Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit (27 page)

‘Maybe an external pump is the only answer,’ one said.

‘We still have to connect it to his heart, and to do that we have to connect it to blood vessels, and that’s our problem—finding a couple that can take the pressure.’

But eventually they did it, although Clare stayed around until midafternoon, afraid if a blood vessel began to leak they’d have to open the man’s chest again.

‘All good!’ the lead surgeon finally declared. He turned to Clare. ‘You can go back to your babies now,’ he said, ‘but thanks for the hand and thank Alex for lending you to us. I know how tight your team is, so lending someone out is a strain on everyone.’

Clare was feeling too weary to do more than nod acceptance of the man’s kind words. She changed into her civvies, pleased she’d washed out her undies and they’d dried while she slept, and caught the train back to the city, dozing as they crossed the bridge, changing trains, then finally arriving at the station just across the road from the rear of Jimmie’s grounds.

It was only as she stared at the place that was fast becoming so familiar to her that she remembered it was Tuesday—rehearsal day for the pantomime.

Feeling certain that Oliver intended dropping out and not sure if anyone else from the cardiac team would turn up, she muttered the age-old words—
the show must go on
—and made her way to the canteen in the second tower.

Fate was apparently still in its capricious mood for the first person she saw was Oliver. In fact, she probably saw a lot of people before him but he was certainly the first to stand out in the crowd.

Tables had been pushed back and an area representing a stage marked out on the floor. Dr Droopy was clutching a bundle of paper, and Clare realised with some surprise that they had moved as far as scripts.

Oliver had seen her come in and now he made his way, unobtrusively he hoped, towards her. He didn’t know why, given how angry he’d been to find she’d
disappeared on him again. Not having seen her all day at the hospital, he’d knocked on her door last evening. No reply.

His immediate reaction had been fury. Damn the woman! He understood why she’d avoided him the previous week, but once she’d decided to tell him things, surely she shouldn’t have been hiding herself away again? His anger had burned through the night, so he’d felt foolish—even ashamed of himself—when Alex had explained Clare was on loan to another hospital.

He didn’t doubt that the tension he’d been feeling since he’d seen her scarred breasts had fired the anger, which, in retrospect, was more against whoever had hurt Clare than against Clare herself.

So with all this turmoil messing his head, he finally came to stand beside her in the small throng of people Dr Droopy was already calling to order.

‘I’ve decided against the separate performances but still want people from all of the wards to do guest appearances there. Even if it’s just a wander through the wards in costume a couple of times, it will make all the children feel included. The main performance now will be much bigger and grander and I’ve some preliminary scripts here for you to take.’

There was general muttering among the cast, but Oliver’s attention was on Clare, who looked pale and tired.

‘Rough op?’ he asked, resolutely refraining from putting his arm around her and giving her a hug.

She offered him a weak smile.

‘Two of them, both rough, and there’s no telling if the poor patient is out of the woods yet.’

‘We can only do so much,’ Oliver was telling her when Dr Droopy stopped in front of them.

‘You’re the cardiac lot, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘That’s us,’ Oliver responded, wondering what had happened to the other four Becky had mentioned.

‘Good,’ Dr Droopy told them, then he consulted his list. ‘Clare Jackson, right?’ he said to Clare, who nodded.

‘I want you for Snow White.’

‘Snow White isn’t in
Cinderella
,’ Clare objected.

‘It’s panto,’ Dr Droopy reminded her. ‘I thought as we were only doing the one performance—though probably two or three times—I’d put a lot of other nursery characters into it. With the ball scene we can have whoever we want there.’

‘Makes sense,’ Clare told him. ‘The little kids these days seem to know the name of every princess ever written. My daughter certainly did.’

‘How old is she?’ Dr Droopy demanded.

‘Snow White?’ Clare was frowning at him now.

‘No, your daughter! I’m after mice. Could she be a mouse?’

Clare hesitated but Oliver stepped in.

‘I’m sure she’d love it,’ he said, then he turned to Clare. ‘She’ll be on holidays soon, so will be able to come to rehearsals.’

Clare gave him a look that suggested there’d be further discussion on the subject later, but she didn’t object. In fact, she offered Emily’s name to the pantomime director.

‘And you,’ Dr Droopy continued, turning to Oliver, ‘will be the fairy godmother. I thought I might get someone really ugly to begin with but we can do wonders with make-up.’

Oliver began to protest but as Clare was laughing and it seemed so long since he’d heard that delightful sound, he shut up.

The other clowns passed scripts around, and a rough read-through began, but Oliver’s attention was more on Clare than the familiar words being read out in different voices—on Clare and the hurt she had suffered, presumably at the hands of her ex-husband.

He knew enough to understand the physical scars were probably the least of her worries, that the emotional scars would be the ones that took longer to heal—might never, in some cases, heal.

But what could he do?

How far into her space would she let him intrude?

‘You look exhausted. I’ll get a cab to take us home?’ he said as the rehearsal broke up.

‘A cab home? It’s just down the road, Oliver. I’m not made of glass!’

True enough but Clare
did
feel fragile. That was the natural outcome of a combination of little sleep and the emotional outpourings of Sunday evening. But the feelings of acute embarrassment she was now conscious of in Oliver’s company were worse than any tiredness.

Shouldn’t she have simply told him she’d never marry again? Couldn’t she at least have kept him at arms length? But to show him the scars, to reveal herself that way, not so much physically—although, oh, boy, did she ever do that—but emotionally as well? Had she been crazy?

They left the building together, Clare careful to walk far enough away from him they didn’t accidentally brush against each other.

‘Come and eat with me,’ Oliver suggested as they went up the stairs to their flats. ‘I’d actually intended asking you yesterday and bought some chicken pieces. I do a mean Moroccan chicken.’

Clare tried to smile. The idea of Oliver cooking—not just a grilled steak and chips but from a recipe—was enough to make anyone who’d known him smile. But she’d lost her smiles somewhere and the best she could manage was a shake of her head.

‘You
will
come,’ he told her. ‘You will sit down, have a glass of wine, leaf through a newspaper or watch something mindless on the television while I cook, then eat and go home. No talk, no pressure, Clare—I promise you.’

She heard the sincerity in his voice and, when she looked up, saw it mirrored in his eyes.

‘I don’t deserve you should even speak to me,’ she whispered, and the softness in his eyes vanished as anger blazed in its place.

‘You will never say that again!’ he said, icy words slicing through the sultry summer air. ‘You are deserving of so much more than me, deserving of the best of everything. You are beautiful and kind and good. You’re an excellent technician with a top-class reputation. You are a woman our daughter will always be proud to call her mother, and one she can aspire to be like.’

Clare stared at him, then felt her throat thicken, but she refused to cry again. Swallowing the lump that threatened to choke her, she said a simple, ‘Thank you,’ then sank down into Oliver’s armchair and stared into space.

Oliver’s words replayed themselves in her head and she knew they were a gift she could never repay.
Knew also that they might spell the beginning of an ending for the past. Oh, she’d got beyond her marriage break-up, forged a career and made a life for herself and her daughter, but deep inside she knew she’d never grown emotionally, never healed the scars that weren’t visible.

Could she heal with Oliver’s help?

Not when he’d promised not to pressure her.

When he’d promised not to touch her…

Tired as she was, she stood and walked towards where he was chopping things in the kitchen.

‘Can you put it all away and order pizza later?’ she asked him.

He looked up, so obviously puzzled that now she had to smile.

‘Why?’

She came around the bench to stand beside him, and reached up to kiss him on the lips.

‘I want you to take me to bed.’

He put down the knife but otherwise didn’t react, silence stretching tautly between them.

‘You’re exhausted. You haven’t thought this through,’ he told her, brushing his fingers against her cheek. ‘Sex is the last thing you need.’

‘Yes to the first, but no to the second and third. I’ve done nothing but think about it ever since we met again. I’ve thought about whether I could go through with it, whether I’d let you down, whether you’d be so repulsed you wouldn’t want me.’ She hesitated, then continued, ‘Please, Oliver, I really want to do this, but if you find my…my scars…off-putting, then just say no and I’ll never pester you again.’

Oliver couldn’t speak, so he wrapped his arms around her and held her close, smelling hair shampoo and garlic from the recipe, his mind churning at a million miles an hour.

What was she really asking?

Why now?

She was tired and vulnerable; could she handle it?

His body thought it was a great idea, but then his body was so obsessed with her it had thought cooking dinner for her was a reason to tighten.

His brain was still throwing up questions when she pushed away from him, far enough to look into his eyes.

‘I’m not asking you to do this as a kind of medicine—you know, a cure of some kind. I’m asking because if we’re to even contemplate a future together we have to know if I can do it. Do you understand that?’

That’s when he saw the fear and knew the effort it was costing her to make this suggestion, to give herself to him.

‘I understand you are offering me a gift beyond price,’ he said, his voice rasping out of a thickened throat. ‘You are offering me total trust, my darling woman, and that is so special I feel unworthy.’

He lifted her into his arms as easily as he might lift Emily, the gift she’d given him instilling power as well. In his bedroom he set her down gently on the bed, then knelt beside her, leaning down to kiss her lips, her eyelids, her brow and temples, then her lips again. His hand moved to her shirt, unbuttoning it, his fingers running across her chest, her belly—gently, softly, barely brushing her skin.

Still kissing her, he undid the snap on her jeans and slid the zip down, his hand delving further now, fingers tangling in the curls, seeking the moist lips beneath them.

They moved on the bed, adjusting to each other, he shedding his trousers and shirt, while Clare tugged off her jeans and top. He didn’t touch her breasts, although later he would—later he would have to, to show her without words how beautiful she still was.

For now it was enough to feed their arousal with lips and fingers, exploring and remembering, Clare’s hips lifting in encouragement as his fingers slid inside her. She stilled, and held him tightly, and he felt her muscles spasm once, again, and then relax. A sound that was little more than a whimper whispered from her lips, then she guided him into the slick depths and they moved together, remembered rhythms raising the excitement until Oliver could bear no more and spent himself inside her, her sigh of quiet delight suggesting she’d also enjoyed release.

They broke apart and she curled into him, but he knew they weren’t finished. Holding her against his body, he undid the clasp on her bra. At first she stiffened, then, although he could feel reluctance in her muscles, she allowed him to remove it.

Now he knelt above her again, straddling her but keeping his weight off her body. He turned on the bedside light and dimmed it to its lowest setting. With his eyes on hers, he bent his head, and kissed first one breast, then the other.

She lay motionless beneath him but he could feel her…if not fear, then trepidation. With infinite tenderness he let his lips follow the lines of the scars; he kissed

the tiny puckers, and lapped around her peaking nipples, forcing himself to relax, reminding himself that this was now and this was for Clare and she didn’t need more anger in her life.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured, taking one nipple gently into his mouth, teasing at it with his tongue.

She stiffened, then relaxed, beginning to move, to use her hands against his skin, exciting him again, as if to tell him she was now enjoying his attentions.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked as her fingers coaxed excitement from his body.

‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured, and this time as he plunged inside her the cry of release was loud and heartfelt, her muscles clasping and releasing, draining him completely.

T
HEY
lay together, still joined, and haltingly the words came out.

‘He was so good, so supportive, the whole time Em was in hospital, then he told me he’d bought a farm of his own. We’d have our own place—Em could grow up in the country as I had.’

She paused and Oliver rubbed his hands across her back, massaging the muscles he could feel tensing beneath her skin.

‘I don’t need to know,’ he said.

‘I need to tell,’ she whispered.

‘He said, let’s sell your car and buy a newer dualcab ute, safer for the baby than my old ute or your old car. Mum had bought a baby capsule and we used it in my car to take her home. It was close to Christmas and he’d decorated the house with tinsel. I cried to think he’d done that just for me. Later—maybe just a day or two, I can’t remember now—he took my car to town to buy the new ute. Ordered it, he said, but coming up to Christmas it might take a while.’

She paused and snuggled closer, and Oliver found his arms tightening around her.

‘The house on the farm was old, but I didn’t care. I planned to do it up, bit by bit. He liked it tidy, liked
things neat, so I was happy to have things to do. It was isolated, you see, but with Em to care for and the house, it didn’t seem to matter.’

Her voice was growing quieter, as if whispering the memories might somehow make them less horrifying.

‘Sometimes, when Em had been fretful and things around the house hadn’t got done, he’d look around the messy room and sigh. Not saying anything but I’d feel that I’d disappointed him. Then one day, we were about to go to bed, and Em woke for a feed. It must have stirred his jealousy, and it triggered something in him I’d never have guessed was there.’

Anger so deep and hot he wondered he could keep it capped seemed to boil within Oliver, but he realised that, now she’d started, Clare needed to go on. He could only hold her, aching for her, fearing what he was about to hear, wondering if he could maintain his control.

‘The new ute never came. I couldn’t leave the house because we couldn’t put the capsule in his old vehicle. He picked up groceries when he went to town. Sometimes he’d have a drink while he was there and after that would be rough with me—squeeze my breasts too hard. Mum had sent a box of Christmas decorations, some old ones I’d loved as a child and new ones, too, for Em’s first Christmas, although we knew she was too small to know. I cut a little tree in the bush not far from the house and decorated it. It was Christmas—everything would be all right.’

She was shivering now, remembering, and Oliver could do nothing but hold her close and listen as the poison of that time was lanced from her soul.

‘But Christmas meant parties, not that I’d go. I wouldn’t enjoy them, he’d say, and besides, how could
we take the baby? He’d meet some mates and have a drink and that was when he hurt me. He was always sorry afterwards, always promising it would never happen again, but one night, sometime in January, he grabbed my breasts and scratched them with his fingernails, scoring them and pinching me so hard I had to muffle my cries in the pillow in case I woke Em and he hurt her.’

Oliver felt her face pressed hard into the curve of his neck and knew his skin was wet with tears.

Was there more?

Could he listen to more?

Control his urge to find this man and murder him?

Then Clare’s whispered words began again and he had to strain to listen.

‘I realised just how jealous he was of my baby, of my feeding her, of my giving her any attention at all, and that’s when I knew I had to leave. I waited until he slept, and knowing he’d been drunk so he’d sleep deeply, I took the capsule and Emily and left, walking not along the road but across the fields. The neighbours all around knew us both—knew Barry better and liked and respected him—so I had to get as far away as I could, carrying Em in the capsule because I knew I’d need it if I found someone to give us a lift.’

Oliver heard the words, so flat and emotionless, but in his mind he saw the woman he loved, trudging across the fields on the peninsula southwest of Melbourne, and he felt the fear she must have felt, the agony of desperation.

And understood her courage.

‘I had a school friend in a small town near Apollo Bay. It was morning by the time I got there, so I went
to her place. She didn’t ask a single question, just put me and Emily in her car and drove us to the airport, paid for my ticket to Queensland on her credit card, bought some food and coffee for me, and once I was safely on the plane she phoned Mum to meet me at the other end.’

‘Did he look for you?’

Oliver was surprised his voice had worked, so choked up did he feel.

Clare nodded against his chest.

‘But not for long,’ she whispered. ‘Both my brothers flew south to see him. I don’t know what happened but they came back and told me he wouldn’t bother me again. Later Steve apologised, saying he had no idea Barry could behave that way. Apparently when they’d arrived, Barry had shown them the pile he’d made of my and Emily’s clothes and all the gifts she’d been given. He’d put the Christmas tree and decorations on the top. He’d soaked them in petrol and had apparently been waiting for an audience for he set fire to it in front of them.’

‘He was mad,’ Oliver muttered. ‘He must have been.’

Clare kissed his cheek.

‘I thought so for a long time,’ she said softly, ‘but in the end I think perhaps he was just obsessed. For some reason I’d become the object of that obsession.’

She shivered and Oliver held her close again, murmuring not sweet nothings now, but talking of her courage and his love.

Thinking a pizza delivery after midnight might disturb Rod downstairs, Oliver made scrambled eggs and toast, coaxing Clare to eat until her body realised it needed fuel and she ate the lot.

Once she was fed, he took her into the shower, where he soaped her body, washed off the soap, dried her down and tucked her back into bed, his bed—Clare as docile as a child, allowing him to take care of her, although maybe she was so emotionally spent she could do nothing else.

He lay in bed beside her, knowing he should sleep, but wondering about how she might wake up in the morning, not wanting her to feel uneasy or embarrassed that she’d bared her soul to him.

‘It was a gift without price,’ he whispered to her when she did awake, sitting up uncertainly on the side of the bed.

‘Making love?’ she queried, a little frown puckering her forehead.

He shook his head and smiled at her.

‘Telling me,’ he said. He sat up, kissed her lips, then patted her lightly on the back. ‘Now we’ve got to get to work. Tonight we’ll need to catch up on our sleep, but by Thursday we should be rational enough to talk about where we go from here, okay?’

She was still frowning, so he kissed her again.

‘No more today,’ he told her. ‘Don’t think about the past or the future. Let’s get to work—there are babies to be helped.’

Now she smiled, and Oliver’s heart scrunched as if a giant fist had gripped it hard.

Was it love?

It had to be.

Clare wrapped his robe around her and dashed across to her flat to prepare for work, while Oliver moved into the bathroom, realising as he showered just how vulnerable love made a person.

It held you hostage, trapped you—yet the face in the mirror was smiling at him, so could it be all bad?

Obedience seemed the safest course. Clare kept her mind on the day ahead as she dressed for work. One of the things she loved about her work was the uncertainty of it, not knowing what case they might have to deal with next.

Oliver tapped on her door as she finished dressing. She called to him to come in, still feeling slightly anxious about the welter of emotion she’d dumped on him during the night. But when he kissed her, not with heat but with what felt like love, she put the past behind her, and delighted in his company even if all they were doing was walking to work together.

They went first to the PICU, where Oliver introduced her to the baby whose PDA he’d fixed on Monday. The baby’s mother was in a chair beside his crib, dozing while her infant slept.

‘You might have missed Em growing up but don’t regret missing all the worry that went on when I discovered she had a problem,’ Clare told him as they left the unit, knowing there was a team meeting in ten minutes. ‘You feel so helpless, so useless, and although you know your child’s in expert hands, not being able to do anything yourself is incredibly frustrating.’

Oliver squeezed her shoulder, just as Becky emerged from her office, heading for the meeting room.

‘Aha,’ she said. ‘Cupid strikes again!’

‘We’re old friends,’ Oliver told her, surprising Clare as they hadn’t at any stage discussed how they’d handle their relationship at work.

‘Oh, yes?’ Becky said, eyebrows rising and a teasing smile lighting up her face. ‘And don’t think you’re the only ones. Have you seen how Angus looks at Kate?’

Clare shook her head. She wasn’t into hospital gossip, but usually if there was something going on within a team as small as theirs, there’d be some kind of buzz.

‘Too absorbed in our own reunion,’ Oliver whispered to her as Becky dashed away, ‘but now Becky knows, the whole world will. Does it worry you?’

He turned to look at her, his green eyes showing his concern.

Clare pondered it for a moment, then shook her head.

‘Not that we’re going to stand in a team meeting and make an announcement,’ she said, ‘but no, if people begin to realise we’re together, then that’s okay.’

She stopped and studied him again, aware she must be frowning.

‘Oh, dear, that’s assumption on my part. Just because you were kind to me last night—it needn’t mean more than that, Oliver, truly it needn’t.’

She was looking so harried Oliver had to reassure her, dropping a light kiss on her lips in spite of their location in a hospital corridor.

‘Except it does,’ he told her firmly. ‘I love you, Clare, and probably always have. I’ve wasted ten years of both our lives, and in doing that I put you into a position where you were alone and then abused. I can never make that up to you, but from this day forward I will do everything in my power to help you forget that time. I just hope my love for you will be strong enough to do that.’

‘Am I interrupting something important?’ Alex asked, edging past them in the corridor.

‘Yes,’ Oliver told him, putting his arm around Clare’s shoulders to steer her up against the wall. ‘We’ll be with you in a minute.’

He’d intended kissing her, right there and then, but Kate was coming, and Angus, and the junior surgeon, so he made do with a brush of his fingers across her cheek, then led her into the meeting room where the entire team was awaiting their arrival, a smile on every face, and speculation in their colleagues’ eyes.

Circumspection meant they kept to their own beds on the weekends when Emily was home, but every other night they spent together and, safe in the cocoon of bed and darkness and Oliver’s love, Clare let out the pain and anguish of her brief marriage, then told of how she’d remade herself, determined for Emily’s sake not to be a victim, and not to let the past drag her down.

Oliver would hold her and marvel at her strength and courage, unable to believe his love for her could still increase every day. With Emily, they shopped for Christmas decorations, Emily insisting they wait and buy a real tree, Oliver insisting they do without tinsel in their plans—so tacky, he said to his daughter, winning a warm smile from the woman he hoped to soon make his wife.

Two days before Christmas, the three of them turned up for the final performance of the pantomime. Oliver had only done one stint as the fairy godmother, having to do an emergency operation on the afternoon of the first
one. But tonight he was back; in fact, both the fairy godmothers were there, and their jealous behaviour towards each other had the audience laughing with delight.

Emily had made friends with the other mice and had spent the previous night with one of them, Mia, the daughter of a nurse in the orthopaedic ward. With the performance over, the small Emily mouse bounced up to Clare and Oliver, who were still in costume as they planned to do a visit to the wards.

‘Mia and I decided we’d be bridesmaids when you two get married,’ she announced. ‘And Mia said the right way to propose, Dad, is to get down on your knees—or maybe one knee, I don’t remember now—but if you’re going to do that, can I watch?’

‘Can we all watch?’ a deep voice said, and Clare turned to see Dr Droopy standing right behind them, and behind him most of the cast.

And now she looked around it seemed the audience had stayed on as well, surely not expecting more of a performance. But before she could speculate further, the fairy godmother—grotesque make-up, wig, huge fairy wings and all—was down on one knee, reaching for her hand, asking her to marry him.

The cast and audience applauded and the mouse jumped up and down, then Oliver was on his feet, taking her in his arms, enfolding her and Emily, encompassing them both in his love.

‘Did Snow White really marry the fairy godmother?’ Clare heard a child’s voice ask.

‘In fairy stories anything can happen,’ someone responded, but Clare was beyond caring what other people thought. She had her own happy ending right there.