The Surgeon's Doorstep Baby

‘She’s not sick, Mim.’

‘She’s not your problem,’ Miriam snapped. ‘And don’t call me Mim. You know I hate it. Call the police, say you have a baby you know nothing about on your doorstep and let them deal with it.’

‘This is my father’s grandchild. My … niece.’

There was a hiss of indrawn breath. ‘So what are you saying? You want to keep it?’

‘No!’ He was watching the baby while he talked. She’d managed to wriggle a fist free from the bundle Maggie had wrapped her in, and her tiny knuckles were in her mouth. They were giving her comfort, he thought, and wondered how much she’d needed those knuckles in her few short weeks of life.

This was not his problem. Nothing to do with him.

She was his niece. His father’s grandchild.

He’d loathed his father. He’d left this place when he’d been six years old and had had two short access visits since. Both had been misery from first to last.

His father had been a bully and a thug.

Maggie had known him better, he thought. Had there been anything under that brutish exterior?

He could ask.

‘Just take the baby back to the midwife and insist,’ Miriam was saying. ‘It’s her professional responsibility. You could … I don’t know … threaten to have her struck off if she doesn’t?’

‘For handing a baby back to her family?’

‘You’re not her family.’

‘I’m all she has.’

‘Her parents are all she has. The police can find them tomorrow. Meanwhile, lean on the nurse. You’re recovering, Blake. You do not need this hassle. Okay, misconduct mightn’t fly but there are other ways. You’re her landlord. Threaten to evict her.’

‘Mim—’

‘Just do whatever you need to do,’ she snapped. ‘Look, love, I rang to tell you about the paper I presented this afternoon. It went really well. Can I finally tell you about it?’

‘Of course,’ he said, and he thought that would settle him. He could stand here and listen to Miriam talk medicine and he could forget all about his little stranger who’d be gone tomorrow.

And he could also forget about the woman who’d refused to take her.

Maggie.

Why was he thinking about Maggie?

He was remembering her at the funeral. It had been pouring. She’d been dressed in a vast overcoat and gum-boots, sensible garments in the tiny, country graveyard. She’d stomped across to him, half-hidden by her enormous umbrella, and she’d put it over him, enclosing him for the first time, giving him his only sense of inclusion in this bleak little ceremony.

‘I took on your father’s dogs because I couldn’t bear them to be put down,’ she’d said. ‘But I’m sharing a too-small house with my too-big family. The dogs make the situation unworkable. I assume your dad’s farm will be empty for a while. It has a housekeeper’s residence at the back. If I pay a reasonable rent, how about you let me live there until you decide what to do with it?’

‘Yes,’ he’d said without any hesitation, and he’d watched something akin to joy flash across her face.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘You won’t regret it,’ she’d said gruffly. ‘The dogs and I will love it.’ Then she’d hesitated and looked across at the men filling in the open grave. ‘He was a hard man, your father,’ she’d said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’

And he’d thought, uncomfortably, that she understood.

Did this whole district understand? That he and his father had had no relationship at all?

They weren’t a family.

Family …

His mother had gone on to three or four more relationships, all disastrous. He’d never worked out the concept of family. Now …

He listened on to Miriam and he watched the sleeping baby. Would he and Miriam ever have babies? Family?

Now wasn’t the time to ask, he thought, and he grimaced as he realised he hadn’t heard a word she’d said for the last few minutes.

Focus, he told himself. Do what the lady says. Concentrate on medicine and not baby. Tomorrow give the baby back to Maggie or get rid of it some other way. Do whatever it takes. This was an aberration from the past.

One baby, with twisted feet and no one to care for her. An aberration?

He carried on listening to Miriam and he thought, Maggie’s just through the wall. She might even be listening to half this conversation.

The thought was unnerving.

Forget it, he thought. Forget Maggie. And the baby?

Do whatever it takes.

If only she wasn’t sucking her knuckles. If only she wasn’t twisting his heart in a way that made him realise a pain he’d felt when he’d been six years old had never been resolved.

She was his father’s grandchild. She was the child of his half-sister.

Family?

It was his health that was making him think like this, he told himself. He’d had his appendix out barely a week before, and it had been messy. He was tired and weaker than he cared to admit, and he was staying in a house that held nothing but bad memories.

He had a sudden, overwhelming urge to thump a hole in the wall in the sitting room. Let his father’s dogs through.

See Maggie.

Heaven knew what Miriam was saying. He’d given up trying to listen. It had been an important paper she’d presented. Normally he’d listen and be impressed. Tonight, though, he looked at one tiny baby, sleeping cocooned in Maggie’s cashmere blanket, and suddenly he felt tired and weak—and faintly jealous of the deep sleep, the total oblivion.

And he also felt … alone.

If the bridge was safe, maybe he’d suggest Miriam come down.

Don’t be nuts, he told himself. She’d never come, and even if she did there’d be nothing for her to do.

She wouldn’t care for a baby.

He had to.

Baby. Floods. Maggie. The images were drifting around his head in a swirl of exhausted confusion.

Baby. Floods. Maggie.

‘I need to go,’ he told Miriam, cutting her off in mid-sentence. ‘Sorry, love, but I’ll ring you back tomorrow. The baby needs me.’

‘The midwife—’

‘She’s gone to sleep,’ he said. ‘That’s where I’m heading, too. Hours and hours of sleep. I just have to get one baby called Ruby to agree.’

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