The Nurse's Christmas Gift

by Tina Beckett

  ‘I don’t think I can.’ That kiss went through her mind. He was certainly still attracted to her, he’d said as much, but Annabelle had always assumed that he’d stopped loving her when he’d left their home. So even if she cared about him, would it matter?

  ‘Maybe that gala will give you the strength to do just that. If it does, then you have a decision to make. And this time you’d better act on it, one way or the other. Unless you’re content to remain in stasis for the rest of your life.’

  No. Of that Annabelle was sure. She had been locked in a kind of suspended animation for three years now. It was time to move forward.

  Even if that meant leaving Max behind. For ever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAX SAT ON the stairs, listening to his parents argue.

  Again.

  For the first time in his fifteen years he was scared about what might happen to him. Would they leave him here by himself?

  ‘I am going on that cruise, whether you come with me or not.’

  His dad’s angry voice carried easily, just as it always did. Even if Max had been upstairs in his room, he would have heard those words.

  ‘And what about Maxwell?’

  ‘What about him? If you’re worried, ask your aunt Vanessa to come and stay with him. I’m sure she’ll be happy to lounge around the pool and do nothing.’

  ‘Doug, that’s not fair.’

  ‘What’s not fair about it? I consider it an equitable trade. I worked hard for this bonus, and I’m not going to give it up.’

  There was a pause, and he held his breath as he waited for his mother’s answer. ‘Okay, I’ll ask her. But we can’t keep doing this. Vanessa has accused me more than once of not wanting him.’

  ‘Just ask her.’

  No reassurance that his parents actually did want him. They never took him on any of their so-called trips.

  His hands tightened into fists as they rested on his knees. Then he slowly got up from his spot and crept back up the stairs. To pretend he didn’t care.

  Except when he got to his room and opened the door there was someone already in there. A woman...crouched on the floor beside his bed, crying. She looked up. Blue eyes met his.

  Annabelle!

  Suddenly he was grown up and his childhood bedroom morphed into the bathroom of their London flat. Anna held a small plastic stick in one hand, her eyes red and swollen. When he went to kneel down beside her to comfort her, she floated away. Through the door. Down the stairs, where everything was now eerily quiet. No matter how hard he tried to reach her, she kept sliding further and further away, until she was a tiny blip on the horizon. Then poof! She was gone. Leaving him all alone. Just as his parents had.

  Max’s eyes popped open and encountered darkness. He blinked a couple of times, a hand going to his chest, which was slick with sweat.

  God. A dream.

  He sat up and shoved the covers down, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

  Well, hell!

  He didn’t need a dream to tell him what he already knew.

  But maybe his subconscious had needed to send him a clear and pointed message about going to that Christmas party with Anna: that he needed to tread very, very carefully.

  * * *

  Baby Hope was still holding her own. And he’d finally shaken off the remnants of that dream he’d had that morning.

  He’d also received some positive news about the accident victims they’d treated a couple of days ago. Several of the patients had already been released to go home, and the rest of them were expected to recover. Sarah, who’d been one of the most badly injured, might have to have surgery to stabilise the sternal fracture. But everyone was hopeful that she’d heal up without any lasting damage.

  That was some very good news.

  He hadn’t seen Annabelle yet this morning. Which was another good thing.

  Right, Max. Just because you’ve passed the entrance to the hospital multiple times since your arrival this morning, means nothing.

  A thought hit him. Maybe she’d come down with the same virus that had plagued other hospital staff.

  It didn’t seem likely. A few of those had trickled back to work today, and no one else had called in sick. At least, that was what one of the nurses had told him. So it seemed that the outbreak might be dying down. A good thing too. The closer they got to Christmas, the more patients they’d probably be seeing. Everywhere he looked, there were doctors and nurses whose faces appeared haggard and tired.

  Frayed nerves were evident everywhere, including the operating room this morning, where he’d had to repair a hole in a young patient’s heart. The anaesthetist had snapped at a nurse who’d only been trying to do her job. He’d apologised immediately afterward, but the woman had thrown him an irritated glance, muttering under her breath. It was probably a good thing that he’d understood none of the words.

  All of a sudden, Annabelle came hurrying down the hall, a red coat still belted tightly around her waist. When she caught sight of him and then glanced guiltily at the clock to his right, one side of his mouth cranked up in spite of himself. She was late.

  The Annabelle he knew was never late. Ever.

  He moved a few steps towards her. ‘Get held up, did you?’

  ‘I’m only six minutes late.’

  For Anna, that was an eternity. He held up his hands to ward off any other angry words. ‘Hey, I was only asking a friendly question.’

  ‘Sorry, Max. It’s just been quite a day already.’

  ‘Yes, it has.’ His had started off with that damned nightmare, followed by a surgery at five o’clock this morning. Fortunately, the procedure had been pretty straightforward, and he’d been out of the surgical suite an hour later.

  Her glance strayed to his face. ‘What time did you get here?’

  ‘A few hours ago.’

  ‘I thought shift changes were at eight.’ Her fingers went to her belt, quickly undoing the knot.

  He nodded. ‘They are. I had an emergency to see to, so I came in early.’

  Her breath caught with an audible sound, her hands stopping all movement. ‘Hope?’

  ‘No, another surgery. It was urgent, but it came out fine.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’ She finished shifting out of her jacket and stepped into her office, where she hung the garment on the back of the door. Her lanyard was already hanging on a cord around her neck. ‘Have you been to see Hope yet?’

  ‘Once. She’s still stable. I was just getting ready to check on her again. Care to join me?’

  ‘Yes. I was halfway afraid something would go terribly wrong during the night.’

  A cold hand gripped his heart. It had indeed. He shook off the thought.

  ‘I would have called you, if something involving Hope had come up.’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So your day has already been tough?’

  ‘Kind of. I’ve been on the second floor.’

  ‘Oncology?’ Some kind of eerie premonition whispered through his veins.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice quavered slightly. ‘We found out this morning that one of my nephews has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I went to ask Dr Terrill a few questions about the type and prognosis. Just so I could hear first-hand what he might be facing.’

  He hadn’t yet met any of the doctors or nurses on the second floor, as each area was kind of insulated from each other. ‘I’m sorry, Anna. Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Nate. Jessica’s son...the one I mentioned.’

  A band tightened around his chest. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Just two.’

  Jessica, the youngest of Annabelle’s sisters, had already had a couple of children by the time he’d left. In fact, the huge size of Anna’s family wa
s one of the things that had created such pressure on her to have children of her own. She would never admit it, but with each new niece or nephew the shadows in his wife’s eyes had grown. She’d wanted so desperately what her sisters had...what her parents had had. If the family hadn’t been so close, it might not have mattered quite so much. But they were—and it did.

  He wanted to ask what Dr Terrill had said, but, at two years of age, the tumour had to be something that didn’t take years to emerge.

  ‘Jessica noticed he wasn’t keeping up with his peers on the growth charts like he should. And recently he’d been complaining that his head hurt. So they ran a series of tests.’

  Headaches could be benign or they could signal something deadly. ‘Do they have the results?’

  Annabelle could say it was none of his business. And it wasn’t. Not any more. He’d lost the right to know anything about her family when he’d walked out of their home and flown to Africa.

  ‘A craniopharyngioma tumour. They’re in discussing treatment options with their doctor today.’

  He went through the catalogue in his head, searching for the name.

  Found it.

  Craniopharyngiomas were normally benign. But even though they didn’t typically spread outside the original area, they could still be difficult to reach and treat.

  ‘Why don’t you get someone to cover you for a few hours, so you can be on hand if they need you? Or maybe you should go to London early.’

  That might solve his dilemma about the Christmas party.

  ‘I need to work. And Mum and Dad are there with Jessica and her husband. At this point there are too many people. Too many opinions.’

  Kind of like with Annabelle’s in-vitro procedures. There had always been someone in her family stepping up with an opinion on this or that. It hadn’t bothered him at first, but as things had continued to go downhill Max had come to wish they would just mind their own business. A ridiculous mind-set, considering Max himself had hoped to have a family as large and connected as Annabelle’s had been—and evidently still was.

  ‘If you’d rather not go to the party—’

  ‘I want to go. It’ll give me a chance to run by and check in on Nate while I’m in London.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Well, if fate didn’t want to help him, he was stuck. Besides, he didn’t blame her for wanting to go, if it meant making a side trip to see them. It was doubtful her family would want him there, though. Not with everything that had happened. But he could think about that later.

  He decided to change the subject. ‘Are you ready to go see Hope?’

  ‘Yes, just let me check in and make sure there are no other urgent cases I need to attend to.’

  Five minutes later, they were in Hope’s room, gowned and gloved to minimise exposure to pathogens that could put the tiny girl in danger. She was still sedated, still intubated. But her colour was good, no more cyanosis. Something inside Max relaxed. Her atrial fibrillation hadn’t returned after the scare yesterday, and her new heart was beating with gusto.

  The empty chair next to the baby’s incubator made a few muscles tense all over again. This child would never have a concerned loved one sitting beside her to give her extra love and care. At least not her mum.

  As if Annabelle knew what he was thinking, she lowered herself into that seat, her gaze on the baby inside. She murmured something that he couldn’t hear and then slid her hand through one of the openings of the special care cot. She stroked the baby’s hair, cooing to her in a quiet voice. More muscles went on high alert.

  Had she done this for each of her nieces and nephews? The fact that she would never hold a child she’d given birth to made him sad. And angry. Sometimes the world was just cruel, when you thought about it. Here was a woman who could give unlimited amounts of love to a child, and she couldn’t have one.

  But life wasn’t fair. There were wars and starving children and terrible destructive forces of nature that laid waste to whole communities.

  Annabelle glanced up at him. ‘The difference between how she looked thirty-six hours ago and right now are like day and night.’

  He remembered. He also remembered how they’d almost lost her an hour after her surgery.

  But this tiny tyke was a fighter, just as Anna had said she was. She wanted to live. Her body had fought hard, almost as if she’d known that if she held on long enough, relief would come.

  And it had.

  Maybe life was sometimes fair after all.

  He laid a hand on top of the incubator. ‘And so far she’s handling all of this like a champ.’

  ‘Where will she go after this?’

  The question wasn’t aimed at him. But he felt a need to answer it anyway. ‘I’m sure there are a lot of people who would take Hope in a second. She’ll get a lot of love.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘There’s no chance that her mum will come back and want her later?’

  ‘It’s been over two weeks. She knew that Hope was born with a heart defect. There’s always a chance, but if she’d wanted to find her, surely she would have come back to the hospital by now?’

  He nodded. ‘What do social services say?’

  ‘That if her mum doesn’t return, she’ll be placed in a foster home and then put up for adoption.’

  That brought up another point. He took his hand off the cot. ‘You’ve never thought again about adopting?’

  That had been another sticky subject towards the end of their marriage. She’d refused to even entertain the idea.

  ‘My sister’s experience made me afraid of going that route. But after spending so much time with Hope, I’m more open to it than I was in the past. Not every case ends in heartache, like Mallory’s did. I don’t know if I’d be able to adopt Hope, but surely they would let me consider another child with special needs. I love my nieces and nephews, but...’ She stopped as if remembering that she had a very ill nephew.

  She withdrew her hand, staring into the special care cot.

  ‘But it’s not the same. I get it.’ He wanted to make sure she knew that there was nothing wrong with wanting someone of your own to love. He’d once felt that way about Anna. That she made his life complete in a way nothing else could, not even his work in Africa, as worthy as that might be. But in the end, his dream had been right about one thing: she hadn’t wanted him to stay.

  ‘You’ve probably seen plenty of needy children in Africa.’

  ‘Yes. There are some incredible needs on that continent. I’ve sometimes wished...’ He’d sometimes wished he could give a couple of kids a stable home without poverty or fear, but with the way his parents had been... Well, it wasn’t something he saw himself tackling on his own.

  Then there was the unfinished business with Annabelle. It didn’t lend itself to making a new start. Especially when the previous chapter was still buzzing in the background. It was another thing his dream had got right. Annabelle was out of reach. She had been for a long time. He needed to sign those papers. Only then could he move forward.

  He’d been thinking more and more along those lines over the last several days. She was here. His excuse of old was that he wasn’t quite sure where to find her. But that no longer held water.

  He couldn’t have hired a solicitor to track her down back then? Or have gone through her parents?

  Probably. But he’d believed if she wanted that divorce badly enough, she would find him.

  ‘You’ve sometimes wished what?’

  ‘That I could make life better for a child or two.’

  She swivelled in her chair, her face turning up to study his. ‘You once told me you no longer wanted children.’

  Yes, he had. After her last miscarriage, he’d told her that to protect her health and to save what was evidently unsalvageable: th
eir marriage. So he’d told a lie. Except when he’d said the words, they hadn’t been a lie. He’d just wanted it all to stop.

  And it had.

  ‘I was tired of all the hoops we had to leap through. Of all of the disappointment.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Max.’ Her face went from looking up at him as if trying to understand to bending down to stare at the floor.

  What the hell?

  Realising she might have misunderstood his words, he knelt down beside her in a hurry, taking her chin and forcing her to look at him. ‘I wasn’t disappointed in you, Anna. I was disappointed for you. For both of us. I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make everything right, and when I couldn’t... It just wore me down, made me feel helpless in a way I’d never felt before.’

  ‘Like Jessica must feel right now with Nate.’ Her eyes swam with moisture, although none of it spilled over the lower rim of her eyelids.

  ‘She has a great support network in you and the rest of the family.’ Something Max hadn’t felt as if he’d given to Annabelle. He’d withdrawn more and more of his emotional support, afraid to get attached to a foetus that would never see the light of day. And towards the end, that was what he’d started thinking of them as. Foetuses and not babies. And he’d damned himself each time he’d used that term.

  ‘She does. Her husband has been her rock as well.’

  Unlike him? His jaw tightened, teeth clenching together in an effort to keep from apologising for something that he couldn’t change.

  Her eyes focused on him. And then her hand went to his cheek. ‘Don’t. I wasn’t accusing you of not being there, Max. I was the one who pulled away. You did what you could.’

  ‘It wasn’t enough.’

  Her lashes fluttered as her lids closed and her hand fell back to her side. ‘Nothing would have been enough. I was a mess back then. I’m stronger now.’

  She was. He saw it in the way she cared for Baby Hope and the rest of her patients. She’d called Jessica’s husband a rock. She could have been describing herself.