He’d made the right decision in leaving her years ago—he knew he had. There’d been no other choice.
That was years ago. Nothing you can do about it now except give her the best education you can.
She looked up, caught his eye, and he gave her a brief smile. Fate had thrown them back together again, and if that wasn’t some sort of sign that this was a chance for him to make amends then he didn’t know what was.
He’d set her free once. Now he would do so again. But this time when she left in a few weeks she would thank him.
CHAPTER TWO
‘THIS IS LILY MAE BURKE. Born at twenty-seven weeks, she weighed one and a half pounds.’
Ellie gazed down at the tiny baby swamped, it seemed, by wires and tubes, wearing a yellow knitted hat that was almost too big and a nappy that seemed the same. Her eyes were covered by gauze pads and a tube was taped to her mouth, with a thinner one running into her left nostril. She looked lighter than a feather, but she was sleeping peacefully. Someone had placed a pink teddy in the far corner of her incubator.
‘What happened?’
‘Her mother went into an early labour at twenty-one weeks. They were able to stop the contractions and she went home—only to wake one night a few weeks later to find her bedsheets soaked through and with the urge to push. We couldn’t stop the labour a second time.’
‘Was it cervical insufficiency?’
‘We believe so.’
‘How’s the mother?’
‘Jeanette is here most days—you’ll probably meet her later. We’ve been getting them to do some skin-to-skin therapy, which they both seem to enjoy.’
Skin-to-skin was something Ellie wished she’d had the opportunity to do—one thing for Samuel before he...
The thought almost made the tears come, but there was no room for that here. She needed to hold it together.
Logan moved on to the next incubator. ‘This is Aanchal Sealy. A twin born at twenty-eight weeks. He’s the bigger twin and suffered from Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome. Do you know what that is?’
Ellie nodded. ‘A condition that can affect identical twins who share a placenta. One twin gets more blood volume than the other.’
He nodded. Pleased. ‘That’s right. And alongside Aanchal is her sister Devyani—the smaller twin.’
‘By how much?’
‘Two whole pounds.’
‘That’s a lot.’
‘It is. Do you know the mortality rate?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Sixty to one hundred percent. Do you know the dangers for each twin?’
She thought for a moment. Before coming here she’d tried to read a few of her textbooks and learn about some of the more common conditions she might come across. ‘Er...the bigger twin could have heart problems.’
‘That’s right. What kind?’
‘Heart failure.’ She tried to sound sure of her answers.
‘Good—you’ve been doing your homework.’
‘Did the mother have surgery before the birth to try and adjust the blood-flow?’
‘Yes, she did. An umbilical cord occlusion to try and ligate the cord and interrupt the flow of blood between the two foetuses. It has an eighty-five percent survival rate, but a five percent chance of causing cerebral palsy.’
‘Does Aanchal or Devyani have cerebral palsy?’
‘We can’t be sure just yet.’
Logan moved on to the fourth and final baby in this room.
‘And this fine fellow is Matthew Wentworth, born at thirty weeks. He’s had a few problems with his oxygen levels, so we’re keeping him in a high-flow oxygen box.’
Matthew was much bigger than the others. He almost looked healthy in comparison, but she knew that looks could be deceptive.
She looked about the room—at the equipment, the machines. It was all so overwhelming. So frightening.
Samuel had never made it to a room such as this. But she wished that he had. Because if he’d made it there he might have had a chance.
These babies—they all had a chance at life. Hope was still alive for each and every one of them, and she envied them—then felt guilty for doing so. The parents of these babies probably wished they’d never had to come here, and here she was wishing she’d had the chance to. Wasn’t that terrible?
Logan’s dark brown eyes were staring into her soul, as if trying to read her, and she had to look away. The intensity of his gaze was too much. He’d looked at her like that before, but back then she’d been able to settle into his arms, or kiss him, or squeeze him tight. Not now, though.
How did he cope with this? Seeing all these babies who could grow up with disabilities, knowing how hard their lives and the lives of their parents might be. How did he cope, knowing that? Where did he find the strength?
What if there was an emergency? What if one of the many alarms on these incubators started to sound? What then? Would she be able to stay and watch as they tried to fight for a child’s life?
I can do this. I’ve already survived the worst that life can throw at me and I’m still standing.
‘How do you do it?’ she asked him. ‘Deal with this every day?’
‘It’s my job.’
‘I know...but why choose this as a specialism?’
He looked around them at the incubators, at the babies, his gaze softening as he stared at their tiny bodies. ‘They’re so helpless, these babies. How could I ever walk away from them? Choose something else? They can’t talk—they can’t say what they need. You have to know. You have to be certain of what you’re doing and have conviction in your actions. These babies need us. Once I’d spent a rotation here I knew I wouldn’t ever want to do anything else.’
He had a faraway look in his eyes and she got the feeling that he wasn’t just talking about the babies here. He meant something else. Something she wasn’t privy to.
Would she always be a stranger in his life now? Or would her time here create a friendship between them so that they could go back to talking to each other about anything, the way they’d used to?
She’d missed him so much after he’d left for medical school. He’d broken her heart, and as well as losing her boyfriend she’d also lost her best friend. There’d been so much she’d missed telling him in the days after he’d broken it off. And she’d hated that empty feeling she’d felt inside because she couldn’t just pick up the phone and tell him what was going on in her life.
‘It’s lunch. You should take the opportunity to eat whilst you can. I’d like you to have enough strength for surgery this afternoon.’
‘I’m going into surgery?’
‘Just to observe. We’re hoping to help the gastroschisis baby get all her organs back in her abdomen, where they should be.’
She nodded. ‘That’s brilliant news.’
‘Be back for two o clock.’
Ellie decided to offer an olive branch—to try and make things less awkward. ‘You could join me? It would be good to catch up, wouldn’t it?’
She saw the indecision in his eyes. ‘Maybe another time. I have someone I need to see.’
‘Oh, right. Okay.’
And she watched him walk away.
Perhaps hoping for friendship was hoping for too much?
* * *
Logan sat opposite his daughter, smiling as he listened to her tell him about blood. Specifically how many pints there were in the body and what constituents made it.
‘Plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets...’ She listed them off, holding her fingers out in front of her as she counted and explained their jobs.
It was a topic that anyone might talk about in a hospital and not have anyone stare, but here in a small coffee shop, just down the road from the hospital, his six-year-old daughter Rachel was drawing a few looks from som
e older members of the community, who appeared to be a little disturbed at her topic of conversation.
He was used to it, of course. This was one of Rachel’s favourite topics. The human body and how it worked—its components and what jobs they did. It was something she’d become fascinated by ever since she’d truly begun to understand that her mother had died, and her autism had sent her down a road of trying to understand why her mother’s body had failed.
He’d found it quite morbid to begin with. Disturbing and upsetting. So he got why strangers might find it odd. But he almost found comfort in it now, the same way Rachel did, as they settled in to a familiar, reassuring conversation in which there were no surprises and Rachel could control it, knowing the outcome.
First she would talk about blood. Then she would talk about the heart. And then she would talk about what stopped a heart and specifically what happened after the heart stopped beating.
He could see so much of her mother in her features. Rachel had Jo’s eyes. Blue, like the sky on a clear, hot summer’s day. And her hair was the colour of straw—not dark, like his. Sometimes when she talked, happily chatting away about her favourite subject, he would see Jo in her and would suddenly become aware of his loss—almost as if it was fresh once again—and he would have to take a moment just to breathe and remind himself that it had been years ago.
He felt guilty about Jo. He’d loved her—he was sure of that. But had it been the kind of love he’d felt for Ellie?
Ellie was from years ago and now she’d come back into his life. Jo would never come back, but Ellie had. He wondered what she would make of Rachel? Of him being a father?
She’d asked him why he did the job he did, but he’d not been able to tell her the whole truth. That in every child he tried to save he saw Rachel. That with every baby rushed to his department he recalled what it had felt like to be a lost parent, trailing in afterwards, hoping and praying that someone had the expertise to fix his child and make everything all right.
He’d have given his own life for Rachel, so he knew exactly what all those parents felt when they walked through into The Nest. Terrified and afraid...making bargains with God. He had an insight that the other doctors in Neonatal didn’t have, and that was why he did this job. That was why he chose to be a mentor and teach medical students—because they needed more doctors who could save these tiny babies. To give these brand-new baby humans a future. To give them time to enjoy life.
He’d never expected he would see Ellie again, even though he’d moved back to London. So much had happened in their time apart he’d figured she wouldn’t want him walking back into her life. They’d be moving in different circles. London was such a vast place and he’d just assumed she would have moved on.
Back then she’d talked about travelling the globe, seeing the world, and he’d hoped that by setting her free he would have helped her do that. Yet now she was training to become a doctor. What had provoked that?
Life hadn’t even touched her. Except, maybe, for her eyes. Those beautiful eyes of hers, a cloudy blue, seemed to look right into his soul. Her eyes told a story and he wondered if it was a story he wanted to hear? She looked a little sad. The brightness and optimism that had flowed from her, that he had once enjoyed, was gone, and in its place was a reserve he had never seen there before.
His own life had thrown trauma at him in the years they had been apart. What had happened to her? What had she lived through—if anything?
Ellie had seemed hesitant. Was it him? Was it meeting him again after all these years? Perhaps, it was just shock and surprise.
He’d wanted to reach out when he came back, but it had already been five long years then, and life had got in the way, and as his life had progressed with Jo he’d felt sure that it was better for both of them if he kept his distance. He’d told himself that she would have moved on too, and that getting in touch would simply be reopening old wounds. It would have seemed odd to get back in touch just to cause her more heartache...to stir up old feelings that she must have moved on from.
He’d not wanted to seem as if he was rubbing her face in it. Not that he’d suspected in any shape or form that she was single and still waiting for him, anyway. Ellie was beautiful. He’d hoped that she’d found someone, too.
He sipped at his tea and smiled at his beautiful daughter as she continued to detail the areas of the heart. Atria. Ventricles. Mitral valve. Tricuspid valve. He heard the way she always paused before saying sinus node and wondered, as he always did, if she would become a doctor one day.
‘And then...’ she paused, considering, looking up at him. It was a strange, unexpected break in her routine. ‘Daddy, how do you break someone’s heart?’
He almost choked on his lunch. He had to cough, wipe his mouth on a napkin. He leaned forward, wondering where the question had come from? ‘Why?’
‘This girl at Verity’s said that her dad had broken her mother’s heart.’ There was another pause as she frowned. ‘How do you do that? The heart isn’t made of glass, or china. It’s muscle. It’s meant to be strong, not weak.’
How did you break a heart?
I bet a lot of us could answer this one.
* * *
Ellie was putting on scrubs, preparing for surgery with Logan. She’d spent her lunch break reading up about gastroschisis as she’d tried to eat a sandwich, finding herself falling down rabbit holes of research as she often did, reading about one situation and sparking an interest in another.
The baby in question had a silo pouch currently covering her intestines, and she knew that after the surgery she would remain in NICU for several weeks. The intestines had been floating in amniotic fluid for months, so they would be swollen and not working very well. The baby would only be discharged once she was taking feeds well, putting on weight and excreting normally.
The surgery today was to insert the last remaining part of the intestines, remove the silo pouch and repair the defect that had caused the gastroschisis in the first place.
She was just putting her clothes into a locker when one of the nurses entered.
‘Hi, it’s Ellie, right? Clare. Very pleased to meet you.’ Clare shook her hand. ‘Is this your first surgery?’
‘My first on this placement.’
‘You’ve done some before? That’s good. So I don’t have to worry about you fainting, then?’
Ellie smiled. ‘No.’
‘Dr Riley is a good surgeon. He’ll teach you a lot.’
‘He already has.’
There must have been something in her tone, because Clare cocked her head to one side.
‘Do you know each other?’
‘From years ago. We knew each other when we were young.’
‘Oh. Right. What was he like back then? Still handsome?’
Ellie tried not to smile, but couldn’t help it. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘I knew it. I bet every girl in school was after him.’
‘I only met him at college, doing A levels.’
‘The wild years, huh?’ Clare stripped out of her clothes and got into a set of scrubs. ‘Before he settled down?’
Ellie looked at Clare. He’d ‘settled down’? What did that mean? Was he married? Living with someone? For some strange reason the knowledge was disappointing. Almost upsetting. But what had she expected? That he was still single? She guessed she might have assumed he’d be with someone, but as she hadn’t known for sure it hadn’t hurt. But now...? Now that she was being told for definite...? Well, that was an entirely different beast.
She didn’t want to appear to Clare as if she didn’t know, so she went along with it. ‘Yeah.’
‘It’s kind of sweet how he goes to eat lunch with Rachel when he can.’
Rachel. She’s called Rachel.
Ellie slowly wrapped up her hair and placed it inside a surgical cap carefully, taking her time
as she allowed this new nugget of knowledge to seep into her brain.
Rachel.
He meets her for lunch as often as he can.
That’s kind of romantic. They must love each other very much.
And she felt jealous. A sudden wave of jealousy hit her smack in the solar plexus, making her feel almost dizzy and faint with the strength of it. Jealous that he had someone to love. Jealous that he had someone he could wrap his arms around and hold. Jealous that someone else now held the heart she herself had once thought was hers.
‘Yes. It’s very sweet,’ she said, thinking it was anything but.
* * *
He could feel her watching him. Those wide blue eyes were watching his every move from over her surgical face mask. He felt tempted to look up and see, but after his lunch with Rachel and her questions about breaking someone’s heart he felt guilty about doing so. He knew exactly how he’d broken Ellie’s.
Luckily there was an operation to concentrate on: getting the last of Baby Darcy’s intestines back into her body and the hole in her abdominal wall repaired. This would hopefully be her final surgery and would get rid of the horrible silo bag that she’d had attached to her since birth.
‘How was Rachel?’ she asked.
His hands paused. How the hell did she know about Rachel? He hadn’t told her a thing. Had she spotted him at lunchtime with his daughter? Or was this just a case of the damned hospital grapevine at work? Probably the latter. However, he still felt irritated by it. That he hadn’t been the one to tell her. And this was hardly the place to be bringing up something so damned personal!
‘I’m not sure that’s what we need to be concentrating on right now, Miss Jones.’
There and then he knew there was a change in the atmosphere in the operating room. Knew that those around him were all looking at him with questioning glances. Because normally he was happy to talk about his daughter and her progress. He was proud of Rachel.
He met her gaze. ‘I’m sorry—that was rude of me. Rachel was very well, thank you.’
Pregnant by the Single Dad Doc Page 3
