The Doctors' Christmas Reunion / Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart

That was just habit, she told herself firmly and hauled her mind back to work.

For all their separate lives at home, their professional lives had barely changed, their work lives remaining stable as they followed their usual routine, assisting each other when needed, discussing patients they shared.

They were even enjoying the togetherness of that side of things—well, Ellie did and she thought Andy seemed to…

Although that would stop—and soon—if she went ahead and moved.

Even thinking about it caused her pain.

Putting the mail aside for later, she powered up her computer, checked test results that had come in, then switched to her appointments list.

Back in work mode, she speed-read down the appointments, putting asterisks against the patients who’d be coming in for test results so she could be sure she’d re-read the results before the patient arrived.

Busy with the list, she barely heard the outer door open, but Maureen was greeting the first arrival, no doubt handing her the patient information forms to fill in.

She pressed the buzzer, and heard Maureen tell Chelsea to go on through.

It was a pregnant young woman who came in. A very young, not very pregnant woman, slight and blonde, who seemed strangely familiar.

‘Don’t I know you?’ she asked, smiling at the obviously nervous young woman.

A nod in response.

Ellie smiled again as she asked, ‘Do I have to guess how, or will you tell me?’

Another nod, then Chelsea drew in a deep breath.

‘I thought Andy might be here,’ she said, ‘although Aunty Meg always worked here and Uncle Doug at the hospital.’

Aunty Meg, Uncle Doug: Andy’s parents?

Light dawned.

‘Of course I know you! You’re Chelsea Fraser. I’m so sorry I didn’t recognise you, but you’ve kind of grown since you were flower-girl at our wedding. Did you come here to see Andy?’

Chelsea frowned.

‘Well, I came to see both of you really. I’m pregnant, you see, and I wondered whether I could stay with you until I have the baby, because you probably heard Mum and Dad split up and Mum’s gone off to find herself, whatever that means. She’s in India, or maybe Nepal, and Dad’s gone to Antarctica again, and Harry—you remember my older brother Harry?—well, he’s supposed to be looking after me but he’s at uni most of the time or out partying so he’s never there.’

‘You’re all on your own?’ Ellie asked.

‘Well, Alex—that’s my boyfriend—he comes over…’

Tears began to stream down Chelsea’s face, and Ellie left her chair to walk around and wrap her arms around the unhappy, lonely child. Ellie held her tightly and let her cry out her tension, handing her the box of tissues when the sobs became hiccups as the tears dried up.

‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ Chelsea whispered, patting the bump. ‘But I was so lonely and Alex loves me, and I was on the Pill but must have forgotten to take it or something and then I wasn’t sure, you see… But of course I was pregnant and Alex wanted to tell his parents and have me come and live with them, but then they might think Mum and Dad are really awful parents, and they’re not, you know, they’ve just kind of lost their way.’

Tell me about it! Ellie thought, but didn’t say, although she did think Chelsea’s mother could have waited a little longer to find herself. She shook the thought away and pressed Maureen’s buzzer twice to warn her the next appointment would be late.

‘They brought us up to be independent,’ Chelsea explained, ‘and to think for ourselves, but I didn’t want everyone at school to know about this, or the cousins and all, so I thought if you and Andy let me stay here until the baby’s born, then I can go back to school and no one would know.’

Except there’d be a baby somewhere, Ellie thought, but didn’t say.

‘No one back home knows because it’s been cold and I’ve been able to wear baggy jumpers back at home. I told my friends my uncle needed me out at his place in the bush and here I am.’

She’d so obviously practised what she was going to say that it came out in a slightly garbled rush, and Ellie had to be careful not to smile.

‘Does anyone know where you are?’

Chelsea nodded.

‘I told Harry and he thought it was a good idea. He said there wasn’t anything Mum or Dad could do to help at the moment and at least I’d be safe with you and Andy.’

‘Of course you will be,’ Ellie assured her, then, after a niggle of doubt, added, ‘I’ll have to talk to Andy, but I’m sure he’d be happy to have you. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of bedrooms in the old house.’

‘And there’s the little flat downstairs. We often stayed in it when we came for Christmas.’

My little flat.

And with Chelsea here how long would it take for word to travel along the family grapevine and Andy’s parents to realise things had gone wrong between her and Andy? They’d kept it from them while Meg had been going through chemo for breast cancer and they hadn’t wanted to heap more worries on her head.

Meg had become more of a friend than a mother-in-law for Ellie, who’d known from the first time she’d met Andy’s family that she’d love to be one of their warm, happy household. Her own father was dead, and her mother drifted from one country to another, one man to another, much as Chelsea’s mother appeared to be doing. Family had been a big gap in Ellie’s life.

So upsetting Meg with the story of their split had never even been a consideration.

And now here was Chelsea, and there was no getting away from it, despite the current circumstances, the Frasers were Ellie’s family now, so Chelsea was her responsibility as well as Andy’s.

‘I should be examining you, not chatting,’ she said. ‘Do you want to hop up on the couch? Nothing invasive, I just need to feel what’s going on then we’ll take some blood for tests, and check your blood pressure and pulse, and Maureen will make an appointment for you to come in for a scan later in the week.

‘Relax!’ she told Chelsea as her patient lay rigid on the couch. ‘Do you know how pregnant you might be?’

A quick shake of the head was the only answer.

‘No worries!’ Ellie told her gently. ‘We can do a measure of what we call the fundal height and that will give us an approximate time. It’s not entirely accurate, and is a better guide after twenty weeks, but let’s see.’

The measurement of fourteen centimetres gave her a gestation period of twelve to sixteen weeks.

‘Does that seem about right to you? Can you remember when you had your last period?’

Chelsea shook her head.

‘I was so sad and lonely when Mum went away, and then Dad did, too. Alex has been my boyfriend for ages, and he comforted me and stayed over a few times and it just happened.’

Of course it did, Ellie thought, but didn’t say. Poor kid must have been totally lost, with her parents not only breaking up but taking off. Mum heaven knew where, and Dad—who Ellie remembered now was a climatologist—heading off to the ice and snow at the very bottom of the world.

I need to talk to Andy.

This thought had passed through Ellie’s head earlier, but now it became insistent.

‘Well, you seem totally fit to me,’ she told Chelsea, ‘and as you know there’s plenty of room for you. How did you get here? Did you bring clothes?’

‘Train, and not much, to answer both your questions. The train got in this morning, and as far as clothes, I knew it would be hot, and I didn’t really know what to get.’

Of course, the train had come in this morning; it was the big weekly event in the town, for it not only brought people but fresh fruit and vegetables.

‘Well, how about you go upstairs and choose a room along the back veranda—Andy uses the side one for his soccer club and people come and go along the front one. Have a shower and then, if you’re up to it, you could walk uptown—it’s only two blocks—and check out the limited array of clothes in the general store. I’ll phone them and tell them to put anything you want on our account.’

‘Oh, no, I’ve got my own credit card,’ Chelsea protested. ‘But I’d like to get a few things.’

‘Great! And when you get back you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen. There’s bread and ham and cheese for sandwiches, and plenty of salad things. I might be late back for lunch as I have to help Andy with an op, but just look after yourself. And come and see Maureen down here if you need to ask anything. I know that doesn’t sound very hospitable, but I’ve got patients all morning. Will you be okay?’

To Ellie’s surprise, Chelsea flung her arms around her neck and hugged her hard, tears in her voice as she said, ‘You’ve been so kind. I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m really grateful!’

‘Of course you deserve it,’ Ellie said, a little choked up herself. ‘You’re family!’

How best to help her?

What would Andy advise?

CHAPTER TWO

SHE SET ALL thoughts of Chelsea—and Andy—aside as she went through her list of morning patients, pleased with some, concerned about others, mostly elderly men who seemed more aimless and depressed than ill. In other places, they could have a community garden or an allotment to work on, but out here, where water was a very scarce commodity, such a thing would be a luxury.

But her thoughts returned to Chelsea as she walked briskly to the hospital, sighing as she went in through the side entrance, where more Christmas decorations were already in place.

But Christmas cheer was the last thing on her mind as she considered the discussion she’d have to have with Andy.

Not right now, when there’d be other people around, but later on they would definitely need to talk.

Chelsea’s arrival had thrown their arrangement into disarray. It had seemed sensible to live separately within the house, mainly to avoid gossip and speculation, but Chelsea would pick up on it immediately, and word would spread around the family, and Ellie knew it would cause distress to Meg.

She pushed into the theatre changing room and found Andy already waiting for her.

‘Sorry, I was held up on my first patient and I’ve been late all morning,’ she explained.

His beautiful Ellie looked so tired and stressed that Andy wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her—to find their way back to where they’d been. But pain and grief and too many harsh words had opened up a gulf between them, and as yet, he could find no way of bridging it.

And did he even want to?

He shook his head. That was a stupid question when there was a patient waiting.

Of course he wanted to! The thought of living without Ellie was…well, inconceivable.

‘The patient is a young lad who got hit by a strand of barbed wire when he was helping his father repair a fence. Apparently, the fence strainers snapped, the wire flicked back, and a piece flew into his lower abdomen. They got it out, and cleaned and dressed the wound, but there’s a bit still in there—one of the barbs, I’d say—and it’s badly infected. I need to go in and clean it out before it develops into sepsis. He’s on IV antibiotics, and I’ll leave a drain in place for a few days if it looks at all dubious.’

Andy watched as Ellie greeted Tony, a nurse who loved theatre work, then checked the drugs and instruments he’d laid out for her.

Once upon a time, in what seemed like another life—in another country, for that matter—they’d worked together like this. The lack of specialist doctors in some of the African countries where they’d lived meant you had to do whatever was required of you, and often it was surgery—he cutting while Ellie did the anaesthetic—basic though it had been.

He held back a snort, disgusted that he could be distracted by such trivial thoughts. All that was so far in the past it was history now.

Yet how could he not watch as she spoke quietly to the boy, explaining how he’d be getting sleepy, checking the cannula already attached to the back of one small hand and smiling gently. She was so good with children—the children they would never have…

Satisfied that all was well, Ellie took up the prepared anaesthetic, and with a nod to Andy injected it, waiting until the boy dozed off before securing the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.

How many times—?

Enough!

The past belonged in the past. Here and now, he needed one hundred percent concentration on Jonah. Electrodes already attached to his patient’s body told the monitor everything was stable, and Ellie would keep an eye on it while he cut carefully into the pale skin on the lower abdomen, Tony beside him to mop the blood and cauterise any small bleeders.

Andy glanced across the table, and by chance met Ellie’s eyes above her mask. She winked at him—something she’d done a thousand times before—a ‘going well’ kind of wink, but the sight of such a silly, insignificant facial tic brought an arrow of pain into his innermost being. One he tried to ignore…

The infection was obvious, the culprit a small piece of metal—a tiny scrap had broken free from a barb on the wire. No wonder the boy had been complaining of pain.

Andy irrigated the wound and searched for any secondary sites of infection, but everything was clean and clear.

‘I won’t leave a drain,’ he said, as much to himself as to the staff around the table. ‘In that position it could be easily dislodged, especially considering he’s an adventurous young boy.’

He closed the wound, and nodded to Ellie to reverse the anaesthetic, then stood back while Tony did the dressing.

He should go and change. This team knew what they were doing. The boy would be transferred to a bed and wheeled through to the small recovery room. Ellie was in charge of him now and would be watching over him until he was fully conscious and aware of his surroundings.

But sometimes Andy needed to watch his wife—to watch and wonder what had happened to them to end up on either side of what was now an abyss.

Was it his fault?

Those final, hurtful words about the state of their marriage had certainly marked the end of life as they’d known it, but what had brought them to that?

Did he still feel a lingering resentment about the money the IVF had cost?

But it had been he who’d first suggested IVF, so it couldn’t be that that burned inside him.

Yet something did.

He’d been keen to have a family—as keen as Ellie was—but that had been back before he’d known about the pain of loss; how much each failure would hurt, although that was nothing compared to the terrible piercing pain of losing the baby.

But worst of all had been watching Ellie’s pain and being unable to take it away from her. That was the part he’d found so bloody impossible…

It wasn’t that she’d pushed him away at the time, more that she’d wrapped herself inside it—made a cocoon of her pain—and had no longer been part of him, no, of them, cutting their oneness…

Now Andy watched Ellie sadly as she followed the trolley out of the theatre, before heading for the shower. There was nothing like water to wash away pointless suppositions and what-ifs that were too late…

Ellie waited as the youngster came around, checked he was sufficiently conscious to be given a few sips of water, and tell her who and where he was, then she departed, hurrying now, as she’d been due to see a patient at one-thirty and it was already close to two.

But her thoughts remained firmly stuck on Andy.

His skill as a surgeon was undeniable, and while still at university he’d even considered making a career of it, but during their time in Africa he’d realised that his skill lay with people; with helping them, comforting them and, yes, healing them when it was humanly possible.

And it had fired his determination to return to the isolated regions of Australia—areas always crying out for doctors—where his patients would be people he would get to know and care about, not simply a person needing an appendectomy or a new knee.

Ellie caught up as she worked through the afternoon’s patients, so had seen the last one out when Chelsea returned, laden with bags and filled with excitement.

‘You should rest,’ she told the young woman as she locked the surgery door then walked up the front steps and along the veranda to the room Chelsea had chosen.

It had belonged to one of Andy’s sisters, and although Ellie had put fresh sheets on the bed in case of unexpected visitors, she’d done little in the way of redecorating, so it still had posters of old rock bands on the walls and a bookcase full of science-fiction books that the whole Fraser family had loved to read.

Ellie half-smiled, remembering how she’d felt an utter alien herself among people who knew a genre she’d never read as well as the Frasers knew sci-fi.

After depositing Chelsea’s few possessions, Ellie showed her the nearest bathroom, then led her into the kitchen.

‘You’ll probably remember that the kitchen is the centre of the house, it’s where we mainly live,’ she said, adding rather ruefully, ‘That’s when we’re actually at home.’

And living together… She had to talk to Andy!

She’d barely finished the thought when her cellphone buzzed in her pocket.

‘Can you come back up, Ellie? Jonah’s temperature has shot up, and his heart rate is ninety-five. I’m afraid I must have missed something and he could be heading into sepsis.’

‘I’ll be right there.’

She looked at Chelsea, new in town, still uncertain of her welcome, and crossed the room to give her a hug.

‘I hate having to leave you like this on your first day here but I have to go up to the hospital, and from what Andy said I could be a while,’ she said. ‘There’s food in the fridge, or you could walk up the road and get a burger and chips. The TV in the sitting room only has a couple of channels, but feel free to use it, and there are plenty of books around the place. Do you think you’ll be okay?’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Chelsea assured her. ‘I sat up all night on the train and I’m exhausted. If it’s all right with you, I’ll just get a drink of milk and a sandwich and go straight to bed.’

‘Bless you,’ Ellie said. ‘But I’ll leave both my and Andy’s numbers and if you’re at all worried about anything, please phone one of us.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Chelsea assured her. ‘I have stayed here before and I know my aunt and uncle were often called out at night. You go and do your work.’

But as Ellie walked swiftly up the road to the hospital, she couldn’t help thinking of the young woman alone in the big house, and wonder just what she was thinking, not to mention what Andy was going to make of it all…

She arrived to find Andrea, a senior nurse who had specialist anaesthetic training, already in Theatre.

‘I’ll need you to assist,’ Andy said, as Ellie walked in. ‘There’s gear set out in the ante-room, and Tony will help you scrub.’

Ellie took a deep breath. It wasn’t that she hadn’t assisted in operations before. It was part of their medical training, and they’d done a lot in Africa, but surgery had always made her feel anxious, as if she had no business having her hands in someone else’s body. It was impersonal, yet at the same time deeply moving.

Shaking away the thoughts, she changed, scrubbed her hands and arms and held them up for Tony to slide on the gloves. He tied an extra apron around her waist, and she was ready.

‘Will you enlarge the wound you made earlier?’ she asked Andy as she took her place beside him.

A quick headshake.

‘It was big enough, but I must have missed something.’

The tightness of his voice told her how stressed he was—stressed because he felt he’d somehow failed the boy.

‘There was nothing obvious,’ she reminded him, ‘and you didn’t want to interfere with his bowel by poking around under it.’

She paused then added, in a deep, terrifying voice, ‘Never touch the bowel.’

Andy laughed. Her mimicry of a lecturer they’d had in third year had always been good, and the words took him back to when, as students, they and their friends had used the words in more earthy ways.

It broke his tension and he opened the wound, holding it for her to clamp so he had a clear view.

‘Think about the barb,’ he muttered, and although she knew he was talking to himself, she understood what he was getting at. The barb could have pierced a muscle, tendon or even the bowel, and infection had developed in the second site.

But there was nothing obvious. Lecturer or not, he was going to have to touch the bowel.

He gently lifted the nearest coil of the large intestine, checking all around it for damage.

Nothing.

They irrigated the wound again, and closed it up, then all stood frowning at the monitor, which had no good news for them.

‘Hang on,’ Ellie said. ‘Didn’t someone say he was fixing a barbed-wire fence? Imagine what happened. The fence strainers broke, the loose wire would have flicked back, one barb would have pierced his skin. How far apart are the barbs on barbed wire?

‘Roughly a hand span.’ It was Andy who answered, catching on quickly to Ellie’s train of thought.

So some things hadn’t changed…

‘That means the next barb would be here,’ he said, measuring across the boy’s abdomen with his hand.

They all peered at the spot but there was no sign of damage to the skin, or any indication of infection.

‘Imagine him with clothes on,’ Ellie said. ‘Jeans, most likely, and low slung how the kids wear them these days. That barb would have hit the double layer of the pocket, possibly even a stud, so the next barb would be here…’ She used her hand to measure the distance, brushing Andy’s hand then glancing up, meeting his eyes above his mask—a flash of something as sudden and powerful as lightning flashing between them. ‘If the wire wrapped around him.’

They found the wound beneath their patient’s left hip, a tiny pinprick of a mark, surrounded by swollen, angry redness.

While Tony went for the portable X-ray machine, Ellie and Andy propped the boy on his side, careful not to touch each other after whatever it was that had flashed between them earlier.

‘From the size of it, it’s just an infection rather than another foreign object,’ Ellie said, and Andy nodded, although she could tell he was furious with himself for not checking more carefully earlier.

She opened her mouth to say, ‘You weren’t to know,’ but Andrea beat her to it.

Not that Andy would have found any comfort in the assurance. He prided himself on his physical examination of all patients, although earlier this morning the pinprick of a mark could have been all but invisible.

The X-ray showed no foreign matter in the wound, but Andy opened it up anyway. Clearing out the infection already there would lead to a quicker recovery for the boy.

‘Do you still hate it?’ Andy asked Ellie as they left the hospital an hour later. It was only when she didn’t reply that he looked around to find she’d halted, twenty or so paces behind him, and was gazing up at the night sky.

‘Still gets to you, huh?’ he teased as he walked back to join her, resting his hand on the small of her back as he had so often in the past. Often just a touch in passing, often a prelude—but he wouldn’t go there.

She smiled at him.