The Surgeon's Secret Son

by Rebecca Lang

  THE SURGEON'S SECRET SON

  Rebecca Lang

  A very precious child

  When Dr. Joel Matheson unexpectedly comes to work with her at Gresham General, surgeon Nell Montague, MD, is faced with uncertainty. She has never stopped loving him since their relationship over ten years ago and hopes he can eventually understand why she never told him she was pregnant, when they suddenly parted.

  The attraction is just as strong, and Nell is sure that they can be a family at last, but she is not the only one with a secret. For as much as Joel also adores their son Alec -- something is holding him back…

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nell Montague MD eased her car into one of the last available spots in the staff parking lot at Gresham General Hospital, Gresham, Ontario, and turned off the engine with a satisfied sigh. At this rate she would be on time for the international symposium on plastic surgery and burns that was to be held at the convention centre over on the next street from the hospital, a comfortable walk on this pleasant sunny day in early June.

  First checking her appearance quickly in the rear-view mirror, she gathered up her briefcase and a sheaf of papers, mostly yesterday's mail, which she had not had time to read, about the upcoming conference. There would be time for her to get a cup of coffee after she had registered for the meeting, then quickly go through the papers at the last minute.

  The walk in the sunshine was a welcome respite in a life that seemed more and more to be governed by the clock these days. She thrived on it all, she knew that. She rose to the challenge and liked the adrenaline rush that it all gave her. The main stress in her job was in finding enough time for her son, Alec, forcing time. Sometimes that stress overshadowed the other source of regret that had hung over her for the last nine years, had never really left her...

  Briskly she thrust those thoughts out of her mind, something that was not hard to do on such a lovely day, not like those bleak days in the dead of winter that invited introspection. For a few minutes she felt totally free as she walked, recapturing something of her early youth, knowing that she looked attractive in her simple oyster-coloured linen trouser suit and the rose-coloured silk sleeveless blouse underneath, well suited to the heat of early summer. Usually she gave little thought to her appearance, garbed as she was for most of the time in the ubiquitous green or blue scrub suit and white lab coat, then covered up even more for the operating rooms. Her newly washed hair, light brown streaked with blonde, blew around her face in the breeze.

  Ah, life was good when one could take pleasure in simple things. She even revelled in walking in shoes that had relatively high heels, which made her feel feminine, instead of the surgical clogs or rubber boots that she galumphed around in during surgery in the operating suite of the burns unit in the hospital.

  The conference centre was an imposing high-rise building of glass, steel and concrete, right in the heart of the city, and as Nell pushed her way through the revolving glass doors into the vast marble tiled lobby she was greeted by several colleagues from among the milling crowd.

  'Hi!' She waved and smiled at them, striding out to the registration desk. When that was done, she got herself a cup of coffee from one of the tables set up for the purpose and then in a relatively quite corner she slit open the mail that had come recently about the meeting, listing any changes in the programme. Sometimes a week would go by before she had a chance to read her mail, leaving it to the weekend.

  There were so many interesting lectures and workshops to go to that making a choice about which ones to attend had been difficult. Idly, she checked those for which she had registered, looking for any changes. The first one was to start in a few minutes, at nine o'clock.

  Then she felt as though time stood still, that her surroundings had floated away out of conscious awareness, as a name jumped out at her, a name of a replacement lecturer for the first talk.

  'Oh, my heavens!' she said aloud. 'It can't be, surely?' Glancing around surreptitiously, she saw that no one was within immediate earshot. Her heart seemed to do a little jump, stop for a second or two, and then start up again with a deep, sonorous pounding as she stared at the name. The talk was to be about some of the latest surgical techniques in the treatment of severe burns.

  Joel Matheson...there was the name in solid print. Nell stared at it as though it might dissolve in front of her eyes. After all those years, ten years, he had suddenly, unexpectedly surfaced, engendering in her a feeling of something like panic, her previous sangfroid disappearing like the proverbial mist before the sun, putting her back into the mind-set of a sixteen-year-old girl, as she had been when she had first met Dr Joel Matheson.

  How very odd it seemed that she had spent a long time looking for him, then when she had more or less given up an active search, he should suddenly materialize without any effort on her part. She swallowed, her throat constricted by such powerful emotion that she thought she might faint.

  The original lecturer, she read numbly, had been taken ill and had been replaced by Dr Joel Matheson of Montreal, who had kindly agreed to do it at very short notice.

  'Hey, Nell, are you going to the first surgical lecture?' One of her colleagues, Dr Trixie Deerborne, accosted her in the hall, and she looked up blankly.

  Trixie was a bubbly, chatty person, sometimes too chatty, very focussed on herself so that she was not likely to pick up on the blank look of shock that was on her own face, Nell hoped as she strove to reply.

  'I...um...yes,' she managed to get out, as Trixie sat down beside her on the bench.

  Trixie, more astute than usual, stared at her. 'Hey, are you OK?' she asked. 'You look a little green around the gills.'

  'I'm all right,' Nell mumbled. And not wishing to appear mysterious with her colleague, who could keep a confidence, she pointed at Joel Matheson's name and added, 'The first speaker has been replaced by Dr Joel Matheson. I used to know him.'

  'Ah,' Trixie said, looking at her with uncharacteristic comprehension. 'A light dawns. He used to mean something to you, right?'

  'You could say that,' Nell said quietly. That was the biggest understatement she had made in her life.

  'Come on, then,' Trixie said, 'otherwise we won't get a decent seat. You might as well bite the bullet and give him the once-over.'

  Nell laughed, the imagery pulling her back to the present moment from the tantalizing and traumatic past that had started to redraw itself in the form of mental pictures and intrude forcefully into her thoughts. Even so, she didn't know how on earth she was going to concentrate on what Joel had to say when her mind would be churning. For a few seconds she contemplated giving the lecture a miss, but then knew that she would be putting off the inevitable, when she really wanted to see Joel Matheson more than anything in the world.

  'I'm glad you're with me, Trixie,' she said.

  'Come on, then. I would give my eye-teeth for a mysterious past, to maybe compensate for the paucity of the present where mystery is concerned—or romance, for that matter,' Trixie said dryly.

  'I'm not sure you would want my "mysterious" past,' Nell said, gathering up her papers, stating what she was thinking.

  'Tell me about it some time. I'm all ears,' Trixie said.

  They walked down a long corridor to find the appropriate lecture hall, then settled themselves in seats near the front, among about two hundred other people, Nell assessed. It was doubtful, she thought, that Joel would recognize her immediately after so long. Certainly, it was doubtful that he could pick her out in such a crowd from where he would be standing on the stage. After all, she was ten years older, looked more sophisticated and considerably different from the way she had looked at age sixteen-pretending-to-be-nineteen when they had met ten years ago. And what would h
e say when he saw her again? The thought nagged at her persistently as she contemplated what she would say to him.

  Nonetheless, she felt an absurd desire to hide, to slide down in her seat, while at the same time longing to see him.

  While they waited for Joel to be introduced, Nell's thoughts flitted back persistently to the past. She had always been ambitious, working hard at school for what she had wanted. Yet the experience of motherhood had mellowed her, making her focus on her child rather than on herself. Nevertheless, she had got through medical school, through her internship and was now two years into a residency training in the treatment of burns, and plastic surgery as it related to burns, with two more years to go.

  Her mother had called it the water-lily syndrome, her ambition, while still being proud of her daughter. It was something she had made up. It meant that the person who had that syndrome was always wanting to pick the flower that was out of reach, rather than those she had in her garden, however beautiful. In her personal life, Joel had been that flower, always, it seemed... and proved... just out of reach. It was something she hoped she had outgrown, that striving.

  Now the reaction of her body proved the lie as she waited for him to appear. Almost sick with anticipation, tempered by a strange apprehension, she tried to distract herself by concentrating on what Trixie was saying to her.

  Then there he was, coming onto the stage a pace or two behind the man who was to introduce him. Oh, Joel, Joel! The words spoke themselves in her brain as she was torn between a desire to slide down in her chair and to stand up and shout, Joel, I'm here!

  Without needing to be told, in spite of changes brought by the passage of time, she knew that the man who stood there was Joel.

  He looked different in the harsh light above the stage, older, his face thin, the cheeks hollow. His boyish hair had been cut short. Yet that dynamic masculinity that had always seemed to emanate from him like a tangible thing was still there, that devastating attractiveness that was like a magnet to most women who came within his orbit. The well-cut grey suit he wore, that looked as though it had been made for him, with the medium blue shirt and subdued tie, enhanced that attractiveness. In the past he had seemed impervious to many of those women, but not to her...

  As Nell stared at him she registered that he looked very tired and rather haggard. Next, she wanted to reach forward to touch him, to stroke his face, then to move into his arms, to feel them close tightly around her as they had done when they had both been younger.

  'Is that him?' Trixie asked quietly.

  'Yes.' Nell silently commended her colleague for not voicing the curiosity she must be feeling, for showing tact, which was not always her strong suit. 'In case you're wondering, he was once my boyfriend. I was never married.'

  'I figured that. I was wondering,' Trixie whispered back, grinning, 'but I would never have asked.'

  There was applause, signifying that she had not heard a word of the introduction.

  Then he began to speak...with that decisive, deep, calm voice that she remembered. She bit her lip to stop it trembling and blinked rapidly to dispel the moisture that was gathering in her eyes, beyond her control. There was a gentleness in his tone, as always, signifying the empathy that he had displayed to his patients and to anyone he had liked, including her, when she had known him.

  If Trixie sensed her emotion, she wisely said nothing. At first Nell let the meaning of what he was saying wash over her, then she began deliberately to concentrate. He had always been an excellent and patient teacher. Now, in spite of her agitation, she began to take in what he was saying, very soon finding herself absorbed by it.

  When the lecture was over, some people in the audience crowded forward to the stage to talk to Joel, while the majority slowly began to file out of the room.

  'Stay to talk to him,' Trixie urged Nell. 'I sense that you need to. I'll see you later. I think we're in a workshop together.'

  'OK, Trixie. Save me a spot,' she said, forcing a lightness to her tone as she stood up.

  Nell mounted the few steps to the stage, then hung back at the edge of the small group, waiting patiently until she was the only one left. It was amazing how quickly your sophistication could drop from you, she thought, that you could be transported back into the past, as she was when he looked at her.

  His dark hair, which had been longish when she had known him before, giving him a rakish air, was not so now. Because of it, he seemed altogether more serious. As he looked at her, the years seemed to fall away, leaving her as breathless and vulnerable as she had been then.

  'Hello, Nell,' he said quietly, extending a hand to her. 'It's been a long time.'

  She took the two paces to get close to him and take his hand. 'Hello, Joel,' she said, her voice sounding rusty, as though she had not used it for hours. 'Yes, it has been a long time. I...I've been to a lot of conferences and I've never seen you.'

  'I tend to go to conferences in the States and Europe, not to many in Canada,' he said.

  'I see,' she said, not really seeing at all, her hand remaining in his, suddenly aware that the room still had a lot of people in it and they were under spotlights. Perhaps he had avoided conferences in Canada to avoid her. She eased her hand away, sensing that he had forgotten that he was holding it, as his eyes moved over her face, as though he wanted to imprint her features on his memory. She was aware, too, that she was being stiff and formal, against her nature; when she wanted to ask him a million questions and to put her arms around his neck. This was hardly the place.

  His eyes were grey and direct, under very dark, definite brows, contrasting with the marked paleness of his skin, while his mouth was generous, firm, without being effeminate in any way. Those things had not changed, of course.

  As a girl, she had noted approvingly that he had a strong chin and square jaw, had thought there was something of the poet about him. Now, in her maturity, she admired him anew.

  Yet she was also struck again by how thin he looked. Was he ill? A new kind of fear, a dread, gripped her and overrode everything else. 'How are you, Joel?' she asked, her voice husky with emotion.

  There was a slight hesitation. 'I'm well,' he said, with what seemed to her an odd inflection in his voice. 'How are you?'

  Nell nodded. 'All right,' she said.

  'You're very beautiful, Nell Montague,' he said, 'in a different way. I always knew you would be.' The smile he gave her transformed his face momentarily, erasing the tiredness, so that she felt the increased power of his attraction.

  'Thank you,' she said.

  'Hello again,' he said.

  'Hello,' she whispered back.

  'You're a doctor, too,' he said, 'specializing in burns. You followed through.'

  'Yes. I'm still a resident, of course. I really love it, most of the time.' Somehow he had kept tabs on her, obviously. That was not too difficult in the professional world, although she certainly had not had any success in tracing him.

  'Congratulations.'

  'Thank you. It's been a long, hard slog, as you know.'

  He smiled. 'It always is,' he said. 'Anything worth doing. Are you glad you did it?'

  'Yes.' Thus, with casualness, they minimized the reality of their training, the blood, sweat and tears, the hours of stress and tension, the things they had both witnessed and tackled, the lack of sleep, the bone-weary sheer slog of it. For those who had been through it, it was a bond between them.

  Nell recalled now the words of the head of department in the burns unit, Dr John Lane, to her when she had requested shorter hours to be with her son more when she had been training: 'You can't train part time, Nell,' he had said to her. 'You either do it, or you don't. The less you do, the more someone else has to do.' Nonetheless, he had made things easier for her whenever he had been able to, had given her days off, weekends off. And that had been even before he had let her know that he wanted to marry her...

  And with polite phrases now, she and Joel minimized the impact of their meeting to the glarin
g eyes of the world, while her emotions churned, although there was a wealth of meaning in those words for both of them.

  'Did you have anything in particular to say to me?' he enquired softly, with gross understatement, raising his eyebrows in the familiar way, not taking his eyes from her face. 'I feel you might.' There was a slight, partly cynical smile on his face.

  Nell swallowed the proverbial painful lump in her throat. 'I...I'm not usually this tongue-tied. It's just that I wasn't expecting to see you, so it's taken me by surprise. I rather think we...we do have a lot to say to each other.'

  He hadn't really changed. His gentle humour belied the changes in his appearance, from the handsome, insouciant youth who had looked like a poet to the hard, thin, pale man who stood before her. Especially, those eyes were the same, those grey, sensual, perceptive, intelligent eyes that were now regarding her with an unreadable expression. Most importantly, she had the impression that he was not displeased to see her.

  Joel glanced towards the auditorium. 'If there were not so many people here, I would kiss you,' he said. 'Which is something uppermost in my mind at the moment.'

  Nell laughed, relaxing somewhat. Mine too, she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat.

  'No...no hard feelings, then?' she managed to get out, her cheeks flushing as they had done when she had been sixteen, impressed by the twenty-four-year-old Dr Joel Matheson, intern in the emergency department of Gresham General Hospital.

  'Oh, I wouldn't say that, exactly,' he said, looking at her astutely so that her flush deepened. 'You treated me pretty badly, Nell Montague. I hoped you'd be here, I was looking forward to seeing you.'

  Nell hoped fervently that none of her colleagues were down in the auditorium, watching her, as she felt that emotionally she had regressed to her early youth in the space of a few minutes, as susceptible to him as she had always been, and she felt that it would be obvious to the casual observer. A quick glance told her that the place had more or less emptied out.