‘You’ve put the drops in?’ Alison asked, when she came back from the bathroom. Her mother was at home with baby Brittany, who should be weaned off her oxygen this week. ‘What happens if the doctor is late?’
‘He won’t be. He knows where we’re up to.’
‘Will we know right away if it’s at stage three?’
Stage three retinopathy was the threshold for using laser treatment. The ophthalmologist would look at several key criteria, including the severity and location of the disorder and other clinical abnormalities in the cornea, lens or iris. But this was only the first of Harry’s eye tests, which meant that a good result at this point didn’t necessarily mean Alison or her husband could relax.
‘Yes, he’ll talk to you about all that once he’s taken a good look,’ Tammy told her. ‘How about you go and grab a coffee and something to eat, Alison? Get back a bit later, when Dr Tran is finishing up.’
Alison nodded and pressed her lips together. ‘Maybe that’s best.’
Laird walked past at that moment, and his eyes met Tammy’s—one brief flash of contact that she couldn’t interpret. She often caught him looking at her when she was talking to parents and it threw her off balance every time. She pushed him out of her mind while she assisted Dr Tran. Alison came back just as he was putting his equipment away.
He’d found extensive stage two ROP in the baby’s left eye, but no problems so far in his right. Alison and her husband had been given information to read about retinopathy of prematurity, and Tammy told her after Dr Tran had given a clear and careful report, ‘If you have any questions now, or think of any later, please ask. Write them down as they come to you, so you don’t forget. This isn’t something we want you to have any uncertainties about.’
‘We can deal with it,’ Alison said. ‘It’s OK. If it gets to threshold level, they’ll treat it. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘That’s it, yes.’
‘Hopefully it won’t progress. And I liked the doctor. I saw the way he touched Harry. Gentle. I appreciate that so much. When he’s had so many hands on him, so many things that make him flinch and make his oxygen go down.’
But, still, the presence of stage two retinopathy wasn’t the good news Alison had hoped for. Tammy gave her a hug and told her gently, ‘Hang in, there,’ while wishing there were much better words.
Meanwhile little Max Parry was still in the HDU and had taken no backward steps. His weight had climbed to over 1100 grams. Adam, however, weighed only just over 700 grams. They’d been trialling him for several days on full milk feeds and giving him regular and increasing breaks from CPAP to see how well he breathed on his own.
Adam hadn’t shown any problems on CPAP at first and had seemed to be getting stronger and healthier in other ways, too, ‘And I was stupid,’ sobbed Fran to Tammy on Monday evening. ‘I said to Chris that it looked like he’d turned the corner, and then this happens.’
‘This’ was a serious apnoea episode earlier that afternoon, followed by three significant vomits. Now his gut had swollen and Fran knew enough about premature babies by now to understand the risks. Adam was put on increased antibiotics, put back on the ventilator after the scary episode of forgetting to breathe, and put back on intrave nous nutrition instead of milk feeds.
Backward steps, all of them.
Tammy felt as if she understood too much about those. She’d been taking backward steps since Laird had left her house on Saturday night. Back to the doubt that any man could find her attractive with the amount of baggage she carried—precious baggage, true, but her baggage, not his.
She knew she’d done the right thing, asking him to take some time, to really think about what he wanted and what he could give. But, oh, it didn’t feel like the right thing!
She was such a fool! All she wanted was to find him at her front door with…what…a bottle of champagne, an armful of flowers, a pair of board shorts and a beach towel, a pile of his shirts to iron, for heaven’s sake! Anything, as long as it came with huge, wonderful promises and lifelong declarations and a great big passionate sweep off her feet and into his arms.
I don’t need time to think, Tammy, sweetheart, I just need you.
It didn’t happen.
No phone call, no appearance, no flowers or board shorts or crumpled shirts or sweeping, just silence and the painful prospect of seeing him regularly at work for the next thousand or so years, while all the hurt and vulnerability that Tom had delivered into Tammy’s life became magnified a hundred times because of Laird.
Meanwhile, if Adam developed necrotising enterocolitis at his current size, he wouldn’t survive. Surgery on such a small baby’s bowel would be so risky and delicate, it verged on the impossible. At nine-thirty on Monday night, Laird and surgeon Ralph Goode were still assessing the tiny boy, trying to work out what was going on and what, if anything, they could do.
‘The X-ray wasn’t clear enough,’ Laird said to Dr Goode, in the night-time quiet of the unit. ‘Tammy, can you please put it up so we can take another look?’
She nodded, found the X-ray envelope, slid the pictures out and clipped them against the light-box on a nearby wall. She was painfully aware of Laird while she did it, and she could so easily read the studied way he avoided her eye, then helplessly caught it once or twice, making the air zing. If either the Parrys or Dr Goode noticed any kind of tension, she couldn’t tell.
What was he thinking? She wanted to touch him, throw herself onto him and tell him, I didn’t mean it. Don’t think. Just take me to bed again. Just look at me again the way you did this afternoon when I was talking to Alison. Tell me with those eyes of yours that you want me and I’m yours.
The two doctors looked at the X-rays together, Laird tracing his lean fingers over the confusing shadings of black and grey and white as he talked. ‘It could be a blockage, but I’m not prepared to make that diagnosis on the basis of a picture like this. He had a blood transfusion late this afternoon. His blood gases have improved…’ He trailed off.
The word ‘but’hung unspoken in the air. Fran wiped her eyes with the tissues Chris passed her. He had an expression of powerless anger and pain on his face, while they both clung to every word the doctors said.
‘And there’s no sign of active infection?’ Dr Goode asked.
‘No, the antibiotics are a preventative, rather than a response.’
Dr Goode palpated the baby’s fragile, distended abdomen with gloved hands and an incredibly sure, delicate touch, then applied a warmed stethoscope and listened. He was in his early fifties, and gave off a calm authority and air of experience that the Parrys must feel and find reassuring. ‘I’m hearing some bowel sounds. If it’s a blockage, it’s not complete. Rest his gut, and let’s wait and see. It may resolve on its own.’
‘Mr and Mrs Parry, are you happy with that plan?’ Laird asked.
‘Is there another option?’ Chris asked.
‘Not really. Surgery would be a last-ditch measure.’
‘The reality is he’d be unlikely to survive it, let alone be helped by it,’ said Dr Goode. ‘There’s no point softening what we tell you on this.’
Fran nodded, her throat working.
‘Let’s go and see Max,’ Chris said gently to his wife.
But Fran shook her head and pushed him away. ‘I want to stay here.’ Her fists were clenched as if pure willpower would keep her baby alive.
‘Beautiful, Max needs us just as much. Don’t give him less because he’s healthier. Come with me and let’s just sit with him for a while.’
‘OK. All right.’ She nodded tiredly and he led her out of the unit, and Laird and Dr Goode departed, too, leaving Tammy alone with little Adam.
Twenty minutes later, he pooed.
‘And we’re thrilled about it, baby,’ Tammy cooed softly to him as she changed his tiny envelope of a nappy. ‘You wait until I tell your mummy!’
And Laird.
It was scary how much she looked forward to telling Laird, and h
ow disappointed she was when she discovered he’d gone home without seeking her out, even to say goodnight.
He’s thinking. He’s giving us both some distance. It’s what you asked for, so trust it.
But trust, after a betrayal, was so scary and hard.
‘How about we make a deal, you and me?’ she told a briefly wakeful baby Adam, after Fran and Chris had gone home at around ten-thirty. They seemed to be feeling more cheerful after Adam’s encouraging bowel movement, and the NICU had gone quiet and dark for the night, with only one or two parents still slumped tiredly in uncomfortable chairs, and the frieze of ‘graduate’ babies just a blur on the wall.
‘No more backward steps, OK?’ Tammy said softly to the baby. ‘We’ll keep each other on track. You grow and get strong and remember to breathe right…and so will I. Is it a deal? I have too much to do in my life, too much else to think about, to let Laird Burchell mean so much, to spend so much of my time and effort fighting to trust him.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘I CANNOT get this hat to work!’ Tarsha said viciously, blinking back tears.
‘So try a different one,’ Laird suggested in a soothing voice.
Wrong answer.
So far today, Tarsha didn’t seem too impressed at how he was performing in his role of suave professional handbag. He couldn’t blame her. His heart wasn’t in it. His heart was with a copper-haired, sumptuous-bodied nurse who made his whole soul burn with questions that he couldn’t yet answer and didn’t know how he ever would.
‘Do you honestly think I have another hat just lying around that will match this outfit?’ Tarsha gestured at her slip of a dress in beige silk and lace, her tiny jacket and her barely there spike-heeled shoes. ‘And if you suggest trying a different outfit…!’
‘I think the hat looks great.’ His thoughts were miles away.
‘You’re not taking this seriously.’
Making the effort to focus, Laird told her, ‘Well, I did think the Melbourne Cup was more about horses than clothes.’
He almost had the impression that Tarsha wasn’t taking it seriously either, despite her anger. It seemed as if she was using the hat and his own thick-headedness about fashion as a way to vent other sources of stress. If that was the case, he knew better than to ask for a direct explanation. She’d get to the point if and when she was ready.
‘Are you kidding?’ she exclaimed. ‘I was so lucky to get the invites from L’Occidentale.’ Her whole demeanour suddenly changed. She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath. One beautifully manicured hand rested for a moment above her left breast. ‘But you’re right. It’s not important, is it? Not in the scheme of things. I don’t know what I’m doing today…’ She cast him a narrow, sideways glance and opened her mouth as if to speak again, then shook her head and sighed. ‘Let’s just go to the races,’ she muttered.
‘Take your time, Tarsha,’ he soothed her again, at a loss to know what he was dealing with here. ‘Check your makeup. I’ll wait.’ She seemed as highly strung as one of the thoroughbreds they were going to watch.
‘No. You’re right. I’ll leave the hat. It truly is not important,’ she said again, as if she really meant it.
As far as Tammy was concerned, there was absolutely no point in taking the Melbourne Cup fashion thing seriously.
She wouldn’t have gone to the event at all, under normal circumstances, but several friends had followed through on the threat they’d made this time last year, after she’d organised a Mini Melbourne Cup Party in the back garden for her own children and eight of their little mates, complete with hobby-horse races and dress-ups and colourful food. In Victoria, the Tuesday of ‘The Race That Stops A Nation’ was a public holiday, and there was no school.
‘Next year, Tammy, two of us are babysitting, and the other two are taking you to the races,’ Liz had said after the kids’ Cup party.
‘Which two of you are doing which?’
‘Whoever wins first and second in our Cup sweep today gets to stay home with the kids,’ Kelly declared.
So at nine-thirty in the morning a year later—i.e. today—Mel had swooped in and carried all five kids off to her place, where Bron was already setting up some games, and Kelly and Liz had marched Tammy into her bedroom to help her with her wardrobe.
‘I already have the hat,’ she told them helpfully, then watched them shriek in delight—or was it horror?—at the large, floppy-brimmed wheel of cream straw festooned with green organza ribbon, fake leaves and a ring of bright red plastic chillies. She and Sarah had had a lot of fun and hilarity putting it together on Sunday afternoon. For almost a whole half an hour, her heart hadn’t ached about Laird.
This morning, she was determined not to let her friends know how churned up she was feeling. They didn’t yet know that Laird existed, and she didn’t intend to tell them. Sarah might let something slip, she realised. Hopefully Mel and Bron would keep the kids too busy for an eight-year-old to think about it.
‘All right,’ Liz said calmly. ‘You really aren’t taking the fashion thing seriously. Now, what can we put with it?’
‘Well, my wardrobe is simply crammed with designer outfits, as you can imagine.’ Tammy laughed. ‘Take a look.’
Liz ended up driving back to her place to bring an armload of possibilities, and they settled on an elegantly floaty panelled skirt and a shoulder-baring silk camisole, neither of which was the same colour green as any of the three different greens on the hat, but, as Kelly said, it didn’t matter.
‘It’s more a symphony of greens,’ she decreed. ‘It works. Really shows off your figure.’
‘You mean it makes me look fat?’
‘Womanly, Tammy. The word is womanly.’
She decreed that the spare plastic chillies pinned artistically around the slightly-lower-than-Tammy-was-happy-with neckline of the camisole worked, too.
‘And the sash,’ Liz insisted. ‘The red silk sash.’ She tied it in place, puffing out the loop of the bow.
Tammy groaned. ‘Oh, I’m going to be so loud!’
‘Much more interesting than our drippy pastels.’
‘No, you both look lovely.’
‘So do you.’
‘In a loud kind of way. Like a big red apple hanging on a tree.’
And yet she felt like dressing loud today.
When in doubt, shout.
Or something.
Through the sheer audacity of wearing to the Melbourne Cup a whole orchestral, apple-hued arrangement of red and green with her copper-and-carrots hair and finishing the outfit off with scarlet shoes, Tammy could shut out the sound of that nagging, aching, vulnerable little voice inside her every time she thought about Laird, about trusting him—whether she dared to, whether there was any chance he’d come up with an answer to their future that wouldn’t hurt.
The outfit almost worked, too, until an hour after arriving, when, temporarily parted from her two friends, she saw Laird himself and the whole day suddenly changed, like a fierce storm sweeping in to cut down baking summer heat.
He stood just beyond the mounting yard, inspecting the horses before the fourth race. He was wearing a suit, so well cut it could have been Armani, with a flower in his lapel, and there was a gorgeously clad, elegantly thin, model-beautiful woman in a vintage couture dress and six-inch heels leaning intimately on his arm and smiling.
And Tammy felt ill.
Physically ill. Sick to her stomach, head dizzy and pounding, skin breaking out in a cold sweat, limbs gone weak. Oh, she remembered this! It was exactly the way she’d felt the day she’d come home to find Tom packing his things in their bedroom, when he hadn’t even told her yet that he planned to leave.
She stood there and watched Laird, appalled by the power and suddenness of her reaction. She couldn’t move. Her throat was choked. It felt like solid ground collapsing without warning beneath her feet, and it was horrible. Familiar and horrible. She couldn’t have spoken a word, even if Kelly and Liz had been standing rig
ht beside her, demanding to know what was wrong. The sounds of the crowd faded, and for a moment Tammy was afraid she might actually faint.
The woman smiled again. Laird nodded. The woman nudged his shoulder and pointed at something. They were together. That was all Tammy knew. Here she was in the flesh, the mythical woman Tammy had talked about to Laird when they’d argued over him sending cleaners in after the kids had been sick.
Thin, single and gorgeous.
She wasn’t an abstract possibility—the woman he should be going out with, the theoretical opposite to Tammy herself, the woman he would go out with one day, when Tammy herself was long forgotten—she was already real.
There was no room for anything inside her but the sheer, physical hurt of it. Betrayal like a knife thrust. Disbelief like an onslaught of white noise. Shock thundering through her bloodstream like the hooves on the track.
What a fool I am…
Trust? Where did trust fit in now?
She honestly hadn’t considered that she might have a rival so soon or, worse, that she might have had one all along. How long had these two known each other? For a while, judging by the way they were talking. There was something so casual and familiar about the woman’s hold on Laird’s arm, about the way he nodded at something she said without turning to look at her.
Tammy thought she had fully considered the harsh reality that Laird didn’t belong in her life. She’d told herself more than once that he should be going out with that gorgeous, thin, designer-dressed model she’d conjured up for him.
But, oh, she hadn’t really meant it!
And he is going out with her, said the evidence of her eyes, until her vision was blinded by tears, at which point all she could do was to stand there, blinking, waiting for her heart to recover the correct beat.
‘You’ll have to hurry if you’re going to put on a bet, Laird,’ Tarsha pointed out.
Six Sexy Doctors Part 1 (Mills & Boon e-Book Collections): A Doctor, A Nurse: A Little Miracle / The Children's Doctor and the Single Mum / A Wife for ... / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal Page 27
