The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child

by Meredith Webber

  He should have said more—reminded her of India—but she was so totally oblivious and the little boy was claiming pain in his injured hand. So Jean-Luc settled for saying goodbye and watched her scurry back towards the house, head bent as she spoke quietly to her child, the dog they’d called Lucy—surely a female name and it was definitely a male dog—following close behind them, though turning from time to time to check Jean-Luc posed no further danger. The front door opened and all three disappeared inside, the door closing behind them.

  Maybe she was a ghost—the whole episode a figment of his imagination, brought about because he’d been thinking about Lauren and her description of her home town…

  Had she met that man before? Surely not, for how could she have forgotten someone so mesmeric? Tall, dark and handsome he most certainly was, with eyes—were they dark blue or black?—deepset under black brows. Black hair, neatly trimmed, greying slightly at the temples—a cliché surely! Maybe he dyed it grey to look distinguished. If so, he’d certainly achieved his aim! Tanned olive skin, slightly scarred, puckered even in places, stretched across a strongly boned face, while a long straight nose drew the eyes to well-shaped lips.

  Kissable lips!

  Lauren set Joe down on the kitchen table the better to examine his injuries. Kissable lips indeed! What was she thinking?

  And why?

  Because her body had responded to the touch of his hand? Because her skin had tingled when he’d clasped her fingers?

  Of course not! She’d been strung up over seeing Joe in a stranger’s arms—then to hear he’d been injured…

  The tingling had been apprehension…

  It had only happened when he’d touched her.

  She used a clean cloth to wipe the grazes on Joe’s hand and leg, chatting to him, asking about the accident, although her mind was not on Joe’s explanations of the skateboard rider crashing into him but on the man who had rescued her son.

  A stranger.

  Just an ordinary man.

  No! Not in the wildest flights of any woman’s imagination could that man be classed as ordinary.

  Or forgettable—yet she certainly had no recollection of ever having met him.

  ‘Did he say he was a doctor?’ Lauren asked, pushing her memory to bring up some hint of a meeting.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who picked you up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Big help!

  ‘At the hospital?’

  ‘Dunno. Mum, can I go and play?’

  ‘A snack first,’ Lauren said. What was she doing, cross-examining her own child about a man she’d probably never see again? She lifted Joe off the table and sent him to wash his hands.

  Although the man had been walking down the road…

  And most of the houses in the area were hospital houses…

  She shook her head at her own stupidity. As if a man like that would ever look at someone like her, and then there was her track record with men. Most men who took her out were interested right up until the stage they met Joe and realised he was part of the package, after which they disappeared, never to be heard from again.

  She put a glass of milk and a plate of cheese with fruit and vegetable sticks on the table, and settled Joe in front of them. Then she ruffled his hair and bent to kiss the top of his head.

  She’d rather have Joe than a thousand handsome men, although now and then she wondered wistfully about his father. Had his touch made her skin tingle?

  The next morning Jean-Luc stood at the bedroom window of the flat that would be his home for the next six months. It was two doors down from the one where the ghost of Lauren lived—except she wasn’t a ghost, she was real. Even her name, Lauren Henderson, was real.

  It was unbelievable—first that she was alive, and then the coincidence of running into her, although Lauren had been set on a medical career and from what he’d been told most of the houses in the area were home to medical personnel from St James’s Hospital. Jimmie’s, the staff all called it—

  Not what he should be thinking about—nicknames for hospitals. What he had to consider was why he was even thinking about her. So she was alive! She had obviously survived the typhoon though how, when he’d seen photos of the collapsed church and couldn’t imagine anyone surviving beneath the rubble, he didn’t know.

  Was that the accident she’d spoken of? Was the memory loss amnesia?

  Which brought him neatly back to the fact that it didn’t matter. So, an old girlfriend was living two doors away—so what?

  It certainly wasn’t important as far as Lauren was concerned, for she didn’t have a clue who he was.

  And there was no reason why things couldn’t stay that way.

  Except that he’d spent the night tossing and turning in his bed, fragments of their time together returning to haunt his dreams, images of how she looked now intruding into his sleep, which was extremely aggravating.

  And her not remembering him made him feel…not angry but definitely put out.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  The old house in which he was living was hospital property, available for rent by visiting specialists. It was divided into two flats, and Grace Sutherland, the second of the surgical fellows working with Alex Attwood’s team this term, was occupying the other one. She was tapping at his door, as she did most mornings, so they could walk to work together.

  Grace chattered as they walked, talking about Theo, the Greek perfusionist on the surgical team. Was Grace really interested in the mechanics of, and possibilities of improvement to, the heart bypass machine or was her interest more personal? Jean-Luc and Grace had been in Australia less than a week, and had only met the members of the surgical team a couple of days earlier—could she be interested in a man so quickly?

  Women—he would never understand them, and now he no longer tried. He’d already chalked up one failed marriage, and since the end of his engagement to Justine—she’d accused him, perhaps justly, of being more interested in work than he was in her—he had found there were plenty of women who didn’t want to be understood any more than they wanted permanence, women happy to enjoy an affair with no strings attached on either side.

  And if, at times, he felt an emptiness in his life, he knew he had only to return to work—to see the babies and children he treated—and he would feel fulfilled and whole again. There was something in their innocence and trust that allowed him to forget about his relationship failures—forget even his cynicism about life in general. Being with his small patients renewed his determination to provide them all with the best possible chance at life.

  ‘Just being with these children brings me indescribable joy,’ Lauren had once said, talking of the children in the orphanage, and in his head he had often echoed those words, thinking her long gone yet finding comfort and confirmation in them.

  Except she wasn’t long gone—wasn’t dead at all.

  He strode out along the footpath, aware his steps must have slowed as he thought about Lauren, so he was trailing behind Grace who moved with athletic ease.

  ‘Did you leave a beautiful woman behind in France? Is that why you’re dreaming your way up the road?’ Grace asked, stopping at the lights to wait for him to catch up.

  ‘No beautiful woman left behind,’ he told her. ‘No non-beautiful woman either, except, of course, my mother and my grandmother, a brace of aunts and a horde of female cousins.’

  Grace studied him.

  ‘You’re far too good-looking not to have women falling over themselves to be with you, so what’s the story?’

  He had to smile. His new colleague didn’t know the meaning of subtle—all her questions and observations were equally blunt and often intrusive.

  ‘Maybe I’m not interested in women,’ he said, hoping to stop her probing, but she greeted this remark with a laugh, then took his arm to cross the road, the lights now showing green and a crowd hustling all around them.

  ‘The consulting rooms and team-meeting rooms are
above the theatre and PICU,’ Grace reminded him as they went into the big building.

  ‘I remember, but I’ll stop on the floor below and check the babies before I go up,’ he said. ‘I’ve plenty of time.’

  Grace seemed surprised, but checking the babies in his care was always the first thing he did when he entered a hospital. It was more than a habit, because even when he didn’t need to see them to boost his spirits, he felt it centred him—concentrated his mind on his work, and most of all reminded him why he did what he did. So the tiny scraps of humanity on whom they operated would have a chance to live normal, useful, happy lives.

  ‘You do your thing with the babies and I’ll go on ahead,’ Grace told him, her tone of voice and the look she gave him suggesting she was humouring him in some way.

  Well, Grace could think what she liked. He was going to visit the babies!

  Jean-Luc found his way into the PICU, where he spoke to the sister watching the monitor and learned that all the babies in the unit were stable, some doing better than others, but all progressing. He visited each one of them, learning names—Mollie, Jake, Tom—finding himself translating them into the French equivalents because that made them more personal to him. He talked to parents sitting by the cribs, introducing himself to those he hadn’t met before, assuring and reassuring them.

  But always the focus of his attention was the infants, most of whom slept peacefully or watched him pass with wide-open eyes.

  He was leaving one of the single rooms after a quiet chat with the parents of a three-year-old recovering from a septal defect repair when a voice, so familiar he shivered at hearing it, penetrated his consciousness.

  Movement on the far side of the bigger room attracted his attention and he watched as a tall woman in the smock and headscarf of a nurse led a distressed couple out of a door.

  They disappeared from view but now they were outside the room he could hear their voices more clearly.

  ‘But he’s so tiny, how can he survive?’ a woman wailed.

  ‘Because he’s had the best team in Australia operating on him,’ came the confident answer. ‘Yes, it was a traumatic operation for such a tiny baby but, believe me, the men and women in that theatre know their jobs. If anyone can sort out the problems your Jake had with his heart, that lot could. Now all we have to do is get him better.’

  Impossible! Coincidence couldn’t stretch that far. Although his mother always said things happened in threes and here was Lauren alive, number one, then living all but next door, number two, now working in the same unit, number three.

  Impossible!

  Yet this third coincidence—or twist of fate—had shaken him and he went into the small tearoom and sat down for a moment. Could he work with Lauren and not tell her of their shared past?

  All their shared past?

  She had a child and presumably a husband although she was still using her maiden name.

  Lauren married?

  It shouldn’t hurt—it had been ten years…

  And if she’d forgotten him, then surely that was that. No need to tell her, to remind her.

  The idea made him feel extremely uneasy, and digging deep into his confused mind he decided it was pique. He felt upset that she’d forgotten him—betrayed…

  Lauren led Brian and Shelley Appleton out of the PICU and into a small quiet room, one of several set aside for parents. She offered them tea or coffee but Brian was too uptight to do more than wave away the offer with his hand, pacing back and forth in the small space between the four comfortable chairs and the coffee-table.

  Lauren knew she had to try again to calm the man.

  ‘There’s no guarantee he’ll need another operation,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve been reading up on it and know that in some cases children with coarctation of the aorta do need further surgery as they grow, but it doesn’t happen in all cases. The surgeons have removed the narrow part of Jake’s aorta that was causing him problems and rejoined the blood vessel without any difficulty or the need for a man-made tube so the outlook for him is really good.’

  She looked hopefully at Brian, and knew immediately he hadn’t been mollified. Though Shelley had sunk down into one of the armchairs and closed her eyes, as if removing herself from the discussion.

  ‘Except that he’ll have to keep seeing specialists, and he could get endocarditis or even golden staph.’

  ‘Brian!’

  Shelley’s voice held appeal, but beyond that was exhaustion. Lauren shifted her attention.

  ‘Can I get something for you, Shelley? A cup of something or a cold drink, a sandwich?’

  ‘We’ve been living on sandwiches for the last month!’ Brian stormed. ‘What makes you think we’d want more of them?’

  Lauren swallowed a sigh. Baby Jake had been in hospital since his birth a month earlier—of course his parents would be sick of sandwiches. But Shelley obviously needed food, and probably a change of scenery.

  ‘Look,’ Lauren said, touching Brian’s arm to make him stop pacing and look at her. ‘I know you’re upset, and you’ve reason to be, but you’re being too negative about this. You’re also both exhausted, mentally and physically. Why don’t you get out of this place for a while? Go for a walk in the park. Stop in the shade for a hug and a kiss. There’s a terrific Italian restaurant on the other side of the park—get some breakfast there and a cup of real coffee, breathe fresh air, and be thankful young Jake was born in a hospital where there are facilities to treat his condition, and extra thankful he’s got through the operation so well. I’ve spent the last three years in this kind of unit and I’ve never seen a baby come through an op like his as well as he did. So go somewhere and think about yourselves for a change. Think about each other, talk to each other—about yourselves not Jake.’

  Brian stared at her and Lauren wondered if he’d heard a word she’d said, then he grinned, looking about ten years younger, more like his real age, which she knew was thirty.

  ‘A hug and a kiss sounds OK,’ he said, then he turned to his wife. ‘Shell?’

  Shelley smiled, though tiredly, and looked at Lauren, who nodded firmly, mouthing, ‘Go.’

  ‘OK, we’ll take a walk.’

  Shelley stood up and linked her arm through her husband’s.

  ‘But I’m not making any promises about hugs or kisses,’ she added, a real smile this time taking years off her face, too. ‘You’ll look after Jake?’

  ‘As if he were my own,’ Lauren promised, not bothering to add she should have finished her night shift several hours ago. These people had needed her, and though Jake didn’t—he’d have extremely competent nurses watching him—she’d stay, because she’d said she would.

  She watched the Appletons walk towards the lift, then returned to the room which Jake was sharing with two other post-op babies.

  ‘You’re off duty,’ Jasmine Wells, who’d relieved her, reminded her.

  ‘I promised Shelley I’d stay with Jake while they get away from the hospital for a while.’

  ‘As if he’d know whether you were there or not,’ Jasmine scoffed. ‘That kid’s the best sleeper we’ve ever had in here. But if you’re going to watch him, that leaves me free to do the rosters for next week. You OK working nights over the weekend or have you got a hot date with Theo?’

  Lauren smiled.

  ‘I don’t do hot dates,’ she reminded her friend. ‘You know full well the only reason I’ve been seeing Theo from time to time is that he’s been trying to persuade me to go to the States and do a perfusionist’s course. He keeps pulling info off the internet for me.’

  She paused then added, ‘And I have to admit I’m tempted. However, it would mean such a change, and uprooting Joe, not only from school but from all the other activities he enjoys.’

  ‘He’d adapt,’ Jasmine said. ‘You know he would. In fact, he’d probably love it, especially if you could get into a school close to one of the Disneylands. Think about that! Then think about all those gorgeous American doctors
we see on TV—think about them.’

  ‘Go and do the rosters,’ Lauren said, waving her hand to chase Jasmine away, afraid if they kept talking she’d admit just how much she wanted to do the course. Well, not how much she wanted to do the course as such, but how much she wanted a change in her life.

  Now she did sigh, but baby Jake didn’t notice, and, having let go of a little frustration with the release of air, she shook off the vague feeling of depression that had been hovering around her lately. It was Jasmine’s fault. Only two weeks ago she’d announced her engagement, while the week before Becky, the unit secretary, had decided on a wedding date. It felt to Lauren as if the love fairy was back at work, not only in the hospital but right here in the unit. Last year it had touched the lives of three couples connected with the unit and now it was back, the malicious imp, sprinkling love dust willy-nilly.

  Thankfully none had landed on her.

  Her fingers tingled and she remembered the man who’d shaken her hand the previous afternoon.

  ‘As if!’ she muttered to herself, knowing such a man was probably married with two point four children, and even if he wasn’t, why would he be interested in her? And then there was Joe.

  So she was thankful the love dust had missed her.

  Of course she was. She nodded confirmation of this to the sleeping Jake. If thinking about studying in the US was causing her major confusion, how much more confusion would love cause?

  She gave the baby a wistful smile.

  It would have been nice to have remembered love…

  Then love was forgotten as she realised all was not well with Jake. A swelling on his hand where a cannula was sited suggested his vein had collapsed. She pressed the help button, knowing whoever was manning the central monitor would call a doctor, and began to disconnect Jake’s leads from the monitor.