The Doctors' Baby (10 page)

Jonas stared at her blankly, not having the faintest clue what she was talking about. He was so blind! ‘You're over-dramatising.'

But as Em went to answer the door she knew she wasn't.

She loved and needed. And she was desperate to be loved and needed in return.

And it wasn't just the little boy in her arms who was engendering these dangerous emotions.

It was Jonas Lunn!

T
HE
days after Anna's operation became a week. And then two.

Work and domesticity settled into a pattern Em found almost acceptable—if only her stupid emotions didn't get in the way.

Once Anna's drainage tube came out, she was allowed home. Her children went with her. She refused to let Jonas stay with her—he stayed on with Em, whether Em thought it was wise or not—but Anna
did
allow her brother to organise home help.

That was something, at least, Em thought. The prickly Anna of old wouldn't even have allowed that.

And as for Jonas…

Jonas was frustrated with the little help he could give his sister. There was so little he could do!

He did insist on spending time each day with Ruby and Sam and Matt, using his wish to establish bonds with them as a way to give Anna much needed child care. He also threw himself into working for the town. He did what he could.

For both the women he was helping…

At least Em was a skilled doctor, he thought as he worked on beside her. He could trust her to look after Anna. And at least, with him staying on as her temporary partner, she had time to do it properly. Do house calls. Care…

She would have done it anyway, he knew, but in the
equation without him, there would have been no time at all for Robby, or for Em herself.

She would have worked herself into a breakdown.

It wasn't that she was driven to work, he decided, although he knew doctors who were consumed with their jobs. Em wasn't like that. She simply found it impossible to reject pleas for help. She never said no, and it made no difference how tired she was, or how long the queue waiting in the surgery.

So he'd saved her from that—temporarily—but the more he saw of her—the more he saw of her medicine and her caring—the more he wondered how he could possibly leave at the end of Anna's radiotherapy.

An idea was starting to stir and shift at the back of his mind…

 

Physically, Anna was recovering brilliantly, though neither Jonas nor Em were so sure about emotionally.

Anna read all the literature, and then deliberately left it behind in the hospital. Well over ninety percent survival, the books said, which backed up what the doctors had told her. She could live with that. Sure, the oncologist had said her chances would be even better if she had chemotherapy, but that meant months of depending on others for help, and she rejected it out of hand.

So live she did, but on her own terms. She went about organising the radiotherapy but, despite Jonas's offer to rent an apartment in Blairglen for them all, she made the decision to travel to Blairglen every day.

‘So I can still be independent. Lori will look after the kids during the day and I can still be with them at night.'

And Lori, due to return to Bay Beach any day, was willing to take them on.

‘It's not the easiest solution for you,' Em told Anna. ‘The travelling will make you tired.'

But Anna wasn't giving in. ‘I don't want to be any more dependent on Jonas than I already am,' Anna said definitely, and Em could only watch as his sister drove Jonas as far away as she could.

And Anna was also driving Jim away.

The fire chief came to see Em in surgery, ostensibly for a twisted little finger but in truth to tell her how concerned he was about Anna.

‘She won't let me help,' he told her sadly. ‘She won't let me near.'

Em could only shake her head. There was no advice she could give. If she had any way of breaking down barriers, she'd be breaking them down herself.

The time she'd spent with Jonas and four children seemed now like an amazing dream. That sensation of family had eased now that Anna's three children had left. With Amy's help, Em could look after Robby without Jonas's assistance, and Jonas seemed to want that. So there was less and less need for Jonas and her to be together.

But separation hurt. Em was hurting. Even her dog was pining. Bernard was back to his old, lethargic self.

And here was Jim, and he was hurting, too.

‘Do you really want me to do anything about this finger?' Em asked the fire chief, examining the offending digit. ‘I could refer you to an orthopaedic surgeon for resetting, but it looks like it was broken years ago. Is it causing any trouble?'

‘Yeah, well, it
was
broken years ago and, no, it's not causing trouble,' he admitted. ‘I sort of wanted an excuse to talk to you.'

‘Now, why did I suspect that?'

‘Are you getting on any better with her brother than I am with Anna?'

Em frowned, and spent some more time unnecessarily examining his finger. Getting her face in order. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘I mean there's two Lunns,' Jim said grimly. ‘There's two people who are fighting shy of attachment. At least you have yours living with you. Working side by side…'

And a fat lot of good that was doing her, Em thought bleakly.

It might halve her workload, but in every other respect it was just making life impossible.

 

Lori returned to Bay Beach the following day, cheerful, optimistic and ready to return to being a home mother.

‘Ray's out of danger. His operation went really, really well,' she told Em and Jonas. ‘All he needs is a whole heap of advice from the dietician and he'll be back at work. Like I will be tomorrow.'

‘We've missed you.' It was Jonas. They'd just finished dinner, and Em was giving Robby his last bottle for the night. She'd been standing at the window, rocking him to sleep, when Lori had dropped in to see them all.

We've missed you…

Em flashed Jonas a quick look and couldn't quite keep the resentment out of her tone when she added, ‘Yeah. Jonas has had to do some babysitting.'

‘I've done it really well,' he said indignantly, and Lori smiled. Her smile was only surface deep, though. Suddenly her active mind was working overtime. There were undercurrents here that she couldn't read.

‘Do you want me to take Robby home with me tonight?' she asked, and Em almost gasped. Instead, she took a deep, steadying breath.

This had to happen some time, she told herself, trying hard not to look down at the baby in her arms. Well, why not? It was logical. Lori was Robby's carer. Not her.

‘Maybe it'd be for the best,' she said, but her voice didn't sound like hers at all.

‘The best for whom?' Jonas asked indifferently, and Em could have slapped him.

‘For Robby, of course,' she snapped.

‘You're only thinking of Robby?'

‘Who else would I be thinking of?'

‘Yourself,' Jonas said mildly, and watched her face.

‘Why…why…?'

‘Because you love the kid,' Jonas told her, as if she were a little bit stupid, and as if he didn't see what the problem was. ‘I don't see why you don't adopt him yourself. Heck, anyone can see you think the sun rises and sets with him.'

‘And you think that'd be OK,' Em snapped. ‘I've been able to spend heaps of time with him these last couple of weeks, but that's only because you've been here to help with my workload. As soon as you go, I'll have to depend totally on Amy—a teenager who'll take off with her own life any minute. That's no basis for adoption. Me being a mother for short bursts at night? I don't think so!'

‘You'd be a mother who loves her baby, though,' Jonas said thoughtfully. ‘That's more than a lot of kids have.'

‘It wouldn't work.' Lori's quick eyes had been assessing the pair of them. She was as concerned as Em as to Robby's fate, and she was very, very interested in these undercurrents. ‘For a start, Tom wouldn't allow it.'

‘Tom?' Jonas's eyebrows snapped a question.

‘Our director.' Lori shook her head when she thought about him. ‘There's an assessment committee, but the final decision comes down to Tom. He decides whether a
couple—or a single person—would make good parents, and he's very good at his job.'

‘You're saying Em wouldn't make a good mother?'

‘I'm saying Em wouldn't stand a chance of being permitted to adopt,' Lori said bluntly. ‘An overworked single mum… Tom would say that she'd never hack the pace.'

‘So he'd discriminate because she's single.'

‘No. If she was working half-time she'd get a look-in—a good look-in because Tom would soon figure out how much she cares. But our Em works eighty-hour weeks or more. He'd discriminate, and rightly so because she doesn't have time.'

‘But if she was married…' Jonas said thoughtfully, and let the room fade to silence. ‘Would that make a difference?'

‘Of course it would,' Lori told him, after a moment's stunned silence. She frowned and very carefully didn't look at Em. She concentrated on Jonas. They were all standing—Jonas from when he'd answered the door and Em still at her watching place by the window. Only she wasn't watching the window. ‘Is it likely?' Lori asked at last. ‘That our Em could be married?'

‘I suppose it could be,' Jonas told her, as if the idea had only just occurred to him.

‘How could it be?' Lori asked bluntly.

‘She could be married to me.'

For a moment there was absolute silence. Not even the clock ticked. The world held its breath, waiting for the bomb Jonas had just lobbed to explode into a million fragments and destroy everything around it.

Maybe it already had. For when Em's breathing returned to a semblance of normality, her world had tilted on its axis, so much so that she felt like she was about to fall off.

What had he said?

‘I beg your pardon?' Lori said, and Em could only cast her a grateful glance. For herself, she was totally unable to speak.

‘I mean Em and I could get married,' Jonas said mildly. ‘It's been done before. Marriages of convenience.'

‘Yes, but—'

‘Look, it's simple,' he said reasonably. ‘I'm not the least bit interested in marriage. I never have been. And Em doesn't want—hasn't time for—a proper husband. However, she wants Robby.' He smiled, his gorgeous, crooked smile that did so much damage to Em's heart. ‘I can see what the problem is, and I'm sure you can, too, Lori. I haven't been staying with Em for this long without realising she's tearing her heart out to keep Robby. And this way she could.'

‘How could she?' Lori sounded fascinated.

Em, on the other hand, was just plain dumbfounded. She had to find a chair and sit. So she sat and held onto Robby like she was drowning, gazing up at Jonas in stupefaction.

‘Easy.'

‘It's not easy.' Lori had been under a fair amount of strain over the past couple of weeks and her normal placid self wasn't what it should have been. She let an edge of annoyance show. ‘You're a city surgeon. I assume you don't want to practise here, in Bay Beach.'

‘No. Well, not totally, but…'

‘But what?' Lori glared. She cast an uncertain glance at Em, then went right on glaring. She was starting to think this man was an insensitive oaf. The way Em looked… She looked like her world was crumbling.

She looked like she loved this man, Lori thought suddenly. She was watching Jonas as if he was close to the
most precious thing in the world, rating as precious as the child she held in her arms.

And Jonas was talking as if the whole thing was a business proposition.

‘Tom's going to want to know who's intending to look after Robby,' Lori snapped. ‘You're not offering to be Robby's daddy?'

‘No.' But Jonas's voice was suddenly uncertain. ‘Except…sometimes.'

‘This is crazy.' Em interrupted them both from where she sat. ‘Just crazy! Lori, go home. The man's talking nonsense.'

‘I'm not talking nonsense.' Jonas's voice firmed. ‘It could work.'

‘How could it work?' Em's voice was a desperate whisper, and Jonas gave a wry smile.

‘Hey, Em, there's no need to get your knickers in a twist. I'm not offering human sacrifice here. I'm offering a business proposition.'

‘Which is?'

‘I've been thinking,' he said, and for the first time a trace of uncertainty entered his voice. Like he was a little unsure himself why he was doing what he was doing. But he
had
been thinking things through. It did make sense. Sort of. ‘You know I was offered a teaching job overseas before I came here?'

‘Yes.'

Em cast an uncertain glance at Lori, but Lori was riveted. She was listening to a proposal of marriage. Lori should get herself out of here and leave them to it, but she didn't look like she intended moving for quids!

And Jonas kept right on speaking. ‘I really want at least a part-time teaching job,' he told Em, and he was ignoring Lori now, speaking directly to her. To his intended…
wife
?
‘I enjoy teaching,' he told her. ‘I've been doing some in Sydney but there's not enough for a full-time position. For the rest of the time I've been doing increasingly technical surgery, which I haven't been enjoying much at all.'

‘I don't—'

But he wasn't brooking interruptions, and he was still focusing on Em. Trying to make her see.

‘Em, increasingly, my area of expertise is patient-surgeon interaction. In fact, I've written papers and presented theories on healing times improving with better communication.' He gave a self-conscious grin. ‘And they do. I've been working through guidelines for surgeons to discuss with their patients before and after surgery, including such things as fear of outcome, fear of pain—even such things as family problems. Things many surgeons don't think they have time for. That's my soapbox, really, and it's what's important to me. The surgery itself, although important, is no longer my chief priority.'

‘I don't see what this has to do with me.' This was hard. Em could hardly find the strength to speak. What had he said?
Marriage!
She was rocking Robby back and forth, clutching him like a lifeline, and Lori was looking from Jonas to Em and back again with the alertness of a particularly interested sparrow.