Loe raamatut: «The Surgeon's Family Wish»

CHAPTER ONE

AARON LEWIS was smiling as it was announced that the aircraft was preparing for landing. The last two weeks spent touring foreign hospitals and noting different techniques had been absorbing, but here was where his heart was. In the English city where he worked in a large children’s hospital and lived in a rambling, red-brick house with what was left of his family.

His smile deepened as he envisaged them waiting for him at the airport. His mother, her round pink face alight with pleasure at the sight of him, with Lucy beside her, dancing with excitement because he was back. They were his world and every time he saw a sick child he gave thanks for his daughter’s good health.

Ever since the day when his wife had gone into the sea in a Cornish cove to go to the assistance of his father, who’d been caught in a fast and dangerous current, there’d been just the three of them—his mother, his daughter and himself.

He’d gone back to the hotel that day with Lucy, then a toddler, for something they’d forgotten, and by the time he’d got back to the beach his wife and father had both been swept out to sea.

There’d been a huge search, with the lifeboat and air-sea rescue services involved, but to no avail, and when their bodies had been washed up with the tide a couple of days later, both he and his mother had been faced with the knowledge that half of a close, loving family was gone.

Eloise had drowned trying to save her adored father-in-law and as Aaron had stood gazing bleakly out to sea on the golden sand where they’d been picnicking on that terrible day, his mother had said, ‘Life has to go on, Aaron, for Lucy’s sake if nothing else.’

That had been four years ago and they’d coped. As long as he didn’t look back too much, life had been reasonably good. His mother had taken Eloise’s place in Lucy’s young life, while he’d done his best to take care of them both. In a very short time the threesome would be reunited.

As he waited for his luggage to come round on the carousel Aaron was imagining his daughter’s face when she saw what he’d brought her back from the trip. He’d spoken to her every night while he’d been away but it hadn’t been the same as holding Lucy in his arms.

Yet there was only his mother waiting to greet him when he’d gone through the formalities. No Lucy, and her grandmother’s face was pinched and grey. He could smell trouble a mile off. It went with the job, and he’d only seen his mother look like this once before.

As Mary Lewis watched her son approach she knew she was about to blight his homecoming. He was a commanding figure, striding towards her amongst the other travellers. Tall, straight, with dark hair curling above his ears, his eyes were like soft brown velvet when they rested upon his family and his small patients. They could also be as hard as flint if he came across a situation that did not please him....

She saw his brisk stride falter and swallowed hard.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked the moment he reached her side. ‘Where’s Lucy?’

Her smooth cheeks were crumpling, but her voice was steady as she told him, ‘She’s in Barnaby’s, Aaron. Lucy fell off the climbing frame in the garden yesterday and instead of landing on the grass cracked her head on the lawnmower that I’d left nearby while I went to answer the phone. She must have fallen awkwardly. By the time I got to her she was unconscious. I sent for an ambulance. They took us to the General and from there they transferred Lucy to Barnaby’s.’

‘Why?’ he questioned tightly as his worst nightmare took on form and shape. ‘Why did they transfer her? And why didn’t you let me know?’

He’d taken hold of his mother’s arm and was ushering her towards the exit, not wanting to waste a moment in getting to his daughter’s side.

‘They X-rayed her head in A and E and did a CT scan which revealed an open fracture of the skull requiring surgery. The new paediatric surgeon at Barnaby’s took over from there. As to why I didn’t let you know, I rang your hotel but you’d just left for the airport, and I decided that you would be better making the long flight without having a terrible anxiety gnawing at you.’

‘How is Lucy now?’ he asked in the same tight tone. ‘Any brain damage?’

‘You need to talk to the doctor who operated. I was so agitated I could hardly take in what she was saying. The main thing at the moment is that Lucy has come through it and was sleeping peacefully when I left her. I’ve been with her all the time, needless to say, but I had to come to meet you. I couldn’t let you walk into something so worrying without warning.’

She was almost running to keep up with him and, contrite, he slowed down. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he gave her a quick hug.

‘You are the best. You do know that, don’t you?’

Her smile was wry. ‘I didn’t feel like that yesterday when I saw our little one lying so still.’

‘No, I can imagine,’ he said gently, adding, with the urgency in him unabated, ‘Where have you parked the car?’

‘Across the way there,’ she told him, passing him the keys. ‘You’d better drive, Aaron. We’ll get there more quickly and I’m beginning to wilt now that I’ve passed the burden on to you.’

‘I’m sorry that you’ve had to cope with this on your own, Mum,’ he told her regretfully. ‘It must have been horrendous, but we’ll be with Lucy soon and then I’ll be able to find out for myself what the damage is.’

He groaned.

‘I can’t believe that the moment I turn my back the fates start playing tricks. My daughter in my hospital. And you said it’s someone new who operated on Lucy. Where was Charles, for heaven’s sake, and Mark Lafferty?’

Charles Drury was the consultant, who was shortly to retire after a long career in paediatric surgery, and the other man was a skilled surgeon in his fifties. It was surprising that neither of them had been available to operate on his precious child.

‘Charles is away on holiday,’ his mother informed him, ‘and Mark is incapacitated with a broken pelvis after a motor accident. It was a Dr Swain who operated on Lucy. It was her first day at Barnaby’s and she looked washed out, as if she should be in bed herself.’

Aaron nodded grimly.

‘Yes, of course. I’d forgotten. She would be the new broom. We’ve had a lot of staff changes recently on the surgical side. Thankfully my lot don’t have such itchy feet.’

He was hoping that this new woman was up to scratch. Not all the surgeons who operated on the children that he and his staff had in their care were of Charles Drury’s standard.

The hospital gates were looming up. He would soon know how well the Swain woman did her job.

He was almost galloping as they reached the main corridor of the hospital and his mother said, ‘Go on, I’ll catch you up. Lucy is in a small room off Rainbow Ward.’

In the early October morning the ward was beginning to come to life. Nurses flitted amongst the beds, talking gently to those who were fretful and with a cheerful word for the rest.

The sister saw him the moment he came whizzing in and she flashed him a sympathetic smile.

‘Not a good day for you, is it, Dr Lewis, but Lucy is making good progress,’ she said as he made towards the side ward. ‘She came through the operation satisfactorily and is still sleeping. Dr Swain is on her way to see her.’

Aaron felt tears prick as he stood beside the still form of his daughter. She was so small to have to go through that kind of surgery, but there was a ward full of children out there and none of their problems were minor. Rainbow Ward was for the more serious cases and the Lollipop Ward for those less complicated, but often they overflowed into each other.

Lucy’s fair curls had been shorn off and the part of her scalp where surgery had been performed was covered in dressings. She looked so little and vulnerable he could hardly bear it, but there were things he had to know. The extent of the damage to her skull. What amount of surgery had been necessary. And the best person to tell him that was Dr Swain.

The sister had left him to go back to supervising in the main ward, and as Aaron was lifting the clipboard from the bottom rail of the bed to read Lucy’s notes the door opened.

She was tall, slender, with nut-brown shoulder-length hair framing a tired, white face. But tired or not, her glance, when it met his, was cool and professional and her grip firm as she introduced herself.

‘I’m Annabel Swain,’ she said quietly, ‘and you must be Dr Lewis, Lucy’s father.’

‘Yes,’ he told her, and without going into any of the niceties added, ‘I need to know how badly hurt my daughter was and what surgery you’ve performed on her.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed. Sinking down onto a chair beside the bed, she looked up at him.

There was weariness behind the cool hazel gaze meeting his, but it barely registered. Aaron was frantic to know the worst. Once he’d absorbed it he would cope. At least Lucy was alive and who knew better than he what terrible damage could be caused to children and adults in accidental happenings?

‘Lucy was transferred to Barnaby’s from A and E last night as I was about to finish my shift,’ she told him in a voice that he would have thought pleasing to the ear at any other time. ‘She was unconscious and had been diagnosed with an open skull fracture.

‘Fortunately, I have done some specialising in neurology and problems of the cranium and operated immediately to correct fragmentation of the bone and prevent her condition worsening.’

‘What about brain damage?’ he asked quickly. ‘Any penetration of the meninges and brain tissue?’

She shook her head and the brown hair swung gently around her pale face.

‘None that I could see. I drained away surplus blood and repaired damaged vessels, along with realigning the fractured bone. I shall be keeping a close watch on Lucy for the next few days. She was unconscious before the operation but she’s sleeping naturally now.’ She was getting to her feet. ‘But as Head of Paediatrics I’m sure you won’t need me to tell you that.’

‘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.

The luxury in which he lived was a far cry from Annabel Swain’s living quarters, he thought as he put his key in the lock. What was a woman like her doing in hospital accommodation, for heaven’s sake?

His mother was in bed but not asleep, and the moment she heard his step on the landing she came out to ask about Lucy.

‘So far so good,’ he told her. ‘She’s rational, as you saw when she awoke, and the surgery that Annabel Swain performed was spot on from the looks of it.’

Mary nodded.

‘We owe that lady a lot, Aaron. I know that she was only doing the job she’s paid to do, but I liked her the moment I saw her. She’d barely had time to get her foot over the doorstep at Barnaby’s and she was operating on our precious girl. When Lucy comes home, why don’t we invite her over for a meal?’

‘I agree with all you say,’ he told her, ‘but she might think an invitation to dinner a bit over the top.’

‘Nonsense!’ his mother exclaimed. ‘Annabel Swain looks as if she could do with some tender loving care herself. She’s too thin and pale.’

Aaron was smiling. ‘And you’d like to turn her into a buxom wench?’

‘Not exactly. I wouldn’t have thought that ‘‘buxom wenches’’ were quite your type.’

‘What has it got to do with me?’ he asked with dark brows rising. ‘You’re not going to try and marry me off again, are you? Because it won’t work.’

‘You can’t mourn Eloise for ever,’ she said gently.

‘It has nothing to do with that. I accepted long ago that she’s gone and won’t be coming back. But if and when I decide to marry again, I’ll do the choosing.’

She laughed. ‘All right. I get the message, but I’m not getting any younger, you know. Lucy needs a younger woman in her life.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he agreed, ‘and when the time is right I’ll do something about it.’

He felt vaguely irritated that his mother was taking such an interest in a woman that he’d only just met. Yet he had to admit that he’d been drawn to her for some reason and there hadn’t been many women he could say that about since he’d lost Eloise.

But reason said it was because she’d saved his daughter’s life. It certainly wasn’t because he’d been bowled over by her looks. Like a lot of other overworked doctors he’d met, she was white-faced, with dark smudges beneath those striking hazel eyes, and weary.

After he’d showered and changed Aaron unloaded his luggage from his mother’s car and took out the gift he’d brought for Lucy. Mary was on the verge of sleep again, so he crept in and put the box that held a gold bracelet from one of New York’s top stores on the bedside table.

He’d brought his daughter a doll, a miniature version of a pretty cheer-leader, and hoped that it might help to take her mind off the aches and pains that were the aftermath of surgery. Patti-Faye, she was called, and he thought whimsically that with her pouting red lips and glossy blonde bob she was an overstated version of the opposite sex, while the woman who had been in his thoughts was understated to say the least.