From Doctor to Daddy

by Becky Wicks

  ‘As I’m sure you know, this test will throw into the light any sign of infection or other abnormalities,’ Rishi told him. ‘If we find any sort of blood, protein or glucose in your good stuff, Dr Breckenridge, you won’t be able to donate. You’ve said you’re not on any meds, any antibiotics...?’

  ‘No, I’m not, that’s correct,’ he said.

  ‘OK, then, we’ll be right here when you’re done.’

  Fraser stepped into the bathroom. He knew he was fine already—he’d done his own tests prior to this. He’d been torturing himself by doing that, really, because whatever the tests told him didn’t matter—the experts had to make their own minds up. It was Esme’s health at stake... Esme’s life.

  He’d wanted to tell Sara what he was planning, of course, but at the same time knew it was probably too soon. He’d see if he was eligible to donate first, then he’d tell her. He’d asked Boyd about other options via email and on the phone, and he was on the case already, but what would be the point of getting her hopes up about him as a donor before he knew if he could help? They were there to enjoy Esme’s first real holiday—not to wait on tenterhooks for something that might not happen.

  Fraser’s urine sample was placed into a container with some others as Boyd continued with his questions from behind his desk. He wondered exactly how many people were planning to donate right now, at this very minute. How many people had sat in this chair before him, willing to donate a part of themselves to help someone else?

  ‘We’ll be checking your blood for potentially harmful viruses. Things like hepatitis, HIV... Any nasty infection that could be passed to your intended donor will rule you out.’

  Fraser didn’t even flinch as the needle was inserted.

  ‘We’re also seeing how well your kidneys, liver and other organs are functioning... Your forms say you don’t drink?’

  ‘No, sir—I never have.’

  ‘I remember that, actually.’

  ‘I don’t smoke, I don’t drink—I also don’t run marathons any more.’

  Boyd flashed Fraser’s pecs an appreciative smile. ‘Doesn’t look like you need to. The ship’s gym seems to be doing you some favours.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’

  Boyd readied another needle. ‘We’re also making sure you have enough blood, and that your blood clots properly.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘This is just the start of quite a lengthy process, Fraser—I’m sure you know that.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be worth it.’

  ‘I remember Sara,’ Boyd responded, taking Fraser by surprise.

  He was testing his glomerular filtration rate—GFR—which involved an injection of a chemical into a vein in his arm. Again, Fraser didn’t flinch. The GFR test would measure his kidney’s ability to clear the blood of the substance that had been injected.

  ‘I remember you talking about her long after you broke things off.’

  Fraser drummed his fingers on the chair’s arm, watching the liquid empty from the syringe. Who had he been kidding, thinking Boyd wouldn’t say something eventually?

  Of course he’d talked about her—he’d loved her. He always had and everyone knew it. And to love Sara was to love everything about her—especially Esme.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘HER HEART-RATE SHOWS one hundred and three. It climbs when she moves so she’s clearly still in pain, likely from the vomiting.’ Fraser turned from Sara back to their sweaty young patient. ‘Where does it still hurt?’

  ‘Here,’ the girl said, putting her hands to her stomach. ‘I think I’m going to throw up again.’

  Sara helped the teenage girl out of her vomit-covered T-shirt and into a clean white one. The teen appeared to have contracted some kind of respiratory infection, and Fraser had his suspicions as to what it was.

  ‘Lucky you came to us when you did,’ Sara said kindly. She was fetching another bedpan now, just in case. She didn’t look up at him as she worked. She hadn’t done all afternoon. He knew he was still in the doghouse.

  ‘Take care of this please, Chief?’ she said to him, again without making eye contact.

  She handed him the dirty T-shirt. He took it, glad of his rubber gloves. Sara could have just thrown it into the laundry bin herself, but he said nothing. She was still mad at him for disappearing on her. She had every right to be; he’d left her lying alone in his bed, after all.

  But she’d looked so peaceful there. And, God, he’d missed the sight of that face, still and silent, her hair splayed on his pillowcase.

  ‘Were there any other women after me?’ she’d asked him before they’d drifted off.

  ‘A couple,’ he’d admitted. ‘But none that made me feel like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like we could all go down on this ship and I wouldn’t care as long as I was holding you like this.’

  The second he’d said it he’d regretted it, because Sara wouldn’t think of him if that happened—she’d think of Esme. Esme would always come first... And if he’d tried to explain then where he was going at such an early hour she’d have wanted to come too.

  Either that or she’d have stopped him going. He wasn’t sure which.

  The phone rang. Sara beat him to it. He watched her movements in her long white coat and too-white sneakers as she held the receiver to her ear. She was tanned already...she was glowing.

  ‘We have the results,’ she told him a few minutes later.

  He walked closer, out of earshot of their patient. ‘The urine antigen?’

  ‘It’s not Legionnaires’—it’s Pontiac fever.’ She finally met his eyes.

  They could be at odds with each other as much as Sara Cohen wanted, he thought. It didn’t change what had happened, or the fact that their closeness had dredged up some long-suppressed feelings. Sure, they’d just about managed to keep it platonic, but he knew they’d both been fighting doing more in his bed.

  Fraser cleared his throat. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘Pontiac we can deal with.’

  Better than Legionnaires’.

  He didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t need to. They were both thinking it. During his last cruise they’d had a case of that, and the ship had been forced to cordon off the hot tubs. It was rare in people under fifty, but not unheard of.

  ‘Have you been in the hot tub or the swimming pool in the last few days?’ he asked the teen. Her long red hair was stringy with sweat.

  ‘No. Can I go now?’

  ‘No.’

  She started coughing again wildly, into her hand. Her forehead was glistening with sweat.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Sara told her pointedly. Fraser watched her put a hand to her back and pat her gently. ‘Sorry to say, but it looks like you have something called Pontiac fever.’

  ‘What’s that?’ She looked horrified, her red hair sticking to her pallid face.

  Fraser let Sara explain while he fixed an IV and its tubes.

  ‘It’s a milder form of Legionnaire’s Disease...’

  ‘A disease?’ She looked even more horrified now.

  ‘It’s not transmitted from person to person, but it is contracted by inhaling bad bacteria from water. Did you sit under any kind of water jet or spray anywhere? Go anywhere with strange air-conditioning?’

  The girl wrinkled her nose. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Think,’ Fraser told her. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘She is thinking, Fr... Doctor.’ Sara paused. ‘She’s battling a fever. It’s OK if you can’t remember, honey.’

  That had told him. He frowned in her direction and she pretended not to see. She’d said it in such a way that only he would know how annoyed she was—at him, obviously, not at the girl for her understandably cloudy memory.

  He let it go. She was stressed about a Legionnaires’ outbreak. She
was thinking of Esme and the other dialysis patients. Those with weak immune systems were more likely to contract the condition, which put the dialysis patients at high risk should there be an issue with the ship.

  He adjusted the IV as the teen swiped at her clammy face with a cool towel. ‘Actually, there were ventilators pointed at us in that seafood restaurant.’

  ‘Which restaurant?’ Sara’s voice was calm but anxiety was practically a cloud around her.

  ‘Back in Florida. I knew that place was dodgy. Mum said it had the best prawns, but she really meant the cheapest. We won this cruise in a competition, you know?’

  ‘Where’s your mother now?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. She doesn’t know I’m here.’

  Fraser looked at Sara. They spoke without words. They had to find this girl’s mother as soon as possible for tests. Even if she wasn’t showing any symptoms it was better to be safe than sorry. Both Legionnaires’ and Pontiac could take a couple of weeks to manifest at times, though it was deeply unlucky to contract either.

  Sara ushered him aside while the teen hacked some more behind them.

  ‘I’ll call Miami. Tell them to report this—see if it links to any other clusters of Pontiac. There haven’t been any other cases on the Ocean Dream?’

  ‘Not yet on this trip. Never on any trip before, and not on this ship. It’s practically brand-new.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She searched his eyes. He wanted to touch her.

  ‘I’m sure. Cohen, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s probably a one-off. It’s not contagious.’

  ‘I know, but what if something has been overlooked?’

  ‘Highly unlikely—they’ve triple-tested everything on here.’ He couldn’t help it. He placed his hands firmly on her shoulders. ‘Sara, they wouldn’t have allowed dialysis patients on board at all if there was any doubt that it was safe. You know this.’

  She bit her lip. He’d never seen her so riled up in a medical setting. Keeping her status as a mother separate from that of a nurse must be tough in times like this. He pictured Boyd back at the clinic, running the tests, concluding...hopefully any day now...that he could be a donor for Esme.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ she said, drumming her fingers on her leg.

  Her hair brushed his fingers.

  ‘I know you’re right. It was the restaurant.’

  ‘I’m sure it was the restaurant. We’ll call them right now.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  SARA TRIED TO ignore the way her knee kept nudging Fraser’s unbidden in the back of the buggy.

  ‘This is one of my favourite islands,’ he said as they started the bumpy, winding journey away from the bustling port where they’d docked in the Bahamas.

  Esme looked wonderstruck, sitting on his knee, taking it all in. She had wanted Fraser to come with them to the pineapple plantation, the same way she’d wanted him at the beach in Aruba that time, and most evenings at their dinner table.

  Sara’s brow creased involuntarily under her sun hat as she fanned herself with a map. She couldn’t exactly have argued with her daughter. They had been instructed to leave the ship anyway.

  Renee had promised to call as soon as she’d heard from the seafood restaurant and had the ship’s engineers check everything out again, just to be sure the problem didn’t lie there.

  She wasn’t proud of the way she’d cracked over the Pontiac fever case. The times when Esme’s health might be further at risk were the only times that it interfered with her job. The thought of what might happen to Esme or any of the other dialysis patients should there be any trace of Pontiac on the ship was not even worth contemplating. At least Fraser understood that.

  He was filming Esme now. She listened as the little girl gave him a running commentary on the types of trees they were passing. She was making up names for them all.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, look—that’s the Sara tree, and that’s the Dr Fraser tree!’

  ‘That’s great,’ she replied as Fraser cheered. She was trying and probably failing to sound upbeat. Esme always knew when she was down. She was usually the one to bring her up.

  Esme looked enchanted now, though. Fraser seemed to love telling her stories about the time he went travelling. Before they’d met, and before his medical studies began, he’d spent six months seeing South America—the Galapagos, Ecuador, Chile and Peru. He was feeding Esme’s imagination at every opportunity, answering her endless questions, and it unsettled Sara more than she could say, because she knew Esme dreamed of having a father figure in her life although Sara had always told herself they didn’t need one.

  ‘This is a very important part of the Bahamas, Esme,’ Fraser was saying now in his best tour guide voice. ‘The British settled here in the seventeen-hundreds—you can see it in the architecture. Looks a bit like home, don’t you think?’

  Esme wrinkled her nose.

  ‘It doesn’t look anything like the Britain I know,’ Sara told him, smiling in spite of herself. It really didn’t. It was a lot hotter, too. Her map was falling apart.

  ‘You OK?’ Fraser asked her, putting a hand to her knee suddenly. ‘You’re very quiet. I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.’

  ‘I hope so.’ He squeezed her knee and she resisted the urge to touch him back. She was still annoyed with him for slipping out the other morning without waking her. He was hiding something—she could feel it.

  When they reached the pineapple plantation she lingered behind, gathering her thoughts.

  ‘They look like pine cones, Mummy!’ Esme cried, pointing at the baby pineapples poking from their spiky green leaves on the ground.

  She was filming everything, as usual. There were rows and rows and rows of them, stretching into the distance under the grey sky.

  ‘Come on, Cohen, you’re falling behind! You don’t want to miss out on planting your own pineapple, do you? We’ll name it after you.’

  Fraser stopped on the trail between the rows of plants. His black curls were sticking out around his red baseball cap. His eyes narrowed when she caught up to him.

  ‘You’re not still angry at me, are you? I told you—I had to go and see some people and it was too early to wake you up.’

  ‘I’m not angry.’

  ‘So you’ve been avoiding looking me in the eye for no reason, have you?’

  Sara stopped in her tracks. She crossed her arms automatically, cutting him off like a roadblock. The slight breeze was picking up the bottom of her turquoise dress and trying to ruffle it against his khaki shorts, as if even their clothing couldn’t keep away from each other.

  ‘Fraser. I know you. I know you’re keeping things from me.’

  He stepped closer and stared into her sunglasses.

  ‘I can’t have men around who lie to me,’ she continued, lifting the glasses up to her head so she could look him straight in the eye. ‘Not with Esme. She’s been through enough. I’ve been through enough.’

  ‘I understand. It’s nothing for you to worry about, I promise you.’

  ‘Is it someone else?’ She felt embarrassed the second he frowned.

  ‘Is that what you really think? Cohen, I can barely even keep up with you.’

  He looked genuinely offended at her words. She kicked herself internally as he looked away and out at the pineapples.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ramming a hand through her hair. ‘It’s just everything’s getting a little overwhelming, you know? I told you we should focus on our work, I told you this couldn’t happen, but I did it anyway.’

  She went to walk past him but he caught her arm, drew her back. His eyes drilled into hers. She pulled her glasses back down to protect her thoughts.

  ‘OK, so you’re angry at yourself—I get it. But don’t take it out on me and don’t beat yourself up over something so stupid.’ He lowered
his voice. ‘We didn’t even do anything, Sara...’

  ‘I should have been with Esme.’

  ‘You were where you wanted to be,’ he said. ‘You were where I wanted you to be. And I’ll tell you where I was the other morning, but not yet. Sara, you know me. You’ll just have to trust me.’

  A young girl no older than seventeen, in a flower-patterned headscarf, was explaining the pineapple industry in Eleuthera with pride, but all Sara could think about as she went along with the tour was Fraser, always two steps behind her, his eyes burning into her back like the sun.

  She was being too hard on him.

  It was easier being hard on him.

  Their guide started leading them down another path towards an open patch of land. Three people were on their hands and knees in the dirt, planting baby plants and sowing seeds. Sara watched as Esme was led over to them and handed a seedling.

  ‘Will you film me, Dr Fraser?’

  ‘You bet I will.’ He took the camera. ‘Tell me what you’re doing—don’t miss anything out.’

  Esme launched into a comical explanation as she went along, talking straight into the lens.

  ‘He’s so good with her,’ the guide whispered at her side.

  ‘He is—very good with her,’ she agreed, noting how Fraser treated Esme like an equal, rather than a broken little kid. Esme adored him for it already.

  ‘Cover it up with more dirt!’

  Esme had buried the baby plant and was patting the dark soil firmly all around it to keep it in place. Everyone clapped and she beamed as if she’d just performed the greatest task on Earth.

  ‘You should plant one too,’ she announced. She picked up another seedling and held it out to Sara. ‘Plant it with Dr Fraser, Mummy. You have to share it.’

  Sara got on her knees beside him and he handed her a tiny shovel. Her fingers brushed his as she took it and she felt those sparks again, the need to hold her breath. She’d wanted nothing more than to make love with him, to reconnect the real way, but he’d been adamant they keep things PG-rated. Was it because he’d known he was about to get up early and leave, and not tell her where he was going?