Her Four-Year Baby Secret

by Alison Roberts

  ‘Mr Wright has been short of breath since this morning. He’s on home oxygen for COAD, which is currently exacerbated by a chest infection. SP02 is 93 percent on oxygen…’

  Things got quieter late in the day but Nick missed his now usual visit to the ambulance station and that was when the first alarm bells rang for Fiona.

  She waited for him on Tuesday evening, knowing he was still at work because his little red car was still parked outside. When he didn’t appear, she went to his office to find him busy with paperwork.

  ‘Come home for dinner,’ she invited. ‘Sam’s been drawing pictures for you and you know how Mum loves to have her cooking appreciated.’

  Nick smiled but he hadn’t looked at her for more than an instant and he shook his head.

  ‘I can’t keep imposing on you. And…I’m expecting an overseas call. I need to be home tonight.’

  On Wednesday afternoon, Fiona had a call to a man with back pain and she called Nick a short time later.

  ‘We’re on the way in with a fifty-eight-year-old male with sudden onset “ripping sensation” back and abdominal pain,’ she relayed. ‘Suspected triple A. Ten out of ten pain, which hasn’t responded to 20 milligrams of morphine, and his blood pressure has dropped from 140 over 90 to 110 over 60. I’ve got two wide-bore IV lines in situ and am running a bolus of saline. GCS has dropped to about 12.’

  ‘You want helicopter evacuation set up?’

  ‘Already organised. Could you meet us over at the helipad? I don’t want to take off until he’s as stable as possible.’

  If her patient had an abdominal aortic aneurysm that was rupturing, there was nothing they could do for him at Lakeview. He needed emergency surgery at a large hospital and even if they got him there, his chances of survival weren’t great.

  It was no wonder Nick looked grim when he jumped into the back of the ambulance as Shane parked near the helicopter, which was being readied for take-off, its rotors already turning.

  ‘He lost consciousness about two minutes ago,’ Fiona said. ‘And I can’t get a blood pressure…’ She looked over her shoulder at the life pack, where the cardiac rhythm on the screen was showing some alarming changes. Shane climbed through from the driver’s seat and picked up the bag mask to ventilate their patient.

  Nick felt the man’s abdomen. ‘It’s rigid.’

  ‘He’s in VF.’ The back of the ambulance was the worst of places to try and run a cardiac arrest scenario. Far too cramped. Dangerous, in fact, to defibrillate patients with the metal stretchers and not enough space to get well clear but they had to try.

  It was messy. Nick climbed past Fiona to get to the man’s head and prepare to intubate him. Fiona delivered a series of shocks that failed to restore a normal heart rhythm and then started chest compressions.

  Shane squeezed in to look after bag masking while Nick hung more fluids and used a pressure cuff to try and infuse them rapidly. Then he pulled drugs from Fiona’s kit as they continued to fight what they all knew was a losing battle.

  When Fiona reached to charge up the machine for the fifth time, she felt Nick’s fingers grip her wrist. ‘It’s time to stop,’ he told her gently. ‘He’s bled out. We’ve done our best but we can’t start a heart that has no blood to work with.’

  He was right, of course, but it was never an easy call to accept. Fiona stared at Nick. He looked upset, too, she decided. More than upset. Those shadows under his eyes made it look like he hadn’t slept well for days. Fiona wanted to reach out and touch him, to ask if he was OK, but that would be a stupid question at a time like this. None of them were ‘OK’.

  The silence made her aware of the hiss of oxygen still escaping the main cylinder.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like me to do?’ Nick asked. ‘What’s the protocol?’

  ‘It’s a sudden death.’ Fiona turned off the oxygen supply. ‘We’ll have to notify the police and he’ll have to be transferred for an autopsy. We’ll take him to the morgue for now.’ She swallowed. ‘His wife was going to follow us in her car. She might be here already.’

  ‘I’ll go and talk to her,’ Nick offered. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Eileen Wilkins.’

  ‘And his name?’

  Fiona was removing the ET tube from her patient’s mouth. His wife would want to see him and it was important to preserve his dignity for her sake.

  ‘Fi?’

  ‘His name’s Alistair.’ Fiona was taking out the IV lines now. She didn’t look up at Nick. ‘His wife called him Al.’

  The ambulance rocked as Nick climbed jumped down from the back without saying anything. Had he heard the reluctance in her voice to use that name? Would he understand that she now knew she had been mistaken? Reminding Nick of what he’d lost hadn’t been the way to make him feel safe at all. It had had the opposite effect but Fiona had no idea how to fix things. She would have to try, of course, just as she had tried her best for her patient, but she had the horrible feeling that it wasn’t going to work.

  It was not a good way to finish her day, cleaning up an unsuccessful resuscitation scene. Fiona’s spirits lifted a little when she saw Nick coming out of the hospital, heading towards the car park. She abandoned her bucket of hot water and detergent, leaving the mop propped against the back of the ambulance, and headed towards him. Then she noticed his companion and her heart sank.

  ‘Sorry, Jeff. I know I was supposed to ring you but I haven’t had a chance yet.’

  ‘Could we talk now? I’ve got a few ideas about the fundraising campaign.’

  Fiona shook her head. ‘This really isn’t a good time.’

  ‘Yeah. Nick was saying you’d had a bad day. Can I take you out for a drink or something?’

  ‘No.’ Fiona shook her head again. ‘I’ll get back to you next week, OK?’

  ‘I’ll call you, shall I?’

  Fiona shook her head for the third time, wishing Nick would say something, but he just nodded a farewell as he pulled car keys from his pocket.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow, Fi.’

  She watched him drive away. ‘I’ve got a lot to do,’ she said to Jeff. ‘Sorry, but I’ll have to go, too.’

  ‘Guess I’ll get the bus home, then.’

  Was he expecting her to offer him a lift? It wasn’t the first time this man had made Fiona feel uneasy. Shane’s approach was a relief.

  ‘You want me to mop out the truck, Fi?’

  ‘No, I’ll do it. See you, Jeff.’

  He took the hint but looked less than happy at the blatant dismissal. Shane watched him walk away. ‘Funny guy,’ he said. ‘You sure you want him hanging around?’

  ‘I’m not sure of anything today,’ Fiona responded glumly. ‘Let’s get the truck sorted and go home ourselves.’

  ‘I’ve tidied the gear. I found this under the stretcher.’ Shane reached into his pocket. ‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ But Fiona recognised the cellphone. ‘It’s Nick’s. I’ll take it and give it back to him tomorrow.’

  The phone rang when Fiona was climbing into her car to go home. She flipped it open and answered it, thinking it might be Nick, trying to locate it.

  ‘Nick?’ The male voice had an American accent and sounded enthusiastic. ‘How are you, buddy?’

  ‘It’s not Nick,’ she replied. ‘He left his phone at work.’

  ‘Damn! I really need to talk to him. I tried his landline number but couldn’t get through.’

  ‘Try again. He should be home.’

  ‘I think there’s a fault with the line or something. It just beeps. Look, if you see him, can you tell him to ring Doug? I’m with MSF and we’ve got a job lined up that he’s going to love. In El Salvador. We need to get an answer pretty quick, though, ’cos we’re finalising the team tonight.’

  ‘I’ll pass on the message,’ Fiona promised. She could ring him herself, couldn’t she?

  But what if the landline was faulty? Hugh had had problems in the
past with lines that went through a stand of old trees before they got to the house on the beach. Maybe Nick was relying on his cellphone and had no idea he’d dropped it during that resuscitation effort. Could it be that worrying about his next job was contributing to how unhappy he’d been looking?

  Instead of turning for home, Fiona took the road that led to the Pattersons’ property. Returning the cellphone was fate giving her an opportunity she needed. A chance to talk to Nick and let him know how important he was to her family. To her. Hopefully, she could do that without stepping over any safe boundaries but if not, well, she would just have to deal with it.

  She used her own phone to call her mother. ‘I’ll be late,’ she warned. ‘Give Sam a kiss for me but don’t hold up dinner.’

  ‘His name was Doug. He said it was important that you call him tonight.’

  ‘It could have waited. You didn’t need to come all the way out here, Fi.’

  ‘It’s not that far.’

  ‘You probably had better things to do.’

  ‘Like what?’ Fiona bent to scratch the ears of the two dogs crowding her at the door. ‘Hey, Tuck. Hey, Lass. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you guys.’

  ‘Like going out for a drink with your new admirer.’

  ‘What?’ Fiona straightened. ‘You mean Jeff? You’ve got to be kidding! He’s not any kind of admirer. He just wants to discuss the fundraising thing.’

  Nick turned away. ‘Don’t be naïve, Fi.’

  She followed him. As an opportunity to talk, this was not promising. Nick didn’t stop until he reached the kitchen where he was obviously preparing the dogs’ dinner. He picked up the knife and continued cutting meat but he gave Fiona a long glance and shook his head as though giving up. ‘Why can’t you see something for what it really is?’

  ‘I’m not following you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I think it does.’ Fiona leaned against the bench and watched him cutting the meat. The dogs sat on either side of his legs. They were also watching. The atmosphere was one of expectation but Fiona’s wasn’t pleasurable. ‘What’s wrong, Nick?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. You’ve been avoiding me in the last few days. You looked miserable today and it wasn’t just because we couldn’t save a patient.’ Fiona’s heart was thumping. ‘I thought we were friends again, Nick. Talk to me. Please.’

  Nick scooped meat into the dogs’ bowls. He set them down in a corner of the kitchen near the coal range that was providing the only warmth Fiona could detect here.

  ‘I should ring Doug,’ he said finally. ‘It’s time I sorted out where I’m going next.’

  Fiona took a deep breath. She could deal with this. She had to.

  ‘You’ll come back, though…’ It was hard to keep a wobble from her voice. ‘Won’t you?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea.’ He opened the fridge and took out a bottle of wine. He held it up and Fiona nodded silently.

  Nick poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Fiona. She followed his example and sat down at the table.

  ‘If I’d known I was going to get plunged back into the past, I would never have come,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not what I wanted, Fi. To tell you the truth, I can’t deal with hearing about Al all the time. I stood at his funeral, jammed in behind that media contingent, and I thought at least it was over. I could get on with my life without everything I did—who I was—being compared to my brother.’

  ‘Nobody’s comparing you. You’re totally different people.’

  ‘Not different enough. Same name. Same looks.’

  ‘No. You’re different.’

  ‘Not when you’ve had a glass of wine or two.’

  ‘What?’ Fiona set her glass down with a bang. She stared at Nick, waiting until he met her gaze.

  ‘Would you have kissed me, Fi? If it hadn’t been so easy to imagine you were kissing Al?’

  Fiona’s mouth had gone dry but there was no way she was picking up that glass of wine again. ‘Is that what you thought I was thinking?’

  ‘You can’t deny it. You shocked yourself.’ Nick’s face was expressionless. ‘You asked my name as if you couldn’t believe you could have made such a mistake.’

  ‘No. You’ve got it wrong, Nick. It wasn’t—’

  ‘And ever since then you’ve been hauling Al into the conversation whenever you can. So’s everybody else. God.’ Nick closed his eyes for a second. ‘Even your patients are helping to remind me.’

  He opened his eyes with a sigh. ‘You’ve got your son growing up to believe his father was a superhero. At least, if I’m not around, he’s not going to find out how wrong he is.’

  Fiona couldn’t believe the words she was hearing. Or the bitter undertone. This was Nick talking. The man she had remembered, until very recently, as a quiet youth who had looked up to his older brother. Had grown up trying, but failing, to live up to standards Alistair had set. OK, he had also lived with the feeling of being invisible in a family where success had meant grabbing headlines but it seemed totally out of character to attack his brother’s reputation.

  Or had she been protecting that reputation needlessly?

  ‘You sound like you hated him,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Let’s just say I lost any respect I had for him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The night before he married you.’

  So she hadn’t been wrong about her first impressions. The rift had occurred later—at a time when her life had been changing so much she had barely seen her brother-in-law.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Nick drained his glass of wine and began to pour another. ‘There’s no point in dragging it all out now. You probably wouldn’t believe me. And why should you? You had a wonderful marriage. That’s all that matters.’ Nick took a swallow of the wine. ‘I shouldn’t have started this conversation.’ He gave Fiona a tight smile. ‘Just forget I said anything.’

  The silence was broken only by the sound of one of the dogs lapping water and then settling back onto the rug by the coal range with a sigh of contentment. Fiona toyed with the stem of her wineglass as the silence continued. If ever there was a time to be honest, this had to be it. She drew in a somewhat shaky breath.

  ‘Actually…it wasn’t that wonderful.’

  Nick looked up sharply but he said nothing. Just waited.

  Fiona sighed. ‘Oh, it was to begin with, I guess, but it was never real. I hung on to my job because that was real but it meant we had quite long stretches of time apart and when we were together it was one long party. I got to dress up and be with the man every other woman wanted to be with. It wasn’t anything like a real marriage.’ Fiona had to stop and swallow hard. ‘Maybe that’s why it took so long to realise I’d made such a mistake.’

  Still, Nick said nothing but he was watching her carefully.

  ‘We’d separated, Nick. Nearly a year before he died. It happened slowly. He still stayed in the house every time he was back in London but we had separate rooms. It was only a matter of time before it got out but Al was desperate to avoid the publicity. He always hated anything negative being written about him.’

  Nick cleared his throat. ‘Why did you separate?’

  ‘It became apparent that some of the rumours weren’t just tabloid rubbish. Al was never faithful to me.’

  ‘You knew that?’

  ‘Not for a long time. Not for sure. Al was very good at talking his way out of trouble. Using his charm to make sure he got what he wanted. And I suppose I wanted to be wrong.’ Fiona held Nick’s gaze. ‘But that was only part of his life. He was a hero to a lot of people. Especially rally racing fans. They didn’t need to know the truth. Sam doesn’t need to know. Is it so wrong to let him be proud of a father he can never even meet?’

  But Nick didn’t answer the question. He had his own.

  ‘How did you get Sam when you were separate
d?’

  ‘He was the result of one night. Al was back in the country after a long tour and he was…I don’t know…down about something. It was close to the anniversary of your parents’ death. He begged me to forgive him. Wanted to try again. Was making all kinds of promises and…I’d been lonely. We had a few drinks…one thing led to another…’

  ‘Did he know you were pregnant?’

  ‘No, but I suggested the possibility, given that we hadn’t bothered with protection.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And that was when I knew there was no possibility of us ever being together again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he laughed.’

  ‘He thought the idea of having kids was funny?’

  ‘No. It was a nasty kind of laugh. And he said that if I was pregnant, I’d know what I needed to do about it, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘He didn’t mean…?’ Nick seemed too shocked to finish his question but Fiona nodded anyway.

  ‘Get rid of it? Of course that’s what he meant. He didn’t want a fat wife. Or a child cramping his lifestyle.’

  ‘My God…’ Nick’s hand curled into a fist on the tabletop. ‘I knew he was a bastard but I had no real idea at all.’

  ‘Why did you think he was a bastard? When I first met you I got the impression you thought he was as wonderful as everybody else thought.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Was it at your parents’ funeral? When he told you how stupid it would be to waste your medical degree working in Third World countries instead of making a decent living and getting the status of being in private practice?’

  ‘No. Way before that.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I told you. The night before your wedding. At the stag party. We…had an argument.’

  ‘What about?’

  Nick looked away and Fiona touched his hand.

  ‘Please, tell me. I’m not going to be shocked, Nick. Or hurt. I’ve dealt with all that. I knew exactly what Al was like in the end but I didn’t think you did. I didn’t want to destroy any childhood memories that might be important for you to hang on to. Did he spend the night with another woman, is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’