One Night to Forever Family

by Meredith Webber

  Then reminding himself he couldn’t have not employed her. She had been far and away the best candidate.

  Wondering, also, why she hadn’t answered.

  It had been the kind of question that usually got a reply immediately.

  So he had to turn, had to look at her, had to put up with the disturbances her presence was causing him, because she was the best and his patients deserved that.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked this time.

  She smiled at him, but it was such a pathetic effort he forgot about the coffee, and his personal concerns, and sat down beside her on the couch.

  ‘What is it?’ he said, trying to sound gently persuasive but missing it by a mile.

  Even to him the question sounded abrupt to the point of rudeness, but it had been the best he could do when every fibre in his being was telling him to put his arm around her—tell her that whatever it was they’d work it out.

  Hold her...

  Comfort her...

  That might be what she needed right now, but was it what he wanted?

  Forget that, think about her. It’s what a friend would do—any friend.

  But were they friends?

  They’d certainly made peace between them...

  She smiled again, a better effort, and added a half-laugh.

  ‘Stupid, really,’ she said. ‘But I was looking at young Nathan and wondering if I could let my child play football.’

  She studied him for a moment before adding, ‘When you’ve got children—a family of your own—how do you make those decisions? Do they worry constantly, every parent, or is it worse for us because we see what can happen?’

  He thought of the children he’d probably never have—the women who hadn’t wanted to risk having a child with him—the scars that had made him stop thinking about a family, about any permanent relationship...

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘about other parents but I think it’s probably easier not to have them, then you don’t have to worry at all. That’s where I’ve got to in my thinking.’

  He knew it was a flippant answer but he didn’t want to go into all of that with Sam when she was obviously upset.

  Thrusting the confusion of thoughts out of his head, Andy returned to his coffee-making. But he had to think about Sam’s questions because there’d been genuine concern in her voice, as if having a family was important to her and she’d need to know how to handle things.

  Had she and Nick been arguing about that?

  Nick certainly wouldn’t have wanted a family—it would have diverted the attention from him. He chose instead to just answer her original question.

  ‘About sport, that lad could just as easily have fallen out of a tree and hit his head or tripped at home. I guess most parents just do what they think is best at the time and hope their children survive childhood.’

  She made a sound that could have been agreement but continued to look pensive—even worried.

  He carried over a coffee, realising as he placed it down in front of her that he hadn’t even asked how she took it, and wondering why he’d remembered her coffee preferences from the past.

  ‘You remembered?’ she said, looking up at him, her eyes wide with surprise.

  ‘It wasn’t a hard choice to remember,’ he said. ‘Black no sugar.’

  He carried his own coffee over, along with a tin of assorted biscuits.

  ‘Like white, skimmed milk and half a teaspoon of sugar?’

  She spoke lightly, but he heard a hint of tension beneath the words and wondered, not for the first time, how she’d ever managed to live with Nick’s little peculiarities.

  She’d loved him to distraction, she’d said, but had come to hate who she’d become in fitting into his mould of her.

  He understood that. He’d known Nick nearly all his life and had accepted his pedantic ways—for the most part—as simply Nick being Nick.

  But he’d been able to walk away; to find someone else to play with, someone else to discuss their studies with, when Nick had become too controlling.

  Sam had not only loved the man, she’d been married to him. Hard to walk away from that.

  Impossible, Andy guessed, to find someone else...

  He watched as she dunked a biscuit in her coffee and sucked on the soggy end, drank some coffee, then looked across the table at him.

  ‘You’ve probably read the latest studies on OCD, linking it to serotonin issues,’ she said quietly. ‘I tried to persuade Nick to try some anti-anxiety medication, which works for some people, but, as you know, he really couldn’t see he had a problem.’

  Which made Andy remember the accident, and his own personal conviction, at the time, that Nick would never have driven above the legal limit, could never speed—it was part of his make-up.

  Perfectionism was how Nick had termed it.

  So, now the fact they’d had an argument had been revealed, rather than solving things, it had made Andy more curious. It must have been about something really important, drastic even, for Nick to have reacted the way he had.

  Had it been about them having a family?

  Sam had finished her coffee. ‘Back to work?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s no rush. The staff know where we are. And we did come here to discuss the patients.’

  He hesitated, wanting to ask how she was finding things but knowing it was far too early for such a question.

  And, anyway, what he really wanted to know was more about her—about her life over the last three years—and how she felt about Nick now. Was she still mourning him?

  Well, he wanted to know everything really.

  Which was so unsettling a thought he stood up, collected her cup and the biscuits and made a business of washing the dishes, aware of her standing, moving towards the door—every nerve ending in his skin alive to her movement...

  * * *

  Weirdest coffee break she could remember, Sam thought, leaving her cup on the table because carrying it over to the taps would have meant getting close to Andy again.

  She escaped from the comfortable room to the routine movement on the ward but couldn’t escape her thoughts. Thoughts that must have been written clearly on her face earlier because Andy had been so concerned—so caring—when he’d sat her down and asked if she was okay.

  Which she really wasn’t, considering it was so close to the anniversary...

  But she’d welcomed the coffee break, sure they’d be discussing patients or talking about the hospital in general—even gossiping, which was the most common pursuit in staffroom coffee breaks. All of which would have got her mind off her own bleak thoughts.

  But, no, somehow, without really speaking, they’d ended up discussing Nick.

  And children—that had been the other topic, and a revealing one. Andy had spoken lightly but it sounded as if he’d, for some reason, already decided not to have children.

  For a moment she wondered why, then realised all this was just another way to keep her mind off the upcoming date.

  Work! That was a far better answer.

  Her first stop was at the nurses’ station to check that families of children who might have been in contact with young Rosa had been alerted by the hospital staff.

  ‘Yes, we’ve got on to the private day care place she went to twice a week. Only five kids in all, and the woman who runs the place said she’s spoken to all the parents, but we got names and telephone numbers and spoke to them again ourselves.’

  The nurse—Damian, his name tag read—frowned. ‘It’s not the children I’ve been worried about but the old people,’ he said.

  ‘Old people?’ Sam echoed, as she felt Andy materialise by her side.

  ‘Yes. Rosa also went to a playgroup. The nanny took her one day each week. It was run in a nursing home. Apparently, the residents loved having the little one
s running around.’

  Sam closed her eyes, considering how quickly something like measles might spread through such a place.

  ‘It might not be too bad,’ Andy said, coming to stand beside her. ‘A lot of older people have the measles vaccine when they’re expecting their first grandchild. It’s actually recommended by most GPs.’

  ‘But would they all remember whether they’ve had it or not? And can we really vaccinate everyone in the place, given that many of them would have complex health problems?’

  Sam had turned towards Andy as she spoke so read her own concern in his face.

  ‘I’ll get on to the people at Infections Diseases Control—talk to them,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s going to be safer to vaccinate them all.’

  ‘Is this really our problem?’ another nurse asked, and Andy and Sam both turned back towards her.

  ‘Who else’s would it be?’ Sam demanded. ‘It’s not as if we have to do the actual work, but we need to get authorities alerted to what’s going on. And they, in turn, can make the decisions, even publicise the risk if they feel it’s necessary.’

  The nurse nodded, though she still seemed unconvinced.

  ‘It’s a very real risk,’ Sam told her. ‘A measles outbreak—even with a limited number of patients—almost inevitably results in some deaths.’

  She turned away, disturbed by her own words, wanting to go back and check on Rosa.

  And, if she was honest, wanting to put some space between herself and Andy, who’d been standing beside her for far too long. This awareness thing she was feeling would disrupt her work if she didn’t get it under control. It wasn’t as if Andy would ever be interested in her, given how he’d seen her role in the accident.

  And hadn’t he said that the reason he’d asked her to stay had been because she was the widow of his best friend?

  Hardly a romantic invitation.

  Rosa was still febrile. The drugs and cooling packs would be keeping her temperature below a really dangerous level, but she was still a very sick little girl.

  Sam watched the monitors. Her heart rate was a little elevated but it would be, blood oxygen level fine, but it was being helped by the nasal cannula providing supplemental oxygen. A tube dripped fluid and drugs into her little body, but what else could they do?

  She knew this was the problem with choosing to work with seriously ill children—some of them could not be saved. But deep inside she felt that wasn’t good enough. They all deserved a chance at life—something her child had never had...

  A nurse distracted her with a message about one of the chemo patients, and she was pleased to turn her attention from such dismal thoughts. She met the oncology consultant in the child’s room, and from then on it seemed as if the world had conspired to keep her mind fully focussed on work.

  Sometime in the early afternoon she grabbed a cup of tea and an apple in the staffroom and was looking forward to the end of the day when she could finally relax.

  But Rosa’s condition had worsened and neither she nor Andy felt happy about leaving the child. Andy made the excuse of paperwork while she stayed with the father in the room, bathing the little girl’s body with a cool, damp cloth.

  ‘She’s not going to make it, is she?’ the father asked at one stage, and Sam couldn’t answer. He sat back in his chair and bent forward, elbows on knees, face bowed into his upturned hands, his despair seeping into the room.

  * * *

  Rosa died at four minutes past midnight in her father’s arms, Sam standing with a protective arm around the man’s shoulders, tears glistening in her eyes.

  After a few minutes the duty doctor and nurses moved in quietly, taking care of both the father and the formalities.

  Andy slipped his arm around Sam’s shoulders and led her firmly out to his car, aware of a terrible tension in her body.

  But as he walked around to the driver’s door, he looked up at the star-bright sky and wondered what the hell was going on. He’d understood Sam’s desire to stay and care for Rosa, but when he’d forced her to leave the child for long enough to eat earlier in the evening he’d seen the tension in her body, and he’d had the sense of someone holding themselves together with only the greatest difficulty.

  Now she sat, rigid in the seat beside him, her hands knotted in her lap, and instinct told him to get her home—unfamiliar though that home might be. She needed to be somewhere away from the hospital, somewhere he could put his arm around her shoulders when he asked her what was wrong.

  But they only made it to the elevator of his apartment block before he saw the tears on her cheeks, so he held her as they rose, steered her gently into the apartment, and enfolded her against his body as soon as they were inside.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, sliding his fingers into her hair to tug her head back gently so he could see her face, flushed and tear-stained.

  She looked at him, so much pain in her eyes—pain he couldn’t understand—but still he felt it. He tried to ask, to get her to talk explain, but found he couldn’t speak, words weren’t enough.

  He brushed his lips across hers, murmuring her name, aware this might be a very wrong response yet feeling her take something from it—feeling passion, heat, and some unable-to-be-spoken agony as she kissed him back.

  Somewhere in his head a voice was yelling warnings, but his body felt her urgency and responded to it.

  The kiss deepened, her hands now on his back, tugging at his shirt so she was touching his skin—cold hands, cold fingers digging into his skin, dragging him closer and closer. His hands exploring now, feeling the dip of her waist, the curve of her hips, moving lower to press her into him.

  Then clothes were shed in an undignified scramble, Sam pushing his hands away and quickly peeling garments off herself.

  They kissed again, and that magic moment of skin touching skin swept over Andy as he guided them both towards his bedroom, to the rumpled, unmade bed he’d had no time to straighten that morning.

  * * *

  In some dim recess of her brain Sam was aware this was madness—they had to go on living together—but right now, on the anniversary of her own baby’s death, she needed the release—the oblivion—of sex.

  So, as Andy’s lips moved down her neck, as his hand grasped her breast, fingers teasing at the nipple, she groaned with the sheer, mindless pleasure of it, bit into his shoulder, and pressed her body hard against his.

  They fell together onto the bed, mindlessly engrossed in pleasure—in pleasing each other and being pleased, teasing and being teased—until Sam could take no more and guided him into her body, revelling at how natural it was, moving in an age-old rhythm that eventually brought with it total release.

  A long time later, it seemed, Sam woke to find Andy propped on his elbow, looking down at her, and as she watched, he reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek, holding it up for her inspection.

  She rubbed her hands across her face, hoping to obliterate any more tell-tale signs there might be, then slid carefully out of his bed, wanting to take a rumpled sheet to wrap around her naked body but feeling that would make her look as if she was ashamed.

  Which she probably was, but right now leaving was the best thing she could do, before he started asking questions.

  Andy was far too astute for his own good!

  But at the door she did turn to say thank you, adding honestly, as heat flooded her cheeks, ‘I really needed that.’

  He gave her a mocking smile that didn’t quite hide the hurt she saw in his eyes.

  ‘Any time. Only too happy to oblige.’

  She fled, not wanting to make things more complicated than they already were. What they’d shared had been surprisingly intense and fulfilling for first time lovers, but that was all it could be. For all she knew, he had a woman in his life already.

  And having a relationship with a colleague wa
sn’t a good idea.

  She showered, dressed for work, and came out to find him already gone. No doubt to the beach for his morning swim.

  Images of his naked body danced before her eyes and she knew she didn’t want to be around when he returned, even though he’d not be entirely naked. She grabbed her things and headed for the café. Avocado and smoked salmon on toast sounded good, and if she kept her mind on food, and then on work, she wouldn’t be thinking about how good it had felt to be held in Andy’s arms—or what today’s date meant to her and how hard she was going to find it...

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY WORKED THROUGH the day, carefully polite with each other but equally careful not to get too close. Fortunately, it was busy, some children transferred back to children’s wards while new patients came in.

  Two were high priority, one an oncology patient who’d received a stem-cell transplant from a non-family member and needed a total isolation room, which meant anyone entering the room, staff included, needed mask, gloves, booties and a long gown.

  It was the mask Sam was having trouble with, in the small airlock area outside the isolation room. The strings had somehow become entangled with her hair and as someone else came in, she closed her lips tightly to capture the swear words that wanted to escape.

  ‘Here, let me!’

  His voice, right there behind her, stopped her breath, and the touch of his strong hands releasing her fingers and the tape from her hair stole her ability to breathe.

  ‘It didn’t mean anything, you know that, don’t you?’ The words tumbled out with a desperation she couldn’t control. ‘Can we forget it happened? I was upset, overwrought. The clock ticked past midnight and it just brought it all back. It’s the anniversary, you see.’

  He must have finished untangling her mask for now both hands rested on her shoulders, drew her back against his body.

  ‘What happened?’ he said gravely, and all the pent-up anxiety left her body in a long sigh.

  ‘I can’t talk about it today. But thank you, Andy,’ she said quietly, then she stepped away because, contrary to what she had said, being held against him was extremely comforting.