Saved by Their Miracle Baby

by Alison Roberts

  Her older sister, Lisa, had gone into huge debt to cover the massive cost of a car with the kind of modifications Abby needed because she’d understood how life-changing it would be to have this kind of independence. She would also understand how unsettling it was to have been involved in an accident. She took a photo of the damage and texted it to Lisa.

  Oops. Got rear-ended at a traffic light. Not the best way to start my day, huh?

  Lisa’s response pinged in almost instantly.

  OMG. U ok??

  All good. Need to get to work now. Will come down and see you later.

  Come now. Just to be on the safe side.

  Both Lisa and her husband worked in St John’s Hospital’s emergency department now, although Lisa would be leaving before too long to start her maternity leave. Abby loved both her sister and her brother-in-law dearly but she wasn’t about to go and visit them. She had far too much work of her own to get on with. She shouldn’t have sent the message at all—she could have told Lisa about it later—but maybe she was still a little shaken up and had needed to touch base with her only family.

  No need. Stop...

  Abby found a picture icon she’d used in the past—a little helicopter. It was a private code that told Lisa she didn’t need a parent any more, especially of the hovering and overprotective type. She followed it with a smiley face, however.

  Lisa had been a parent to her all her life. Six years older than Abby, she’d filled in the gaps left by a mother who had been unable to cope and had then died, leaving a grandmother to step in. It can’t have been easy for either of them after the accident that had left Abby in a wheelchair when she’d been little more than two years old. For good measure, Abby added a heart to finish her message.

  She propelled herself out of the elevator, through the doors of the parking building and onto the footpath. She was reaching to push the button that would activate the lights for the pedestrian crossing when someone beat her to it.

  ‘Let me do that for you, love.’

  It was never going to go away completely, was it? That beat of awareness of what could happen when a man assumed that her lack of physical ability gifted him the opportunity to take total control. She’d learned to deal with it, of course. To subdue fear and protect herself by becoming even more fiercely independent and not worrying about bruising anyone’s feelings by rejecting unwelcome advances. She’d even learned to do it quite politely so she bit back a retort that, actually, her hands worked perfectly well, which was why she was using a manual rather than an electric wheelchair, and instead she gave the man a tight smile, her sweet tone disguising a slightly sarcastic thank-you.

  He was probably in his early forties, wearing jeans and a T-shirt under a jacket and carrying a laptop bag. It must be her morning for good-looking men, Abby decided, although this one had blond hair and looked like he might enjoy spending his downtime surfing or skiing or something. Anyway...she preferred dark hair. Especially with blue eyes...

  The lights changed and Abby moved onto the pedestrian crossing. To her dismay, the man walked out ahead of her holding up one hand, not unlike the police officer who’d overridden the traffic lights to clear the jam, as if the drivers might be considering taking off before the lights went green again and running a poor defenceless disabled person over. It was obviously done to be of assistance to Abby but it made her feel like everybody was staring at her and unwanted assistance had always been a pet peeve from a very early age. One of Abby’s earliest memories was trying so hard to climb into a swing and pushing her sister’s helping hands away.

  ‘Go ’way. I can do it by myself...’

  It was nothing like someone taking sexual advantage of her disability, of course, but it was on the same spectrum as far as Abby was concerned, and while she had learned to deal with the aftermath of that appalling incident, it was never going to be forgotten.

  She sped up on the other side of the road, eager to disappear into the steady stream of people already heading into what was a large, busy regional hospital, but the blond man was keeping pace.

  ‘Hey...could I buy you a coffee or something?’

  ‘No.’ Her negative response came out as being curt this time. Rude enough to make Abby feel a little ashamed of herself so she offered another tight smile. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. Don’t think my boyfriend would approve.’

  ‘Oh...’ He looked comically disappointed. ‘I should have guessed. See ya.’

  Not if I see you first, Abby thought, but she let her breath out in a sigh as she took the corridor that led both to the hand clinic and, further on, to the emergency department. She didn’t have a boyfriend—it was just one of the more polite ways she had to brush off any interest that men showed in her. Especially men who saw her disability before they saw anything else about her.

  She hadn’t brushed that Noah off, though, had she? She’d not only given him her phone number, the thought that he might ring her was creating an unfamiliar ripple of sensation that was...oh, help...embryonic excitement? Whatever it was, it was enough for Abby to fish in her shoulder bag to retrieve her phone as soon as she reached the clinic. It was also enough to feel disappointed that she hadn’t missed any messages or calls yet and that, no, her phone wasn’t on silent.

  It had been a very, very long time since she’d felt that “waiting for a call” anxiety but it only took Abby a matter of moments to put two and two together about why she wanted to hear from the man who’d driven into the back of her car this morning. He hadn’t seen her disability, had he? He’d been shocked to see her wheelchair, which meant that when he’d met her, he hadn’t been influenced by any kind of social stereotyping or personal prejudice about disabled people.

  He’d only seen her. Abby Phillips. A specialist hand therapist, which was something she was very proud of being, although he didn’t know that yet. Mind you, she was also a twenty-six-year-old virgin, which Abby was definitely not proud of being, but thank goodness she was the only person who knew that.

  And why on earth had it occurred to her to think of that right now?

  Abby opened her locker to get her white coat off the hook and then she went to the mirror to brush her hair and scrape it up into a ponytail that wouldn’t get in the way of her work this morning. It was the touch of her own thumbs on the back of her neck that gave her the answer to that question. Because she was thinking of the touch of someone else’s hands on her neck. Of how it had made her feel. She wanted Noah to call because she was attracted to him. Possibly more attracted than she’d ever been to anyone else. Ever...

  Could this possibly be, perhaps, a case of love at first sight?

  Abby caught a glimpse of the grin on her face as she turned away from the mirror.

  A kind of “watch this space” grin...

  * * *

  Talk about being thrown in at the deep end.

  It was specialist hand surgeon Noah Baxter’s first day on the job at St John’s Hospital and his very first call was to the emergency department for a serious injury to someone’s hand. He’d met quite a few of the senior members of his departmental staff the other day but this was his first visit to the ED. The first person he encountered was a nurse who was obviously quite well along in her pregnancy. She greeted him with a friendly smile.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’ve been paged for a consult. By a Hugh Patterson?’

  The nurse’s smile widened. ‘I know him well. I’ll let him know you’re here.’ She turned and went swiftly in the direction of one of the closed resuscitation rooms.

  A tension he hadn’t actually been aware of started to recede the moment she turned her back. It wasn’t anything to do with meeting new colleagues or not knowing what he’d been asked to come and see. It was just that he still hadn’t got to a stage when he could see a pregnant belly and not feel a pang of loss. Maybe he never would, but he’d become very go
od at distracting himself by deliberately noticing something else.

  It was her hair that snagged his attention now. Red hair, quite dark. Nothing like that vibrant red gold shade on the woman whose car he’d bumped into the other day on the way to his first visit to St John’s. That shade of hair had proved quite memorable.

  Too memorable.

  Which was why he hadn’t yet called that number he’d requested from her. He’d intended to, of course, on more than one occasion in the last few days but when he’d been about to press the call button, he’d just been unable to do it.

  Because he really wanted to...

  Which was quite ridiculous. He was a single man in his mid-thirties. If he was attracted to a woman he shouldn’t be short of the confidence to do something about that. But that was the whole problem, wasn’t it?

  He was attracted to someone. For the first time in years. And he didn’t want to be, any more than he wanted to be affected by seeing a pregnant belly. He never wanted to be attracted to anyone again because he knew where that road could lead. Been there, done that and once was more than enough.

  Still, it was inexcusable that he hadn’t made contact yet and, at the very least, given her his insurance company details. He didn’t actually need to ring and hear her voice for that either. He could simply text her the details and he would do that, Noah decided—just as soon as he had a moment to spare later today.

  One of the department’s consultants emerged from the resuscitation room and strode swiftly towards Noah.

  ‘Hugh Patterson,’ he introduced himself. ‘And you’re Noah Baxter, yes?’

  ‘Indeed.’ He shook Hugh’s hand.

  ‘We’re delighted to have you at St John’s. The word is that you’re the best in the field. I think that’s what our patient might need today.

  Noah raised an eyebrow. ‘No pressure, then?’

  Hugh’s smile had a grim edge. ‘Come and see. Not pretty. Patient’s a thirty-eight-year-old gentleman who got his hand caught in some food-processing machinery a couple of hours ago. Crush injury to several fingers and partial amputation to his thumb. It took a while to get him free. And it’s his dominant hand.’

  “Not pretty” was a good description for what Noah found when he lifted the dressings on the man’s hand. His fingers and—more importantly—his thumb were all mangled enough for it to be impossible to tell exactly what was, or was not, salvageable, despite the help of the X-rays illuminated on the screen behind the head of the bed. Even if bones could be wired or plated together, there might be too much damage to nerves, tendons and tissues to make reconstruction possible.

  ‘I can’t look.’ The patient, Steve, had his head firmly turned away and his uninjured hand shielding his eyes. ‘Don’t touch it...’ His breath came out in a sob, ‘Please don’t touch it...’

  Noah glanced at Hugh. ‘He’s got a good level of sedation and ten milligrams of morphine on board. Might need a top-up?’

  ‘I’ll be as gentle as I can be, Steve,’ Noah told him. ‘And I don’t need to do much at the moment other than assess what’s going on with your blood vessels and nerves. I can already see that we need to take you up to Theatre and get things cleaned up. I’m just going to touch your wrist, here, and the palm of your hand, okay? I want to see what’s happening with the blood supply.’

  ‘I can’t lose my hand, Doc...’ Steve sounded desperate now. ‘I can’t lose my job. I’ve got three kids and it’s hard enough as it is...’

  ‘I know...’ Noah’s tone was gentle. ‘Try not to panic, Steve. We’re going to do everything we possibly can to save your hand, okay?’

  He put his fingers on Steve’s wrist to occlude the radial and ulnar arteries at the same time as he squeezed gently on the palm of the badly injured hand. Releasing one artery at a time give him good information about the patency of important vessels. Even while he was conducting this test, Noah was gathering other impressions. The colour and temperature of this hand was poor compared to Steve’s uninjured hand, which meant that the sooner they got him to Theatre the better to debride these injuries and repair blood vessels. An inadequate blood supply could mean complications in delayed healing, fibrosis and infection.

  With the injured hand covered again with sterile dressings, an operating theatre being set up, additional assistance from orthopaedic, vascular and neurosurgical staff requested and Steve’s panicked wife arriving in the department with a baby in her arms, Noah had a few minutes to pull up a chair, introduce himself properly and talk through what he was going to do.

  ‘So we’ll do our very best to save whatever we can,’ he finished up. ‘Especially with your thumb because it’s so important in achieving useful function of your hand, but we won’t know how much we can do until we can see exactly what the damage is. And there are risks, as I’ve explained. Are you happy to sign the consent form or do you have any more questions?’

  Steve’s wife, Pauline, was still looking terrified. ‘They told me when I arrived that you’re the best in the country for hand surgery, Mr Baxter. One of the best in the world so we’ll leave it up to you.’

  Steve had his uninjured hand covering his eyes again and his voice was choked. ‘I need my hand,’ he managed. ‘How am I going to be able to work, otherwise? Or look after my family...?’

  Pauline shifted the baby to one arm as she reached to touch Steve’s shoulder. ‘We’ll manage, babe,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure Mr Baxter is going to be able to save your hand...’ Her glance at Noah was a plea that was made even more eloquent as this young couple’s baby began crying as she turned back to her husband. ‘But whatever happens, we’re going to get through this. I love you...’

  ‘You’ll have to sign the form for me,’ Steve was clutching his wife’s hand now and there were tears on his cheeks. ‘You know how useless I am with my left hand...’

  * * *

  He was confident, that’s for sure, but maybe that came with the territory of being renowned as the best in the field.

  Fancy being about to start your first surgery in a new hospital, leading a large team of people he’d only just met, and this Mr Baxter had given permission for the gallery to be open. Word had spread like wildfire, of course, but staff in the hand clinic were well up in the priority list, and Abby had been thrilled that she could go and watch because her next appointments were with inpatients and they could be fitted in later in the day. She was more than happy to skip her lunch break, if necessary, to compensate.

  That the operating theatre gallery had rather steep stairs could have been an issue but one of the orthopaedic registrars, Alex, who was in the clinic when the news came through, had smiled at her.

  ‘Let’s go early,’ he’d suggested. ‘And get the good seats up front.’

  Abby appreciated the unspoken part of his suggestion—that they could tuck her wheelchair out of the way before there were too many people around to notice and that Alex would carry her up the awkward entrance to the gallery that had certainly not been built with disabled access in mind. This wasn’t the kind of self-important and uninvited assistance like someone directing traffic on her behalf. This was help that was there automatically from someone who knew her well. Someone who knew how much she loved watching the initial repair on a hand she might well end up working on herself further down the track.

  So, here she was, in a front row seat that gave her a great view into the theatre below, where there were at least a dozen people busy setting up for what would undoubtedly be complex and lengthy surgery. Abby had a clear view of one of the television screens, too, which would give a close-up view of the microsurgery needed to repair tendons, blood vessels and nerves.

  The patient had been anaesthetised and was lying with his arm and hand positioned on a side wing of the operating table. Nurses and registrars were busy making sure that everything was ready for the stars of the show—the surgeons. There were trays of inst
ruments being checked, lights being positioned and headsets with both cameras and magnifying technology being readied.

  All they needed now was the lead surgeon and he came in from the scrub room, already gowned and masked, with his gloved hands crossed in front of him to prevent him touching anything not sterile.

  He nodded towards the team of people waiting to work with him and then he glanced up towards the gallery. Just the briefest glance that raked the packed seating available and acknowledged the people who were interested in what he was about to do. Only his eyes were visible because he hadn’t yet had the headgear placed but there was something familiar about his face that made Abby frown as she tried to focus more clearly.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked Alex. ‘Mr Baxter or one of the orthopaedic guys?’

  ‘Yep... Noah Baxter. Let’s hope he’s as good as they say he is.’ Alex glanced up at the screen above them, which was filled with the close-up image of the mangled fingers. ‘That hand’s a mess.’

  A bit like Abby’s head right now, then, and it was going to take a breath or two for her to get it back under control. Her excitement at being able to observe such major surgery had evaporated. Replaced by something that should have been anger but, pathetically, felt much more like a surprisingly sharp disappointment.

  Noah...of course it was. She would never forget those eyes.

  She hadn’t been about to forget him at all, for that matter. Or forgive him.

  He hadn’t called her. He had probably never even intended to.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HE COULDN’T HAVE missed that hair.

  Not in a million years. Certainly not when she was sitting in the front row of this operating theatre’s gallery because the edge of the pool of light over the central table reached far enough to catch the golden glint and make it shine like some kind of halo.

  It hadn’t seemed like a big deal when he’d agreed to have the gallery open. Noah was quite used to having colleagues, medical students or other interested staff members who worked in the field observing his work but the last person he would have expected to see was the woman he’d met when he’d bumped her car the other day.