Finding His Wife, Finding a Son

by Marion Lennox

  After all these years... Her Luc...

  ‘The chuckle...’ he managed. ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘I was just thinking of pure silk negligees and...’

  ‘Don’t.’ He groaned again. ‘Beth, you’re driving me wild.’ And then he stopped as if sense had suddenly reared its head and he had to force himself to say it. ‘Love...are you sure?’

  ‘I guess...’ Somehow she had to force herself to say it, too. ‘If you can... If you have...’

  And he got that, too. He’d always had the unnerving ability to read her mind.

  ‘What doctor doesn’t carry condoms for educational purposes? But you’ll have to wait until I’m showered. If I hit the sheets like this we’ll have to buy new linen.’

  ‘Worth it, love.’

  ‘Then worth waiting,’ he said, and grinned. ‘If you didn’t have a leg covered in dressings and a moon boot...’

  ‘And if you didn’t have half the outback splattered on your person...’

  ‘All I need is three minutes.’ He lowered her onto the bed.

  ‘You can have two,’ she told him. ‘I’ve waited for eight years and I won’t wait a moment longer.’

  She didn’t need to.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THEY HAD A night of blessed peace. A night when the work receded.

  And then the world flooded back, and then some.

  They’d slept after making love, skin against skin, lost in the wonder of each other’s bodies.

  They were woken by a sound of distress that had Beth tossing back the covers and reaching for her glasses and wrap before she even remembered where she was.

  Luc woke, too. They’d been spooned together as they’d slept all those years ago, encased in each other’s bodies. At home. At peace. Now he moved with her, his hand still on her thigh. ‘Love? What?’

  ‘Toby.’

  ‘I guess that’s the new norm,’ he said sleepily, as she reached for her wrap. ‘Being woken by a baby.’ But then he jerked wide awake.

  He got it. He’d been looking after Toby for a week while she’d been in hospital. He knew Toby’s normal was to wake up happy. As long as Robert Rabbit was in the cot with him he’d burble and chat and play until his mother got her act together and got them both out of there.

  If Robert had fallen out, then Toby roared, a full-throated yell of indignation, but what they were hearing now was a reedy whimper, and it had Beth grabbing her crutches and heading for the door fast.

  Luc was right behind her, hauling on his pants as he came.

  Toby was lying in the cot, uttering little mews of distress. He was on his back, staring at the ceiling. Robert Rabbit lay unheeded by his side.

  As Beth reached the cot he registered her presence and held his arms up, as if pleading. Get me out of here?

  Why wasn’t he standing?

  Beth’s crutches clattered to the floor as she scooped him up and Luc shoved a chair forward so she could sit with him.

  She cradled him against her, a tousle-headed toddler, usually a bright, happy baby version of Beth herself. But now he crumpled into her, limp, miserable. The weak sobs stopped.

  Years ago, back when Luc had been an intern, green about the gills, he remembered a child being brought into the emergency department roaring so loudly every head had swivelled to see what was wrong. Luc had responded automatically, turning from the child he’d been treating.

  He’d been brought up short by his consultant, an elderly doctor who’d been practising paediatrics since before Luc had been born.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ she’d snapped. ‘There’s no emergency. If a child can roar like that then any damage is superficial. For kids’ triage, you see to the silent ones first.’

  But now... Toby was silent.

  ‘He’s hot,’ Beth said, kissing his forehead. ‘A virus?’

  That’d explain it. Kids got ill fast and they got better fast, too. Nothing to worry about.

  Except the silence. And the limpness.

  He knelt and put his fingers on Toby’s neck. Yeah, definitely hot. They needed to get him cool.

  And the way he held himself...he was huddled on his mother’s knees but his head wasn’t tucked down. He was pulling to one side.

  As if his neck hurt?

  Luc unzipped his sleeping bag—and froze.

  ‘What?’ Beth whispered and Luc rose and pulled back the curtains, flooding the room with dawn light. So Beth could see what he was seeing.

  She saw. ‘Oh, God...’ It was scarcely spoken, a breath of sheer terror. ‘Oh...’

  ‘Hey, he’s in the right place.’ Luc was already heading for his phone. ‘I’ll ring in and warn them we’re coming. It might not be...’

  ‘It is.’ She didn’t move, stunned with the horror of what she faced. ‘Luc...the day of the crash... When I went to pick him up from crèche they asked me to see another child. A rash... A high temp. I started him on antibiotics and got him on a plane to Sydney before the diagnosis was confirmed but I was pretty sure it was meningitis. I left instructions...the minute we had confirmation I wanted the kids he’d been in contact with started on prophylactic antibiotics. And then... Oh, God, Luc, I forgot. I forgot...’

  She broke on a sob.

  He was on the phone, kneeling beside her, doing his darnedest to be there for Beth, for both of them, even as he barked into the receiver. Marsha was head of Paediatrics and she was the best. At least they were in the right spot. If this was what they thought it was then Toby was in the best place in Australia. ‘We have a twenty-month-old with suspected meningitis. We’re bringing him in now. Ten minutes.’

  ‘Your little boy?’

  Marsha’s demand gave him pause even then. The hospital grapevine had indeed done its job. He’d gone to Namborra and brought back a woman who was his ex-wife. He’d taken time off and cared for her child and now he was living with her.

  Your little boy?

  He looked at Toby, at this little stranger he hadn’t met until ten days ago.

  He looked at Toby’s mother.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  * * *

  As a doctor he’d always had some inkling that waiting was hard. He’d seen relatives in hundreds of settings during his career, white faced, limp with fear. Often it had been Luc who’d opened the door on that waiting room to give news, sometimes good, sometimes bleak, sometimes terrible.

  Now it was his turn.

  He shouldn’t be here. He was officially on duty. He hoped someone had noticed where he was and told Blake. He’d made one urgent call as they’d arrived, one that couldn’t wait, but that was all he’d had time for. All his focus was on Toby.

  The way the rash had spread over Toby’s small body... The spike in his temperature...the look on the paediatricians’ faces as they’d assessed... It had stilled him to numbness.

  Was it better to not know the odds? Was it better to not know the risk of appalling long-term damage?

  He sat with Beth while they inserted IV lines, set up the antibiotics, maximum dosages. They had fluid lines going in, because by now Toby was too weak to drink. Indeed he seemed barely conscious. The illness was taking over so fast...

  Beth sat and held as much as she could of him and Luc stayed in the background. And waited.

  He watched the tension of Beth’s shoulders, he watched her mouth move in silent prayer, he watched her fingers curl around Toby’s as if by sheer force of will she could hold him. As if she could keep him safe. He watched as they insisted on transferring him to a bed so they could work more intensely. He watched Beth watch her baby. He watched for hours.

  Finally Marsha ordered him to take Beth out. ‘Take half an hour,’ she said, and stooped to take Beth’s hands firmly in hers. Toby lay on a too big bed, IV lines taped, his tiny face blotched and pallid as he lay among a
sea of high-tech monitors. ‘Beth, Toby’s asleep. For now he doesn’t need you.’

  ‘He’s un—’ Beth began.

  ‘He’s not unconscious. This looks a natural sleep.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But he needs you when he wakes,’ Marsha told her. ‘And you’re no use to him if you fall over. I’m working in here for the next half-hour and the nurses will be here, too. We’ll watch him like a hawk and the moment there’s any change, the moment he opens his eyes, I’ll call you back. Luc, take Beth into the waiting room. There’s coffee and sandwiches. Bully her to eat. Bully her to take time out. Do anything, but take a break from the tension. Now.’

  So here they were, in the tiny waiting room outside kids’ intensive care unit. The room contained a drinks vending machine. An overhead television, turned on but no sound. No windows.

  Take a break from the tension? It was impossible. He knew Beth couldn’t leave the hospital and he had the sense not to suggest it.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ Beth whispered. She’d managed a sandwich and coffee but he knew it had been sheer strength of will that’d got the food down. ‘I need to go back.’

  ‘Marsha will have my hide if I let you back in before half an hour,’ Luc told her. ‘She’s good, Beth. The whole team’s good. I suspect she’ll have half the hospital’s paediatric team in there pooling their knowledge while she has a parent-free zone.’

  ‘I wouldn’t interfere...’

  ‘But you know as well as I do that a parent’s distress can sometimes mess with doctors’ heads. Especially with children. We need to give them space, Beth. For the best outcome.’

  She picked up another sandwich, stared at it and then set it down again. ‘I can’t believe... He was so well...’

  And then she stood, so fast her empty mug of coffee clattered to the floor and smashed. She didn’t notice. Her eyes were huge and her face had lost its last trace of colour. ‘The other kids,’ she whispered, her voice loaded with horror. ‘In crèche. I set up orders to follow up. As soon as Felix’s diagnosis was confirmed they were to start... And then I forgot. It won’t be just Toby. Luc, the others...’

  He tried to hug her, pulling her against him, but she held rigid. ‘I can’t... Luc, if I hurt them...’

  ‘You haven’t hurt anyone,’ he said, solidly now, putting her back until he could look into her haunted eyes. ‘They’re fine. The crèche was undamaged so no other child was hurt. You might not have noticed but as soon as Toby was admitted, I left you for a moment. While Marsha was doing initial assessment and setting up the first IV lines, I rang Namborra. I spoke to Dr Clarkson. She said Margie remembered—the head of your crèche? She had the presence of mind to take the crèche notes with her when the centre was evacuated. Your orders were the last ones written and she realised they were important. By next morning every kid who’d been in crèche was started on prophylactic antibiotics. Dr Clarkson’s gutted they didn’t follow up on Toby.’

  ‘So Toby’s the only one I forgot...’

  She was close to collapse. He dragged her back into his arms, holding her, feeling her body shudder with tension and fear. ‘Beth, listen. You didn’t forget Toby. You sheltered him with your body as the roof collapsed. You saved Toby.’

  ‘What use is that if he dies from meningitis? Or loses his legs or arms? You know what meningitis can do. I can’t—’

  ‘Beth!’ He put her back again, holding her firmly by her shoulders, forcing her gaze to meet his. ‘Firstly, Toby’s already been immunised so you did your best by protecting him all you could. We don’t know what strain this is but maybe the protection he already has will help now. Dr Clarkson tells me Felix, who you diagnosed on the day you were trapped, has made a full recovery. She’s organised parental consent so details of the strain he had have been faxed here. Our medical team’s already working with full information.’

  ‘Second, he’s been caught fast. I checked on Toby an hour after...after we went to bed.’ He touched her cheek, smiling faintly at the memory. ‘Things were too new, too overwhelming for me to sleep, and for some reason...’ He hesitated. ‘For some reason I needed to ground myself and seeing Toby helped. He was sleeping peacefully, clutching Wobit. Therefore, whatever this is, it’s come on fast but we’ve caught it fast, too. We’ve also caught it within ten minutes of one of the best paediatric units in Australia. The doctors here are the best. He’ll be fine, Beth, I know it.’

  He couldn’t know it, not for sure, but he put every ounce of conviction into his voice, into his body language. His eyes didn’t leave hers. She gazed up at him and he saw the moment a faint chink broke through the flood of terror.

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I know.’

  She didn’t break her gaze. ‘You checked on him while I slept?’

  ‘As I said, I sort of...needed to. And I’ve been doing it for the week you’ve been in hospital.’

  ‘You checked on him through the night when you were caring for him?’

  ‘Before you came home I had his cot in my room.’

  ‘Oh, Luc...’ She sobbed and gasped and then buried her face into his shirt, hard, fierce, as if she needed the sheer bulk of him to assure herself all was well. Or all would be well.

  ‘I told myself I didn’t need you,’ she whispered, half to herself, half to him. ‘All those years ago. I thought I didn’t need you and how wrong was that? How stupid? Oh, love...’

  And she put her hands around him as if she’d never let go.

  He hugged her back, solidly, tugging her against him so her breasts moulded against his chest, kissing her hair, saying dumb, meaningless nothings because she didn’t need silence.

  She needed...him.

  And part of him wanted it. Part of him held her and thought his world was settling. He had his woman back in his bed, in his life. She was his wife. And Toby? The little boy already felt like his own.

  ‘Beth?’

  ‘Mmm...’ It was a whisper, no more.

  ‘Tell me about...’ It almost broke him to say it, but it needed to be asked. ‘Toby’s father.’

  ‘Wh-why? Her face was muffled in his shirt.

  ‘He needs to be told.’ That was the truth, he thought. If it was his son he’d want to be told he was in danger.

  He wanted it to be his son.

  ‘You mean...he might die...’

  ‘Beth...’

  ‘I know.’ She pushed away, shoving her curls from her tear-streaked face. ‘I know...the odds. But I don’t need to tell him.’

  ‘Why not, Beth?’

  ‘Toby’s...from donated sperm. After you...’ She shook her head. ‘Crazy but after you I couldn’t imagine being married to anyone else. But I thought...when I started work at Namborra, I thought I could care for a baby. I thought...’ Her voice broke. ‘Oh, God, Luc, I was so wrong.’

  ‘You weren’t wrong.’ He said it strongly. He might not believe it himself but she didn’t need a talk on responsibility now. ‘You had a fantastic set-up. You had everything in place to care for him.’

  ‘But I couldn’t care for him. When I walked away from you I felt so brave, like I could take on the world. But to put Toby at risk...’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘You never would have let it happen.’ Her voice broke on another ragged sob and she buried her face in his shirt again. ‘Oh, Luc, we needed you. I needed you...’

  And wasn’t that what he needed to hear?

  He held her close as her sobs subsided, as she fought to regain composure, as she fought to regain control of her world. But still she clung.

  She needed him.

  She’d held him. She’d lain in his arms. She was his wife again, in every sense of the word, and part of him felt like a vast void inside him had been filled. His Beth was where she belonged, and Toby with her.

  He would c
are for them, he vowed. He’d love them and protect them for ever, he told himself as he held her close.

  But there was another voice, a tiny insidious crazy voice that told him something was wrong.

  Nothing’s wrong, he told himself or nothing will be wrong as long as Toby survives unscathed. This was how things should be. This was his family and he could love and protect them for ever.

  So why was the little voice niggling?

  Why did he feel...something was still very wrong and it had nothing to do with Toby’s illness?

  * * *

  For two days Beth and Luc watched and waited, two adults with only one thought between them. That Toby survive with no long-term damage.

  For two days he lay limp, almost unresponsive. For two days the doctors fought with everything they had.

  And won.

  On the afternoon of the third day Luc closed his eyes for a few moments and the miracle happened. He woke to find Beth cuddling Toby. The little boy still had his IV lines attached, but his eyes were wide, he looked alert and he was struggling to pull himself away from Beth’s arms.

  ‘Walk,’ he said firmly, and Beth closed her eyes for a nanosecond and let him slide to the floor.

  The drip lines were still attached but Beth had them organised so he couldn’t pull them free.

  Toby tried to stand but his legs didn’t hold him. The days of desperate illness would have made the strongest individual’s knees turn to jelly. So he plonked on the floor in his nappy and singlet, staring at his legs as if he couldn’t believe they’d let him down. And then he glanced around the room and saw Luc. He gave a joyful chirp and hauled himself into a crawl position.

  Crawling worked. He made a bee-line to his playmate of a week. He and Luc had dug a hole almost to China and his body language said hooray, take him there again. He reached Luc’s ankles and held up his hands.

  Luc rose and gathered him into his arms, while Beth wrangled IV lines. And Luc buried his face into Toby’s small, bony shoulder and felt...like bursting into tears.