A Mother by Nature

by Caroline Anderson

  There was a crush, of course, and Ben and Danny got in a race. It probably would have been fine if Ben hadn’t slipped on a bit of sticky paper on his shoe at the top of the stairs, but he did, and in horror they watched as he tumbled over and fell headlong. Then, suddenly, halfway down there was a cracking noise and he halted abruptly and screamed.

  They all froze, and then Lissa’s hands flew to her face and she started to shake. ‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered, and Adam pushed past her.

  ‘It’s OK, Ben,’ he said, and went carefully down to the boy’s level. Ben’s arm was through the banisters and, needless to say, it was broken. He was sobbing now, and behind him Adam heard the sitting-room door open.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ben—he’s fallen downstairs and hurt his arm. He’s all right, aren’t you, sport? Let’s get you out of here. Josh, can you give me a hand?’

  ‘Sure. OK, little one, don’t worry, Daddy’s here.’ He looked at Adam, his face ashen. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Just lift him up a little so I can get the arm through. He’s broken the spindle—I can probably bend it out of the way. That might help.’

  Seconds later the sobbing child was free, and Lissa was rushing down the stairs with tears in her eyes. ‘Are you all right, darling? I’m here. Don’t worry, it’s all right.’

  ‘It’s a classic greenstick,’ Adam said quietly. ‘It’ll need pulling out under anaesthetic and plastering, and I think he’ll be fine. Can you feel all your fingers, Ben? Wiggle them for me.’

  He wiggled them and nodded tearfully. ‘It hurts.’

  ‘I’m sure it does, Ben. I’m sorry. Well, you’re going to have to go to hospital and be sorted out. Think you can cope with that?’

  He nodded, and Adam looked up the stairs at Anna, who was holding Jasper by the hand. Damn Helle for leaving so suddenly, he thought. Still, she’d offered… ‘Anna, I hate to do this to you, but could you watch them for me until I get back? Give everyone pizza and ice cream, and then—’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll manage,’ Anna said. ‘You take Ben, and we’ll sort out the rest.’

  Well, they’d done it. They’d given everyone pizza, and then while the children ate ice cream and watched television in the breakfast room, the women organised a clear-up, gathering up bin bags of paper and mop-ping down floors, and the men moved the furniture back into position.

  Matt and Sarah took their children home, and Allie and Mark left once they were sure everything was cleared up.

  ‘Right, how about you three? Shall we see what your rooms look like?’ Anna suggested.

  ‘Messy,’ Skye said heavily. ‘I thought it would make it nice.’

  ‘It will be nice,’ Anna assured her. ‘We’ve taken off most of the paper—a little bit longer and all the rest will be off, then you can have what you want on the walls. Have you decided?’

  ‘No.’

  A dismissal? Anna thought so, but it was hard to tell. Sometimes she wondered if Skye didn’t dare express an opinion in case it was the wrong one. Was she so desperate for approval that she’d daren’t hold a different view to anyone else?

  Poor little mite, she thought.

  ‘Still, at least the bed’s made. Boys, what about your beds? Are they ready to get into?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  She followed them in and found their room similarly restored. Someone had been busy while she’d sat with the youngsters in the kitchen. She helped them change, wash and clean their teeth. Then she sent them to the loo and tucked them all up in bed.

  Skye turned away when she went to kiss her, but Anna kissed her anyway, because she knew the child needed spontaneous displays of affection. ‘Sleep tight, poppet,’ she said, and turned her light down.

  ‘Not too dark!’ Skye said in alarm, and Anna turned it up again.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Thanks. ‘Night, Anna.’

  ‘Goodnight, Skye. Sleep well—and well done. You’ve worked very hard today.’

  She went downstairs, past the spot where poor little Ben Lancaster had caught his arm, and into the kitchen. It, too, was clear now, and there was nothing to do but sit and wait.

  She went into the sitting room, bare and damp and smelling of wallpaper paste and soggy lime plaster, and dropped into the nearest chair. She was bushed, but even so she tried to stay awake for Adam coming home.

  He might be hours. She knew that, and wondered if she wouldn’t do better to go to bed, but she didn’t want to—not in his house, with his children there. It wouldn’t seem right. She moved to the sofa, pulled a throw off the back of it over herself and snuggled down with a cushion. She’d be fine like this until he got back…

  Adam was exhausted. He’d been on the go all day, and just when he’d thought he was winding down he ended up in Theatre with little Ben Lancaster.

  It was a straightforward enough break, and it didn’t really take very long, but even so he’d been gone some three hours by the time he admitted defeat and plated it for a good result. It was trying to rotate, so he’d had little choice, but now he was wiped out and he just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep.

  With Anna.

  He let himself into his house, and found Anna in the sitting room under the throw. She should have gone up to bed, he thought, and then wondered where. In the au pair’s room, without any bed linen? Or the spare room, where he’d slept last weekend when his parents had stayed?

  Or his bed.

  What a tempting thought.

  Oh, lord, he thought, it’s getting too cosy. She’s here all the time—all day last Sunday, all day today, now tonight—it was getting too close, too much. The children were beginning to be a pain about her, especially Danny, and he didn’t know what to do about it except keep her away.

  He woke her with a kiss, like a princess in a fairy-tale, and, like a fairytale princess, she opened her eyes and looked at him and smiled.

  ‘Hi. How is he?’

  ‘Plated and in for a couple of days. It was a bit nasty. He’ll be fine. I’m sorry to be so long.’

  ‘It’s all right. You look shattered. I’ll get out of your hair now.’ She stood up, picked up her coat and bag, which were by the door, and went up on tiptoe to kiss him goodnight.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ she promised.

  ‘I might get a babysitter.’

  ‘Do that. Not your mother. Her eyes are too sharp.’

  Adam chuckled, kissed her again, more thoroughly this time, and thanked her for looking after the party.

  Then he watched her go, watched her walk out to her car and get in it and drive away, and wondered how he could be so perverse.

  He’d wanted her to go, hadn’t he? So why, then, was he so irrationally disappointed when she did?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANNA was on duty on the Sunday morning after Adam’s party, and the first person she saw when she went in was Josh, sitting by Ben’s bed and reading to him.

  She went over to them and greeted them with a smile. ‘Morning, all. How are things? How are you feeling, Ben?’

  ‘It hurts,’ he said fretfully.

  Anna felt the tips of his fingers sticking out of the end of the cast. They were warm, not hot, and they wriggled when she touched them. Good.

  His arm was in a special sling attached to the bed, the hand supported upright to minimise swelling, but it meant he couldn’t fidget very easily and that was hard for a little boy, especially such an active one as Ben.

  ‘He’s all right,’ Josh told her. ‘He had a bit of a restless night. I stayed with him—Lissa’s at home with Katie, stressing out. I’ve rung her a couple of times, but she doesn’t believe he hasn’t succumbed to the anaesthetic, I don’t think.’

  Anna smiled understandingly. ‘Why don’t you tell her to come in? She’ll feel happier when she’s seen him.’

  ‘She’s on her way. She wants to see the post-op X-rays—ah, here she is. Ben, Mummy’s here.’

  Anna turned to greet Lissa, and in th
e distance, just coming onto the ward, she saw Adam with his three children in tow.

  ‘It’s a party,’ she said with a smile, and waved at him.

  The children waved back, all except Skye who looked around her worriedly and moved a step closer to Adam. Anna went over to them, leaving Lissa and Katie to talk to Ben and Josh in peace.

  ‘Hi,’ she said softly. ‘Is this a social call, or are you working?’

  ‘Bit of both. I thought I’d check up on him—how is he? I was a bit concerned about his circulation.’

  ‘Seems good,’ she told him. ‘His fingers are nice and warm, and they’re wriggling from time to time when he gets bored.’

  ‘All the time, then, I should think, if Danny’s anything to go by, eh, sport?’

  ‘Is he going to be all right?’ Skye asked, her eyes like saucers, studying the sling doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ Adam told her gently. ‘He just needs time for the bones to join together again, then he’ll have the little metal bits out that are holding them together at the moment, and he’ll be as good as new.’

  ‘Metal bits?’ Danny asked, avidly interested.

  Adam looked at Anna. ‘Can we have the plates?’

  ‘Sure.’ She fetched the X-rays from the file trolley, and Adam snapped them into the light box on the wall near Ben’s bed. ‘Can you see, Ben? That’s your arm, and here are the bones, and these white things are the little metal plates that hold the break together, and these little things are the screws. They’ll come out in about four weeks, when you’re better, and then you’ll just have a cast on for the rest of the time.’

  ‘Can I see the first ones again?’ Josh asked, and Adam snapped the initial plates up onto the screen.

  ‘Ow,’ Lissa said under her breath, and Adam nodded.

  ‘Ow, indeed. You can see why I had to operate—there’s a distinct rotation here where he left his arm behind in the banisters and tried to keep on moving. In too much of a hurry for your pizza, weren’t you, Ben? Never mind, I expect you can have some as soon as you get home.’

  ‘Which will be when?’ Josh asked.

  Adam shrugged and pulled a thoughtful face. ‘Couple of days? I’d like to get the swelling right down and get a proper cast on it, then he can get back to normal for a while.’

  ‘He was lucky it wasn’t a little further down towards his hand,’ Josh said pensively, studying the plates. ‘It would have hit the epiphysis and that would have been drastic.’

  ‘What’s the epiffy-thing?’ Ben asked, looking from one to the other.

  ‘The growth plate. There’s a special place on each bone where it does its growing, and if you break it there it can stop growing properly. That doesn’t matter when you’re big, but when you’re little it can be more of a problem,’ Adam explained.

  ‘’Cos you’d end up with one short arm,’ Danny said, his mind working visibly.

  ‘That’s right. There’s a girl in here at the moment who did that to her leg, and it didn’t grow, and now we’re trying to make her leg grow longer with a special operation.’

  ‘Did you do the operation?’ Skye asked, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s Jaz looking at?’ Danny asked, and they looked round to see the little boy squatting under Damian, peering up through the cut-out in the Stryker bed at his face.

  ‘That’s Damian. He has to lie in a special bed at the moment. He gets very bored. I expect he’ll be pleased to have someone to talk to. I take it the locks are all on it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Anna assured him with a laugh. ‘There’s no way he can spin it round and dump Damian on the floor. Nevertheless, I think we might get him out from under it. Jaz, come here, sweetheart.’

  He said goodbye to Damian, and came running over, throwing himself at Anna. She scooped him up into her arms with a laugh, swung him round and settled him on her hip, then looked up to see a steely expression on Adam’s face.

  ‘I’d better take these kids out of here,’ he said tightly. ‘Jasper, come on.’

  Anna put him down and watched them as they left the ward, puzzled by their abrupt departure.

  ‘Was it something I said?’

  ‘God knows,’ Josh murmured, moving to stand beside her. ‘That man moves in mysterious ways. I think he panicked.’

  ‘Panicked?’

  ‘You’re getting too close, Anna—hang in there. You’re getting to him.’

  ‘Oh, lord.’ She tugged at her tabard, looked at her watch and straightened. ‘Um, I have to go and get on. I’ve got to take report and get on with the day. I’ll see you later.’

  Too close, she thought, trying to ignore the hurt Adam’s abrupt departure had caused. How can I be too close? I love them, I love him, he loves me—how can we all possibly be too close?

  Adam didn’t come round that night, and she didn’t see him until Monday afternoon, because she was on a late and he was in Theatre. He came round to do his post-op checks, though, looking harassed, and she confronted him.

  ‘I thought you were coming round last night,’ she said, trying not to sound accusing.

  ‘I was—I’m sorry I didn’t get to you, but Danny was sick and I didn’t think it was fair to leave him with the babysitter.’

  ‘You could have phoned.’

  He nodded. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I thought I’d finish stripping the sitting room and the night just got away from me. I didn’t want to ring you at midnight.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded. I had a lie-in this morning.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘I didn’t. The new nanny started today. I think she’s going to be a disaster. I’d come round tonight but I need to be there. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s half-term week this week, and the kids are going to be at home all the time with her and I don’t see it working.’

  ‘Why don’t I come to you?’

  ‘No. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not with the kids in the house. I might slide out if I can get away for a minute, but it will be a flying visit.’

  Crumbs, Anna thought sadly. That’s all he can spare—just the crumbs from his life.

  He arrived at ten past ten, and his eyes showed the signs of his domestic strain.

  ‘Problems?’

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ he said, going into her arms with a sigh of relief. ‘I’m sorry, this really is going to be a flying visit, but I just needed to see you, get a bit of sanity in my life.’

  He eased away and tilted her chin, looking down into her eyes. He looks so unhappy and torn, Anna thought, and lifted a hand to caress his cheek. The stubble was rough against her palm, curiously erotic. She drew his head down for a kiss, and he took her mouth hungrily.

  ‘How long can you stay?’ she asked, and he laughed softly against her mouth.

  ‘Long enough,’ he murmured, and kissed her again.

  He lied. It wasn’t long enough. For ever wouldn’t be long enough to give him all the love she had to give.

  Ben made good progress, and went home on Tuesday morning, to his parents’ relief. Lissa had found it very difficult to juggle Katie and Ben, and Josh had found it impossibly hard to see his patients and ignore Ben’s pleas for attention every time he’d gone past his line of vision. They’d had to move Ben so that he hadn’t been able to see his father so easily, and then Ben had got upset because Josh had been out of sight.

  When Lissa took Ben home, Josh kissed him goodbye and watched them go with a sigh of relief.

  ‘Thank God for that—now I can get on with my work without feeling guilty,’ he said to Anna with a smile. He searched her face and the smile faded. ‘How are things?’

  She shrugged. ‘Much the same. I don’t know how long I can go on like this, Josh. I feel like a hamster in a cage, and he gets me out when he wants to play with me.’

  ‘I think that’s a bit harsh,’ Josh said gently. ‘He does have problems, Anna. Those kids need a lot of time and attention. Skye, especially, needs a lot
of one-to-one.’

  ‘She needs a mother,’ Anna said tightly.

  ‘She’s had two already. Perhaps what she needs is just what Adam’s giving her—stability and security. I hate to say it, but I wonder if I was wrong. I don’t think it’s right for Adam, but it might well be right for the children, and perhaps he’s just about strong enough to do it—to make that sacrifice for the kids. In which case, Anna, you’re going to get very badly hurt.’

  ‘I know,’ she said softly, her voice rough with tears. ‘I don’t agree about Skye, but I think you’re right about Adam, and I think he’s capable of hurting both of us if he feels it’s what he has to do. Only time will tell.’

  The phone rang, and she excused herself to answer it, then snapped into action. ‘OK. Thank you. We’ll start getting ready. We’ve got a few beds—not many. I’ll see if I can mobilise a few discharges or cancel any operations. Thanks for letting me know.’

  She looked up at Josh. ‘A school bus has overturned. There are lots of orthopaedic injuries and some head injuries. They’ll be coming in to A and E shortly. Can you clear any of your patients?’

  He ran an eye over the ward. ‘I don’t know. You might want to contact Adam, see if he’s got anyone that can go. I’ll have a flick through the notes and think about it.’

  She rang Adam in the outpatients clinic, and he groaned. ‘I’ve got a full clinic this morning—I’ll have to leave them and go over to A and E to assess the kids as they come in. Damn. And that means I’ll be home late, and the new nanny has to leave at six.’

  ‘Do you want me to go round there?’

  ‘No—I’ll contact my mother. If I can’t get hold of her, I might ask you. Thanks. As for the beds, I haven’t got anyone I can transfer or discharge—unless we send Kate home. She’s getting on all right with her leg and it’s healed well. I was sending her home tomorrow, but she could go today. Go and talk to her mother, see what she says.’

  ‘OK. I’ll speak to you later.’

  She found Allie, started her off on shuffling patients to get the spare beds all grouped together, and found Mrs Funnell and Kate. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ she told them. ‘We need all the beds we can lay our hands on, and Mr Bradbury was going to suggest that Kate went home tomorrow. He thinks, in fact, she could go home today, if you feel you can cope and you’re ready for it. Of course, you can always ring up or come in for advice. How do you feel?’