The Nurse's Christmas Gift

by Tina Beckett

  Two nurses were at the baby’s head watching the heart monitor on the side. Annabelle saw it at once.

  ‘A-fib.’

  Her eyes swung to Max, waiting for his assessment. And the concern on his normally passive face sent a wave of panic through her.

  * * *

  Damn it!

  Max went into immediate action. While post-operative atrial fibrillation was a fairly common complication of cardiac surgeries, POAF wasn’t the norm for heart transplants, and, when it did show up, it typically showed up a couple of days down the line. That made it a very big deal. Especially in an infant that had already been in crisis in recent days.

  The possibilities skated through his head and were legion. Problem with the pulmonary vein? Probably not. The isolation of that vessel usually helped prevent POAF. Acute rejection? Not likely this soon after transplantation. Pericardial inflammation or effusion? Yes. It could be that. Fluid could be building around the heart—the body’s reaction to inflammation. And it could cause a-fib, especially if it came on this quickly.

  ‘Let’s see if she’s got some effusion going on and work from there.’

  The baby, awash in tubes and bandages, looked tiny as she lay in the special care incubator, a tuft of soft blonde hair turning her from a patient into a person. He glanced to the side to see that Annabelle’s face was taut with fear, her hands clenched in front of her body.

  Was she worried about losing this one, the way she’d lost baby after baby due to miscarriage?

  He’d been helpless to prevent those, but he damned well wasn’t right now. He could do something to turn this around. And if he had anything to do with it, this baby was going to live.

  He belted out orders and over the next three hours they ran several tests, which confirmed his diagnosis. They pumped in anti-inflammatories, and he and Annabelle settled in to wait for a reaction. Four hours after the initial alarm was raised, Baby Hope’s heart had resumed a normal sinus rhythm.

  Annabelle sank into a rocking chair, her elbows propped on her knees, her back curving as she sat there with her eyes closed. ‘Thank God.’

  Unable to resist, Max went over and used his palm to move in slow circles between her shoulder blades. ‘We’ll keep a close eye on her over the next twenty-four hours, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got this licked. As long as the fluid doesn’t start building again, the rhythm should hold.’

  ‘And if it starts building?’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Anna.’

  The other nurses had moved on to other patients, now that the crisis was over, leaving Max and Annabelle alone with the baby.

  Annabelle reached into the incubator and smoothed down that tuft of hair he’d noticed earlier. The gesture caught him right in the gut, making it tighten until it was hard to breathe. ‘I think you’re too close to this case. Maybe you need to take a step back.’

  ‘Social services handed me her care.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Please don’t make me stay away.’

  He could do just that. Let someone know that her emotions were getting in the way of her objectivity. And he probably should. But Max couldn’t bring himself to even mention that possibility. He hadn’t been able to comfort her during those awful times in their marriage, but he could give her this. As long as it didn’t take too big a toll on her.

  She was a grown woman. She could make her own decisions. Unless it adversely affected their patient.

  ‘I won’t. But I’m going to count on you to recognise when your emotions are getting the better of you and to pull back.’

  He didn’t say the words ‘or else’, but they hung between them. Anna acknowledged them with a nod of her head. ‘Fine. But I don’t think I should go to the Christmas party with you.’

  ‘Miss McDonald will take good care of her. If she starts taking another turn tomorrow, we’ll both stay here. But it’s only for one night. We’ll be back the next day.’

  She looked up, her hand still on the baby’s head. ‘Are you sure?’

  Why he was so insistent on her going with him he had no idea. But these first few days at the hospital had been crazy. With the staff shortages, Annabelle had probably worked herself almost into the ground. A little Christmas cheer was in order. For both of them. They could count it as a celebration of Hope’s successful surgery.

  He told her as much, and then added, ‘I’ll tell you what. As long as she’s holding her own, we’ll go to London. If we hear the slightest peep out of Sienna, we’ll come back immediately. It’s not that long a drive.’

  Her thumb brushed back and forth over the baby’s tiny forehead. ‘Okay.’

  She probably had no idea how protective she looked right now. As if her very presence were enough to keep anything bad from happening to that baby. If it worked like that, Annabelle might have three or four children by now.

  His children.

  Max’s throat tightened, a band threatening to cut off his airway. There would be no children. Not for Annabelle. And not for him.

  That had nothing to do with this case. Or with either of them. Max needed to remember that, or the past would come back and undo all the progress he’d made over the last three years.

  Progress. Was that what it was called? His stints in Africa seemed more like running away.

  No. He’d helped a lot of children during those trips. Kids that might have had no chance had he not been there.

  Like Baby Hope?

  It wasn’t the same at all. Hope could have had any number of doctors perform her transplant. He’d just happened to be here at the time.

  And he was glad he was.

  His fingers gave Annabelle’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘She needs her rest.’

  A ridiculous statement, since Hope was in a drug-induced sleep. He had a feeling his words were more to help Annabelle rest than the baby.

  ‘She’s just so...helpless.’

  ‘She might be. But we’re not. She’s got a great team of experts who are pretty damned stubborn.’

  ‘Like you.’

  That made Max smile, the band around his throat easing. ‘Do I fall on the expert side or the stubborn side?’

  ‘Both.’ She tilted her head back and smiled up at him. ‘Hope is extremely lucky to have you on her team.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  When she stayed like that, he gave in to temptation and bent down to give her a friendly kiss, hoping to hell no one was looking through the observation window at them right now.

  He straightened, his fingers moving beneath her hair to the warm skin of her neck, damp despite the chilly temperatures in the room. From the stress of working to keep Hope’s a-fib from turning into something worse. She had to be absolutely exhausted. ‘You need to get some rest too, Anna. Before you collapse.’

  ‘I will.’ Her attention moved back to the baby. ‘I just want to sit here a little longer, okay?’

  He had a feeling nothing he said was going to move her out of that chair, so he did something he shouldn’t have done. Something that would only test his equilibrium more than it already had been.

  He pulled up a second rocking chair and settled in beside her.

  * * *

  ‘How are the quads?’

  Ella and Annabelle walked towards the front doors of the local café just like they did every Friday morning. Only today big flakes of snow were beginning to fall around them, sifting over the Christmas decorations that had been strung to the lamp posts. It should have felt festive, like something out of a postcard. But it didn’t.

  She had too much on her mind for that.

  She tightened the scarf around her neck, needing her friend’s advice today. The midwife hadn’t steered her wrong when she’d convinced her to move to the Cotswolds a year ago. The change in scenery had done her a world o
f good. At least until Max had come barrelling back into her life. But no one could have predicted that he would be the one taking Sienna’s place. Well, Sienna had known, but, from her reaction when she realised they knew each other, the cardiothoracic surgeon had had no idea who he was when the hospital had contracted him.

  Annabelle just had to think about how to broach the subject. So she’d started with something work related until she could figure out how to bring up Max’s name.

  ‘They’re fine so far. Mum and babies all doing well. It’s very exciting.’

  Ella had seemed distracted over the last couple of weeks. But every time Annabelle tried to gently probe to see what was bothering her, her friend clammed up. ‘I hope everything goes well for them.’

  ‘Me too.’ Ella pushed open the door to the café and got into line along with probably ten other people who were all ordering speciality coffees and breakfast sandwiches. ‘So what’s going on with Max?’

  Whoa. So much for casually introducing the subject after an appropriate amount of small talk. But she should have known that wasn’t going to happen. Ella tended to jump right to the heart of the matter. Except when it came to talking about her own issues, evidently. But at least she seemed to be feeling better than she had a couple of days ago. Maybe she wasn’t catching the virus after all.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are we really going to play this game, Annabelle?’

  Her? Her friend had been pretty evasive herself recently.

  ‘I guess we’re not.’ She gripped the wrought-iron rail that kept customers headed in the right direction. ‘It’s no big deal. He asked me to go to a Christmas fundraiser with him. It’s in London.’

  ‘He did? When did this happen?’ Ella’s face was alight with curiosity. And concern.

  Annabelle couldn’t blame her. Max had only been at the hospital a few days, but he’d already managed to turn her neat and orderly world on its head. Just as he always did. She’d sworn she was immune to him, that she could stay objective.

  But just like with Baby Hope, it seemed that Max had the uncanny knack of being able to separate the fibres of her emotions and stretch them until Annabelle was positive they would snap.

  He’d warned her about getting too emotionally attached to Hope. But who was going to warn her about him?

  Max was a master at keeping his feelings under wraps. She knew the way she—and the rest of her family—wore her heart on her sleeve made him uncomfortable. His background had made him much more cautious about big emotional displays when they’d started dating. But with a lot of work and time spent with her parents that personality trait had turned around to the point that Max didn’t think twice about slinging his arm around her shoulders. That was when Annabelle knew she could love him.

  His parents had died when he was in his early twenties, before he and Annabelle met. Even his grieving had been a private affair. And when she’d lost her babies...

  He’d gone back to being clinical. Probably because she’d been so overwrought the first time or two. Then she’d begun pulling away as well and it had snowballed from there. She’d called him heartless that last time.

  No more, Anna.

  Wasn’t that what he’d said?

  But had he really been as heartless as she’d thought? Maybe his grief—like with his parents’ deaths—had been worn on the inside.

  ‘Anna?’

  Her friend’s voice called her back. She tried to remember the question. When had Max asked her to the charity event? ‘He asked me yesterday, after Hope’s surgery.’

  When he’d almost kissed her in the hospital corridor.

  If the male nurse hadn’t interrupted them when he had...

  God! She was setting herself up for disaster.

  The redhead moved forward several feet in line. ‘How did he ask you?’

  ‘Um...with his voice?’

  Ella jabbed her with her elbow. ‘That’s not what I mean and you know it. Was he asking you to a fundraiser? Or was he asking you to something else?’

  Something else?

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  Ella turned her attention to the barista, ordering her usual beans and eggs breakfast with coffee.

  Unlike her friend, Annabelle’s stomach was churning too much to go for a hearty breakfast so she ordered a cup of tea and a couple of crumpets with butter and marmalade.

  ‘What in the world are you having?’ Her friend curled her nose, her Irish accent coming through full force, as it did when she was amused.

  ‘I’m trying to eat lighter these days.’

  Ella tossed her hair over her shoulder, taking the coffee the woman at the counter handed her. ‘I’ll go find us a table.’

  It would do no good to try to hide anything from the midwife. She had always been far too good at seeing through her. Then again, there was that heart-on-the-sleeve syndrome that Annabelle just couldn’t shake. The barista handed her a teapot and cup, promising that she would be along with their breakfast orders soon. There was nothing left but to join Ella and try to sort through all of her feelings about spending time alone with her husband tomorrow evening. After all the years they’d been apart, he shouldn’t still leave her weak at the knees, but he did. And there was no denying it.

  The second she sank into her chair, the midwife wrapped her hands around her chunky white mug and leaned forward. ‘So tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Ella didn’t respond, just sat there with brows raised.

  Okay, so this was worse than just spilling her guts. ‘Like I said, it’s Max.’

  This time her friend laughed. ‘I thought we’d already established that. If the rumours about the newest—and sublimely hot—member of Teddy’s tight-knit family are true, then he was spotted with his lips puckered, ready to swoop in on the always untouchable Annabelle. Some accounts of that story included a ringing slap to the face.’

  Annabelle’s eyes widened, shock moving through her system. ‘People think I slapped him?’

  ‘Not everyone. Some think you disappeared into the nearest supply cupboard with him.’

  ‘Oh, heavens!’ She poured tea into her cup and took a quick sip, letting the hot liquid splash into her empty stomach, hoping it would give her some kind of strength. ‘Do they know who he is?’

  She hoped Ella would understand the question. Did everyone at the hospital know that Max was her husband? Not that he actually was, except for on a piece of paper. The second she’d told him to get out, the marriage had been over.

  ‘If they don’t yet, they’re going to work it out soon enough.’ A waitress stopped by and dropped off their plates of food. ‘The only thing stopping them is that you’re using your maiden name. But of course, that makes it even more delicious as it heads down the gossip chain. Who wants to hear about an old married couple doing naughty things?’

  ‘Great. So what do I do about it?’

  ‘You might want to think about putting your own version of events out there so that you—and Max, for that matter—don’t wind up with a real mess on your hands.’

  ‘And what version of events is that? That I’m married to Max, but that we’re on our way to dissolving the marriage? Talk about winding up with a mess on my hands.’

  She already had. And she wasn’t exactly sure what she could do to fix it. Especially since some people had evidently seen their display after the transplant surgery, when she was as sure as the next person that Max had been about to kiss her. If not for the nurse...

  She presumed that he had been one of the ones to start the rumour. Then there was the situation of the actual kiss that had passed between them. But that had been outside the pub, and she was pretty sure no one from the hospital had been there. It was why she’d chosen the place.

/>   Quickly telling Ella about that incident as well as all of the confusing feelings and emotions she’d been dealing with up to this point, she shrugged. ‘Maybe I should have told him I wouldn’t go to London with him.’

  ‘Are you kissing...I mean kidding?’ Ella grinned to show that the slip had been anything but an accident. ‘You two have got to figure this thing out. There’s obviously something there. That’s what people are picking up on. Tell me you’re not still in love with him.’

  Annabelle didn’t miss a beat, although her fingers tightened on the handle of her teacup. ‘Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens to him. I want him to be happy.’

  ‘And you don’t think he will be with you?’ Ella took a deep breath. ‘You’ve been locked in the past, Anna, whether you realise it or not. I think you have a decision to make. If you really believe you shouldn’t be together, and you want him to be happy, then maybe it’s time to do something about it. Remove yourself as an obstacle, as hard as that might be.’

  When she’d asked Max to leave, she’d made no effort to go after him. And he’d made no effort to come back and work things out. Besides, she’d been so devastated by the fact that he wasn’t willing to sit and wallow in misery with her that she hadn’t been thinking straight.

  But he evidently hadn’t needed to wallow. He could have fought for their marriage—offered to go with her to counselling. But he hadn’t. He’d simply seemed relieved it was all over with.

  Her heart clutched in her chest. She’d been relieved too. And now?

  Now she didn’t know how she felt.

  Their food was long since gone, although Annabelle couldn’t remember actually eating her crumpets. But she must have since the spoon from the little pot of marmalade was sitting on her bread plate, remnants of orange rind still clinging to its silver bowl.

  ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is time to do something.’ She could contact her solicitor and ask him to prod Max to sign, since she couldn’t seem to get the nerve up to ask him herself.

  ‘Unless you decide you still love him. Then I say you fight.’ Ella reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘I know that doesn’t help, but maybe you need to take a closer look at your heart. See what it’s telling you to do.’