Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit (13 page)

This was doing his head in. Thank heavens Juanita had picked up their car today. He’d talk to Alex, then head for the beach, take a walk to clear his head. He’d heard you could walk for miles along a headland path from Coogee. He’d do that—

He caught up with Alex’s conversation, saying yes to a cold drink, but thinking now, as Alex disappeared to get drinks, not of a solitary walk but perhaps a trip to the beach with Hamish. They could swim and play in the sand.

Ask Kate?

Not this time, there was a lot of catching up to do, but soon he’d ask Kate—

Ask Kate what?

‘I
HATE
transplants.’

They were in Theatre. Oliver was preparing baby Karl. Angus was to do the operation as Alex was still in Melbourne, but it was Clare who voiced the emotion Kate also felt.

‘Why?’ Oliver asked as he cut open the tiny chest of the patient.

‘For me it’s because some other baby has to die.’ It was Kate who answered. ‘I know it means this baby will live, and one lot of parents will have the joy, but I always think of the other parents, the ones going home with empty, aching arms, and bruises on their hearts that will last for ever.’

‘Just slightly melodramatic, Kate?’ Angus had returned from speaking to the patient’s parents in time to hear her words.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, barely glancing at Angus, who’d been avoiding her assiduously since their coffee and walk through the park a week earlier. Although, to be fair, with Alex away, Angus was busier than usual…

She’d been avoiding him, as well, although she’d seen plenty of Hamish, who, having been reunited with McTavish, was spending a lot of time adventuring in her backyard.

But when Angus spoke again, she was startled and just a little put out, for he was opening the box that was Jenna, not just to her but to his colleagues.

‘My wife died suddenly,’ he was saying, while Kate tried to concentrate on her job and ignore the emotion bumbling around in her chest. ‘As a physician, she’d always been an advocate of organ donation, yet at the time of her death, when a woman from the organ donor program approached me, all I felt was revulsion. I was about to refuse when I remembered how vocal Jenna had been about it, and although it ripped me apart at the time, I agreed that they should take whatever they could use.’

He paused, and the normal sounds of the operating theatre seemed louder in his silence, then he added, ‘But it does bring comfort later, when you can think more clearly, and to parents of a child that died to know their child didn’t die in vain, I think that must, in time, be helpful.’

Kate stared at him, and though his dark eyes, all but hidden behind the magnifying loupe, turned her way, she could read nothing in them. Yet she sensed that this was probably the first time Angus had spoken openly to colleagues about his wife’s death, and wondered if perhaps this, too, would be helpful to him.

Her love for him made her want to go to him, to put her arms around him and hold him tightly, but this was work, and here in this place, they were colleagues and nothing more.

Perhaps that’s all they were anywhere; nothing had been resolved…

The talk around the operating table was purely professional now, with the circulating nurse offering the latest
information on the expected arrival time of the donor heart, the operating team counting down the minutes, preparing precisely, so little Karl’s time on the machine would be as short as possible. And as the operation proceeded, Kate lost her reservations about transplants. Angus did the switch so swiftly it seemed impossible to think dozens of tiny stitches had been inserted as the new heart was set in place and connected to Karl’s blood vessels, but now, as the heart beat on its own for the first time in Karl’s chest, Kate felt the joy that
this
baby had survived.

Angus was in the PICU with Karl’s parents when she and Clare wheeled the baby through. Clare was really in charge now he was on the ventilator, but Kate wanted to see him settled before she left the hospital.

And not only was Angus with the parents, but he had his arm around Karl’s mother, who had tears welling in her eyes as she thanked him and his team.

‘You’ve humanised me again, Kate Armstrong,’ he told her later, catching up with her as she walked through the early-evening light along their street. ‘And for that I thank you.’

He slung an arm around her shoulder and drew her close.

‘I’m not saying you were right about the boxes, mind,’ he added, ‘but I’d lost my way and now I see a faint hint of a path ahead of me.’

Which meant what? Kate wondered but didn’t ask, simply enjoying the feel of his arm around her, the solidity of his body against hers.

‘So, dinner tonight at Scoozi’s? Or somewhere else if you’d prefer? I don’t know the places to go so you choose.’

Kate shook her head, remembering another conversation—dinner and sex, a movie and sex…

‘Why?’ she asked, perhaps a little bluntly, as they reached his front gate.

‘Because,’ he said, and kissed her, right there and then for all the world—or any of it that happened to be around at the time—to see. ‘We’re starting again. I’m courting you. We’re not going to get tangled up in where we’re going or what might happen in the future—we’re going to take it one day at a time and see what happens.’

He kissed her again.

‘That suit you?’

All Kate could do was nod, too overwhelmed by the sudden change in this man to take it in. Perhaps…

‘Then why don’t you come to my place for dinner,’ she suggested. ‘That way we can get to know each other a little better than we would in a restaurant.’

A sexy smile greeted this pronouncement, and before she could protest that that wasn’t what she’d meant, he was kissing her again.

‘I’ll read Hamish his bedtime story and be in at eight,’ he promised as they drew apart, and though Kate was reasonably sure her feet were touching the ground as she made her way next door, it felt as if she was dancing at least a yard above the ground, flying like a fairy in a bright bubble of happiness.

He came, they talked, and ate, and talked some more. They wandered through the park, hand in hand, kissing
in the shadows, prolonging the agony of desire for as long as they could. Then suddenly both needing more than kisses, hurrying back to her house, to her bedroom, stripping off their clothes and lying together once more, not talking now, but letting their hands renew the exploration of each other’s bodies.

It was a dream yet not a dream, Kate decided as the escalation of her desire blasted thoughts of the future from her mind. For the moment there was only now, and right now, here with Angus, was where she wanted to be.

His teasing fingers brought her to a whimpering, tremulous climax, and as he slid inside her, she shivered again, knowing that she would surely splinter into a million pieces the next time. But it was Angus who cried out loud when the moment came, his body shuddering with his release, his arms clamping her to his body as if she was a lifeline in a very turbulent sea.

They lay together, Kate holding him close, knowing so much had changed in his life recently he might feel totally adrift, and as she held him, he drifted off to sleep, and she watched over him in the moonlight that streamed through her window.

Would it go anywhere, this relationship?

Did it matter if it didn’t?

Couldn’t she simply take what she could out of it, and if a time came to move on, then she’d have memories to treasure in the future?

But even as she assured herself this was possible, she knew that she was wrong. The more time she spent with Angus, the more she learned of his convoluted personality, the more she loved him, and the harder any parting would eventually be.

So she held him as he slept and tried not to think, simply reliving the pleasure of the evening they’d spent together—the walk in the park, the kisses under the trees, the magic of his lovemaking.

‘You should have woken me!’

It was two in the morning and she was sitting up in bed, still watching over him, having decided that was far more satisfying than sleeping beside him, when he came awake so suddenly she was startled.

But the accusation in his words startled her even more, and as she watched him pull on his clothes, she felt her happiness seep away, leaving only emptiness. How had she fooled herself that Angus had changed? Why had she thought that two kisses outside his gate meant he was willing for people to know they were in a relationship?

‘I would have woken you soon,’ she muttered, angry now at his reaction. ‘I know you like to be home before Hamish wakes.’

‘I’ve got to go—I’ll see you later. You’re on call this weekend? You’ll be here?’

He was out the door, doing up his shirt with one hand, his shoes and socks in his other.

Kate stared at the empty doorway, then heard him call from the bottom of the steps.

‘Don’t forget to come down and lock the door before you go back to sleep.’

Go back to sleep? Ha! She was so confused she might never sleep again.

Maybe he hadn’t meant to be so offhand?

Who was she kidding?

Dinner and sex, movies and sex—that was Angus’s idea of a relationship and she’d known that from the start. Just because he was becoming more human in other areas of his life didn’t mean he was going to fall madly in love with his next-door neighbour.

She must have slept for she was woken by a strange noise at her back door, and she pulled on a robe and made her way downstairs to find McTavish sitting on the doorstep, whimpering piteously.

‘What’s wrong, where’s Hamish?’ she asked the dog, then realised how pathetic that was.

She called the boy, thinking he must be hiding somewhere and McTavish couldn’t find him, but there was no reply, and in spite of her sudden rush of anxiety a quick search of her backyard revealed no unconscious little boy.

Picking McTavish up, she was walking towards the gate when she realised she was hardly dressed for visiting.

‘Come inside with me,’ she told him, carrying him into the kitchen and putting some water for him into a bowl. ‘I’ll get some clothes on and we’ll investigate.’

He sat beside the water bowl, the dark brown eyes in the pale Highland terrier face looking so sorrowful she had to hug him again before she went upstairs to change.

But going next door provided no answers. The little car Angus had bought was on the concrete pad in the backyard, but no-one was at home.

‘Well, do you want to stay here or come home with me?’ she asked McTavish, who put his nose against her leg by way of answer and followed her back into her yard.

‘I don’t have a dog door but I’ll leave the back door open,’ she told him, but apparently, having found one of the few humans he knew in Australia, McTavish wasn’t going to budge from her side.

By late afternoon Kate was seriously worried, and although she’d phoned her neighbours frequently there was no reply, and no answering machine picked up. She’d never had reason to know Angus’s mobile number and wondered about phoning the hospital and asking them to contact Angus on his pager. But she knew how much he’d hate that, so she sat and worried, cleaned her living-room walls down and worried, took McTavish for a walk in the park using a belt for a lead, and worried.

At midnight, when McTavish’s scratching at her bedclothes told her he needed to go outside, she let him out into the backyard and saw lights on next door, but they were upstairs in Juanita’s flat and Kate didn’t feel she knew Juanita well enough to visit her at midnight.

Instead, she tried to shoo McTavish back home, but although he went through the gate and wandered around for a while, he came back and followed Kate inside.

‘Stuck with each other, aren’t we?’ she said, although by morning she knew she had to find out what had happened. Clutching McTavish’s solid body under one arm, she went next door, to the front door this time, and pressed her finger on the bell. So what if it was barely seven; the dog was lost, well, kind of lost…

And so was she, but that was different.

Juanita came eventually. Not the cheerful, competent Juanita Kate was used to seeing, but a sleep-rumpled Juanita with dark shadows under her eyes.

‘The dog! I’d forgotten all about him. He hasn’t been here long enough for me to remember he’s part of the family. Have you been looking after him?’

She reached out to take McTavish but Kate held on to her prize.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘He’s been at my place since yesterday morning and I’ve tried to contact Angus any number of times.’

‘You don’t know?’

Juanita sounded shocked, but the look of her, and now the tone of her voice, was filling Kate with a strong foreboding.

She shook her head.

‘It’s Hamish!’ Juanita said, her voice catching on his name, and tears welling in her eyes. ‘Just suddenly on Friday night—he was sleeping in my flat because Angus was out, and he started crying, then he stopped, suddenly. One minute crying, then no crying. I went to check—he was asleep. He felt a little hot but he gets ear infections and a temperature sometimes and he was sleeping so I didn’t wake him. Then in the morning—very early, it was still dark—he was going down the stairs to his own flat and he fell. Angus thought he’d knocked himself out and took him up to the hospital for X-rays but it wasn’t the fall. He’s got enceph—’

‘Encephalitis?’ Kate whispered, finishing the word that Juanita was trying to get out.

Juanita nodded.

‘The doctors there say he must have had some kind of virus and this followed it, but until last night he’s been well as far as we could see.’

‘And Angus?’

‘He is by his son’s bed where he should be,’ Juanita said, somehow implying it’s where he should have been when Hamish was first ill. Not that Kate needed Juanita’s words to make her feel guilty; she’d been feeling guilt since she’d first heard of the little boy’s illness.

And if she was feeling guilt, how would Angus be feeling—Angus who was a world champion in the guilt stakes.

She handed McTavish over and headed straight for the hospital, then had second thoughts and turned back, returning home to get her hospital ID just in case she was stopped from entering the intensive-care unit where Hamish would be.

He was in a small room, hooked up to monitors, a haggard-looking Angus by his side.

‘I’ll sit with him while you take a break,’ she said, coming close but not touching either the man or the comatose child.

Angus looked up at her, his dark eyes almost black with worry.

And regret!

Although maybe she was imagining the regret.

‘I should have been there for him earlier in the evening,’ he muttered, confirming her fears that Angus would be taking on entire responsibility for his son’s illness.