‘There was another medical problem we found,’ she told the young mother. ‘Lucky’s got a blood disorder. Something called von Willebrand’s disease.’
Megan shrugged. ‘So he’s going to die anyway, then.’
Emily shook her head. ‘It’s treatable. It means that he might have a tendency to bleed more badly if he ever gets injured, but as long as it’s known about it shouldn’t present problems. It’s when you don’t know about it that it can be dangerous. We needed to test you before you had surgery.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s an inherited disorder.’
‘So, have I got it as well?’
‘No.’
‘Which means,’ Mike said casually, ‘that the baby’s father might have von Willebrand’s.’
The silence stretched on this time. Emily cleared her throat.
‘Do you know whether that’s the case?’ she asked.
Megan shook her head and looked down at her hands.
‘Are you in any contact with him?’
Her head dipped lower as she shook it again. Emily could see fresh tears collecting on dark lashes.
‘Do you know where he is?’
Megan’s breath escaped in a harsh sob. ‘No.’ She pulled her knees up and rested her head on her arms, giving way to her misery. ‘And it doesn’t matter,’ she choked out, ‘whether he’s got a disease that’s going to kill him. I’ll never see him again so he might as well be dead.’
Mike and Emily both did their best to comfort Megan. To persuade her that she would get through this and that they were there to help her. That she needed time and plenty of rest and that nobody was going to rush her into making any decisions in a hurry. They all wanted what was going to be best for her.
Megan finally stopped sobbing and looked up. ‘What’s best is if you just make it all go away,’ she said forlornly. Huge eyes in a tear-stained face made her look a lot younger than her nineteen years. Too young to be faced with the prospect of single parenthood. ‘Give my baby to someone who can take care of him.’ Megan sniffed and scrubbed at her face with a fist. ‘Someone who really wants him. Make things go back to the way they were before.’
Mike met Emily’s gaze over the top of the teenager’s head. ‘My baby’, she’d said. If they’d achieved nothing else this morning, at least Megan had accepted the fact that she was a mother.
Leaving her to rest, Mike and Emily walked quietly through the hospital corridors. By tactic consent they made their way towards the nursery.
‘Do you think we upset her too much?’
‘No.’ Mike’s tone was very sombre. ‘It’s hard, but there are decisions that only Megan can make. She’s got to think about it. We’ve started the ball rolling.’
Lucky was asleep but they stood for a minute and admired the infant.
‘She wouldn’t have been that upset if giving up her baby and forgetting she’d given birth was really what she wants.’
‘No.’ Mike was smiling at Lucky. ‘And I think she’s refusing to see him because she knows how much harder it would be once she did. She’d have to face the reality of giving up her child.’
‘She’s going to have to do that at some point. Nobody’s going to let her sign adoption papers until they’re absolutely sure it’s what she wants.’ Emily touched Lucky’s cheek softly enough to leave him undisturbed. ‘So maybe that’s the next step. We get her to see him. Hold him, even, and then see where we go.’
She’d never let him go. Emily certainly wouldn’t if Lucky were her baby. And when he was cradled in Megan’s arms, Emily would be able to let go of that small black cloud hanging over her future with Mike.
‘Hmm.’ Mike sounded as thoughtful as Emily felt. ‘If we force him on her, it might make her even more determined. We all need a little patience here, babe. ‘ He smiled at her. ‘I have a feeling it’s all going to work out just fine.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’d do a bit of spitting for luck but Grace would have me out of here before you could say “unhygienic”, and I might never be allowed back in.’
The smile didn’t last.
The rest of Friday was quiet for Emily and gave her too much time to think. To worry about Megan and Lucky, and to rack her brains, trying to think of a way to bring them together.
She had nothing against adoption and, indeed, it could be the best option in this case. There would be any number of loving families ready to take this tiny boy into their homes and hearts.
But that would haunt Megan for the rest of her life.
The birth date of that child would stand out every year. Megan might try and brush it off as just another day. She might even think it was forgotten after years had passed but Emily knew differently. She’d see someone with a baby or a toddler or a small child and it would sneak up and hit her like a brick. She’d think, Yes, he would be about that age now. Would he be smiling like that? Have so many teeth? Be learning to point or wave or say ‘No!’?
Would he be off to school with lovingly made sandwiches tucked into his backpack and a plastic dinosaur in his pocket? Learning to ride a bike or climb trees and have scraped knees and elbows that needed a sticky plaster and a kiss to make it better?
The ghosts would be so much worse for Megan because when she saw those children, she would not only wonder if Lucky would be like that. She would have to wonder whether that actually was her own child.
Never mind about any omens. This had nothing to do with the future she, Emily, could have with Mike.
That she would have with Mike.
It had nothing to do with her own past either, or any ghosts that were never going to go away. Emily simply had a unique perspective on this case, and what it had everything to do with was the young mother lying alone in her room. And grandparents, hundreds of miles away, who were oblivious to how their futures might be changing.
The potential ripples kept expanding as Emily ignored her paperwork, too absorbed by thoughts about Megan and Lucky. So many people were going to be affected by the decisions made in the next few days or weeks. What about the young man out there somewhere who might have no knowledge that he had become a father? Who might not even know that he had a potentially life-threatening blood disorder? There was another set of grandparents as well. And maybe aunts, uncles and cousins.
Emily could see those ripples fading into a murky future, only to gather strength like an embryonic tidal wave and cause more heartache twenty years down the track when Lucky might set out to discover his birth family.
She couldn’t be entirely sure that Megan would be able to have any more children easily either, despite her reassurance to Honey. An infection like that was bound to have left scarring. They couldn’t know what long-term effects it could have on Megan’s Fallopian tubes or fertility without further tests once she had healed completely.
What if Lucky was the only child she would ever bear?
Mike phoned late that afternoon to find Emily still in her office.
‘I’m at the Athina,’ he told her. ‘I’ve collected the tribe from the airport and we’ve got a bit of a family party going here. How ’bout joining us?’
‘I’m on call,’ Emily reminded him.
‘You wouldn’t be trying to get out of dish-washing duties, would you? There’s a riot in the kitchen with all the preparation for the fundraiser dinner tomorrow night.’
‘I’ll try and get up later,’ Emily promised. ‘I want to visit Megan again after dinner and follow up on this morning, now that she’s had a bit of time to think about things.’
‘Oh, right.’ Mike didn’t sound particularly interested in discussing a patient case, but that was hardly surprising. Emily could hear the shrieks of small excited children in the background, interspersed with adult laughter and a commanding voice she recognised as that of Sophia.
‘I’d better go,’ Mike said apologetically. Then he laughed. ‘If someone doesn’t restore some law and order around here, I suspect there’ll be a fatality.’
‘Good l
uck! Sounds like you’ll need it.’
‘Yeah. Oh, I’ll probably stay here tonight. Looks like it could be a late one. Come as soon as you can. Love you, babe.’
‘Love you, too,’ Emily said softly. But Mike had already gone.
The background accompaniment to the call stayed with her long after she hung up and made a concerted effort to deal with the paperwork. It had been such a happy noise. Probably quite typical of any gathering involving Mike’s family, but totally outside the realm of Emily’s existence so far.
As an only child, raised by busy, professional parents, Emily had always hungered to belong amidst such family chaos. It would be the perfect antidote to the tension that had been building all day as well. But it would also be an escape. Shirking a responsibility that was weighing more and more heavily on Emily’s shoulders.
If she didn’t do her utmost to help Megan right now, she would be a failure as the teenager’s primary physician. She felt she had failed too often in important areas of her life to allow anything to set her up for a repeat performance if she could help it. Taking selfish time to enjoy the company of Mike and his family instead of talking to Megan was precisely the kind of situation that could lead to missing some vital step and to failure.
Emily got to the small coffee and gift shop in the hospital’s atrium just before it closed. She stood in front of the magazine rack, pulling out everything that looked of potential interest to a teenager. The front cover of the Australian Women’s Weekly had a picture of a young television star with her new baby and Emily hesitated for a long moment.
The photographer had captured the joy of new motherhood beautifully. Emily snorted softly as she realised she was viewing the picture as another omen. Maybe she did have a drop or two of Greek blood somewhere in her veins. She’d be spitting surreptitiously in corners soon if she wasn’t careful!
She did, however, pick up and purchase the magazine. She put it at the bottom of the pile, hoping that Megan would come across it in her own time. There had to be a key to solving this issue and it could be anything. Maybe seeing that picture could provide something that no amount of talking could.
The pile of magazines was exactly where Emily had left it when she returned to Megan’s room late on Saturday morning.
‘How are you feeling, pet?’
‘Better. The same. I want to get out of here and go home.’
‘Soon.’
Megan was avoiding eye contact. She stared at her locker. ‘Did you bring those magazines?’
‘Yes. I came to visit you last night but you were asleep.’ Emily had waited well over an hour in the hope that Megan would wake up and want to talk, but she had been disappointed.
‘Thanks.’ The appreciation was grudging. ‘Maybe I’ll look at them later.’
‘It’s a gorgeous day. You might like to go and sit in the sun for a bit. Or would you like to call home on the radio again?’
‘Nah.’ Megan shook her head. ‘I’m tired. I think I’ll go back to sleep for a while.’
Emily just nodded. She was tired, too. Weary in spirit as well as body. Last night had been her first night apart from Mike since they had first made love. After the frustration of not being able to talk to Megan, the hours had been long and lonely.
Called in for emergency surgery this morning on an elderly woman with severe abdominal pain from the nursing-home adjacent to the hospital, Emily and Cal had had to face their inability to rescue her from the effects of an aortic dissection. She had come straight from Theatre to get another kick in the gut by discovering that Megan hadn’t even glanced at that magazine cover.
Nothing was helping.
Difficult cases for the afternoon which would normally have provided a satisfying challenge for Emily had the opposite effect today. Trying to anaesthetise a screaming toddler who needed a fractured radius reduced was an ordeal.
Intubating a middle-aged woman who was brought in having suffered a catastrophic brain haemorrhage was even more distressing. The only point to putting this patient on life support was to give the family some time to say goodbye and to keep the woman’s organs viable in case they agreed to donation.
Settling this patient into Intensive Care, and coping with distraught relatives including the woman’s fourteen-year-old son, kept Emily occupied until 8 p.m., at which point she realised she was extremely late for the fundraising dinner at the Athina.
She almost didn’t go. But then she thought of the fourteen-year-old she had just seen, who was struggling to make sense of the blow life had just dealt his family. She thought of the patient they had lost on the table that morning and remembered another such loss, only last week, during surgery on one of the survivors from the terrible car crash when those kids from Wygera had been playing chicken with their cars.
That was what this fundraiser was all about. Trying to do something that could prevent another such tragedy. Besides, Mike would be there, and Emily was sadly in need of being close to someone who loved her.
She had a quick shower and changed her clothes, choosing a gypsy-style skirt with ruffles and a pretty puffed-sleeve top. She clipped a pager to the waistband of her skirt and let the staff in both Intensive Care and the emergency department know where she would be. And she took her car so that she could be back within minutes if she was needed.
Fairy-lights adorned the exterior of the classically Greek-looking roughcast building that housed the restaurant and hotel, and Emily could hear the music and buzz of humanity before she even stepped out of her car. Edging inside through a crowded foyer, she took in the rich smell of foods like roast lamb and olives, garlic and eggplant. She caught the distinctive aroma of ouzo amongst the more familiar odours of beer and wine and felt faintly unwell.
To step into the middle of well-established gaiety was too much after the stressful day she’d had. Or maybe there had been too much to disappoint her and it had accumulated into a knot that was creating a distinctly sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
She moved further into the restaurant, which was clearly the hub of the evening’s entertainment. A traditional Greek band was playing and the dance floor was alive with movement. Charles was parked near the doorway and he smiled at Emily, but she was prevented from moving towards him by Sophia, who sailed out from the crowd and gripped Emily’s shoulder firmly.
‘Emily! Darling!’ One cheek was kissed and then the other. ‘Have you met my daughter, Maria?’
‘No. Hi.’ Emily smiled at a much younger, feminine version of Mike who appeared beside Sophia and was holding a baby in her arms.
‘Have a baby,’ Maria instructed, thrusting the infant into Emily’s arms. ‘I have to find out what my other little monsters are up to.’
‘She has four boys,’ Sophia said happily. ‘All under five.’
Maria was scanning the room. ‘I can’t see any of them,’ she said. ‘This isn’t good.’
‘I keep telling you, Maria—you should move home.’ Sophia seemed to have forgotten Emily was there. ‘We’ll convert the bridal suite and make it self-contained. I can help with the children.’ She followed Maria towards the dance floor. ‘You could go back nursing whenever you wanted. The hospital’s only a step away. I keep telling you this! Why won’t you listen to your mother?’
George, dressed in traditional clothing of a pleated white skirt, colourful garters on white leggings and a matching waistcoat over the top of the tunic, came past, carrying a stack of plain white dinner plates. He winked at Emily. ‘For later,’ he said in a stage whisper. ‘Don’t tell Sophia!’
Emily shook her head. Separated from Charles by a group of people, including Kylie the hairdresser, who were having an animated conversation, Emily felt like a sombre island in a sea of happy people. She also felt firmly anchored by the surprisingly heavy baby she was holding.
She caught a glimpse of Sophia near a queue of children, headed by Max, the seven-year-old son of O and G surgeon Georgie Turner, who had the shadow of CJ close behind. The sma
ll boys were eyeing a trestle table laden with delicious-looking desserts that were obviously on the agenda for later.
Emily watched as Sophia flapped her hands at the children and then swooped to catch what had to be one of her grandsons. The child shrieked with enough glee to be heard over the music and then wrapped his arms around his grandmother’s neck and kissed her soundly on the lips.
The conversation beside her was only a buzz because Emily was still thinking of what Sophia had been saying to Maria. She was desperate to have her grandchildren close by. Enough to offer a make-over of the hotel’s highlight suite. Would she make the same offer to Mike? How perfect would that be? A home of their own with the most beautiful outlook imaginable and a private path to the beach.
Support—encouragement, even—for them both to continue their careers to whatever level they desired after the children came along. The more time Sophia had with them the better. The more children the better.
As if to echo her thoughts, Emily spotted the now mobile train of small boys weaving their way through the dance floor and creating a hazard people seemed happy to accommodate. They made way and then Emily could see one side of the area clearly, where a traditional Greek dance was taking place with a line of people who were linked by holding each other’s arms.
In the midst of them was the most gorgeous woman Emily had ever seen. Tall and incredibly slender, she had dark, very curly hair that spiralled down to her waist. Tiny silver star clips glittered on her scalp. She clearly didn’t know the steps to the dance and was laughing, but her ineptitude didn’t matter because the men on either side of her were keeping the dance going.
And one of those men was Mike.
Emily had to look away. She found herself looking directly at Charles, and did her best to summon a smile. She jiggled the baby in her arms as he whimpered. And then Cal was nearby and it was easy to smile because he was looking happier than she had ever seen him look.
‘You’ve missed most of the food,’ he said in dismay. ‘But don’t worry—we haven’t had dessert yet. And look at this!’ He was clutching a fistful of cheques. ‘We’ve raised at least five thousand dollars, and this is just the beginning. We’ll have a swimming pool for the settlement in no time.’
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