by Annie O'Neil
This wasn’t a contest and Leon wasn’t her father. He wasn’t trying to dominate her, or box her into a way of living that suffocated the woman she really was. He was a proud father-to-be wanting his child to delight in the things he delighted in. To enjoy the things that brought him joy—or the things that, perhaps more realistically, he’d never been allowed to enjoy. Not with his family anyway.
This was his chance every bit as much as it was hers to give a child the life each of them had ached for. Happy, carefree, and full of love. She would have to learn to allow Leon the freedom to love their child in his way as much as she wanted to love the child in hers, the most important point being that they both wanted their child to feel loved.
Lizzy drew her fingers through Leon’s silky hair, eventually dissolving into giggles as his lips brushed against her tummy with a never-ending menu. Bucatini amatriciana, tonnarelli cacio e pepe, suppli, carciofi de fritte. And the list went on and on.
She leant back against the pillow, little trills of excitement running through her each time Leon said ‘mamma’ or ‘papà’.
The enormity of it hit her afresh. She was going to be a mother. Leon was going to be a father. The baby they would have was right here in her belly, growing, developing, just days away from being able to distinguish between its father’s voice and its mother’s laugh. She prayed those would be the sounds their child would hear throughout his or her life. Sounds of joy. Love. Happiness. She herself had no idea what it was like to grow up in a happy household.
‘Let’s find out,’ she said abruptly.
‘What?’ Leon looked up, confused. ‘You want to know what the special is at Osteria Russo tomorrow?’
‘No,’ she said, with an urgency she hadn’t realised she’d been building up to. ‘I want to know if it’s a boy or girl. I want to call it something other than pompelmo.’
He looked at her, his eyes communicating all the things words simply didn’t have the capacity to embrace, and nodded. ‘As you wish.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘READY?’ LEON ASKED.
‘As I’ll ever be.’ She gave him a nod. ‘Go on. Do it.’
He laughed, considering the fact that she’d been saying she was ready for the past two weeks and then, just as he was about to put the sonography wand on her stomach, always changed her mind.
This sort of surprise, she’d told him as she batted away his hand, only came once. They didn’t want to misread the scan, which might easily happen if they did it too early.
He’d nodded, bitten his cheek, and kept back all the things he could have said—like, We do this for a living, or Who cares what sex it is so long as it’s healthy? or, more daringly, We could always have another child after this one. Be a proper big, bustling family. The type he’d always wanted to be a part of but never once admitted—not even to himself.
They’d reached a point where they were going to have to tell someone about the baby—Giovanni being the obvious candidate—but the more aware he was of the child growing inside Lizzy, the more her stomach arced and swelled, the more Leon wanted to stay inside the little private bubble the two of them had been living in since that magical night they’d made love.
There, had, of course, been other nights, other moments of intimacy, but that night had marked a turning point. A sea change in his approach to the life he wanted to live and who he wanted to live it with.
They’d agreed to keep things professional at the hospital, not wanting to fuel the permanent hunger for gossip, but life had a way of forcing people’s hands and they were no different. This morning, when Lizzy hadn’t been able to fit into any of the clothes she’d packed, they had known that the truth, if not already out there, would have to become common knowledge. Which was why they’d decided to find out the sex of their baby today—before Lizzy’s pregnancy was made public.
‘Okay...’ He held the wand above her belly. ‘Are you ready to see the cucumber?’
She smirked at him. ‘I thought we’d gone with pompelmo?’
He shrugged that easy shrug of his. ‘You say pompelmo. I say cetriolo.’ And then he put the wand on her belly.
They watched in silence as the screen flickered to life, their child’s heartbeat almost instantly filling the room with that gorgeous whoosh-whoosh signifying life.
‘He’s got fingerprints now.’
‘Or she,’ Lizzy corrected softly, knowing from the way the baby was positioned that they couldn’t yet know.
‘Look at those little feet!’
Leon whispered something she couldn’t quite catch in Italian, but it sounded like a prayer of gratitude. Then they watched as he moved the wand here and there, one of them occasionally saying a word like ears or toes or perfect.
‘Do you see?’
Leon had finally hit the sweet spot in the scan.
Lizzy’s face lit up. ‘I do.’
‘We’re going to have a little girl.’
Her brows dived together. ‘You’re happy with that, right?’
‘I’d be happy if you had a koala!’
She laughed, then made a dismissive noise. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You look nothing like a koala.’
‘Oh?’ He put his head between her and the sonography screen. ‘What do I look like, then?’
Her smile softened as her cheeks lightly pinkened. ‘Like no one else in the world.’
‘And that’s a good thing?’ he asked.
‘That’s the very best thing,’ she replied, reaching out to press the kiss she’d put on her fingertips to his lips. ‘The very best thing of all.’
It should have been a perfect moment. A moment when he told her, once and for all, that he loved her. A moment when he produced a diamond ring from his pocket. A moment when he got down on his knee and asked her to make him the happiest man on earth by agreeing to be part of a family with him and their daughter.
But something about the look in her eyes—the hope, the expectation she had, that things wouldn’t come to a natural end as they had back in New York—shifted something inside him that unleashed a sharp, painful rush of age-old fears.
Would he be enough? Could he really stay the course? Was he the best man for Lizzy to raise a child with? And, more to the point, would loving Lizzy expose him to the heartache his mother had been subjected to when his father had decided he’d rather go leave and pretend none of his marriage had ever happened?
Mercifully, his beeper went off. He didn’t want her to see this. To witness the uncertainty in his eyes when he knew what she needed more than anything was a confident, solid, committed man by her side.
Somehow, some way, he told himself as he strode through the hospital corridors towards the surgical ward, where he would help another mother and her child surmount their own difficulties, he hoped he would find a way to hurdle his own.
* * *
Lizzy withdrew the laparoscope and discarded the instrument on a tray with a clatter of frustration. The nurse who was helping looked at her, startled. Lizzy wasn’t normally a clatterer. Or one to use blue language, for that matter.
‘Scusi, I—’
Lizzy shook her head and tried to find the words to explain how it was that she’d let emotions get the better of her, but those same emotions seemed to have absorbed her vocabulary. Urgh.
She tugged off the surgical cap she’d put on to try and get herself in the zone, but even that hadn’t worked. She simply wasn’t in the mood. And she’d just killed Hope. And by proxy Grace. Pretend 3D-printed Hope and Grace, but still... She’d killed them.
There was no chance she would be wheeling Gabrielle into the operating theatre when she was feeling like this. Emotional. Distracted. Wondering why the hell Leon had abruptly left her in the middle of finding out they were having a little girl.
Sure, he’d been paged, but she’d seen something happen. Something that had tu
rned his eyes a dangerous shade of dark that had absorbed the warm chocolatey depths she loved.
A pretty dark-haired woman with a lovely Scottish burr walked into the lab. Autumn Fraser. She was the surgeon Giovanni had recruited to head Team Grace once the babies had been safely delivered.
If they got that far, Lizzy thought darkly, glaring at the biocompatible model of the twins.
She grimaced, then forced on a smile. ‘G’day. You all right?’
‘Hi! Sorry. I was just hoping for a bit of...just trying to find somewhere—’ Autumn stopped and started a couple more times until finally settling on, ‘I didn’t realise anyone else was in here.’
Lizzy instantly saw a kindred spirit. Someone hoping for a quiet space to mull over some extra-complicated thoughts. Her smile instantly grew warm with empathy. She’d had a nice impression of Autumn the smattering of times they’d crossed paths. Obviously they saw each other every day for the briefings, but somehow, apart from a short exchange in the locker room, when they’d promised to have a coffee together and talk about the joys of working with Italian surgeons, they hadn’t yet got to know each other.
‘Is it okay if I watch?’ Autumn asked.
Lizzy stood back from the ‘operating table’ and held up her hands. ‘Too late.’
‘Oh?’
‘I just killed your patient.’
‘Ah...’ Autumn stayed near the doorway, taking a quick read of the atmosphere in the room. Her concise nod and step back were an acknowledgement that she understood when a surgeon had had a bad day.
The nurse, whom Lizzy knew had live babies to look after, threw her a glance.
‘Grazie mille,’ she told her. ‘Thank you for helping me work the mistakes out of my system.’
She threw in a laugh and a weird little victory punch, trying to prove she wasn’t having an actual, proper meltdown in advance of the quickly approaching real-life surgery.
Autumn let the nurse pass, then hesitated, clearly unsure if she should go in or not.
‘It’s okay. Come on in, Autumn.’
Staying in a huff wasn’t going to make this operation any easier. Also, if she was going to be performing surgery that would ultimately affect Grace’s well-being, Autumn needed to be as up to speed as she was.
‘Want to help me try again?’
‘Delighted to.’ Autumn’s demeanour changed from wary to proactive. ‘I want to get my head wrapped round as many angles of the twins’ situation as possible.’
‘Smart,’ Lizzy said, moving the model she’d just used to one side and pulling another one into its place.
At least the technology was reliable here at St Nicolino’s, she thought grumpily. Generous, even. Unlike the humans. The men in particular. Well... Not all men. Just the ones called Leon Cassanetti.
He’d been called away hours ago and hadn’t bothered to come and find her again. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. She wasn’t his keeper. But he’d been weird. Very weird...
Her mind raced back to the exam room for the nine hundredth time. What on earth had happened in there? They’d been so happy, sharing the joy of discovering they were going to have a daughter, and then, all of a sudden—kablam! His smile had disappeared as if someone had ripped his fuse out. Then off he’d gone with an excuse she’d used on at least a dozen dates she hadn’t wanted to be on: surgery.
Sure, his excuse was legitimate, seeing as he was at work and a surreptitious walk-by of the surgical board did, in fact, have a list of surgeries Leon would be performing today, but a week ago he would’ve invited her to come along, or at least they would have had a private little kissing session in one of the on-call rooms in between. But this time....
Whatever. Jerk. The big chestnut-haired, espresso-eyed Italian so-and-so could take his ‘marry me’ to someone less gullible. She had known this would happen. Had known it from the start. The moment she’d agreed to fly over here, in fact.
Yes, she’d known in her heart of hearts that she’d be raising their child on her own—had embraced the fact, even. And then, just as he had back in New York, he’d spun her round that surgically perfect little finger of his and allowed her to believe things might turn out differently.
More fool her.
So it was back to Plan A. Because Plan B, which had always been half-formed at best, was quite clearly not destined for success.
Lizzy talked Autumn through the surgery—which, unsurprisingly, followed an exacting protocol. On the day, of course, there’d be a huge team of medical professionals. Perinatologists, cardiologists, radiologists, foetal surgeons, anaesthetists and, of course, Leon. Today, simply put, she needed to laparoscopically balloon dilate Hope’s left heart valve in order to insert a small stent.
They began to work. Autumn asked the occasional question and Lizzy talked her through each move, occasionally lapsing into silence as she slipped first the laparoscope, then the tiny surgical tools, and finally the camera into place.
‘And Leon will be monitoring Grace, throughout?’
Lizzy shot Autumn a sharp look. Why did she want to know about Leon? She sternly reminded herself that any normal surgeon working on a conjoined twins’ case would want to know what was happening to ‘her’ baby during life-altering surgery to the other baby. It was a perfectly innocent and fairly essential question.
‘Yes. He’ll be there the whole time.’
Maybe Leon had wanted a boy. Could be as simple as that. He just needed time to rebuild the scenarios he’d built for himself and his son into new scenarios of him and his daughter.
Or... She paused mid-inflation of the balloon stent. Possibly...was he hurting?
She thought back to the childhood he’d had, with one parent walking out and the other keeping him at arm’s length emotionally. There were studies proving that children raised without touch or affection could very easily veer towards sociopathic tendencies. Maybe that was why Leon was such a good surgeon. No actual feelings were running through him.
She remembered his caresses from the night before, his whispered terms of endearment, the sweet-as-honey kisses he’d given her before they’d left the flat that morning.
Nah.
She gave the balloon a microscopic inflation, then paused again.
‘Everything okay?’ Autumn asked.
‘Just ensuring the left heart ventricle isn’t increased at too rapid a rate of knots,’ she lied, trying to figure out something—anything—that would explain why Leon had responded so poorly to the news that he was having a daughter.
Maybe he was experiencing hormones by proxy.
To be honest, if she loved him—if she really loved him as she thought she did—she’d have to learn to shake this kind of thing off. They were going to spend a lifetime together. Everybody needed alone-time, right? Everyone had occasional ‘moments’.’ Especially when their life was going to change for ever in about four and a half months.
Then again...
‘It isn’t like he doesn’t have options,’ Lizzy said, with a frustrated harrumph.
‘Sorry?’ Autumn looked at her, confused.
‘Leon!’
‘Do you mean about Grace’s heart? Were you planning on isolating the shared aortic valve during surgery?’
Lizzy stared at her for a minute, then withdrew her instruments from the model.
‘I don’t think I can do this.’
‘What? Of course you can.’
The two of them stared at the model of the babies for a moment, and then Lizzy burst out laughing. ‘No—sorry. I can do the surgery. I just don’t think I can do it with, you know...’ she pointed at her belly ‘...things up in the air the way they are.’
Autumn threw a look over her shoulder, as if hoping an escape route would present itself. The look said one of the two of them was acting a little bit irrationally,
and it wasn’t Autumn.
‘I mean, why won’t he just make up his mind?’ Lizzy threw up her hands. ‘One minute he’s all “marry me” and the next he’s all “I’ve got surgery...can’t talk.” What sort of father-to-be does that?’
Autumn, who obviously had absolutely no idea what Lizzy was talking about, said, ‘Most of the fathers-to-be that I deal with are worse than the mums.’
Lizzy sat with that nugget for a minute. ‘Yeah. I suppose you’re right. Women have a much more present reality to cope with.’ She pointed again at her swelling belly.
Autumn nodded. ‘They’re powerless, aren’t they? The men? And men like to fix things. This is one thing they have absolutely no control over and it makes some of them a bit bonkers.’
‘Especially surgeon men,’ Lizzy said, with a know what I mean look.
Autumn gave an oh, yes, I do nod, shared a complicit smile and asked, ‘Want to talk about it?’ in a way that said she’d be a sounding board, but wouldn’t be interfering.
‘No!’ Lizzy huffed. ‘Yes...’ She gave herself a little shake. ‘Actually, it’d be nice to have a woman to talk to. But not just yet. I need to let all this maddening Italian man business marinate for a bit.’ Her eyes shot to the door as a group of doctors raced past. ‘Erm... Mind if we keep this little incident to ourselves?’
‘What goes on in the lab, stays in the lab.’ Autumn locked her lips with an invisible key and threw it away.
Lizzy gave her a grateful smile. She liked this woman. She hoped whoever she was avoiding wasn’t half as frustrating as Leon.
A tiny exchange from that morning’s briefing flared in her mind. One between Giovanni and Autumn. They’d been comparing notes and had begun speaking over one another, and then, just as quickly, deferring to each other to go first. It had ended in a weirdly awkward stalemate during which neither had spoken but they’d kept looking into one another’s eyes.
Hmm... Lizzy’s mind began to whirr. It wasn’t often she was so caught up in her own personal dramas that she failed to notice a burgeoning romance. ‘Coffee date some time?’ she asked.
