The Doctors’ Baby

by Marion Lennox

  ‘And I want to see them,’ Anna whispered. ‘Oh, I’m so glad it’s over.’

  ‘Aren’t we all? Can you ring Dr Lunn in clinic?’ Em asked the nurse with her. She glanced at her watch. ‘Tell him Anna is back. Tell him I’ve just given her morphine and she’ll sleep for an hour or so, but after that…if he could bring in the kids, I’ll take over clinic.’

  And that was that.

  She didn’t see Jonas for the rest of the day, and if that was deliberate on Em’s part then who could blame her? She desperately needed time out. She was so confused she was having trouble concentrating on medicine.

  And when she returned to the house that night, Robby was alone with Amy. Jonas was still out with the kids.

  Maybe he needed time out, too, she thought, and if there was a trace of bitterness in her thoughts, who could blame her for that either? The man had stirred up so much unwanted emotion within her. It was to be hoped he felt a little bit stirred up as well!

  She played with Robby for a while, then settled him to sleep. Then she left him in the care of the night staff and went through to the hospital to do a late round. She was expecting Anna to be alone. Instead, she found her with Jonas.

  And her blasted emotions were stirred all over again.

  ‘What have you done with the kids?’ she asked. She raised her eyebrows at Jonas, and then smiled down at Anna in mock indignation. ‘He’s a fine babysitter, I don’t think.’

  But Jonas was indignant in his turn. ‘I haven’t abandoned them. Jim’s taken them out for pizza.’

  ‘Jim?’ Em’s eyebrows rose still further. ‘Jim Bainbridge?’

  To her surprise-and delight-a faint trace of colour was sweeping over Anna’s pale face. Well, well. So it wasn’t all one way.

  ‘He offered,’ she said defensively. ‘And the kids know him. He just lives over the back fence. He…’ Her colour mounted still further. ‘He came up to Blairglen but I didn’t want to see him. Then he waited for a couple of hours to see me here. In the end, I had to say I’d see him. And he wanted to do something so much.’

  ‘I think it’s a fine idea,’ Em said soundly. She picked up Anna’s observation chart to do a quick check and smiled down again at her patient. ‘Sometimes it takes courage to accept that people want desperately to help. I think, often, it’s easier to be the giver than the receiver.’

  Anna nodded. ‘I’m not used…to receiving.’

  ‘Now, how did I guess that?’ Another smile, this time including Jonas. ‘These obs are good. The trip here doesn’t seem to have upset you too much. Everything’s looking fine, Anna. Now I’ll leave you with your brother,’ Em said gently, but Anna shook her head.

  ‘I’d like Jonas to leave, too,’ she said. ‘Please… I want to be alone.’

  ‘She always wants to be alone.’

  Back in their shared living room, Jonas was pacing like a caged tiger, his frustration showing. ‘Hell. How can I let her see how much I want to be near?’

  Em watched him pace. Robby had just woken and she was cuddling him. The baby was crooning his happiness to be reunited with her and she was undergoing all sorts of pain herself-but she felt for Jonas.

  And she also felt for Anna.

  ‘Your parents hurt her badly,’ she said softly. ‘As they hurt you. She’s learned the hard way to be independent.’

  ‘If I was in this situation-’

  ‘Would you depend on other people?’ She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Of course I would.’

  ‘Emotionally?’ She rose and hugged Robby tighter. The baby snuggled against her breast, and Em’s heart twisted. ‘I’m not sure whether you know the meaning of the words emotional dependency.’ She certainly did.

  But Jonas was turning on her, confused. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ She took a deep breath, trying to figure the best way to say it. ‘Jonas, do you need Anna?’

  He stared at her blankly. ‘She’s my little sister.’

  ‘I know that. But do you need her? Have you ever shown her that?’

  ‘I don’t need her,’ he said, his voice still uncomprehending. ‘Of course I don’t. I’ve always been the strong one.’

  ‘Because you’ve had to be. But emotional dependency works both ways.’ She took a deep breath and looked down at Robby. ‘Take me and Robby.’

  ‘Now, that’s another thing-’

  ‘Robby needs me,’ she said, ignoring the interruption. ‘At least, he needs someone to love him to bits. Which I could do so easily. But I have the honesty to acknowledge that I need Robby, too.’

  ‘You don’t need Robby. He’s a baby.’

  ‘But he gives.’ Em looked down at the child in her arms and her face changed. ‘Every time he grins at me, every time I have to hurt him when I change his dressings or massage his little limbs, and he doesn’t cry because he knows if I hurt him a cuddle will follow, every time he snuggles into me-that need grows. That’s the sort of need I’m talking about. I’m talking about love, Jonas. Anna has learned to survive without it. And I think…so have you.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘No. It’s the truth.’ A knock sounded through the house and she sighed and put her emotions on the back-burner. ‘This’ll be Jim, bringing the children home. He’s another one like me. Who loves-and needs-and who doesn’t stand a donkey’s chance of being loved and needed in return.’

  Jonas stared at her blankly, not having the faintest clue what she was talking about. He was so blind! ‘You’re over-dramatising.’

  But as Em went to answer the door she knew she wasn’t.

  She loved and needed. And she was desperate to be loved and needed in return.

  And it wasn’t just the little boy in her arms who was engendering these dangerous emotions.

  It was Jonas Lunn!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE days after Anna’s operation became a week. And then two.

  Work and domesticity settled into a pattern Em found almost acceptable-if only her stupid emotions didn’t get in the way.

  Once Anna’s drainage tube came out, she was allowed home. Her children went with her. She refused to let Jonas stay with her-he stayed on with Em, whether Em thought it was wise or not-but Anna did allow her brother to organise home help.

  That was something, at least, Em thought. The prickly Anna of old wouldn’t even have allowed that.

  And as for Jonas…

  Jonas was frustrated with the little help he could give his sister. There was so little he could do!

  He did insist on spending time each day with Ruby and Sam and Matt, using his wish to establish bonds with them as a way to give Anna much needed child care. He also threw himself into working for the town. He did what he could.

  For both the women he was helping…

  At least Em was a skilled doctor, he thought as he worked on beside her. He could trust her to look after Anna. And at least, with him staying on as her temporary partner, she had time to do it properly. Do house calls. Care…

  She would have done it anyway, he knew, but in the equation without him, there would have been no time at all for Robby, or for Em herself.

  She would have worked herself into a breakdown.

  It wasn’t that she was driven to work, he decided, although he knew doctors who were consumed with their jobs. Em wasn’t like that. She simply found it impossible to reject pleas for help. She never said no, and it made no difference how tired she was, or how long the queue waiting in the surgery.

  So he’d saved her from that-temporarily-but the more he saw of her-the more he saw of her medicine and her caring-the more he wondered how he could possibly leave at the end of Anna’s radiotherapy.

  An idea was starting to stir and shift at the back of his mind…

  Physically, Anna was recovering brilliantly, though neither Jonas nor Em were so sure about emotionally.

  Anna read all the literature,
and then deliberately left it behind in the hospital. Well over ninety percent survival, the books said, which backed up what the doctors had told her. She could live with that. Sure, the oncologist had said her chances would be even better if she had chemotherapy, but that meant months of depending on others for help, and she rejected it out of hand.

  So live she did, but on her own terms. She went about organising the radiotherapy but, despite Jonas’s offer to rent an apartment in Blairglen for them all, she made the decision to travel to Blairglen every day.

  ‘So I can still be independent. Lori will look after the kids during the day and I can still be with them at night.’

  And Lori, due to return to Bay Beach any day, was willing to take them on.

  ‘It’s not the easiest solution for you,’ Em told Anna. ‘The travelling will make you tired.’

  But Anna wasn’t giving in. ‘I don’t want to be any more dependent on Jonas than I already am,’ Anna said definitely, and Em could only watch as his sister drove Jonas as far away as she could.

  And Anna was also driving Jim away.

  The fire chief came to see Em in surgery, ostensibly for a twisted little finger but in truth to tell her how concerned he was about Anna.

  ‘She won’t let me help,’ he told her sadly. ‘She won’t let me near.’

  Em could only shake her head. There was no advice she could give. If she had any way of breaking down barriers, she’d be breaking them down herself.

  The time she’d spent with Jonas and four children seemed now like an amazing dream. That sensation of family had eased now that Anna’s three children had left. With Amy’s help, Em could look after Robby without Jonas’s assistance, and Jonas seemed to want that. So there was less and less need for Jonas and her to be together.

  But separation hurt. Em was hurting. Even her dog was pining. Bernard was back to his old, lethargic self.

  And here was Jim, and he was hurting, too.

  ‘Do you really want me to do anything about this finger?’ Em asked the fire chief, examining the offending digit. ‘I could refer you to an orthopaedic surgeon for resetting, but it looks like it was broken years ago. Is it causing any trouble?’

  ‘Yeah, well, it was broken years ago and, no, it’s not causing trouble,’ he admitted. ‘I sort of wanted an excuse to talk to you.’

  ‘Now, why did I suspect that?’

  ‘Are you getting on any better with her brother than I am with Anna?’

  Em frowned, and spent some more time unnecessarily examining his finger. Getting her face in order. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I mean there’s two Lunns,’ Jim said grimly. ‘There’s two people who are fighting shy of attachment. At least you have yours living with you. Working side by side…’

  And a fat lot of good that was doing her, Em thought bleakly.

  It might halve her workload, but in every other respect it was just making life impossible.

  Lori returned to Bay Beach the following day, cheerful, optimistic and ready to return to being a home mother.

  ‘Ray’s out of danger. His operation went really, really well,’ she told Em and Jonas. ‘All he needs is a whole heap of advice from the dietician and he’ll be back at work. Like I will be tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ve missed you.’ It was Jonas. They’d just finished dinner, and Em was giving Robby his last bottle for the night. She’d been standing at the window, rocking him to sleep, when Lori had dropped in to see them all.

  We’ve missed you…

  Em flashed Jonas a quick look and couldn’t quite keep the resentment out of her tone when she added, ‘Yeah. Jonas has had to do some babysitting.’

  ‘I’ve done it really well,’ he said indignantly, and Lori smiled. Her smile was only surface deep, though. Suddenly her active mind was working overtime. There were undercurrents here that she couldn’t read.

  ‘Do you want me to take Robby home with me tonight?’ she asked, and Em almost gasped. Instead, she took a deep, steadying breath.

  This had to happen some time, she told herself, trying hard not to look down at the baby in her arms. Well, why not? It was logical. Lori was Robby’s carer. Not her.

  ‘Maybe it’d be for the best,’ she said, but her voice didn’t sound like hers at all.

  ‘The best for whom?’ Jonas asked indifferently, and Em could have slapped him.

  ‘For Robby, of course,’ she snapped.

  ‘You’re only thinking of Robby?’

  ‘Who else would I be thinking of?’

  ‘Yourself,’ Jonas said mildly, and watched her face.

  ‘Why…why…?’

  ‘Because you love the kid,’ Jonas told her, as if she were a little bit stupid, and as if he didn’t see what the problem was. ‘I don’t see why you don’t adopt him yourself. Heck, anyone can see you think the sun rises and sets with him.’

  ‘And you think that’d be OK,’ Em snapped. ‘I’ve been able to spend heaps of time with him these last couple of weeks, but that’s only because you’ve been here to help with my workload. As soon as you go, I’ll have to depend totally on Amy-a teenager who’ll take off with her own life any minute. That’s no basis for adoption. Me being a mother for short bursts at night? I don’t think so!’

  ‘You’d be a mother who loves her baby, though,’ Jonas said thoughtfully. ‘That’s more than a lot of kids have.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work.’ Lori’s quick eyes had been assessing the pair of them. She was as concerned as Em as to Robby’s fate, and she was very, very interested in these undercurrents. ‘For a start, Tom wouldn’t allow it.’

  ‘Tom?’ Jonas’s eyebrows snapped a question.

  ‘Our director.’ Lori shook her head when she thought about him. ‘There’s an assessment committee, but the final decision comes down to Tom. He decides whether a couple-or a single person-would make good parents, and he’s very good at his job.’

  ‘You’re saying Em wouldn’t make a good mother?’

  ‘I’m saying Em wouldn’t stand a chance of being permitted to adopt,’ Lori said bluntly. ‘An overworked single mum… Tom would say that she’d never hack the pace.’

  ‘So he’d discriminate because she’s single.’

  ‘No. If she was working half-time she’d get a look-in-a good look-in because Tom would soon figure out how much she cares. But our Em works eighty-hour weeks or more. He’d discriminate, and rightly so because she doesn’t have time.’

  ‘But if she was married…’ Jonas said thoughtfully, and let the room fade to silence. ‘Would that make a difference?’

  ‘Of course it would,’ Lori told him, after a moment’s stunned silence. She frowned and very carefully didn’t look at Em. She concentrated on Jonas. They were all standing-Jonas from when he’d answered the door and Em still at her watching place by the window. Only she wasn’t watching the window. ‘Is it likely?’ Lori asked at last. ‘That our Em could be married?’

  ‘I suppose it could be,’ Jonas told her, as if the idea had only just occurred to him.

  ‘How could it be?’ Lori asked bluntly.

  ‘She could be married to me.’

  For a moment there was absolute silence. Not even the clock ticked. The world held its breath, waiting for the bomb Jonas had just lobbed to explode into a million fragments and destroy everything around it.

  Maybe it already had. For when Em’s breathing returned to a semblance of normality, her world had tilted on its axis, so much so that she felt like she was about to fall off.

  What had he said?

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Lori said, and Em could only cast her a grateful glance. For herself, she was totally unable to speak.

  ‘I mean Em and I could get married,’ Jonas said mildly. ‘It’s been done before. Marriages of convenience.’

  ‘Yes, but-’

  ‘Look, it’s simple,’ he said reasonably. ‘I’m not the least bit interested in marriage. I never have been. And Em doesn’t want-hasn’t time for-a proper
husband. However, she wants Robby.’ He smiled, his gorgeous, crooked smile that did so much damage to Em’s heart. ‘I can see what the problem is, and I’m sure you can, too, Lori. I haven’t been staying with Em for this long without realising she’s tearing her heart out to keep Robby. And this way she could.’

  ‘How could she?’ Lori sounded fascinated.

  Em, on the other hand, was just plain dumbfounded. She had to find a chair and sit. So she sat and held onto Robby like she was drowning, gazing up at Jonas in stupefaction.

  ‘Easy.’

  ‘It’s not easy.’ Lori had been under a fair amount of strain over the past couple of weeks and her normal placid self wasn’t what it should have been. She let an edge of annoyance show. ‘You’re a city surgeon. I assume you don’t want to practise here, in Bay Beach.’

  ‘No. Well, not totally, but…’

  ‘But what?’ Lori glared. She cast an uncertain glance at Em, then went right on glaring. She was starting to think this man was an insensitive oaf. The way Em looked… She looked like her world was crumbling.

  She looked like she loved this man, Lori thought suddenly. She was watching Jonas as if he was close to the most precious thing in the world, rating as precious as the child she held in her arms.

  And Jonas was talking as if the whole thing was a business proposition.

  ‘Tom’s going to want to know who’s intending to look after Robby,’ Lori snapped. ‘You’re not offering to be Robby’s daddy?’

  ‘No.’ But Jonas’s voice was suddenly uncertain. ‘Except…sometimes.’

  ‘This is crazy.’ Em interrupted them both from where she sat. ‘Just crazy! Lori, go home. The man’s talking nonsense.’

  ‘I’m not talking nonsense.’ Jonas’s voice firmed. ‘It could work.’

  ‘How could it work?’ Em’s voice was a desperate whisper, and Jonas gave a wry smile.