the arms of their brand-new mums!
Amidst the drama and emotion of babies arriving at all hours of the day and night, when the shifts are over, somehow there’s still time for some sizzling out-of-hours romance …
Whilst these caring professionals might come face-to-face with a whole lot of love in their line of work, now it’s their turn to find a happy-ever-after of their own!
Midwives On-Call
Midwives, mothers and babies—lives changing for ever …!
I was thrilled to be a part of the Midwives On-Call series, and to work alongside some of my favourite authors.
We all have secrets, or sides to ourselves that we might not reveal, and that really is the case with my heroine, Isla—she is outwardly strong, with a demanding job and an exciting social life, but there is a side to her that she lets no one see. I knew it would take a very special hero to discover the real Isla, behind the rather glamorous façade. Alessi is all that and more.
I hope you enjoy Isla and Alessi’s story.
Happy reading!
Carol x
CAROL MARINELLI recently filled in a form where she was asked for her job title and was thrilled, after all these years, to be able to put down her answer as ‘writer’. Then it asked what Carol did for relaxation. After chewing her pen for a moment Carol put down the truth—‘writing’. The third question asked: ‘What are your hobbies?’ Well, not wanting to look obsessed or, worse still, boring, she crossed the fingers on her free hand and answered ‘swimming and tennis’. But, given that the chlorine in the pool does terrible things to her highlights, and the closest she’s got to a tennis racket in the last couple of years is watching the Australian Open, I’m sure you can guess the real answer!
Just One Night?
Carol Marinelli
MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Dear Reader
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘ISLA …’ THE PANIC and fear was evident in Cathy’s voice. ‘What are all those alarms?’
‘They’re truly nothing to worry about,’ Isla said, glancing over to the anaesthetist and pleased to see that he was changing the alarm settings so as to cause minimal distress to Cathy.
‘Was it about the baby?’
Isla shook her head. ‘It was just letting the anaesthetist know that your blood pressure is a little bit low but we expect that when you’ve been given an epidural.’ Isla sat on a stool at the head of the theatre table and did her best to reassure a very anxious Cathy as her husband, Dan, got changed to come into Theatre and be there for his wife.
‘It’s not the baby that’s making all the alarms go off?’ Cathy checked again.
‘No, everything looks fine with the baby.’
‘I’m so scared, Isla.’
‘I know that you are,’ Isla said as she stroked Cathy’s cheek. ‘But everything is going perfectly.’
This Caesarean section had to go perfectly.
Isla, head nurse at the Melbourne Maternity Unit at the Victoria Hospital, or MMU, as it was more regularly known, had been there for Dan and Cathy during some particularly difficult times. There was little more emotional or more difficult in Isla’s work than delivering a stillborn baby and she had been there twice for Cathy and Dan at such a time. As hard as it was, there was a certain privilege to being there, too—making a gut-wrenching time somehow beautiful, making the birth and the limited time with their baby poignant in a way that the family might only appreciate later.
Cathy and Dan’s journey to parenthood had been hellish. They had undergone several rounds of IVF, had suffered through four miscarriages and there had been two stillbirths which Isla had delivered.
Now, late afternoon on Valentine’s Day, their desperately wanted baby was about to be born.
Cathy had initially been booked in next Thursday for a planned Caesarean section at thirty-seven weeks gestation. However, she had rung the MMU two hours ago to say that she thought she was going into labour and had been told to come straight in.
Cathy had delivered her other babies naturally. Even though the labours had often been long and difficult with a stillborn, it was considered better for the mother to deliver that way.
As head of