Kitabı oku: «Special Deliveries: Her Gift, His Baby», sayfa 9
Something she’d never really felt before—an L word that would probably be as shocking to Ethan as the F word had been to Jasmine, and if that mouth returned to hers now, she might be tempted later to say so, and again it was just too much and too soon.
‘You need to go,’ Penny said.
‘Do I?’
‘Yes,’ Penny said, ‘because I want to go to bed and have sex with you and I want to get up tomorrow and do it again, and then I want you to take me out tomorrow night, but I think I need to think about things properly. I need to work some stuff out.’
‘And you can’t do that with me?’
Penny looked at him and, no, she didn’t want to try to do this with Ethan—her fertility issues were conversations that should be had far later along in a relationship, dark places a couple might visit later that had instead been thrust on them at the beginning.
‘It’s a girl thing,’ Penny said, because with or without Ethan in her future she needed to properly know how she felt. And as to the other issue, the L one—well, she didn’t need him by her side to work that out.
Penny already knew.
So much for a wild fling—of all the times to go and fall in love with someone.
‘I could make love to you on the sofa and then leave,’ Ethan said, cupping her naked bottom and making her laugh.
‘I suppose that might be a compromise.’
He kissed her again, pulled her around on his lap so she was facing him, and his hands were everywhere and so too were hers. ‘I’m crazy about you, Penny.’
‘I know,’ she said, kissing him back and trying to hold on to a word he might not be ready to hear. ‘I’m crazy about you too.’
Her hand went to his back pocket, which gave him lovely access to her neck. She could feel his tongue, his mouth most definitely leaving evidence that hers hadn’t been about to, but it was bliss and she had a whole two weeks off, so she let him carry on, working her neck and his hands stroked her breasts as she slid the condom on him.
‘You’ll call me if you need me,’ Ethan said as she sank herself down onto him.
‘You’ll call me too,’ Penny said, locked in an erotic embrace, hardly able to breathe. ‘But not for this.’
‘Penny.’ He was lifting his hips and thrusting into her, protesting her impossible rules.
‘I mean it,’ Penny panted, because she could bury herself in Ethan and stay there forever, just as he was burying himself deep in her now.
Yes, a good cry and a good orgasm and Penny felt a whole lot better as she kissed him goodbye at her door. Still stuck on deuce but with play suspended.
Penny was going to sort herself out.
And so too would Ethan.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘PENNY!’ KATE SMILED as she walked past the café and ignored Penny’s burning cheeks.
‘Oh, hi,’ Penny said, as if she just happened to be sitting there at a quarter to nine in the morning, as if she hadn’t been looking up school times on the internet, as if she hadn’t spent forty minutes trying to cover the marks on her neck and her puffy eyes. ‘How are you?’
‘Good.’ Kate smiled. ‘Though I could do with one of them.’ She nodded to Penny’s coffee and, yes, she’d love to join her and, yes, Penny thought, it was another woman she needed for this and this link was thanks to Ethan.
‘How’s work?’ Kate asked, taking a seat.
‘I’m taking some time off.’ She told her why and Penny realised that Kate probably already knew. ‘Did Ethan tell you?’
‘Do I have to answer that?’
‘No.’ Penny shook her head.
‘Then I won’t.’
Kate had been there and knew, though she couldn’t have a second coffee, not at the café anyway because the baby needed feeding. In truth, she shouldn’t really have stopped for the first, but she’d been where Penny was.
‘We could take a coffee back to mine,’ Kate suggested, ‘and talk there.’
It was another woman Penny needed, one who’d been there and knew—who knew it so well that she took phone calls for a support group.
‘Everyone was pregnant when I started trying,’ Kate said, making up bottles for Dillon a little while later as Penny sat at the kitchen table.
It was so nice to talk and to hold someone else’s baby and not feel guilty for shedding tears. She’d always tried to smile with Jasmine and friends, and say, no, no, she was fine. It was nice to hold one and have a little weep.
‘I think I’ve gone a bit mad,’ Penny admitted.
‘It’s par for the course.’
Penny looked at Dillon and though she’d never be disappointed with a boy, Penny admitted to herself that deep down she would have loved a girl too. Oh, a boy would be fantastic, but she’d have loved a mini-Penny. A little girl who she could do everything right by and fix the world for, who she could unashamedly show all the love that bubbled and fizzed inside.
But she could do it for herself too, Penny realised.
‘I’ve just had a text,’ Kate said a little while later. ‘My brother’s coming around.’
‘I’ll go, then.’
She thanked Kate for the morning and they had a hug and she handed back little Dillon. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Ethan, it was more there was something she was ready to face and she wanted to face it alone. Penny headed to the beach and walked for a while, adding up all the months, all the years, all the time she’d lost trying. She was ready to stop and so she said it out loud—but to herself first.
‘I’m not going to be a mum.’ She actually didn’t cry as she said it, just felt relief almost as she let go of something she had never had, anger shifting towards acceptance; sadness a constant ache but one she could now more readily wear.
Yes, times alone were needed for both of them, yet Kate was the strange conduit that linked them.
‘She’s been here.’ He could just tell, when about ten minutes after Penny left he was at his sister’s door and Kate was blushing and flustered when she answered.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I can smell her perfume,’ Ethan said.
‘You really have got it bad,’ Kate said. ‘What did you do to her neck?’
Ethan wasn’t going to answer that one, so he asked a question instead. ‘What was she talking about?’
‘Not about you,’ Kate said, then added, ‘She’s really nice.’
Not seems, Ethan noted—finally, it would appear, Penny was letting people in.
‘She is.’
‘Well, I hate to chuck you out so soon, but I’ve got nothing done today and I’m on fruit duty at playgroup.’ Kate was putting sandals onto her daughter’s feet. The baby was asleep and instead of letting her wake him, as usually Ethan would, he offered to watch him instead.
‘Are you sure?’ Kate checked. ‘There’s a bottle in the fridge if he wakes up.’
‘Go.’
And later he sat with Dillon on his lap and stared at a very little man who would, God willing, grow up.
And, Ethan realised, taking out his phone, it was time for him to as well.
Just not yet.
He made every decision alone—it was simply the way he was, but instead of ringing who he meant to, he dialled Penny.
She probably wouldn’t pick up.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi, Penny,’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sitting on the beach. What about you?’
‘Watching my nephew. Kate’s at playgroup.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to ring Gina.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I think I need to say sorry first, for how the family has been.’ He was really just thinking out loud.
‘Maybe,’ Penny said, ‘but are you ringing on behalf of the family?’
‘No.’
‘You could just keep it more about you,’ Penny said, and they chatted for a while about what he might say till the baby on his lap decided that a bottle might be a good idea, and Penny could hear his little whimpers in the background.
‘You’d better go,’ Penny said. ‘It sounds like the baby needs feeding.’
As he hung up the phone he sat for a moment, wondering if he’d upset her with the baby crying and everything, but she’d seemed fine. It had been their first full conversation without a mention of babies.
‘Apart from you,’ he said to Dillon as he headed to the fridge.
Ethan offered the baby his bottle but he spat out the cold milk so Ethan warmed it up. ‘It was worth a try.’ He grinned at his new friend and they settled back down on the sofa. There was no putting it off any longer and Ethan again picked up his phone.
‘Gina …’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s Ethan.’ He was met with a very long silence. ‘I’m really sorry for all that the family has put you through.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But I do know what happened and I know too what Jack and Vera can be like.’ He took a long breath. ‘But I’m not ringing about them, I’m ringing about Justin. I lost my dad around the same age.’
‘I know.’
They chatted for a bit and it was awkward at first and there was a long stretch of silence when he made his suggestion. ‘I was thinking, if it’s okay with you, I could get Justin his football membership. I can’t take him every week, it depends on the roster, but …’ He thought of Penny, because he so often did and, yes, she’d swap now and then and so too would the others.
This he could do.
Would do.
‘I would be able to take Justin to most games.’
‘He’d love that,’ Gina said. ‘But …’ She hesitated for a moment.
‘I’m not starting something I won’t see through,’ Ethan said. ‘I’m not saying I’m never going to move, but I will be there for him. I wouldn’t be offering otherwise.’
Only that wasn’t what Gina was hesitating about. ‘Maybe you could take him to his grandparents’ after the match, but not every week. Maybe he could stay over?’ Gina let out a sigh. ‘But I can’t face picking him up.’
‘I can do that,’ Ethan said. ‘We can work out times.’
‘Would you talk to Vera and Jack first?’ Gina said. ‘I don’t want Justin going there and being told what a terrible person I am.’
‘I’ll talk to them,’ Ethan said. ‘And if it’s not working out, I’ll talk to them again, but whatever happens there, I’ll be around for Justin.’
They chatted some more and it was agreed he would ring Justin and tell him the good news that night. When Ethan hung up the phone he looked into the solemn eyes of his nephew.
‘How did I do?’
He got no answer.
‘When you’re a bit bigger I might take you to the football too.’ He got a smile for that and again his mind tripped back to Penny. ‘I’ll be the mad uncle.’
And so the weekend came around and he picked up a six-year-old with a pinched, angry face. He knew that look only too well and sat where they always had, only this time without Phil.
And they shouted at the opposition and the umpire and let off a bit of a steam, but instead of talking about the game on the way to Justin’s grandparents’ they spoke about what mattered.
‘Well, if he wanted to live so much then he should have tried harder,’ Justin said, because he was tired of hearing that his dad had tried so hard to be there for him. And he got to be six and very angry instead of being told to be brave and strong. And maybe Penny has sprayed Ethan with some Pertinence before he left because instead of being subtle, instead of dropping him off at his Vera and Jack’s and hoping for the best, Ethan warned him how things might be.
‘They’re upset,’ Ethan said, ‘and you remind them of your dad, and it’s just so hard on everyone.’ He blew out a breath because there was just so much hurt all around, but so much love too.
‘They hate my mum.’
‘They don’t,’ Ethan said, and then corrected himself, because it was Justin who was dealing with this. ‘Well, if they do, you shouldn’t have to hear it. You tell me if they say anything that hurts. And if they are less than nice about her, it’s because they don’t know your mum,’ Ethan said. ‘She’s great.’
He saw the smile lift the edge of Justin’s lips as finally someone in the Lewis family said something nice about his mum.
Yes, Ethan decided, having dropped Justin off—this he could do.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘MORNING, ETHAN.’ VANESSA was just coming on duty and smiled when she saw him, but then pulled a face. ‘I’m guessing, from the state of you, that you’re going off duty?’
Finishing up a week of nights, Ethan was aware that he probably wasn’t looking his best. He had meant to shave before he’d come on last night, and had also meant to shave the night before that too. ‘So, if you’re going off duty …’ Vanessa said, looking at the board that Lisa was filling in—it showed all the on-take doctors and who was on duty today. ‘Oh, no!’ Vanessa said as she watched Lisa write ‘Penny Masters’ in red. ‘She’s back.’
‘She will be soon,’ Lisa teased the nurses. ‘Party’s over for you lot.’
‘Tell me about it. Who knows what her problem is,’ Vanessa groaned, and Ethan wanted to tell them to give her a break, that the two of them had no idea what Penny was going through.
But Penny would hate that.
She was just this tough little thing choosing to go it alone, and for the last couple of weeks he’d had to force himself to respect that while trying to sort out how he felt about IVF and babies and things. Ethan still didn’t know. He couldn’t work out how he felt about dating someone who wanted a baby, oh, say, about nine months from now.
He’d bought flowers for the first time in his unromantic life and they were waiting in her office, along with an invitation for dinner. Maybe they could just take it slowly, start at the beginning without those blasted needles hanging over them.
Though he’d rather liked giving them!
Play was resuming, Ethan thought with a smile.
He heard the bell from Triage and Lisa stopped writing on the board and sped off with Ethan following. They got outside to find nurses trying to get an unconscious woman from the back seat of a car onto a trolley as her panicked husband shouted for them to hurry up. Security was nowhere to be seen.
‘What happened?’ Ethan asked the man.
‘I just came home from work and I couldn’t wake her …’ The man was barefoot and jumping up and down on the spot. As his wife was placed on the trolley Ethan tried to get some more information, but apart from a urine infection there was nothing wrong with her, the agitated husband said.
‘You’re going to have to move your car,’ Lisa told him as they started to move the patient inside, but he ignored her, instead running alongside his wife.
‘You need to move your car,’ Ethan said, because even if it sounded a minor detail, it wasn’t if there was an ambulance on its way in with another sick patient.
‘Just sort my wife out!’ the man roared at Ethan. ‘Stop worrying about the car.’ There was a minor scuffle; the man fronted up to Ethan, fear and adrenaline and panic igniting. Ethan blocked the man’s fist, but Ethan was angry too.
‘Man up!’ Ethan said. ‘You want me to stand here fighting, or do you want me to sort out your wife? Go and move your car.’
He did so, but as they sped the woman through, the usually laid-back Ethan, who let things like that go, glared over at Lisa.
‘Where the hell was Security?’
Lisa didn’t answer.
‘I want that reported.’
‘He’s just scared.’
‘Yeah, well, we’re all scared at times.’
They were now at the doors to Resus and Ethan was dealing with the patient, who was responding to pain and her pupils were reacting. He could smell what was wrong—there was the familiar smell of ketones on her breath. Lisa was attaching her to monitors as Ethan quickly found a vein and took bloods. ‘Add a pregnancy test,’ Ethan said, because she was of childbearing age and a diabetic crisis could be dangerous for any foetus. By the time the husband returned from parking his car there was saline up and Lisa was giving the patient her first dose of insulin. His anger was fading, but still it churned.
‘Are you all right, Ethan?’ Lisa checked.
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll do an incident form after …’
‘Forget it.’ He gave a small smile that said he had overreacted.
‘Touched a nerve, did it?’ Lisa smiled back.
‘Must have,’ Ethan said.
He thought of his own fear as he’d raced to get to his cousin, yet it wouldn’t have entered his head to front up to anyone, and he thought of Kate, who had done the right thing and not just left the car, even though she must so badly have wanted to. ‘I want to know where Security was, though,’ Ethan said, and then got back to the patient. The medics were on their way down but for now Ethan went in to speak with the husband.
‘I’ll come in with you,’ Lisa said.
‘No need,’ Ethan said.
‘I wasn’t offering.’ Lisa had worked there a very long time and gave him a smile that told him there was no way she was leaving the two of them in the same room.
‘Come on, then.’
They walked in and the man was sitting in there, his head in his hands.
‘Mr Edmunds.’ Ethan looked at the patient sheet that had been handed to him.
‘Mark.’ He looked up. ‘Sorry about before.’
Ethan would deal with that later. He was actually glad Lisa had insisted on coming in as there was still this strange surliness writhing inside Ethan and he looked down at the patient card again for a moment before talking.
‘Your wife, Anna, did you know she was diabetic?’
Mark shook his head. ‘No … she’s been fine, well, tired, but like I said, she thought she had a urine infection.’
Ethan nodded. ‘One of the signs is passing urine a lot but we’re checking for any infection.’ He explained things as simply as he could to the very confused and very scared man—that his wife had type one diabetes and she was in ketoacidosis—her glucose was far too high and would be slowly brought down. But it affected everything and she would be very closely watched, and while she was very sick, he expected her to soon be well.
‘She’ll still be diabetic?’
‘Yes.’ Ethan nodded. ‘But she’ll be taught to manage it and this will hopefully be the worst it ever is.’ Ethan took a breath. ‘Is there any chance that your wife might be pregnant?’
‘We’re trying.’
‘Okay,’ Ethan said.
‘Would it damage the baby?’
‘Let’s just wait for results and then we’ll see what we’re dealing with. Do you want to come in and see your wife?’
Mark nodded and then said it again. ‘I am sorry about earlier.’
‘And I accept your apology,’ Ethan said. ‘But there is no place for that sort of carry-on here.’
‘I was just—’
‘Not an excuse,’ Ethan broke in. ‘There were two women there and your fist wasn’t looking where it was going. We’ve got doctors here who are barely five foot …’
Yes, there was his problem—everything went back to Penny.
But, hell, Ethan thought, it could have been Penny on duty and she could have been pregnant, and he stood up and walked out and took a deep breath.
‘Where was Security?’ Ethan asked Lisa.
‘Over in the car park,’ Lisa said. ‘Someone was trying to break into a car. They can’t be everywhere, Ethan.’
He knew that, but he wanted them everywhere, wanted two burly guards and an Alsatian walking alongside Penny at all times.
Maybe he was a caveman after all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
YES, SHE HAD always rotated her clothes, mixing and matching her outfits with precision, changing them with the seasons. Not anymore. Today she had chosen a floral dress that buttoned at the front. Instead of low, flat heels, she wore sandals, and because she hadn’t been meticulous with her factor thirty, Penny’s legs were sun-kissed and she wore her hair loose.
She smiled as she walked into work and Ethan, tired after his night shift, chatting to the medics, noticed the glow in her and had a feeling her decision had been made and that there were embryos about to be taken out of storage in the very near future.
‘Morning, Vanessa,’ Penny said as she walked past.
‘Er, morning, Penny.’
‘Hi, Lisa.’
‘Penny.’
Penny swallowed. ‘Lisa, can I have a word with you, please?’
It was the hardest word and Lisa gave her a smile as they moved into an empty cubicle, and Penny said it. ‘I’ve been going through some things and I should never have brought it to work. It was just …’ And she did what Jasmine had advised all along and what Penny had thought she would never do—let Lisa know what had been going on.
‘Well, you can’t really leave your hormones at home.’ Lisa smiled. ‘You could have said.’
‘I know.’
‘I am discreet.’
‘I know that too,’ Penny said. ‘I’ll have a word with Vanessa and apologise. Anyone else?’ And then Penny gave a guilty smile. ‘Should I just call a staff meeting?’
Yes, it really was the hardest, hardest word because sometimes when you had to say it, it meant that you’d really hurt someone.
‘I’m so sorry, Vanessa.’ Penny saw the red cheeks and the flash of tears in her colleague’s eyes and it wasn’t actually the blood pressure she hadn’t written down or the delays in medication that were the problem. There was another morning Penny hadn’t properly apologised for, and though she didn’t want to play the sympathy card, Penny did want Vanessa to know that her outburst hadn’t been aimed at her.
Penny took her into an interview room.
‘You were right to come and get me that morning and let me know what was happening. I know you’d never leave a patient and that Raj was there. I wasn’t angry at you—I was just upset. When you came to find me I’d just got my period,’ Penny said. ‘I’d been trying for a baby and I thought I was finally pregnant.’ And, no, she didn’t tell her that for twenty-four hours she had been pregnant, neither did she say anything about the IVF, but it was enough for Vanessa to put her arms around her. Penny gave a little self-conscious wriggle, but then found out that it was nice sometimes to have a friend and be held.
Ethan watched them walking out of the interview room, smiling and chatting, and he excused himself and walked over.
‘Morning, Penny.’
‘Morning.’
‘Nice break?’
‘Very.’
‘What did you get up to?’
‘Not much.’ How lovely it was to say that.
‘Glad to be back?’
‘Not yet.’ Penny took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a cow to work with.’ Even though he knew why, she still felt she ought to say it here in the workplace and not just to Ethan. ‘I should have recorded my apology before I came back to work. You’re the third and I haven’t even got halfway down the corridor.’
‘Maybe you could ask the receptionist to play it over the loudspeaker?’ Ethan grinned.
She walked off to her office and turned and flashed that smile but he didn’t follow at first.
He just stood there thinking, because he knew how he felt now, and he checked with himself for a moment and the answer was still the same so he headed to her office to tell her.
‘I would have loved your baby.’ Ethan stood at the door and whether it was the wrong or right thing to say, he told her what he now knew.
‘Ethan …’
‘I’m not just saying that.’ He wasn’t and he told her why. ‘I know you’re going to go for it again,’ Ethan said, ‘I could see it when you walked in. I’ll tell you this, if you were pregnant now, if it had worked out for you, well, I might have taken a while to come around but I would have, because it wouldn’t change the way I feel. It’s just taken a bit of a time for me to understand that.’
‘I’m not going for it again.’ She saw him frown. ‘This is Tranquil Penny.’
‘Oh.’ He came over and took her in his arms and introduced himself. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Then he frowned. ‘What do you mean, you’re not going to try again?’
‘I can’t have children.’ She’d practised saying it, not just to Ethan but at other times in her future. ‘I know I might want to try again someday, but now I just want a break from it—I want lots of sex for sex’s sake, preferably with you.’ She reached into her bag and took out a packet of pills and waved them. ‘It’s probably overkill—left to their own devices my ovaries squeeze out two, maybe three eggs a year—but I’m taking the pressure off.’
She gave him a smile. ‘Yes, please, to dinner.’ He kissed her and he had never been so pleased to kiss a woman, just relieved to find her mouth and what had been missing in every other mouth he had kissed.
Here it was, the love he hadn’t been looking for.
‘I’m going home to sleep,’ Ethan said.
‘Not yet,’ Penny grumbled.
‘I am, and then I’m going to set my alarm so I’ve time to tidy up in case I end up bringing my date back.’ He gave her a smile. ‘You’ve never seen my home.’
Penny blushed. Yes, there was a lot to get to know and lots of fun to be had before a guy like Ethan might settle down. And it might never happen, but she wanted him in a way she never had. There was a love inside Penny so much bigger than this kiss. A love that crowded out so many other things, and she just had to hold on to her feelings a bit, not terrify him with them by jumping in too soon.
‘Or maybe …’ Ethan said, and he undid a couple of buttons and had a peek and she was in coral, his favourite ‘… we could skip the restaurant and eat at my place?’
‘What’s for dinner, Ethan?’
They had the tiniest of histories, but it was enough to make the other smile.
‘That all depends on what you pick up at the supermarket on your way home from work,’ Ethan said.
And he glimpsed then a future and there would be no remote-control flinging because they would look out for each other, argue and tease each other, and then kiss and make up and not let things fester.
‘Do you want to go to the football on Sunday?’
‘No!’ Penny pulled a face; she could think of nothing worse, but then it clicked. ‘Are you going with Justin?’
‘It will be our second week,’ Ethan said.
‘Gina agreed?’
‘More than that. Afterwards I’m taking him to my aunt and uncle’s and he’s staying the night, and then in the morning I’ll go and collect him and take him back to his mum’s. We’ll be doing that a couple of times a month and it’s working out well.’
‘That’s some commitment.’ Penny smiled at her commitment-phobe.
‘I’m getting good at them.’
Yes, there was still a lot she didn’t know about Ethan, because as he stood there looking at her he was doing the maths. She was thirty-five and at a rate of two to three eggs a year there weren’t a whole lot of chances, but he was prepared to take them now. Ethan picked up the pill pack she was still holding and, just as Penny had with the needles to get what she wanted, he faced his fears over and over, twenty-eight times, in fact.
He punched each pill into the sink, even the sugar-coated ones, and then turned on the tap and watched them swirl in the water. Then he broke out in a sweat because it was him now talking about making babies when he’d never thought he might.
‘I’ve got more at home.’
‘I want whatever happens,’ Ethan said. ‘And I don’t want to take away even one of your chances.’
‘And I don’t want to ruin this,’ Penny said. They were chasing the same dream from different directions, both terrified to miss or even to clash and blow them apart. Penny was standing at the silver lining of acceptance that there might never be babies, and Ethan was just starting to accept that there might be. ‘I don’t want you to find out you do want babies after all and then be disappointed.’
And he was the most honest, sexiest, funniest man she had ever met, even as he voiced her unspoken fears. ‘And then go off with someone years younger …’
‘Ha, ha,’ Penny said, because they could talk about things, tell each other things and, yes, they could tease each other too. ‘Someone soft and curvy and cute.’
‘Did I really used to go for cute?’ Ethan smiled. And he looked at her and he knew where his heart was. ‘Actually,’ Ethan said as he faced another of his fears, ‘for one hot mess you’d make a very cute bride.’
She blinked at him.
‘I want to see Menopausal Penny and I want you to see Midlife Crisis Ethan.’
‘So do I.’ She was kissing him again. ‘Going out in your sports car and joining a gym and things.’
‘And if there are no babies, we’ll be the mad aunt and uncle who spoil all their nieces and nephews but make their parents jealous as we go off on cruises and travel around the world. But,’ Ethan said, ‘if we’re really clucky, we’ll move to America and adopt little twin monkeys.’
‘And dress them in tutus.’
‘No,’ Ethan said, because it was his future they were planning too. ‘Not the boy one.’
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