The Doctor's Love-Child

by Barbara Hart

  “You two know each other?” the nurse asked

  “We’ve met,” Helen said.

  “In New York,” said Andrew.

  Helen hardly dared to look him in the eyes. There was an awkward pause.

  “Dr. Blackburn,” said Andrew in a professional tone, “why don’t we meet in the canteen for coffee, to catch up on old times?”

  Helen glanced at her watch. “I can’t stay too long. I have to…be somewhere soon.” She’d almost said, I have to go home to my baby, but stopped in time. This was definitely not the right time or place to tell Andrew that he had a baby son.

  Dear Reader,

  Although they’re both British, Helen Blackburn and Andrew Henderson find themselves working alongside each other in New York City. Helen’s first impression of Manhattan is that it is the most vibrant, exciting place she has ever been—and having lived and worked there myself I couldn’t agree with her more. Andrew is a bit of a dark horse (my favorite kind of hero)—and a very handsome one. He’s also a brilliant surgeon, performing medical miracles with his skillful hands…enough to cause an adrenaline rush to the heart of any woman—even one as down-to-earth as Helen.

  As the story progresses, Helen and Andrew move back across the Atlantic to other places I particularly love—the north of England, for instance…and Norfolk, the home of Sandringham Castle and some of the most beautiful English countryside and coast. All perfect settings for their romance.…

  Best wishes,

  Barbara Hart

  The Doctor’s Love-Child

  Barbara Hart

  For Jane, Julia, Maggie and Mary

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  HELEN remembered the exact moment she’d met him. In Rolf’s Deli on Sixth Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

  Helen Blackburn had been so engrossed in the medical journal she’d been reading that she hadn’t noticed the tall, dark-haired man in the impeccably cut suit taking his place across from her at the restaurant table. It had only been when he’d given the waitress his breakfast order that she’d glanced at him. Helen had picked up on his English accent, something of a rarity in New York.

  Their eyes had met for an instant and he’d smiled at her. He was one of those people who rippled with energy and authority. She’d dropped her gaze back to the journal which she’d then lifted in order to hide behind it. A deep blush had coloured her face. You stupid woman, she’d cursed herself, pull yourself together. A handsome stranger smiles at you and you go all hot under the collar! She’d thought she’d left her blushing days well behind her, along with her gymslip and school bag. And anyway, what had she been told about getting involved with strangers in New York? Everyone back home in England had warned her about it…don’t make eye contact, don’t speak to strangers, all that kind of thing.

  Helen had scanned the feature that she’d previously found so interesting and had continued to drink her coffee. She hadn’t looked again at the man opposite but had had a distinct feeling that he’d been watching her.

  ‘Is it good, that article you’re reading?’ he asked. The voice was velvety, the charm inescapable.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied curtly, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the page.

  ‘Are you in the medical profession?’

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated, her hands gripping the magazine tightly.

  ‘A doctor?’ the man enquired pleasantly.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice took on a hard edge. Surely he would take the hint and realise that she didn’t want to talk to him. He could be a serial killer for all she knew!

  Out of the corner of her eye Helen noticed that the waitress had returned with the man’s breakfast order, placing an empty mug on the table and pouring coffee for him. Helen was glad of the interruption…perhaps now the man would get the message and leave her alone.

  ‘Wanna refill?’ A pause. ‘Wanna refill, ma’am?’

  Helen realised with a start that the waitress was speaking to her. She was standing close by her elbow with a large pot of coffee.

  ‘Refill? D’ya wanna refill?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please,’ said Helen. Then, realising that she needed to be leaving soon, said, ‘I mean, no, thank you.’

  ‘Make up your mind,’ said the waitress, abruptly turning on her heel and walking to the next table.

  Their eyes met again. Helen’s and the man’s.

  ‘You’ve got to be quick round here,’ he said, smiling broadly as he stirred non-dairy creamer into his coffee. ‘No dithering.’

  His smile was infectious and this time she couldn’t stop herself from smiling back.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re quite right.’ She picked up her bill and took out her purse in order to pay.

  ‘I don’t mean to keep you from where you’re going,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t help noticing the journal you were reading.’

  He’s trying to pick me up, thought Helen. At breakfast, for heaven’s sake! An Englishman…over here on business, no doubt…A few days on his own without the wife and kiddies and he thinks he’ll try his luck with me—or with any woman he decides to hit on while he’s safely away from home.

  ‘Try going to an art gallery,’ she said briskly, closing the journal and stuffing it in her jacket pocket.

  ‘Sorry?’ he said, genuinely mystified by her reply.

  ‘To pick up women. Art galleries, exhibitions, museums, that kind of place. If you want to find someone for a quick fling, no strings attached, that’s where you should go. It’s really quite easy to strike up conversations, or so I’ve been told.’

  He threw back his head and guffawed loudly. Two people from the next table looked across at them.

  ‘You’ve got me all wrong.’ He chuckled. ‘I’m not about to pounce on you!’ He grinned, highly amused by the very idea. ‘I was just delighted to see what you were reading. It’s not my normal practice to strike up conversations with complete strangers, but, seeing you reading that particular feature, I just had to say something.’

  Helen’s jaw dropped. What was he going on about, sitting there grinning at her? Was he a lunatic? New York certainly had its fair share of those. Of course there were plenty of mentally disturbed people back home in Milchester—as a doctor she was acutely aware of that. But they weren’t usually dressed quite so smartly and weren’t quite so disarmingly good-looking as the man sitting opposite.

  ‘I wrote it. That article on sports injuries. The one on the patellar tendon graft.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Helen in surprise. ‘It gave me a real buzz, watching you become so engrossed in it.’

  Seeing her amazed expression, he explained further.

  ‘I’m Andrew Henderson. Check my name on the article if you like. And to prove I’m who I say I am, here’s my card.’

  He handed it to her.

  She was still in a state of disbelief as she read the words DR ANDREW HENDERSON CONSULTANT ORTHOPAEDIC SURGEON.

  ‘Nice to meet a fellow Brit,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Helen Blackburn. I’m a post-doctoral student at the Sherratt Institute researching the diagnosis and treatment of sports injuries.’

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, holding her hand for a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. ‘I’m connected with the Institute myself. I do a bit of lecturing there from time to time. But mainly I’m involved with the local hospital, doing clin
ical research. Perhaps our paths will cross at the Sherratt. I do hope so.’

  ‘Er, yes,’ she said, hurriedly rising from the table.

  ‘I assure you I wasn’t trying to pick you up.’ His eyes twinkled mischievously as he added, ‘Have a nice day.’

  ‘And you, too.’ Helen walked quickly to the pay desk. She couldn’t wait to be out of his sight. The confrontation had made her feel extremely awkward and foolish. Imagine accusing Dr Henderson of trying to pick her up for a ‘quick fling’—Dr Henderson, one of the leading specialists in the field of sports injuries!

  The memory of it made her blush all over again as she strode out along Sixth Avenue in the direction of the Sherratt Institute.

  After a few blocks Helen managed to put the incident in perspective, and her confidence returned. She looked up at the tall buildings as she negotiated the crowds of people on the busy pavement.

  She smiled to herself with the pleasure of just being there. After seven days the novelty of it all hadn’t even begun to wear off. This week, her first in Manhattan, had fulfilled all her expectations. New York was amazing and wonderful and just about everything she’d hoped it would be…and for the next six months it was going to be her home. It was the most vibrant, exciting place she had ever been, and she still couldn’t get over the fact that New York looked exactly like it did on a postcard. She didn’t know why this should come as such a surprise to her, but it did.

  Milchester, where she came from, wasn’t like that at all. It would be impossible to capture in a single image the former mill town in the north of England which was now a bustling cosmopolitan city.

  Milchester was home to Helen—but not for the immediate future. For the next six months Dr Helen Blackburn was going to be a New Yorker—and, while she didn’t want to disown her Milchester past, at present her sights were fixed on a very different skyline.

  As she breezed along the pavement towards to Sherratt Institute she just couldn’t believe her luck.

  ‘Dr Blackburn, I presume,’ said the smartly attired professor, standing up as Helen walked into his office. ‘Alan Mulberry.’ He offered his right hand in greeting, adding with smile, ‘But you can call me Al, as they say in the song.’

  Professor Dr Alan J Mulberry, the Institute’s Director of Sports Science, was a big-framed man of medium height, whose natural bulk was kept in trim by a tight regime of diet, exercise, mineral water and will-power. His hair looked expensively groomed and, for a man in his late fifties, suspiciously dark in colour.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here on your first day at the Institute but, as you know, I was away in Australia, giving a paper at a conference on sports injuries. I hope you’ve been made to feel at home in our little laboratory.’ He beamed at her from behind his large mahogany desk.

  ‘Everyone’s been so kind,’ replied Helen. She wasn’t sure whether he’d meant it for real when he’d said, ‘Call me Al’, or if he’d been just joking. She decided to err on the side of caution. ‘And, Professor, I’d hardly call your laboratory little. It’s absolutely enormous! Well, it certainly is compared to anything I’ve ever worked in back home in England. The banks of computers, electro-microscopes, X-ray machines, scanners…And the library!’

  Professor Mulberry was gratified to note how Helen’s eyes shone with enthusiasm. He was duly proud of his Institute and its state-of-the-art facilities, many of which had been provided by generous patrons and sponsors.

  ‘And your living arrangements? Did that work out OK?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Your secretary very kindly organised everything before I arrived over here. I’m sharing a lovely apartment a few blocks across town with another young doctor, a girl who’s working in ER at the City Hospital.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘We want to make sure that our new post-doctoral student is well looked after, certainly one who comes with such an excellent background in orthopaedic medicine as yourself. The thesis for which you were awarded the Moreton Research Scholarship is of great interest to us here at the Sherratt Institute. You are one very bright doctor! Having you as a member of the team reflects well on all of us, I assure you, my dear. We are honoured by your presence.’

  Helen looked down at the ground for a moment, temporarily embarrassed by his effusiveness.

  She hadn’t got used to the way some Americans had a knack of looking you straight in the eye and, without a hint of irony, heaping praise on you to your face. Back home no one in authority would have dreamt of giving such a stream of compliments to a young medic in case it went to their head and they demanded a pay rise! But here cash, or lack of it, didn’t enter into the equation. It came as a pleasant surprise to Helen to find herself working in an environment where money wasn’t a problem. The whole Institute reeked of it. Everything was the best that money could buy and the research facilities were the most magnificent she’d ever come across.

  ‘I just love working here,’ she said with genuine feeling.

  ‘Are you getting on well with the other members of the team?’ the professor enquired.

  ‘Oh, yes, Professor,’ replied Helen.

  She was a member of an eight-person research team, all of whom were post-doctoral graduates. They were working on a sports medicine research project looking into knee injuries caused by sporting activity—in particular anterior cruciate ligament injuries.

  At the centre of the research was the fact that damage to the ACL, as it was known, was one of the most common sports injuries and one of the most frequent causes of permanent disability. In England, Helen had done a lot of research on the prevention and treatment of this injury and it was this work that had been the basis for her winning the prestigious Moreton scholarship and the funding for her six months’ postdoctoral research in America.

  ‘We live in a society obsessed by sport,’ said Professor Mulberry. ‘We participate in it and when we’re not doing it ourselves we expect it to provide us with endless entertainment. And at all levels, amateur and professional, child and adult, injury is a constant threat. And of all injuries, those to the knee represent the athlete’s greatest fear and the greatest suffering. Here at the Institute we hope to do our bit towards ending that suffering. And with your help, Dr Blackburn, and a little guidance from above…’ he raised his eyes heavenward ‘…maybe that day will come soon. Very soon, Dr Blackburn.’

  Helen felt as if she’d attended a prayer meeting. She rose to leave but the professor stopped her.

  ‘Before you go, my dear, I would just like to show you this and ask your opinion of it.’ He waved a filmy object between his hands, stretching it apart and allowing it to snap back again before handing it over to her.

  ‘It’s a new type of bandage made by Perks & Perks, one of our major sponsors. As you can see, it’s transparent so it doesn’t put off fashion-conscious young people, and the manufacturers claim it can stop up to ninety per cent of all sports injuries to the knee.’

  Helen raised her eyebrows in disbelief. ‘Really?’

  ‘Apparently so. It’s something I think you should include in your research project,’ announced the professor. ‘I’ve arranged for several hundred to be sent to you for testing. Keep me informed about the test results, won’t you?’

  Helen left the office clutching the bandage and feeling slightly uneasy. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she felt that some of the shine from her new job had begun to wear off. Perhaps all that glisters was not, after all, gold. Did her magnificent new research facilities by any chance come with strings—or bandages—attached?

  Another week passed before she found herself sitting opposite Andrew Henderson again. This time it was in the Institute café.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not.’ She gathered up her notes to make room for his coffee-cup.

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you. Are you in the middle of something?’ He indicated the pile of papers she’d brought with her and which she’d been reading during her lunch-break.

&nb
sp; ‘No. Nothing of importance.’ She didn’t explain to him that the main reason she spread out her reading material on the table was to deter Marcie, one of the laboratory technical staff, from joining her for lunch. She had latched onto Helen and made a beeline for her every time she saw her sitting quietly by herself. Marcie was a brilliant technician but the woman talked non-stop in a very squeaky, high-pitched voice.

  Helen was delighted to see Andrew again. And from the beam on his face, he was just as pleased to meet her.

  ‘So, what are you—?’

  ‘How are you getting—?’

  They both spoke at once.

  ‘After you,’ he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

  ‘I was just wondering what you were doing in the Institute today. I remember you said you did some lecturing here.’

  ‘I’m not actually giving a lecture today,’ Andrew replied, ‘but I’ve come in to arrange for some of my students to come and observe an operation I’m doing tomorrow…a patellar tendon graft.’

  ‘The procedure that you wrote about in your article?’

  ‘The very one.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Are you perhaps interested in coming along to the operating theatre?’

  Helen jumped at the chance.

  ‘I’d love to, Dr Henderson. It would be wonderful to have the chance of watching you operate. Reconstructing a torn knee ligament using graft tissue is something I’ve never had the opportunity of seeing done. I believe it’s a procedure that could have a lot going for it.’

  ‘Not Dr Henderson,’ he said. ‘Andrew, please.’ He smiled, a warm generous smile that lit up his whole face.

  ‘Helen.’ She smiled back.

  ‘Tell me, Helen,’ he said, deliberately using her name, ‘a little about your medical background. Then I’ll know when not to teach my granny to suck eggs. The students I lecture are normally in their first year. I get the impression from Professor Mulberry that you are very high up in the qualifications league. Are you an MD?’

  She nodded. ‘After pre-registration I worked as an SHO in Milchester General while I researched a doctorate in physics. Oh, and I also took a diploma in orthopaedic surgery.’