The Heart Surgeon's Baby Surprise Read online

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she muttered. ‘Atoms

  hooking, as you keep saying. Is it always so—so taut?’

  ‘Taut is good,’ he murmured, opening her front gate

  and taking her hand to lead her into the shade of a huge

  camellia bush by the front path. ‘Taut means our bodies

  are communicating, taut means you’ll need release and

  the best release of all is…’

  Theo hesitated. He’d been going to say ‘making

  love’ but that wasn’t what they would be doing, yet ‘in-

  tercourse’ sounded too clinical. So he kissed her instead

  of finishing the sentence, and felt her tense body relax

  as she kissed him back.

  Although the kiss had a far from relaxing effect on

  his body and he knew Grace would know it.

  They said goodnight at the door, although his hand

  lingered on her tight, demin-clad butt as she unlocked

  the door and slipped inside.

  How had that Paul let her go?

  How had he not read the ripe sensuality of the

  woman behind the cool, detached image she so care-

  fully projected?

  Two things to consider as he drove home—better by

  far than the dark memories that had come back to haunt

  him earlier.

  Morning, and Grace was once again in a clothes bind.

  Back to the sensible and classy work clothes, or should

  she wear one of her new shirts?

  She couldn’t deny her motivation—she wanted to

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  97

  look nice for Theo. OK, so their affair might not be the

  traditional type, begun with excitement and hope and

  with the possibility of a deeper relationship at the end of

  it, but that didn’t stop her wanting him to want her—even

  at work.

  And the new shirt she was considering was white

  and as most of her shirts were white, maybe no one

  would notice she was ‘dressing up’!

  She pulled it on, doing up the buttons, wondering

  why one shirt looked neat and another, similar cut and

  all, looked, well, not sexy but definitely inviting.

  Or was she kidding herself?

  ‘Thank heavens, I was about to page you.’ Jasmine

  greeted her as she walked into the small reception area

  outside the PICU. ‘Emergency admission, flown in

  from the bush. Phil needs you in Theatre ten minutes

  ago.’

  Grace smiled to herself as she ran up the stairs to the

  next floor, admitting to herself the folly of her morning

  clothing debate. Theo, if he saw her at all at work today,

  would be seeing her in theatre garb—all-enveloping

  gown, cap, goggles and headlamp—really sexy gear!

  One of the theatre sisters was in the changing room.

  ‘It’s a PDA,’ she explained. ‘Three-month-old who

  was doing OK without the ductus arteriosus closing, but

  suddenly suffering endocarditis in spite of antibiotics.

  Phil’s going to clamp it off using video-assisted thorac-

  oscopic surgery. Have you done much of that? It’s so

  easy on the babies.’

  Grace felt a surge of excitement. She’d seen videos

  of the surgery but had never assisted. The only down-

  side was that with the minimally invasive surgery

  98

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  Theo wouldn’t be present. Although she’d known he

  was working with Alex today, so why the disappoint-

  ment?

  And why the new shirt?

  She wouldn’t think about that now.

  With no thought beyond that of the child in Theatre

  in her head, she went through to the scrub room and,

  once gloved, on into Theatre.

  ‘Done one before?’ Phil asked, and she shook her

  head.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ he said, ‘always providing we don’t

  puncture the lung. The big thing is to be prepared to

  open the chest should anything go wrong, but that’s

  never happened with a VAT PDA ligation at Jimmie’s—

  touch wood.’

  Grace smiled to herself, wondering what a layper-

  son would think of their casual use of acronyms,

  although the VAT part was easy—video assisted tho-

  rascope—and PDA common enough in hospitals, re-

  ferring to the tiny tube, the ductus arteriosus that, in a

  foetus, shuffled blood between the aorta and the pul-

  monary artery. Shortly after birth this tube closed, but

  in some babies it remained open—therefore patent,

  meaning that the blood, which should be flowing into

  the aorta could take the path of least resistance and

  flow back into the lungs, causing potential problems

  for the baby.

  She was thinking about this as Phil positioned the

  unconscious baby the way he wanted him, propped his

  little form with disposable pads to keep him still, and

  made four small incisions in his chest.

  ‘Much better than the usual surgical incision,’ Grace

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  99

  murmured, as she watched. ‘We’re not cutting muscles

  or bones and we don’t have to retract the rib cage,

  which means far less stress on the baby’s body and

  makes for a far better recovery every time.’

  With a mechanical arm holding the videoscope in

  place, Phil was able to insert forceps into one of the in-

  cisions and, with cotton swabs, carefully move the left

  lobe of the baby’s lung out of the way. The videoscope

  now gave them a perfect view inside the small chest,

  the vagus and pharyngeal nerves both obvious and

  possible to avoid. Through another hole Phil used an

  endoscope to put clips on the little blood vessel,

  clamping off both ends of it to stop the flow of blood.

  ‘I’m putting a tube in one of the incisions, just until

  we’ve reinflated the lung. If there’s any damage to the

  lung we’ll know before little Jasper here leaves Theatre

  and we can use the thoracostomy tube if we need to

  remove air from his chest cavity.’

  Grace glanced at the clock on the far wall. The

  whole operation had taken less than an hour, and now

  Jasper was breathing and there was no sign of damage

  to the left lobe of his lung, the tube could be released.

  Although he would stay in hospital overnight, where

  he could be watched for any possible reaction, it was

  likely he’d be going home the following day. A great

  result for the little boy, and proof that minimally

  invasive surgery was gaining ground in their field.

  Grace checked the operating list—nothing major,

  nothing that would require bypass yet a full day none-

  theless.

  Yes, wearing the new shirt had been stupid.

  * * *

  100

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  ‘Some days go easy and some days go hard,’ Phil said.

  He was leaning against the wall of the theatre next to

  the soiled clothes bin but was obviously too weary to

  strip off even his gloves.

  Grace leant on the other side, while between them,

  Phil’s surgical assistant held both their headlamps, t
he

  cords trailing on the floor.

  ‘It was as if some gremlin had got into the theatre,’

  he muttered, staring at the headlamps as if they might

  hold the answer. ‘Everything that could go wrong did.’

  ‘Except the PDA,’ Grace reminded the two men.

  ‘That was great. It was only after that things started go-

  ing berserk.’

  Phil grinned at her.

  ‘Going berserk? Can you call it going berserk when

  a three-year-old having a minor repair for a narrowing

  of the pulmonary artery arrests on the table?’

  ‘You saved her, she’ll be OK,’ Grace reminded him,

  remembering the frantic massaging of the little girl’s

  heart that had got it beating again.

  ‘Yes, but why do these things happen? That’s what

  we need to find out. We’re advancing so we can do more

  and more repairs through keyhole surgery, then we get

  something like that today and we don’t know why.’

  Wearily, Phil stripped off his gloves and tossed them

  in the bin, then followed them with his mask and cap,

  and finally his gown. He stood there for a moment, a

  good-looking man in nothing more than boxer shorts,

  but Grace felt no squirmy feelings deep inside her, or

  even the faintest glimmer of curiosity.

  So what was it about attraction? she wondered as she

  in turn stripped off her theatre clothes and made her

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  101

  way into the changing room. Why did one male body

  make the blood heat when others made no impression

  at all?

  It must be different for men, she decided, or girlie

  magazines wouldn’t sell. She’d have to ask Theo later.

  The thought brought her up short as she adjusted the

  water in the shower. First that it seemed so natural that

  she could talk to Theo about such things, but the second

  hitch in her thinking was worse. Had they talked about

  a later? As far as she could remember, they’d made no

  arrangements to meet again, no doubt assuming they’d

  see each other at work.

  But they hadn’t and she felt something that could

  only be disappointment coiling in her belly.

  She could phone him, she decided as water cascaded

  down her body, dousing her hair and sloshing around

  her feet while she stood still beneath it and tried to

  think.

  The phoning-him suggestion hadn’t done anything

  to relieve whatever coiled inside her, and she scoffed

  at the notion that she was too prudish to make such a

  move. You’ve asked this man to father a baby for you

  and you can’t phone him? her head mocked, but the

  coiling stayed and she knew she wouldn’t.

  ‘You were so long in there I was going to come in

  and join you.’

  Theo was lounging against the wall of the

  changing room, still in theatre green, when she

  emerged from the cubicle, already dressed but with

  her shirt only partially buttoned and not yet tucked

  into her skirt.

  ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked, the coiling

  102

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  turning to heat although she prayed it wasn’t yet

  obvious.

  ‘Shoes!’ he said, tapping her shoes—the sensible

  dancing pumps she invariably wore to work—with his

  toe. ‘Plus the fact that Phil’s soap doesn’t smell like

  orange blossom.’

  He grinned at her.

  ‘It’s nice. I like it.’

  She didn’t know what to say, but as other members

  of Alex’s team came wandering in, she didn’t say

  anything. As she walked across to slip on her shoes and

  gather her belongings, Theo touched her lightly on the

  arm, and spoke quietly so only she could hear.

  ‘Dinner at the brasserie? I’ll be ready in ten. You

  want to go straight from here or go home first? And, no,

  don’t do up that button, it’s incredibly sexy.’

  Now she knew she’d blush but her fingers, which had

  been fumbling at the button, trying to find the hole,

  dropped away.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ she managed to say, through heat and ex-

  citement that she knew was wrong, but couldn’t control.

  How could she possibly want him this much?

  ‘In the PICU?’

  He nodded, and headed into the cubicle she’d

  vacated, pausing in the open doorway and sniffing the

  still steamy air, then winking at her.

  Scarlett seemed a lot better, so much so her mother

  greeted Grace with a broad smile.

  ‘Dr Attwood says she’s improving by the minute,

  and my mother phoned to say she knows a heart is not

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  103

  far away. My mother’s the seventh daughter of a seventh

  daughter and she has the sight.’

  Grace had to smile back. Whatever worked to make

  Mrs Robinson feel positive was OK with her. In fact,

  she wondered what Mrs Robinson’s mother might see

  into her future…

  Stupid!

  What was wrong with her?

  She read through Scarlett’s obs and agreed with Alex

  that the baby seemed to be improving, which often

  happened without any intervention or explanation.

  ‘You just hang in there,’ she whispered to the tiny

  girl. ‘Your grandma’s obviously working on a heart.’

  ‘There are other babies in here.’

  Theo’s voice distracted her and she turned to see him

  smiling at her—which distracted her a whole lot more.

  ‘I look at all the babies,’ she assured him, moving to

  a crib on the far side of the room. ‘And I want to see

  young Jasper before I leave.’

  She thought she was doing really well until Theo

  touched her in the small of her back, ushering her out

  of the big room. It was nothing more than a casual

  gesture of politeness but the skin beneath her shirt

  burned and excitement fizzed in her blood.

  She stopped in the passageway.

  ‘Do we have to have dinner?’ she asked, through

  lips so dry she had to lick them before the words

  would come out.

  ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Yours if that’s OK,’ she managed. ‘Mine…Jean-

  Luc, Lauren, most of the team live so close.’

  Theo nodded, but the desire she could see burning

  104

  THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

  in his eyes lit fires within her body. She had to take a

  deep breath and remind herself how important her work

  was to her, before going into Jasper’s room to see the

  little post-op patient, who was doing well. Phil was

  also in there and he left the room with her.

  ‘Do you always visit the PICU before you go home?’

  he asked, and she shook her head.

  ‘Usually I come up later. During the day, the family

  want to be with their children, but late at night when

  they’ve gone off to get what rest they can, I don’t feel

  I’m taking baby time away from them.’

  Phil nodded his understanding.

  ‘Theo doe
s the same. He thinks we think he comes

  to check on those on ECMO but he’s a fraud. He loves

  the little ones as if they were his own—it’s as if he em-

  pathises with them while most of us feel empathy with

  the parents. Whoops! There he is—early tonight. Hi,

  Theo, we were just talking about you.’

  Theo’s questioning eyebrow rose as he looked at

  Grace, but she’d been so struck by Phil’s artless reve-

  lations she couldn’t think about his eyebrows—or his

  question—right now. Did Theo really love the babies

  in their care? And if he did, wouldn’t he also want to

  love a child of his own?

  Panic fluttered in her stomach where heat had been

  only minutes earlier, but she managed to wait until they

  were in his car, heading for his house, before she asked

  the question.

  ‘You love those children. Why not one of your own?’

  Asked far too curtly—crassly—probably too loudly

  as well.

  He didn’t answer, pretending concentration on the

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  105

  traffic, although it was thick so maybe it wasn’t pre-

  tence. But as he pulled into the parking space outside

  his terrace house he turned and when he’d switched off

  the engine, he put his hands out, palms up, towards her.

  ‘I burnt my hands trying to get my baby out of the

  car. I couldn’t undo the straps holding her in the

  capsule. I couldn’t save her. The agony of the burns, the

  pain of losing the ability to operate—they were nothing

  compared to the pain I felt in my heart. No, in my

  whole body. I ached for the loss of that baby, Grace, and

  I still do when I think about her. I doubted I would

  survive it, but I did, but I know for certain that I don’t

  want to go through that again—not ever.’

  Grace stared out the window, seeing the house he had

  put so much energy into doing up—understanding that

  his DIY project was his way of keeping his ghosts at

  bay.

  What he’d said had reassured her, but her heart was

  aching for his pain and loss and she didn’t want to be

  feeling things for him—not before they’d made love.

  She was worried enough about what would happen

  after the act, now here she was getting emotionally

  involved before it.

  ‘We should have gone to dinner,’ he said quietly, and

  she knew what he meant, but she also knew the sex act

  could bring release and maybe in some small way a little

  healing, so she leant across and kissed him on the lips.