Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit: Bachelor of the Baby Ward / Fairytale on the Children's Ward

Kate nodded, picturing the subdued panic in the theatre as the team fought to sort out the problems that tiny heart would have presented.

‘So you made a speciality of them?’

He smiled at her, a slow, lazy smile that made her stomach flip. Mouldy bread or something far more serious?

‘Well, I did a lot more study into previous TGA cases and the complications the team could encounter during the operation, and tried to work out the best way of handling them.’

‘Including coping with coronary arteries that wound through the heart wall?’ Kate teased, unable to stop herself smiling at this stranger.

Not that he’d be a stranger for long, because they were neighbours, as well as colleagues. The thought caused another quiver in her abdomen, although she knew they’d only be friends. A man as good-looking as Angus McDowell could have his pick of women—should he want a woman—and scraggly redheads were unlikely to be on the top of his list.

‘Including—in fact, especially—that,’ he was saying. ‘Now, you’re doing me a favour, showing me around, so I’ll pay for our coffee.’

He stood and walked towards the till, leaving Kate wondering what she’d said that had caused such an abrupt departure.

And such a shift in mood, which had been becoming, well, neighbourly!

Angus knew he’d spoken curtly, not to mention practically knocking over his chair in his haste to get away from the table, but the redhead’s smile—talking about coronary arteries of all things—had caused a physical reaction in his body, one he hadn’t felt in a long time, and didn’t want to dwell on now.

Jet lag might explain it.

Or concern about Hamish’s rash.

Hamish…

Better to think about Kate’s smile than the little boy he loved but knew he wasn’t bonding with the way he should—the little boy who was the image of his mother…

He paid for the coffees, but thinking of Kate’s smile had him wondering if he could politely ask directions to the supermarket so they could part company and he could sort out what was happening to him.

Hardly!

Nor was he going to be able to avoid her in the future, given they’d be working on the same team—working closely.

Kate took him to the local shopping mall, within walking distance, and pointed out the best places to shop for meat and fruit.

‘Stupid of me not to have thought of getting the car before we came here. Do you have a car?’ Although she needed to shop herself—fresh bread for one thing—she was too eager to get out of his company to do it now, so added quickly, ‘All the shops deliver, or you could get a cab. Will you be all right?’

Angus was forced to look at her now, although since the smile he’d been avoiding eye contact. The neat-fetured face was turned towards him and it seemed to him there was a shadow of anxiety in her pale green eyes.

For him?

Surely not! He was a grown man and quite capable of shopping and getting a cab home.

But it could hardly be for herself.

‘Thank you, yes, of course I’ll manage,’ he responded, but at the same time, contrary now, he wished she’d stay—shop with him, share the cab, maybe come in and meet Hamish and Juanita—neighbourly…

‘Stop kidding yourself,’ he muttered under his breath when, goodbyes said, he was striding down the refrigerator aisle in the supermarket. ‘One silly little smile across a coffee table and suddenly you’re attracted to the woman!’

Not that anything could happen! It was Sod’s Law once again. The one woman in the world he’d felt a physical response to in four years and she wanted children.

Well, she wanted to be a grandmother…

Why?

He recalled a depth of emotion in her voice and guessed the grandmother thing might be a cover for something else.

He shoved yoghurt and butter into his trolley, then had to go back for cheese, knowing it wasn’t quite true about the physical attraction. There’d been a couple of women but nothing serious, nothing he’d wanted to pursue.

So maybe an affair with this woman…

What was he thinking! He’d barely met her, didn’t know her at all, and just because she looked like one of his mother’s figurines, it didn’t mean he had to go loopy over her. Besides, there were a whole raft of reasons why he shouldn’t get involved. The effect it would have on his relationship—what there was of it—with Hamish for one. Two, she was a colleague. And three, well, he wasn’t certain about three, although he knew there must be a three—didn’t things always come in threes…?

Having worked the previous weekend, Kate had what was left of Monday off, but given the proximity of their houses and not wanting to run into Angus McDowell again, she chose instead to go back to work. There was always book work to be done, and reports to write up—work she was usually happy to ignore until the last possible moment.

It was almost dusk when she finally walked down the road to her house, dawdling until she reached the place where Angus McDowell now lived, then hurrying, looking busy, in case he happened to see her. But once past the boundary fence, she paused and surveyed the mess in her front yard. She should have hired a skip before she began moving the old furniture. She could have thrown things straight into it.

‘It’s a terrible mess.’ The young, accusatory voice came from somewhere behind an old yellow sofa and the rolled r‘s told her it must be the four-year-old from next door.

‘It is indeed,’ she agreed, walking towards the sofa and peering over the back to see the little boy with wide blue eyes beneath a tousled thatch of white-blond hair, crouched there, a tunnel through the hedge behind him revealing his access from the neighbouring yard. ‘Does your dad know you’re here?’

‘He’s out…’ It sounded like ‘oot’ to Kate, who had to smile, though if the child had been living in the U.S., surely his accent should be American rather than Scottish.

‘And Juanita told me to get out from under her feet,’ the small explorer finished. ‘I was looking for an adventure. Me and McTavish—he’s my dog but right now he’s quantined—we like adventures.’

Kate nodded. She’d liked adventures herself when she’d been four. Unexpected pain hit her as memories of Susie’s death flashed before her eyes. They’d shifted to this house soon after and here the family had fallen apart…

‘Adventures can be fun but you need to be careful where you have them,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps you and McTavish, when he’s back with you, should have your adventures in my backyard. Come on, I’ll show you.’

She opened the side gate and led the way around her house, pushing through the branching arms of the untrimmed camellia hedge, to where the bushes grew even more thickly in the backyard, although there were patches of rather dry lawn here and there.

‘See, you can come through the hedge here—’ she pointed out another little tunnel ‘—and play safely. With the gate shut, McTavish won’t be able to run on the road.’

‘Hamish!’

The thunderous roar startled both of them, but Kate was first to respond.

‘He’s here, in my backyard. You won’t fit through the tunnel so you’ll have to come around the side.’

There was some muttering from the other side of the hedge, then the sound of next door’s side gate opening.

Hamish, meanwhile, had read the situation well and disappeared through the hole in the hedge, back into his own yard and was even now calling out to Juanita, so when a scowling Angus McDowell appeared, Kate was the only one in his sights.

‘Didn’t you think to check that someone knew where he was?’ he demanded. ‘Surely if you’ve been involved with the childcare centre you’ve some notion of children’s behaviour! We’re going demented in there, looking for him and you’re here chatting to him in your own backyard.’

There was more than anger in his eyes, there was fear, as well, but his tone had tightened Kate’s nerves and she was in no mood to be conciliatory.

‘Well, I’d hardly be chatting to him in your backyard, now would I?’ she demanded. ‘You were “oot,” he told me, and Juanita sent him to play. As it happens, I found him in my front yard, and because there’s only a low brick fence that a crawling infant could get over, and a front gate that doesn’t shut properly, I brought him around the back to suggest if he goes adventuring he should use the backyard.’

She considered setting her hands on her hips and giving him a good glare but the shadows she saw again in his eyes had killed her anger. This man had suffered pain. Was still suffering it? Was his move to Australia part of a healing process?

It’s none of your business, her head warned, but having known pain—strong emotional pain—she couldn’t help but wonder.

‘Adventures! It’s all he thinks about,’ Angus muttered, still angry in the aftermath of anxiety but not seething any more. ‘Some fool gave him a book that has a story about a boy and his dog that go on adventures and he’s been mad for them ever since.’

He looked at the woman he’d been yelling at only minutes earlier and caught a hint of a smile she’d tried to hide.

‘It isn’t funny,’ he snapped, not sure it was the smile or his reaction to it that had riled him.

She looked up at him, really smiling this time.

‘It’s a little bit funny,’ she pointed out. ‘Four years old and he’s trespassing on my property and telling me it’s a terrible mess. I’m sorry I didn’t call out to Juanita to tell her he was with me, but it was a matter of a minute or two to show him the backyard where I knew he’d be safe. Take a look—could you get a better place for an adventure? And wouldn’t you be more worried about him if he wasn’t off having adventures? If he did nothing but sit around in front of the television all day?’

Angus sighed. Of course he’d be worried if Hamish wasn’t always pushing himself to see more, do more, learn more. But did he want to admit it to this woman?

‘I guess so,’ he said, although reluctantly, ‘and I know he misses the dog. Apparently we can visit him in quarantine but I haven’t sorted out a vehicle yet so can’t get to the quarantine station.’

‘Well, that’s easily fixed,’ his neighbour replied. ‘I’m on call at the weekend, so feel free to take my car. I’ve got a sat nav you can use so you won’t get lost.’

Angus stared at her. Every cell in his body told him not to get more involved with this woman, but she wasn’t inviting him to dinner, nor showing any signs she felt the slightest interest in him as a man; she was simply being neighbourly.

So why was he so hesitant to accept her offer?

‘Or not,’ she added with a shrug that showed little concern over his rudeness in not replying. ‘Now, I’ve got to get inside, I’ve some stripping to do.’

Stripping?

It had to be jet lag that had his imagination working overtime, seeing that slight body slowly revealed as she eased off her clothes!

She started towards the back of the house, pausing to remove a key from under a lichen-covered Buddha, then as she straightened she turned back towards where he still stood, puzzled and disturbed, in her backyard.

‘I’ve just remembered,’ she said, ‘there’s a gate down the back between the two properties. Dad let the hedge grow over it when the house you’re in was sold for rentals years ago, but if you hack away at the hedge and free the gate, Juanita will be able to get in here more easily if she needs to find the adventurers.’

‘That’s the first place burglars would look for a spare key,’ he muttered, ignoring her advice about gates and hedges but finally getting his legs to work and moving towards her rather than the side gate.

Now she laughed.

‘No way. They look under the doormat first, then under the flowerpots—look at all of them.’ She waved her hands towards the mass of flowerpots clustered on mossy paving stones around the back door.

Angus did look. Looking at pot plants was infinitely preferable to the mental image lingering unwanted in his head.

Although she couldn’t have meant that kind of stripping…

He turned more of his attention to the pot plants—a lot more.

‘Herbs? I thought you said you couldn’t cook. Why all the herbs?’

‘I can cook, I just can’t bake. When it comes to things like cakes and biscuits—I’m hopeless at those.’

It was one of the most inane conversations Kate had ever been involved in, but somehow she couldn’t move away from the man who was now examining her herbs with an almost professional interest.

Or what seemed like one!

Why hadn’t he left?

Why walk towards her rather than the side gate?

Surely the strangeness she was feeling in his presence wasn’t reciprocated? Not just attraction as in physical awareness but attraction like iron filings to a magnet—a kind of inexorable pull…

‘I’ve got a wall to strip and someone’s calling you,’ she said as a shrill, ‘Daddy’ wafted across the hedge.

‘Yes,’ he said, but still he didn’t move, except to straighten up from his examination of the herbs and look directly at her, the shadows in his eyes not visible in the gathering dusk, so he was just a tall, dark and very handsome man!

‘Yes,’ he said again, then finally he turned away, calling back to Hamish, telling him he was coming, and disappearing around the side of the house.

Weird!

Chapter Two

KATE left early for the hospital, telling herself it had nothing to do with not wanting to accidentally run into her neighbour and so having to walk with him. But maybe he’d had the same idea of avoiding her, or he always arrived at work an hour early, for he was the first person she saw as she entered the unit.

‘The baby being transferred has arrived,’ he said, a slight frown furrowing his brow.

‘Bigger problem than you thought?’ she asked, sticking to professionalism mainly because the toast she’d had that morning hadn’t been made from mouldy bread but her stomach was still unsettled.

‘No, the scans show really good coronaries, as far as you can ever tell from scans, but he hasn’t got a name.’

Now Kate found herself frowning also.

‘Hasn’t got a name?’ she repeated. ‘But that’s ridiculous. Of course he must have a name.’

‘Baby Stamford,’ Angus replied, his frown deepening.

‘Oh, dear,’ Kate muttered, hoping the first thing that had entered her head was the wrong one. ‘But sometimes parents wait until their baby’s born to name him or her, thinking they’ll know a name that suits once they’ve seen the baby.’

Now Angus smiled, but it was a poor effort, telling Kate he knew as well as she did that sometimes the shock of having a baby with a problem affected the parents so badly they didn’t want to give the child a name—didn’t want to personalise the infant—in case he or she didn’t survive.

Her heart ached for them, but aching hearts didn’t fix babies.

‘You’re operating this morning?’ she asked Angus.

He nodded.

‘Good! That gives me an excuse to speak to the parents, to explain what my part will be, before, during and after.’

She looked up at him.

‘Shall we go together? A double act?’

Angus studied her for a moment, almost as if he was trying to place her in his life, then he nodded.

‘The mother came by air ambulance with the baby, and the husband is driving down. Somewhere called Port something, I think they come from.’

‘Port Macquarie,’ Kate told him, ‘and as far as I’m concerned, that’s in our favour, the mother being here on her own. We might find out more from her than we would from the two together.’

‘I prefer to speak to both parents,’ Angus said in the kind of voice that suggested he was coolly professional in his approach to his job, not someone who got involved with the parents of the infants on whom he operated.

Which was fine, Kate admitted to herself as they walked down the corridor towards the parents’ waiting room. A lot of paediatric surgeons were that way, finding a certain detachment necessary in a job that carried huge emotional burdens.

Although he was a single father himself—wouldn’t that make him more empathetic?

And why, pray tell, was she even thinking about his approach to his job when it was none of her business? All she needed to know was that he was a top surgeon!

The waiting room was empty.

‘The baby was born by Caesarean, so the mother is still a patient,’ Becky, the unit secretary, told them. ‘She’s one floor up, C Ward, room fifteen.’

‘Let’s take the stairs,’ Kate suggested, and when Angus grimaced she added, ‘Not keen on incidental exercise? Don’t you know that even the smallest amount of exercise every day can help keep you healthy?’

Far better to be talking exercise than thinking about empathy…

‘I lived in America for five years, where everyone drives, and already today I’ve walked to work—incidental exercise, but mainly because I don’t have a car.’

‘You lived there for five years?’ Kate queried, taking the second flight two steps at a time, only partly for the exercise. ‘Yet Hamish has a broad Scots accent?’

Angus caught up with her as she opened the door.

‘When my wife died, my mother came out to mind the baby, then my father took early retirement, so he and my mother were Hamish’s prime carers when he learned to talk. They stayed until Hamish was three, then found Juanita for me before they returned to Scotland, where my father’s old firm was only too happy to have him return to work.’

When his wife died?

There were plenty of single parents around, but most of them didn’t have partners who had died!

No wonder he had shadows in his eyes…

Kate tried to make sense of this—and make sense of why a casual answer to her question was having such an impact on her—as she led the way to C Ward, but once inside room fifteen, Angus’s marital state was the last thing on her mind.

‘I really don’t care what you do,’ the woman in the bed in room fifteen announced when they’d introduced themselves and explained the reason for their visit. ‘This is just not the kind of thing that happens to people like us. I mean, my husband has his own business and I’m a barrister—we’re both healthy, and we run in marathons. I keep telling people that the babies must have been mixed up. I held my baby when he was born and there was nothing wrong with him, and then suddenly people are saying his heart’s not right and flying me off to Sydney, even refusing to take my husband in the plane.’

The tirade left Kate so saddened she was speechless, but thankfully Angus was there. He sat down carefully by the side of the bed, and spoke quietly but firmly.

‘Mrs Stamford, I realise this is a terrible shock to you, but with this defect babies always seem perfectly healthy at first. It’s only when a little duct between the two arteries starts to close and oxygenated blood keeps circulating through the lungs rather than around the body that a blueness is noticed, usually in the nail beds and lips of the infant.’

Kate saw the woman’s fury mount, and expected further claims of baby-swapping, but to Kate’s surprise, Mrs Stamford’s anger was directed at Angus’s choice of words.

‘Defect? You’re saying my baby has a defect?’

Time to step in before she became hysterical, Kate decided.

‘It’s fixable, the problem he has,’ she said gently. ‘That’s why we’re here. We need to explain the operation to you and get your permission to perform it.’

‘And if I refuse?’

Oh, hell! Kate tried to think, but once again Angus took over.

‘There could well be legal precedents that would allow us to operate anyway,’ he said. ‘I’m new to Australia but in many of the states in the U.S.—’

‘Well, I very much doubt that,’ Mrs Stamford interrupted him, although she seemed to have calmed down somewhat. Kate sought to reassure the woman.

‘It’s an operation that’s frequently performed, and with excellent results,’ she told her, ‘and we’re lucky to have Dr McDowell here as he specialises in it.’

She looked at Angus, expecting him to begin his explanation, but he hesitated for a moment before taking a small notebook and pen out of his shirt pocket.

‘This might explain it best,’ he said to Mrs Stamford.

Kate wondered about the hesitation—was it to do with the detachment she’d sensed earlier?—although now he was drawing a small heart on a clean page of the notebook, carefully inking in the coronary arteries which clasped the heart like protective fingers, then showing the two major arteries coming out the top of the organ.

‘These coronary arteries which feed oxygenated blood to the heart muscle to keep it beating come off the aorta, the bigger of the two arteries coming out of the heart. The aorta is supposed to come out of the left ventricle while the pulmonary artery that divides in two and goes into the lungs comes out of the right. On rare occasions these two arteries are transposed and the aorta comes out of the right ventricle, with the pulmonary artery coming out of the left.’

Mrs Stamford was at least interested enough to look at Angus’s drawing, and as she was quiet, he continued.

‘What we have to do is first move the two coronary arteries, then we swap the major arteries, cutting the aorta and fixing it to the pulmonary artery where it comes out of the heart, and stitching the pulmonary artery to the aorta so the two arteries are now doing the jobs they’re supposed to be doing.’

‘For ever?’ Mrs Stamford demanded.

Angus hid a sigh. She was right to ask, and had every right to know the truth, but this was one of the reasons he hated getting too involved with parents, having to tell them that the future could hold more operations, having to tell them that, although their child could lead a normal life, there was no guarantee of a permanent fix. Every conversation led to more emotional involvement—and often more pain for the parents.

‘There’s a chance the baby will need another operation when he’s older.’ He spoke calmly and dispassionately—straight medical information. ‘The valves on the pulmonary artery are smaller than the aorta’s valves and as these valves are left in place they might sometimes need to be expanded.’

‘Leave the diagram,’ Mrs Stamford said. Ordered? ‘I’ll speak to my husband and then talk to you again.’

She was dismissing them, and Kate waited while Angus pulled the page from his notebook, then they both left the room.

‘Is there a legal precedent in some places to go ahead without permission?’ Kate asked him.

‘I’ve no idea,’ he replied, ‘but the woman was getting hysterical and I thought, as she’s a barrister, legal talk might calm her down.’

‘I think she’s entitled to a little hysteria,’ Kate muttered, wondering if Angus could really be as detached as he appeared.

She shrugged her shoulders, trying to ease the tension that had coiled in her body.

‘It must be terrible for the parents,’ she reminded him, ‘to learn that there’s something wrong with their child.’

Worse than losing an unborn child?

She thrust the thought away and turned her attention to what Angus was saying.

‘Particularly parents who are barristers and run marathons?’ he queried, the dryness in his voice suggesting he hadn’t taken to Mrs Stamford, not one little bit. ‘I wonder who she thinks do have children with heart defects? Common people like doctors and teachers? People who don’t run marathons? I’m glad the baby is our patient, not the mother.’

‘That’s if the baby is our patient,’ Kate reminded him, although she was wondering why Angus had chosen this specialty if he didn’t like dealing with parents. Surely that was as important as successfully completing a delicate operation? Or nearly as important…

‘He will be,’ Angus assured her, moving to avoid a passer-by and accidentally bumping against her shoulder. ‘I doubt any mother would deny her child a chance at life.’

‘I hope you’re right!’ Kate murmured, though fear for the tiny scrap of humanity fighting for his life right now made her feel cold and shivery.