Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit (9 page)

He was teasing her and suddenly she hated him—well, not hated, but definitely didn’t like him very much. He’d awoken responses from her she’d never thought to feel and to him it was nothing more than a game—kissing, flirtation, an affair—with no more point than the kissing games young teens played at parties, practicing for love…

‘Go home,’ she told him, and though his arms tightened momentarily around her, she stiffened and he didn’t pull her close.

‘No goodnight kiss?’

‘No kisses period,’ she told him, but as he walked towards the gate she remembered it was Friday night and called him back. ‘Wait, I’ll give you the car keys and the sat nav so you can take the car to visit McTavish. I might not be here in the morning.’

Angus turned and followed her into the house, into the kitchen, the only room he’d seen so far. She rummaged through a drawer in search of keys while he studied her, wondering why this woman of all the women he met in his day-to-day life should fire something in him, something so strong he knew he should be strengthening his resistance against her, not wondering how soon he could kiss her again.

‘Ah,’ she said, turning to him with triumph in her eyes, her smile so open and delighted he felt as if a hand had tightened around his heart. ‘Not only keys but the sat nav, as well. You’ve used one? Can program it?’

He took the little device and nodded, knowing it was the same brand as the one he’d used in the U.S., but the hand clutching his heart hadn’t let go and he suspected he’d have to rethink his ambition to kiss Kate again as soon as possible. He was beginning to suspect that kissing Kate could be addictive, and addictions were hard to break…

‘Thank you,’ he said, aware he sounded formal and aloof once more, the way he sounded at the hospital when he was talking to the parents of his patients.

And Kate heard it, too, for her dark eyebrows rose and her pink lips, still swollen from his kisses, twisted into a wry smile.

‘Okay,’ she said, as if she understood exactly what his tone had meant. ‘Enjoy yourselves tomorrow. There’s plenty of fuel in the tank if you want to take Hamish to the beach after you’ve been to the quarantine station.’

He nodded and departed, pausing in the doorway to look back at her, the smile gone from her face and in its place an unmistakeable sadness.

‘Goodnight,’ he said, for what else was there to say. An affair between them could
not
have any point and he wasn’t going to lie to her to get her into bed.

Although, as he shut the gate between their properties, the discomfort in his body suggested that this stance was all very well morally and ethically, but physically, given that he wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing her every working day, it might be difficult.

Kate was actually pleased when the phone rang at one o’clock in the morning. She might have been in a light sleep but whatever sleep she’d managed had been deeply disturbed, her body tossing and turning, feeling the magic Angus had generated, the heat, and wanting to satisfy it.

It was a good thing she was mentally strong, she told herself as she pulled on slacks and a T-shirt. She had a stock of laundered white coats in her locker at work, so all she had to do was clean her teeth, wash her face, tie her hair up in a bundle and get moving up the road.

A five-day-old baby girl had been admitted to the hospital with cold, clammy skin, rapid breathing and alarming cyanosis, her lips very blue. The neonatologist on call was doing X-rays, an ECG and an echocardiogram, but had called in one of Kate’s team—she rather
thought Oliver was on call this weekend—thinking they’d need to do a cardiac catheterisation to see what was happening in the baby’s heart.

Kate considered what lay ahead as she jogged up the street, thinking, too, of the parents, so happy with their new baby, then panicked by her distress. She made her way to the treatment room off the PICU where she found not Oliver but Angus.

‘You’re not on call,’ she told him, so bothered by the unexpected encounter her heart was racing and her mind in a whirl—not a good way to be before sedating a tiny baby.

‘Oliver had a family occasion of some kind so I offered to do tonight for him. He’ll owe me.’

Well! Obviously Angus was in hospital mode, all thoughts of hot kisses in her backyard well and truly gone.

Which is how it should be, she reminded herself.

And if he could do it, so could she!

‘How long will you need?’ she asked as she read the baby’s chart, checking her weight so the sedation could be accurately measured.

Angus didn’t answer immediately, but she was used to that now. She could imagine him running through the operation in his mind—inserting the catheter into a blood vessel in the patient’s groin, feeding the wire carefully up into the heart, perhaps introducing dye so he could better see the problem, perhaps also, depending on what he found, needing to use a special catheter with a balloon at the tip to open up a hole between the left and right atria.

‘Forty minutes! I should be able to do it in half an hour but we’ll take the extra ten minutes just in case. It’s a suspected TAPVR.’

Kate mentally translated the initials, thinking how frightening it must be for parents to hear that their child had total anomalous pulmonary venous return, when, in fact, it simply meant that the veins from the lungs, pulmonary veins, had somehow got themselves attached to the wrong part of the heart. Angus would find out exactly what was happening now, and later the baby would need an operation where the veins would be disconnected from where they were, and set into place where they should be, connecting to the left atrium. At the same time, the surgeon would close the little hole Angus was about to make, and the baby’s heart should operate beautifully.

She checked the dosage of sedative and injected it into the intravenous line already attached to the baby girl, who lay, unresisting and lethargic, looking up at her until slowly the dark blue eyes closed and her breathing grew less laboured.

Kate took a blood sample from a second catheter in the baby’s foot, wanting to check on the blood gases before the procedure, so they could compare it after Angus had completed the operation. A small oxygen monitor was attached to one of the tiny fingers, but Kate always checked the blood, as well, not wanting to rely on just one reading.

Angus nodded at her as if he agreed, then his eyes focused on the ultrasound screen as he slid the fine wire up the baby’s vein towards the heart.

Kate watched her patient and the second monitor that told her exactly what was happening in the baby’s
body—blood pressure, oxygen saturation, heart rate and rhythm. She watched over the unconscious child while just a small part of her mind went back to the conversation she’d had with the nurse at baby Bob’s monitor, the nurse who wanted to get out of the PICU before she had children because seeing the ones who had health issues made her nervous about having children of her own.

Yet Kate saw babies with congenital problems every day of her working life, so why didn’t it bother her?

Because she knew they could be fixed?

Nonsense, not all of them could, although every day brought new procedures and treatments to improve the health not only of babies but of adults, as well.

But deep down she knew it didn’t bother her because the longing for a child—or for the child she hadn’t had—was far stronger than any fear of a congenital abnormality. It was gut deep, instinctually emotional—inexplicable really…

The straying thoughts made her glance at Angus, his lips—those lips—closed into a thin line as he concentrated on getting the tip of the balloon catheter through a tiny opening in the atrial wall. As she had suggested to him once before, maybe it was his work with children that made him so definite about not having any more.

She’d have liked to ask him again, liked to have had him as a friend, as well as a neighbour and a colleague, but after the kisses, that was impossible.

‘Impossible!’ she repeated, actually saying the word, although under her breath, so she could drum it into her head.

Angus glanced her way before returning his attention to the monitor, where she saw him pull the tiny, now-inflated balloon through the hole, enlarging it so
the oxygenated blood could mix with the unoxygenated blood and ease the work the little heart had to do while they waited for the baby to grow strong enough to have an operation.

‘Impossible? No such word!’ he told her, and she heard the satisfaction in his voice as he withdrew the catheter and dressed the wound in the baby’s groin.

‘You really love your job, don’t you?’ Kate said, and he gave her a quizzical look.

‘Are you telling me you don’t?’

She shrugged. Of course she loved her job, but it was far less demanding than a surgeon’s, so the risk of burnout—of falling out of love with it—was far less likely.

‘I doubt anyone could work with babies like this if they didn’t love it,’ the nurse who’d been assisting said. ‘And as for Kate, well, I’ve seen her here at four in the morning, anxious about a patient she might have sedated days earlier, just drawn by some instinct to come back.’

Kate shook her head, although she did remember the incident—a baby newly off the ventilator having a reaction to some drug the surgeon had prescribed. To this day she couldn’t say what had brought her racing to the hospital.

‘I think they send out thought waves, our babies,’ she said, smiling at the nurse. ‘It wasn’t only me that night—I found Phil here, as well. He’d woken up with a conviction that something was wrong so we were able to stabilise the baby and get him back onto a ventilator. He came off two days later without the slightest trouble.’

Angus nodded; he knew what she was saying, although he’d never realised other people had that
inexplicable sense of trouble from time to time. He followed Kate from the treatment room, the nurse wheeling the baby back into the PICU. Kate stopped by Bob’s crib, smiling down at Mrs Stamford, who slept beside her baby boy.

‘He looks good,’ she said quietly to Angus, and taking in the pink cheeks of the infant, Angus had to agree. But Kate looked good, as well, although why he found her so attractive he couldn’t have explained. To another man she might just be a slim, average-looking woman with wild red hair, but just being in her vicinity stirred his senses in ways he didn’t want to consider.

‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said, but she shook her head.

‘I’ll stay awhile,’ she said. ‘You’d best be off. You have a big day ahead of you, navigating around Sydney for the first time, visiting McTavish.’

Angus would have liked to argue, but she was right. He hadn’t been sleeping when the call came, still disturbed by the after-effects of kissing Kate. But now he could walk away from her—in colleague mode again.

No worries!

He said goodnight and went along the corridor to the elevator foyer, but the sense of her came with him—‘kissing Kate,’ not ‘colleague Kate…’

K
NOWING
she could have other emergency calls so needed some sleep, Kate left the hospital an hour later, walking slowly past the house where Angus would be sleeping, trying hard to think about work, not her colleague. But the kisses had stirred something deep inside her, and she had to wonder if a relationship—forget that, an affair—with Angus would be so very bad.

Okay, so it had no future, but what else was she doing? Going through the motions of a life, her social life consisting of occasional visits to a movie, or having dinner at friends’ places, where a likely man would have been invited, her friends all committed to ‘finding a man for Kate’!

From time to time, one of these available men would follow up on their meeting, inviting her for drinks, maybe dinner, but after a few outings, too casual to be called dates, one or other of them would realise that there was no…zing—that was the only word—between them and the relationship would be over before it had really begun. Yet she’d always remained confident that somewhere out there was a man for her—
the
man—the one who’d be a father to her children, a grandfather to her grandchildren.

Or was she wasting her life? Letting it slip away from her because of the loss of an unborn baby years ago and an absurd dream she’d had as a child?

She’d found the zing—boy, had she found the zing!—and she was going to let it go because an affair with Angus had no future?

Was she out of her tiny mind?

She realised her steps had slowed sufficiently for it to be called a halt and she was standing on the footpath outside Angus’s house, staring at it like some lovelorn fool.

She had to get her act together, sort out some priorities here. But even as she moved on, this idea firmly fixed in her mind, she imagined the weight of a tiny baby in her arms, and longed to feel it for herself—her own baby in her arms, the future in its tiny form…

She’d lied to Angus—perhaps not lied but shifted the emphasis of her dreams—when she’d talked of her ambition to be a grandmother. Yes, that had been the precipitating event, that long-ago family gathering, but later, after the miscarriage, it was a family of her own she longed for, a baby of her own, someone who belonged to her, had her blood, her genes—although probably not her red hair.

Of course,
belonged
was the wrong word—no one could belong to another person…

She unlocked her front door and walked into the house, hearing the ghosts of children who’d lived there in the past when it was the family home it was built to be. The smell of the chemical in the product she was using to strip wallpaper off the living room walls struck
her immediately. Well, at least this weekend she’d have enough work to do finishing that job to keep her mind off Angus and relationships and babies of her own.

‘We saw McTavish and he remembered me!’

Had she been kidding herself when she’d thought she’d see no more of the McDowells over the weekend? Had she forgotten that Hamish now viewed her as his new best friend? She was bundling the last strips of the wallpaper, slimy and stinking, into the rubbish bin near the back lane when he erupted from the tunnel in the hedge.

‘I’m sure he remembered you,’ Kate told the little boy, who was now holding his nose as he stared at her.

‘Phew, you smell,’ he told her, and she had to laugh. If anyone told it how it was, it was Hamish.

‘I do indeed, but I’m about to have a shower. I’ve been peeling the old wallpaper off a wall and it’s a very smelly job.’

‘Can I look, can I?’ he demanded, excited as he always seemed to be by some new concept.

‘Only if you tell your father or Juanita first. Did you tell them you were coming over?’

‘We were both coming over,’ a deeper voice said as Angus appeared through the gate. ‘Hamish just took the shortcut.’

This time it wasn’t just a cheek blush! Kate could feel her entire body heating, reddening, as she imagined just how she must look—scraps of wallpaper and stripping chemicals in her hair, bits sticking to her arms and legs. Her working attire, an ancient pair of cut-off jeans—cut off far too short—and an old T-shirt advertising a rock band long defunct.

‘You found the place all right, then?’

It was a feeble response but she saw that Angus had her car keys and sat nav in his hand, and it was all she could manage.

‘No problems,’ he replied, although, possibly for the first time since she’d met him, she could see a gleam of what could only be humour in his dark eyes.

‘Kate’s pulled all the wallpaper off her walls and I’m going to look,’ Hamish announced, breaking what could easily have become a strained silence, because her conversational spring had definitely dried up and he seemed content to stand there and study her dishevelled state—with that gleam in his eyes—for ever.

‘We might be interrupting Kate,’ Angus argued, but Hamish waved aside the objection.

‘No, she was just going to have a shower, but we don’t mind if she smells a bit, do we?’

Angus had to smile. Better to be smiling at his son’s faux pas than be thinking of Kate stripped down in a shower. Why was stripping such a recurring theme in her backyard?

‘Kate?’ he said, and as he watched he saw her weigh her discomfort at having him in her house—and probably the smell—against the appeal in a pair of blue eyes. He saw her waver, then nod at Hamish.

“Okay,’ she said, reluctance dragging out the word, ‘you can come in but I warn you, there’s nothing very exciting about a living room with bare damp walls. I thought I’d paint it once I had the wallpaper off, but it’s kind of rough so maybe I’ll have to repaper.’

She was leading the way into her house as she spoke, through the kitchen, up a hall, past a dining room and into the large room at the front of the house. Angus
peered around, realising this house must have been similar to the one he was renting, before his place was converted into flats.

Hamish had climbed onto the window seat in one of two bay windows in the graciously designed room.

‘If that hedge wasn’t there, I could see my bedroom,’ he said, excitedly working out the geography of the two places.

‘In my house, I use that room as my study,’ Kate told him. ‘Do you want to see it?’

Hamish was off the window seat in a second, heading out of the room and across the hall. Angus followed more slowly, wondering at the very definite reluctance he was feeling. Was it something to do with seeing more of Kate’s house and the possibility it might make him feel closer to her?

Or was it seeing how Hamish had connected with her that made him uneasy. She treated his son as she would an adult friend, accepting his enthusiasm for anything new and never speaking down to him. Once again Angus was conscious of a gap in his relationship with Hamish, and found himself frowning over the thought. He did things with his son—read him stories, listened to his prattle about his daily life—loved him dearly, but…

He turned his thoughts back to Kate but there was no less confusion there. The moment he saw the room he knew he’d have been better off not following, for this was obviously the room she’d chosen to furnish first, and though he didn’t know her well, he knew the room spoke volumes about her. Two walls lined with bookshelves and books from childhood days with faded covers, through medical tomes and reference books to
the latest thrillers, were crammed into the shelves. She had a desk, an old roll-top set against the third wall, but her laptop was on the cushioned window seat of yet another bay window and he could picture her there, checking something out, keeping up with friends through emails, perhaps doing something on the research she’d mentioned once.

The cushions on the window seat looked soft and comfortable, blue and green tones, muted but easy colours with which to live.

‘You’ve made this space special,’ he said, and saw the colour rise in her cheeks again.

‘I did it first—I needed a space in which I’d feel comfortable. You should see my bedroom!’

It was a natural enough statement but the moment it was out—hanging there in the air between them—she coloured even more deeply and moved towards the bookshelves, pulling out a book which she showed to Hamish.

‘This is an old book of mine about possums,’ she told him, resolutely ignoring Angus. ‘Would you like to borrow it?’

Of course Hamish would, which meant there’d be yet another thing to return. But Hamish and Juanita could return the book; he, Angus, was out of here. Since the bedroom remark all the sensations kissing Kate had generated were returning and he was becoming more and more aware that his libido was completely out of control. Keeping out of her life was the only answer. He had to get it into his thick skull that she was a work colleague, nothing more!

‘See, Dad, see,’ Hamish was saying, showing him the possum on the cover of the book.

‘That’s great,’ Angus managed, then he glanced at Kate. ‘But we really must be going. Kate wants to have a shower.’

Work colleague, work colleague!

‘Thanks for returning the keys,’ she said, not refuting her need to have a shower or urging them to stay. ‘I’ll see you back at work on Monday. Here, you can go out through the front door.’

She brushed past him, out of the study and down the passage to the door, which she opened, then stepped back. He’d have liked to think it was because she didn’t want to stand too close to him—that her hormones were as active as his libido—but she could also have been saving them from the weird chemical smell of stripped wallpaper and, either way, all she was, was a work colleague after all.

By Monday the baby girl, Bethany Walker, who had been admitted on Friday night, was judged strong enough to have the necessary operation. Alex had decided he would do it, but had asked Kate to act as anaesthetist. She didn’t know whether to be delighted because it saved her the uneasiness of working closely with Angus that day or to be disappointed because she
wouldn’t
be working closely with Angus that day! Talk about confused!

‘Howdy, neighbour.’

She was in Theatre, setting out all the things she’d need, checking and rechecking drugs and equipment, when Angus walked in.

‘Are you looking for Alex?’ she asked, dismayed to find the zing was right here in Theatre, in the area of their workplace where it was least expected—and most inappropriate.

‘No, I like to check things out before an op,’ he replied, showing no evidence of zing at all.

‘But Alex is doing the op,’ she protested—one-way zing was the pits.

Angus smiled at her which certainly didn’t help.

‘And I’m assisting,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘I might be okay with TGAs but the man’s a genius when it comes to TAPVR, so I’d welcome any opportunity to see him at work or work with him as I will today. Is Clare our perfusionist?’

Angus wasn’t sure why he’d asked the question, except that, although he was usually totally focused on his job when he was in Theatre, today he was feeling all the manifestations of the attraction his body had developed towards Kate’s. He’d already decided after their strained conversation the previous day that he’d have to find a diversion. His next decision had been that he would ask Clare to have a drink with him one night or maybe dinner—go to a movie. He’d discovered back when they’d lunched together, that she was as new to Sydney as he was, and as friendless.

Kate hadn’t answered his question, although she had shrugged her shoulders, so maybe she didn’t know, or was she so intent in fiddling with syringes and cannulae and drugs that she hadn’t heard him? He doubted that, although she may have been as determined to ignore him as he was to avoid her. He finished checking the instrument tray and left the theatre, switching his mind firmly to the operation ahead.

It went smoothly, Angus opening the little chest, spreading the ribs apart so Alex could get best access to the heart. The switch to the bypass machine went
without a hitch and Alex’s skill at separating out the wayward veins and reattaching them was, as far as Angus was concerned, a marvel to behold.

‘Off pump!’

Alex gave the order and the whole team watched the tiny pale heart, willing it to beat, but it lay there, flat and flaccid while tension spread like noxious gas through the room.

‘We’ll have to shock her,’ Alex said quietly, while Angus was already giving orders to Kate for the drugs the baby needed. Tension tightened but neither drugs nor electric current could restart the little heart. Angus had his hand in the baby’s chest, his fingers oh-so-gently massaging it to keep blood circulating to the vital organs. Alex fired more quiet orders for different drugs, shocked again, to no avail, and Angus slid his hand back into place and continued massaging.

It was third time lucky. The third time the electric current hit the little heart it jolted; it heaved, then, rapidly at first, began to beat.

‘Not arrhythmia, not now,’ Alex muttered under his breath, because arrhythmia would mean more shocks, but while the whole team waited and watched, the beating steadied and a muted cheer went up. Little Bethany had made it—this far at least.

‘Do you want to close or leave it open?’ Angus asked Alex, and Kate held her breath. Leaving the chest open, covered only by a dressing, would mean Alex was anticipating more trouble.

‘Close,’ Alex said, and Kate imagined everyone let out a sigh.

‘She’s a little fighter,’ Grace murmured, but the rest of the team grew silent, too shocked by the near loss
to be chattering. Alex left the theatre; a resident, under Angus’s watchful eyes, would close the chest, leaving in place drains and a pacemaker to keep the heartbeat steady. Like Bob, Bethany would be on a ventilator for a few days at least, watched over night and day in the special PICU.

Kate waited while the baby was transferred to a crib, then followed as it was wheeled to the PICU. But as Alex was there talking to the parents, she didn’t stay, thinking she’d change and return in a short while to check on her charge. But once in the changing room she slumped onto a bench, feeling as if all her energy had been drained away by the tension they’d endured in Theatre.

Angus came and sat beside her, not speaking, just sitting, yet the bulk and warmth of his body, close to hers, was infinitely comforting.