The Nurse's Christmas Gift

by Tina Beckett

  The surgical unit. The epicentre of Max’s—and Sienna’s—world. Even with all the prep work that went on before the actual surgery, this was still where everything would be won or lost. Annabelle had once said she didn’t know how he did it. He wasn’t completely sure either. He just did it. The same way she did her job, standing beside the incubators of very sick babies and taking the best care she could of them.

  Why was he even thinking about Annabelle right now? ‘Can we go inside?’

  ‘Of course.’ She hit a button on the wall and the doors swung wide to allow them through. Glancing at the schedule on the whiteboard at the nurses’ station, she said, ‘Do you want to scrub up and observe a surgery? There’s a gallbladder being taken out in surgical unit two.’

  ‘No, I’m good. But I would like to observe your next cardiac surgery.’

  Sienna gave a sigh and put a hand to her belly. ‘Sure, but I’m really hoping to scale back by about seventy-five per cent over the next week so I can leave without worrying that you haven’t carried an actual caseload.’

  Maybe he should have been offended by that, but he wasn’t. Sienna didn’t know him from Adam. He was pretty sure that she could still carry her share of the patient load, but her comment had been more about wanting to see him in action. To reassure herself that she was leaving her little charges in the best possible hands. He was determined not to disappoint her.

  ‘That sounds fair enough.’ He paused. ‘And the baby who was in crisis? Baby...Hope?’

  ‘She doesn’t have an official name. Hope is Annabelle’s pet name for her. I think it’s a fingers-crossed kind of thing. Whatever it is, it’s stuck, and we all find ourselves calling her that now.’

  That sounded just like Annabelle. Refusing to give up hope, even when it was obvious that the procedures were not going to work.

  ‘Annabelle mentioned social services. And that the mum took off?’

  ‘Yes. The mum came in while she was in labour. She was an addict and abandoned the baby soon afterwards. We have no idea where she is.’

  Max’s chest tightened. His parents had never actually abandoned him physically, except for those long cruises and trips they’d taken, leaving him in the care of an aunt. But emotionally?

  ‘Anyway,’ Sienna went on, ‘I’m assigning the case to you. Make sure you become familiar with it. Your best bet for doing that is to get with Annabelle and go over her patient file. She has followed that baby from the beginning. She knows more about her than anyone, maybe even me, and I’m Baby Hope’s doctor.’

  Max’s heart twinged out a warning. The last thing he wanted to do was spend even more time with Annabelle, because it was...

  Dangerous.

  But what else could he do? Say no? Tell Sienna that he couldn’t be a professional when it came to dealing with his almost-ex? Not hardly.

  Maybe Sienna saw something in his face. ‘Is that going to be a problem considering the circumstances? I’m sorry, I had no idea you two even knew each other.’

  If there was one thing Max was good at, it was disengaging his brain from his heart.

  ‘It won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Good.’

  He’d work with Anna. Until it was over. Because one way or the other it would be. The baby would either have a new heart, or she wouldn’t. The twinge he’d felt seconds earlier grew to an ache—just like the one he’d dealt with on an almost daily basis while working in the Sudan. He rubbed a palm over the spot for a second to ease the pressure.

  ‘How often do hearts come available?’

  ‘Do you mean here in Cheltenham? Some years there are more. Some years, less.’

  ‘How many transplants have you done?’

  ‘One. In my whole career. We deal with lots of holes in the heart and diverting blood flow, but hypoplastic cases are rare at Teddy’s.’

  So why was she handing the case over to him? This was a chance that she’d just admitted didn’t come across her desk very often. ‘Are you sure you don’t want it?’

  ‘Very.’ Something flashed through her brown eyes. A trickle of fear? His gaze shifted lower. Was she worried about the health of her own baby?

  He remembered well the worry over whether a foetus would make it to term. In fact he remembered several times when he’d prayed over Annabelle as she’d slept. Those prayers had gone unanswered.

  ‘When are you due?’

  ‘Too soon. But right now it feels like for ever.’ Her glance caught his. ‘Everything is fine with the baby, if that’s what you’re wondering. My handing that case over has nothing to do with superstition. I just don’t think I have the endurance right now for what could be a long, complicated surgery.’ She pressed a hand to the small of her back. ‘And if for some reason I go earlier than I expect, I don’t want to pass Baby Hope over to someone else at the last second. I want it to be now, when it’s a deliberate decision on both of our parts.’

  That he could understand. The need to be prepared for what might happen. Unlike in his relationship with Annabelle when he’d impulsively issued an ultimatum, hoping to save her from the grief of repeating a tragic cycle—not to mention the dangerous physical symptoms she’d been experiencing.

  It had worked. But not quite in the way he’d expected.

  This was not where he wanted his thoughts to head. He’d do better to stick with what he could control and leave the rest of it to the side at the moment.

  ‘Your patients will be in good hands. I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘Thank you. That means a lot to me.’ She sent him a smile that was genuine. ‘Do you have any other questions before we officially end our tour and go on to discuss actual cases?’

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘All right.’ The wariness he’d sensed during his mention of Montanari filtered back into her eyes. She had no need to be worried. He was done with discussing personal issues.

  ‘Is the food as bad here as it was at my last gig?’

  Sienna actually laughed. ‘I’ll let you be the judge of that. I don’t mind it. But then again, I eat almost anything, as long as it isn’t alive or shaped like a snake.’

  ‘Well, on those two points we can agree. So I take it Teddy’s doesn’t serve exotic fare.’

  ‘Nope. Just watery potatoes and tasteless jelly.’

  He glanced at his watch and smiled back at her. ‘Well, then, in the name of science, I think I should go and check out the competition. Can we save the case discussion until later?’

  ‘Yes, I’m ready for a break as well. And you can tell me what you think once you’ve sampled what the canteen has to offer. Just watch out for the nurses.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Some of them have heard you were coming. While you’re checking out the food, don’t be surprised if they’re checking you out.’

  Would they be? He’d made it a point not to get involved with women at all since his separation. And he wasn’t planning on changing that.

  And what of Annabelle? She was a nurse. Had she been checking him out as well?

  Of course not. But on that note, he’d better go and get something into his stomach. Before he did something stupid and went back down to the first floor to check on a very ill baby, and the protective nurse who hovered over her.

  Annabelle wasn’t good for his equilibrium. And she very definitely wasn’t good for his objectivity. And no matter what, he had to keep that. Because if he allowed his heart to become too entangled with her as he cared for his patients, he would have trouble doing his job.

  What Baby Hope and the rest of his patients needed was a doctor who could keep his emotions out of the surgical ward. No matter how hard that might prove to be.

  * * *

  Annabelle grabbed a tray and headed for the line of choices. She wasn’t hungry. Or so she told he
rself. Her stomach had knotted again and again until there was almost no room in it for anything other than the big bowl of worry she’d dished up for herself that morning. Baby Hope was getting weaker. The crisis she’d had this morning proved it. If Max hadn’t been there, Hope might have...

  No, don’t think about that. And Max had not been the only one in that room who could have saved her. Sienna would have called for the exact same treatment protocol. She’d seen the other woman in action.

  Once upon a time, Annabelle had expected Max to play the role of saviour. It hadn’t been fair to him. Or to her. He’d finally cracked under the pressure of it all. And so had she. At least her body had.

  A few days after she’d lost her last babies, her abdomen and legs had swelled up with fluid from all of the hormones she’d been on and she’d been in pain; Max had rushed her to A&E. They’d given her an ultrasound again, thinking maybe some foetal tissue had been left behind. But what they’d found was that her ovaries had swelled to many times their normal size from harvesting the eggs.

  There’d been no magic-wand treatment to make it all go away. Her body had had to do the hard work. She’d worn support hose to keep the fluid from accumulating in her legs, and had had to sleep sitting up in a chair to make it easier to breathe as her hormone levels had gradually gone back to normal. And the look on Max’s face when the doctors had told him the cause...

  It had come right on the heels of him telling her that he was done trying to have babies. It had made everything that much worse. But she’d still desperately wanted children, so she’d started keeping secret recordings of her temperature. Only the more secretive she’d got over the coming weeks, the more distant he’d become. In the end, the death knell had sounded before he’d ever found that journal.

  Back to food, Annabelle.

  She set her tray on the metal supports running parallel to the food selections and gazed into the glass case. Baked chicken? No. Salad? No. Fruit? Yes. She picked up a clear plastic container of fruit salad and set it on her tray, pushing it a few feet further down the line. Sandwiches? Her stomach clenched in revulsion. Not at the food, but at the thought of trying to push that bread down her oesophagus.

  Broccoli? Healthy, and she normally loved it, but no. She kept moving past the selection of veggies until she hit the dessert section.

  Bad Annabelle. What would your mum say?

  She peered back down the row, wondering if she should reverse her steps and make better choices. Except when she glanced the way she’d come, her gaze didn’t fall on food. It fell on the very person she was trying to forget. Max.

  And he was with Sienna. Both were holding food trays, which meant...

  Oh, no! They were eating lunch too.

  It’s what people do. They eat. They sleep. Her throat tightened. They move away to far-off places.

  Sienna waved to her. ‘Hey, Annabelle. Hold on. Would you like to join us? We can talk about Baby Hope, and you can help catch Max up on the case.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say she was going to eat back in her office, but she’d just been worrying about the baby. Any light they could shed on her prognosis should outweigh any awkwardness of eating with her ex. Right?

  Right.

  ‘Sure. I’ll save you a spot.’ She tossed a container of yoghurt onto her plate and then a large slice of chocolate cake for good measure. Handing her personnel card to the cashier and praying she scanned it before the pair caught up with her, she threw a smile at the woman and then headed out towards the crowd of people already parked at tables.

  Setting her tray on one of the only available tables in the far corner, she hesitated. Should she really be doing this?

  Yes. Anything for Baby Hope.

  She shut her eyes. Was she becoming as obsessed with this infant as she had been with her quest to become pregnant all those years ago?

  No. Looking back now, those attempts seemed so futile. Desperate attempts by a desperate woman. Max’s childhood had been pretty awful, and she’d wanted to show him how it should be. How wonderful hers had been. And since he had no blood relatives left alive, she’d wanted to give him that physical connection—for the roots she’d had with her own extended family to take hold and spread. Only none of it had worked.

  If her sister hadn’t had a devastating experience when trying to adopt a baby, Annabelle might have gone that route after her first miscarriage. But if the grief she’d felt after losing a baby she’d never met was horrific, how much worse had it been for her sister, who’d held a baby in her arms for months only to have to hand him back over to the courts weeks before the adoption was finalised? The whole family had been shattered. And so Annabelle had continued on her quest to have a biological child, only to fail time and time again.

  She popped open the lid to her fruit, realising it was the only truly healthy thing on her plate. She’d just wanted to get out of that canteen line at any cost.

  Her mouth twisted sideways. It looked as if the final cost would be paid by her waistline and hips. She shoved a huge blueberry into her mouth and bit down hard just as Max and Sienna joined her. Juice spurted over her teeth and drummed at the backs of her lips, seeking the nearest available exit.

  Perfect. She covered her mouth with her napkin as she continued to fight with the food, finally swallowing it down with a couple of coughs afterwards.

  Max frowned as he sat. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ Another cough, louder this time, a few people at neighbouring tables glancing her way. Probably wondering who they were going to have to do the Heimlich on this time. She swallowed again, clearing her throat. ‘Just went down the wrong pipe.’

  Sienna, who arrived with only some kind of green bottled concoction that made Annabelle horrified at what her own plate contained, twisted the lid to her liquid lunch and sat down. She nodded at the selection. ‘I’m finding smaller portions are easier to handle when I’m working. I’ll eat a proper meal when I go off duty.’

  Forcing herself to cut a chunk of melon into more manageable pieces, she wished she could be just as disciplined as the surgeon. Well, today was not a good day to stand in judgement of herself. Was it any wonder she was seeking out comfort food? Her husband had just landed back in her life.

  She couldn’t even pretend to have a boyfriend, because if there’d been anyone serious she obviously would have wanted to pressure Max into signing the divorce papers. But she hadn’t.

  Ugh! She chewed quickly and then swallowed, thankful that at least this time she wasn’t choking.

  A phone chirped and all three of them looked down at their devices, making her smile. Her screen was blank, so it wasn’t Ella, who she hadn’t heard from all day, which was unusual. Maybe she hadn’t heard that Max was back.

  Or maybe she had.

  Sienna frowned, setting her drink down on the table so quickly the contents sloshed, almost coming over the rim of the bottle. She stared at her phone for several seconds, not touching the screen. Either it was very good news...or very...

  The other doctor stood up, her tongue flicking out to moisten her lips. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’ She glanced at Max. ‘Can you carry on without me?’

  ‘Of course. Is everything all right?’

  ‘It will be.’ Her hand went to her midsection. And rather than responding to whoever had sent a message, she dropped her phone into the pocket of her scrubs and picked up her drink, screwing the cap back on. ‘Page me if you have any questions or need help.’

  ‘I think I’m good.’ Max sent Annabelle a wry glance. ‘I’m sure Anna can answer any questions about Hope or the hospital I might have.’

  Or about why he hadn’t severed those final ties that bound them together?

  Somehow, though, she doubted he was any more eager to revisit their past than she was. But still, the last thing she wanted today was t
o play hospital adviser to a man who still made her knees quake. She had no idea why that was so. She was over him. Had been for the last couple of years. In fact, she hadn’t thought of him in...

  Well, the last fifteen seconds, but that didn’t count, since he was sitting right across from her. Before today, she’d gone weeks at a time without him crossing her mind.

  But since Sienna was glancing her way as if needing reassurance that it was indeed okay to leave them alone without a referee, Annabelle nodded. ‘Go. It’ll be fine.’

  Looking a little doubtful, but evidently not enough to want to stick around, the cardiothoracic surgeon gave a quick wave and headed towards the entrance of the canteen. Annabelle noticed she slid her phone out of her pocket and stared at the screen again as she rounded the corner.

  She wondered what that was all about. But it was really none of her business.

  But Baby Hope was, and since that was why Sienna had wanted to sit with her...

  ‘Is there some news about the baby?’ Maybe that was what the message was about. Could it be that...? ‘Could a heart have become available?’

  Hope sparked in her chest, flaring to life with a jolt that had her leaning forward and sent her plastic fork dropping back onto her tray.

  Max must have seen something in her face because he shook his head. ‘No. Not yet. I think she would have told us if that message had anything to do with a donor heart.’

  She sagged back into her chair. ‘I was hoping...’

  ‘I know. Why don’t we work on things we can control until one is available? Tell me anything else you can think of about her. The events surrounding her birth, et cetera.’

  ‘Are you looking for something in particular?’ She’d told him pretty much everything she knew back in the special care baby unit.

  Max pulled a small notebook out of one of the pockets of his jacket. ‘I can look at her chart and get the mechanics. But tell me about her. Anything out of the ordinary that you’ve noticed that you think might help.’

  She picked up her fork and pushed around a few more blueberries, not trying to really stab any of them but using the empty gesture as a way to sort through her thoughts about Hope.