The Italian Surgeon

by Meredith Webber

  Luca found her in the garden with the little boy who’d lost his legs, teaching him nursery rhymes from her own childhood. For a long time he just looked at her, taking in the dusty jeans and grubby T-shirt, the once shiny hair dulled by dust and lack of time to wash it, her face alight with pleasure as the little boy repeated words he didn’t understand after her.

  That she had come to find him still seemed unbelievable, and, though his initial reaction had been anger that she’d put herself in danger, now his heart was so full of happiness he didn’t think he’d ever be able to express it.

  He walked towards her, to tell her some news Martin had just imparted. The airfield had been cleared and more medical people were flying in the following day. They could fly out on the plane bringing in the relief later tomorrow.

  He knew he must be frowning and tried to wipe the expression off his face, knowing Rachel would pick up on it.

  ‘Luca!’

  She looked up at him and breathed his name. Nothing more, just that, but the word was so full of love he thought his heart would burst.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, knowing the words had to be in English this time. Then he knelt beside her and took her hand. ‘Always and for ever.’

  She looked at him, her amber eyes as serious as he had ever seen them, then a sad little smile tilted up the left side of her lips.

  ‘That sounds a lot like the little speech you made back in the lounge at Jimmie’s when I yelled at you and then you headed off to be captured by rebels in a foreign country.’

  ‘I meant it then and I mean it now. Yes, I had thought of you coming to work for me, with me—of the two of us working together—but that was an added attraction quite apart from my love, because first and always it was you.’

  Then his mouth dried up and no more words would come. She looked at him, eyes wide, the little boy on her knee also watching him.

  ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ she whispered, the sad smile back in place.

  He took her hands and nodded.

  ‘A relief team is flying in tomorrow and the Red Cross has promised more medical staff to follow. Martin has suggested we fly out on tomorrow’s plane when it leaves. He says we’ll no longer be needed here.’

  He hesitated, then said, ‘I would like you on that plane. Away from this place.’

  ‘But you said we’ll no longer be needed—that means both of us, Luca.’

  ‘I would go, but I cannot leave the baby. I know I haven’t been able to spend much time with him, neither can I do anything any competent nurse couldn’t do, but his drug regimen is still too important to his survival to leave him unsupervised.’ He met her eyes and she knew he was begging her to understand.

  ‘I can’t leave so fragile a patient without specialist care.’

  Rachel heard the words, and deep inside she felt them as well. This was part of what she loved about this man—his commitment to the infants he served.

  Although…

  ‘But he is one baby, Luca. Back in Italy there are dozens of babies who would benefit from your skills. Don’t they need you, too?’

  ‘There are other specialists back there,’ he reminded her. ‘And I don’t intend staying for ever—just until we know the little boy is stable, and the hospital is operating efficiently enough for me to know he will get proper treatment. You understand?’

  Understanding was one thing, but to leave this place without Luca?

  It was unthinkable.

  ‘We could take him with us,’ Rachel suggested. ‘He’s off the ventilator, but even if he needed oxygen, there’d be some way we could hook him up to the plane’s supply.’

  ‘Take him with us?’

  He looked so startled Rachel had to smile.

  ‘Think about it, Luca. He’ll need a second op before too long and, no matter how long you stay, you don’t have the facilities to do it here. As things are, his parents aren’t seeing him at all, but if we could visit them, or get a message to them, and suggest we do this, then, when things settle down here and they’re free to travel—

  ‘ If they’re free to travel!’

  Rachel shrugged off the interruption.

  ‘Whatever! They’ll either be reunited with him or they won’t, but at least the little boy will be OK. Don’t you think they’d choose life for him no matter what their fate? They made that choice, travelling to Australia with him for the operation.’

  Luca still looked bemused, though now he was frowning.

  ‘But someone will have to care for him. He won’t be in hospital for ever.’

  ‘ I’ll care for him,’ Rachel said quietly, hugging the little boy on her lap a little closer. ‘I know he won’t be mine but that won’t stop me loving him, and I’ll go into it knowing it’s a foster-situation and one day I’ll have to give him back. But I could do it, Luca. I would do it.’

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and looked at him, not wanting to beg for his agreement but silently beseeching him to see her point. Then he smiled and she knew everything would be all right.

  ‘ We could do it,’ he said softly, then he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘But you are sure? You would take on this child, knowing of his problems? Knowing you could grow to love him then lose him, one way or another?’

  Rachel knew how important the question was, and she paused, thinking it through, before she answered.

  ‘I’m sure, Luca.’

  He must have heard the certainty in her voice for he nodded.

  ‘I’ll go and see who I can sweet-talk into letting me contact the parents.’

  Rachel caught his hand.

  ‘Go carefully,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t put yourself in danger again.’

  Luca touched his palm to her cheek.

  ‘I won’t do that—but I’ve built up some credibility working here, and I think I know who to approach about this.’

  Another kiss and he was gone, leaving Rachel half excited and half anxious. No matter how much work Luca had done for injured rebel soldiers in the hospital, if he was seen to be aligning himself with the old regime he could end up in trouble.

  She didn’t see him again until late that night. She was sitting by the baby’s bed, wondering about his future, when she heard footsteps coming along the aisle between the beds.

  Luca’s footsteps, she was sure, though if she’d been asked if she could recognise them she’d have said no.

  She turned to see him, and even in the muted light of the ward, she could see the smile on his face.

  Behind him, two other figures moved, but it wasn’t until Luca introduced them that Rachel realised his sweet-talking had achieved a miracle—the baby’s parents had been released and would fly to Switzerland with the departing aid workers.

  ‘So we shall all go,’ Luca whispered, drawing Rachel away so the parents could touch their son.

  Luca’s arms closed around her and he held her for a minute, neither of them speaking—content just to be together.

  ‘Come, I’ll walk you to your room,’ he whispered, and the huskiness in his voice told her just where that walk would lead. But much as she wanted to lie in Luca’s arms and forget, for a little while, the horrors she had witnessed, she had to shake her head.

  ‘One last night—I promised Martin I’d stay on duty. I can sleep when we’re finally on the plane.’

  Luca’s arms tightened around her and he kissed the top of her head—thank heavens she’d scrounged that bucket of water and washed her hair today!

  ‘And I promised Martin I’d see some of the new patients that were brought in from some outlying district where fighting continues,’ Luca admitted. ‘But once we’re home, my lovely Rachel, we will shut ourselves away in my apartment and make up for lost time.’

  But Luca was wrong. Once home, he was claimed first by media people demanding interviews and information, then by government people demanding more information, then by his family, who clustered protectively around him, talking, hugging, touching him as i
f to make sure he was really there.

  And through most of it, Rachel slept. They were staying at Paola’s as the paparazzi were camped outside Luca’s apartment building. Paola had taken one look at Rachel and led her to a bathroom, insisting she take as long as she like in the shower, handing her a towelling robe to put on after it, and showing her a bedroom near the bathroom where she could sleep.

  ‘You are still sleeping?’

  Luca’s voice—the bed moving—Luca’s body sliding in beside hers, smelling fresh and clean and so masculine Rachel felt excitement stir within her.

  ‘Not now,’ she whispered, but though he put his arms around her and drew her close, he was asleep before the kiss he brushed against her lips was finished.

  So now he slept, while she watched over him, content to have him near while she explored all the wondrous feelings that were tied up in her love for Luca.

  EPILOGUE

  THE summer sun beat down on the pavement, drawing up swirls of steamy heat.

  ‘We could have called a cab,’ Luca complained as he walked from the apartment to the hospital with his wife of three months.

  ‘But that wouldn’t have been the same,’ Rachel told him, clinging to his arm and thinking of the other times they’d walked together along this pavement.

  Luca had wanted to stay in a hotel in the city for this short trip back to Sydney, but Rachel had begged him to try to get his old apartment back, or another one in the same building.

  ‘Not to relive the past,’ she’d said, ‘but for the fun of it.’

  So here they were, walking the familiar street, Rachel excited at the prospect of seeing her friends again, though Kurt, Alex and Annie, and Phil and Maggie had all flown to Italy to celebrate Luca and Rachel’s wedding.

  As they reached the hospital gates, they saw Kurt standing there, while the other two couples were approaching from the opposite direction.

  Kurt kissed Rachel on the cheek, shook hands with Luca, then put his arm around Rachel in his usual proprietorial way.

  ‘That guy treating you OK?’ he asked, and Luca saw colour sweep into Rachel’s cheeks.

  So often in this way she showed him her thoughts of love, but this time, he suspected, the colour was due to other thoughts. Thoughts of the baby they had just learned she was carrying.

  Maggie, too, was pregnant, and having discovered she had a luteal phase defect, which had caused her previous miscarriages, daily injections during her early pregnancy had ensured she would carry this baby to full term.

  Luca wondered if Phil felt the same ridiculously overwhelming pride in Maggie’s pregnancy that he himself was feeling in Rachel’s. His sisters were constantly teasing him about the perpetual smile on his face, but why wouldn’t he be smiling when he had so much to be happy about?

  He looked at the woman who’d brought him this happiness. She was talking to Kurt, asking him about his life and his decision to remain in Australia when the rest of the team returned to the US.

  Asking him even more personal questions, if the colour now rising in Kurt’s cheeks was any indication.

  Luca smiled to himself. Rachel had been certain her friend must finally have found someone he really loved, hence the decision to remain in Sydney as part of the new team at Jimmie’s.

  She was also hoping to meet this ‘someone’ during their few days in Sydney, and was no doubt pestering Kurt about where and when this meeting could take place.

  Then the others reached them, and after a flurry of kisses, hugs and handshakes they walked as a group into the hospital grounds, where a big marquee had been set up for the official opening ceremony of the St James’s Children’s Hospital Paediatric Cardiac Surgical Unit.

  Becky was waiting for them inside, ready to usher them into their places in the front row of seats.

  ‘And how’s my favourite sexy Italian?’ she whispered to Luca.

  ‘Very well,’ he told her formally, then nodded to where Ned hovered not far away. ‘And how are you?’ he teased, knowing an engagement between the couple was imminent.

  ‘So happy I could shout it to the stars,’ Becky said, and Luca knew exactly what she meant.

  He put his arm around his wife and guided her to her seat, then, as he had done on the bus many months ago, he held her hand.

  She was smiling, but he knew she was sad inside, for this was the real end of the team she, Kurt and Alex had been for many years. And this was the real goodbye to her friends, although Luca was sure they would all see each other whenever possible.

  Then she leaned closer to him and whispered in his ear.

  ‘I loved my work, but not nearly as much as I love you,’ she reminded him, and he wondered when she’d begun to read his thoughts!

  A dais had been erected in the front of the marquee, and above it the name of the new unit had been printed on a very long banner.

  ‘At least no one will be able to make an acronym of it,’ Kurt said. ‘I mean, how would you pronounce SJCHPCSU?’

  ‘Maybe they could call it Jimmie’s kids’ hearts’ unit,’ Maggie suggested.

  ‘Or just,’ Annie said quietly, “A Very Special Place”. Wouldn’t that describe it?’

  And the people who’d worked to establish the unit, and save the lives of children who’d come through its doors, all nodded their agreement.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  MILLS & BOON and MILLS & BOON with the Rose Device are registered trademarks of the publisher.

  © Meredith Webber 2005

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-5833-7