A Father by Christmas

by Meredith Webber

  Then he nodded at the baby.

  ‘I think we’ll have to put him on high-frequency ventilation. It’s a shame because he’s been breathing on his own so well, even though he’s needed the extra oxygen. I’ve been trying to avoid it because once he’s dependent on the ventilator we’ll have to go through the process of weaning him off, then there’s the added complication of air leaks. But what else can we do?’

  He turned to Sophie.

  ‘How about you stay here with Andrew while Albert sets it up? I’ll tell the Atkins what’s happening.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s fifteen minutes since we sent them outside, and they’ll be getting anxious.’

  ‘Anxious? They’ll be paranoid,’ Sophie muttered to Albert, wondering for the thousandth time just how parents of pre-term or low birth weight babies coped. The new healthy pink baby they’d imagined they’d be taking home didn’t exist, and instead they had this fragile wee infant, taken from them and cocooned in a special crib, with pads and wires and murmuring monitors taking the place of loving hands, sweet songs and gentle kisses.

  ‘Parents get it good here,’ Albert said to her as he set up the ventilator. ‘They’ve a special waiting room for times like this, and they’re allowed to stay with their baby all the time, apart from shift changes and doctors’ rounds. They can touch, and talk and sing, and even hold the baby once he or she is strong enough. We encourage that and ask parents to kangaroo the infant—opening their gown or shirt and holding him or her against their chest. And we’ve got three of those little swing-like hammocks—the rocking cots—for those old enough to be out of the cribs so, all in all, our babies and their families do quite well.’

  Sophie looked around the big, warm room, not divided off but large enough for each crib to have private space around it. In the far corner a baby was having phototherapy for jaundice, but the light was placed so it shone only on that baby and not onto any of the adjoining cots. She saw two of the little hammocks Albert had mentioned, a little like the baby capsules used in cars, but instead of being fixed they hung from A-frame legs. A swaddled baby lay in each of them, the swing mechanisms so delicate the slightest movement of the baby set them rocking, mimicking the movements the baby would feel if it were still in its mother’s womb.

  She nodded her approval, remembering how much she’d liked the place on her first visit, and for the first time in hours she felt in control of her life. This was where she belonged…

  She wandered around the nursery, looking at the other babies, most of whom would be gone before she started work next month, seeing the details that had impressed her the first time—tiny flowers and toys embroidered on the stockingette caps the babies wore on their heads, coloured sheets on the specially warmed mattresses in the cribs. These babies were special and the little extra touches proved just how special their carers thought them.

  She nodded to other nurses moving quietly around the cribs, and to parents sitting by them, then left the room. She’d collect Thomas, drop Etty home, then go back to the serviced apartment she was renting on a week-to-week basis and ask about renting it for a longer period.

  Etty was reading a story to a group of children gathered around her wheelchair, Thomas closest, leaning against one arm of it so his shoulder was touching Etty’s knee.

  He looked up as Sophie came into the room and his face lit up in a smile so special and familiar she felt her heart turn over. Would she ever get over the miracle of this little boy?

  ‘Aunt Etty’s reading a story,’ he told her. ‘Do I have to go or can we stay until she finishes?’

  Aunt Etty already?

  ‘We can stay until she finishes,’ Sophie promised Thomas, settling on the floor beside him then, as he sank down onto her knee, putting her arms around him, brushing her cheek against his soft golden curls.

  Etty read well, changing voices for the characters—a koala, a kangaroo and a wise old owl—and Sophie smiled to herself, thinking this was kind of like an interview for Etty and wondering if that’s what had made her choose to read.

  The story finished, Sophie set Thomas on his feet and stood up herself.

  ‘We’re going to drive Aunt Etty home,’ she said, and Thomas’s eyes widened with delighted surprise.

  ‘We are? That’s great. Her legs don’t work, that’s why she has a chair, but she gave some of the kids a ride in the chair. Will she give me a ride if we take her home?’

  Etty had wheeled away to put the story book back on a shelf and Sophie didn’t answer, thinking it might be better it Thomas didn’t get his ride. If he got hooked on Etty, how could Sophie not employ her?

  They were back on the riverside drive, Etty having given directions, when a cellphone rang. Etty dug in a pocket of her skirt and answered it, speaking briskly, then doubtfully, saying, ‘Well, I’ll ask her,’ before ending the call.

  ‘That was Gib,’ she said, although Sophie had already guessed—guessed too that the question might be about staying to dinner—he was determined to persuade her to take Etty as a carer and probably thought the more time Thomas spent with her, the better.

  ‘He wanted to suggest—’

  Etty stopped and Sophie, who’d just turned off the busy road into the quieter street where Gib and Etty lived, glanced towards her. From the little she knew of Etty, not much would faze her.

  ‘You might as well tell me,’ she said, pulling into the drive and explaining to Thomas that this was where Etty lived.

  ‘Gib wondered—with the problems you’re having finding accommodation—if maybe you’d like to live here.’

  Sophie stared at the cottage in front of them, the extensions hidden behind the leafy garden.

  ‘Live here? With him? Why on earth would he think that?’

  ‘Not exactly with him.’ Etty hurried to explain. ‘The other wing, the one we’ve closed off, has a self-contained two-bedroom flat. Gib built it for me when I moved in, but when Gillian died four years ago he was rattling around in his side of it, so I moved over there and we closed the flat. He’s often spoken about renting it to someone quiet. You’d be ideal.’

  Gillian died?

  Had Gillian been his wife?

  Four years ago and he still wore her ring?

  He must have loved her so much…

  Etty was speaking again, something about a kitchen and bathroom and a separate entrance at the side, but even as Sophie pushed away thoughts of Alexander Gibson’s wife that were so absolutely none of her business, she knew saying yes to this offer was not a good idea!

  Confusing though the day had been, this was crystal clear in Sophie’s mind. It was one thing to be working for a man who made her feel unsettled, and whose touch sent tremors along her nerves—quite another to be living in close proximity to him.

  ‘It’s a wonderful offer but, no, I can’t accept it,’ Sophie said. Thomas, who hadn’t been included in the conversation but had obviously been following at least parts of it, said, ‘But if this is Aunt Etty’s house then it’s got a swimming pool. Aunt Etty was telling us. Couldn’t we, please, live here?’

  Sophie hardened her heart against the wistful tone, and turned to explain to Thomas that they needed a home of their own. Etty’s cellphone rang again, and this time the conversation, on her side at least, was monosyllabic. Two ‘nos’ and one ‘yes’ then an ‘OK’ and that was it.

  ‘Gib said why don’t you try it for a month or two—take the flat at least until other housing becomes available? He said once you’ve lived here for a while and know your way around the city, you’ll have a better idea of where you might like to rent.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Sophie began, but Thomas was bouncing in his car seat, yelling, ‘Say yes, Sophie, please say yes. Aunt Etty reads the best stories.’

  Sophie turned again to study the little boy who’d already lost so much. She saw the blue eyes, so like Hilary’s, and the blond curls, the hair colour Hil’s though the curls must have been his father’s. Resolve melted away. If staying here wo
uld make Thomas happy, then who was she to deny him such a simple delight?

  ‘I guess we could stay,’ she said, ‘but not for ever, you understand. Just until we get a house of our own.’

  ‘With a pool?’ he asked, and she nodded.

  ‘With a pool,’ she promised him.

  Not a good idea! Not a good idea!

  She sighed and climbed out of the car, opening the boot, lifting out Etty’s wheelchair and setting it by the car door for her, then watching as her son clambered onto the knee of his new best friend and was carried towards the house.

  Above them a storm that had threatened all afternoon broke, lightning flashing its vivid warning across the sky, thunder rumbling with a threatening insistence.

  Was someone trying to tell her something?

  Gib stood beside Andrew Atkins’s crib, staring at the little boy, desperate to discover what they were missing. His pager vibrated against his hip, but when he checked the number, it was unfamiliar. A cellphone, but not one he recognised.

  Not now, he thought, although he knew if someone had been given his pager number, the call was probably urgent. He moved out of the unit to make the call from his office down the corridor.

  ‘Sophie Fisher.’

  Sophie Fisher paging him? His mind registered surprise while his body—what the hell was his body doing?

  Heating?

  ‘It’s Gib. You paged me?’

  ‘Yes. I was just thinking. About the little boy—Andrew, wasn’t it? I know you’ve probably checked and that you’d be doing blood and urine values all the time, but I’ve seen an infant with a very rare but bad reaction to furosemide—I think I saw on the chart that was the diuretic you were using. He was secreting more than twenty times the normal calcium levels and the metabolic imbalances—’

  ‘Sophie, you’re a lifesaver—and I think that could be more than a figure of speech. Let me go check. I’ll call you back.’

  It was late when he called back, but she could hear triumph beneath the exhaustion in his voice.

  ‘I hadn’t ever encountered it before, though it’s sure to have been written up somewhere,’ he said, the shadowy self-blame all doctors shared now overtaking the triumph.

  ‘You’ve been too close to him,’ Sophie reminded him, ‘plus trying to do the work of three people, not one.’

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ he said. ‘I should have thought of it.’

  ‘Go home to bed, Gib,’ she said softly, and in his head he saw her face—the dark, smoky grey eyes, the straight, thin nose and generous mouth, the black strands of hair framing it—attractive enough…

  Until she smiled…

  ‘Gib?’

  ‘Sorry, I was falling asleep on the end of the phone. But before I go, Etty phoned earlier, said you’d agreed to move in. Does that mean you’re happy for her to be Thomas’s carer—that you’ll start work earlier? Help out?’

  Silence, then a slow, uncertain ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s—’

  ‘But I’ll need to talk to you about rosters and duty times. I have something on on Friday week—something I can’t put off or not do.’

  ‘I’ll organise it,’ Gib promised. ‘Organise any time off that you need. Having you even a few days a week will be better than going on as we are at the moment. You just tell me when you want to work and I’ll take it from there.’

  He was so busy being pleased about this outcome it took some time for him to hear the echoes of strain and sadness in her words.

  ‘This something you have to do on Friday week—is it something I can help with?’

  A longer pause, and then a strangled, whispered ‘No.’

  He heard the click as she disconnected and sat looking at his phone for a very long time.

  He could have sworn she’d started crying…

  CHAPTER THREE

  HE’D been at work when they moved in, but returning home on the Saturday evening, he felt the change in the atmosphere of the house—as if it had come to life again. He knew Etty had been spending time with Thomas, first at the child-care centre then going along on shopping expeditions with him and Sophie, picnicking with them one afternoon in the botanical gardens.

  He’d felt aggrieved he hadn’t been invited, but that had been more because he’d have liked to get to know Sophie better than pursuing his acquaintance with a three-year-old. He was assuring himself it was Sophie as a colleague he wanted to get to know better when Etty called him to dinner.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked Etty as she bustled around the kitchen, finalising the meal she was preparing for him.

  ‘With Sophie and Thomas? I think so, though I sense Sophie is less delighted than Thomas is with the arrangement. Understandable, living so close to a boss she doesn’t really know.’

  She paused, and Gib wondered just what was coming next. It wasn’t like Etty not to come right out with whatever she needed to say.

  ‘We’ve got to talk, too,’ she finally said, putting down his dinner in front of him. ‘About the arrangements here.’

  Another pause, then she added, ‘I’ve asked Sophie to come in at nine. I thought with all of us present, we might be able to thrash it out.’

  His dinner, a fiery chicken curry that was one of Etty’s specialities, suddenly lost taste.

  ‘Thrash what out?’

  ‘My position! I live with you and earn my keep cooking, shopping and housekeeping for you, but if I’m going to work for Sophie, then I should be doing that for her. So I should be paying you board for my room here, and maybe finding someone else to do the housekeeping for you, though if you wanted live-in help, I could shift back into the flat—Sophie says she and Thomas are used to sharing a room and I could have the spare room.’

  ‘But—’

  Before Gib could voice his protest there was a soft knock on the door that closed off the second wing from the big living-dining area.

  Etty called for Sophie to come in and she entered, dressed in a plain white T-shirt and a white floaty kind of skirt that danced around her ankles as she moved.

  ‘Etty did invite me,’ she said hesitantly, while Gib scanned her face for signs of tears, although it had been two days since he’d heard her cry on the telephone.

  ‘You’re welcome any time. I know you’re officially living in the flat, but feel free to use this room as well.’

  She shook her head but half smiled as she said, ‘You know not what you’re saying! Small boys can reduce a room like this to chaos in five minutes flat. I don’t know how they do it, but they seem to trail toys behind them in an invisible cloud, scattering them as they move.’

  Sophie reached out and touched the back of a fat leather armchair, needing the support as she tried to settle her nerves. Shifting into this house had been the worst decision she’d ever made, and considering an ill-considered engagement, the purchase of a totally unridable motorbike and a whole wardrobe full of bad garment choices, she’d made some beauties!

  The uneasiness she felt when she was with Gib had intensified within his house—even when he wasn’t in it—and now, seeing him sitting there, prodding at his dinner while he watched her with an unreadable expression on his face, she felt tension burning through her muscles and stiffening her nerves, so any minute now she’d probably start to shake.

  Make a complete idiot of herself!

  ‘Sit.’

  Etty gave the order.

  ‘I’ll make coffee while Gib finishes his dinner. Take the chair by the window. You’ll see the boats that do the dinner cruises going by, and the City Cats—the ferries that run back and forth to the city and beyond. If you’ve nothing planned for tomorrow, Thomas would love a trip on the ferry. You can take swimming things and get off at South-bank where there’s a great beach and swimming area, or take a picnic and go right up to New Farm Park.’

  Sophie sat, barely listening to Etty’s suggestions but pleased to have something to do that would take her further away from Gib and put her in a position where she wasn’
t looking directly at him.

  ‘Or you could take Thomas on the ferry, Et,’ he said,

  making Sophie turn in spite of her unwillingness to look at him. ‘And I could take Sophie for an orientation tour of the hospital. I’ll probably be too busy to do it on Monday when she starts work, but tomorrow we could do it at our leisure.’

  She opened her mouth and then closed it again. It would be good to get a feel for the hospital before she began work—it was just a pity Gib couldn’t take Thomas on the ferry and Etty do the hospital bit. She felt safe with Etty.

  And not safe with Gib?

  Safe? What kind of word was that to be using about people?

  ‘Fine with me,’ Etty was saying, and Gib laughed.

  ‘You talk about me bulldozing people, Et,’ he said. ‘Here we both are, virtually taking over Sophie’s life. If you’d like to spend a quiet day at home with Thomas, Sophie, you just say so.’

  ‘I probably should feel put out about it,’ she said, smiling at both of them, ‘but, in fact, it’s quite nice to have someone else telling me what to do. Just lately I’ve had to make some huge decisions, then sell a house, pack our belongings and organise the move, so having someone making arrangements for me is…’ She paused, not wanting them to get the idea she needed—or wanted—that to continue.

  ‘Nice for a change,’ Etty finished for her, coming towards her with a tray containing a coffee pot and three cups, and what looked—and smelt—like a freshly baked chocolate cake.

  ‘You’ve been helping me move in all day—when did you get the time to bake a cake?’ Sophie demanded.

  Etty smiled at her.

  ‘I’m adept at doing more than one thing at a time, which is what I wanted to talk to the two of you about. You with us, Gib?’

  He stood up and crossed towards them, moving like a man at ease in his skin. And why wouldn’t he be? Sophie asked herself, disturbed anew that little things like the way he moved should be on her mind.

  ‘I thought perhaps the two of you could share me,’ Etty began. ‘I can stay where I am on Gib’s side of the house, with a baby monitor connecting me to Thomas’s room when Sophie’s on duty or on call at night, take care of Thomas during the day when he’s not at child care, even drop him there or collect him from there when it suits you, Sophie. But if you’re at home, I’ll keep out of the way so you have your special time with him. If you’re at home, you do his bath and dinner and the putting-to-bed routine, while I do dinner out here, then when he’s settled, is there any reason why you can’t have your dinner with Gib and me—or just with me if Gib’s not here?’