Doctor and Son

by Maggie Kingsley

  ‘Jennifer Norton’s on her way in. She’s bleeding.’

  ‘She’s Gideon’s IVF patient, isn’t she?’ Annie queried. ‘The one who’s on her fourth IVF treatment?’

  Liz nodded. ‘I really thought she was going to make it this time, but she’s just eight weeks so…’ She sighed. ‘Could you page Gideon for me while I get hold of the ultrasound technician?’

  Annie didn’t need to. The door of the staffroom suddenly swung open and Gideon appeared.

  ‘Liz, those reports you gave me to sign. You said there were thirty of them, but I’ve only got—’

  ‘Forget the reports,’ she interrupted. ‘Jennifer Norton’s coming in. Vaginal bleeding.’

  He swore under his breath. ‘Have you organised an ultrasound?’

  ‘Just doing it,’ Liz replied, swiftly dialling the number.

  ‘It might not be a miscarriage,’ Annie said, seeing the deep frown on Gideon’s face. ‘Just because she’s bleeding doesn’t necessarily mean—’ She came to a halt as the lift pinged. ‘Is that her?’

  He nodded grimly. ‘Could you come with me, Annie? I may need your help.’

  Quickly she followed him into the corridor, and her heart went out to the woman who was being wheeled towards them. It was obvious that Jennifer and her husband were convinced she’d had a miscarriage. She was sitting hunched in a wheelchair, sobbing uncontrollably, while her husband walked beside her, white-lipped and grim.

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t, Mr Caldwell, honestly I wasn’t,’ Jennifer exclaimed as soon as she saw him. ‘I just bent down to get a pot out of the cupboard, and then I felt such a pain, and—’

  ‘I told her I would do all the cooking,’ her husband interrupted defensively. ‘I told her to leave everything to me, to take things easy.’

  ‘Lifting a pot wouldn’t have brought on a miscarriage,’ Gideon said soothingly, while the porter wheeled Jennifer into one of their private rooms. ‘And we don’t even know if she’s actually had a miscarriage yet. Many women have some spotting right up until twenty-five weeks.’

  ‘But it was such a lot of blood, Mr Caldwell,’ Jennifer wept. ‘It wasn’t just a little bit. There was so much of it which means I’ve definitely lost the baby, and I can’t bear it. I can’t.’

  ‘Jennifer, we’re not going to know anything until we’ve done a scan,’ Gideon said as the ultrasound technician arrived. ‘So until we know something I want you to try to relax. I know that’s asking a lot,’ he continued when another sob broke from her, ‘but the calmer you are, the better the pictures will be. Annie, could you…?’

  She nodded and gently eased Jennifer’s loose-fitting trousers down to smooth the conductive jelly onto her abdomen.

  Once that was done there was nothing else they could do but wait. Wait while the technician swept the probe over Jennifer’s stomach. Wait until the monitor revealed whether the tiny embryo was still there or not.

  Gideon’s eyes were fixed on the screen, searching, searching, but as Annie watched him, hoping to see from his expression whether it was good news or bad, she suddenly noticed something else. His hands were clenched into tight, hard fists by his sides.

  He really cared about this baby. Not because he was the consultant who had carried out the IVF treatment and wanted it to succeed to demonstrate his skill. He cared because it was a new life, and infinitely precious to Jennifer and her husband.

  This man wasn’t Nick, who’d taken, and taken, and never given. He wasn’t Nick, who’d never done anything, or said anything, without an ulterior motive. He was honest and genuine, and yet she’d told him she never wanted to go out with him again.

  Annie must have made some small inarticulate sound because Gideon’s eyes suddenly flicked towards her, and he smiled. A smile of such heart-stopping warmth that tears filled her eyes. The baby was all right—that much was clear—but what was even clearer to her was how much of a fool she was.

  ‘Could you print out a still for me, please?’ Gideon asked the technician, then turned to Jennifer. ‘I want you to take a look at this, Jennifer,’ he continued, pointing at the monitor. ‘Do you see those two fluttering movements—like tiny butterfly wings? Those are your babies’ heartbeats.’

  ‘Babies?’ Mr Norton echoed, looking stunned. ‘But surely there should only be one. Jennifer—she was bleeding and—’

  ‘If you remember, we put three embryos back into your wife in an attempt to maximise the chances of success,’ Gideon explained. ‘Generally only one implants properly and goes on to become a baby, but in Jennifer’s case it looks as though two have.’

  ‘And the bleeding?’

  ‘I don’t know what caused it,’ Gideon admitted. ‘It could be the third embryo has just failed, or—’

  ‘Are you saying the other babies might fail, too?’ Jennifer interrupted, panic appearing on her face.

  ‘I don’t know, Jennifer,’ he said gently. ‘All I can say is that at the moment you’re still pregnant with twins, so hold onto that, OK?’

  The technician had printed out a black and white photograph showing the grainy outline of the two babies. As Jennifer and her husband gazed at it in wonder, Liz appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Do you want her to stay in, Gideon?’ she murmured. ‘I’ve managed to find her a bed but if you don’t need it…’

  ‘I think she’d better stay,’ he answered, keeping his voice as low as hers. ‘She’s had one hell of a fright—given me one, too—and though there’s nothing we can actually do if she does start to lose the other babies, it might keep her calmer if she stays with us for a couple of days.’

  Liz nodded, and within minutes Jennifer was being whisked into one of the beds on the ward. Annie and Gideon stayed with her until she was settled, and eventually Jennifer fell asleep, clearly worn out by the events of the day.

  Gideon looked exhausted, too, and Annie shook her head at him as she accompanied him out of the ward.

  ‘When was the last time you left the hospital early—got ten hours’ unbroken sleep?’

  He smiled a little ruefully. ‘I haven’t a clue. The trouble is we really need another doctor on the team, and I’ve been trying to get Admin to agree to it, but…’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t mind the extra work—not really. It’s not as though I’ve got somebody to rush home to.’

  Tell him, Annie, her heart whispered. Tell him you’ve changed your mind, that you’d very much like to go out with him again.

  ‘Gideon—’

  ‘You’d better start heading for home,’ he commented. ‘It must be well past four o’clock.’

  It was, and the staff at the day-care centre were going to raise merry hell again, but she knew that if she didn’t say what she wanted to now she never would.

  ‘Gideon—’

  ‘Could I have a word with you, please, Gideon?’ Rachel interrupted, appearing beside them without warning. ‘In private,’ she added, her gaze irritably sweeping over Annie.

  He nodded. ‘If you’d like to go along to my consulting room, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ The specialist registrar stalked away, and he sighed. ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  ‘No,’ Annie murmured, but he didn’t move and neither did she.

  ‘How’s Jamie?’ he asked.

  ‘Full of beans as usual.’ She fiddled with the buttons on her white coat. ‘He…he asked me to thank you for taking him to the Botanic Gardens. He really enjoyed himself.’

  ‘So did I.’

  His voice was soft, gentle, and she bit her lip.

  Say it, Annie, she told herself. Good grief, how hard can it be to tell him you want to go out with him again? It’s not like you’re suggesting moving in with him. Only to get to know him better. To take it slowly, one step at a time.

  But what if he’s not interested any more? a warning voice pointed out. He’s not tried to talk you out of the decision you made on Saturday, and he’s got a date for tomorrow night. A date for the St Valentine’s Ball with the busty new nurse i
n Paediatrics or the frosty-faced new receptionist in Radiology. You’re going to look really stupid if you tell him you’ve changed your mind, only to discover he has as well.

  ‘Annie…?’

  Gideon was waiting, clearly becoming more and more perplexed by the second, and she backed up a step.

  ‘You’re right—I’d better go,’ she said, and turned round and walked away.

  Coward, her heart mocked when she reached the staffroom. Coward. Chicken.

  Better a chicken than an idiot, she thought, but was it?

  Nobody had ever died of embarrassment. They might feel as though they’d like to, but they never had. Two minutes was all it would take to go to his room and tell him, and those two minutes might lead to the start of something wonderful.

  Do it, Annie, her heart urged, and before she’d even realised she was moving she was hurrying back down the corridor towards his room.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind, Gideon,’ she muttered out loud as she walked along. ‘That’s all I have to say. No big preamble, no lengthy explanation, just, “If it’s not too late, Gideon, I’ve changed my mind.”’

  She could do it—she knew she could—but she didn’t get the chance to.

  The door of Gideon’s room was open. Nothing unusual about that, of course. He often didn’t close it so that anyone passing could drop in for a chat, but he wasn’t alone.

  Woody was with him.

  Woody was standing wrapped in Gideon’s arms. Her head was resting on his shoulder, and when Annie saw him bend his head to kiss her she turned on her heel and ran.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘I LIKE Gideon.’ Jamie scraped the last remnants of his breakfast cereal from his plate and put down his spoon. ‘Why don’t we see him any more?’

  ‘You’ve hardly seen him a lot, Jamie,’ Annie protested. ‘In fact, you’ve only seen him once.’

  ‘Two times, Mummy. Once when he came round to our house, and the other time when he took us to the park. I liked the park. Could we go there again with Gideon? I won’t wander off this time—I promise I won’t. Can we go to the park with Gideon again?’

  ‘He’s a very busy man, sweetheart.’

  ‘He said we could go,’ Jamie protested. ‘When we had our hamburgers and chips he said he’d like to go back. We could go tomorrow—’

  ‘I’m working tomorrow.’

  ‘On Sunday, then. We could go on Sunday.’

  ‘Look, why don’t I ask your Uncle David to take us?’ Annie said desperately. ‘We could go in his big red Volvo—’

  ‘Uncle David doesn’t like the park as much as Gideon does. Gideon really, really likes the park. If we went there with him we could feed the squirrels this time and look at the big goldfish again. Gideon liked the goldfish. He said—’

  ‘Jamie, will you stop wittering on about the damn park?’ Annie snapped, then bit her lip when her son’s lip began to tremble. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Mummy…Mummy has a bit of a headache this morning.’

  A headache which had started yesterday. A headache which had begun the second she’d flown out of the hospital, running as though all the devils in hell had been after her.

  Rachel Dunwoody.

  How in the world could Gideon be attracted to somebody like Rachel Dunwoody? If it had been anybody else…

  Liar, her heart jeered. You’d have cared no matter who it had been because you’re half in love with him. Half in love with a man you’ve only been out with once. Half in love with a man whose kiss was like nothing you’ve ever experienced before, and now you’re angry, and confused, and jealous.

  Too damn right I’m angry, she thought as she carried Jamie’s cereal bowl across to the sink. Trust me, he’d said. I’ll never hurt you, he’d said. And yet last night his arms had been around Woody. He’d been kissing Woody.

  ‘Mummy, is Gideon my daddy?’

  The cereal bowl slipped from Annie’s fingers and landed in the sink with a clatter. Where in the world had that come from? Jamie had never asked about his father before. She’d known he would eventually, but why now, and why had he decided Gideon must be the man?

  ‘No, he’s not,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘He’s my boss.’

  ‘Ben at the centre has a daddy,’ Jamie continued, his small forehead creased in thought. ‘Josh has a daddy. Emma Harding has two. One for week times and one for the weekend. Why don’t I have a daddy?’

  ‘You do,’ Annie said awkwardly. ‘He just…he doesn’t live with us.’

  Jamie’s frown deepened. ‘I’d like Gideon to be my daddy. He knows all about trees and squirrels, and he could take us to the park every weekend, and—’

  ‘Jamie, Gideon is not going to be your daddy,’ she said firmly. ‘So can we just drop the subject, please?’

  Her son stared at her for a moment, then got down from his seat. ‘Well, I like him,’ he muttered.

  So do I, Annie thought with a sharp twist of pain. In fact, I was beginning to think…Unconsciously she shook her head. It didn’t matter what she thought any more.

  Wearily she ran some water into the sink, then saw the time. ‘We’ve got to go, Jamie, or we’ll be late.’

  ‘Don’t care.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ she said, taking his coat down from the back of the door. ‘I’m assisting Dr Brooke in the operating theatre this morning.’

  ‘Don’t care,’ he repeated, even more belligerently. ‘Want to stay home. Want you to stay home, too.’

  Not that again. Not this morning when she already felt strung out and exhausted and her day hadn’t even begun.

  ‘I don’t care what you want,’ she said, catching hold of his hand and forcing him into his coat. ‘You are going to the centre, and you are going now.’

  He howled the whole way. People stared, people shook their heads, and Annie didn’t know what she felt most—mortification, anger or guilt.

  ‘He’ll be fine, Dr Hart,’ the assistant at the day-care centre declared when she arrived. ‘Once he’s met all his little friends, started to play with them, he’ll be fine.’

  He probably would, she thought as she trudged wearily to the hospital. Children’s memories were notoriously short. She wished hers was. She wished even more that she hadn’t gone to Gideon’s room last night.

  Still waters and dark horses, Liz had said. Well, they certainly didn’t get much deeper or darker than Gideon Caldwell. Kissing her on Saturday, Rachel Dunwoody on Thursday, and goodness knows how many other women in between.

  How could she have been so wrong about him? He’d seemed so genuine—so honest and different—but when it came right down to it, he was no better than Nick.

  Helen obviously didn’t agree with her. In fact, Helen was bubbling with delight when they met outside the staffroom.

  ‘A little bird’s just told me you’re going to the ball tonight with Gideon.’ She beamed. ‘Oh, Annie, I couldn’t be more pleased—’

  ‘Or more wrong,’ Annie interrupted. ‘I don’t know who told you that.’

  ‘Liz did. Well, to be fair, she didn’t exactly say you were going with Gideon,’ Helen conceded, ‘but when she told me he’d bought two tickets—’

  ‘Helen, I am not—repeat not—going anywhere with Gideon Caldwell. Not tonight—not any night.’

  ‘You’re not?’ the SHO said, her delight giving way to a puzzled frown. ‘Then who’s he going with?’

  Annie could have told her. She could also have said that far from appearing to have difficulty in talking to women on a personal level, Gideon was, in fact, a world expert, but she didn’t.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said instead. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m assisting Tom in Theatre this morning.’

  At least that’s what the roster had said she’d be doing, but when she reached Theatre 2 it wasn’t Tom who turned to smile at her. It was Gideon. Gideon all dressed up in theatre scrubs and ready to go.

  ‘I thought—I mean, isn’t Tom scheduled to operate this morning?’ s
he said with barely concealed dismay.

  ‘There’s been a change of plan,’ Gideon said, ‘so I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.’

  ‘Stuck’ being the operative word, Annie thought crossly as she pulled a set of theatre scrubs from the cupboard. What was the point of having schedules if nobody kept to them? She’d been looking forward to some hopefully peaceful hours of instructive surgery with Tom, and who had she got instead? The Belfield’s answer to Casanova.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Gideon continued, his smile fading as she stalked past him towards one of the changing cubicles. ‘You’re looking a bit flushed.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied, her voice tight, cold.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he pressed. ‘Because if you’re not feeling well I could page Helen, get her to assist—’

  ‘I said I’m fine,’ she snapped, slamming the cubicle door on him, only to lean against it with a groan.

  Brilliant, Annie, really brilliant. How is biting the man’s head off going to solve anything? He’s your boss, for heaven’s sake, and who he kisses is none of your damn business. You’re not his girlfriend. You and Jamie have been out with him precisely once. You’ve no claim on him—no right to be angry. It was one measly kiss, that’s all, so unless you’re planning on looking for another job, back off, simmer down and be polite.

  But I don’t want to be polite, her heart protested. I want to pummel him senseless. I want to kick his shins, and demand to know what the hell he thinks he’s playing at. And then—and this is the really, really crazy part—I want to howl my eyes out.

  Unfortunately, none of those options were starters if she wanted to hold onto her job, and reluctantly she put on her theatre scrubs, and even more reluctantly opened the changing-room door to find Gideon still standing where she’d left him.

  ‘I…I’m sorry,’ she forced herself to say. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you, but I…I didn’t sleep very well last night.’

  ‘There’s no need to apologise,’ he said gently. ‘As long as you’re OK, that’s all that matters.’

  But I’m not OK, she thought, edging past him to the sink. I’m angry and disappointed, and the last thing I want from you is kindness. Not when you obviously don’t mean it. Not when you probably said exactly the same thing to Woody last night.