‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘Ring him—but I’ll pay.’
He nodded, picked up the phone and left a message with Huw’s secretary for him to call back, then replaced the phone in its cradle and drained his coffee—the fourth that morning. He was going to have a heart attack at this rate.
‘I need to get on.’
‘Me, too. How’s Jacob?’
Reality. Thank God for reality. ‘Good,’ he replied. ‘He’s conscious and talking, and they’re moving him to the high-dependency unit today. Looks like the brain injury may not be as serious as they’d feared, and his legs and pelvis are healing well, so hopefully he’ll soon be up and about.’
Her smile lit up his world. ‘I’m so pleased. Well done.’
‘Thanks.’ He didn’t pretend false modesty. He knew he was a good surgeon, his high standards wouldn’t allow him to be anything less, but her praise still warmed him, and he smiled back, stood up and pulled her into his arms and hugged her, unable to stop himself.
It felt so good to hold her. So right. And if Huw discovered that she was a carrier, then maybe…
‘I have to go,’ she murmured, snuggling closer and sighing.
He let her go and stepped back. ‘Me, too.’
‘Will I see you tonight?’
‘Probably not. We’re on take. I expect all hell will break loose. I’ll give you a call when I hear from Huw—can I give him your mobile number?’
‘Of course you can. I’ll have it with me. And thank you.’
She reached up and kissed his cheek, then went back to the ward to check an IV line on a baby, and all the time she was working on him, then changing a dressing on another child, setting up an infusion in a child with Crohn’s who was in for a few days to recover her strength before surgery to remove an obstruction in her bowel, doing the drugs round—through it all, she was waiting for Huw’s call.
It came at lunchtime, after she’d done the discharge notes and said goodbye to Joel, who was going home to continue his convalescence, and as she went into the office to grab some lunch, her phone rang.
‘Hi, it’s Huw Parry. I gather you want to see me for DMD screening?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said, suddenly nervous as the reality of it hit her. ‘I’ve been referred to you by the GP and I haven’t heard anything, but it’s not really urgent. I’m just getting a bit edgy, and Mr Langham-Jones suggested seeing you privately.’
‘Are you busy now?’
‘Now?’ she squeaked, and swallowed. ‘No, I’m not busy now. Nothing that can’t wait, I’m on a break.’
‘Can you come down? We can fill in a few forms, run through the questions and I can send off the bloods. Come to Medical Genetics and ask them to call me.’
‘So how did it go?’
She pushed the cat off her lap and went to put the kettle on while she talked to him. She’d been waiting for him to ring for ages. ‘Fine. He asked all sorts of questions, took a family history and about a gallon of blood and that was it, really. I already knew all the biology of inherited genes, the one in two chance of passing it on if I’m a carrier.’
‘But only one in four of it affecting a child,’ Andrew corrected.
‘No. One in four that it’s a boy with the disease, but also one in four that it’s a girl who’ll be a carrier, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s affected, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis wouldn’t alter that. I’m not prepared to hand this bombshell on for my daughter to deal with when her time comes, any more than I want to give my son a life sentence. So, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a one in two chance, even with screening, and that’s crazy odds.’
She heard his good-natured sigh down the phone. ‘OK, you win. One in two. So how long did he think it would take to get the results?’
‘A couple of weeks. Maybe less, maybe more. There are several layers of testing. I feel sick now. I wish you were here.’
She heard him sigh. ‘Me, too. I’m sorry, it’s really busy. I’ve had a spate of little accidents—greenstick fractures, squashed fingers, a dislocated elbow. My registrar told me to go, but she’s run off her feet and I don’t like to make the children wait. I’ll get over later if I can, just for a while.’
‘Please do,’ she said, suddenly realising how much she needed him there with her, how much she wanted to talk through what Huw Parry had told her.
Not that there was anything more to say, really, but somehow she just longed for the comfort of his presence, the warmth of his body hard up against hers, holding her while she waited.
Which was ridiculous, because it could be weeks, and he couldn’t just be there and hold her for weeks, but so much hung in the balance. If she was a carrier, then she might—just might—be able to persuade him to give them a chance.
And perversely, having spent a year hoping she wasn’t a carrier, she now found herself hoping that she was, because the thought of life without him was extraordinarily painful, far more painful than the loss of any theoretical family she might have in the future.
Besides, there was always adoption.
She hugged her arms around herself, needing him, wishing he was there, and when he came to her at ten she went into his arms without a word and just held on.
CHAPTER TEN
THE next two weeks were difficult, but as the days passed without a word from Huw Parry, Libby forced herself to put the results out of her mind and concentrate on the good things in her life.
Like Andrew, and her patients, who were fortunately keeping her busy. Jacob was doing well, up on his feet now and making slow, cautious progress with a frame—and of course Amy was up there, too, helping him walk again, his gait a little affected by the head injury but not so badly that he’d have any serious long-term issues.
And the trouble with Amy was that she saw too much.
‘You look funny,’ she said, getting straight to the point. ‘What’s going on, Libs?’
She looked away, her heart jerking against her ribs. ‘Nothing. We’ve got some tricky patients at the moment. I’m just a bit distracted.’
Amy made a noncommittal noise, but Libby wasn’t sharing her innermost fears and feelings with her friend. She was having enough trouble sharing them with Andrew, and he was involved.
Or possibly not, but she’d like him to be. He was still being cagey, though, a little distant, and she couldn’t wait to get the results, but as the end of the second week came, she began to fret.
‘Let’s go away again,’ Andrew said on Friday evening. ‘Just for a night. There’s a pub on the Thames, right down by the water. We could stay there—get right away.’
‘Not Paris? Not a trick weekend like the last time you took me away?’ she teased, and he chuckled.
‘No. It’s near Goring, on the Berkshire–Oxfordshire border. Why don’t I ring them, see if they’ve got a room?’
They had, and she packed the next morning while Andrew went home and did the same, then he came back and picked her up and they set off, skirting London on the M25 and heading down into Berkshire.
‘Good idea?’ he said, locking the car and following her to the river bank at the edge of the car park.
‘Lovely. It’s so pretty—look, the weeping willows are trailing in the water, and there’s a cherry flowering. Oh, and baby ducks! Oh, it’s beautiful. Can we go for a walk?’
‘Can we have lunch first?’
‘I should think so,’ she conceded with a smile, and they ordered sandwiches at the bar and ate them looking out over the river at the ducks and geese and moorhens, and then they went for a walk along the river’s edge until they reached a fence and had to turn back.
She pulled a face. ‘We can’t get as far as I’d thought. Pity. I wanted to look at the houses.’
He chuckled. ‘You want to snoop? We’ll get a boat,’ he said, and they went back to the pub and hired a little motor launch, and went upriver through the lock gates, gazing at all the houses—some modest, some outrageously ostentatious—whose g
ardens stretched down to the water’s edge, and speculating laughingly on who lived in them. The ducks paddled hastily out of the way, and at one point they were joined by a swan which sailed majestically alongside, eyeing them with disdain.
And then at last, even wrapped up as warmly as they were, the chilly wind off the water got to them and they turned back, headed downstream to the pub and warmed up with a pot of tea and a slice of home-made gingerbread, snuggled together on a sofa by the fireside.
‘This was a lovely idea,’ she murmured, and he dropped a kiss on her hair and hugged her closer.
‘Good. I’m glad you approve. It’s a favourite haunt of Will and Sally’s. They sneak down here every now and again for a bit of privacy, and apparently the restaurant’s fabulous.’
‘I’ll need to work up a bit of an appetite if we’re having dinner,’ she said, staring at the empty plate in dismay. ‘I only meant to eat a tiny piece of that. I’m getting fatter by the minute.’
He nuzzled her ear. ‘Rubbish. You’re gorgeous.’
‘Andrew, you’re feeding me constantly!’ she protested. ‘I swear my clothes are tighter.’
‘Gorgeous,’ he repeated, his eyes smouldering behind the smile. ‘Are you finished with that tea? We need to dress for dinner,’ he added, confusing her.
‘Dinner? It’s only five o’clock, and, anyway, it’s a pub!’
‘You’re still going to need to dress for dinner,’ he murmured. ‘Unless you want to shock the other diners? You did say something about working up an appetite…’
‘Andrew!’ she whispered, scandalised and horribly tempted, a giggle bubbling in her throat as he got to his feet and held out his hand, a lazy, sensuous challenge in his eyes.
She took it.
Going away for the weekend was all very well, but on Sunday night reality came crashing back. She was alone again, Andrew as usual going home to attend to paperwork and catch up with his work, and the wait for the results was tearing her into little pieces.
She met him for coffee the next morning, after a sleepless and wretched night, and he frowned at her and touched the shadows under her eyes with a warm, blunt fingertip.
‘You look tired.’
‘I didn’t sleep. Andrew, I don’t think I can stand this waiting any longer, but I can’t bring myself to ring Huw Parry and every time my phone rings I feel sick.’
He searched her eyes, pulled her gently into his arms and hugged her. ‘Do you want me to ring?’ he offered, holding his breath, because the truth was the wait was getting to him, too, and he wanted it over every bit as much as Libby clearly did.
‘Would you?’
‘Sure.’
He used his desk phone, switching it to hands-free, and called Huw’s secretary.
‘Hi, it’s Andrew Langham-Jones here. Could you see if you’ve got the test results for Elizabeth Tate, please? She was having bloods and screening for DMD.’
‘Yes, sure, of course.’ They heard her flicking through files, the rustle of paper, and then the scrape as she picked up the phone again.
‘Um, we haven’t got the dystrophin gene result back, but the bloods are here: the creatine phosphokinase is normal and the pregnancy test was positive.’
His world ground to a halt, until even the clock seemed to stop ticking, and he met Libby’s stunned eyes in confusion. Pregnant? Libby was pregnant?
‘No!’ she mouthed, the blood draining from her face, and he felt sick. She couldn’t be—not unless…
‘Hello?’
‘Um—hi. Yeah. Thanks. Um—tell Huw I’ll call him, could you?’
‘Sure. I’m going off now, but I’ll leave a note for him, Mr Langham-Jones. Thank you.’
The dial tone buzzed loudly in the room, and he reached out an unsteady hand to press the ‘off’ button and met Libby’s distraught eyes.
‘Libby, I—’
‘I can’t be pregnant,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, Andrew, I can’t be! How?’
‘I have no idea. I can’t—’ he began, and Libby leapt to her feet, twisting her hands together, her mouth open, her breath jerking in and out of tortured lungs.
‘Well, apparently you can. Oh, I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid! I knew you hadn’t had proper tests, I knew there was a risk—you even bought condoms, for goodness’ sake! Why on earth didn’t I let you use them? I must have been crazy! Oh, dear God, Andrew, what on earth are we going to do?’
He got to his feet, his legs shaking, and walked over to her, resting his hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Libby, I’m so sorry. If I’d had the slightest idea—the merest hint that there was any possibility I could get you pregnant, do you imagine for a moment that I would have made love to you without using protection?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I knew how important it was not to get pregnant with this hanging over me, but I did nothing about it, and I should have done. You know how I feel about it, about the prospect of conceiving a child who might be—’
She broke off, pressing her fists to her mouth, her eyes wild with grief and anger and despair, and the fleeting, momentary doubt that it could be his child was banished in that instant, replaced by the absolute certainty that he was the father.
He wasn’t infertile. He had been, he was sure of that, but apparently not any longer. And now the woman he loved more than anyone else in the world was carrying his child.
And that child might have inherited a dreadful, life-limiting disease because he hadn’t followed up his test results properly, just assumed that the situation hadn’t changed.
‘Libby, I’m so sorry,’ he began again, but she drew herself up and away from him, her arms hugging her waist, her eyes tortured.
‘Sorry isn’t the point, Andrew. We’re both sorry, but this is one thing that being sorry isn’t going to change. I’m having a baby who may or may not be going to die after years of suffering, and it’s my fault. Your fault, too, for not double-checking, but my fault for believing you, and only I knew the significance of an unplanned pregnancy. Why on earth did I do that?’ she asked, a trifle hysterically. ‘I’m not stupid, I know things can change. I should have insisted we used protection.’
He rammed his hands through his hair, his emotions knotting his stomach. ‘Libby, I’m so sorry, but I really was so sure. I did the tests. Again and again.’
‘But years ago, Andrew! And you said yourself you’d been ill. And when I asked if you’d had it checked by anyone recently, you said what’s the point, either they’re there swimming or they’re not. And I didn’t even question it, and I should have done.’
‘I really believed it. It must have been a blip, but it went on so long—years. It was several years after I found out that I looked again, and, believe me, Libby, there was nothing.’
‘Well, there obviously isn’t nothing now, and you need to know that this is your child, so can I suggest that you go and get checked out?’
‘Why? I have no intention of wriggling out of my responsibility,’ he said quietly, tortured by guilt, reeling from the utterly unexpected news that he could have fathered a child. ‘In fact, I have every intention of being there for our child on a daily basis, starting with marrying you.’
‘Marrying me?’ she said, her voice dropping to a shocked whisper. ‘Why would you do that? You didn’t sign up for this—for a disabled child.’
‘You’re getting ahead of yourself. It’s only one in four.’
‘That’s pretty good odds if it was a lottery ticket,’ she said. ‘And, anyway, there’s no way I’m marrying you. Not now you know you can have children with anyone you like. Maybe even Cousin Charlotte,’ she added, and blinking back a fresh wave of tears, she yanked open the door and ran out, leaving him standing there, rooted to the spot, his thoughts in turmoil.
He wasn’t sterile.
It had dominated his life, governed his every move, every relationship, every day that he spent with children. And it was no longer true.
He was going t
o be a father, and what should have been the happiest day of his life was turning into a potential tragedy.
He closed the door softly, sat on the edge of the desk and stared blankly at the wall. Please, let it be a girl, he prayed. Don’t let this child be stricken. Not my baby. Our baby. It’s done nothing wrong.
There was a sharp rap on the door, and he swallowed hard. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s only me. Hell, what on earth’s happened?’
Andrew met his brother’s shocked, searching eyes and swallowed hard.
‘Libby’s pregnant,’ he managed.
‘What?’
‘Shut the door. There’s a problem.’
‘A problem?’ He shut the door, his eyes piercing. ‘What sort of problem, apart from her being pregnant? Don’t tell me—she’s demanding you marry her?’
‘Actually, I asked her, and she turned me down. Suggested I ask Cousin Charlotte.’
Will’s jaw dropped, and he sat down on the edge of the desk and frowned. ‘Wow. Are you sure it’s yours?’
He gave a startled laugh. ‘Oh, yes. If you’d seen her face—you can’t fake that kind of reaction. This is my child, I know it is, because I know she wouldn’t expose herself to the risk of pregnancy at the moment and she didn’t realise there was a risk, because I told her—oh, hell, you might as well know. I thought I was sterile.’
His brother’s eyes widened. ‘What? What on earth gave you that idea?’
So he told him, and Will stared at him in horror. ‘And you never mentioned it? Hell, is this why you won’t get involved with anyone?’ He nodded, and Will scrubbed a hand through his hair. ‘So—you thought you couldn’t get her pregnant, so you didn’t use anything?’
He nodded again. ‘Only apparently I can, and did. And here’s the problem. She’s being screened for DMD—Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Her sister’s a carrier.’
Will’s jaw dropped, and he blew out his breath on a soft sigh. ‘Oh, my God.’
‘Yeah. So, the good news is I’m going to be a father. The bad new is—’
The Surgeon's Miracle Page 14
