Exposed

Martin heard the kitchen door open and close as he was shooing his last patient of the day out the front door. "Yes, yes, Miss Pengelly," he was telling the woman, "Just take the medication as prescribed."

"But I'm still ill!" she protested. "It's them pills doing it!"

He frowned. "Have you been taking the medication after meals?"

"Well, no," she confessed.

"Ah." Typical Martin thought. "As I told you, just follow the directions." He got her to the door and through the opening. "Goodbye." He closed the door then he sighed. "What is it with these people?" he muttered.

Pauline had already cleaned off her desk and slipped into a coat. "She's just…"

"Just what? Stupid?" Martin spit out.

Pauline tipped her head. "Doc, look, some of these folks here abouts, well… they are not the best sweet in the box, you know."

Martin crossed his arms. "I am aware, yes." He knew that lack of education was an issue, on top of stubbornness and a decided deficit in higher thinking.

"Or the brightest bulb in the lamp?" Pauline added. She turned her head when she heard Louisa enter the room from the back hallway. "Oh, hello Louisa! How are you? The Doc and I are just finishing up for the day."

"Hello, Pauline," Louisa answered. "I'm fine."

Too late, Louisa realized that she was still carrying the paper sack from the maternity store in Truro. She had decided to visit the one on River Street, though expensive, because of the better clothing choices, both in variety and quality. The discount store on the other end of the built-up part of Truro was very affordable but as she had examined some of the items sold there, the material was thin, the seams looked ill stitched, and she doubted they'd hold up. So at the trendy place she had splurged. New bras and knickers, a pair of warm flannel pajamas with an expandible waist arrangement, and so forth. She also purchased a pair of larger jeans and two maternity tops which would be useful soon enough.

Martin turned to greet his wife and then he saw it. The sack; made of a pale pink paper, with the name of the store emblazoned across it. 'Jenna's – The Place for Mum's to Be,' the legend read. And it that was not bad enough, below it was a stylized cartoon of a woman's outline advanced in pregnancy. His eye's went wide when he saw it.

"Oh my God!" Pauline shouted. "Louisa, you're having a baby! You're pregnant!"

Louisa did the only thing she could. She smiled sweetly, put a hand on her belly and answered. "Yes, yes I am."

Martin, meanwhile, was screwing his face up in apparent mental agony. No! No! he was thinking. Best to keep Louisa's condition quiet, until near the end of the first trimester, at least another month! Just in case, his mind went black, she suffered a miscarriage.

Pauline dropped her handbag, ran across the room, hugged Louisa and started crying and howling.

Louisa braved the manhandling, patting the girl on the back. "A surprise, I know…"

Pauline turned a tear-streaked face to her boss. "And you didn't tell me?"

"Ahm, no," Martin said. "We…"

"How long have you known?" Pauline asked. "When's the baby due?"

Louisa managed to say, "Next summer," before Martin could get a word in.

Pauline wiped her face with her hands. "Oh lovely when it'll be nice and warm! Oh, my God, Louisa, we never thought you'd ever get married. Thought Danny Steel might do the trick, but no you held out for the Doc!"

"Who's we?" Martin asked testily.

Pauline chuckled. "Oh you know. Everybody."

Louisa gave her husband an embarrassed look. She mouthed the words, 'Sorry, Martin' to him.

"Now you're expecting…" then Pauline blathered on and on about baby showers, a Christening, and so forth, far ahead of this point in time.

After the girl had left them, still spouting words of amazement, relief and excitement, Martin was exhausted. Martin shook his head. Wonderful! Now the whole cursed village will be involved! Blast.

Louisa shrugged. "Martin, I know we wanted to wait a while…"

"It will all be apparent soon enough anyway," he sighed. "Uhm, how was the doctor's visit? Who examined you?"

"Visit went fine, just fine. All's good. Thomas Roberts is the OB. Oh, boy what an exciting time though. As I was waiting to make my appointment for next month one of the women – a very pregnant woman – went into labor as she was leaving reception." Louisa screwed up her nose. "Fluid on the floor, oh dear."

"Hm. Must have been a repeat pregnancy."

"Actually, her fourth," Louisa said. "We had a brief conversation before things started to happen. You know she was talking to her doctor, a ginger-haired woman, very spikey to her patient I thought; most rude, and she – that woman; the doctor – was clearly startled when she heard my name."

"Glasson?"

"No, Ellingham. As in Mrs. Louisa Ellingham. Remember that?"

"Yes." Martin felt the ice beginning to crack over a long-held secret. "Ahem, this woman – the patient? Did she deliver in the OB-GYN reception room?"

"No, thank God. They whisked her off to hospital, which fortunately is attached to the medical office building."

"Ah," Martin answered.

"Apparently that lady delivered her baby in the elevator. An elevator." Louisa grabbed Martin's arm. "Promise me, Martin, that you won't let me delivery our baby in an elevator."

He nodded. "Louisa it sounds to me like this woman had a precipitous delivery. That can happen in repeat pregnancies. The tissues become stretched out and lax, so uterine contractions can more easily expel the baby. There are also some genetic syndromes which result in hypermobility of tissues. In that case labor can be far more rapid…" He stopped for breath when he noticed his wife giving him an irritated look.

She held up her hands. "Martin, there are some things that I would prefer that you not tell me. Okay?" She rested her hand on her belly and looked down. "I have enough concerns about being pregnant that you do not have to add to the list! Got it?"

Martin took a deep breath. Keeping his voice level, he told her, "Louisa, just because it happened to the woman at the office does not mean it might happen to you." He looked at her with concern. "You are anxious about being pregnant."

"Well, of course, I'm anxious, Martin! I'll get big and fat, stretch marks and hemorrhoids, and the whole what if this and what if that of a baby developing inside me? And, husband, morning sickness isn't fun either. You should try being pregnant some time." She didn't mention getting sore nipples either, but she'd worn one of her new bras home and that had helped that tenderness. She bit her lip, not saying aloud her concerns about being a mum or Martin as a father. Those was an entirely different list of worries.

Martin knew that the latter part of her statement was rhetorical, yet even with modern medicine – an absurd notion - that was not possible. "Louisa…" he held up his hands. "If you are unduly anxious…"

Louisa shook her head. "It's just that everything is so compressed, Martin. We didn't date for very long. Then we got married quickly, and almost didn't, so then I found out I'm gonna have a baby and as near as I can figured that happened within a day or so of when we got engaged…

"Um, Louisa we have known one another for three years." Martin looked affectionately at her. "And I loved you from the first. On the plane."

She grinned. "I will admit that you were intriguing on the flight, the way you keep giving me the eye over your newspaper, but the way you were staring at me that day I might have imagined you were staring at my chest."

"What?"

Louisa set the sack down and per her arms around him. "Joke."

"Oh." He just wanted to move on from here and let the past be the past but time marches on, yet those who ignore the lessons of the past may be doomed to repeat them at their peril. "Louisa. You said something about another doctor; the ginger doctor?"

Louisa laughed. "Oh, she was interesting. Certainly gave me the once over. I wonder why?"

Martin sighed.

"Is something wrong?"

Taking a deep breath he said, "Let's sit on the sofa."

Intrigued, Louisa followed him to their front room. "What's this about?"

Martin took the plunge. "When I was in medical school, I…. had a relationship… which lasted for nearly two years," as he said he'd knew it was really three, but he pressed on, "and when we graduated I wished that relationship to continue but… it ended."

Louisa smiled. "Well I didn't think you'd lived as a monk. A girlfriend; that's nice."

Martin cleared his throat. "We actually lived together for that time."

"A live-in girlfriend? My, my. You never mentioned this before." She said it calmly, but her temper flared a little. Martin with some other woman? Well he was tall and good looking and brilliant, so no wonder a female student would not have taken the opportunity. "But it ended."

He nodded. "Yes, she went to Canada for her training."

Louisa took his hand. "Must have been painful."

He cracked his neck, looking at the floor. "Long ago. I got over it."

Louisa said playfully, "And just what other secrets have you been hiding? A large family estate in the Scottish Highlands. Royal blood? A lost family fortune?"

Martin shook his head. "No. None of that. I am fairly sure that… the… that doctor… the ginger OB? That's her."

"What?"

Martin looked straight at his wife. "That's Edith Montgomery."

Louisa shook her head to clear it. "So she's here, I mean over in Truro."

"And apparently practicing at your OB-GYN office."

"I… don't know what to say."

"She clearly recognized my surname, when you told her…"

"Oh. And she put two-and-two together." Louisa had to take a breath, before she turned to face him. He looked rather forlorn about this expose. "It's fine, Martin. Nothing to worry about."

Marti sighed, then said to her, "I'm glad that she will not be following this pregnancy."

Louisa agreed. "Oh my yes."

"I don't think you'd find her to be very… pleasant."

"Because I'm married to you?"

"No. It's just that… she… she doesn't treat people vary fairly."

Louisa now found her hands to be held by his. "I see."

Do you? wondered Martin. "Good."

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