A Baby on Her Christmas List by Louisa George

little boy’s mum laughed, but Liam could see by her lined forehead and forced smile that she was still anxious. It didn’t matter what befell a kid, their parent always worried.
    ‘I don’t know why he decided it needed to go all the way up his nose. I just wish he hadn’t found it at all. I’ll kill his dad when we get home. Leaving little things on the floor is so dangerous.’
    ‘I guess having kids means big changes. It takes a bit of getting used to.’
    That thought had been running over and over in his head since he’d left. Would he be like that with his child? Worried sick if it stuffed something up its nose? Would he refuse to let them play outside in case they injured themselves? He’d seen extremes in this job. Neglect that almost tore his heart in two, and the worried well who caused a fuss over nothing. Where children were concerned, it was difficult to get the balance right. But generally it didn’t matter where he was—flooded Pakistan, drought-ridden Africa
—
parents were the same the world over. They loved. They gave their children what they could. They worried.
    He tried to find the wee lad a smile.
    The boy grinned back. With sticky-out ears beneath sand-coloured hair he was pretty cute. And now, with the analgesic kicking in, clearly unbothered by the metal ball in his left nostril. ‘I liked it. It was silver. I wanted to smell it.’
    ‘Oh.’ Kids said the strangest things. Stupefied by his inadequacy where children were concerned, Liam wondered whether you should talk to them like adults or use special kiddy words. He stuck to plain and simple. ‘Metal ball bearings don’t have a smell, buddy. Now, don’t put anything else up your nose. Not even your finger. Off you go.’ He turned to the mum and relaxed a little. It was far easier to talk to a grown-up. ‘See you when you get back from X-Ray.’
    The kid laughed at Liam’s grumbling stomach, clearly unfazed by whichever way Liam spoke to him. ‘What’s that funny noise?’
    ‘It’s...er...’ Not often he was lost for words. ‘I’m hungry. My tummy’s asking for lunch.’
    ‘Metal balls don’t smell and tummies don’t talk.’
    ‘No. Well, I don’t suppose they do. But they growl, like mine, so go on and get your picture taken so we can see inside you. Skedaddle.’
    And lunch was supposed to have been six hours ago. But since then he’d had a steady stream of minor emergencies on top of a few pretty major ones. Now, shift almost over, he could finally go home. Looking forward to getting something into his stomach that wasn’t yet another Sudanese stew or tasteless plane mush, he strode across the ER floor, past the whiteboard. And stopped. Turned. Refocused on the names.
What the...?
    White noise filled his ears, his appetite replaced by an empty hole deep in his gut as he hot-footed it back to Minors and threw the cubicle curtain open. Sure enough, she was there, head in her hands, making soft snuffling noises.
    ‘Georgie? What the hell
—
?’ Four months he’d lain sweltering in a too-hot tent and she’d been tattooed onto the back of his eyelids as he’d gone to sleep, their last conversation going over and over in his head. Making things right hadn’t seemed possible from the dodgy dirty-walled internet cafés he’d visited sporadically, so his emails had been short and perfunctory.
    He’d spent weeks wondering what he’d say when he saw her in person, how he’d feel when he saw her carrying his baby. How he’d feel when he saw her, period. He hated it that she had put a line under their friendship, ending everything so abruptly. But none of that mattered now, none of it.
    He tugged her into his arms, hauled her head against his chest and stroked her back. ‘Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay. It’s okay. Whatever’s happened we’ll fix it. It’s okay.’
    Firm hands pressed on his chest and gripped his shirt. Her voice was low but not upset. In fact...was she laughing? ‘Oh, my God! Liam. You’re