Their Twin Christmas Surprise

‘Dan, I really did try to get out of its path,’ she assured him fervently, desperate that he should believe that she’d done her best to protect his child, ‘but it was coming at me far too fast and then my foot slipped but the car still hit my leg and I spun round … Actually at the time I thought it was the streetlight that was spinning round me … but I was falling and falling and I couldn’t stop myself and then my head hit the ground and everything went black.’

He was silent for so long that she wondered if he was ever going to speak to her again. What was he thinking? That she was crazy? That he’d made a monumental mistake in asking her to carry his children in case she passed her craziness on to his innocent offspring?

‘So, what part of the car would have hit you?’ he asked, his voice sounding more like a rough growl until he cleared his throat, and tears threatened when she realised that his question meant he hadn’t dismissed what she’d told him out of hand. ‘Would it have been the front, the wing or both?’

CHAPTER SIX

DAN and Sara stared down at the broken light on the passenger side of the BMW while the mechanic wiped his hands on a rag so black and oily that it couldn’t possibly be doing any good.

‘It’s not the first time she’s brought it in but, then, that’s women drivers for you,’ he added with blatant chauvinism and a knowing wink for Dan.

Sara didn’t have the breath to argue this slur on her half of mankind. She was still devastated by the evident damage to her sister’s car.

‘You say she’s brought it in for repairs before?’ Dan questioned, and from the tone of his voice that fact was news to him.

‘Oops! Sorry if I’m dumping you in it, love,’ he said to Sara, ‘but last time it was the back bumper. She said she’d managed to reverse it into a bollard somewhere up near the London Eye.’

‘And what did she tell you about this?’ Dan pointed to the recent damage.

His uncomfortable look in her direction, not quite meeting her eye, made Sara suddenly realise that he thought she was Zara, being taken to task by a far-too-calm husband. He probably thought her rapidly developing black eye and the dressing on her forehead were signs of wife abuse, she realized with a crazy urge to laugh.

‘Actually, she didn’t say anything because she didn’t drop it off until after the garage closed. And last night, that was six o’clock because we were waiting for a customer to come and pick his vehicle up and settle his bill—you don’t mind staying open a bit longer when it’s for a good customer bringing you money, do you?’

His attempt at comradeship fell flat as Dan leant forward to take a closer look at the damaged light, reaching out to fiddle with the shattered remains for a second before he straightened up again.

‘Well, thank you for your time,’ he said politely. ‘Let me know when the vehicle’s ready for collection, won’t you?’ He wrapped a supportive arm around Sara’s waist and helped her to hop the couple of steps to his car.

‘So, it could have been any number of things that caused the damage, if she’s in the habit of bumping into things,’ Sara said almost before he’d closed his door, trying to find a logical reason why the damage they’d seen had nothing to do with her injuries.

She hated the thought that her sister might have wished her ill, although that long-ago episode with the piece of wood and the ‘accident’ that hadn’t been accidental at all. Still, she was desperately afraid that she’d set something in motion that couldn’t be stopped.

But, then, did she want it stopped? If her sister had tried to hurt her by driving that car straight at her then it was important to find out why or she might never be safe. And what if it had been the pregnancy that had been Zara’s target? Sara couldn’t bear the thought that her precious babies might be put at risk if she handed them over to her sister.

Had Zara been taking some of the more exotic designer drugs that her colleagues brought back from their foreign photo shoots? If so, they could have disturbed the balance of her mind and caused her to do such an outrageous thing.

But there hadn’t been any evidence of strange chemicals in any of her blood tests—at least, nothing beyond the sleeping tablets and paracetamol that they already knew about.

She shook her head, at a loss to know what to think. It was already aching enough with out this mental stress, but that was probably because she’d been on her feet far too much already today. It certainly wasn’t what she would want a patient of hers to do after such an incident.

Into the silence of the car came the unmistakable sound of Dan’s pager and he cursed softly under his breath as he tried to find a break in the busy traffic to pull over to the side of the road.

Once there, it only took seconds before he’d used his mobile phone to call the unit and Sara suddenly realised that it was the first time she’d heard him speak since they’d left the garage.

What had he been thinking while her brain had been strangled by conflicting ideas? Had he dismissed her claim that she’d recognised Zara as her assailant now that he’d seen that there was no real evidence or was he, too, worried about the ramifications for the children she was carrying if their mother-to-be had really tried to injure them?

‘That was your mother,’ he announced as he ended the call and pulled back out into the traffic. ‘She says that we need to go back to the hospital straight away. Zara’s next set of tests results have come in.’

‘Is she worse?’ Sara demanded anxiously, because, no matter what she’d done, Zara was her twin and she loved her.

‘Your mother didn’t say. All she told me was that we had to go straight to the hospital, so …’ He shrugged, his eyes never leaving the road as he navigated the quickest route.

‘Mum. Dad. What’s happened? What’s the problem with the latest results?’ Sara asked as soon as Dan pushed her into the unit in a hastily purloined wheelchair and found her parents just inside the doors, as though they’d been waiting impatiently for them to arrive.

‘What took you so long?’ her mother demanded, whirling to hurry up the corridor. ‘Mr Shah has got the results in his office and he needs to have a word with us.’

Sara suspected that the consultant was waiting to have a word with Dan rather than her parents. After all, as her husband he was legally Zara’s next of kin.

‘Daniel, come in, come in,’ the dapper gentleman invited, but it was Audrey who pushed in ahead of the wheelchair and took one of the two available chairs, closely followed by her husband. Daniel was left to prop himself up on the wall beside Sara to wait for Mr Shah to open Zara’s file sitting on his desk.

‘The nurse said you’ve had some more results, and I want to know when we’re going to be able to take our daughter home,’ Audrey said with the air of a general firing the opening salvo in a war she fully intended winning.

An expression of annoyance slid briefly across the consultant’s face, probably at the knowledge that a nurse had been giving out more information than she should have. Sara could imagine that before the shift was over her superior would be having a sharply worded conversation with whoever was responsible.

In the meantime, the man’s face had settled into the sort of bland expression that always preceded less-than-welcome news.

‘Unfortunately, the news isn’t good enough for us to be able to give you that sort of information,’ he said quietly. ‘Her liver function tests are giving us more cause for concern and it looks as if there may be more necrosis than we’d expected.’

‘Necrosis?’ Audrey pounced on the word. ‘What’s necrosis?’

‘It means that sections of her liver have been damaged and are dying, so they are no longer able to perform their proper function.’

‘So it’s the same as what you found on the last tests,’ she summarised for herself.

‘Yes and no,’ he prevaricated. ‘Yes, it’s the same condition but, no, it’s not the same as before because the condition has worsened.’

‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ Frank asked, and Sara wasn’t surprised to see how pale he was looking at the thought that his precious daughter’s health wasn’t improving the way they’d hoped.

‘I’m afraid we can’t do much more than we’re already doing as far as infusing the antidote into her system and supporting her and keeping an eye on the concentration of various components in her blood. It’s still very much a case of wait and see, but I thought you would want to be informed of the results so that you would know to prepare yourselves in case—’

‘Would a transplant cure it?’ Audrey interrupted, clearly unwilling to hear that particular eventuality even as a theory.

‘Well, yes, we can do liver transplants in some conditions—for example, in people with cirrhosis or hepatitis and also in some cases where the patient has had medication toxic to the liver—but the success rate is not as good as for kidney transplantation and there’s still the problem of finding a compatible liver donor while there’s still time to do the operation.’

‘Well, that’s not a problem, then … not for Zara,’ her mother announced with a beaming smile. ‘Sara will give her one of hers. I’ve seen it on television and they said that identical twins are a perfect match. Once you operate, Zara will be as good as new.’

‘No,’ Sara said sharply, and her mother turned on her with a look of utter disbelief on her face.

‘What do you mean, no? Sara, you can’t refuse to help your sister if she needs one of yours.’

‘Mother, I’ve only got one liver, so I can’t give it to her. The operation would mean chopping a chunk of mine away and that’s major surgery. Anyway, I doubt if you’d find a surgeon willing to do it because I’m pregnant and it wouldn’t be good for the babies.’

‘Well, then, you’ll have to get rid of the babies,’ her mother announced with a breathtaking lack of feeling for the unborn lives nestling inside her. ‘You can’t refuse to help save your sister’s life. She could die.’

‘But you would be quite happy for me to murder my babies to save your baby?’ Sara couldn’t believe the pain that thought caused, her heart clenching inside her chest as though every drop of blood had been wrung out of it.

Ever since she’d seen those two hearts on the ultrasound screen, beating so valiantly in spite of the recent trauma, it had brought the reality of her pregnancy home to her the way no amount of reading pregnancy books had done. She felt so connected to those tiny beings, so protective, that the thought of deliberately scouring them out of her womb and flushing them away was anathema.

‘So.’ She lifted her chin and stared her mother right in the eye. ‘What if I refuse to do it?’

‘You can’t refuse because they’re not your babies, they’re Zara’s, and if she needs them to die so that she can live—’

It was Sara’s turn to interrupt and she did so without a qualm.

‘They might be babies I’m carrying for Zara, but they’re growing in my body and from my eggs … and what’s more, it’s my liver you’re talking about and no one can have it if I don’t want to give it.’

Her mother broke into noisy sobs and no matter what her father said she wouldn’t be consoled.

Sara felt dreadful.

She now knew firsthand just how fiercely a mother would defend her child and couldn’t really blame her own mother for wanting to do everything she could to give her daughter a chance of being well again.

But she was a mother, too—at least while those two helpless innocents were still inside her—and she was going to fight every bit as hard for their survival.

Poor Mr Shah didn’t seem to know what to do for the best. Her parents were clearly beyond listening to anything he said, even though he repeatedly tried to reassure them that Zara’s condition hadn’t yet reached the point of no return.

While Dan …

Suddenly, Sara realised that the one person with the most to lose in this whole disastrous situation was the only one who hadn’t said a single word.

A single glance in his direction was enough to tell her that he’d retreated behind what she’d privately dubbed his ‘stone’ face. There wasn’t a single emotion visible, until she happened to see the way his hands were clenched into tight fists inside his trouser pockets.

As if her mother had sensed that her attention had wandered she turned a tear-ravaged face to her son-in-law. ‘Danny, do something,’ she pleaded. ‘You have to tell Sara to save my precious girl … You must make her give Zara a new liver!’

‘No,’ he said quietly with a reinforcing shake of his head. ‘It’s not time for that discussion, Audrey. Listen to what Mr Shah’s been trying to tell you. Eighty per cent of patients with even severe liver damage eventually recover on their own, so it’s just a case of waiting to see if Zara’s liver is going to do the same.’

‘But the transplant,’ she persisted. ‘Because they’re identical twins it would be a perfect match and—’

‘And it might only give her another year of life,’ Dan finished brutally, and literally robbed her of the breath to argue any further, her mouth and eyes open like a gasping fish. ‘That’s the average survival rate for liver transplants at the moment,’ he told her with an air of finality.

Sara knew from reading medical journals that some patients had survived considerably longer. It was probably the poor survival rate of liver cancer transplant patients that brought the overall rate down, but it wasn’t accurate statistics that she cared about, it was the fact that he had managed to take her completely out of the firing line … for the moment at least.

‘Now,’ said Mr Shah, looking unusually flustered by the open warfare he’d just had to witness, ‘I think it would be best if you were all to go home and have some rest.’

‘Oh, but we haven’t seen—’ Audrey began, but was totally ignored as he continued inexorably, drawing a line in the sand.

‘You may come back at visiting time this evening, but no more than two of you may visit at a time. That will ensure that my patient will have what remains of the day to rest and hopefully give her body a chance to start to recover.’

It was beautifully done, Sara acknowledged wryly as they filed silently out of the consultant’s office, but it had left all of them in no doubt who was wielding the power in his unit.

‘Would you like a lift?’ Dan offered quietly, when they’d watched her parents scurry out of the unit before he began to push her in the same direction.

‘Don’t you have to go to work today?’ she asked, desperate to spend what time she could with him but knowing it wasn’t a sensible idea. ‘You don’t have time to keep ferrying me about.’

‘Actually, I’ve got all the time in the world, having just been banned from visiting until evening visiting hours,’ he contradicted her as he pushed the button for the lift that was just taking the Walkers down to the main reception area.

All Sara hoped was that it would deliver the two of them to the ground floor before it returned for Dan and her. She didn’t think she could bear to be shut up in such a small space with her parents, even for the short time it would take to travel a couple of floors. Mr Shah’s office had been bad enough with all that animosity flying around.

‘Anyway …’ Dan continued, breaking into her silent replay of the moment when her mother had glibly talked about aborting the precious pair already making their presence felt under her protective hand, the curve of her belly already noticeably bigger than it would have been for a single baby at the same number of weeks. ‘As I’m on compassionate leave until we know what the situation is with Zara, you can just name your destination.’

‘You’re going to regret that offer when you find out where I need to go,’ she warned, suddenly immeasurably grateful that the rest of the day didn’t stretch out in front of her like an arid desert.

‘Don’t tell me!’ Dan said with a groan as he pushed the chair into the waiting lift. ‘You need to go shopping!’

‘All right, I won’t tell you … but that doesn’t mean that I don’t need to go.’

‘All right,’ he said with an air of long-suffering that caused several smiles on the faces of the people sharing the lift. ‘I offered so I’ll take you. Just tell me where you need to go and let’s get it over with.’

‘What is it with men that they don’t like shopping? Is it a genetic thing?’ Sara mused aloud, drawing a few smiles of her own, then relented. ‘It shouldn’t take very long because I only need to do some grocery shopping while I’ve got someone to carry the bags for me,’ she added with a grin, then another thought struck her.

She hesitated for a moment, wondering if there was some other way she could achieve what she wanted and feeling the increased warmth in her cheeks that told her she still hadn’t grown out of the habit of blushing. ‘I’m sorry but I’ll also need to do a bit of clothes shopping.’

He groaned as he waited for their companions to exit first then pushed the wheelchair out into the spacious reception area, thronged as ever by a constantly changing stream of visitors going in and out of the hospital. ‘My absolute favourite occupation … not!’ he complained in tones of disgust. ‘If you’re anything like your sister, that will take the rest of the day.’

His assumption stung her more than she had a right to feel and loosened the leash on her tongue. ‘Apart from the obvious physical resemblance, over which I have no control, I am absolutely nothing like my sister!’ she snapped. ‘And furthermore, far from taking the rest of the day, my shopping should take me no more than five minutes because I only need some comfortable underwear that I can pull on over my cast.’

The words almost seemed to echo around the whole reception area—probably right around the whole of the hospital if the gossip grapevine was operating in its usual mysterious way.

‘Oh, good grief!’ she moaned, and covered her face when she saw just how many inquisitive faces were turned in their direction, and how many of them were sporting broad grins. ‘Just get me out of here,’ she ordered through clenched teeth, hoping that her long curtain of her hair was hiding the furious heat of her blush.

Dan didn’t make the situation any better when he leaned forward and murmured in her ear, ‘Comfortable underwear, Sara? Is that what they call black lace thongs these days?’

‘Shut up!’ she hissed. ‘Just shut up and get me to the car.’

‘Ah … in just a second,’ he promised as he veered the chair towards the policeman who had just entered the reception area. Then he abandoned her in the middle of the floor to hail the man and the two of them stood talking earnestly for several minutes.

Sara was puzzled when Dan reached into his pocket to pull out a disposable glove, especially when the two of them peered at something inside the glove.

They both had serious expressions on their faces but she was far too far away to hear a single word either of them said, especially with the constant hubbub of passing humanity around her.

‘Right! To the car!’ Dan announced as he came back to her with the air of a man pleased with a mission accomplished. ‘Which would you rather do first—groceries or underwear?’ he demanded cheerfully, and the chance to ask what that little episode had been about was lost in the return of her embarrassment.

The grocery shopping was done and they were standing in front of an embarrassing display of female underwear in her favourite high-street shop when Dan’s mobile burst into the opening bars of the 1812 Overture.

Grateful for the fact that he wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder for a moment, Sara grabbed a packet containing some very definitely non-sexy underwear in a size several larger than her usual one, in the hope that the leg opening would be loose enough to accommodate her cast. But she couldn’t resist grabbing another containing a rainbow mix of coloured thongs, telling herself that at least she knew that they were relatively easy to get on. The fact that they were far sexier than the ‘old lady’ pants in her other hand had absolutely nothing to do with her choice.

There was a frown on his face when he turned back to her.

‘That was the hospital,’ he began, and her heart leapt into her throat.

‘Zara?’ she said, immediately feeling guilty that she and Dan were out shopping for her underwear when he should have been waiting for news of his wife. ‘Is she worse?’

‘No, Sara, no,’ he soothed, looking contrite that he hadn’t realised that she’d immediately panic. ‘It was nothing to do with your sister. It was A and E, asking if I could possibly go in. With the two of us out and two others called in sick—that flu bug that’s going around has finally felled Derek when he was only boasting the other day that he never catches anything—they’re desperate for another doctor.’

‘Desperate? As in … they’re building up a logjam of patients and the waiting time’s becoming unacceptable?’ she asked as she handed over the two packages and had to submit to the indignity of having Dan pay for her underwear, too. He’d already paid for her groceries when she’d belatedly realised that sneaking out of the ward meant that she hadn’t collected the purse that had been given into Sister’s safekeeping.

‘That, and the fact that the traffic lights are on the blink at one of the crossroads and there’s been a whole series of prangs as people take the law into their own hands. Pedestrians, cyclists and car-drivers, some more serious than others.’

‘Ouch!’ She pursed her lips as frustration swept through her. She was certain she would be able to work if she’d only injured her leg. Having a doctor working away in minors, doing the bread-and-butter jobs of stitching and retrieving foreign bodies from various apertures, wouldn’t be too taxing as she would probably be able to sit down for much of it, and it would definitely take some of the load off the rest of them. But with her shoulder strapped to prevent her using anywhere near the full range of motion and with the rest of her body complaining whenever she moved a bruised portion, she’d be more of a liability than a help.

‘Stop brooding,’ he chided as he pushed her back towards his car at a far faster rate than the companionable stroll with which they’d started their outing. ‘You’re in no fit state to work, so don’t even think about it.’

‘Hmm! I see you’ve added mind-reading to your diagnostic skills,’ she sniped, uncomfortable that he’d been able to tell what she was thinking. She hadn’t realised that she was so transparent and now worried just how many of her other thoughts he’d been privy to. ‘Was that the Masters course in Mind-reading or just the Diploma?’

He laughed. ‘Nothing so low-brow. I found I was so good at it that I went all the way to PhD.’

He quickly had her settled in the blissful comfort of the passenger seat and they were on their way—at least, they should have been on their way. The journey from the car park to her flat was only a matter of two streets but they weren’t even able to join the stream of traffic on the first one because nothing was moving.

‘This isn’t going to work,’ he said aloud as, with a careful look around, he put the car into a swift U-turn and went back the way they’d come. ‘I’m sorry, Sara, but if I’m going to arrive at the hospital in time to do any good I’m going to have to drop you off at our place instead.’

She wanted to object because she really didn’t want to spend any time at all in the place that her sister shared with the man she loved, but logic told her that she didn’t have any other option. Even if she were to ring for a taxi, that would still leave her with the insurmountable obstacle of getting herself and her groceries up four flights of stairs with only one leg and one arm in any sort of usable state.

‘I’ll come back as soon as the panic’s over and deliver you and your goods and chattels as promised,’ he assured her as he deposited her shopping bags on the pristine work surface in his kitchen. The journey up in the lift had been a breeze in comparison to the struggle it would have been to install her in her own flat.