The Surgeon's Family Wish (2 page)

‘You can tell me anything you like as long as it's beneficial to Lucy,' he told her, and sent up a prayer of thankfulness that this woman
had
known what she was doing.

‘I'm living in hospital accommodation at the moment in a flat at the other side of the grounds,' she was explaining. ‘I'm going there to get some sleep once I've made sure that your daughter is all right. If you need me for anything, don't hesitate to ring me. I've already told Sister to call me the moment she wakes up, but it could be some time before Lucy surfaces from the trauma of the operation and the effects of the anaesthetic. When she does, that will be crunch time.'

Aaron nodded.

‘I realise that, and if you need sleep by all means go and get it. A tired doctor is not a good one. It would seem that you came to us at a bad time, with two of our paediatric surgeons not available.'

Her smile was wry.

‘Yes...and
you
weren't around either.'

‘No, I wasn't,' he agreed sombrely. ‘I wish I had been.'

‘But Lucy's grandma was there.'

‘Yes,' he said levelly. ‘My mother is always there
when we need her. Our three generations jog along together very well.'

* * *

As Annabel Swain threw herself down on top of sheets that hadn't been slept between for two days she was thinking about the man she'd just met. Since becoming involved with Lucy she had discovered that the absent head of Paediatrics at Barnaby's Children's Hospital was someone of note.

He was referred to with respect and deference and she'd wondered why. Now that she'd met him she understood in part. He had a commanding presence...and a very attractive one, too. She might be disenchanted with the opposite sex but a man like him was so easy on the eye she wasn't going to overlook that.

She'd sensed back there in the ward that he'd had his doubts about her, would have preferred his daughter to be operated on by one of the regular surgeons, but if that was the case it was too bad. Yet she couldn't blame him. It was clear to see that he was a loving father and it must have been horrendous to come home to find his daughter had been given emergency surgery in his absence by a stranger instead of a close colleague.

There didn't appear to be any mother in the family set-up, so he must be either divorced or a widower. Neither situation very unusual. Both the kind of set-up where a loving grandmother would be welcome.

His mother had arrived at the ward just as Annabel was leaving and the two women had spoken briefly.

‘How is Lucy now?' Mary Lewis had asked anxiously when they'd come face to face, and Annabel had thought how lovely it would be to have a mother like this kindly, chubby woman.

She'd managed a tired smile. ‘Progressing satisfactorily,'
she'd told her. ‘Pulse and temperature normal. No post-operative complications at the moment. But as her father is only too aware, there is still a possibility of brain damage.'

The colour had drained from the older woman's face.

‘Oh, no!'

‘I've told your son that there were no signs of damage to the brain or the meninges, but one can't be sure until the patient is fully awake and over the effects of the operation,' Annabel had told her. ‘Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going off duty for a while to get some sleep.'

The anxious grandmother had flashed her a sympathetic smile.

‘Yes, of course, my dear. You must be exhausted. Thank you for taking such good care of our little one.'

‘It's my job,' Annabel had told her, and as she'd walked through the hospital grounds to the utilitarian flat she was renting because she couldn't be bothered to start house-hunting, she'd thought that there hadn't been any thanks coming from Aaron Lewis. But she could forgive him for that. He would be on a knife edge until Lucy opened her eyes. Praying that he would see lucid normality there.

She'd been looking forward to being a parent herself not so long ago. But a fall on a wet tiled floor in a hospital corridor while moving at speed had sent her crashing down and had brought an end to all her hopes and dreams.

If it had been in the first weeks after she'd found out she was to have a child, Annabel might have felt she'd had a lucky escape after her affair with an American doctor had dwindled and died when she'd discovered he had a wife and family back in the States. But at four months into the pregnancy Annabel had settled into the
role of prospective single parent and had been eagerly looking forward to the birth of her child. Now, bereft and lonely after her shamefaced lover had returned to his homeland, she was doing the job she'd always done, using her skills to try to save or improve the lives of other people's children, and all the time she was mourning the loss of her own baby.

As she lay looking up at the drab ceiling the memory of her affair with Randolph Graham was preventing sleep. They'd worked together in Paediatrics in a big Middlesex hospital where he'd come to do a twelve-month exchange and Annabel, in her thirties, having spent all her working life caring for the children of others, had been happy to discover her pregnancy with the amiable American as her partner.

But when he heard that the two of them had made a child, everything had changed. He'd confessed that he was married and that had been the end of the affair. After the first shock of his deceit and the realisation that she was faced with the prospect of becoming a single mother, Annabel had rallied and had been looking forward to having a child of her own. Since she'd lost it the days were empty and her heart like a stone.

It was the reason why she'd moved north to get away from painful memories of betrayal and loss. But agonising parents such as Aaron Lewis need have no fear. Her dedication to the job was as strong as ever. No one would be able to say that she put her own heartache before that of others, and as an autumn sun poked its head through the curtains she rolled over and slept.

* * *

Lucy was awake and crying.

‘My head hurts, Daddy,' she whimpered.

‘Yes, I know,' Aaron said gently. ‘We'll give you
something to make it feel better in a moment, Lucy, but first tell me, can you see me all right?'

She blinked weakly.

‘Yes. You've got your blue shirt on.'

‘Can you see Grandma?'

Without moving her head, Lucy looked sideways to where Mary was sitting.

‘Yes. Why is she crying?'

‘Because you're awake...and getting better.'

‘What happened to me?'

Aaron took a deep breath.

‘Let's see if you can remember.'

Her bruised little face was crumpled with the effort of thinking back but she didn't disappoint him.

‘I fell off the climbing frame and there was something there. I banged my head on it.'

‘Good girl,' he said gently, and his mother's tears turned to smiles. ‘The doctor who mended your poorly head is coming to see you and then we'll give you something to make it feel better.'

It was the same as before. He heard the door behind him open and shut and she was standing beside him, the pale-faced doctor who had been there for Lucy when he hadn't been.

‘Hello, Lucy,' she said quietly. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘My head hurts,' she said fretfully.

‘I'm sure that it does. You gave it a nasty knock and I had to put you together again like they tried to do for Humpty Dumpty. Sister is going to give you something to stop it hurting and a nice cool drink. Then later on we'll take some pictures of your head.'

‘Will
that
hurt?' Lucy asked.

‘We'll be very gentle,' Annabel promised, then turned
to the tall figure beside her. ‘Does she remember what happened?'

‘Yes, thank goodness.'

His eyes were moist and if he hadn't been Head of Paediatrics she would have put a comforting hand out to him, but she'd never operated on the child of a top doctor before, she thought wryly, and didn't know what the rules were.

Aaron's glance had switched to his mother.

‘Go home and get some rest,' he told her gently. ‘You've had an anxious time. I wish you could have been spared it. The folks in Reception will get you a taxi and I'll use your car when I come home, which will be a while yet.'

‘All right,' she agreed, getting to her feet. ‘Now that I've seen Lucy awake I feel better.' Planting a kiss on her granddaughter's bruised cheek, she went.

As a nurse gave the little girl something for the pain and a drink in a cup with a spout so that she didn't have to move, Annabel said, ‘You are lucky to have such a wonderful mother. Does she live with you?'

He was staring at her with raised brows and she felt her cheeks reddening. Aaron Lewis must think her extremely nosy, she thought as she fiddled with her stethoscope and pushed back a strand of hair off her brow.

It seemed an eternity before he spoke and then he said, ‘Yes, my mother
is
wonderful and, yes, she does live with us. Having her there helps to make up for Lucy's mother not being around any more.'

If he was expecting her to start asking questions about that after her first display of curiosity he was very much mistaken, she decided. Though by now she
was
intrigued.

It would all come out eventually as they were going
to be working together, most of the time in close proximity. Aaron and his team were involved in diagnosis and treatment, while the other surgeons and herself performed the necessary surgery that would bring their small patients back to health. And for those who were not so lucky, a better quality of life...

* * *

Aaron was still there late that evening. He wasn't officially on duty for a couple of days, which would have given him time to relax before going back to Barnaby's, but all that had changed and Annabel thought that, jetlagged or not, this man was staying put until he was happy about his daughter's condition.

A junior doctor and a relief surgeon from the General Hospital were due to come on duty at ten o'clock and that would be the routine until the other two regulars came back.

Aaron had been by Lucy's side while further scans had been done to check on the success of the operation, and soon they would know whether the man who was seeing the other face of medicine, from the position of anxious parent, could relax.

Annabel didn't know why but she felt an affinity with him. Maybe it was because she'd recently suffered a great loss herself and had known the aching grief that had come with the knowledge that
her
baby would never see the light of day.

She'd dealt with grieving and frantic parents since then but had never felt like this, and she told herself it must be because they were both doctors seeing life from the opposite side of the fence.

The results came through just as she was due to go off duty at ten o'clock and as they studied them the two doctors were smiling. The skull was as back to normal
in shape and size as it could be so soon after surgery. There was no bleeding and the bone fragments were still in place where she'd repaired them.

When he turned to her there was warmth in his eyes for the first time and he said abruptly, ‘I think some thanks are overdue, Dr Swain. Charles Drury, who I hold in high esteem, couldn't have done better.'

She smiled and he thought that with a bit more life in her and some natural colour in her cheeks this hazel-eyed doctor would be quite something. His glance went to her hands. There was no wedding ring on view. But that didn't mean anything these days. She could have a partner. Though that wasn't likely if she was living in the soulless block in the hospital grounds.

There was a solitariness about her. The air of a loner. Curiosity was stirring in him, but he wasn't going to let her see it. He would find out soon enough what was going on in her life if they were going to be teaming up on the wards.

She was ready to leave and Aaron was still sitting beside a sleeping Lucy.

‘I'm finished for the day, Dr Lewis,' she said quietly. ‘But if you need me at all during the night, call me. A junior doctor and a surgeon on loan from the General are taking over now, but Lucy is
my
patient and I want it to stay that way.'

He nodded, almost asleep himself as jet-lag was beginning to take over.

‘Why don't you go home for a couple of hours?' she suggested. ‘It must be quite some time since you slept. I believe you've been on a tour of paediatric hospitals in America and were met at the airport with news of Lucy's accident.'

‘I suppose I could pop home for an hour,' he was
saying. ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes, and at the moment all is quiet with Lucy so, yes, Dr Swain, I'll take your advice.'

‘The name is Annabel,' she told him.

Again he was aware of her in a strange sort of way.

‘Suits you,' he commented briefly. ‘At least it would if...'

His voice had trailed away and with a wry smile she finished the sentence for him, ‘I wasn't such a washed-out mess?'

For the first time in ages she was bothered about what someone thought of her.

It was Aaron's turn to smile.

‘That isn't how I would describe you. It would be more along the lines of someone who looks as if they need plenty of rest and vitamins. Have you been ill recently?'

‘No,' she said, not sure if a painful miscarriage came into that category.

‘So it must just be due to the strains and stresses of health care that get to us all at one time or another,' he commented, and with nothing further to say she nodded.

* * *

When Annabel had gone, Aaron did as she'd suggested and drove the short distance to the house that he and Eloise had bought when they'd married. She'd loved the rambling red-brick place and coming back to it without her after that disastrous holiday had been dreadful, but, as his mother had said, life had to go on and, as Lucy was growing older, his mother's stoic calm and his daughter's laughter had made it into a home again.