The Heart Surgeon's Proposal

by Meredith Webber

  ‘I flew up to the Gold Coast, but not, if you must know, with Becky,’ Phil muttered, wondering why things this woman said pushed his buttons when someone else saying them wouldn’t affect him at all.

  ‘Some other blonde, then?’ Maggie said blithely, reaching the kitchen and snapping the towing handle of her case back into place, then bending to lift it.

  Fuming over the ‘blonde’ dig, but not forgetful of his manners, Phil reached to take it from her and nearly knocked her over, recovering quickly enough to grab her arm to steady her.

  ‘Sorry! Don’t usually send new housemates flying as a way of introduction.’

  And don’t touch her again, he added to himself, as the awareness he was trying to keep at bay flared through his body.

  Maggie looked into his blue eyes, wondering where the smile that usually lurked there had gone.

  Just as well it had. Living with Phil was going to be bad enough, but it would be infinitely harder if he’d kept smiling and twinkling those devastating eyes in her direction.

  Why on earth had she agreed to this crazy scheme?

  So the newlyweds Alex and Annie could have some privacy at Annie’s place—that was why, she reminded herself.

  ‘I’ll carry this upstairs for you,’ Phil said, and Maggie stepped back, determined not to have any more physical contact between them, no matter how accidental it might be.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She followed him up the stairs, her eyes taking note of the set of his shoulders, of the lithe way he moved, her body remembering other movements, her head repeating a sharp refrain—madness, madness, madness—because that’s what moving in with Phil was. Total and utter madness!

  Especially now.

  Especially with what was in the case he carried, though she knew taking a second pregnancy test was useless. It would show exactly what the first one had—that she was carrying Phil’s baby.

  Some of the cocktail of fear, despair, excitement, trepidation and confusion inside her must have escaped in an involuntary cry, for Phil reached the top of the stairs and turned.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine, just fine,’ she said, and indeed she was.

  Physically fine.

  Mentally she was almost deranged with thinking about it. About being pregnant!

  Again!

  Would it be all right this time?

  She tamped down the now-familiar flutter of fear, and told herself fretting over how it had happened when Phil had used protection was pointless.

  It had happened but, given her previous miscarriages—back when she’d been married to Jack—was she likely to keep it? Have a live baby?

  And if she did, could she juggle work and a baby?

  Time enough to decide what to do—and how to tell Phil—when she’d carried it safely for three months.

  Tell Phil? Hell and damnation—how had it happened?

  ‘There. Is there anything else you need brought up? Do you want time to unpack? We should sit down and talk about household things some time, I suppose. What you like to eat, cooking rosters, shopping, all that stuff. Alex and I did what suited us—if there was no food in the house and I was here, I shopped. It worked most of the time, but you might like something more structured. Mrs Hobbs, the cleaning lady, comes on Thursdays, and she puts on loads of washing and comes back Friday mornings to iron.’

  Phil was looking over Maggie’s shoulder, out through the front window, as he imparted this information and Maggie realised he probably felt as awkward about the night they’d spent together as she did.

  Well, not quite as awkward, given the baby, but perhaps she should clear the air.

  She took a deep breath and started right in.

  ‘Look, Phil, with Annie being shot, Alex going out of his mind with worry and the resulting pressure of extra work at the hospital, we haven’t had much chance to talk to each other about that night. But we can’t go on pretending what happened didn’t happen. It did, and I enjoyed it and have no regrets—’ well, maybe one which he didn’t need to know about—yet! ‘—but we’re going to be living together and we need to move on.’

  ‘That’s it?’ he said. ‘We need to move on? That’s all it meant to you?’ He was practically yelling the words at her.

  Oh, dear! Now she’d hurt his ego, or whatever part of a man’s mental make-up was attached to his sexual prowess. But she could hardly tell him that it had been like all her dreams coming true, that she’d been attracted to him from the first time they’d met six months ago—not when he had no idea how she felt about him and when he certainly wasn’t even part way to falling in love with her.

  Not when he usually took no more notice of her than he did of the furniture in their suite of rooms at work.

  ‘Phil, we went out to dinner in a group, went on from there to a club and danced, got worked up and, being consenting adults, fell lustily into bed together. What was it meant to mean?’

  Huge frown from Phil.

  ‘Something more than it did to you, obviously,’ he growled, adding under his breath, ‘Fell lustily into bed! Move on!’

  ‘But you can’t make it more than it was,’ she protested. ‘It wasn’t as if you’d been chasing me around the hospital corridors since we first met, or that we’d been dating and it was the next step in a relationship. It happened, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all!’ he muttered, echoing her words but not the placating way she’d said them. Then he stalked out of her bedroom and clumped down the stairs, apparently meeting Minnie on the way for she heard him grumbling away to someone.

  Realising her legs had become a little shaky, Maggie made her way to the bed and sank down on it.

  Had she made a mistake, bringing up the subject at all? Or was it her minimising it—surely the only option, considering they’d be living together—that had upset Phil?

  No answer to either question sprang to mind, so she stood up and crossed to her suitcase, unpacking it, putting clothes away, finding the new packet from the chemist and setting it down in the en suite bathroom. Then, because she wanted to leave it another week before she did a second test, and remembering the cleaning lady, she put it in the cupboard under the basin.

  Another deep breath and it was time to go downstairs and join him. Time to discuss shopping and cooking, and pretend this was a normal house-sharing arrangement between two colleagues.

  Yeah, right!

  Phil heard the floor creak as she moved about upstairs, and reminded himself that at least she wasn’t wearing boots. His libido was already running amok where Maggie was concerned, but had she been wearing the red numbers, he’d find it even harder to restrain himself from ravishing her right here on the kitchen table.

  Though why he still wanted to, he had no idea.

  Cool as a cucumber, she’d brushed him off. About the only thing she hadn’t said to destroy his self-confidence had been that the sex had been forgettable. Although ‘enjoyed it’ was hardly high praise.

  Probably next to forgettable, come to think about it.

  ‘Pathetic, that’s what it is, Minnie,’ he complained to the dog who, missing Alex, had once again found her way onto his lap. ‘It’s not as if my self-worth and self-confidence are tied to my sexual prowess!’

  Footsteps on the stairs—get a grip! They were house-sharing colleagues.

  She breezed in and bent to pat Minnie, who’d leapt off his knee to greet her then settled at the other side of the table, though not far enough away for him to avoid the faint hint of perfume that seemed the only thing common to the two Maggies.

  ‘Lilacs!’ he said, and knew from her questioning glance she had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘The perfume you wear. I’ve been wondering for months what it reminded me of and it just struck me. Lilacs flowering in the garden at home. You notice the perfume most at night when it seems to scent the air all over the property.’

  ‘Do you miss home?’

  The question startled him, but not nearl
y as much as the look of genuine interest and concern on Maggie’s face.

  If she but knew!

  ‘Not really,’ he said, then something prompted him to add, ‘I’m not quite sure where home is—in a permanent sense.’

  ‘But home is where you grew up, surely!’ A puzzled frown accompanied the words. ‘I haven’t lived at home for years, not in the house where I grew up, but it will always be home to me. Though I guess home is more a concept—a “whole-of-family” kind of thing.’

  ‘Yes, well, family’s nearly as alien to me as home.’ Phil stood up and moved to fill the kettle, hoping his curt tone and his movement would be enough to signal the conversation was at an end.

  ‘Alien? In what way?’

  Persistence in a small package!

  He could ignore her, but he had a feeling she’d just keep asking, so he sighed, rested his hands on the sink and looked out the kitchen window as he replied.

  ‘I’m not sure about the concept of home, Mags, because I grew up in a house. It might have had beautiful gardens and lilacs that bloomed in spring, nannies, servants, horses, dogs and cats, but it was a house, not a home. I had a brother, a sister, a mother and a father—I have all but the father still, though his death made little difference, he was never there—and even now, when my mother writes dutifully once a week, she says things like, “Your brother has a new car, your grandfather kicked the cat.” No one has a name and surely in homes, people have names.’

  ‘Mags! I like that,’ Maggie managed to say, though her chest was filled to overflowing with pity for the man who stood, turned away from her, shoulders bent as he revealed the poverty of his wealthy upbringing. She longed to go to him—to press her body against his back and put her arms around his waist, holding him in silent empathy. But something told her Phil hadn’t shared this information with many people, and was probably already regretting having told her.

  She’d have to be very careful how she treated it.

  And him.

  Especially him. No way could she let pity intrude into her determination to keep him at arm’s length. Her body might shimmy with delight at even the most casual of touches, but embarking on a physical relationship with Phil would make things even more complex than they already were.

  Especially when it would mean nothing more to him than physical pleasure…

  ‘Coffee?’

  Maggie breathed easily again, aware they’d negotiated a very delicate situation and got things back to normal.

  ‘Black, two sugars,’ she said, thinking about her relief, not the content of what she’d said, so she was surprised when he spun towards her.

  ‘Two sugars? You? I know you’re always drinking coffee so, with all the sugar, why don’t you put on weight?’

  His eyes were scanning her body to see where sixteen teaspoons of sugar per day might be showing themselves in unsightly bulges.

  ‘I dance it off,’ she told him. ‘That’s why I’m crazy about going out to clubs where there’s dancing. I tried a gym membership at one time, and did one session. It was the most boring, tedious hour of my life and, believe me, as an anaesthetist I know about boring and tedious. From then on I stuck with dancing.’

  Phil wished with all his heart she hadn’t said that, because it brought back the night they’d danced and danced together, the music and the contact, and though a lot of it had been little more than occasional touches, it had primed them both for love.

  He remembered how she’d felt in his arms—small, and warm, and cuddly in the final, slower dance—and his body, which had been on full alert since Maggie had entered the house, now went into demand mode.

  He concentrated on making coffee, stirred the two spoons of sugar—heaped, so she’d need to dance again—into it, then brought both cups over to the table.

  ‘We’ll put sugar on the shopping list,’ he joked, and wasn’t at all surprised to hear his voice come out exceedingly croaky.

  ‘Do we need a shopping list? Should we shop today?’

  Once again, Phil felt relief. So far things weren’t going too badly. Maggie seemed to have the ability to sail right over the awkward bits, which meant she was either totally insensitive or very adept at putting her fellow man at ease.

  Whichever it was, long may it continue while he was the fellow man in question!

  ‘We should. What with Alex spending most of the last month down at Annie’s place, then the wedding preparations, we’ve done very little shopping and the pantry’s almost bare.’

  Maggie got up and crossed to it, familiar with the layout of the kitchen as she’d been living four doors down in Annie’s house, which had a similar floor plan.

  ‘You’re right,’ she told him, ‘though Minnie either eats an inordinate amount for such a small dog, or every time either of you shopped you bought food for her.’

  Minnie, hearing her name, got up from beneath the table and trotted across to look hopefully up at Maggie.

  ‘Don’t try that soft brown begging eyes stuff on me,’ Maggie said sternly. ‘I bet you have regular mealtimes and a proper amount of food at each. You go begging for food and you’ll get as fat as a fool because you can’t dance it off.’

  The conversation eased a lot of Phil’s tension and by the time he’d explained Minnie’s routine and they’d made out a shopping list, he could almost believe this ‘nothing-more-than-colleagues-sharing-a-house’ pretence he’d engaged in might work.

  ‘I love cooking, so I’m happy to cook if I’m home,’ Maggie offered, and Phil smiled at her.

  ‘Which means I get to stack the dishwasher—I’m good at that.’

  ‘And unstack it,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s part and parcel of the dishwasher job!’

  They were arguing amiably about how to stack dishwashers and whether they’d shop before or after lunch when first his and then Maggie’s pager buzzed.

  ‘Hospital,’ he said, getting up and moving to phone in.

  ‘I’ll change my shoes and be right down,’ Maggie told him. ‘You can fill me in on what’s happening as we walk up the road.’

  She will not be changing into boots, Phil told himself as he rinsed the coffee cups and stacked them on the top shelf—his choice of placement, not Maggie’s—of the dishwasher.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘IT’S a newborn—male—with aortic stenosis,’ Phil began as they walked the short distance to the hospital.

  ‘Narrowing or failure of the aortic valve showing as congestive heart failure and shock?’ Maggie queried, thinking of the symptoms and trying not to think of the wee infant suffering them, or his desperately anxious parents. ‘Did they have pre-warning something was wrong, and what are they doing for him now?’

  ‘Apparently they had no pre-warning. No recent scans to show something might be amiss. The baby was born in a small birthing unit in an outer suburb, and the midwife heard a heart murmur and had the mother and child transferred straight to Jimmie’s. The paediatrician called in a cardiologist, who’s done scans which show the valve problem. He tried a balloon valvuloplasty to open the valves, but it didn’t work.’

  ‘There are probably associated problems,’ Maggie muttered, shaking her head of the enormity of what the little baby was going through. ‘Don’t you usually find ventricular dysfunction—often left ventricle insufficiency—in these cases?’

  ‘Yes, and the real problem is that surgery to correct aortic valves—’

  He stopped, and Maggie, sensing something big lay beyond the beginning of the sentence, didn’t press for more while he was thinking things through, but she wondered just what he hadn’t said.

  She found out a little later, as he argued with the cardiologist.

  ‘I know from what you tell me the case is urgent, but every study done on AS in neonates shows a far greater chance of success with open surgery for valve repair in infants over one month. Even catheterisation repairs are more effective and last longer if the infant is a little older.’

  ‘I’ve told the
parents you can operate,’ the cardiologist, someone Maggie hadn’t met before, told Phil.

  ‘Before I saw the child? You had no right to do that!’

  ‘No? Seems to me it was the right thing to do, the way you’re acting. I don’t want you near the child at all if all you’re going to do is cause problems.’

  Maggie could sense Phil stiffening, and hear his determination to do the right thing in the way his voice became far more ‘English’, but he was still trying to placate the specialist.

  ‘Look, we can use supportive management on the little chap until he’s older. Prostaglandin to keep the ductus arteriosis open. The right ventricle in a neonate can keep blood flowing adequately through the whole body and newborns can tolerate less oxygen in their blood.’

  ‘I have problems with prolonged use of prostaglandin,’ the cardiologist said in a pompous voice bound to rile his listeners, ‘but if you don’t feel capable of doing the operation, then I suppose we’ll have to try it. At least until your boss returns.’

  He certainly riled Maggie.

  ‘Excuse me!’ she burst out, able to stand the man’s snooty attitude no longer. ‘I’ve been in Theatre when both Dr Attwood and Dr Park have been operating, and if you just watch their hands you could not tell which is which. Both are excellent surgeons with the figures from their successes to back this up. If Dr Park thinks this baby is too young for the surgery you want to inflict on him, he’ll have solid statistics to prove it. You want to give him some figures, Phil?’

  Phil smiled at her, but once again there was no smile lurking in his eyes, and she guessed the man’s slur about waiting for Alex had bitten deep.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that. There are other paediatric cardiac surgeons in town. Dr Ellis might want to consult one of them.’

  ‘I will!’ The angry cardiologist spat the words at them, and strode away.