Bride at Bay Hospital

by Meredith Webber

  She found her own handkerchief and blew her nose.

  ‘On you. I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you want.’

  Sam heard the curses building like bubbling lava inside him, and barely kept them to a muted roar when they came out.

  ‘Don’t ever say that,’ he finally managed. ‘You and every part of you is what I want. Do you really think I only want the happy bits—the sex, the fun, the companionship? Do you think I don’t want to share your pain? To hold you when you cry? Do you really think I’m so shallow, Megan, that holding you like this would bother me?’

  He took her face in his hands and turned it towards him.

  ‘You gave me one great gift a few days ago when you told me Lucy’s name. Letting me hold you while you cried was another gift, Meg. I love you. You must know that! You must know in your bones that my love is just as deep as yours!’

  ‘But…’

  He gathered her close again, and held her to him, knowing exactly what she’d been unable to say.

  And suddenly he knew, too. He’d been wrong, taking a unilateral decision not to tell her about the heart disease, instead making out she was asking too much of love.

  ‘I thought it best,’ he began. ‘Best if we just broke up. That way you’d get over me, finish medicine, find someone else to love and have your babies.’

  She shifted in his arms, pushing away from his body so she could see his face.

  So he could see her disbelief…

  ‘Best for whom?’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘Breaking my heart was best for me? Because you didn’t love me enough, you decided it should end?’

  Would she understand?

  ‘Because I did love you enough,’ he said. ‘Because I finally understood the kind of love you wanted—-felt that kind of love for you. I thought it was the kind of love that should put the loved one first—before everything. But finding it—understanding it—came about because of something else I learned.’

  He kissed her lips, cold and still damp from her tears, then straightened up and took her hands in his.

  ‘I spoke to Martin Goodall. Mum was seeing him for a heart problem all her working life. If she had a faulty valve way back then, I can only assume it was congenital. You wanted babies, Meg. You’d already had one baby with a heart problem. Could I father babies with you without risk of that happening again?’

  She was frowning furiously at him, as if unable to believe what she was hearing.

  ‘You pushed me away, decided we weren’t meant to be together, in the name of love, for heaven’s sake—because you were worried our babies might have heart problems?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Without telling me? Without talking about it? Without genetic testing? For all you know, your mother’s problem might have come from rheumatic fever when she was a child—nothing to do with genetics. And isn’t that what you did thirteen years ago? Pushed me away without an explanation, a discussion—anything? This is exactly what happened then. The decision was all yours! Taking control and throwing me out of your life as if I was nothing more than an old pair of jeans.’

  Rheumatic fever? Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  He was so busy feeling relief he missed what Meg was saying next, but from the look on her face it wasn’t something he particularly wanted to hear. She was still furious.

  She stood up and glared down at him.

  ‘I think it’s a very good thing you decided, for whatever pathetic reason, we weren’t suited to each other, because two more stupid people I’ve never met. Babies! We’d be lucky to breed chimpanzees, and stupid chimpanzees at that!’

  She marched away, not back into the hospital but towards the car park, escaping him as well as her memories.

  She’d walk along the beach, he guessed. Maybe she’d cool off enough to talk some more.

  Not likely!

  He went back into the hospital to talk to Melody about the baby she hadn’t wanted.

  She was sitting up in bed, alone in the single room, tears dribbling down her cheeks. Having passed Mrs Carter and Mike in the corridor, Sam knew she knew and he took her hand and sat beside her, letting her fingers cling to his.

  ‘I kept saying I didn’t want her and now she’s dead,’ Melody cried, lifting her other hand to her mouth and biting at her knuckles.

  ‘Not because of anything you said,’ Sam reminded her.

  ‘But because of what I did. Of how I was.’

  Her anguish was so great Sam stood up and put his arm around her, holding her against his chest as he’d held Meg earlier.

  Holding another young woman while she cried for another baby.

  Then suddenly she straightened, grabbed a tissue and mopped her face.

  ‘That’s it, Dr Agostini. Oh, I know I’ve been going along with the drug protocol you’ve set for me, but in my heart of hearts I haven’t believed it would work—haven’t really cared if it did or didn’t. But say I had another baby—did this to it. No way!’

  Her lips wobbled as if this new resolve wasn’t quite as strong as it should be.

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ Sam reminded her, ‘but there are excellent places you can go for help.’

  Melody nodded, and even found a smile. ‘Mum knows every one of them, but this time it will be different. This time I’ll be doing it for me—and for the baby—not for Mum or to escape a jail sentence, or any other reason.’

  ‘That’s a great start,’ Sam agreed, ‘and if you need more incentive, by the time you’re clean I should be about ready to open a rehab centre up here. Would you like to come back and work there?’

  Melody smiled her thanks then reached for the tissues again as all the brave talk of the future didn’t completely blot out the loss of her baby.

  ‘Don’t be afraid to cry,’ Sam told her. ‘Crying’s part of the healing process.’

  She gave him a watery smile, and as Mrs Carter came back into the room, Sam had the strong impression that Melody might just make it.

  He went back to his office, finished up some paperwork, then drove to the site of the new hospital. The architect was there, discussing final landscaping details with a contractor. With the painting nearly done, the place was looking great.

  ‘You’ll be opening right on time,’ he told Sam, leading him into the foyer to show him the new glass walls that had been put in place behind the reception desk. ‘When’s your manager due to start?’

  Thoughts of Megan had pushed the details of the hospital completion out of Sam’s head, but he recalled his manager, who’d been in Sydney handling the ordering of all the necessary equipment, was due to arrive in the Bay this coming weekend and start work here the following Monday.

  ‘Great,’ the architect replied. ‘We’ll have his office all set up by then, and he can handle any queries we might have over the last few weeks.’

  Sam accompanied the man around the building, approving of all that had happened since his previous visit two days earlier, then, leaving the man with a plumber in the staff washrooms, he walked back out the front to admire the healthy coconut palms that had been planted just that day.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  Meg!

  The words were still husky from her tears, but her face showed no sign of the emotional storm—storms—she’d suffered, although her cheeks held the pinkness of embarrassment as she forced herself to look him in the eyes.

  ‘Want to see inside?’ he offered, unsure exactly what was happening here but inwardly excited just to be near Meg again.

  She nodded and he led her in, taking her away from where the architect and plumber were, showing her the day surgery rooms, then the main theatre, explaining how the design allowed for the necessary clean zones to prevent contamination.

  ‘Have you got a store cupboard?’ she asked, her voice shaking so much it was a wonder she got them out.

  Sam had to smile, and he put his arm around her shoulders and led her into the scrub room. Closed the door and leaned a
gainst it.

  ‘Not a store cupboard but not much bigger. Will it do?’

  Meg nodded her reply then studied him in silence, eventually shrugging her shoulders as she stumbled into speech.

  ‘I don’t know where we are, Sam. I don’t know if we even have a relationship any more. I’m lost. But I do know that I love you and that comes first. Before plans, or babies, or anything else. I don’t even know if you want to hear that, but I had to say it.’

  Green eyes pleaded with him, but for what? Every instinct in his body told him to be careful—that this was potentially the most important moment in his life.

  But Meg was lost and scared, so what could he do but take her in his arms and hold her close, pressing kisses on her hair as he fought for breath to say the words he had to say?

  ‘You didn’t know if I wanted to hear it? Of course I wanted to hear it, Megan. I love you so much, bone-deep, Meg. I know that now. But before I’d even told you how much, I did my best to ruin everything for both of us.’

  He tipped her head back and kissed her properly on the lips.

  ‘But it’s still an issue, Mum’s heart problem, and we have to talk about genetic testing and all the practical things, but now I understand exactly what you meant—that love is about sharing as well as about loving. And sharing is about bad times—bad things—as well as good.’

  He kissed her again and felt her mouth grow warm and her tongue tease along his lips.

  ‘I love you that way, Megan, and every other way. I love your compassion and your humour and the way you walk across the sand, shaking the sand off your toes the way the cat does. I even love your splashy swimming, and especially I love your sexy underwear, most of which is still living in my house.’

  Another kiss, much longer this time, then he lifted his head to ask, ‘Come and live with it? Live properly with me? Marry me whenever, but shift out of the cottage and share my house as well as my life? Now?’

  Meg kissed him this time, pressing her lips to his, while her heart sang with a new happiness—bone-deep!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE BEACH at sunset, Meg in a filmy golden skirt that blew against her legs and a lacy, beaded top that dipped between her breasts, the golden colour making her skin seem whiter. Two gardenias pinned in her hair, feet bare but for the sand that clung to them.

  Mrs Anstey, Bill, the Richards family, his manager and Meg’s friends from the hospital. Eddie stood beside him, Meg’s cousin Libby beside her, Meg shaking as much as he’d been shaking—excited yet somehow terrified that something might still go wrong. Excited yet somehow terrified by the magnitude of his love…

  Sam rolled over so he could tuck his body around his wife’s, spooning into her back so he could feel the warmth and softness of her against his skin.

  She moved, snuggling closer, then turned and put her arms around his neck.

  ‘Did we really do it?’ she whispered, moving her head to his pillow so her lips were only inches from his own.

  ‘Get married?’ Sam lifted his left hand from beneath the sheet and held it so she would see it.

  ‘I guess we did.’

  Then he found her hand and brought it out as well, so their two hands intertwined, the new gold rings glinting in the moonlight that streamed through the windows of the old house.

  ‘Did I mention love, Mrs Agostini?’

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5878-8

  BRIDE AT BAY HOSPITAL

  First North American Publication 2006

  Copyright © 2006 by Meredith Webber

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.eHarlequin.com