The Heart Surgeon's Baby Surprise
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?’