The door to Theatre was still closed. There hadn’t been time to investigate. She’d had to trust that Marc knew what he was doing.
Now, though, as paramedics fired questions at her, as each of these kids got the attention they needed, she was able to think of what—and who—was behind those doors.
‘I have a kid with a shattered elbow and possible ruptured spleen,’ she told the senior paramedic. ‘A visiting surgeon was on hand. He’s in Theatre now.’
‘Here?’ the guy said incredulously, and Ellie thought again of the mixed emotions his arrival meant for her.
Marc was behind those doors. Her old life was a life of secrets. A life that now had to be faced.
She took a deep breath and opened the door to Theatre.
Chris was at the head of the table. She smiled and gave Ellie a swift thumbs-up, then went back to monitor-gazing.
Chris was magnificent, Ellie thought, not for the first time. Ellie had needed to talk her charge nurse through an anaesthetic more times than she could count and she’d coped magnificently every time. She should be a doctor herself. She practically was.
But her attention wasn’t on Chris.
Masked and gowned, Marc could be any surgeon in any theatre anywhere in the world. He was totally focused on the job at hand.
‘Nearly closed,’ he growled and his voice was a shock all by itself.
She’d never thought she’d hear it again.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked.
‘We’ve stabilised the elbow, removing bone fragments that could shift. The circulation should hold until she receives specialist orthopaedic attention. The worst risk was the spleen. It was a mess. There was no choice but removal. Sorry, Ellie, to leave you with everything else. I had Chris slip out and tell Joe to call if there was any priority you couldn’t cope with, but then we went for it.’
‘He’s done the whole thing,’ Chris breathed. ‘He’s removed the spleen but he’s done so much more. He’s stopped the internal bleeding completely. Blood pressure’s already rising. And the elbow! Look at the X-rays, Ellie. To get the circulation back. He’s saved her life and he’s saved her arm. Oh, Ellie, I can’t tell you...’
‘Thanks to Chris,’ Marc growled, still focused. ‘You have a gem of a nurse, Ellie.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ she said a trifle unsteadily.
This was surgery way beyond her field of expertise. Maybe she could have diagnosed and removed the spleen but the pneumothorax had been just as urgent. She would have lost one of the two kids, and how appalling a choice would that have been? But the elbow... She glanced at the X-ray, saw the mess, and knew without a doubt that Lisa would be facing amputation if Marc hadn’t been here.
Marc’s battlefield training had come to the fore. She never could have done this alone.
A bullet had been dodged. Or multiple bullets. She wanted to sit down. Badly.
It wasn’t going to happen.
‘I’m just applying an external fixator and then I’m done,’ Marc told her. ‘Ten minutes? I gather the air ambulance is here. I’d like Lisa transferred to Sydney as soon as possible. The elbow will need attention from a specialist. I’m not an orthopod.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ Chris muttered, and Ellie looked at Marc and thought, What good fairy brought you here today?
And then she thought of the repercussions of him being here and she stopped thinking of good fairies.
She didn’t have time to go there. She had to face the relatives.
But there was no longer any urgency. She had room for thought.
Marc was here.
Good fairies? She didn’t think so.
* * *
The first chopper took the most seriously injured, including Lisa, but the boy with the pneumothorax left by road. Air travel wasn’t recommended when lungs were compromised. The road ambulance also took the driver of one of the cars and his girlfriend. The pair had suffered lacerations; the girl had a minor fracture. They could have stayed, but feelings were running high in the town and a driver with only minor injuries could well turn into a scapegoat.
The second chopper, a big one, had places to spare and the battered train crew chose to leave on it. They, too, could have been cared for here, but their homes, their families, were in Sydney. Borrawong Hospital was suddenly almost deserted.
But Marc was still inside and, as Ellie watched the second chopper disappear, that fact seemed more terrifying than a room full of casualties.
‘You can get through this.’ She said it to herself, but she was suddenly thinking of all the times she’d said it before. During the trauma of being the kid of a defiant, erratic single mum with cystic fibrosis. The roller coaster of a childhood living with her mother’s illness. The relief of her mother’s first lung transplant and then the despair when it had failed.
And then the moment the doors had closed at Sydney Airport and Marc was gone for ever. The moment she’d looked at the lines on the pregnancy testing kit. The moment she’d seen her baby’s ultrasound.
The day she’d made the decision to keep her baby, to stay here, to cope alone.
But it was no use thinking of that now.
The sun was sinking behind the town’s wheat silos, casting shadows that almost reached the hospital. Somewhere a dog was barking. This was Borrawong’s nightlife. Marc was about to see Borrawong at its best.
Why was he here?
‘You can get through this,’ she said again but heaven only knew the effort it cost her to turn and re-enter the hospital.
Felix was still in the waiting room. He’d pushed his wheelchair behind the reception desk and was engrossed in a computer game but he looked up as she entered and grinned.
‘Got rid of them all?’
‘We have. Felix, you were wonderful.’
‘I know,’ he said, his grin broadening. ‘I kept ’em all out. Except the doctor with the funny accent. He’s still in there now, helping clean up. Joe says if we have a doctor who cleans we should lock the doors and keep him. He said he’s your friend?’
‘I...yes. He’s someone I knew a long time ago. When I was at university.’
And Felix’s face changed.
Uh oh.
Felix was smart. He was also right at the age where he was asking questions, and the questions had been getting harder.
‘So you met my dad when you were at uni. Why won’t you tell me his name? The kids at school reckon he must have been married to someone else. Or he was a scumbag. Otherwise you’d tell me. Why can’t I meet him?’
And now Felix had met a strange doctor three hours ago while he’d been bored and had time to think—a guy who’d appeared from the past, a man his mum had never talked about.
A man with hair and eyes exactly the same as his.
‘Is he my father?’ Felix demanded and Ellie closed her eyes.
And when she opened them Marc was in the doorway.
He’d ditched his theatre gear. He was wearing casual chinos and a white open-necked shirt.
His dark hair, wavy just like her son’s, was rumpled. He’d raked it, she thought. He always raked his hair.
Felix looked like him. Felix was Marc in miniature—except for the freckles. And the wheelchair.
But there was no use denying it. Felix’s face was bristling with suspicion, but also with something else. Hope, perhaps? He wanted a father.
How wrong had it been not to tell Marc what she’d done?
She glanced at Marc again. His face was impassive. Shuttered.
She thought of the first time she’d met him. She’d been nineteen, a second-year university student, working her butt off to put herself through medicine. Marc had been twenty-four, just completed training, headed to Australia for a gap year before he started surgic
al training.
He’d intended working his way around Australia’s coastline, but in his first week in Sydney there’d been an international conference on vascular surgery. He’d cadged an invitation because, gap year or not, he was interested.
She’d been there as a waitress. On the edges. Soaking up knowledge any way she could. She’d been working the crowd, carrying drinks.
An eminent vascular surgeon had been holding forth to a small group of similarly esteemed professionals, talking of the latest cardiovascular techniques. She’d paused to listen, intrigued by the discussion of a technique she’d never heard of.
And then one of the group had caught her eye, maybe suspecting she was eavesdropping. Uh oh. If she lost this job it’d be a disaster. She’d spun away fast—and crashed into Marc.
Her tray had been loaded with red and white wine and orange juice. The whole lot had spilled down his front. Glasses smashed on the floor. The attention of the whole room had suddenly been on her, and she’d stood, appalled, expecting to be sacked.
But Marc had moved with a decisiveness that had taken her breath away. He’d stopped people moving onto the broken glass, and he’d talked to her boss before she could say a word.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he’d said in his lovely broken English. ‘So stupid. I was caught by something Professor Kramer was discussing, and it seemed important to catch it. So I turned suddenly and I hit your waitress hard. Mam’selle, are you hurt? A thousand apologies. Sir, may I make recompense? The cost of the glasses? The wine? Something extra for your work? And, mam’selle, I will pay the cost of your cleaning...’
He’d charmed her right back into her job—and that night, when she’d finished work, he’d been waiting for her at the staff entrance.
‘I messed with your night,’ he said simply. ‘The least I can do is take you to supper.’
‘It was my fault.’
‘The fault is immaterial. It was my body you crashed into. Therefore my body will propel you to supper.’
He’d been irresistible. His looks, his accent, his smile... His kindness.
She’d fallen in love right there and then and, amazingly, he’d seemed to feel the same.
And now he was here.
‘Ellie?’ he said gently, but there was no smile.
He was waiting for an answer.
Felix was waiting for an answer.
She looked from one to the other. Her son. Her ex-husband. The man she’d loved with all her heart.
Once. Not now.
Is he my father?
There was nowhere to go.
‘Felix, this is Marc Falken,’ she managed and was amazed at the way her voice sounded. It was almost steady. ‘He’s from Falkenstein, near Austria, in Europe. Marc’s a doctor. He and I met at university and for a few short months we were married. But then there was a war in Marc’s country, a disaster that lasted for years. He was needed. I’d imagine he’s still needed. But, for whatever reason, he’s here now, and yes, Felix, Marc is your father.’
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER THAT, THE NIGHT seemed to pass out of her control. Felix was excited and full of questions. Marc seemed calm, courteous and kind.
She could stay silent—and she did.
Between Marc and Felix, they sorted that Marc would have dinner with them. The hospital cook was making bulk fish and chips, so they ended up at the kitchen table in Ellie’s hospital apartment with a mound of fish and chips in front of them.
Ellie simply went along with it. She didn’t have the strength for anything else.
She ate her fish and chips in silence and was vaguely grateful for them—how long since she’d eaten?
There was a bottle of wine in the fridge. She offered it to Marc but he refused. ‘Jet lag,’ he told her and she nodded and reflected that that was how she herself was feeling. She was pretty much ready to fall over now.
And Marc? He must be shocked to the core, but he was being kind.
For Felix was hammering him with questions. One part of Ellie was numb, but there was still a part of her that was taking in Marc’s responses.
‘Are you really a surgeon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you work in a big hospital?’
‘I travel a lot, Felix. I’m in charge of the country’s health system. I do operate when I’m needed, but a lot of my time’s spent checking our remote hospitals are up to standard.’
‘What’s remote? Like the Outback here?’
‘We don’t have deserts,’ he told him. ‘But we do have mountains. Lots of mountains and many of our tiny hospitals are cut off in bad weather. Like your mum’s hospital here, they’re a long way from anywhere and it’s my job to see they’re not cut off completely.’
‘But you still operate.’
‘I love my job so yes, I operate, whenever I can. I have an apartment in one of the city hospitals and I operate there when I’m needed.’
‘Like this afternoon.’
‘Like this afternoon.’
And then the questions got personal.
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’ He glanced at Ellie and Ellie concentrated fiercely on her pile of chips.
‘Why not?’
‘I guess I’ve been too busy.’
‘You weren’t too busy to marry my mum.’
‘I wasn’t,’ he said gravely. ‘But your mum and I were both students then, so we had more time. We hadn’t realised just how many responsibilities we faced. There was a war in my country and I had to go home. Your grandmother was ill and your mum was needed here. There wasn’t time for us to stay married.’
And finally Felix fixed his eyes on his father and asked the question she’d been dreading. ‘There was time to make me,’ he said flatly. ‘Didn’t you want me?’
If ever she wanted to turn into a puddle of nothing, it was now. What had she been thinking, not telling Marc what she intended?
It had been for all the right reasons, she told herself, but her silent reasoning sounded hysterical. It sounded wrong.
And Marc? He’d respond with anger, she thought, and he had every right. He could slam her decision of nine years ago. He could drive a wedge between her and her son, give Felix a reason to turn to her with bewilderment and betrayal.
Marc glanced at her, for just a moment. Their eyes locked.
She saw anger, but underneath there was mostly confusion. And concern.
All that she could see at a glance. Why?
Because she knew this man. She’d married him. Three glorious months...
‘Felix, this takes some understanding,’ Marc said, and whatever betrayal he was feeling seemed to have been set aside.
But she hadn’t betrayed Marc, she told herself. She’d told him the truth.
Sort of.
‘Your mum and I were very young when we met,’ Marc continued. ‘We were not much more than kids. We fell in love and we got married. It was all very fast and very romantic. But sometimes you do things that you hope might work out, even if they probably won’t. Have you ever done that?’
‘Like riding Sam Thomas’s brother’s bike down the hill at top speed,’ Felix said. Marc was talking to him as an adult and he was responding in kind. ‘It was too big for me and I couldn’t make the brakes work but there was a grassy paddock at the bottom so I sort of hoped it’d be okay.’
‘It wasn’t, huh?’
‘No,’ Felix said but he peeped a cautious smile at Marc, obviously looking for a reaction. ‘I broke my leg. Getting married was like that? Getting on a bike with no brakes?’
‘I guess so,’ Marc said and Ellie saw a faint smile in response. ‘Only in this case we didn’t break our legs. A war started in my country. A big one. There were many, many people killed and
more hurt. And your grandma was ill here. So your mum and I had to part.’
‘You didn’t write to me.’
‘No,’ Marc said softly and Ellie thought, Here it comes.
But it didn’t.
‘I didn’t write,’ Marc continued. ‘And I’m very, very sorry.’
And, just like that, he’d let her off the hook. Of all the things he could have said, the anger, the blame...
He could be telling Felix it was his mother’s fault, his mother’s deception. Instead of which, he was simply apologising.
‘When I left I didn’t know your mother was pregnant,’ Marc said. ‘And when she told me, I was in the middle of a war zone, helping people survive. But I should have come back for you and I’m very sorry I didn’t.’
All the questions Felix had been firing at her had been becoming increasingly belligerent. Increasingly angry.
She’d known that she’d have to face that anger some time. Now, Marc had taken it all on himself. He’d let her off the hook.
She’d been staring into her water glass sightlessly, numbly. Now she looked up and met his gaze.
Not quite. She wasn’t off the hook. There were still questions she had to answer. Accusations to face.
But not from her son. For that, at least, she was so grateful she could weep.
‘So, the wheelchair,’ Marc said, and she thought, He hasn’t asked it until now. That was a gift in itself. For most people it was the obvious focus, and now he asked. ‘What’s the matter with your leg?’ And it was a simple follow-up on the preceding conversation. ‘That was the bike, huh? Bad break?’
Felix hated the questions. The sympathy. The constant probing from a small community. ‘How are the feet? Does it hurt? Oh, you poor little boy...’
Felix routinely reacted either by pretending he hadn’t heard or by an angry brush-off. Now, though, for some reason he faced the question head-on.
‘I was born with club feet,’ he told Marc. ‘Talipes equinovarus. You know about it?’
‘I do,’ Marc told him. ‘Rotten luck. Both feet?’
‘Yeah, but the left’s worse than the right. I had to have operations and wear braces for years and now the right one’s almost normal. But my left leg won’t stay in position and it’s been shorter than the right one. Then I broke it and the surgeon in Sydney said let’s go for it and see if we can get a really good cure for the foot as well as for my leg. So it was a big operation and I’m in a wheelchair for another two weeks and then braces again for a bit. But Mum reckons it should be the last thing. Won’t it, Mum?’
Reunited with Her Surgeon Prince Page 3
