Their Marriage Miracle

by Sue MacKay

  This was what she remembered. The meltdown. The sheer delight in kissing Tom, in being kissed by him. She was floating, getting warmer by the second. Her body responded like a drought-stricken plain—hot sensations flooding over her, washing away the long, lonely nights.

  A groan escaped Tom’s lips.

  She blinked. Paused mid-kiss. What was she doing? Setting herself up for more heartbreak? There could be no future in this. One stolen kiss, or more, wouldn’t solve a thing. For either of them. She leaned backwards, slowly pulling her lips from Tom’s beautiful mouth.

  ‘Fi?’ Slowly Tom opened his eyes, looking startled to find her watching him. ‘Oh, hell, I’m sorry. So much for the talk I gave myself half an hour ago.’

  He lifted her off his thighs and scrambled upright. Leaning down, he offered her a hand, tugged her up onto her feet. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he added softly, shaking his head in a bemused fashion.

  Fiona reached a hand to his face, touched him lightly. ‘It takes two, Tom.’

  His answering smile was brief and filled with guilt. ‘Sure.’

  Fiona bent down to retrieve the photo that had started this. She studied it, her heart squeezing. ‘I guess all mothers think their baby is gorgeous, but Liam really was.’

  ‘I think all mothers say exactly that. Of course he was gorgeous. We wouldn’t have been normal parents if we hadn’t been blinded to any imperfections.’

  She swung around. ‘Imperfections? What do you mean?’

  Tom lifted his hands and shrugged, a warm smile teasing his lips. ‘See? You defend him instantly. That’s great. And anyway, he was perfect. Apart from the sleepless nights he gave us.’

  Relaxing again, she placed a kiss on Liam’s head and placed the photo upright on Tom’s dressing table. ‘I miss you so much. Every day.’

  ‘You’re talking to Liam, right?’

  Fiona blinked. Gazed at her son. Yes. She was. But had she been talking to Tom as well? Not intentionally. But truthfully? The breath she hadn’t realised she held oozed past her lips, lips now swollen from Tom’s kisses. Yes, she’d missed Tom every single day and night since the moment she’d left him. Even during the years she’d spent fully focused on medicine and helping others there had been a feeling of loss that she couldn’t entirely pin on Liam.

  Turning to Tom, she murmured, ‘Of course.’

  The chilly room caused her to shiver. Gathering up the quilt folded over a chair, she wrapped herself in it and curled up on the end of the bed. She really should move out into the kitchen or the lounge, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave that photo just yet.

  Her voice wobbled when she said, ‘Tell me about what you did, where you went, after I left town. I mean, how did you get from working in the paediatric department at Auckland Hospital to opening your own hospital in the South Island?’

  The bed dipped as Tom sat at the opposite end and shuffled his backside up onto the pillows. Leaning against the headboard, he clasped his hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. ‘I think the idea began bubbling away at the back of my mind as I worked with children at Auckland. I saw so many of them needing to get together with other kids coping with similar problems. Their parents needed that sort of contact too. But after we split up I first took a position at Christchurch Hospital.’

  ‘The one city you always said you’d never live in.’

  ‘I needed to get out of Auckland for a while. Quite frankly, I didn’t care where I went, so when a job came up in Christchurch I applied.’ He looked wistful. ‘I loved working in Auckland, but I couldn’t focus any more. I figured a change would do the trick.’

  ‘Did it?’ It hadn’t for her. Not initially, anyway.

  He lowered his eyes to look at her. ‘Yes and no. I immersed myself in work, but that wasn’t enough to fill in the long, empty hours when I returned to my flat at night. So I began toying with my dream of setting up a specialist hospital. Almost overnight the dream grew into reality. Sometimes I thought it had become a monster, but it did keep me busy and the images of Liam and you at bay.’

  ‘Are you happy, Tom?’

  ‘There are degrees of happiness. Considering what happened to me…us…yes, I think I am content.’ A shadow crossed his eyes.

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’ What was missing from his life? A woman? Family? Of course that had to be the answer. He came from a good family, and he’d always wanted to emulate that with her and Liam. The void in his heart would be huge.

  ‘Let’s drop this, Fiona.’

  ‘No, let’s not. We’ve dropped too many hard issues in the past when if we’d worked our way through them instead we might never have separated.’ Steady, she warned herself. Don’t get uptight. Drawing a rough breath, she squeezed out the words she’d needed to say for a long time. ‘Tom, I’m sorry for leaving that day, for the way I just up and went. Driving through that red light and crashing the car was the last straw. Suddenly it seemed imperative I get away and try to straighten my head out. At the time I wasn’t going for good, just for however long it took to sort myself out. Unfortunately it took a lot longer than I’d ever imagined.’ Years longer.

  He reached for her hand, gripped it between his, his warmth seeping into her. ‘I should’ve tried harder to hear what you were really telling me. I couldn’t understand you at the time. It seemed that everything I tried to do for you was wrong. The paediatric unit became the one place where I did get things right, and so I spent more and more time there. When you left I knew I’d failed you by not being able to help you through your grief.’

  ‘Tom, all I wanted from you was for you to tell me your feelings. Now, after hearing about Billy, I understand why you couldn’t talk. You’d been brought up to hold everything in.’

  He dropped her hand as though it was poisonous. ‘My son gone and you wanted to know how I felt?’ Pain deepened his voice, darkened his grey eyes to coal. His hands were clenched on his thighs.

  ‘Of course I knew.’ She took both fists in her hands. ‘But I needed you to share those feelings. I told you about my pain and I got nothing back. We created Liam together, through our love. We were together when he came into the world. But we mourned him separately.’

  His fists opened, clasped both her hands. ‘I thought I was helping you by being outwardly strong. I wanted to be your anchor, carry your grief as well as mine.’

  ‘Was I truly so selfish that you thought I wouldn’t help you?’

  With one hand he brushed an errant strand of hair off her face. ‘No. You have to understand that’s the only way I knew how to cope. By focusing on your grief I avoided my own.’

  ‘You seemed so remote. I’d lost not only my son but the only man I’d ever loved. So I left you to think things through.’

  ‘Fi, I waited for you to come back.’

  He had no idea how often she’d nearly returned, only she’d been afraid to face him and see the hurt she’d caused written in his eyes. And then there had been her guilt…

  He continued, ‘I rang your father daily, asking if you were with him, but he always fobbed me off by saying you wanted time to yourself. No one at the hospital knew where you’d gone, only that you’d resigned abruptly.’

  ‘I did want time to myself. That’s why I left in the first place.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe you’d disappear from my life so completely. At first I was angry with you, then as the days passed I blamed myself, felt I’d failed you in some way and that was why you’d left. As the years went by and I got really busy with this place I figured I’d only be raking up old wounds if I tracked you down. They were best left alone by then.’ He stared at his hands, recalling the anguish of those weeks. ‘Where did you go when you left me?’

  ‘I got an apartment on Auckland’s Viaduct, overlooking the harbour. It should’ve been soothing and healing; instead I found everything to be cold and sterile.’ She shivered. ‘I’d lost the two most important people in the whole wide world. Almost overnight my reason for livi
ng had gone. Looking back, I wonder if I didn’t go a little bit crazy…I took my plane and flew the length and breadth of the country, trying to break every private pilot record standing. But it didn’t dull the pain one iota. So I took up aerobatics. I became careless of myself. Unfortunately, or thankfully, I’m a natural when it comes to flying. No matter how hard I pushed all the bound-aries I couldn’t get it wrong enough to write myself off.’

  Once more Tom hooked her up in his arms and drew her close, cuddled her. ‘You idiot,’ he muttered, but understanding laced his voice.

  ‘Yep. A total fool. Then one day it all caught up with me.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Just like that. I fell apart. Completely. I cried for six months. I lost so much weight my father had me hospitalised and fed intravenously. But in the long run it worked out for the best.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘One day the television in my hospital room was tuned to the Discovery channel, and I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed to find the remote and change the channel. One of the nurses used to deliberately leave the remote out of reach so I’d have to make an effort. Her ploy didn’t work very often. So this day I lay watching how the poverty-stricken women of the Sudan coped with raising their children in appalling conditions. I’d always known about third world countries. Who didn’t? But I’d never really taken it in other than on a superficial level. That day I did. My wealthy, self-indulgent lifestyle shamed me. That programme changed my life, and gave me a focus for getting out of hospital.’

  ‘So you went to London?’

  ‘I still hadn’t sorted out my feelings about what had happened to us, so I thought I needed to put as much space as possible between you and me. I couldn’t get much further away than England and still be able to finish my training. That’s where I heard about Global Health. The rest, as they say, is history. My history, anyway.’

  ‘It’s an impressive one.’

  ‘I know. It’s nothing like what you’d have expected of me. I surprised myself sometimes. There were days working for Global Health when the temperatures were in the forties, and exasperating equipment malfunctions were undermining our hard work, and I’d look around, wondering what I was doing. But if someone had come up to me with a ticket out, even at the worst times I’d never have taken it. I really believed in what I was doing. It has to have been the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.’

  Tom shook his head and smiled back. ‘It does seem a little odd to imagine you in such extreme conditions. I admire you. I’m sure you’re downplaying the hard times.’

  ‘Surprised?’ She raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t been known for her lack of forthrightness about herself. It just went to show that people sometimes could change. She’d had enough hard knocks to instigate a mammoth makeover.

  The cold air sent a shiver through her body. Not so long ago they’d been kissing and her blood had been boiling. Tightening the quilt around her, she snuggled closer to Tom. Again she thought she really shouldn’t be here in Tom’s bedroom, lying on his bed with him. Their relationship wasn’t like that now. Her smile faded as sadness enveloped her.

  Tom must have sensed her change of mood. Or he’d realised the same thing at the same time as she had. They’d always had an uncanny ability to read each other’s minds. Whatever the reason, he now sat up straighter and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, rested his forearms on his thighs.

  ‘How often have you been home since you left for London?’

  His question startled her. ‘This is the first time.’

  His eyes widened. ‘Really?’

  ‘I may have found a focus for my life but I’d still lost Liam and you. I didn’t feel I belonged here any more.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘It was time to do what was right for me, not something designed to get Dad’s attention.’

  ‘That must have been interesting,’ Tom drawled. ‘How’d he take that?’

  ‘He refused to believe I’d waste my training on “the poor people of the world”. Dad’s words, not mine. When he couldn’t change my mind about who I worked for, he tried a different tack. You wouldn’t believe the offers I received for partnerships.’

  Tom frowned. ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Okay, maybe you would. But once the message clanged home that I wasn’t taking up any of those offers he turned off the money supply into my bank account. Figured that would have me racing back so fast I’d have passed a meteor on the way.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  She had to chuckle at the amusement in Tom’s voice. ‘I knew you’d have a problem believing that one.’

  Until then her father had always given her a very substantial allowance. He was a wealthy man, and in his book wealthy men provided well for their families.

  She added, ‘After that Dad changed. It’s as though he respects me for who I am now, not who he wanted me to be. I’m still a little cautious around him, but we’re getting on a lot better these days.’

  ‘Which is all you ever wanted from him in the first place.’

  I like this Fiona, Tom thought as he absorbed yet another change in her. She was intriguing him with her new attitude to life.

  These past days of working together, sharing his cottage, had given him the feeling of how it had used to be when he and Fi were married. Cosy, even fun. He liked coming home at the end of a busy day to find Fiona already there, pottering around in the kitchen. It wasn’t the meals she prepared, it was the company. In particular her company.

  Careful, he warned himself. Remember you swore that you’d never, ever, let Fiona near your heart again. No matter what.

  True, but she is different, his heart argued.

  Which is good, but I once loved the old Fiona. Look what happened there. I’m too vulnerable to the depth of love we shared. It hurts too much when it goes wrong, and there are no guarantees it won’t happen again.

  Coward. His heart had the last word.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘DID you ever forgive me for Liam’s death?’ Fiona whispered.

  ‘What?’ Tom’s jaw dropped as shock slammed into him. Fiona had blamed herself for Liam’s death? No way! ‘You can’t have blamed yourself for what happened. What could you have done to save him? It was cot death, for pity’s sake. No one can prevent that. It creeps in and steals life,’ Tom choked. His heart pounded painfully against his ribs.

  ‘I always blamed myself. Surely you knew that?’ Her eyes were huge in her pale face. ‘What if I hadn’t put him on his right side, knowing that he tended to roll over? Or what if I’d sat with him a little bit longer that night? He’d been colicky earlier in the evening. Had I missed him crying out in his sleep? Anything—everything—that could possibly have happened, even an uneven breath, I wish I’d been in Liam’s bedroom to know about it.’

  ‘If only I’d known you felt like that.’ He’d have tried to save her a whole heap of anguish. But he hadn’t known—because he hadn’t listened. He had let her down, big-time. Would she ever forgive him? Maybe if he explained his feelings of help-lessness back then, how he’d been trying to save her some grief.

  Tom stood up and lifted Fiona into the bed and climbed in beside her, tugging the bedcovers over them. He lay down along her back, hooked am arm over her waist and held her against him. He tried to warm her as she shook continuously.

  ‘Listen to me, Fi. Never did I blame you. No one can predict Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Nor can they save their baby from it. SIDS is widely written up by every expert under the sun. Not one of them purports that parents should sit with their babies every second of their lives. As hard as it is to accept, it happens.’

  ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But I had to find a reason, and the only one I could come up with was that I’d done something wrong. I’m a doctor. I should’ve noticed something.’

  ‘Put it like that and it’s worse for me. I’m a paediatrician. Children, babies, are my specialty. I spent months reading every article I could get my
hands on, but I’d always known the vagaries of the syndrome.’ Which hadn’t helped one iota.

  ‘Did you ever? Blame yourself, I mean.’

  ‘Of course I did—for a damned long time. But eventually I saw reason. I’ve seen enough distraught parents of babies who’ve died of SIDS to know that they’re the first to blame themselves, and that they’re invariably wrong. They couldn’t have prevented it and neither could we. Doctors aren’t immune to these things.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m glad I came here this week, even if I’ve disturbed you. This is something we needed to share.’ Her voice sounded clogged with tears.

  He held her tight for a moment, remembering how they’d used to lie like this to go to sleep every night. And how invariably Fiona would fall asleep and, as she relaxed, start poking him with her elbow, tapping him with her heels. Even in sleep she’d been restless. He nibbled his bottom lip. He’d loved those moments with her. He’d missed her so much when she’d gone away. Not just for the big things, but the little things that were special between couples.

  Tom flipped onto his back, shuffled sideways, putting a space between them. They were getting way too cosy. Lying in his bed, holding her in his arms was dangerous, no matter that they were fully clothed. The situation fogged his mind, blanked out reality. Which was what? That they were no longer a couple. That he still cared for her, but there could be no future for them together. Their marriage had failed first time round. What could possibly make it work if they tried again?

  Did he want to try? Was he afraid to try? Yes. And yes.

  Fiona rolled the other way and sat up to lean back against the pillows. Had she felt the same danger?

  ‘Did you really never wonder where I’d gone? Try to follow me?’

  ‘At first I kept thinking you’d be back, that I had to give you the space you so obviously wanted. But as time went on and you didn’t return I began to accept you didn’t love me any more.’ He’d waited endlessly, stubbornly refusing to go after her, wrongly thinking she had to make the first move.