A Father by Christmas

by Meredith Webber

  He’d turned towards the river again, and she knew he’d withdrawn inside himself—tucking the part that was attracted to her safely away in some distant corner of his psyche.

  ‘I let my wife down—not once but many times.’

  At first the words made no sense at all, then, as a coolness swept through Sophie’s body, she realised he was answering the question she’d asked earlier—giving her a reason for his avoidance of involvement.

  ‘Gillian was everything I wasn’t. She was beautiful, bright, vivacious, an extrovert to my introvert. She was an actress, working in television—in serial dramas made in Melbourne or Sydney—so she was away during the week for most of each year.’

  Silence fell between them, a silence so tensely uncomfortable Sophie felt she had to break it.

  ‘That must have been hard on your marriage.’

  Gib turned to her as if surprised, and shook his head.

  ‘It wasn’t, you know. In fact, if anything, it made things more exciting.’

  Exciting? The description made Sophie even more tense.

  ‘We’d meet again each weekend as if it was for the first time, and for years I thought the magic would never go away.’

  Magic?

  Another knot formed in Sophie’s stomach. How could an ordinary woman like herself compete with magic?

  ‘So for years I didn’t realise the excitement—her gaiety—wasn’t natural. That more often than not I was seeing Gillian’s highs and somehow missing the lows, although in those early days of her illness the lows weren’t as extreme as they became later, when often she was hospitalised for months before drugs could balance the chemicals in her brain and she could handle life again.’

  Pity for the woman and for the husband who had so obviously loved her made Sophie forget her own reaction and move close again, resting her hand on Gib’s arm in an unspoken show of sympathy.

  ‘In those early days, if she was home, not working, I put the lows down to me being busy—she was missing my company because I was either studying, or working all hours of the day and night. It was natural she might be depressed.’

  Sophie heard his huff of self-disgust, and pity for him—and for poor, tortured Gillian—made her eyes sting with tears as he muttered savagely, ‘I was a doctor, for heaven’s sake, and I couldn’t diagnose my own wife with a bipolar condition!’

  ‘I don’t remember much from my psych lectures, because I always knew I wanted to work with kids, but would that have made a difference?’ Sophie asked, hoping to ease the pain she heard in his voice. ‘Would getting her on drugs earlier have improved the long-term outcome?’

  He didn’t answer, but after a minute he put his hand on hers and squeezed her fingers gently.

  ‘Probably not,’ he admitted, and though they stood together—touching—Sophie knew she could have been anyone, male or female—just someone who happened to be around when Gib decided the time had come to talk about his marriage.

  ‘When we were first married, I wanted a child—a number of children—but it would have interrupted Gillian’s career at a time it was just beginning to take off. Then later, when she wanted a child, I wasn’t so sure about it—about whether she would be able to cope, especially if, by chance, the child had special needs. We talked about it and decided we wouldn’t have children, but although she agreed it was a sensible decision, I wondered afterwards if she’d just agreed to placate me. Was she disappointed that her condition worsened? Again, I don’t know, but it was about that time that she was first hospitalised. Then it was as if our world went mad. Little things became hugely important to her, chance remarks took on dreadful connotations, and she saw my love for her as something bad—even evil. As her health, physical as well as mental, deteriorated, I brought Etty to live with us, and Gillian hated that as well—hated that she had what, in her bad times, she called a gaoler.’

  He sighed, then added, ‘I doubt, in retrospect, I ever made a right decision for her and that, Sophie, is what I have to live with. But I live with it alone—I wouldn’t foist it on another woman, or put myself into a position where I could make the same mistakes all over again.’

  Silence, then the final nail in Sophie’s coffin of hopes.

  ‘Or new mistakes.’

  He touched her lightly on the top of her head and moved away, picking up a big plastic box from beside the barbeque and beginning to stack the detritus of their meal into it.

  She should offer to help, but if she went into the light, would he see traces of the tears she’d wept for him, and for his beautiful, tortured, childless Gillian?

  ‘I’ll take this up to the house and start the dishwasher,’ he said, as if the conversation and the kisses had never happened. ‘You’ll be all right down here? Find your way back up to the house when you’re ready. If you want to swim, the lights are still on in the pool.’

  Sophie nodded, not trusting her voice, but she didn’t want to swim, or go back to her lonely bedroom in the flat. She wanted to stay here by the river.

  With Gib.

  A man and a woman and moonlight and water lapping…

  Foolish as it was, she wanted the magic of romance, with a man who had been so badly burnt by it, he no longer believed in it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘LIKE to do a retrieval flight?’

  The weekend had passed too quickly, Sophie spending most of it with Thomas, taking him on the City Cats that plied the river, first to Southbank where they swam then further down the river for a picnic in a large, tree-shaded park.

  When he rested, or played quietly in the flat, she’d phoned the friends Hilary had made while working at the research institute in Brisbane. Some she’d already spoken to, needing their help to organise the memorial service for her sister, but others were just names in Hilary’s address book until she made the phone calls and heard them talk of her sister with respect and affection.

  Through these people, Hilary’s friends and colleagues, Sophie was certain she would find Thomas’s father.

  On Sunday afternoon, Gib had found her and Thomas in the pool, and had suggested a barbeque, but, still twitchy from their weird conversation after Friday’s barbeque, Sophie had declined, saying she’d promised Thomas she’d take him out for a burger.

  Which was true, although she hadn’t specified a day!

  Now, with Thomas safely tucked into bed, and a weekend of avoiding Gib successfully completed, Sophie wandered back down to the lower terrace and stood by the river, watching it slide by, lapping softly at the rocks. She touched her fingers against her lips, brushing them as lightly as Gib’s kiss had brushed them, and, remembering, dreamt foolish dreams.

  ‘Sophie, can you hear me? Would you like to do a retrieval flight?’

  Gib was calling to her from the living-room window and something in his voice suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d called. How long had she been mooning by the river?

  ‘Triplets born only four weeks premature but low birth weights, two hours’ flight west of Brisbane.’

  ‘I’m on my way—five minutes to get changed and I’ll be ready to go.’

  She took the steps up from the lower terrace two at a time, pulling off her sarong as she went, aware of how easy having Etty around had made her working life.

  ‘Do you normally do transport flights?’ she asked when she joined him in the car. ‘And do you usually take two doctors?’

  ‘No and no. Haven’t done a flight for years, but with the staff shortage, well, when the flight co-ordinator phoned to advise me it was on, I thought, Why not?’

  ‘Then you thought what a good opportunity to see how the new girl handles herself, so I’m going instead of, what? An NICU nurse? I can’t imagine you’d leave the respiratory therapist behind.’

  They were on the main road now, well lit enough for Sophie to see the smile playing around Gib’s lips.

  ‘Close, but it’s not a test of your skill or ability—I’ve seen enough of your work to know the glowing references yo
u provided were all true. But the co-ordinator hadn’t phoned a nurse and I realised it would be a good opportunity for you to see how our transport team works. The Royal Flying Doctor Service has a plane based in Brisbane and for longer flights we use that if it’s available. If it’s not, there’s a government jet. The RFDS plane is best because of its configuration, but the two infant transport incubators we use have self-contained power supplies to maintain the thermal environment, ventilators, temp and cardio monitoring, oxygen and compressed air, suction devices and infusion pumps, so they can go into helicopters, ambulances—whatever vehicle is required.’

  They were travelling through a part of the city Sophie didn’t recognise, although bright lights ahead suggested they were close to the airport.

  ‘Thirty minutes—that’s the mobilisation time we aim for.’

  He’d taken a side street that led to a security gate, which was already opening as if the guard knew the car.

  ‘The co-ordinator advises airport security of our number plates,’ Gib explained, lifting a hand in thanks to the man and driving through rows of long hangars, towards a well-lit apron. ‘As you guessed, we’ll have a respiratory therapist—you’re replacing a nurse.’

  He was parking the car when something he’d said earlier registered in Sophie’s brain.

  ‘Two transport incubators? Aren’t there three babies?’

  He turned and smiled, making her forget this was work, not pleasure.

  ‘I’ll put all three in together in one if I can. Have you been doing that in Sydney? Keeping twins together in one crib? We’ve found they seem to like each other’s company, and will lie quietly together for longer waking periods than when they’re kept apart. We haven’t done a formal study of it, but are talking to other NICUs about the possibility of keeping data.’

  Why had he asked her to come?

  That was the question persisting in Gib’s head as he watched the way Sophie cocked her head slightly when she was listening—watched how her hair, this evening loosely pulled back into a ponytail, swished across one shoulder as she did it.

  ‘We’ve done it in our ICU if the babies have much the same needs, although with multiple births there’s usually one that has done less well in utero,’ she said, showing him she was far more focussed on the job than he was.

  He led the way to the waiting plane, knowing from the way she greeted Sue, the respiratory therapist, that they’d met before. The pilot introduced himself and showed Gib how he’d secured the incubators and medical bags, which had arrived by ambulance minutes earlier. He then explained the flight details, asked them to strap in, and within minutes they were taxiing across the tarmac.

  ‘Are other flights cleared for us?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Usually,’ Sue responded. ‘They won’t abort the takeoff or landing of another plane, but once the tower is advised we’ve got a mission, they work the flight times to fit us in.’

  ‘The plane could be going to retrieve a donated organ, or a critically injured road accident victim, so there has to be prioritising,’ Gib added, wondering how it was possible for his head to be carrying two parallel lines of thought—the one work-focussed, the other seeing Sophie’s pink, unpainted lips and thinking how they’d tasted in that all-too-brief kiss.

  Was he wrong to assume she wouldn’t want a short-term relationship?

  Were the babies being kept warm?

  She hadn’t reacted to the kiss but, then, it had barely been a kiss…

  Would all three babies fit in one incubator?

  ‘Sue was telling me about the quads she helped transport last year.’

  Gib turned to Sophie.

  ‘She was saying you lost one.’

  ‘Thirty-four weeks gestation and all less than one thousand grams,’ Gib said, hoping memories of the quads would force his mind onto one track. ‘The smallest fellow had PDA—common enough with all premature babies, but with him we couldn’t get the darned duct to close with medication and even after surgery he was getting leakage of blood from his aorta back into his lungs. This led, of course, to increased fluid in his lungs, heart having to work harder—the poor wee thing went from one problem to another.’

  Sophie studied him for a moment, as if those smoky grey eyes were trying to peer beneath his skin.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how many babies you lose, does it? Each one is still like a knife wound in your heart,’ she said softly.

  ‘You feel that?’

  His surprise must have shown, for she frowned at him.

  ‘You don’t?’

  He shook his head at the thought that he might, one day, not feel that stab of agony in his heart.

  ‘I do,’ he admitted, ‘but I’ve met plenty of professionals who feel it’s for the best, or are content that they have done whatever they could and so the end result is nothing to do with them.’

  ‘I think they still care,’ Sophie retorted. ‘They just say things like that to cover up the sense of loss that is sometimes so swamping you wonder why you do the job.’

  ‘Until a healthy fifteen-year-old walks into your consulting room, kisses your cheek and announces she’s going to study medicine because of you.’

  ‘Has that actually happened to you?’

  ‘Becky Wainwright,’ Sue said, nodding towards Sophie as she supplied the young woman’s name. ‘She came in the week before you started. Gosh, she was small at birth, wasn’t she, Gib?’

  ‘Teenage mother, smoker, thought she was getting fat so she’d dieted like mad. Becky was only a week premature but so small everyone doubted she’d survive. But she was tough, and her mother was tougher. She totally turned her life around, went back to school, got into university, studied child care and you’d know her as Vicki—Thomas’s teacher in the centre downstairs.’

  ‘That’s a wonderful story. I must talk to Vicki about how she managed. She must have had good family help.’

  A tightness in Sophie’s voice as she made the offhand remark made Gib wonder about her family circumstances. But Thomas was only three. Sophie would have been thirty—and a fully fledged paediatrician—when she had him. The parallels between her and Vicki were hardly relevant.

  Except that, like Vicki, she was raising a child on her own…

  Sue had gone forward to sit with the pilot and, though Gib knew it was none of his business, he found himself asking.

  ‘You didn’t have family help with Thomas?’

  Sophie looked at him, her eyes widening.

  ‘I barely had a family—just my sister and my gran. And they’re both dead.’

  She turned away, peering out the window into the blackness. What was it about this man that he could touch the sore parts of her so unerringly?

  Or had her attraction to him, pointless though it was, sensitised her in some way?

  ‘OK, folks, strap in tight, there’s a storm ahead but I’ll try to go around it. Sue’s up here with me, so it’s just you two back there.’

  The pilot’s voice was tinny, but that didn’t make the warning any less effective. Sophie pulled at her seat-belt strap to make sure it was tight, and not a minute too soon, for the plane dipped one wing then bucked and dropped, with stomach-heaving suddenness, through the air. It levelled out again, but not before Sophie had grabbed for Gib’s hand, needing to anchor herself to another human being, rather than just the arm of her seat.

  Everything beyond survival forgotten, Sophie clung to him, willing the storm to pass—or the pilot to go even further from its power. Beyond the windows, lightning lit the sky with a fierce glow, showing the dark clouds boiling up and up, beyond and below them.

  ‘Nice adventure?’ Gib said calmly, and Sophie scowled at him.

  ‘I hate planes,’ she muttered, miles beyond diplomacy now. ‘Hate, hate, hate them!’

  ‘You didn’t have to come.’ He spoke so mildly she could feel her teeth grinding together as she fought to hang onto her temper.

  ‘Of course I did,’ she snapped, letting go the reins ju
st a little. ‘Doing transport runs is part of my job. I can’t get picky about the form of transport.’

  She paused then added, ‘But I don’t have to enjoy it!’

  He squeezed her fingers. How mortifying to find she was still gripping his hand while she showed how cowardly she was about plane travel. She pulled her fingers free, but the plane lurched again, and she grasped for him again, her hand landing on his leg, her fingers pressing in so tightly she was probably bruising him.

  ‘Want a distraction?’

  His fingers were moving in her hair and the three words, barely audible above the engine noise, insinuated themselves into her ears. She turned towards him and saw how close he was—saw his blue eyes looking intently at her, his gaze sliding from her eyes towards her lips.

  Lips that were suddenly so dry she had to lick them.

  ‘Imagine it,’ he whispered, touching his own tongue to his upper lip. ‘Lips meeting, heat building, imagine that nothing kiss we shared going further, Sophie.’

  Had he hypnotised her that she could actually feel his lips on hers—taste his tongue as it teased against her teeth? She knew her breath was coming faster, her heart rate rising as she felt the kiss that wasn’t a kiss grow more and more demanding. His fingers massaged the back of her neck, beneath the band that kept her hair contained, and a subtle pressure was bringing her head towards him, although she was ninety-nine per cent certain he had no intention of taking it further than talk.

  Distraction! That’s all it was.

  ‘Do you want to feel my heart beating? Feel how you affect me when we’re only imagining a kiss?’

  She did and yet she didn’t, but then he lifted her hand off his leg and held it against his shirt so she could, indeed, feel the rapid thudding of his heart.

  The plane lurched again, but the movement didn’t bother her, for now Gib’s forefinger was tracing the line of her lips—parted lips, dragging in great gulps of air. Then his finger slid into her mouth, and she licked its saltiness, then heard him gasp as she closed her lips around it, and sucked on it—gently, oh, so gently…

  Had they missed the storm?