The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child

by Meredith Webber

  She would be the monitor while she took him through to the procedures room—to the machine responsible for seeing he kept breathing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JEAN-LUC was leaving the unit, his mind on coincidence and betrayal, when he all but collided with the crib a nurse—the nurse—was pushing out the door.

  ‘Good grief, you’re the doctor who rescued Joe! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘So your memory’s not all that bad,’ he snapped, as the pique he’d been feeling since she’d failed to recognise him surfaced. ‘I’m one of the new visiting surgeons on Alex Attwood’s team.’

  He tapped the ID that was clipped onto his belt.

  ‘Thank heavens—just who I need,’ Lauren said, ignoring his jibe and smiling happily. ‘You do seem to have the knack of being in the right place at the right time. Jake’s vein’s collapsed and he’ll need a new catheter put in. I’m just taking him through to the procedure room. I’ve asked Jasmine to put out a call for a doctor, but as you’re here, you can do it.’

  She manoeuvred the crib into the small room and, though busy reattaching monitor leads to the monitor in there, she continued talking.

  ‘It would happen when I’ve sent his parents away from the hospital for the first time since he was born!’

  Although he knew a collapsed vein wasn’t life-threatening, Jean-Luc’s training kicked in and he washed his hands then bent over the infant, checking his size, seeing the chest scar of a recent operation.

  ‘Fill me in.’

  Lauren was unwrapping a fine-bore cannula, but she responded to his abrupt order without pause. A good nurse…

  ‘Jake Appleton, coarctation of the aorta. Phil caught the case. He tried prostaglandin to keep the ductus arteriosis open, heart medication, diuretics, but Jake continued to suffer congestive heart failure. Cardiac catheterisation with balloon angioplasty to widen the aorta didn’t work and in the end Phil had to operate to remove the narrowed section. Jake’s been doing well, until this.’

  Lauren stepped back, but although her eyes should have been on Jake she found she was now studying the doctor who bent over him, his hands firm but gentle as he lifted Jake’s limbs, searching for a viable vein in the baby’s already over-taxed and-treated body. Every touch assured her this man not only knew what he was doing but had an instinctive rapport with his little patients.

  She couldn’t possibly have met him before. His eyes were blue, she knew that now, while as for the rest of his face—well, further scrutiny confirmed the opinion she’d formed yesterday. He was definitely unforgettable!

  So presumably she’d met him as Alex had taken him through the unit on a guided tour of some kind. Lauren was aware there were two new staff members, one French—this one, from the accent that curled around his words—the other from South Africa. Both would be working in the unit for six months, improving their skills and no doubt passing on their own expertise to Alex and Phil’s surgical teams.

  ‘Problems?’

  Phil Park, the head of the second surgical team, arrived but Lauren could see the new doctor had already sited the cannula and was reattaching the drip.

  ‘Collapsed vein,’ Lauren said to Phil. ‘I could see the fluid leaking out beneath his skin. Dr…’

  She looked from the man, still bent over Jake, to Phil, then back to the man.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

  The newcomer muttered something under his breath and Lauren, who talked quietly to her charges all the time, assumed he was speaking to Jake. She turned to Phil, who answered for her.

  ‘Fournier,’ he said. ‘Jean-Luc Fournier. Actually, you’ll probably be seeing him around as he and Dr Sutherland, the South African surgeon who is also joining us, will be living near you in the flats at Number 26.’

  Satisfied the cannula was sited safely, Jean-Luc had remained bent over the baby, wanting to see the fluid flowing again before he was one hundred per cent certain. With babies’ tiny veins…

  But as Phil said his name, Jean-Luc looked up, interested in Lauren’s reaction—hoping to see shame that she hadn’t recognised him the previous day, perhaps guilt that she hadn’t been in touch with him after the typhoon—wanting to see something!

  Anything!

  But the green-brown eyes that met his held no hint of embarrassed recollection, just politeness as she nodded.

  ‘Ah, that explains it,’ she said, then turned her attention back to Phil. ‘I met Dr Fournier yesterday—he rescued Joe when he was knocked over on the footpath.’

  To Jean-Luc she added, ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue so promptly.’ She smiled. ‘Again!’

  Jean-Luc felt his body respond to that smile and knew that responding to her was even more impossible than finding her. How could this be after ten years?

  Was it leftover lust?

  Not a thought he could pursue when Phil was talking to him, thanking him for stepping in.

  ‘You’ll be a useful chap to have around,’ Phil finished, waving his hand for Jean-Luc to precede him out of the room.

  Jean-Luc swung back towards Lauren, but she was once again fiddling with monitor leads, no doubt detaching them preparatory to taking the infant back to the PICU.

  Who was she now?

  And why was he wondering?

  She was married, with a child—end of story!

  Or was it?

  Surely something of the woman he had fallen so deeply and desperately in love with still lingered within her.

  His thoughts left him so unsettled he wanted to go back in and look at the babies in the unit but he was expected upstairs.

  Consultations awaited…

  Had some of the love dust landed on her after all that she was going weak-kneed whenever the new surgeon was around? Lauren wheeled Jake back into the big room and reattached his monitor leads, thankful Shelley and Brian had missed the little drama, forcing herself to think of them, not of blue eyes that had looked, almost angrily, into hers.

  No, she had to be imagining the anger. He couldn’t possibly be angry that she didn’t remember some chance meeting they’d had earlier, although it could only have been within the last few days—the new team members hadn’t been here all that long.

  And her memory wasn’t usually that bad!

  It was a puzzle but not one she needed to bother with right now. Although the image of possibly angry blue eyes lingered in her mind and she was distracted as she listened to Brian and Shelley thank her for sending them away, the walk, Brian assured her, having done them both the world of good. Now he would sit with Jake while Shelley had a sleep, and Lauren could go home to sleep herself—No, she couldn’t! It was consultation day. She had to sit in on Alex’s consultations before she could go anywhere.

  She sighed but hurried through to the locker rooms to have a wash and run a brush through her hair, which had been knotted up under the scarf all night. Her face was pale and she smeared some lipstick on her lips then put some on her finger and rubbed it into her cheeks. It didn’t help much but she looked less ghostly and hopefully more proficient. Alex insisted on at least one member of the nursing staff sitting in on pre-op consultations because he believed the parents were more confident if they already knew the nurses who would be caring for their infant or child. But seeing a colourless ghost might make them less, not more at ease…

  ‘I’m just explaining to Jean-Luc why we have a nurse sitting in,’ Alex said, as she met up with him and the Frenchman outside the door of his consulting room.

  ‘As well as being reassuring for the parents,’ Alex continued, ‘it helps that the nurse—Lauren in this case—knows exactly what we intend to do in the operation. The parents never take it all in at once, it’s just too much for them, and we’ve found, prior to an op, they are so strung up that they forget what they do take in, so if the nurse can explain to them afterwards, or at least answer their questions, things go a lot more smoothly.’

  ‘For the parents,’ Lauren explained. ‘The
y are such an important part of the equation and if they have to wait to see a doctor to ask their questions, then the doctors get overworked and the parents get over-anxious and the situation becomes fraught.’

  Could she really not remember him?

  How would she react if he said India?

  Jean-Luc knew he should be concentrating on what he was being told, not on the lack of recognition in the beautiful eyes that met his so trustingly.

  ‘It is so sensible, the idea of the nurse sitting in, I am surprised other places do not do it,’ he managed, glad he could be honest—it was a good idea—even though he was distracted.

  ‘Coffee first,’ Alex declared. ‘While we drink we’ll run through the list of patients we’ll be seeing this morning so you both have some idea of what lies ahead. Lauren, I know you’re white with one. Jean-Luc, how do you take your coffee?’

  ‘Straight black, no sugar,’ Jean-Luc replied, then was surprised when Alex left the comfortable consulting room.

  ‘He will get the coffee himself?’ Jean-Luc asked Lauren, who grinned at him in reply.

  ‘Not used to men getting the coffee?’ she teased, the smile still playing around her soft lips.

  Jean-Luc shrugged, too busy watching the smile and fighting his reaction to it—not leftover lust at all, but attraction, still alive and well—to answer.

  ‘Actually,’ Lauren continued, ‘he’ll go to the reception desk out front, pick up his pile of case files and ask Becky, the unit secretary, to organise some coffee.’

  ‘Ah!’

  The man smiled and Lauren felt a totally inappropriate response. It was deep down in her belly and it felt shivery and hot at the same time, then shock that she could react to something as innocuous as a stranger’s smile rushed through her.

  Jasmine had a theory that unused emotions and responses grew slack and lazy, like unused muscles. It was a theory she’d propounded often to Lauren, urging her to go out more, to find a man to have a bit of fun with—even sex. ‘Because sex is just so good for you—for your general well-being and for your skin—it makes you glow,’ Jasmine would usually add, glowing herself because obviously her sex life was very satisfactory.

  But Jasmine’s theory must be wrong, because there was nothing slack or lazy about the response in Lauren’s belly. Or in the way her skin heated, and the tiny hairs on her forearms prickled with awareness…

  Jean-Luc saw colour rise in her cheeks, barely visible beneath the freckled olive skin, but there, nonetheless.

  Did she remember him?

  But, if so, why deny it?

  Because she was now married to Joe’s father—that would be the most likely explanation—and having a lover from the past come back into her life would be awkward.

  Except that awkward wasn’t the vibe he was getting from her. Anxiety, yes, as if he worried her in some way, but not the way an old lover would.

  Although they were alone together, so surely this was the time—

  ‘You really don’t remember me.’

  He cursed himself the instant he’d said it, hearing it like an accusation, although he hadn’t intended it to be.

  She frowned at him, genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Did we meet properly before yesterday?’ she asked, and he felt his lips tighten and a frown drag his eyebrows together.

  ‘I’m not talking about recent meetings,’ he growled, then regretted his stupid anger—he couldn’t make her remember—as she looked upset.

  The soft, full lips spread to a hesitant smile. ‘Have you been to Australia before? I know I’ve never been to France.’

  Her bewilderment was genuine—he had no doubt about that—and hurt pride brought anger in its train.

  ‘Not France—India,’ he said, far too abruptly, then caught her arm as the flush faded from beneath her skin and she seemed to stagger. She steadied herself, withdrew a little so he was no longer touching her, and her dark hazel eyes met his with a mix of apprehension and entreaty.

  ‘You were in India? You met me at St Catherine’s?’

  The words were little more than a hushed whisper, but the desperation he heard in them was reflected in her eyes.

  Why?

  Was the memory of India—whatever memory she did have—so horrific? Of course it would be! His own memory of the typhoon was confused, disjointed, then blurred by pain, but she, who’d been buried alive…

  ‘Did you—?’

  The whispered words had barely left her lips when Alex strode back into the room.

  ‘Coffee’s on the way and the first patient is in fifteen minutes so we’ll skip quickly through these files while we drink it.’ He dropped the files on his desk, and pulled two chairs close to it so they could all see the records as he leafed through them.

  ‘Alex, I—’ Lauren began, then she shook her head and added, ‘The files, of course. Let’s get on with them.’

  But she shot another look in Jean-Luc’s direction, a searching look that turned to despair before she shook her head again and dropped into one of the chairs by Alex’s desk.

  Jean-Luc took the other chair, too close to Lauren, so he was conscious of the tension in her body and of her attempts to relax, breathing deeply, holding her hands clasped tightly in her lap to still their trembling.

  Once she had trembled in his arms, but this reaction—this was pain or fear or something else he couldn’t understand.

  He cursed himself for upsetting her so badly at the beginning of a working day, but why was she so upset?

  ‘Sorry, Alex, I know I’ve got to stop blaming jet-lag but I was distracted again. Would you please tell me the child’s name once more?’

  Jean-Luc forced himself to set all thoughts of the past aside and concentrate on what Alex was saying—after all, these would be his patients very shortly. An operation was only the beginning of some children’s relationship with their cardiac surgeon—follow-up visits might go on for years.

  ‘Cain Cardella. He was brought to the hospital with aortic stenosis. A balloon catheterisation at the regional hospital failed and we did an open-heart op to repair the aortic valve. There were complications with his coronary artery as well, but he came through the op well and now he’s back for a twelve-month check-up.’

  Alex passed the file to Jean-Luc, who opened it and began to read, surprised to see that the ‘complications’ Alex had spoken of so casually had been quite complex, with the left coronary artery having to be repositioned.

  ‘It was quite a long operation,’ Alex said, apparently reading Jean-Luc’s surprise. ‘Very tricky, but as you will see, Cain’s done surprisingly well.’

  Coffee arrived and the three of them continued to work through the patient files, Alex giving Jean-Luc a précis of each patient’s problem while Lauren added information about the families of the children.

  ‘Now, this one,’ Alex said, when they’d reached the final file, ‘will be yours. Unless Annie has the baby early, I’ll still be here, but I’ve been reading of your success with the latest septal occluder. We’ve never used this particular device so we’d all like to see how you use it and to learn why you prefer it. We’ll discuss it further at a full unit meeting prior to the op, but for now the patient, Jeremy Willis, is four years old. The specialist who was seeing him over at the Children’s Hospital had already decided he’d need to do a closure, then he heard you were coming and contacted us to ask if we’d get you to do it.’

  Alex passed the file to Jean-Luc and as the new unit member took it in his long, slender fingers and began to read through the information, Lauren seized the opportunity to study this man who had, so suddenly and surprisingly, announced he’d known her in India.

  Not that she hadn’t studied him—surreptitiously—earlier. Her reaction to his smile—his touch—had been so extreme, she’d taken every opportunity she’d had to have a good look at him, trying to work out why he affected her as he did.

  Was it the scarring here and there on his cheeks—an accident at some time, which
would explain his limp—that added an extra something to the man’s appeal? Made him look more attractive?

  Fascinating!

  Manly!

  She shook her head. Theo was a manly man—gorgeous, in fact—but he didn’t raise goose-bumps on Lauren’s arms when she brushed past him, or make her stomach feel squirmy and uneasy just sitting next to him.

  Perhaps it was some fragment of memory in the bit of the past that had never come back to her that made Jean-Luc so appealing.

  Had he known her well, or simply met her in passing? Surely it must be the latter, or he would have said more when they’d met the previous day.

  Had he been, perhaps, one of the backpackers she’d written about in her emails home—young people who’d sometimes called in and spent a night at the mission, doing jobs around the place in return for shelter and food?

  Or had he been something more?

  Fear, apprehension and despair all gripped her heart, squeezing it hard enough to cause physical pain in her chest.

  Though, doing the maths, Jean-Luc Fournier would have been in his late twenties ten years ago and there was no way such a man—a worldly, handsome, French man—would have looked twice at the lanky, freckly, immature twenty-one-year-old she’d been.

  The fear subsided though apprehension remained, useless anger building from despair that she couldn’t remember!

  ‘So, are we ready? Can I buzz Becky and ask her to send the Cardella family in?’

  Alex’s question interrupted Lauren’s tortured thoughts, and she thrust away the nightmare of a past that was a total blank to concentrate on the present.

  ‘I’ll go out and bring them in,’ she said, hoping movement would ease the tension in her body and help her mind focus on her work. Even better, she could show them in then take an unobtrusive seat at the back of the office, away from Jean-Luc and his disturbing physical presence.

  Jean-Luc watched Lauren leave the room, surprised that the way she moved, treading lightly and lithely, should still be so familiar to him. Surprised that his body could still react to that movement.