‘You know what I mean,’ she muttered. ‘Atoms
hooking, as you keep saying. Is it always so—so taut?’
‘Taut is good,’ he murmured, opening her front gate
and taking her hand to lead her into the shade of a huge
camellia bush by the front path. ‘Taut means our bodies
are communicating, taut means you’ll need release and
the best release of all is…’
Theo hesitated. He’d been going to say ‘making
love’ but that wasn’t what they would be doing, yet ‘in-
tercourse’ sounded too clinical. So he kissed her instead
of finishing the sentence, and felt her tense body relax
as she kissed him back.
Although the kiss had a far from relaxing effect on
his body and he knew Grace would know it.
They said goodnight at the door, although his hand
lingered on her tight, demin-clad butt as she unlocked
the door and slipped inside.
How had that Paul let her go?
How had he not read the ripe sensuality of the
woman behind the cool, detached image she so care-
fully projected?
Two things to consider as he drove home—better by
far than the dark memories that had come back to haunt
him earlier.
Morning, and Grace was once again in a clothes bind.
Back to the sensible and classy work clothes, or should
she wear one of her new shirts?
She couldn’t deny her motivation—she wanted to
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look nice for Theo. OK, so their affair might not be the
traditional type, begun with excitement and hope and
with the possibility of a deeper relationship at the end of
it, but that didn’t stop her wanting him to want her—even
at work.
And the new shirt she was considering was white
and as most of her shirts were white, maybe no one
would notice she was ‘dressing up’!
She pulled it on, doing up the buttons, wondering
why one shirt looked neat and another, similar cut and
all, looked, well, not sexy but definitely inviting.
Or was she kidding herself?
‘Thank heavens, I was about to page you.’ Jasmine
greeted her as she walked into the small reception area
outside the PICU. ‘Emergency admission, flown in
from the bush. Phil needs you in Theatre ten minutes
ago.’
Grace smiled to herself as she ran up the stairs to the
next floor, admitting to herself the folly of her morning
clothing debate. Theo, if he saw her at all at work today,
would be seeing her in theatre garb—all-enveloping
gown, cap, goggles and headlamp—really sexy gear!
One of the theatre sisters was in the changing room.
‘It’s a PDA,’ she explained. ‘Three-month-old who
was doing OK without the ductus arteriosus closing, but
suddenly suffering endocarditis in spite of antibiotics.
Phil’s going to clamp it off using video-assisted thorac-
oscopic surgery. Have you done much of that? It’s so
easy on the babies.’
Grace felt a surge of excitement. She’d seen videos
of the surgery but had never assisted. The only down-
side was that with the minimally invasive surgery
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Theo wouldn’t be present. Although she’d known he
was working with Alex today, so why the disappoint-
ment?
And why the new shirt?
She wouldn’t think about that now.
With no thought beyond that of the child in Theatre
in her head, she went through to the scrub room and,
once gloved, on into Theatre.
‘Done one before?’ Phil asked, and she shook her
head.
‘Piece of cake,’ he said, ‘always providing we don’t
puncture the lung. The big thing is to be prepared to
open the chest should anything go wrong, but that’s
never happened with a VAT PDA ligation at Jimmie’s—
touch wood.’
Grace smiled to herself, wondering what a layper-
son would think of their casual use of acronyms,
although the VAT part was easy—video assisted tho-
rascope—and PDA common enough in hospitals, re-
ferring to the tiny tube, the ductus arteriosus that, in a
foetus, shuffled blood between the aorta and the pul-
monary artery. Shortly after birth this tube closed, but
in some babies it remained open—therefore patent,
meaning that the blood, which should be flowing into
the aorta could take the path of least resistance and
flow back into the lungs, causing potential problems
for the baby.
She was thinking about this as Phil positioned the
unconscious baby the way he wanted him, propped his
little form with disposable pads to keep him still, and
made four small incisions in his chest.
‘Much better than the usual surgical incision,’ Grace
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99
murmured, as she watched. ‘We’re not cutting muscles
or bones and we don’t have to retract the rib cage,
which means far less stress on the baby’s body and
makes for a far better recovery every time.’
With a mechanical arm holding the videoscope in
place, Phil was able to insert forceps into one of the in-
cisions and, with cotton swabs, carefully move the left
lobe of the baby’s lung out of the way. The videoscope
now gave them a perfect view inside the small chest,
the vagus and pharyngeal nerves both obvious and
possible to avoid. Through another hole Phil used an
endoscope to put clips on the little blood vessel,
clamping off both ends of it to stop the flow of blood.
‘I’m putting a tube in one of the incisions, just until
we’ve reinflated the lung. If there’s any damage to the
lung we’ll know before little Jasper here leaves Theatre
and we can use the thoracostomy tube if we need to
remove air from his chest cavity.’
Grace glanced at the clock on the far wall. The
whole operation had taken less than an hour, and now
Jasper was breathing and there was no sign of damage
to the left lobe of his lung, the tube could be released.
Although he would stay in hospital overnight, where
he could be watched for any possible reaction, it was
likely he’d be going home the following day. A great
result for the little boy, and proof that minimally
invasive surgery was gaining ground in their field.
Grace checked the operating list—nothing major,
nothing that would require bypass yet a full day none-
theless.
Yes, wearing the new shirt had been stupid.
* * *
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‘Some days go easy and some days go hard,’ Phil said.
He was leaning against the wall of the theatre next to
the soiled clothes bin but was obviously too weary to
strip off even his gloves.
Grace leant on the other side, while between them,
Phil’s surgical assistant held both their headlamps, t
he
cords trailing on the floor.
‘It was as if some gremlin had got into the theatre,’
he muttered, staring at the headlamps as if they might
hold the answer. ‘Everything that could go wrong did.’
‘Except the PDA,’ Grace reminded the two men.
‘That was great. It was only after that things started go-
ing berserk.’
Phil grinned at her.
‘Going berserk? Can you call it going berserk when
a three-year-old having a minor repair for a narrowing
of the pulmonary artery arrests on the table?’
‘You saved her, she’ll be OK,’ Grace reminded him,
remembering the frantic massaging of the little girl’s
heart that had got it beating again.
‘Yes, but why do these things happen? That’s what
we need to find out. We’re advancing so we can do more
and more repairs through keyhole surgery, then we get
something like that today and we don’t know why.’
Wearily, Phil stripped off his gloves and tossed them
in the bin, then followed them with his mask and cap,
and finally his gown. He stood there for a moment, a
good-looking man in nothing more than boxer shorts,
but Grace felt no squirmy feelings deep inside her, or
even the faintest glimmer of curiosity.
So what was it about attraction? she wondered as she
in turn stripped off her theatre clothes and made her
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101
way into the changing room. Why did one male body
make the blood heat when others made no impression
at all?
It must be different for men, she decided, or girlie
magazines wouldn’t sell. She’d have to ask Theo later.
The thought brought her up short as she adjusted the
water in the shower. First that it seemed so natural that
she could talk to Theo about such things, but the second
hitch in her thinking was worse. Had they talked about
a later? As far as she could remember, they’d made no
arrangements to meet again, no doubt assuming they’d
see each other at work.
But they hadn’t and she felt something that could
only be disappointment coiling in her belly.
She could phone him, she decided as water cascaded
down her body, dousing her hair and sloshing around
her feet while she stood still beneath it and tried to
think.
The phoning-him suggestion hadn’t done anything
to relieve whatever coiled inside her, and she scoffed
at the notion that she was too prudish to make such a
move. You’ve asked this man to father a baby for you
and you can’t phone him? her head mocked, but the
coiling stayed and she knew she wouldn’t.
‘You were so long in there I was going to come in
and join you.’
Theo was lounging against the wall of the
changing room, still in theatre green, when she
emerged from the cubicle, already dressed but with
her shirt only partially buttoned and not yet tucked
into her skirt.
‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked, the coiling
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turning to heat although she prayed it wasn’t yet
obvious.
‘Shoes!’ he said, tapping her shoes—the sensible
dancing pumps she invariably wore to work—with his
toe. ‘Plus the fact that Phil’s soap doesn’t smell like
orange blossom.’
He grinned at her.
‘It’s nice. I like it.’
She didn’t know what to say, but as other members
of Alex’s team came wandering in, she didn’t say
anything. As she walked across to slip on her shoes and
gather her belongings, Theo touched her lightly on the
arm, and spoke quietly so only she could hear.
‘Dinner at the brasserie? I’ll be ready in ten. You
want to go straight from here or go home first? And, no,
don’t do up that button, it’s incredibly sexy.’
Now she knew she’d blush but her fingers, which had
been fumbling at the button, trying to find the hole,
dropped away.
‘I’ll wait,’ she managed to say, through heat and ex-
citement that she knew was wrong, but couldn’t control.
How could she possibly want him this much?
‘In the PICU?’
He nodded, and headed into the cubicle she’d
vacated, pausing in the open doorway and sniffing the
still steamy air, then winking at her.
Scarlett seemed a lot better, so much so her mother
greeted Grace with a broad smile.
‘Dr Attwood says she’s improving by the minute,
and my mother phoned to say she knows a heart is not
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far away. My mother’s the seventh daughter of a seventh
daughter and she has the sight.’
Grace had to smile back. Whatever worked to make
Mrs Robinson feel positive was OK with her. In fact,
she wondered what Mrs Robinson’s mother might see
into her future…
Stupid!
What was wrong with her?
She read through Scarlett’s obs and agreed with Alex
that the baby seemed to be improving, which often
happened without any intervention or explanation.
‘You just hang in there,’ she whispered to the tiny
girl. ‘Your grandma’s obviously working on a heart.’
‘There are other babies in here.’
Theo’s voice distracted her and she turned to see him
smiling at her—which distracted her a whole lot more.
‘I look at all the babies,’ she assured him, moving to
a crib on the far side of the room. ‘And I want to see
young Jasper before I leave.’
She thought she was doing really well until Theo
touched her in the small of her back, ushering her out
of the big room. It was nothing more than a casual
gesture of politeness but the skin beneath her shirt
burned and excitement fizzed in her blood.
She stopped in the passageway.
‘Do we have to have dinner?’ she asked, through
lips so dry she had to lick them before the words
would come out.
‘Your place or mine?’
‘Yours if that’s OK,’ she managed. ‘Mine…Jean-
Luc, Lauren, most of the team live so close.’
Theo nodded, but the desire she could see burning
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in his eyes lit fires within her body. She had to take a
deep breath and remind herself how important her work
was to her, before going into Jasper’s room to see the
little post-op patient, who was doing well. Phil was
also in there and he left the room with her.
‘Do you always visit the PICU before you go home?’
he asked, and she shook her head.
‘Usually I come up later. During the day, the family
want to be with their children, but late at night when
they’ve gone off to get what rest they can, I don’t feel
I’m taking baby time away from them.’
Phil nodded his understanding.
‘Theo doe
s the same. He thinks we think he comes
to check on those on ECMO but he’s a fraud. He loves
the little ones as if they were his own—it’s as if he em-
pathises with them while most of us feel empathy with
the parents. Whoops! There he is—early tonight. Hi,
Theo, we were just talking about you.’
Theo’s questioning eyebrow rose as he looked at
Grace, but she’d been so struck by Phil’s artless reve-
lations she couldn’t think about his eyebrows—or his
question—right now. Did Theo really love the babies
in their care? And if he did, wouldn’t he also want to
love a child of his own?
Panic fluttered in her stomach where heat had been
only minutes earlier, but she managed to wait until they
were in his car, heading for his house, before she asked
the question.
‘You love those children. Why not one of your own?’
Asked far too curtly—crassly—probably too loudly
as well.
He didn’t answer, pretending concentration on the
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105
traffic, although it was thick so maybe it wasn’t pre-
tence. But as he pulled into the parking space outside
his terrace house he turned and when he’d switched off
the engine, he put his hands out, palms up, towards her.
‘I burnt my hands trying to get my baby out of the
car. I couldn’t undo the straps holding her in the
capsule. I couldn’t save her. The agony of the burns, the
pain of losing the ability to operate—they were nothing
compared to the pain I felt in my heart. No, in my
whole body. I ached for the loss of that baby, Grace, and
I still do when I think about her. I doubted I would
survive it, but I did, but I know for certain that I don’t
want to go through that again—not ever.’
Grace stared out the window, seeing the house he had
put so much energy into doing up—understanding that
his DIY project was his way of keeping his ghosts at
bay.
What he’d said had reassured her, but her heart was
aching for his pain and loss and she didn’t want to be
feeling things for him—not before they’d made love.
She was worried enough about what would happen
after the act, now here she was getting emotionally
involved before it.
‘We should have gone to dinner,’ he said quietly, and
she knew what he meant, but she also knew the sex act
could bring release and maybe in some small way a little
healing, so she leant across and kissed him on the lips.
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