The Surgeon's Family Wish (20 page)

‘And Dr Lewis, where does he come into all this?'

‘The baby clinic where I take her saw the bruises and she was taken to hospital. He was the one who saw Sally and said she'd been abused 'cos she had bruises and two broken ribs.'

Desperate to know where Lucy was, Annabel forced herself to be patient. The woman was at breaking point. If she pushed her too far, she might clam up or even collapse, and that would do Lucy no good.

‘He was beside himself when they took Sally,' she went on, this time without prompting. ‘Got the car out, and as he was driving off he said, ‘‘We'll see how Dr Lewis likes having
his
kid taken from him.'''

‘What's your name?' Annabel asked.

‘Janice. Janice Carter,' she said tearfully.

‘Well, Janice, you're a brave woman and I'm a determined one. Where do you think Roy will have taken Dr Lewis's little girl?'

‘They'll be somewhere around here.'

‘What, at Barnaby's?' she exclaimed.

‘Well, yes. He works here, you see. Roy looks after the boilers. He has a hidey-hole beneath the hospital where he goes to have a smoke.'

‘And you think that's where they'll be?'

Janice nodded, but Annabel was thinking that they could be anywhere, the distraught father and Lucy.

‘So why didn't you go straight there when you heard that Lucy was missing?'

‘I'd have had to tell him it was me that hurt the baby and I was frightened of what he might do.'

Exactly, Annabel thought.

If the woman's husband was in such a state, what
might he do if the police surrounded the place where he was hiding? That was if his wife was right and he was somewhere in the labyrinth of passages beneath the hospital.

She would see for herself before she rang them. No point in raising Aaron's hopes if they weren't there, and every second was vital to Lucy's safety if the man was mentally unbalanced.

‘Show me, Janice,' she said. ‘Show me where you think he's taken Lucy.'

* * *

The boiler room was empty, as she'd expected it to be. If Roy Carter
had
taken Lucy down into the dungeon-like bowels of the hospital, he wasn't going to have her on view to anyone who might be around.

‘Where now?' she asked.

‘This way,' Janice croaked, and led the way along a dismal passage to where a heavy wooden door blocked the way.

‘In there,' she whispered. ‘That's where Roy goes for a smoke. See if it's locked.'

It was, and Annabel ushered Janice back to the other end of the passage.

‘How big is your husband?' she asked.

‘He's not small,' the other woman said. ‘Six foot. Does a bit of weightlifting. But he's not violent. It's having Sally taken off us that's made him do this.'

Annabel nodded, not entirely convinced.

‘We're going to go back there,' she said, ‘and I want you to persuade your husband to open the door if he's in there. He'll maybe listen to you where he won't trust me. I'll stay out of sight until he's done what you ask and then I'm going in after Lucy. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, I understand,' she said nervously, ‘but what if he refuses to come out?'

‘Tell him the truth. That you are responsible for the injuries to your baby and if he's a reasonable man he will see that Dr Lewis, and especially his daughter, have done you both no wrong.'

‘None of this would have happened if I'd owned up in the first place, would it?' Janice said fearfully. ‘Roy won't hurt me, but he'll never forgive me.'

‘We'll sort something out regarding that.' Annabel told her reassuringly, ‘but first we have to find out if he's in there.'

There was no answer the first time Janice called his name, and Annabel groaned. She called again and again and at last came a surly response.

‘What you doin' here, Janice? Go back home.'

‘Open the door, please, Roy,' she begged. ‘Just for a minute.'

‘No. I'm stayin' here until they promise to give our little 'un back to us.'

‘Ask him if he's got Lucy,' Annabel whispered.

‘Have you got the doctor's little girl in there with you?'

‘Yeah. I told you he was going to pay.'

‘Is she all right?'

‘Go away. I've told you. He's going to pay for what he's done to us.'

‘Tell him,' Annabel urged. ‘We've got to get Lucy out of there!'

Janice was crumpling. ‘He'll throw me out after this.'

‘You've still got to tell him,' she insisted. ‘Two innocent children have suffered through this mix-up and it's got to be put right.'

‘All right,' she said wearily. ‘I'll do it.' Raising her
voice, she said, ‘There's something I have to tell you, Roy, and when you hear what I have to say you'll know that Dr Lewis was right. Sally's injuries
were
caused in the home but not by you.
I'm
to blame for what's happened. It was me that hurt Sally.'

‘Oh, aye? An' you think I'm going to believe that?'

‘It's true. I can't hold her properly. There's no strength in my arms and every time my hold gives way she gets hurt. I thought if I told anybody they'd say I wasn't a fit mother.'

There was silence at the other side of the big studded door. Then they heard bolts being drawn back and it began to open slowly. Annabel waited until the man who'd taken Lucy was framed there and then flung herself forward from where she'd been pressed up against the wall of the passage.

Startled by her appearance, his arm came up and a clenched fist struck her in the face. As her knees buckled beneath her the last thing she saw was Lucy lying on an old blanket in the corner.

She didn't hear running feet outside in the passage or Aaron's voice calling both their names in horrified anguish. She'd caught her head on a metal cylinder as she'd fallen and was unconscious.

* * *

‘Lucy?' was the first word to pass Annabel's lips when the mists began to clear.

‘I'm here, Annabel,' a subdued small voice said, and as a little hand curled around hers a single tear rolled down Annabel's swollen cheek.

‘Thank God!' she breathed weakly. ‘You're safe.'

‘She's tired and bewildered but unhurt, thanks to you,' Aaron's voice said raggedly from nearby. ‘You're the one who is causing concern, Annabel. You took a blow
to the face and as you fell you cracked your head on one of the metal cylinders that are stored in that room.'

‘Where am I?'

‘You're in an A and E at the Infirmary and are due to go for X-rays and a scan. Needless to say, I'm coming with you. Mum and Tom are on their way from the airport. They'll take Lucy home.'

‘So he didn't hurt her?'

‘No. The guy was just trying to make a point in the worst possible way. I've checked her over and she's not been harmed. When he found her in the garden, Carter told her that he knew where there were lots of robins and, forgetting all she'd been told about not talking to strangers, she went with him. When we found her she was patiently waiting for them to appear.

‘As for the rest of it, I imagine that you know more than I do. But it can wait. You've been hurt because of us, Annabel, and I can't bear the thought of it. I should have been the one getting punched by Carter, not you.'

‘I owed it to you,' she said painfully. ‘I let Lucy be taken. It was up to me to find her. And if my looks have suffered in the process I won't complain.'

He bent over and stroked her swollen temple with a feather-light touch.

‘It's what's happened inside here that I'm concerned about. You were out cold for quite some time. Can you see all right?'

‘Mmm. I think so. But my head feels twice its size.'

‘At this moment it is,' he told her gently.

The door swung back at that moment and a nurse came into view, followed by a porter with a stretcher trolley.

‘The consultant will see Dr Swain as soon as the results of the X-rays are available,' she said, and Aaron
thought grimly that they were well and truly on the other side of the fence this time.

‘We've done an X-ray and a CT scan and they show that there is bleeding between the dura mater and the arachnoid layers from a torn vein. We need to operate,' the consultant in A and E informed them some time later.

‘That should be my line,' Annabel said weakly.

‘Not this time,' he told her with a sympathetic smile, and Aaron turned away.

One nightmare had ended and another was beginning, he thought. If anything happened to Annabel without him having told her that she was the light in his gloom, the one he'd been waiting for all this time, he would go crazy. But the doctor was saying, ‘The nurses are waiting to give you your pre-med and then we'll take you to Theatre.' He smiled. ‘But I don't need to tell
you
the routine, do I?'

She shook her head and closed her eyes, and as Aaron's glance met that of the other man's he said, ‘No time to waste, Aaron. We need to get Dr Swain sorted.'

He held her hand all the way to Theatre and in the moment of parting said softly, for her ears only, ‘I love you, Annabel. Don't leave me. I'm sorry I ever doubted you.'

She was already slipping into oblivion so he didn't know if she'd heard. He just prayed that she had.

* * *

It was a Sunday afternoon a week later, and Aaron had gone to bring Annabel home from the hospital. The surgery had been successful. The clotting blood had been drained away through holes drilled into her skull and the damaged blood vessel repaired. And now, looking somewhat peculiar with half of her head shaved and the assorted
colours of fading bruises still evident, she was about to be discharged.

Once she was over the operation and feeling less frail, she'd begun to question Aaron about the Carters. She felt sorry for them both, even though Roy Carter had been to blame for a night of horror and her ending up in hospital.

Janice had been very foolish not to tell him that she couldn't hold the baby properly, and knowing the long hours that he worked in the boiler room he wouldn't always have been on hand to witness her difficulties. He had hotly denied any harm coming to the child from himself and Janice, and when she'd been taken from them he'd flipped.

Knowing who Aaron was from working at the hospital and having no trouble in finding where he lived, Roy had seen him as the villain of the piece when actually he had only been doing his job and had been right in saying that the child's injuries had not been accidental.

Their little one had been returned to them at Aaron's and Annabel's request, and Janice's mother had moved in with them for the time being while her daughter was having tests for multiple sclerosis. A daunting thought, but to the relieved Janice a justification for what had gone before. Roy had forgiven her and now it remained for the two doctors to decide if they wanted to press charges.

‘What do you think?' he'd asked one evening when he'd gone to visit her. ‘Carter has much to answer for. I know he didn't hurt Lucy, but he hurt you, Annabel, and gave me some of the worst hours of my life. Do we prosecute?'

She'd shaken her head. ‘Not as far as I'm concerned. That poor woman had brought it all upon them through
fear that she would be found an unfit mother, and the irony of it is that is exactly what happened. She triggered off a set of circumstances that sent her husband over the edge, turned your life into a nightmare, put Lucy at risk...'

‘And you nearly got yourself killed,' he'd pointed out grimly. ‘I think the police will take him to court even if we don't.'

‘Well, if that happens we'll have to plead for him.'

‘I don't believe what you're saying,' he'd exclaimed, ‘but if that's what you want, that's how it's going to be. You know that the WPC who was at my place had you down as prime suspect. She encouraged you to go back to the flat to see if Lucy was there because she thought you were meeting an accomplice. I told her she was crazy but she still rang the sergeant and that's why we were all there at the moment of truth. I'll bet she saw promotion on the horizon when she saw you with Janice Carter outside the hospital, deep in conversation on that bench.'

‘Maybe it was as well that she did suspect me,' she'd said laughingly, ‘as after what Roy did to me I would have been in no fit state to fetch help.'

Serious again, she'd said, ‘I can forgive him for what he did to me. Can you forgive me for letting him take Lucy away?'

He groaned.

‘There is nothing to forgive. If my past behaviour has made you think I'm a person who bears grudges, I've only myself to blame. But did you really think that I thought what had happened was your fault?'

‘Yes, because all the time we were searching for Lucy you never said anything. Never told me that you didn't blame me.'

He took her hand in his and squeezed it gently as he said, ‘It never occurred to me. You were hardly likely to expect someone to be lurking in the garden, and as you said at the time Lucy had been only a few feet away from you.

‘
She
wasn't entirely blameless, you know, ignoring all the times I've told her not to go with strangers. But as she's only five years old and couldn't resist the temptation of going to see a lot of robins, I haven't said too much to her. Carter would probably have snatched her if she
had
resisted and then she would have been terrified. As it was, she saw the whole thing merely as something different, and it was certainly that. But I don't think she'll do it again.'

It didn't make the incident any less horrendous but to know that Aaron didn't think her incapable of looking after Lucy was like a bright star in her sky.

Yet nothing else was said. There was no mention of the sham engagement and what was going to come after it. When he left she felt deflated because she was no nearer to knowing what was in his mind.