The Greek Doctor's New-Year Baby

She shook her head. ‘It’s all right. I can manage.’

‘I know you’re perfectly capable of managing, but you don’t have to do it on your own. At times like this, you need support.’ Just like she’d given him support the day he’d finally talked about the misery he’d kept locked away for years. ‘It’s what friends do,’ he reminded her. Even though he was aware he wanted to be more than just friends, now wasn’t the time or the place to discuss it.

‘Thank you.’

She left his office again, and was back two hours later with the test results. He took one look at them and sighed. ‘It’s a definite. Come on. Let’s go and break the news as gently as we can.’

‘Mrs Scott’s husband was able to get here within twenty minutes, so my clinic’s more or less running on time.’

‘I’m not criticising you,’ he said softly. ‘You run your clinic the way that works for you.’ He followed Madison back to her patient and introduced himself to Mrs Scott and her husband. ‘You’ve been feeling a bit off colour for a few days, Maddie tells me,’ he said gently. ‘And your blood tests, along with your scan, show that you have a condition that we call a partial molar pregnancy. I’m sorry.’

‘What does it mean?’ Mrs Scott asked, holding her husband’s hand tightly.

‘It means there was a problem when the egg was fertilised. Normally, a baby gets twenty-three chromosomes from you and twenty-three from the dad, but in a molar pregnancy the dad’s chromosomes are duplicated.’

Mrs Scott stared at him, frowning. ‘But how can that happen?’

‘Sometimes,’ Madison explained, ‘two sperm can fertilise one egg. Instead of twins developing, just one baby develops—with sixty-nine chromosomes instead of forty-six.’

‘So I’m not having a baby after all?’ Mrs Scott’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Theo reached out and squeezed her free hand. ‘I know it’s a shock, and it’s probably the last thing you want to think about, but your health is my priority right now. Sometimes, a few months after a molar pregnancy, the molar tissue grows back again, so you’ll need to visit a specialist centre in London for follow-up tests for the next six months.’

‘What sort of tests?’

‘Blood or urine,’ he said. ‘They test for the same chemicals as they would in a pregnancy test, so you need to make sure you don’t try for a baby until you’ve had a chance to recover.’

‘Grow back?’ Mr Scott asked. ‘You mean, it’s like a cancer?’

‘Not quite. It’s called a gestational trophoblastic tumour—but the important things to remember are that it’s benign and it’s curable. If the mole does grow back, we’ll have to treat it with chemotherapy,’ Theo explained gently, ‘but because you have a partial mole rather than a complete mole, it’s much less likely to happen to you. When your hCG levels are back to zero, in about six months’ time, you’ll be able to start trying for a baby.’

Mrs Scott was clearly trying to hold back her tears. ‘If we try for another baby…will this happen again?’

‘The odds of you having another molar pregnancy are pretty low,’ Theo reassured her. ‘There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t have a normal pregnancy next time, and you won’t have increased risk of any complications.’ He was still holding her hand. ‘We’ll need to take you to Theatre to remove the mole—it’s an operation you may have heard of called a D and C.’ Quietly, he talked her through the procedure, explaining exactly what he was going to do. ‘I do need to do the operation under a general anaesthetic, so you won’t be able to have anyone in Theatre with you, but you’ll be able to wait outside the theatre if you want to, Mr Scott.’

‘So when does my wife have to have the operation?’ Mr Scott asked.

‘It’s entirely up to the two of you,’ Theo said. ‘We can do it this afternoon, or if you’d rather wait a day or two to come to terms with everything first, that’s also fine.’

‘It’s a thing growing inside me, not my baby.’ Finally, a tear trickled down Mrs Scott’s face. ‘Do it today. Please. I don’t want it inside me any more.’

‘When did you last eat?’ he asked.

‘Breakfast. I was too worried to eat lunch, and Maddie told me not to eat or drink anything in case you needed to take me to Theatre.’

He nodded his approval. ‘That’s fine. Have you ever had any allergies or any reaction to a previous anaesthetic?’