Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit (5 page)

‘Look, there’s no point in all three of us being here. Why don’t you two grab a coffee break—in fact, it’s past lunchtime. The canteen is good, and cheaper than the coffee shop on the ground floor. You know where to go?’

Was she pushing them together? Angus wondered. Then knew it was only because, for some indefinable reason, he was attracted to Kate Armstrong that he’d even consider she might be doing such a thing. This was work—two colleagues sharing lunch. He had to get his mind off Kate Armstrong and, having decided that, lunch with the beautiful Clare might be just what he needed.

Kate watched them depart, telling herself it was for the best, particularly now she’d heard Angus being so adamant about not producing siblings for Hamish. Given that fact, Angus McDowell was definitely not the man for her.

Not that he’d shown the slightest sign of wanting to be, so why she’d been idly fantasising about him she had no idea!

No idea apart from the attraction that had startled her body into life when she’d first met him.
Her
body, that was usually biddable and dependable and had rarely felt anything more than a lukewarm interest in any man since Brian and even he hadn’t provoked much physical reaction.

Enough of attraction; she’d think about something else. Like why was Angus so definite about not wanting more children? Perhaps it was another way of saying he’d never marry again?

Get your mind back on work!

She checked Baby Stamford, wishing he had a name, then was surprised to hear the whirr of a wheelchair coming towards her. Mrs Stamford, pushed by a man who definitely wasn’t a wardsman.

‘They said he’d come through very well.’ Mrs Stamford’s voice was back in accusatory mode, daring Kate to argue this piece of good news.

‘He’s a little champion,’ she assured the still-pale woman, then she held out her hand to the man. ‘I’m Kate Armstrong, the anaesthetist. I’ll be keeping an eye on him for the next few hours.’

‘Pete Stamford,’ the man responded, shaking Kate’s hand, although all his attention was on his baby son who was so dwarfed by wires and tubes it was hard to see much of him. ‘You keep a personal eye on him? Not just watch monitors?’

‘I like to be here most of the time,’ Kate told him, and was surprised when the man’s face darkened.

‘Then it’s obvious to me he’s not out of the woods yet,’ he said, his muted voice still managing to convey anger.

‘He’s been through a huge ordeal for such a tiny baby,’ Kate said gently. ‘Being on bypass takes a lot out of them, and we stop his heart while the switch happens, poor wee mite, but there’s no cause for anxiety. I stay because I like to watch until I’m certain he’s over the
effect of the anaesthetic and sleeping naturally. I can’t always do it, because I’ve usually other ops scheduled, so today it’s a bit of a treat for me.’

Pete Stamford eyed her with great suspicion and Kate was glad he hadn’t come when all three of the specialists had been in the room. Then he would have been truly alarmed.

And she was even gladder—or should that be more glad, she wondered—when she realised that Mrs Stamford had wheeled herself closer to the cot, put her hand through the vent and was softly stroking her baby’s arm, talking quietly to him at the same time.

Kate felt her heart turn over at the sight, then realised Baby Stamford’s father was also looking at his wife, while tears streamed down his cheeks.

Unable to resist offering comfort, Kate put her arm around his shoulders and he turned to her and sobbed, his chin resting on her head.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, more or less to both of them. ‘You’ve been through such an ordeal and it isn’t over yet, but the worst part is behind him, so maybe, little champ that he is, he deserves a name.’

To Kate’s surprise, Pete straightened. He stepped towards his wife, taking her hand as they both chorused, ‘Bob.’

Bob?

They were going to call the baby Bob?

What about Jack and Tom and Sam, simple syllable names that were in vogue right now? What kind of a name for a baby was Bob?

It was Mrs Stamford who eventually explained.

‘We had a dog once, a border collie, who was the most faithful animal God ever put on earth. Even when
he was dying of some terrible liver disease, he would drag himself to the doorway to greet Pete every night, and every morning he’d bring in the paper and drop it at my feet, right up to the day he died. He had more strength and courage than any human we’ve ever known, so it seems right to name this little fellow after him.’

Now Mrs Stamford was crying, too, and Kate quietly backed out of the room, wanting to leave the pair of them to comfort each other—and to get to know their little son.

Bob!

Angus returned as she was standing by the main monitors in the PICU. He peered into the room where the couple were, then turned to Kate, his eyebrows raised.

‘They’re okay,’ she told him. ‘They’ve called him Bob.’

‘Bob?’ Angus repeated. ‘Ah, after a grandfather no doubt.’

‘After their old dog,’ Kate corrected, then she laughed at the expression on Angus’s face. ‘Thinking how it would be to have a child called McTavish?’ she teased, and although he smiled, once again the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

‘I meant it when I said earlier there’d be no more children in my family,’ he said, and Kate sensed he was telling her something else.

Telling her he, too, felt an attraction between them but it couldn’t be?

She was not sure, but her body seemed to take it that way, disappointment forming a heavy lump in her chest.

‘
HIS
name’s Pete—Mr Stamford, that is,’ she said to Angus, anxious to get him out of her company. ‘I’m sure he’d appreciate meeting you and talking to you about the op and Bob’s expected progress.’

Her tongue stumbled over ‘Bob,’ and Angus smiled at her, restarting all the sensations she didn’t want to feel. Surely if she ignored them they’d go away, and for all the fancy she’d had earlier, she doubted Angus would be attracted to her. Especially not with a beauty like Clare around.

Or perhaps he no longer felt attraction for anyone. Perhaps his adamant declaration that Hamish would be an only child was because he was still in love with his dead wife—that was a possibility.

In which case he should do something to dampen down
his
attractiveness, Kate thought gloomily.

He walked away and she looked through the window to where he stood, talking to Pete and Mrs Stamford, and though she couldn’t hear what they were saying, in her imagination she heard his seductive accent and knew ignoring the manifestations of attraction would be difficult to do.

Perhaps an affair—

He’s not interested in you!

One part of her head was yelling at the other part. She tried to remember back to lectures on the brain and which bits controlled what. She’d never been particularly interested in neurology and worked quite happily on the theory that half her brain did emotion while the other half did common sense. And while the common-sense half—maybe that part was more than half in her case—usually held sway, she knew once the emotion part was awoken, it could be difficult to ignore.

Double damn again.

‘You talking to yourself?’

The nurse sitting at the monitor looked up and Kate realised she’d sworn aloud.

‘Probably,’ she told the nurse. ‘Early dementia setting in.’

‘Not surprising, the work you do, anaesthetising tiny babies. I couldn’t do it. I find it hard enough to watch them on the monitor. I’m getting married next week and we want to have kids, but I’ll have to transfer out of the PICU before I can even think about it. Pregnancy’s scary enough without knowing all the things that could be going wrong with the baby!’

Kate watched the monitor and considered this. It was what she did, caring for babies during lifesaving operations, so she’d always seen the work as positive, but as Angus and the Stamfords left Bob’s room and she returned to it, she wondered if knowing the things that could happen would make pregnancy better or worse.

Better, surely, for there would be no unknowns.

But had she chosen it, subconsciously steered her career this way, because of the baby she’d lost?

No, that had been back in second year at university, before she’d begun her medical training, when medicine had still been only one of the options she’d been considering.

But her affinity for babies came from somewhere…

She shook her head, shaking away thoughts that had been safely locked in some dusty closet in her mind for many years.

‘You handled Mrs Stamford very well. Are you able to feel that empathy for all your patients’ parents?’

Angus appeared when Kate, some hours later, was in the surgeons’ lounge checking the operating list for the following day, baby Bob now in Clare’s care.

Kate turned towards him, but though looking at him usually produced a smile, this time it was forced.

‘That’s a strange question,’ she told him, still puzzling over the man who’d asked it. ‘I would think anyone would feel empathy for someone with a sick child.’

‘Perhaps!’ He shrugged off her assertion with that single word, as if to say
he
didn’t, but she’d seen glimpses of an empathetic man behind the cool detachment he wore like a suit.

Or maybe armour?

‘Not “perhaps” at all,’ she argued. ‘I bet you feel it or have felt it. In fact, I’d like to hazard a guess it’s because of the children you see with problems that you’ve decided not to have more children.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’

The blunt statement struck her like a slap and she felt the colour she hated rising in her cheeks. He must have seen it, for his next question was conciliatory, to say the least.

‘But on that subject, you see these infants yourself, yet you still want to have children. Why’s that?’

He’d asked the question to turn the conversation back on her, Kate knew that, but it was something she’d been thinking about since talking to the nurse earlier at the monitors. She’d locked the memory of her unborn child back into that dusty closet where it belonged, but the other issue was, and always had been, family.

How could she explain the loneliness she’d experienced as a child, and the ache for family, accentuated this time of year as Christmas drew near? Oh, she had friends who always welcomed her, but Christmas was for families, and since she was a child, she’d dreamed that one day she’d be the one cooking the turkey—she’d be the one with the children…

Pathetic, she knew, so she answered truthfully—well, partly truthfully.

‘It’s more a family thing,’ she admitted. ‘I was—I was an only child of parents who had no siblings living in Australia so I had no cousins or aunts or grandparents. Then one day—’

‘When you were eleven,’ he interrupted, and she nodded.

‘—I was staying with a friend and we went to her grandmother’s sixtieth birthday party and I saw a family in action and knew it was what I wanted.’

She kept her eyes on him as she spoke, daring him to laugh at her, wondering why the hell she was pouring out these things to a virtual stranger when she’d held them close inside her lonely heart for all these years!

He didn’t laugh, but nor did he respond, the silence tautening between them.

‘Besides,’ she said, determined to get back to easy ground, ‘why wouldn’t I want to pass on the genetic inheritance of pale skin and red hair—so suitable to a hot Australian climate.’

Now he did respond, even smiling at the fun she was poking at herself.

‘Ah, selective breeding. I do agree with that, but you could do that with one child—even be a grandmother with one child—so why children plural.’

Now Kate’s smile was the real deal, and she shook her head as she replied.

‘You’re a persistent cuss, aren’t you? We barely know each other and you’re asking questions even my best friends don’t ask. They just accept—Kate, yes, the one who wants kids. They usually emphasise the
want
and sigh and roll their eyes because they already have children and are often wondering why on earth they thought it was such a good idea.’

‘Which gets you very neatly out of answering my question,’ Angus said, but he didn’t persist and Kate was happy to let the subject drop, as memories of her father’s long illness and eventual death when her aloneness really struck home—no-one to share the caring, or share the pain and loss—came vividly to mind, bringing back the surging tide of grief she thought she’d conquered years ago.

Had her colleague seen something in her expression—a change of colour in her cheeks—that he held out his hand?

‘Come on, baby Bob is fine, and we’ve a full day tomorrow. I’ll walk you home.’

Kate considered arguing, making the excuse that she wanted to check the children on the next day’s operating list, but weariness was seeping through her bones and, dodging the hand he’d offered to guide her through the door, she led the way into the corridor.

Why did she intrigue him? And why so suddenly was he attracted, he who didn’t believe in instant attraction? Angus pondered this as they walked down the leafy street towards their houses. The summer sun was still hot, although it was late afternoon, and sweat prickled beneath his shirt, but that was nothing to the prickling in his skin when he saw this woman unexpectedly, or an image of her flicked across his inner eye.

‘Does it get much hotter?’ he asked, thinking an innocuous conversation about the weather would distract him from considering his reactions to his companion.

‘Much,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s only late November. Summer doesn’t officially begin until December, and February can be a real killer, but at least you’ve got a nice olive skin. You can go to the beach to cool off and not risk turning as red as a lobster and coming out in freckles the size of dinner plates.’

‘Dinner plates?’ he queried, smiling, but more, he feared, because she’d said he had nice skin than at her gross exaggeration.

‘Well, very freckly,’ she countered.

‘Ah, the great genetic inheritance you want to pass on to your children!’

She sighed and ran a hand through her tangled red curls.

‘I’m very healthy—surely that’s important,’ she pointed out.

It was a silly conversation but the children thing nagged at Angus. He could accept that it was natural for a woman to want children, but Kate’s desire seemed slightly out of kilter—more like determination than desire.

And he was obsessing about this, why?

Because he was attracted to her, of course!

Stuff and nonsense, as his mother would say. It was jet lag, not attraction—attraction didn’t happen this fast.

‘Can Hamish swim? He’ll need to learn if he can’t. There are learn-to-swim classes for children in every suburb.’

Had Kate been talking the whole time he muddled over attraction or had she just come out with this totally unrelated question?

Either way, he’d better answer her.

‘
Need
to learn?’ he repeated.

Her easy strides hesitated and she looked towards him.

‘
I
think so! There are far too many drowning fatalities of small children in Australia each year. No matter what safety measures are put in place, and what warnings are issued, the statistics are appalling.’

Something in her voice sent a shiver down his spine and he hurried to reassure her.

‘He
can
swim. Loves the water but has no fear, which is always a bit of a worry.’

She was standing looking at him, and he almost felt her shrugging off whatever it was that had bothered her earlier, although when he really looked at her, he saw the pain in her eyes.

‘Someone you knew drowned?’ he guessed, then regretted the casual question when all the colour left her face.

But she didn’t flinch, tilting her chin so she could look him in the eyes.

‘My sister—she was only two. It was a long time ago, but you don’t forget.’

He reached out and touched her arm.

‘I’m so sorry, I really am. I shouldn’t have persisted.’

She rallied now, shrugging off the memories.

‘That’s okay, you weren’t to know. Things happen. But you can understand why I’m a wee bit obsessive about children learning to swim.’

‘Of course you are.’ He squeezed her arm where he was holding it, feeling her bones beneath the flesh. ‘Well, be assured Hamish will be fine in the water. We’re quite near the beach, I believe.’

Her smile caught him by surprise, as did his gut’s reaction to it.

‘Quite near the beach? You really were thrown straight in the deep end,’ she said. ‘You haven’t had time to work out your surroundings at all.’

Then, as if their previous conversation had never happened, she looked up at the sky, where the sun was heading slowly towards the west.

‘With daylight saving, it’ll still be light for a while. What if I pile you and Hamish and Juanita into my
car and we do a quick tour of the neighbourhood. We can have a swim and finish with fish and chips at the beach—if Hamish is allowed to eat fish and chips.’

She was being neighbourly, possibly to banish memories his careless question had provoked, but the offer told him more about Kate Armstrong than she’d probably intended it to. She was the kind of person who would always put herself out for others. She’d had no need to go back into Mrs Stamford’s room that morning, but had known the other woman was in deep emotional pain and had decided to make one more attempt to help her.

Now she was offering to drive his little family to the beach.

She
should
have children! A giving person like Kate would be a wonderful mother. Angus remembered a book he’d read on parenting that explained no matter how hard a father tried he could never fully replace a mother. Something to do with wiring…

If Hamish had a mother, would that let Angus off the hook? Allow him to feel less, not exactly guilty, but disquieted about his interaction with his son?

He shook his head as if to shake away the notion. He was fine as a father, spent time with Hamish, did whatever he could for him…

‘Well?’ Kate demanded, and Angus pulled himself together.

‘We’d be delighted, and thanks to his early upbringing Hamish loves fish and chips. It’s practically a staple diet back home in Scotland.’

What was she doing? Was she mad, getting more involved with her neighbours instead of less? Kate left
him at his gate and strode ahead, then found Hamish and a woman who must be Juanita sitting on her yellow sofa.

‘I thought I told you the backyard was for adventures,’ she scolded Hamish, although she softened the words with a smile.

‘This isna an adventure,’ he told her, four-year-old scorn scorching the words. ‘I’m with Juanita. We’re waiting for you to come home so I can—’

‘Introduce me,’ the woman said, standing and holding out her hand to Kate. ‘I am Juanita Cortez.’

She was a solid, olive-skinned woman of about fifty, Kate guessed as she introduced herself, and asked Juanita how she was settling in.

‘We are nearly there,’ Juanita replied. ‘Angus has sorted a kindergarten for Hamish and I’ve found an organisation for ex-pat Americans that meets once a month, and another place where I can go to play bridge, so I will soon meet plenty of people.’

‘Well done you,’ Kate responded, admiring the other woman’s nous in getting organised, but she was watching Hamish as she spoke, watching Angus swing his son into the air before depositing him on his shoulders, normal father stuff but somehow Angus was never looking at the little boy.

Not directly.

Seeing them together, so unalike, Kate wondered if Hamish looked like his mother, and therefore was too painful a reminder…

Oh, dear!