The Surgeon's Convenient Fiancée (Medical Romance)

by Rebecca Lang

  ‘You’ve been very quiet,’ he said quietly to her, coming over to her and putting his arms around her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I’m in a state of shock. The past seems to have caught up with you, Shay.’

  ‘We never really shuffle off the past,’ he said, looking down at her, his eyes holding hers so that she had to look fully at him. ‘We can’t just switch it off and pretend that it didn’t happen, that it hasn’t affected us.’ He gently pulled her head against his chest, stroking her hair, and she felt tears gather in her eyes. It would be devastating to give him up, if she had to.

  ‘We can talk in the kitchen,’ she said, reluctantly breaking away from him, not wanting Mungo and Fleur to hear their personal exchange. Together they carried the dishes and plates out of the room. Always in her mind, since early afternoon, had been the image of Shay putting his arms around Antonia and hugging her. It was a simple, normal gesture between two civilized people, she told herself again. After all, he did not hate her.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, turning to face him in the kitchen, ‘that maybe we should not see each other until the situation has been resolved between you and Antonia—although I hope that Mungo and Fleur can still see Mark, as they would miss him, and he them.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t miss me?’ he said, standing close but not touching her, his face pale and drawn.

  ‘Of course I would,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘but I can’t reconcile myself to the fact that you asked me to marry you but you don’t love me. Now that Antonia’s here I feel that I… um…need to be more certain about things. We need time away from each other.’

  ‘I don’t feel that I do,’ he said. ‘I enjoy being with you.’

  Deirdre found that she could not, at that moment, voice her suspicions that he wanted her to strengthen his position against his former wife, even though things seemed cut and dried legally where Mark was concerned.

  ‘I…would like to stay away from you until Antonia either goes back to New Zealand or something else is resolved between you. I’m not a part of what you have to decide…what Mark has to decide. Does she know about me?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said grimly.

  ‘There you are,’ she said.

  ‘There hasn’t been time to tell her,’ he said. ‘Her priority is Mark, not me. I’m not an issue with her. You must see that.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she said, still facing him, feeling as though she wanted to cry. ‘But that’s the way it is with me, Shay. I love you…but I’m not sure of you… It has to be right…’

  Mungo came in, ostensibly to get a glass of water. ‘I hope you two aren’t quarrelling,’ he said, with the air of a wise old man.

  ‘We wouldn’t do that,’ Shay said. ‘We’re simply discussing a few issues.’

  Mungo nodded sagely, really none the wiser, and went out bearing his glass of water.

  They stood looking at each other, a tension of sadness in her vying with the intense attraction to him. Just then his pager went off, as though on cue, a tinny beeping that was the sound of duty calling.

  Shay took it out of his pocket, looked at the number displayed there and then switched it off. ‘The hospital,’ he said. ‘Probably about one of my post-op patients. Could I use your phone?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  He pocketed the pager. ‘The twenty-four-seven man,’ he said cynically, with a twisted, self-deprecating smile. At that moment, Deirdre felt suddenly that she knew him better than she had before today. There were regrets in his life that she had not experienced herself, things that were not easy to live with. The phrase also served to bring Antonia somehow into the room with them, coming between them.

  ‘It’s in the nature of the job,’ she said, knowing that to be true.

  When it was time for him to go, she and the children stood at the door to say goodbye.

  ‘We’ll see each other at work,’ she said, knowing that only he would understand that work was the only place where they would meet now, as they had agreed that they would not see each other for a while in their free time.

  Lying in bed later, restless, she felt that the bottom had dropped out of her newly created world, that she had somehow gone back to an ‘as you were’ situation. Yet it was not exactly like that. She had a fulfilling job now that she really liked, she was no longer a servant of Jerry, she had made decisions that had improved her life. The guardianship of Mungo and Fleur would only become an issue if Fiona died. Before long, her parents would be home.

  What she wanted most in the world was still just beyond her reach.

  * * *

  There was a poignancy to everything she did at work after that. They worked together, talked, looked at each other longingly from a distance, it seemed. All the time, she waited for word about Antonia.

  Mark came to their house several times, for supper and to hang out with Fleur and Mungo, during which time he talked a bit about his mother but did not say what she was planning. He did not seem exactly happy that she was back. He seemed more thoughtful and distracted, Deirdre judged, and yet a little more relaxed. It was as though his longing for his mother, having been assuaged, had lost its hold on him. In the meantime, Deirdre watched and waited for something to happen.

  ‘It is ridiculous, Deirdre,’ Shay said to her one hectic morning, when they stood briefly together at the scrub sinks outside room one, ‘that we shouldn’t be seeing each other outside work.’ He looked haggard and stressed, as she often did herself these days.

  ‘It’s the best way, Shay,’ she said, crying inside, wanting so much to touch him. ‘It should be self-limiting.’

  ‘Mark wants to know,’ he said, ‘whether we can all get together, with his mother, to have a meal at a restaurant. Would that be all right with you? I get the impression that he wants to make an announcement.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  She had to go then, to push their patient on a stretcher into the operating room for their first case of the day. ‘We’ll talk later,’ she promised him, feeling that things were coming to a head with Mark and his mother, and perhaps for her and Shay as well.

  * * *

  A week later Deirdre, Mungo and Fleur all filed into The Joker restaurant. Deirdre, carefully dressed to look casually sophisticated, looked up at the name ruefully. That was appropriate a lot of the time for what life handed out to you. She couldn’t complain. Life had been more good than bad to her over the past weeks. Her paralysing dilemmas had somehow unravelled, and she felt now that the initiative was hers with regard to whether she and Shay would be together.

  Nonetheless, she felt a nauseating apprehension at meeting Antonia, forcing herself to move forward, to keep her face serene.

  Mark, Antonia and Shay were already seated at a table for six when she and the children came in. As she moved towards them she thought it was appropriate that they should be here again, where Shay had brought them when she had been at her lowest ebb, where he had rescued them, so to speak. Yet here he was with his former wife, and they looked like a family. Once you had a child, she thought, you were always a family of sorts, even though the formal relationship had been dissolved.

  A mixture of intense emotions occupied her mind as she went forward, with no time for her to identify them before Shay and Antonia were standing up to greet them.

  ‘Deirdre,’ Shay was saying, ‘this is Antonia. Tony, this is Deirdre, Mungo and Fleur.’

  They all said hello. In a daze Deirdre allowed her arm to be taken by Antonia and drawn forward to a seat beside her. ‘Come and sit next to me,’ Antonia said, her voice soft and her accent a mixture of Canadian and New Zealand.

  Obediently Deirdre sat down, while Mungo and Fleur sat on either side of Mark, who was smiling at them, obviously very happy to have them there—his surrogate brother and sister, Deirdre thought, staring across the table at them. Shay’s eyes met hers, and he seemed to be giving her the message that this was Mark’s show.

  A waiter having p
laced a menu in front of her, Deirdre turned to Antonia, looking at the tired face of the other woman, whose tanned skin was criss-crossed with fine lines around the eyes, as though she had been exposed to a lot of sun. The beautiful woman of the photograph had remained beautiful, had matured gracefully and naturally. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a delicate knot at the nape of her neck, giving her a sophisticated air.

  ‘It’s good to meet you, Deirdre,’ Antonia said. ‘Mark’s told me a lot about you and the children…and Shay has, too.’ She sounded nice—reasonable and nice.

  ‘I can’t say that they’ve told me a lot about you,’ Deirdre said with a nervous laugh, wondering if Antonia knew that Shay wanted to marry her.

  ‘No…well…’ Antonia said softly, while the others engaged in lively conversation. ‘I’m the black sheep, the breaker-up of the family. But really, you know, families break up long before the members actually leave each other. Once the emotions are disengaged, that is the real end.’

  Deirdre stared at her, amazed that she should be so frank so quickly. She swallowed nervously. Could she match that?

  ‘We haven’t much time,’ Antonia said, as though Deirdre had voiced her surprise. ‘There isn’t much point now in procrastinating about things. I’m so pleased that Mark likes Mungo and Fleur, that he talks about them as though they were his siblings. He’s needed that. I suppose Shay told you that he had a problem with drugs at one point?’

  ‘Yes,’ Deirdre said, dazed.

  ‘That seems to be over now, thank God. I’ve missed Mark like hell…wanted him to be with me. He knows that more fully now, I think, and doesn’t blame me as much. He knows that I love him, and always will. I’m negotiating with John—that’s my partner—to spend a lot of time here in British Columbia, and the rest of the time in New Zealand. He’s looking into buying land here and a winery. In New Zealand he has a wine-growing business and a sheep farm, two things that he could also do here. Mark needs me around a lot for at least another five years.’

  Deirdre nodded. Antonia seemed to be a very nice person. Deirdre had the feeling that Shay had lost something worth having in her. That thought elicited a sadness in her, a mourning. Perhaps that was why Shay could not love her…or could not say that he loved her. She did not know that she could be a match for Antonia. What to do? What to do?

  ‘I hope it works out,’ she said. ‘I know that Mark would be happier with you in the same country, not too far away.’ She forced herself to say the words, even though she did not know what those events would mean for her personally. All she knew at that moment was that the story, the ongoing saga, was not hers alone. In fact, she was on the periphery really, with no past that involved them. The absent John would also very obviously have a say. He must be an accommodating man to be willing to live in two places.

  ‘Did Shay tell you he wants to marry me?’ she finally found the courage to say, knowing that the others were making too much noise for Shay to hear her pose the question.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Antonia said. ‘I think that would be good for him. He’s a good man. I get the impression that you would be good for each other. His downfall is that he doesn’t know how to balance his life. He chose the wrong woman in me, because I’m self-centred. I want a lot of things for myself, and I’m not willing to compromise beyond a certain point. I admit it freely. Don’t let that happen to you, if you decide to marry him. After all, you’re a long time dead.’

  ‘I want to have children,’ Deirdre found herself saying to this woman who was a stranger to her, this woman who had rejected the man she herself wanted. ‘Three or four.’ Oh, do you? Her alter-ego asked the question. That was something she had not discussed fully with Shay.

  Antonia nodded. ‘A proper family,’ she said, so that Deirdre looked at her closely, seeming to hear a touch of wistfulness and regret in the other woman’s voice.

  The waiter came then with his notepad, and Deirdre ordered a generic meal, not bothering to peruse the menu exhaustively as her mind was churning and most of the print meant nothing to her.

  ‘I’ve chosen the wine,’ Shay said to her, no doubt noting her somewhat bewildered expression, she thought with a sudden desire to laugh hysterically. Her fear of meeting Antonia, thinking she might be snooty, had not been justified. Shay’s ex-wife was probably more up-front than she was herself.

  The food came relatively quickly, and as they ate Shay smiled at her from time to time, as though from a distance, aware as he was that Antonia had targeted her, so to speak. Hardly aware of what she was eating, Deirdre munched her way through her food, while the three young people chatted and laughed with abandon, as though they were unaware of any vibes between the adults.

  When the first course had ended and they were waiting for dessert, Mark said, ‘Can everyone listen, please? I have something to say that affects all of us.’ He was shy and decisive at the same time as he turned to his mother. ‘I love you, Mum. I’m very happy you’re back and that you’ll be living part of the time here, but I want you to know…and everyone to know…that I love Deirdre as well, and you two, Mungo and Fleur…and Dad. I think it’s all come clear to me.’

  He paused to take a drink of water, while the others at the table were silent, not moving, their eyes on him, Deirdre felt tears prick her eyes and she pressed her lips together hard to stop them trembling. Out of the mouths of babes…

  ‘Maybe we can work something out,’ Mark went on, sounding mature beyond his years, ‘so that we can all see each other when we want to…find a way to be together. I’m fed up with being away a lot of the time from people I want to have in my life.’

  ‘That sounds fair enough,’ Antonia said, after a silence that was one of respect for Mark.

  ‘Good for you, Mark,’ Shay said. ‘I’m proud of you, in more ways than one.’

  A slow blush of pleasure coloured Mark’s face, while Mungo and Fleur smiled at him. Deirdre had the feeling that the ball was in her court as she blinked away tears. With all of them working together for something good, surely it would happen.

  When dinner was over and they made their way to their cars, Deirdre found herself walking with Shay, behind the others. When he gripped her hand, she did not pull away.

  ‘For someone who doesn’t trust love,’ she said quietly, ‘your son obviously loves you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought he handled all that very well. I didn’t know what he was going to say, only that he wanted to say something.’

  ‘He did handle it well,’ she agreed, her voice husky with the need to cry. The feel of Shay’s warm hand on hers added to the feeling. More than anything in the world, she wanted to be with him, wanted them to belong to each other. ‘What you don’t trust is your own love. Is that right? Or mine? Well, I think I’m a one-man woman.’

  ‘Still waters run deep?’ he said, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘I guess I sensed that when I first met you.’

  Mark got into a car with his mother, after saying goodbye.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you,’ Shay said to Deirdre. ‘May I come to your place? I don’t think it can wait any longer. I’ll follow you in my car.’

  She nodded, not trusting her voice. For the first time in a long time she felt that things were, maybe, going to be all right. There were a lot of practicalities to iron out, but the main hurdle seemed to have been vaulted. ‘I…like your wife,’ she managed to get out, as she unlocked the door of her car.

  ‘She’s a nice person,’ he agreed. ‘I expect she told you that she’s very focused on herself, but not in a selfish way. She knows what she wants and goes for it…and doesn’t see why she shouldn’t get it. She gets it herself, she doesn’t expect anyone else to get it for her. And she’s not my wife…keep that in mind.’

  ‘I’m very different, I think,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I don’t focus on myself enough.’

  ‘Of course you’re different. That’s what’s so great about you. You call yourself a home body…well, I admire that. You know your priorities an
d you have the courage to be what you want to be…a good mother, a good person.’

  ‘Do I?’ she said, surprised. ‘You make me sound as though I’ve got it all together, when a lot of the time I feel as though I’m made up of a lot of loose ends.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s normal,’ he said. ‘You manage very well.’

  ‘Hey, Dee,’ Mungo interrupted, ‘are you expecting us to walk home, or what?’

  ‘Get in,’ she said, pulling open the car door, smiling at them, wanting to hug them and Shay as well. This is my family, she thought, people I love.

  Shay was right behind them when she parked her car in the short driveway of her parents’ home.

  ‘Hey, kids,’ Shay called to them, ‘you go on inside while I talk to Deirdre out here in private.’

  ‘OK,’ Fleur said, with great alacrity, as though she sensed that something momentous was about to happen. ‘It’s pretty cold out here.’

  ‘We’ll keep each other warm,’ he said.

  When the kids were inside and the door closed, Shay took her hand and drew her under the shelter of the covered porch.

  ‘Will you marry me?’ he said, a shadowy figure looking down at her. ‘It bears repeating.’

  ‘I…’ She wanted to shout ‘Yes!’, but somehow the surge of emotion took away her voice.

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘It so happens,’ he said, ‘that I would be marrying the person I love, and would love the person I marry—the best of both worlds.’

  Deirdre took the short step forward that would bring her up close to Shay and put her head against his chest. His arms closed around her. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I like you and I love you.’

  She closed her eyes, unable to speak.

  ‘Shall I go now?’ he said.

  ‘Stay,’ she whispered, ‘please…’

  * * * * *

  ISBN-13: 9781460377642

  The Surgeon’s Convenient Fiancée

  Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Lang

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