The Fiancé He Can't Forget by Caroline Anderson

get his feeding off to a good start, because he’s a little light for his dates, but he’s great. Just a bit skinny, really.’
    Matt nodded. He was. At a guess her placenta had been failing for a couple of weeks, and although he was a good size, he was still slightly behind what he should have been. Whatever, he’d catch up quickly enough now, and he was clearly in good hands.
    â€˜He’s looking good,’ Ben said quietly from beside him, and he nodded again. It seemed easier than talking, while his throat was clogged with emotion and his chest didn’t seem to be working properly.
    He eased away from the crib with a shaky sigh and, asking Rachel to keep in touch, he headed out of the unit with Ben.
    â€˜How about coming down to the canteen?’
    â€˜I want to get back to Amy,’ he said, even though he could murder a drink, now he thought about it.
    â€˜Can I get you anything, then? Tea, coffee, bacon roll?’
    â€˜Coffee and a bacon roll would be good,’ he said, but when it came he could hardly eat it. Sitting there outside the high dependency unit and fretting about Amy did nothing for the appetite, he discovered, and the bacon roll only brought back memories—the morning after the wedding, when he’d spent the night with her, tryingto convey with actions rather than words how much he loved her; the mornings they’d woken in his London apartment and she’d snuggled up to him and told him she was hungry and he’d left her there, warm and sleepy, and made her breakfast.
    They’d been halcyon days, but they’d ended abruptly when she’d lost Samuel.
    Odd. He always thought of him as Samuel, although they’d never talked about it since that awful day. They’d talked about names before, argued endlessly about girls’ names but agreed instantly on Sam.
    He tipped his head back with a sigh, resting it against the wall behind the hard plastic chair in the waiting area outside the HDU. Ben had brought the bacon roll and coffee up to him and then gone back to Daisy and their own tiny baby, and now he sat there, staring at the roll in his hand while he remembered the past and wondered what the future held.
    Once, it had seemed so bright, so cut and dried and full of joy. Now, over four years later, Amy was lying there motionless, possibly brain injured, their newborn son was in SCBU, and Matt had no idea what lay ahead for the three of them.
    He swallowed the last of the cold coffee, threw the roll into the bin and went back to Amy’s side. Could the sheer force of his willpower pull her through? He didn’t know, but he’d give it a damn good try.
    He picked up her lifeless hand, and stopped. Was he clutching at straws, or was it less swollen? He looked at it thoughtfully, wondering if he was imagining it. No. He didn’t think so. It was improving, slowly. She was improving.
    Shaking with relief, knowing it was still early days,trying to find a balance between sheer blind optimism and drenching fear, he cradled the hand in his, pressed it to his cheek and closed his eyes.
    Â 
    She was floating.
    No, not floating. Drowning. Drowning in thick, sticky fog and awash with pain.
    There were noises—bleeps and tweets, hisses and sighs. People talking, alarms going off, laughter in the distance.
    Hospital? It sounded like the hospital. Smelt like the hospital. But she was lying down, floating on the fog—or water? Drowning again. It felt like water—
    She coughed, and felt her hand squeezed. Odd. Someone was there, holding it. Talking to her in a soothing voice.
    Matt? He was saying something about a baby, over and over. ‘The baby’s all right…he’s going to be all right—’
    But her baby was—
    She felt herself recoil from the pain. It hurt too much to think, to work it all out. She tried to open her eyes, to argue, but it was too bright, too difficult, so she shut them again and let the fog