A Father by Christmas

by Meredith Webber

  She sighed again and when her companion didn’t respond, she added, ‘Realistically I know this person might not exist, but I have to try, you see. And finding someone even close to just right will take time. So, though I’d love to help out, Dr Gibson, it just isn’t possible right now.’

  ‘Gib,’ he reminded her, and Sophie stared at him, wondering again if the man had the full complement of working neurones. She was telling him about her concern over finding a suitable carer for Thomas and he was insisting she call him by his nickname.

  She ate some cake and drank some coffee, thinking when she’d finished both she’d leave, then realised he was smiling at her—a full, lips-spread, eyes-aglint smile that did funny things to her lungs.

  ‘Search no longer for your granny,’ he announced. ‘You can have Aunt Etty!’

  He sat back in his chair, the smile growing even brighter.

  ‘Aunt Etty?’

  The echo of the words was so faint Gib realised the woman was confused. He hurried to explain.

  ‘Aunt Etty will be perfect for you. Adores children, volunteers at the child-care centre at the hospital and is bored to death living with me—says I’m never home to make a mess or cook for so what is she supposed to do?’

  ‘But your aunt—she might not want a job.’

  The woman was still confused.

  ‘She’s not my aunt, she’s my wife’s. Look, I’ve still got time. What if I run you home and you meet her and have a chat then I’ll drive you to the hospital to collect Thomas? Although I’ll have to go to a darned meeting, you can take your little boy back to talk to Etty to see how they both get on.’

  Sophie opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late, Dr Gibson—Gib—was asking her about transport—where was her car, she did have a car? Or was the hospital organising one as part of her salary package?

  ‘I brought my own car up from Sydney,’ she said, swept along in the man’s conversational wake, although she knew cars weren’t the issue. ‘It’s at the hospital. I was going to catch the bus back.’

  ‘Perfect,’ her new boss announced, standing up and leaning over to take her elbow. ‘Let’s go!’

  Which was how Sophie found herself in a quietly luxurious saloon, being driven down a road that ran alongside a wide brown river, purple jacaranda blossoms dropping from the trees that lined the road.

  ‘You’ve missed the best of the jacarandas,’ he said, ‘but poincianas will be in flower soon—brilliant scarlet flowers making a canopy over the trees. Great for Christmas decorations—the red flowers and green leaves.’

  Sophie turned to stare at him. His behaviour so far had been approaching manic yet he took the time to know and notice trees and flowers and think of Christmas decorations. He turned as if he’d read her thoughts and smiled again, lightening the rather stern profile she’d been regarding with more than a casual interest.

  ‘Aunt Etty’s mad about plants and trees and gardens.’

  I won’t sigh again, Sophie decided, stifling the breath of confusion. I’ ll just sit here and be swept along and meet Aunt Etty, and when he drops me back at the hospital I’ll tell him no. At least all this is taking my mind off the Thomas’s father problem!

  The road left the river, winding away from it, then cut back towards it, Gib eventually pulling into a tree-shaded drive at the end of which stood a house that looked like a cottage from a child’s picture book.

  ‘We extended in the other direction so we didn’t spoil the look of the place,’ Gib said, and Sophie went back to frowning at him. First flowers, now this! He couldn’t possibly be reading her thoughts!

  Then he explained.

  ‘Everyone seeing the house wonders about the size of it. As a matter of fact, the extensions are far too big. We’ve closed off one wing completely, to cut down on housekeeping. Actually…’

  He paused in his forward rush towards the house as he said the last word, and studied her consideringly for a moment—then shook his head and charged on again, Sophie following meekly in his wake, wondering if his wife was at home and, if she was, how she’d feel about Gib giving away her aunt.

  Not that Sophie intended taking her…

  ‘Come on in!’

  Gib urged his new colleague forward, so excited at his own brilliance it didn’t occur to him she might have reservations.

  ‘Etty!’ he called, then heard the smooth slide of rubber across the polished floorboards. ‘Look what I found!’

  Etty stopped her chair a few feet from them and looked from him to Sophie then back to him.

  A woman! Great! I’ve been telling you you should but I must say she doesn’t look as delighted at being found as you obviously are at finding her. Perhaps she wasn’t lost.’

  She wheeled forward and put out her hand.

  ‘I’m Etty Pritchard, and in case the head case here hasn’t explained, it’s spina bifida. Got around on sticks for quite a while—still can if I really have to—but the chair’s the easiest and fastest.’

  Gib, watching for Sophie’s reaction, saw the young woman smile again, and once more registered the luminous beauty this expression brought to her face. But he should be explaining things, not watching Sophie Fisher’s face. Etty, as usual, had the wrong end of the stick.

  ‘She’s my new neonatologist,’ he began, but Etty wasn’t listening, talking instead to Sophie who’d leaned against the wall and in so doing had unobtrusively diminished her height somewhat so Etty wasn’t forced to look up quite so far.

  ‘She needs a carer for her little boy.’ Gib thought if he kept talking maybe someone would eventually listen. ‘I told her you’d be ideal.’

  How could he possibly have thought a woman in a wheelchair would be a suitable carer for an active little boy? Sophie wondered as she followed Aunt Etty along the passage. Then it opened into a living room and she saw the broad sweep of the river and, to the left, the tall buildings of the city centre.

  ‘Wow!’

  Etty paused and turned back towards her, turning herself and the wheelchair on the proverbial sixpence.

  ‘Nice view?’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Sophie said, her eyes drinking in the beauty.

  ‘Why don’t you stay here and enjoy it?’ Etty suggested. ‘Sit there, and I’ll get us something cool to drink.’

  Instead of sitting, Sophie moved towards the floor-to-ceiling windows, most of which were open to let in the river breeze. From here, she could see the garden where it stepped in terraces down to the river.

  ‘Dr Gibson said you gardened,’ she said, turning back as she heard the wheelchair approaching. ‘How do you manage getting down the different levels?’

  Etty handed her a tall glass filled with pale liquid, a mint leaf floating with the ice at the top.

  ‘See over by the right side—Gib put in a lift affair. It has a ramp and all I have to do is hang on, press the button and it pulls me up or lets me down. Works like a ski-lift—one of those ones that drag you up the hill.’

  Sophie shook her head in admiration then took a sip of her drink and admiration turned to astonishment.

  ‘This tastes like homemade lemonade. I haven’t had it since my grandmother died.’

  Etty smiled at her.

  ‘We’ve two lemon trees and both bear heavily so I’ve always got plenty of fruit for lemonade.’

  ‘And lemon butter, and lemon delicious pudding, and preserved lemons and every other lemon dish you can imagine,’ Gib put in, coming to join them with a tall glass of lemonade in his hand.

  He’s selling her too hard, Sophie thought, studying the man who now leaned against the windows and stared out at the river. Does he want to get rid of her? Is he finding it irksome to have his wife’s aunt in the house all the time? Had she come as a housekeeper but now he wants more privacy?

  Impossible to guess at answers. Sophie drank more of the delicious lemonade and, for a fleeting moment, considered coming home on a hot evening to a view of the river and cold, homemade lemonade…
<
br />   CHAPTER TWO

  ‘ETTY, Sophie is a colleague, due to start work on my team in the new year. She’s from Sydney so presumably all her contacts and family are down there. For that reason, she came up early to find accommodation, settle her little boy, Thomas, into the hospital child-care centre and to employ a live-in person to be there for Thomas when she’s on night duty or on call. She was telling me what she needed and I thought of you!’

  Sophie watched as Etty faced her nephew.

  ‘Now, be honest, Gib! You thought, Great, here’s someone to help out while Pete and Petra are in hospital and somehow I have to organise her life for her so she can start work as soon as possible, preferably tonight.’

  Sophie hid her smile as Gib looked first taken aback, then slightly angry, then gave in and smiled.

  ‘More or less,’ he admitted, ‘but I did remember you complaining about being bored and needing a new distraction in your life. What could be more distracting than a three-year-old boy?’

  Etty returned his smile, and Sophie saw that though they might not be related by blood there was a strong tie of affection between the two of them.

  Maybe he was trying to help Sophie out, not get rid of Aunt Etty from his house.

  ‘You’ve been bulldozing Sophie, haven’t you?’ Aunt Etty accused. ‘And you’ve put her into a very awkward position. She might not want someone like me—age, sex, whatever—minding her little boy, but if she says no now, she’ll worry I’ll think it’s because of the wheelchair.’

  ‘But I never gave the chair a thought,’ Gib protested, and Sophie believed him. How could you consider a woman who kept a big garden on three levels as neat as his obviously was as disabled? She was probably far more capable than a lot of women her age.

  And she made super lemonade.

  Aware this wasn’t the issue, Sophie turned to Etty.

  ‘I don’t think the problem is whether or not I would want to employ you, but why you’d want the job. You’re obviously well settled here, and you have the garden, which you love. We’re living in a drab serviced apartment in the city and don’t look like getting anything better for another six weeks. ‘

  ‘I don’t think where you live is important. Have you thought about the kind of person you want to have on hand for your little boy? For Thomas?’

  Etty’s gently asked question made Sophie stop and think.

  ‘I have,’ she said slowly, realising the person she’d envisaged was sitting right in front of her. ‘I thought a kind of granny—someone kind who hugged a lot and didn’t get frustrated by the million and one questions little boys find to ask. Who understood little boys get dirty and didn’t fuss too much.’

  Etty held out her arms.

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind the chair, here I am,’ she said. ‘Gib was speaking truthfully when he said I was bored, and I’m aware for my own well-being I need a new challenge. You must have reservations about the physical side of things, but the staff at the hospital child-care centre will give me references.’

  Sophie knew she had to look at references and, though an inner conviction that Etty would be the ideal live-in carer for Thomas was growing all the time, she also knew she should be asking more questions—that she should take her time to think this through and not be rushed into it.

  ‘In the end, I would assume,’ Gib offered, ‘it will depend on Thomas, won’t it? He might be disconcerted by someone in a wheelchair. He might not like Etty. Why don’t we take her when you go to pick him up? Or, better yet, do as I suggested earlier. You could collect him and bring him back here so the two of them can spend some time together. He might like a swim.’

  Sophie glanced towards the river, which was beautiful but very brown. Etty caught her concern and laughed.

  ‘There’s a pool downstairs. It’s kind of indoor-outdoor so I can swim all year round.’

  Gib looked towards the wing of the house he kept closed off. Just how hard would it be, having a colleague sharing his house?

  He glanced towards the tall, slim woman, smiling now at Etty, so beautiful again. The real question was, how hard would it be having this colleague sharing his house? The fingers of his right hand found his wedding band and he twisted it round and round, even easing it towards his knuckle, wondering if he’d be able to get it off when and if he ever wanted to.

  ‘I’ll know when the time is right,’ he’d said to Etty when she’d asked if he wanted to take it off.

  But that had been four years ago…

  They drove back towards the hospital, Etty chattering away, pointing out landmark buildings and naming the suburbs through which they passed, while Sophie studied the back of Gib’s head. He’d showered and shaved back at the house, and looked more like the man who’d interviewed her, but his too long, still damp hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck, and those tiny dark curls drew Sophie’s eyes with a magnetic force she found impossible to resist.

  The curls or the man?

  How can you think about a man when you have so many other problems to sort out?

  Especially a man with a wife.

  But just then, as part of a conversation she’d tuned out, he turned and smiled at her, and something in that smile curled into her chest and squeezed hard at her heart.

  He had a wife!

  She forgot about not sighing and let out a long breath of expired air…

  He parked outside the child-care centre and climbed out of the car to get Etty’s wheelchair from the boot, setting it up and wheeling it around to the passenger side of the car. Sophie watched as Etty transferred herself efficiently from one mode of transport to another then turned to—to what? Thank Gib?

  She hesitated and he saved her saying anything.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ he said to Sophie, taking her hand and shaking it in a curiously formal manner that didn’t stop tremors of awareness sparking along her nerves. Etty was already wheeling herself towards the centre, but Sophie watched her new boss climb back into his car and drive away, all the while wondering why a handshake should make her feel uneasy.

  Although it wasn’t the handshake that unsettled her, it was her own weird reaction to it.

  ‘Oh, Dr Fisher, I was hoping you’d be late.’ Vicki, the young woman in charge of Thomas’s group, greeted Sophie with this strange comment, then explained, ‘We had a visit from one of Santa’s elves and it went longer than we expected. Thomas managed to stay awake throughout the fun but he’s not long fallen asleep. Do you want to wake him or would you prefer to wait—maybe have a cup of coffee in the canteen?’

  Sophie turned to Etty, intending to ask her, but the older woman was already chatting to the centre manager—chatting like old friends.

  ‘You go and have a coffee,’ Etty said to Sophie. ‘I volunteer here occasionally so most of the kids know me. I’ll stay and play and maybe meet Thomas that way when he wakes up.’

  Sophie looked around helplessly. It felt as though her life was spinning out of control.

  Would a cup of coffee help?

  She didn’t know where the canteen was, although she did remember a nice coffee shop off the hospital’s main foyer, from when she’d been here for the interview.

  Did she also remember the way to the NICU? That would be a far better destination. Not that she intended meekly falling in with Dr Gibson’s plans and starting work earlier than had been arranged, but looking at the babies would centre her—bring her back to earth. She had her hospital ID, having organised it in order to enrol Thomas in the child-care centre. She’d visit the NICU—look at babies for a while.

  Gib looked from the chart to tiny Andrew Atkins, his mind running through everything they’d already tried to relieve the baby’s RDS.

  ‘Would the mother having pre-eclampsia have made it worse?’ Albert, the charge nurse who’d paged him earlier, enquired.

  Gib shook his head.

  ‘Maternal pre-eclampsia is one of the factors that’s supposed to protect pre-term babies from respiratory distres
s syndrome,’ he muttered, more to himself than to Albert. ‘But what happened earlier doesn’t matter now. What matters is that Andrew’s getting worse when he should be getting better. He’s had surfactant, he’s on continuous positive airway pressure, there’s no indication of infection, yet he’s still labouring to breathe and it’s affecting his heart.’

  ‘Could there be a new infection?’

  Gib turned as he heard the voice and frowned, not at the interruption but at the woman who shouldn’t be here.

  ‘Where’s Thomas?’

  ‘Sleeping.’

  Gib nodded as if accepting the explanation, or perhaps he’d ignored it and was simply indicating the baby.

  ‘This is Andrew. He’s got RDS, and as you can see he’s on continuous positive airway pressure, but he’s failing. He’s had a full course of ampicillin and an aminoglycoside to cover Group B strep, Listeria and gram negative organisms. His blood cultures have been negative for infection for seventy-two hours.’

  Sophie moved closer and looked at the baby, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. She’d have loved to touch him, but hadn’t washed up, intending just to look. Picking up the X-rays from the cart beside the baby’s cot, she held them to the light. The lungs showed the strange ‘ground-glass’ appearance of the hyaline membranes—the other name for RDS being hyaline membrane disease.

  ‘Pneumothorax?’ she said to Gib, who was still staring at her as if she were a being from outer space.

  ‘I thought it might be that—that’s why I paged Gib,’ the nurse explained. ‘Sudden increase in BP then bradycardia and hypotension. I thought pneumothorax for sure, but you can see on the new X-rays up there in the light box, they don’t show it.’

  ‘Albert, this is Sophie Fisher, the neonatalogist who’s due to join the team in January. I’ve been hoping to persuade her to start early and it looks…’ he broke off to smile at Sophie ‘…as if I might have succeeded.’