The Nurse's Secret Son

by Amy Andrews

  Wendy had introduced it when Michael and Daniel had been little to ensure there was one day in the week they all came together. A family of doctors didn’t make for the most regular routine and as the boys had got older they, too, had had many activities that had taken them away from regular family time.

  Sophie and Michael had continued it with Max. John had usually joined them, with Edward and Wendy there as well between jaunts on the European lecture circuit. And since John’s stroke, Family Sunday was going stronger than ever.

  Sophie accepted a glass of champagne from Edward and laughed at a joke Charlie was telling. She was reminded of happier times before Michael’s accident when the family, no matter where they had been or what they had been doing had all tried to make it to Arabella for Family Sunday.

  ‘Mummy,’ Max said, running to her and hugging her around her legs, his little face beaming with excitement. Her son loved Family Sunday more than any of them. The fact that he was usually the centre of attention the obvious reason.

  Sophie was excruciatingly aware of Daniel. She glanced at him over her champagne glass as he popped a roasted cashew into his mouth and looked directly at her. Was he angry about her storming off last night? He didn’t seem to be.

  Max headed for the bowl of nuts and Sophie picked them up out of his reach, placing them on the high table next to John.

  ‘Oh, I want a nut, Mummy.’ Max pouted.

  ‘You’re too little for nuts, Maxy. Have one of Sally’s chocolate crackles instead,’ she said, offering him the plate of assorted nibbles Sally had put out for everyone.

  The next half-hour was full of laughter. Sophie had doubted she could laugh today with the events of last night still fresh in her mind, but the Monday family intimacy worked its magic. There was just something about being with people who knew you. Really knew you and loved you unconditionally.

  Having John in his wheelchair brought a touch of déjà vu to the proceedings. Michael had loved Family Sunday almost as much as Max. Looking around the room, it seemed strange that they were all together without him. It was hard to believe that it had been over two years since his death.

  A squeal of pure delight interrupted her thoughts as Daniel lifted Max up onto his shoulders and jigged him up and down. Max giggled and held onto Daniel’s head. She watched them together, noting the similarities between father and son. They had the same eyes and the same lazy smile. When Max cracked up at something funny it reminded her so much of Daniel’s childhood chuckle that it almost took her breath away.

  But that was pretty much where the similarities ended. In fact, in many ways he had looked much more like his uncle, which had made it easier for Michael to pass him off as his own. Looking at the four generations of Monday men present in the lounge, Sophie could see the strong family resemblance shared by all the men in the family. Yes. Max was definitely a Monday.

  Sophie had promised Michael the day he’d proposed to her that she would never reveal the truth to Daniel. She had been hurt and angry at the time and Michael had been right when he’d said it would be too complicated. He had wanted to raise her baby as his and he had loved her and needed her and they had been best friends. It had been the perfect solution.

  ‘Look at me, Mummy. Look at me,’ said Max from his lofty perch. He stood on his father’s shoulders now, stretched out to his full height, his chubby hands held firmly in Daniel’s. The pure joy of being a child glowed in his eyes and she felt absurdly like crying. He definitely had his father’s eyes.

  ‘Yes, darling, look at you,’ Sophie agreed, blinking back the tears that momentarily blurred her vision.

  Daniel saw the shimmer of moisture in Sophie’s eyes and frowned slightly. Was this about last night or just one of those things that made women such a mystery?

  He remembered how sentimental she had always been.

  How she cried at Anzac Day marches and got all misty-eyed whenever she saw a bride. In his teens he had enjoyed teasing her about it and had taken great delight in how huffy she would become and even more so when she would storm out in disgust. Just like she had last night.

  He saw her blink rapidly and look away, and was grateful to Max who started to tap dance on his shoulder-blades, demanding to be put down. He aeroplaned his squealing nephew onto John’s lap and watched with satisfaction as Max’s little arms twined around the old man’s neck. It reminded him of the many hours he had spent sitting in the same spot and how close he had always been to his grandfather.

  Max whispered something in John’s ear that made him laugh, and Daniel was pleased that John had this little boy’s adoration to help him through the tough times. And for the first time in his life he felt a streak of envy.

  Sophie was talking to Sally and Charlie when she heard Max coughing. She turned instinctively, a sixth sense shooting a tremor of unease through her gut. Max appeared to be choking, coughing and gasping, panic widening his eyes.

  ‘Max!’ Sophie leapt up and was at his side in seconds, plucking him off John’s lap and slapping him on the back. ‘What have you eaten, Maxy?’ she demanded, slapping him some more as he continued to choke.

  Sophie was shaking. Adrenaline surged through her system. Logically she knew that the obstruction should clear but this was her child and he couldn’t breathe and he was looking at her in sheer terror.

  ‘It must have been the nuts!’ John’s alarm said it all.

  ‘He’ll be right,’ said Daniel, coming to Sophie’s side, trying to be calm, hoping this would ease the gut-wrenching fright stamped on her face.

  ‘He can’t breathe, Daniel.’ She turned to him, her dark blue eyes beseeching him as she watched the pink of Max’s lips lose their colour.

  ‘Call an ambulance, Mum,’ he said pulling Max away from Sophie, who was crazily slapping her son’s back. He felt confident that Max would clear his own airway soon enough but back-up wouldn’t hurt. ‘Dad, in my car boot is my kit. Grab it for me.’

  Sophie watched Max’s lips become dusky and his body go limp. Tears fell unchecked from her eyes. ‘Please, help him, Daniel. Do something,’ she yelled. She couldn’t lose Max. She’d already lost her mother and Michael. The very thought made her frantic.

  Daniel flipped his nephew over until his head was lying face down in Daniel’s hand. He supported the little body with his forearm and then laid him along his extended leg. He administered several sharp blows to Max’s back between his little shoulder blades. No luck.

  ‘Ambulance is on its way,’ Wendy said, running back into the room. She put her arm around Sophie, pulling her daughter-in-law close. ‘He’ll be OK,’ she soothed. If any one knew the mind-numbing panic of losing a child, it was Wendy.

  ‘It’s been too long,’ Sophie wailed. ‘He should have coughed it out by now.’

  Edward arrived with Daniel’s bag. Daniel’s heart thumped in his chest. He quashed the rising tide of despair and worry. If he let his emotions get in the way he’d be as useless as Sophie. Someone needed to take charge.

  What he was doing wasn’t working. He knew he had to take a look and see if he could remove the obstruction himself. Luckily he had the equipment to do so.

  He laid Max’s limp body on the floor.

  ‘Here, Daniel,’ said Edward, passing his son a laryngoscope and Magill’s forceps he’d found in Daniel’s kit.

  Daniel was grateful that his father also seemed to be keeping his head. As a renowned paediatric cardiologist, he certainly knew his way around the equipment.

  ‘Hurry, Daniel,’ Sophie begged, her voice holding an urgency that bordered on hysteria.

  Daniel blocked it out. He blocked everything out and talked silently to Max. Don’t do this to us, buddy. Mummy needs you. We all need you.

  He opened Max’s mouth and inserted the blade of the laryngoscope down the side of his tongue, extending Max’s neck slightly as he manoeuvred the instrument to view his nephew’s airway. The light source illuminated the small space well and he almost cheered when he located the offen
ding nut occluding the trachea just past the epiglottis.

  His father held the forceps by their angled neck for ease of transfer, and Daniel took them from him without even looking up. Everyone in the room held their breath.

  He inserted the metal forceps down the line of the laryngoscope, their angled head and long arms allowing deep access. He grasped the nut with the round flat tips and pulled it out in one easy movement. Sophie burst into tears, running to her son’s side.

  ‘Why isn’t he breathing yet, Daniel?’ said Sophie, her relief short lived as Max lay deathly still.

  ‘He will,’ said Daniel confidently. ‘How about I give him a little incentive?’

  He quickly pinched his nephew’s nose, took a deep breath and blew gently twice into the little mouth. Max took a breath and started to cough and then vomited and began to cry. Daniel felt a surge of relief almost overwhelm him.

  Max’s little lips and mottled skin pinked up almost instantly and Sophie picked him up and crushed her to him. She sobbed as she hugged her little boy for dear life. He cried in her arms, his fright and her hysteria upsetting him even more.

  When the paramedics arrived a short time later they were pleased to see the crisis was over but put Max on some oxygen for a while anyway. It was purely for prophylaxis, given Max’s brief spell of hypoxia.

  Sophie couldn’t believe the whole incident had lasted less than two minutes! It had seemed like an eternity when her son’s life had hung in the balance and Daniel had brought him back from the brink.

  The paramedics advised Sophie to transport Max to St Jude’s so he could be monitored for a few hours but looking at him now, dancing to the music and giggling like the Max she knew and loved, Sophie declined. There was enough medical expertise in the house and should they be concerned about him they would get him there pronto.

  Luckily the rest of the family backed her and the paramedics left, happy that they had discharged their duties. Everyone was still so relieved that Max was OK that they didn’t want to let him out of their sight. They all just sat for a while and stared, watching him, drinking in his life and energy.

  Sophie trembled whenever she thought about how close she had come to losing him. She sniffled and sucked in a deep breath. It hadn’t happened. Max was OK. But the what ifs were never far away. She glanced at Daniel. What if he hadn’t been there?

  Max was nonplussed by all the fuss.

  As Sophie tucked him into bed later she lectured him about nuts. He didn’t look like he needed much convincing. Max had scared himself more than anyone and Sophie doubted he’d eat nuts ever again.

  She watched him as he drifted to sleep, reluctant to leave his side. She lay beside him, snuggling his little body close to hers. Subconsciously Max reached for her hair and sucked his thumb. Sophie just lay there, inhaling his smell and counting her blessings. It had been a very scary day.

  She woke an hour later with a kink in her neck and quietly crept out of his room. Sophie heard conversation drifting up from the lounge but didn’t feel like company. She slipped out the back door and found herself heading for the wooden jetty where she had always gone to mull things over.

  It was old and rickety but Sophie found the sound of the waves slapping the wood comforting and felt a strong connection with her childhood. She had fished and swum from this jetty. Skipped stones from it. Star-gazed from it on hot summer nights, lying on the rough boards, peering into the inky night sky. She’d even kissed Daniel on it.

  The view from the end was as magnificent as always. A fairyland of lights on the opposite side of the river illuminated the CBD. She inhaled and the salty aroma filled her senses.

  ‘You OK, Sophie?’

  She didn’t turn. She hadn’t heard Daniel’s approach but, then, she wasn’t surprised by it either. If anyone had known where to find her after the events of the day, it would be Daniel.

  She sensed rather than heard him come closer. The weathered boards always creaked underfoot but Daniel knew from years of sneaking up on her where to tread for maximum surprise. They had all known.

  He sat beside her. He didn’t say anything more and she was grateful for that. They just sat in companionable silence for a while. The magnitude of what could have happened was too horrific to speak about.

  ‘Thank you, Daniel,’ Sophie said, realising that she hadn’t expressed her gratitude. ‘I was so useless today. If you hadn’t had been there…I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘You’re his mother, Sophie.’

  ‘I’m a nurse—an emergency nurse—and I just went to pieces.’

  ‘You’re a mother first. I doubt I would have been any good either if it had been my child.’

  Sophie closed her eyes as the tempo of her heartbeat increased. For the first time in a long time she didn’t feel guilty about keeping the secret. She had needed Daniel today. To be the strong one, the one in control. Would he have been so calm if he had known that Max was really his son? Or would he have been as useless as her? Sophie suppressed a shudder.

  They were quiet again for a while, only the lapping of the gentle tide and the sound of a passing boat interrupting their thoughts.

  Daniel turned so he was facing her and not the view. ‘What were you thinking about earlier today when Max was on my shoulders, before he decided to scare the hell out of us? You looked a little misty-eyed there for a moment.’

  Sophie searched back through the jumbled haze that was her memory of the day. What had she been thinking about?

  ‘I was thinking how Max had his father’s eyes.’ She turned to face him as well, their thighs almost touching. A very small space separated them.

  ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? Not having Michael around? It just doesn’t seem right somehow,’ he said pensively.

  ‘Nothing’s been right since he died,’ she said quietly.

  She looked away as her mind drifted to that awful night two years ago. Michael had taken a tumble out of his wheelchair during the day, playing basketball, and had fractured his femur. She remembered how funny, how ironic he had thought it that a fracture, usually enormously painful, had been completely painless.

  ‘Cheer up, babe.’ He had laughed at her worried face. ‘Just another advantage of being crippled.’ And he had smiled to soften the words.

  Later that night she’d had a phone call from St Jude’s. Michael had been rushed to ICU. The family had charged to the hospital but it had already been too late. They hadn’t been able to revive him.

  An autopsy later revealed what the doctors had suspected. A massive fat embolism, liberated from his bone marrow at the time of the fracture, had lodged in his pulmonary artery and sent him into cardiac arrest.

  Daniel shifted beside her and called her back from the past. She turned to him again and they stared at each other for a short while.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night. It was unforgivable.’

  Sophie nodded. Yes. It had been. But that had been last night and tonight her son was sleeping in his bed soundly because Daniel had saved his life, and nothing else mattered next to that.

  ‘I don’t know what came over me, Soph,’ he said huskily as she continued her silence.

  Her arms prickled as goose-bumps broke out. He had called her Soph. Just like in the old days. She inhaled deeply to quell the mad stirrings in her body and the salty, earthy atmosphere took her further into her past.

  ‘Sophie, please,’ he begged.

  She blinked at the ragged tone of his voice and snapped back to the present. ‘Don’t worry about it, Daniel,’ she sighed. ‘We both behaved unprofessionally. Let’s leave it at that.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Shh.’ Sophie cut him off, placing her fingers against his lips. It was an impulsive move but in the circumstances seemed right.

  She took her hand away. ‘I just want to sit here and listen to the waves and be grateful that Max is alive. Can we do that?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Sure.’

  They both turned back to face th
e view. After a while, Daniel lay back against the boards, his legs dangling over the edge. The waves and the insects were soothing, the breeze was balmy and the stars glistened like teardrops.

  They sat for ages just as they had as children, absorbing the night. The years melted away. Max was alive. Their problems were insignificant.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE next morning at breakfast Sophie and Max were already eating when Daniel pushed John to the breakfast table.

  ‘Morning, Maxy,’ said John.

  ‘Hello, G.G.,’ said Max through a mouthful of cornflakes.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be suffering any adverse effects from yesterday,’ John commented to Sophie as he held his cup out with his good arm for Sally to fill with coffee.

  ‘No.’ She shuddered. It made her feel sick whenever she thought about it. ‘Thanks to Daniel.’

  Daniel looked at her and she smiled at him and he smiled back. Something had happened last night out on the jetty. They hadn’t discussed it—in fact, they’d barely spoken at all—but their relationship felt easier this morning. Free of some excess baggage.

  ‘Yes,’ John agreed, looking at his grandson. ‘She’s right, Danny, boy. You were brilliant. There may just be something to this paramedic nonsense after all.’

  Sophie laughed. John had taken it hard when his favourite grandson had decided not to follow Monday family tradition. Under Arabella’s roof alone there was a microbiology professor and a paediatric cardiologist, and Wendy was a geneticist. In fact, all the Mondays for generations had been involved in the medical profession. Even Michael had been studying to become a doctor when the car accident had crippled him.

  Daniel had been the one exception. Nothing John had said had been able to dissuade him. There had been many heated exchanges. Diatribes about wasting his grades and his talents and how poor the pay was had had no effect. Daniel had stuck to his guns. More than that, he had excelled. Intensive Care Paramedic was a difficult status to achieve.