The Heart Surgeon's Proposal

by Meredith Webber

  “You could marry me,” Phil said

  Maggie felt her knees give way and was sure she would have dropped to the floor if Phil hadn’t grabbed her.

  “Think about it. We’re already living together, so the logistics would be simple. We work together, so we understand the stresses of each other’s job—none better. The baby will have a hands-on father, and we were great together in bed.”

  Maggie felt the air around her grow suddenly colder, then heard Phil repeat the words in a slow, hoarse voice.

  “We were great together in bed!”

  He stared at Maggie, disbelief and anger vying for control of his features.

  Anger won.

  “Is it my baby, Maggie?” he asked, his voice soft but no less furious for its softness.” It is, isn’t it? And just when were you going to share this little gem of knowledge with me? Just how long did you intend letting me believe it was someone else’s?”

  JIMMIE’S CHILDREN’S UNIT

  The Children’s Cardiac Unit, St. James’s Hospital, Sydney. A specialist unit where the dedicated staff mend children’s hearts…and their own!

  The trilogy continues with The Heart Surgeon’s Proposal. Passion leads to pregnancy for anesthetist Maggie, and a practical proposal from surgeon Phil. But Maggie won’t accept a loveless marriage, and Phil finds himself having to persuade her….

  JIMMIE’S CHILDREN’S UNIT…

  where hearts are mended!

  The Heart Surgeon’s Proposal

  Meredith Webber

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  PHILIP PARK, paediatric surgical fellow of some standing and reputation, folded himself into the seat in the small, dingy space behind the pilot. The stuffiness in his head told him he’d spent far too long breathing recycled cigarette smoke in a club the previous evening, having refused to leave before a certain mini-skirted colleague had departed. And gritty eyes reminded him of the mostly sleepless night he’d spent wondering why this same colleague had accepted a lift home with one of those big bronzed Aussies that seemed to hang around all the beaches, and not with neat, clean, though fairly white-skinned, very English Phil!

  So now he felt gnarly and out of sorts and totally irritated at being called out at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning.

  Added to which, he hated flying, hated small planes, hated retrievals—in fact, right now, he couldn’t think of anything much he didn’t hate.

  He didn’t hate his job. In fact, his job excited him more than any woman ever had.

  Didn’t really hate retrievals…

  ‘You all saddled up back there?’ the pilot asked. He was one of a group that called themselves, unbelievably, the Flying Marvels. They offered the planes and services as pilots, free of charge, to fly sick children from country areas to the city for treatment. They also donated their planes, time and piloting skills when organs became available for transplants and no government plane was available.

  But in spite of the man’s worthiness, Phil found himself scowling at the back of the man’s head. Top of his hate list were cheery pilots! This one would probably say ‘Up, up and away’ as he took off.

  ‘Up, up and away,’ the pilot said minutes later, and Phil had to laugh, amusement easing his grumpiness, though not the tension knotting his stomach—tension in part due to the flight but also, he knew, building up because of what lay ahead.

  Think of something else, he told himself, and almost as if he’d snapped a switch an image of a petite brunette slipped onto a screen in his mind.

  Maggie Walsh!

  Because thinking about Maggie was infinitely preferable to thinking about sudden death if this flying sardine can plummeted to earth, or thinking about the task awaiting him if they survived the journey, he trawled through his mind for the moment when taking Maggie Walsh to bed had seemed like an excellent idea.

  He’d taken little enough notice of her—as a woman, not a doctor—six months ago when she’d been appointed as the anaesthetist on their team. She was a calm, quiet, very professional anaesthetist, so focussed on her work that although his male mind had registered the additional words ‘attractive brunette’, he had ignored them.

  Then, a couple of times, when the surgical team had spent social time together, he’d seen another side of Maggie. Freed of the restraints of Theatre—and of ‘hospital’ clothes—she’d metamorphosed into a sexy, boot-wearing party girl. Not a drinker, or outrageous in her social behaviour, just a woman who enjoyed going out and dancing the night away.

  In truth, the change had kind of spooked him and he’d found himself studying her more closely in Theatre and around the hospital, wondering which was the real Maggie Walsh.

  That had been OK. It hadn’t affected his work or anything, and he didn’t think Maggie had known he was puzzled—attracted?—by her other self.

  Until two nights ago, when something had happened between them—something so totally unexpected he was still finding it hard to believe. It hadn’t been entirely his fault because late that night, in the privacy of her bedroom, Maggie’s hands had been as desperate in stripping his clothes off as his had been stripping hers!

  But it was the aftermath of that encounter—could mind-blowing sex be described baldly as an encounter?—that needed consideration.

  Firstly, there was the weird feeling he’d had when he’d woken in the night to find Maggie’s small but curvy body tucked up against his. Protective: that was how he’d felt, the sensation so alien to his usual feelings and moods he’d searched his mind for another description.

  But, no, protective stuck.

  Then, maybe because of the protective sensation, he’d reacted badly, retreating from further intimacy with her by flirting outrageously with Annie the following night—last night.

  Not that Maggie had seemed to mind, giving him the impression that what had happened between them had meant nothing to her either.

  Another image of Maggie flashed into his mind. Not the quiet, efficient anaesthetist he saw every day in Theatre, but a pocket-siren in a red miniskirt, black lacy top and shiny red boots!

  Maggie dressed to go out last night…

  He must have groaned for both Kurt and the Flying Marvel turned.

  ‘You OK?’ the Flying Marvel asked. ‘Sick bag in the pocket on the back of my seat.’

  Phil glared at the pilot then reminded himself they were in his hands, so he couldn’t wish any bad luck on the man. Seeking diversion from his Maggie thoughts, he looked at Kurt, sitting beside the pilot, his attention now refocussed on the Western he was reading. The man was one of the best operators Phil had ever seen on a heart-lung bypass machine, but as a conversationalist—well, one might as well talk to one of the machines he operated.

  But thinking of the heart-lung machine reminded him of why they were flying from Sydney to Brisbane—reminded him of work.

  Enough avoidance tactics! Time to seriously consider what lay ahead.

  Waiting for them up in Brisbane was a SIDS baby—an infant who had died from sudden infant death syndrome.

  Phil’s heart went out to the parents of this unknown infant, grieving for a beloved baby, yet still finding in their hearts the ultimate generosity to donate the baby’s organs so other infants might have a chance to live full and useful lives.

  He would be but one surgeon in Theatre tonight—he and Kurt working together to take the baby’s hea
rt for a little girl who would otherwise die. Then, with the precious organ packed in a slush of ice, they’d fly back with it to Sydney.

  Think of the procedure, he told himself, and a picture of a small healthy infant heart came up in his mind. Mentally he rehearsed how he’d operate to remove it with the aortic arch intact, so he and Alex Attwood, his boss and team leader at the new cardiac surgery unit at St James’s Hospital, could attach it to the vessels in Amy Carter’s tiny chest.

  ‘It’s your heart, you do it!’

  Back at Jimmie’s in Sydney some hours later, Phil heard the words but at first didn’t understand them. He’d only been in Theatre a matter of minutes, moving into the first assistant’s position to help Alex as he carefully removed Amy’s defective heart.

  Now adrenalin surged through him.

  ‘Me? Do it? Do the transplant?’

  ‘Come on, man, we don’t want her on bypass any longer than necessary!’

  Alex’s order was curt, as well it might have been, and Phil responded as much to the tone of voice as to the words. He changed places with Alex, moving in beside Rachel, the American theatre sister they’d brought, with Kurt, from the States, and his hands went through a routine he’d seen a dozen times but had never done as the lead surgeon in an operation.

  ‘Sats are good,’ Maggie said, and her presence and quiet voice gave him added confidence. This was just another op, only he, not Alex, was the lead.

  His fingers working surely in the cooled body, he inserted tiny stitches, sewing Amy’s arteries and veins into place in the new heart. Each stitch had to be spaced with care, so the pressure of blood being pumped through her body wouldn’t force them apart. Kurt counted off the time since Amy’s heart had been removed and Maggie’s regular reports reminded him how long she’d been unconscious, and how her body was standing up to the bypass machine. Blood values told them Amy was OK, but the real test would come after the operation.

  Then the new heart was stimulated with drugs and the silence in Theatre became absolute as they all waited to see if it would beat—and if the carefully stitched veins and arteries would hold.

  ‘Yay!’

  The cheer went up from Rachel, the first to see the rhythmic movement of the heart muscles as they squeezed blood from the atria to the ventricles and out into the arteries.

  ‘Well done,’ Alex said quietly, and Phil felt his knees turn to jelly with relief, though as he’d worked he hadn’t been aware of the terrible tension building up in his body. He glanced involuntarily towards Maggie. Hoping for her praise as well?

  Whatever!

  It didn’t happen. She was watching the screen of the monitor, oblivious to his presence—or his need for reassurance.

  Forget Maggie and concentrate on Amy!

  ‘Should I close her chest or use a patch?’ he asked Alex, knowing there was a likelihood of the new heart swelling in protest to the trauma it had undergone.

  ‘She’s got such a small thoracic cavity I’d use the patch,’ Alex said, and Rachel nodded to the circulating nurse to pass over one of the sealed envelopes, each holding a fine silicone rubber patch.

  Across from him, Alex was explaining to Scott Douglas, the surgical registrar assisting, that the patch would keep the wound sterile while maximising the space inside Amy’s chest.

  ‘In a couple of days,’ Alex added, as Phil sewed the thin filmy material meticulously into place, ‘we’ll operate again to remove the patch and close Amy’s chest.’

  Inserting the final stitch, overseeing the taping of the drains and tubes and wires attached to Amy’s tiny body—it all took time, but finally they were done.

  ‘I’ll take her into the PICU,’ Maggie said, and Phil, who was feeling so elated to have successfully completed the op, wondered how she could possibly be so calm.

  ‘Because I have to be,’ she told him later, when, with an intensivist watching their charge, he persuaded her to go down to the canteen for lunch—a colleague-with-colleague lunch. ‘I know you and Alex are exceptional surgeons, but even with you two there, things can go wrong, and while everyone else is cursing and swearing—and don’t bother telling me you don’t—someone has to remain calm.’

  Her lips teased into a smile, and he remembered how that same teasing smile had set him on fire as they’d danced at the club.

  It still set him on fire, although a hospital corridor was a most inappropriate place to be feeling lusty heat for a colleague. Not that he intended acting on it. He avoided relationships with close colleagues—too much fall-out when things ended!

  He put his arm behind her back to guide her into the lift and looked at her, a small, pretty woman, with dark hair and even darker eyes, velvety dark—night sky in a hospital lift…

  ‘First transplant I’ve been part of so the first time I’ve seen a skin patch used on a baby. Do you always use one in transplants?’

  As he usually had a post-op high himself, he understood why she’d be thinking about Amy, but he still felt a twinge of disappointment that the matter in the forefront of his mind right now—the night they’d spent together—had no place at all in hers.

  He shook his head, hoping to clear it of wayward thoughts, and the velvet brown eyes looked puzzled.

  ‘You don’t know? But you worked so surely, and confidently, and calmly, and competently in there, I thought you must have done plenty of transplants. I was terrified—shaking like a leaf—although I kept telling myself it was just another op. It seems so—so omnipotent somehow!’

  Phil smiled at her choice of words.

  ‘Don’t go saying things like that to Alexander the Great,’ he teased. ‘He’s already given god-like status by most of his patients’ parents.’

  He paused, gathering his thoughts, telling himself it was good to be with Maggie, even if they were only talking work.

  ‘It’s not omnipotence, just good surgical work. If you think of the advances in medicine in the last century—especially in your field—you realise it’s the researchers who should get all the praise. The people who made anaesthesia safer, or who went before us in surgical fields, developing techniques, working out how to keep a patient alive on a bypass machine—these are the ones who need the praise. We’re just good technicians, following paths others forged for us.’

  The lift had stopped, but before stepping out Maggie smiled at him.

  ‘Super-duper technicians,’ she said, and Phil felt a little hitch in the region of his heart.

  It must be post-op excitement kicking in.

  Couldn’t possibly be to do with Maggie’s smile.

  He didn’t do heart hitches where women were concerned.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Six weeks later

  ‘SO, YOU see, Min, given what happened between Maggie and me that one night, it’s going to be awkward to say the least with her living here.’

  So much had happened in the interim. Amy, the little girl on whom Phil had done the transplant, had thrown up every complication known to man, and some not known ones as well; then Annie, their unit manager, had been shot, leading to the revelation that Alex, his boss and landlord, was madly in love with her, and the two were getting married. With the drama and wedding preparations on top of their usual heavy workload, there’d been no time for socialising for any members of the team.

  ‘It’s been chaotic, Min.’

  He scratched the tummy of the little bundle of black curls nestled on his lap and smiled at the sympathetic glance the soft brown eyes of Alex’s dog cast his way. Though maybe the look was a ‘keep scratching’ look, not one of sympathy, as Minnie was now pushing one paw against his hand in a ‘don’t stop now’ kind of way.

  ‘I have to stop,’ Phil told her, setting her back down on the floor. ‘That was a car pulling up out the back and I’ve got to do the right thing and welcome Maggie to her new home. Carry suitcases, act the part of the genial host.’

  Phil stood up, straightened his shoulders and rehearsed his best welcoming smile. Even without
a mirror in the room, he knew it was a poor effort. He’d never felt less welcoming.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ he muttered as he made his way through the house towards the back door. ‘I’m thirty-four years old, a surgical fellow to one of the best paediatric heart surgeons in the world, a noted wooer and winner of women, housebroken to the extent I can clean and cook, well off, a good catch, as they say, and a little snip of an anaesthetist has got me flummoxed.’

  Minnie, capering gaily around his feet, probably didn’t understand the word ‘flummoxed’, and she certainly didn’t understand that while they were intending to be politely welcoming, they weren’t going to exhibit any signs of hysterical delight over Maggie moving in.

  The moment Phil opened the door she was racing across the back yard to leap and cavort around Maggie’s feet—literally dancing with excitement at the arrival of the new housemate.

  ‘I’ll get the rest,’ Phil offered, as Maggie, with a backpack slung across one shoulder, towed a mediumsized red suitcase along the path to the back door.

  ‘There is no rest,’ she said.

  ‘No rest? You’ve fitted all your clothes and four pairs of boots into that case? And don’t tell me you don’t have four pairs of boots, I’ve seen you in at least that many. The black ones you wore to the wedding yesterday, a brown pair you had on one weekend when I saw you at the hospital, another pair that look like snakeskin you were wearing when you went out with that juvenile intensivist in Melbourne, and the red ones you wore to the nightclub with Annie!’

  Maggie stopped wheeling and laughed, little lines crinkling the corners of her usually serious dark eyes.

  ‘Philip Park! Do you have a shoe fetish that you remember all my boots?’ She shifted her attention from him to the dog. ‘Oh, dear, Minnie, what have I got myself into here?’

  See! Phil wanted to say to the same dog. See what I have to put up with from her! But Minnie had obviously gone all female and would undoubtedly side with Maggie.

  ‘Actually, I shifted the rest of my stuff in before Alex and Annie’s wedding,’ Maggie continued, moving again, the suitcase and the dog now following her. ‘Alex cleared all his things out of his room so I could start unpacking. Last weekend. Alex insisted you take time off and you flew up to the Gold Coast with Becky, didn’t you?’