The Heart Surgeon's Baby Surprise Read online

  She stared at the line on the stick,

  checked the packet’s instructions

  to make sure she was reading them

  properly, checked the line again then

  gave a whoop of joy

  She was pregnant! It had happened!

  She couldn’t stop smiling. To have a baby—to

  have a child on whom she could lavish a mother’s

  love, the love she’d missed out on as a young girl.

  Yes, her father had been wonderful, but she knew

  instinctively a mother’s love was different.

  Theo!

  How could she have been so excited when she

  felt, deep in her heart, that Theo really didn’t want

  another child?

  But now that they knew each other better, might

  things actually work out?

  Might she be able to have Theo and a child?

  The excitement she’d felt when she first saw the

  confirmation was gone. She might have fallen in

  love with Theo, but in no way had he indicated he

  had similar feelings for her .

  At least she’d have his child….

  Dear Reader,

  In another life, I taught in a country school in

  Queensland, the hot northeastern state of Australia. In

  this town, as in so many small towns in outback Oz,

  the only local café was run by a Greek family. After

  World War II, thousands of Greek migrants arrived in

  Australia and many of them made their way to country

  towns. They worked hard and did well, and all of

  them were respected members of their communities.

  But what impressed me about this particular family—

  and all the Greek families I subsequently met—was

  the strong familial ties they had. Aunts, cousins,

  great-uncles—whoever arrived was taken in and jobs

  were found for them. And every Sunday, after church,

  these extended families would be seen picnicking in

  the local parks, all the men playing soccer with the

  children, the women passing around home-cooked,

  delicious food. The strength of this sense of family

  was remarkable, but what made an even stronger

  impression was the passion these people had for their

  children, and the determination they had to help them

  succeed in whatever career they decided on. Every

  afternoon you could walk into that café and see the

  children of the family sitting at the Formica-topped

  tables, diligently doing their homework. The pride the

  parents felt in these children was evident in their faces.

  Memories like these sneak into my writing. I can

  almost taste the gifts of baklava that replaced the

  apple for the teacher from one particular pupil.

  The fact that he is now a doctor was in the back

  of my head as I wrote this book. I know he’ll be a

  proud family man first and a doctor second, because

  families—all families, not just Greek ones—are the

  solid foundation on which our society is built.

  Meredith Webber

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  Meredith Webber

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  Jimmie’s Children’s Unit

  The Children’s Cardiac Unit,

  St. James’s Hospital, Sydney.

  Where the dedicated staff

  mend children’s hearts

  …and their own!

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHE was tall, she was blonde and she was beautiful.

  Theo Corones watched from the back of the team

  meeting as all the men in the room, most of whom were

  married, registered this fact.

  ‘Grace Sutherland, paediatric cardiac surgeon, trained

  in Cape Town, South Africa, then further studies in the

  UK. My main area of expertise is paediatric heart trans-

  plants.’

  ‘Of course, you’re a South African and following in

  famous footsteps,’Alex Attwood, the head of the paedi-

  atric cardiac surgery team at St James’s Children’s

  Hospital, teased gently.

  Was it because he was still thinking how beautiful she

  was that Theo saw the puzzled look on her face? She was

  intelligent enough to know from his voice that Alex was

  teasing her, so it seemed she wasn’t used to being teased.

  Theo thought back to the briefing notes he’d had on

  the two new surgeons. Jean-Luc Fournier was from

  France, thirty-four years old and already considered

  good enough to head up a new unit at a hospital in

  Marseilles, and Grace Sutherland, thirty-five…

  8

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  Surely by thirty-five you’d got used to being teased.

  The meeting proceeded and Theo turned his atten-

  tion to it, but that expression on Grace Sutherland’s face

  was like a missed note in a piece of music, so it stuck

  in a corner of his mind.

  ‘Grace, you’ll be working on Phil’s team, while Jean-

  Luc will work on mine. This is only for the first three

  months, then you’ll swap over so you both have a chance

  to see the two of us at work. Not that you’ll be observ-

  ers—no, you’ll be operating with us and, when we’re

  not available, for us. And for that reason it’s important

  you know the whole team. Maggie Park, Phil’s wife,

  usually works as my anaesthetist—take a bow, Mags—

  while Aaron Gilchrist is the anaesthetist on Phil’s team.’

  Aaron waved his hand at the two newcomers, while

  Alex went on to introduce the other theatre staff, nurses,

  registrars and residents who worked with the team.

  ‘And so we come to Theo, who works on both teams.

  At the moment we only have the one bypass machine—

  well, we have three but two are being modified to differ-

  ent specifications. Theo is working with the engineers

  in what spare time he gets—so he works with whoever

  is doing a procedure that requires bypass.’

  Theo nodded his acknowledgement of the introduc-

  tion but as both newcomers turned towards him he saw

  Grace Sutherland’s eyes for the first time. A pale clear

  blue, like the aquamarine stone in a ring his mother

  wore—like morning sky after a night of rain had

  cleared the dust and smog from the city…

  ‘Theo!’

  Alex’s voice wasn’t exactly sharp but it made it clear

  Theo had missed some part of the conversation.

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  9

  ‘Sorry, Alex, you were saying?’

  ‘I was telling Grace and Jean-Luc you also ran the

  ECMO machines and would walk them through the

  way we use both machines later today.’

  ‘I’d be glad to,’ Theo replied, annoyed with himself

  for miss
ing this conversation the first time. He was al-

  ways focussed on work. And to be distracted by a

  blonde with aquamarine eyes—impossible!

  Grace studied the man who worked the bypass ma-

  chines. She’d been intrigued by his background when

  she’d read the notes she’d been given—brief bios of all

  members of the team.

  What was different about Theo was that while most

  perfusionists—people specially trained to run bypass

  and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines—

  were from a nursing background, Theo had been—and

  still was, she assumed—a doctor. A surgeon, in fact,

  who, for reasons unmentioned in the bio had turned

  from operating on small children to running the ma-

  chines that kept them alive, before, after and during del-

  icate operations.

  It was a puzzle and she didn’t like puzzles. She’d

  have to ask him about it.

  And now she’d sorted that out, she should stop look-

  ing at him—looking at him wasn’t going to provide an

  answer. But looking at him had made her register that

  he was a particularly good-looking man, big without

  being bulky, black hair shot through with silver here and

  there, dark eyes below well-shaped eyebrows. Her

  father always kept his eyebrows tidy, bemoaning the

  fact that many men, as they aged, didn’t bother.

  10

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  It was, she realised, even as she considered Theo

  Corones’s eyebrows, a totally absurd thing for her to be

  thinking about in a team meeting and, sadly, a reflec-

  tion of just how unlike other women she was! Other

  women, she was sure, would be checking out the

  straight nose and the full, well-defined lips and the way

  his profile resembled that of old Greek statues, but not

  her—she’d picked on eyebrows as a feature in his

  favour.

  She sighed, aware she was so unlike other women she

  needed a planet of her own. Men were from Mars,

  women from Venus, and Grace from a galaxy far, far

  away…

  The meeting broke up, and Jean-Luc, who would be

  living in the flat beneath hers for the six months she

  would be working in Sydney, was chatting to Maggie

  Park. That was another thing about people from

  galaxies far, far away—they couldn’t chat.

  ‘Would you like to see the machines now?’

  She was pondering her inability to chat and assuring

  herself, for perhaps the millionth time, that it didn’t

  matter, when Theo asked the question. He’d come from

  somewhere behind her so she’d had no warning of his

  approach, and, being unprepared, his deep, velvety voice

  had sparked a peculiar reaction in her skin—prickly, like

  mild sunburn making its presence felt at the end of a day

  at the beach.

  ‘I could come now but Jean-Luc looks as if he’s

  busy,’ she replied, checking out Theo’s eyebrows close

  up and confirming they really were wonderful—strong,

  but neat, and with a decided arch.

  ‘Then I will show you first and Jean-Luc some other

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  11

  time,’ Theo said calmly, putting out his hand as if to

  usher her ahead of him.

  ‘Isn’t that a nuisance for you?’

  Grace had no idea why she was feeling unsettled, but

  she was—and even more unsettled when he added, ‘It

  will be my pleasure.’

  He didn’t mean it in any other way than that he loved

  showing off his machines and twice was better than

  once, while his tone of voice suggested nothing more

  than cool politeness. She knew that, but the prickly

  sunburn effect continued as she left the room with him.

  ‘Why the switch from surgery to perfusionist?’ she

  asked as they entered the lift to go down a floor to see

  the infants on ECMO.

  He looked at her for a moment, then smiled, his

  teeth very white against his olive skin.

  ‘Straight to the point,’ he said. ‘Are you always so

  blunt?’

  Grace pretended to consider this—for all of two

  seconds—before replying.

  ‘I hope people don’t think of me as blunt but, yes, I

  do find asking questions is the easiest way to get

  answers.’

  Theo ushered her out of the lift, nodding as he went.

  ‘Cuts out a lot of chit-chat,’ he agreed. ‘What’s the

  next question?’

  ‘Why aren’t you married?’

  Oops! That surprised even her, although undoubt-

  edly her subconscious mind had sorted through the list

  of staff, checked the bios and, like a good computer,

  come up with four possible candidates for her Grand

  Plan—which probably should be labelled Grace’s

  12

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  Silliest Idea Yet. Theo was one of these, Jean-Luc

  another. Living in the flat above his, she’d have ample

  time to check out Jean-Luc, but she wasn’t sure how

  often she’d come into contact with Theo.

  Hence the question…

  Not that he’d answered either of her questions,

  parrying the first with one of his own and ignoring the

  second! She hoped it was because they’d walked into

  the paediatric intensive care unit, not because he was

  so insulted he’d never speak to her again. She found it

  difficult enough to make friends—to trust people

  enough to let them into her life—without setting col-

  leagues against her from the first meeting.

  ‘This is Scarlett Robinson. She was born with hy-

  poplastic left heart syndrome and although Phil and

  Alex at first decided to do the first-stage operation, she

  hasn’t been well enough and now they’re considering

  heart transplantation if we can get hold of a donor

  heart.’

  ‘Without doing even the first-stage op—a Norwood

  to connect the right ventricle to the aorta?’ Grace asked,

  looking down at the tiny baby girl and wondering, as

  she always did, why some embryonic hearts formed

  perfectly while others, like Scarlett’s, had a very under-

  developed left side.

  ‘She’s not tolerating drugs particularly well,’ Theo

  explained, ‘and after a lot of thought and consultation

  her parents, who live way out west in the bush, decided

  that rather than weaken her further with the first of the

  three HLHS ops, we’d list her for a transplant.’

  Grace stared at the little girl, all alone in the hospital,

  and though she told herself Scarlett didn’t know she

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  13

  was all alone, and in fact she wasn’t, surrounded as she

  was by staff, Grace still felt a flutter in the region of her

  heart which could only be sympathy for the baby.

  But the one thing she’d learned very early on in her

  medical career was never to show what she was feel-

  ing—especially not when babies were concerned. It

  was her job to be detached because, as numerous lec-

 
; turers and professors and even her own father had told

  her, she could be more help to the patient that way.

  So in case Theo had caught a glimpse of her momen-

  tary weakness, she spoke with cool, calm competence

  as she pointed out the downside of this.

  ‘And in the meantime, she’s on ECMO which could

  have devastating consequences on her other organs if

  she’s on it for too long.’

  Theo turned to her and shook his head.

  ‘You certainly believe in telling it like it is,’ he said,

  but Grace thought she detected a smile behind the

  words. ‘You’re right, of course, but it was up to her par-

  ents to make the decision and now my job is to keep

  her alive on the least amount of support she can handle.

  Because of her condition she has to be on full support,

  so the machine is helping both her lungs and her mal-

  formed heart do their jobs, but by gearing it down as

  much as possible I’m hoping to avoid things like brain

  haemorrhages or kidney problems.’

  ‘Hard to get a heart small enough for her,’ Grace

  murmured, her eyes feasting on the tiny infant, think-

  ing of other newborns she’d operated on—thinking of

  other infants.

  Or one other infant…

  One hypothetical infant…

  14

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  Could she do it? Could she ask some man…?

  ‘But they do come up,’ Theo said, and Grace stared

  at him, struggling against the thoughts that kept intrud-

  ing, thoughts she knew were stupid and sentimental

  and all the things she didn’t want to be—thoughts about

  a baby of her own…

  She pulled herself together, hiding the moment of

  weakness behind a bland observation.

  ‘It’s usually women who are unrealistically optimis-

  tic,’ she said.

  Theo frowned.

  ‘I don’t consider optimism a gender-based trait, and

  pointing out that small hearts do become available was

  stating a fact, not being unrealistic.’

  As the words came out he realised he was being as

  blunt as his colleague—was it catching, this brusque-

  ness of hers?

  And as for the question he hadn’t answered earlier,

  what business was it of hers why he wasn’t married?

  Ah! He’d answered his own question. He probably

  wasn’t getting as snappy as Grace Sutherland, but she’d

  prodded a sore spot he rarely thought about these days,

  and his brusqueness was reaction to her prodding.

  ‘Where are her parents?’