The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child

‘Did you leave a beautiful woman behind in France? Is that why you’re dreaming your way up the road?’ Grace asked, stopping at the lights to wait for him to catch up.

‘No beautiful woman left behind,’ he told her. ‘No non-beautiful woman either, except, of course, my mother and my grandmother, a brace of aunts and a horde of female cousins.’

Grace studied him.

‘You’re far too good-looking not to have women falling over themselves to be with you, so what’s the story?’

He had to smile. His new colleague didn’t know the meaning of subtle—all her questions and observations were equally blunt and often intrusive.

‘Maybe I’m not interested in women,’ he said, hoping to stop her probing, but she greeted this remark with a laugh, then took his arm to cross the road, the lights now showing green and a crowd hustling all around them.

‘The consulting rooms and team-meeting rooms are above the theatre and PICU,’ Grace reminded him as they went into the big building.

‘I remember, but I’ll stop on the floor below and check the babies before I go up,’ he said. ‘I’ve plenty of time.’

Grace seemed surprised, but checking the babies in his care was always the first thing he did when he entered a hospital. It was more than a habit, because even when he didn’t need to see them to boost his spirits, he felt it centred him—concentrated his mind on his work, and most of all reminded him why he did what he did. So the tiny scraps of humanity on whom they operated would have a chance to live normal, useful, happy lives.

‘You do your thing with the babies and I’ll go on ahead,’ Grace told him, her tone of voice and the look she gave him suggesting she was humouring him in some way.

Well, Grace could think what she liked. He was going to visit the babies!

Jean-Luc found his way into the PICU, where he spoke to the sister watching the monitor and learned that all the babies in the unit were stable, some doing better than others, but all progressing. He visited each one of them, learning names—Mollie, Jake, Tom—finding himself translating them into the French equivalents because that made them more personal to him. He talked to parents sitting by the cribs, introducing himself to those he hadn’t met before, assuring and reassuring them.

But always the focus of his attention was the infants, most of whom slept peacefully or watched him pass with wide-open eyes.

He was leaving one of the single rooms after a quiet chat with the parents of a three-year-old recovering from a septal defect repair when a voice, so familiar he shivered at hearing it, penetrated his consciousness.

Movement on the far side of the bigger room attracted his attention and he watched as a tall woman in the smock and headscarf of a nurse led a distressed couple out of a door.

They disappeared from view but now they were outside the room he could hear their voices more clearly.

‘But he’s so tiny, how can he survive?’ a woman wailed.

‘Because he’s had the best team in Australia operating on him,’ came the confident answer. ‘Yes, it was a traumatic operation for such a tiny baby but, believe me, the men and women in that theatre know their jobs. If anyone can sort out the problems your Jake had with his heart, that lot could. Now all we have to do is get him better.’

Impossible! Coincidence couldn’t stretch that far. Although his mother always said things happened in threes and here was Lauren alive, number one, then living all but next door, number two, now working in the same unit, number three.

Impossible!

Yet this third coincidence—or twist of fate—had shaken him and he went into the small tearoom and sat down for a moment. Could he work with Lauren and not tell her of their shared past?

All their shared past?

She had a child and presumably a husband although she was still using her maiden name.

Lauren married?

It shouldn’t hurt—it had been ten years…

And if she’d forgotten him, then surely that was that. No need to tell her, to remind her.

The idea made him feel extremely uneasy, and digging deep into his confused mind he decided it was pique. He felt upset that she’d forgotten him—betrayed…

Lauren led Brian and Shelley Appleton out of the PICU and into a small quiet room, one of several set aside for parents. She offered them tea or coffee but Brian was too uptight to do more than wave away the offer with his hand, pacing back and forth in the small space between the four comfortable chairs and the coffee-table.

Lauren knew she had to try again to calm the man.

‘There’s no guarantee he’ll need another operation,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve been reading up on it and know that in some cases children with coarctation of the aorta do need further surgery as they grow, but it doesn’t happen in all cases. The surgeons have removed the narrow part of Jake’s aorta that was causing him problems and rejoined the blood vessel without any difficulty or the need for a man-made tube so the outlook for him is really good.’

She looked hopefully at Brian, and knew immediately he hadn’t been mollified. Though Shelley had sunk down into one of the armchairs and closed her eyes, as if removing herself from the discussion.

‘Except that he’ll have to keep seeing specialists, and he could get endocarditis or even golden staph.’

‘Brian!’

Shelley’s voice held appeal, but beyond that was exhaustion. Lauren shifted her attention.

‘Can I get something for you, Shelley? A cup of something or a cold drink, a sandwich?’

‘We’ve been living on sandwiches for the last month!’ Brian stormed. ‘What makes you think we’d want more of them?’

Lauren swallowed a sigh. Baby Jake had been in hospital since his birth a month earlier—of course his parents would be sick of sandwiches. But Shelley obviously needed food, and probably a change of scenery.

‘Look,’ Lauren said, touching Brian’s arm to make him stop pacing and look at her. ‘I know you’re upset, and you’ve reason to be, but you’re being too negative about this. You’re also both exhausted, mentally and physically. Why don’t you get out of this place for a while? Go for a walk in the park. Stop in the shade for a hug and a kiss. There’s a terrific Italian restaurant on the other side of the park—get some breakfast there and a cup of real coffee, breathe fresh air, and be thankful young Jake was born in a hospital where there are facilities to treat his condition, and extra thankful he’s got through the operation so well. I’ve spent the last three years in this kind of unit and I’ve never seen a baby come through an op like his as well as he did. So go somewhere and think about yourselves for a change. Think about each other, talk to each other—about yourselves not Jake.’

Brian stared at her and Lauren wondered if he’d heard a word she’d said, then he grinned, looking about ten years younger, more like his real age, which she knew was thirty.

‘A hug and a kiss sounds OK,’ he said, then he turned to his wife. ‘Shell?’

Shelley smiled, though tiredly, and looked at Lauren, who nodded firmly, mouthing, ‘Go.’

‘OK, we’ll take a walk.’

Shelley stood up and linked her arm through her husband’s.

‘But I’m not making any promises about hugs or kisses,’ she added, a real smile this time taking years off her face, too. ‘You’ll look after Jake?’

‘As if he were my own,’ Lauren promised, not bothering to add she should have finished her night shift several hours ago. These people had needed her, and though Jake didn’t—he’d have extremely competent nurses watching him—she’d stay, because she’d said she would.

She watched the Appletons walk towards the lift, then returned to the room which Jake was sharing with two other post-op babies.

‘You’re off duty,’ Jasmine Wells, who’d relieved her, reminded her.

‘I promised Shelley I’d stay with Jake while they get away from the hospital for a while.’

‘As if he’d know whether you were there or not,’ Jasmine scoffed. ‘That kid’s the best sleeper we’ve ever had in here. But if you’re going to watch him, that leaves me free to do the rosters for next week. You OK working nights over the weekend or have you got a hot date with Theo?’

Lauren smiled.

‘I don’t do hot dates,’ she reminded her friend. ‘You know full well the only reason I’ve been seeing Theo from time to time is that he’s been trying to persuade me to go to the States and do a perfusionist’s course. He keeps pulling info off the internet for me.’

She paused then added, ‘And I have to admit I’m tempted. However, it would mean such a change, and uprooting Joe, not only from school but from all the other activities he enjoys.’

‘He’d adapt,’ Jasmine said. ‘You know he would. In fact, he’d probably love it, especially if you could get into a school close to one of the Disneylands. Think about that! Then think about all those gorgeous American doctors we see on TV—think about them.’

‘Go and do the rosters,’ Lauren said, waving her hand to chase Jasmine away, afraid if they kept talking she’d admit just how much she wanted to do the course. Well, not how much she wanted to do the course as such, but how much she wanted a change in her life.

Now she did sigh, but baby Jake didn’t notice, and, having let go of a little frustration with the release of air, she shook off the vague feeling of depression that had been hovering around her lately. It was Jasmine’s fault. Only two weeks ago she’d announced her engagement, while the week before Becky, the unit secretary, had decided on a wedding date. It felt to Lauren as if the love fairy was back at work, not only in the hospital but right here in the unit. Last year it had touched the lives of three couples connected with the unit and now it was back, the malicious imp, sprinkling love dust willy-nilly.

Thankfully none had landed on her.

Her fingers tingled and she remembered the man who’d shaken her hand the previous afternoon.

‘As if!’ she muttered to herself, knowing such a man was probably married with two point four children, and even if he wasn’t, why would he be interested in her? And then there was Joe.

So she was thankful the love dust had missed her.

Of course she was. She nodded confirmation of this to the sleeping Jake. If thinking about studying in the US was causing her major confusion, how much more confusion would love cause?

She gave the baby a wistful smile.

It would have been nice to have remembered love…

Then love was forgotten as she realised all was not well with Jake. A swelling on his hand where a cannula was sited suggested his vein had collapsed. She pressed the help button, knowing whoever was manning the central monitor would call a doctor, and began to disconnect Jake’s leads from the monitor.

She would be the monitor while she took him through to the procedures room—to the machine responsible for seeing he kept breathing.

CHAPTER TWO

JEAN-LUC was leaving the unit, his mind on coincidence and betrayal, when he all but collided with the crib a nurse—the nurse—was pushing out the door.

‘Good grief, you’re the doctor who rescued Joe! What on earth are you doing here?’

‘So your memory’s not all that bad,’ he snapped, as the pique he’d been feeling since she’d failed to recognise him surfaced. ‘I’m one of the new visiting surgeons on Alex Attwood’s team.’

He tapped the ID that was clipped onto his belt.

‘Thank heavens—just who I need,’ Lauren said, ignoring his jibe and smiling happily. ‘You do seem to have the knack of being in the right place at the right time. Jake’s vein’s collapsed and he’ll need a new catheter put in. I’m just taking him through to the procedure room. I’ve asked Jasmine to put out a call for a doctor, but as you’re here, you can do it.’

She manoeuvred the crib into the small room and, though busy reattaching monitor leads to the monitor in there, she continued talking.

‘It would happen when I’ve sent his parents away from the hospital for the first time since he was born!’

Although he knew a collapsed vein wasn’t life-threatening, Jean-Luc’s training kicked in and he washed his hands then bent over the infant, checking his size, seeing the chest scar of a recent operation.

‘Fill me in.’

Lauren was unwrapping a fine-bore cannula, but she responded to his abrupt order without pause. A good nurse…

‘Jake Appleton, coarctation of the aorta. Phil caught the case. He tried prostaglandin to keep the ductus arteriosis open, heart medication, diuretics, but Jake continued to suffer congestive heart failure. Cardiac catheterisation with balloon angioplasty to widen the aorta didn’t work and in the end Phil had to operate to remove the narrowed section. Jake’s been doing well, until this.’

Lauren stepped back, but although her eyes should have been on Jake she found she was now studying the doctor who bent over him, his hands firm but gentle as he lifted Jake’s limbs, searching for a viable vein in the baby’s already over-taxed and -treated body. Every touch assured her this man not only knew what he was doing but had an instinctive rapport with his little patients.

She couldn’t possibly have met him before. His eyes were blue, she knew that now, while as for the rest of his face—well, further scrutiny confirmed the opinion she’d formed yesterday. He was definitely unforgettable!

So presumably she’d met him as Alex had taken him through the unit on a guided tour of some kind. Lauren was aware there were two new staff members, one French—this one, from the accent that curled around his words—the other from South Africa. Both would be working in the unit for six months, improving their skills and no doubt passing on their own expertise to Alex and Phil’s surgical teams.

‘Problems?’

Phil Park, the head of the second surgical team, arrived but Lauren could see the new doctor had already sited the cannula and was reattaching the drip.

‘Collapsed vein,’ Lauren said to Phil. ‘I could see the fluid leaking out beneath his skin. Dr…’

She looked from the man, still bent over Jake, to Phil, then back to the man.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

The newcomer muttered something under his breath and Lauren, who talked quietly to her charges all the time, assumed he was speaking to Jake. She turned to Phil, who answered for her.

‘Fournier,’ he said. ‘Jean-Luc Fournier. Actually, you’ll probably be seeing him around as he and Dr Sutherland, the South African surgeon who is also joining us, will be living near you in the flats at Number 26.’

Satisfied the cannula was sited safely, Jean-Luc had remained bent over the baby, wanting to see the fluid flowing again before he was one hundred per cent certain. With babies’ tiny veins…

But as Phil said his name, Jean-Luc looked up, interested in Lauren’s reaction—hoping to see shame that she hadn’t recognised him the previous day, perhaps guilt that she hadn’t been in touch with him after the typhoon—wanting to see something!

Anything!

But the green-brown eyes that met his held no hint of embarrassed recollection, just politeness as she nodded.

‘Ah, that explains it,’ she said, then turned her attention back to Phil. ‘I met Dr Fournier yesterday—he rescued Joe when he was knocked over on the footpath.’

To Jean-Luc she added, ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue so promptly.’ She smiled. ‘Again!’

Jean-Luc felt his body respond to that smile and knew that responding to her was even more impossible than finding her. How could this be after ten years?

Was it leftover lust?

Not a thought he could pursue when Phil was talking to him, thanking him for stepping in.

‘You’ll be a useful chap to have around,’ Phil finished, waving his hand for Jean-Luc to precede him out of the room.

Jean-Luc swung back towards Lauren, but she was once again fiddling with monitor leads, no doubt detaching them preparatory to taking the infant back to the PICU.

Who was she now?

And why was he wondering?

She was married, with a child—end of story!

Or was it?

Surely something of the woman he had fallen so deeply and desperately in love with still lingered within her.

His thoughts left him so unsettled he wanted to go back in and look at the babies in the unit but he was expected upstairs.

Consultations awaited…

Had some of the love dust landed on her after all that she was going weak-kneed whenever the new surgeon was around? Lauren wheeled Jake back into the big room and reattached his monitor leads, thankful Shelley and Brian had missed the little drama, forcing herself to think of them, not of blue eyes that had looked, almost angrily, into hers.

No, she had to be imagining the anger. He couldn’t possibly be angry that she didn’t remember some chance meeting they’d had earlier, although it could only have been within the last few days—the new team members hadn’t been here all that long.

And her memory wasn’t usually that bad!

It was a puzzle but not one she needed to bother with right now. Although the image of possibly angry blue eyes lingered in her mind and she was distracted as she listened to Brian and Shelley thank her for sending them away, the walk, Brian assured her, having done them both the world of good. Now he would sit with Jake while Shelley had a sleep, and Lauren could go home to sleep herself—No, she couldn’t! It was consultation day. She had to sit in on Alex’s consultations before she could go anywhere.

She sighed but hurried through to the locker rooms to have a wash and run a brush through her hair, which had been knotted up under the scarf all night. Her face was pale and she smeared some lipstick on her lips then put some on her finger and rubbed it into her cheeks. It didn’t help much but she looked less ghostly and hopefully more proficient. Alex insisted on at least one member of the nursing staff sitting in on pre-op consultations because he believed the parents were more confident if they already knew the nurses who would be caring for their infant or child. But seeing a colourless ghost might make them less, not more at ease…

‘I’m just explaining to Jean-Luc why we have a nurse sitting in,’ Alex said, as she met up with him and the Frenchman outside the door of his consulting room.

‘As well as being reassuring for the parents,’ Alex continued, ‘it helps that the nurse—Lauren in this case—knows exactly what we intend to do in the operation. The parents never take it all in at once, it’s just too much for them, and we’ve found, prior to an op, they are so strung up that they forget what they do take in, so if the nurse can explain to them afterwards, or at least answer their questions, things go a lot more smoothly.’

‘For the parents,’ Lauren explained. ‘They are such an important part of the equation and if they have to wait to see a doctor to ask their questions, then the doctors get overworked and the parents get over-anxious and the situation becomes fraught.’

Could she really not remember him?

How would she react if he said India?

Jean-Luc knew he should be concentrating on what he was being told, not on the lack of recognition in the beautiful eyes that met his so trustingly.

‘It is so sensible, the idea of the nurse sitting in, I am surprised other places do not do it,’ he managed, glad he could be honest—it was a good idea—even though he was distracted.

‘Coffee first,’ Alex declared. ‘While we drink we’ll run through the list of patients we’ll be seeing this morning so you both have some idea of what lies ahead. Lauren, I know you’re white with one. Jean-Luc, how do you take your coffee?’

‘Straight black, no sugar,’ Jean-Luc replied, then was surprised when Alex left the comfortable consulting room.

‘He will get the coffee himself?’ Jean-Luc asked Lauren, who grinned at him in reply.

‘Not used to men getting the coffee?’ she teased, the smile still playing around her soft lips.

Jean-Luc shrugged, too busy watching the smile and fighting his reaction to it—not leftover lust at all, but attraction, still alive and well—to answer.

‘Actually,’ Lauren continued, ‘he’ll go to the reception desk out front, pick up his pile of case files and ask Becky, the unit secretary, to organise some coffee.’

‘Ah!’

The man smiled and Lauren felt a totally inappropriate response. It was deep down in her belly and it felt shivery and hot at the same time, then shock that she could react to something as innocuous as a stranger’s smile rushed through her.

Jasmine had a theory that unused emotions and responses grew slack and lazy, like unused muscles. It was a theory she’d propounded often to Lauren, urging her to go out more, to find a man to have a bit of fun with—even sex. ‘Because sex is just so good for you—for your general well-being and for your skin—it makes you glow,’ Jasmine would usually add, glowing herself because obviously her sex life was very satisfactory.

But Jasmine’s theory must be wrong, because there was nothing slack or lazy about the response in Lauren’s belly. Or in the way her skin heated, and the tiny hairs on her forearms prickled with awareness…

Jean-Luc saw colour rise in her cheeks, barely visible beneath the freckled olive skin, but there, nonetheless.

Did she remember him?

But, if so, why deny it?

Because she was now married to Joe’s father—that would be the most likely explanation—and having a lover from the past come back into her life would be awkward.

Except that awkward wasn’t the vibe he was getting from her. Anxiety, yes, as if he worried her in some way, but not the way an old lover would.

Although they were alone together, so surely this was the time—

‘You really don’t remember me.’

He cursed himself the instant he’d said it, hearing it like an accusation, although he hadn’t intended it to be.

She frowned at him, genuinely puzzled.

‘Did we meet properly before yesterday?’ she asked, and he felt his lips tighten and a frown drag his eyebrows together.

‘I’m not talking about recent meetings,’ he growled, then regretted his stupid anger—he couldn’t make her remember—as she looked upset.

The soft, full lips spread to a hesitant smile. ‘Have you been to Australia before? I know I’ve never been to France.’

Her bewilderment was genuine—he had no doubt about that—and hurt pride brought anger in its train.

‘Not France—India,’ he said, far too abruptly, then caught her arm as the flush faded from beneath her skin and she seemed to stagger. She steadied herself, withdrew a little so he was no longer touching her, and her dark hazel eyes met his with a mix of apprehension and entreaty.

‘You were in India? You met me at St Catherine’s?’

The words were little more than a hushed whisper, but the desperation he heard in them was reflected in her eyes.

Why?

Was the memory of India—whatever memory she did have—so horrific? Of course it would be! His own memory of the typhoon was confused, disjointed, then blurred by pain, but she, who’d been buried alive…

‘Did you—?’

The whispered words had barely left her lips when Alex strode back into the room.

‘Coffee’s on the way and the first patient is in fifteen minutes so we’ll skip quickly through these files while we drink it.’ He dropped the files on his desk, and pulled two chairs close to it so they could all see the records as he leafed through them.

‘Alex, I—’ Lauren began, then she shook her head and added, ‘The files, of course. Let’s get on with them.’

But she shot another look in Jean-Luc’s direction, a searching look that turned to despair before she shook her head again and dropped into one of the chairs by Alex’s desk.

Jean-Luc took the other chair, too close to Lauren, so he was conscious of the tension in her body and of her attempts to relax, breathing deeply, holding her hands clasped tightly in her lap to still their trembling.