The Doctors’ Baby

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Well, he saw it, and he’s good,’ she reassured him. ‘I’d expect that Patrick’s gut reaction is right. And if he is, that probably means she’ll choose no chemotherapy. Just radiation to mop up anything that might have been left, a tiny silicone insert fitted into her bra to make both sides match, and Anna can get on with her life.’

  But Jonas was still struggling with mixed emotions. ‘Thank…thank God,’ he managed, and it sounded inane even to him.

  ‘And it’s the same for you, too,’ she said gently, watching his face. ‘You can go back to being Jonas Lunn, independent surgeon.’

  ‘In three months,’ he said shortly. ‘After she’s had radiation.’

  ‘She’ll let you help her for that long?’

  ‘She’ll need help while she has the radiotherapy,’ Jonas said. ‘She must accept it. How will she cope alone?’

  ‘There’s a daily bus to Blairglen for radiotherapy.’

  ‘Oh, great. Two hours there, two hours back, every day for seven weeks. She needs to stay at Blairglen.’

  ‘Maybe you could rent a house for all of you,’ Em said slowly, still watching the gamut of emotions running over his face and sensing his confusion. ‘Take the kids. Stay with her.’

  ‘As if she’d let me do that.’

  ‘You could try.’

  ‘And how about you?’ His emotions still weren’t totally focused on Anna, no matter how much Em tried to direct them that way. ‘How will you cope?’

  ‘Like I always have,’ Em said carefully. ‘Alone. Nothing’s changed for me, Jonas.’

  ‘But there’s Robby.’

  Her face closed, and he saw pain wash over it. ‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘There’s Robby. But Lori will be back soon. The news from Sydney is good. Ray’s on the list for an emergency bypass. It’ll be a few weeks before Anna is ready for radiotherapy, so maybe… Maybe you could stay here until then. Until Lori comes back, I mean. That way I can look after Robby for a bit longer, and I don’t need to depend on Amy so much.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ His face softened. ‘You know I’ll do that. Hell, Em, I feel so damned good about all this. I feel like…’

  She smiled at the joy behind his words. He’d been worried sick and it was obvious. ‘Celebrating?’ she suggested, and he grinned.

  ‘I think that’s the word.’ He glanced at his watch. His stomach was telling him it was time to eat, and his stomach was right. ‘How about I take you out for a meal?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  His brow snapped down at that. He wasn’t accustomed to women reacting to his invitations with noncommittal grunts. ‘What does “hmm” mean?’

  “‘Hmm” means you’ve forgotten your responsibilities, Dr Lunn,’ Em said demurely. ‘Amy’s due to go home, and we need to feed and care for our four children.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘No buts. It’s called responsibility.’

  He glowered but, damn, she was right. Of course she was right. He’d offered to take care of these kids, and now he had to live with the consequences.

  Which meant that he couldn’t ask a lady for a date without asking four kids along as well. Unless he changed ladies.

  Which, for some inexplicable reason, seemed impossible.

  ‘It’d better be fish and chips on the beach, then,’ he said weakly, and she grinned.

  ‘Wise choice.’ She motioned to the beeper on her belt. ‘As long as this doesn’t go off.’

  ‘It’d better not.’ He squared his shoulders and readjusted his concept of a perfect date. ‘It won’t. It’s a magnificent night, we’ve just had some wonderful news, and we deserve an absolutely fantastic meal. All of us. What do you say, Dr Mainwaring?’

  What did she say?

  Em knew what she ought to say. She ought to say she would have a quiet meal at home with Robby, while Jonas took Anna’s children to the beach. She ought to insist they stay separate.

  But the thought of what he was inviting her to was insidious in its sweetness. A family meal on the beach. Jonas and herself and four fabulous kids.

  How could she refuse an offer like this?

  How could she refuse a man like Jonas?

  It was, indeed, a magical night.

  Fish and chips had never tasted so good. Reassured as to their mother’s well-being, and becoming more accustomed to Em and their uncle by the minute, the children set out to enjoy themselves. The summer sun had lost its sting but it had left behind enough heat to make the beach wonderful, and they ended up sitting right at the water’s edge, individual bags of fish and chips balanced soggily on their knees as the waves washed over their toes.

  Even Bernard was there and, to Em’s amazement, he was hopping in and out of the waves and running eagerly back and forth to be fed chips by the kids, with all the energy of a pup!

  ‘Maybe he’s been missing children,’ Em said wonderingly. ‘All these years…maybe he’s been seriously depressed and we hadn’t figured out why. But look.’ Sam fed him a chip and his great red tail wagged like a flag. ‘He just needed a family!’

  A family. A sweetly insidious thing…

  ‘How can life get better than this?’ Em said happily. ‘Look out, Ruby. This wave’s a big ’un. It’ll get your dinner.’

  Ruby squealed and raised her fish and chip parcel high-then went happily back to eating until the next wave.

  Em was doing an even trickier balancing act. She was bouncing Robby on her knee, while trying to keep her own fish and chips dry.

  ‘It’s not going to work,’ Jonas told her, grinning as he watched her. ‘Go up past the high-water mark, Dr Mainwaring. It’s the only way you can cope. Plus it’ll keep Robby’s dressings dry. It’ll take you half an hour to change them if he gets wet.’

  In fact, it’d help him as well. He was having trouble concentrating. Em was wearing a really simple black bathing costume. It shouldn’t have the power to do anything to him, but the sight of her in it…

  Well, it was enough to put a hungry man off his fish and chips. And right onto something else!

  ‘In your dreams,’ she retorted. ‘Robby loves the sea-don’t you, Robby?’ Right on cue, the baby squealed in delight to confirm it. ‘And I do, too. If you knew how much I’ve been longing to be near the sea all day…’

  ‘Then let me help you.’ And before she knew what he was about, he’d taken her fish and chips from her. As she lifted Robby from wave to wave, letting his toes just touch the foam and watching him chuckle and chuckle some more, Jonas proceeded to feed her. A chip at a time. One for him, then one for her.

  The action was weirdly intimate. Like a joining…

  Robby chortled and bounced on Em’s knee-his bandages were getting wetter and wetter, but Em refused to worry because surely this amount of joy warranted the trouble of changing them-and the sensation Em felt was indescribable.

  Totally indescribable.

  She looked around at the kids and the baby and Jonas, a wave broke over her bare toes, Jonas popped another chip into her mouth and for a moment she thought she might cry.

  Which was just stupid. Stupid!

  ‘I…I should go home,’ she said weakly as the last chip went the way of its counterparts. ‘There’s work-’

  ‘Your phone hasn’t rung.’

  ‘I have so much medico-legal work to catch up on, it’s coming out my ears.’

  ‘I’ll help you with it after the kids go to bed,’ Jonas said promptly, and that caused an even greater wave of sensation to break over her. The thought of this man sitting up with her into the night, ploughing through her mass of paperwork…

  ‘You don’t need to do that.’

  ‘I want to,’ he said gently, popping a last chip into her mouth, and before she knew what he was about he’d leaned over and lifted Robby into his arms. ‘OK, guys. Sam, Matt, Ruby! Collect every single bit of rubbish, take it over to the bin over there and come back. This instant.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Sam, ever the suspicious one. He had his uncle’s red hair and g
reen eyes, and Em had to grin at the sight of him. Sam was just like Jonas would have looked like at eight years old, she thought. He was so cute.

  ‘Because we’re going swimming, of course,’ Jonas told him. ‘All of us. And anyone who doesn’t gets spiflicated.’

  They gazed, round-eyed. No one knew what the word meant, but it sounded delicious.

  And then Sam tilted his chin.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Want to not come swimming and find out?’

  The boy’s face split into a grin.

  ‘Nope,’ he confessed.

  ‘Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!’

  And Em was left sitting in the shallows, watching as Jonas and the children splashed and yahooed and chortled and wallowed.

  With Robby safely tucked in Jonas’s arms, the rest of the children were growing braver and braver-and venturing deeper and deeper.

  As was Em.

  She was falling deeper in love by the minute!

  By the time they had the kids settled into bed it was almost ten o’clock. Em emerged from giving Robby his last bottle to find Jonas sorting things on her desk.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked, startled, and he grinned.

  ‘Making room for both of us. But I’d change first if I were you.’ He looked virtuously down at his showered self, and his clean linen shirt and tousers. He’d showered with the boys. In contrast, Em, who’d had to bath Robby, reapply his bandages, take him through his stretches and give him his last bottle, was still dressed in her bathing suit, her only other covering being a sarong casually twisted around her waist.

  She looked lovely, he thought. Just gorgeous! But he couldn’t work with her!

  ‘I don’t see myself working beside you like that,’ he told her.

  ‘I don’t see you working beside me at all,’ she said, in a voice that was way firmer than she felt. ‘It’s my paperwork.’

  ‘We’re partners.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about my patients.’

  ‘I can do medico-legal work with my hands tied,’ he told her. He gestured to the computer. ‘I have the lawyers’ letters. Courtesy of your computer, I have your patient notes. We have my laptop. We can look up your notes, you can decide what we can say and I can edit it and type it as we go. Now-any arguments?’

  None at all, Em thought, and looked at the mound of solicitors’ letters. This pile had been building up to insurmountable levels. It seemed that for every second patient she saw there was an insurance claim or motor-accident form to complete.

  And the thought of sharing it was tantalising.

  ‘Just shower, though.’ Jonas’s voice was gruff. ‘I’m not sitting beside you like that, or I won’t answer for the consequences.’

  And neither would she. She looked down at her bare toes, she looked across at Jonas’s laughing face-and she fled.

  Because she didn’t trust herself in the least. Not one bit!

  There was a problem.

  Her hair.

  Em normally washed her hair once a week. It was a thick, woven mane, it took hours to dry and she had to unbraid it to wash it.

  She didn’t want to wash it now.

  But it was full of sand and salt and, she suspected, the odd bit of baby food where Robby had grabbed it with glee.

  ‘I should cut it off,’ she told the mirror crossly. ‘It’s stupid vanity to wear it like this.’

  But her grandpa had loved it, and so had Charlie.

  And so did she.

  ‘So wash it and blow-dry it,’ she suggested to herself.

  ‘That’ll take an hour and Jonas is waiting. He’s doing your work.’

  So she did what she had to do. She unbraided her hair, she washed it and combed it through, then slipped into her gnome-pyjamas and made her way back to the living room with her hair unbraided.

  Jonas was on his feet before she was two feet into the door. He stared-and then he whistled, causing Em to blush from the toes up.

  ‘There’s no need for you to whistle,’ she snapped. ‘I’m still gnome-like. I’m just hairier.’

  ‘I like hairy gnomes,’ he told her, and his eyes told her that he spoke the truth. He did indeed like hairy gnomes. Very much indeed!

  She flicked the hair away from her shoulders, an action which was nearly his undoing. Wow! But her voice was matter-of-fact and businesslike. ‘Come on. If you insist on doing this, let’s start.’

  ‘Your hair is still dripping.’

  ‘Let it drip!’

  ‘Let me towel it for you.’

  ‘Jonas Lunn, if you so much as come within two feet of me, I’ll scream and run,’ she told him crossly, and his green eyes twinkled with mischief.

  ‘What, scared of me, Dr Mainwaring?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said honestly.

  His smile faded. ‘There’s no need to be.’

  ‘On the contrary, there’s every need to be. You’re messing with my equilibrium, and I sometimes think that my equilibrium is all I have to keep me sane. So let’s cut out the personal stuff and get on with my letters.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  And that was that.

  Somehow he had to ignore the fact that he was sitting by the most desirable woman he’d ever met in his life and get on with work.

  Some time soon she’d unbraid her hair just for him, he thought-and wondered how the heck he could achieve it.

  Somehow, the distraction of Em’s hair aside, they did it. They worked for two hours straight, setting up a rhythm that had Em’s pile descending at a rate she wouldn’t have thought possible. Every time she demurred and told Jonas to go to bed, he told her kindly where to get off and lifted another letter from the pile.

  She shouldn’t let him. But he could sleep in tomorrow, she told herself, and the idea of finishing this paperwork was irresistible.

  And then Robby woke.

  He was a restless baby. His healing skin itched, and if he turned in his sleep sometimes he hurt himself and woke with a little cry. He wasn’t a cry-baby, though. He’d wake, sob a little to himself, and then just lie in his cot and wait for things to get better.

  It was as if he knew he didn’t have a mother to hold him close, so it was no use making a fuss, and Em couldn’t bear it. She was up and in to find him before his second murmur, carrying him back to where Jonas sat working.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Jonas pushed his papers away. They really had done enough, and he was ready for bed.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Em cradled the little boy to her, and her gorgeous hair swung across her back in a shimmering mass. ‘I wish he could tell me, but you can’t, can you, sweetie? He’s wet, but that doesn’t usually wake him. Still, now he’s up…’ She laid him on the settee and set about changing him, then cradled him to her again and turned to find Jonas watching.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she complained, and he blinked.

  ‘Wouldn’t do what?’

  ‘Stare. Robby and I aren’t tourist attractions.’

  ‘You should be. You’re gorgeous,’ he said bluntly, and it was all she could do not to throw a cushion at him. Honestly, the man had the capacity to knock her sideways.

  She fought for composure, and found it finally as Robby snuggled into her.

  ‘No,’ she said, and there was a trace of emotion in her voice. ‘It’s Robby who’s gorgeous. Not me. Do you want to hold him?’ And before he could refuse she’d popped the baby on his knees and was heading for the kitchen. ‘I need a hot chocolate, and I dare say you could do with one, too. And I’ll make another bottle to settle Robby again. Take care of Robby while I make them.’

  But it was an excuse for her to get away from him, if only for a moment. For her to find her equilibrium again. Somehow.

  Jonas was so dispassionate, she thought as she prepared the mugs of chocolate and Robby’s bottle. He’d help Anna and then he’d head back out of his sister’s life. And she knew that, given half a chance, he’d make l
ove to her, and then he’d leave without a backward glance.

  It wasn’t enough, she thought. He needed to see that there was more to life…

  That there was more to loving than being needed. It was needing in return.

  And Jonas Lunn didn’t need anyone!

  If only he could see what he was missing out on!

  When she returned to the sitting room, some of the work had been done. Robby was lying on Jonas’s knees. The baby was chortling up at him with his own brand of baby humour, laughing at some joke only an eight-month-old baby could understand, and Jonas looked like a man who’d been struck by lightning.

  He glanced up at her as she returned, and somehow he forced his face back under control, but Em could see that Robby had spread some of his indefinable charm.

  ‘He’s…he’s quite a baby,’ Jonas said, and if his voice was a trifle unsteady, Em could pretend she hadn’t heard.

  ‘He is at that.’

  ‘Why did you say his aunt doesn’t want him?’

  ‘She has three of her own.’

  ‘It wouldn’t stop me,’ Jonas said, and his voice was suddenly so fierce that Em blinked. ‘I mean…if he was my sister’s kid.’

  ‘Of course,’ Em said kindly, but she looked at him and wondered whether he really meant it. She glanced down again at Robby. Robby was crooning his own happy little song, and his tiny hands were folded in Jonas’s much bigger ones.

  There was magic going on here tonight, Em thought, but she didn’t say a word.

  ‘You want me to give him his bottle?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ Jonas’s voice was strangely gruff. ‘I’ll do it. Finish your chocolate.’

  ‘Yours’ll get cold.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  And it didn’t. Em sat and sipped her chocolate, and watched Jonas tenderly feed Robby his bottle, and she found her precious equilibrium slipping further and further from her grasp.

  Until it was gone for ever, like it or not.

  Anna was transferred by ambulance to Bay Beach Hospital the next day. Em checked her on arrival, ensured she had adequate pain relief and watched as she nestled down against her pillows in relief.

  ‘I’ll send you your brother,’ she told her as Anna settled down to sleep. She touched her lightly on her hair, in a gesture of reassurance. ‘The ambulance ride will have stirred up the pain, but it’ll settle now. In a little while, if it’s OK with you, Jonas will bring the kids in. They’ll want to see you.’