Her Brooding Italian Surgeon

by Fiona Lowe

  Go back today with Abbie. The thought circulated, gathering momentum.

  He clenched his teeth. I’m never going back. Going back wouldn’t achieve a thing, and he abruptly extinguished the thought. He’d let his brother down the day he died, he’d let Christina down, and revisiting the scene wouldn’t absolve him of that. Instead, he had his day all planned out and his night as well, and all of it added up to work. He might be ‘home’ but he was an adult and not subject to being told what to do—not by his father, mother or grandmother.

  ‘Is it your birthday?’ Erin winked at him as she handed him the messages. ‘You better buy us cake if it is.’

  He dragged up a smile. ‘If I bring in tiramisu tomorrow do you think Helen on the switchboard would ring them all and say I got the messages but I’m tied up in Theatre for the whole day?’ It was easier to lie by omission than go into the truth.

  Erin laughed. ‘For cake and for you, I’m sure that can be arranged. See you in ten.’

  She walked out and the visiting anaesthetist looked up from his paper. ‘Now that’s a change.’

  Leo hadn’t warmed to his colleague but working harmony deemed he be polite. ‘Sorry, I don’t follow?’

  The other doctor folded the paper in half. ‘You have to admit, compared to frumpy McFarlane, that bit of skirt’s worth looking at.’

  A cold anger chilled Leo to his marrow. ‘Abbie McFarlane is a fine doctor.’

  ‘Sure she is, but you have to admit she’s nothing to write home about.’

  Somehow he managed not to lunge at the self-satisfied bastard’s throat. ‘Look at her eyes next time you see her and try calling her plain after that.’

  ‘Mate, you surprise me.’ He gave Leo a man-to-man leer. ‘It’s not the window to the soul that interests me about a woman.’

  Revulsion filled him. Surely he’d never been that shallow but his father’s voice mocked him. Beautiful women who fill your bed but not your soul. He downed his coffee. ‘We need to get back to it.’

  The anaesthetist rose to his feet. ‘What the hell were you thinking when you drew up this list?’

  Leo managed to grind the words out. ‘I like to keep busy.’

  ‘We’re going to be here until well after dark,’ the anaesthetist grumbled.

  ‘That’s the general idea.’

  But his colleague didn’t hear the muttered words, having already left the room.

  Abbie stared into space. Thirty hours had passed since the two blue lines on her pregnancy test had burned into her retinas. Ever since that moment, everything she looked at was framed by those lines. Two uncompromising lines.

  Pregnant.

  A baby.

  Motherhood.

  It was the best and worst possible news.

  She re-spun the pregnancy wheel and chewed her lip. By her reckoning, she was four weeks pregnant and she’d worked that out so often she’d worn the date off the wheel. Just pregnant but pregnant enough to know her life had irrevocably changed. The doctor in her knew she had to see an obstetrician as soon as possible to have the IUD removed. Those sorts of practical decisions were the easy ones. Telling Leo—that came under the banner of way too hard. He’d already married one woman out of a misguided sense of duty and that was still eating him alive.

  I love kids… No relationship is worth the hurt and when kids are involved it’s even worse.

  She put her head down on her desk and dragged her fingers through her hair. She loved a man who didn’t want a relationship or children, and she was pregnant with his child. A man who would feel honour bound to do the right thing, no matter how much he hated the thought. How much more of a disaster could she have possibly plunged herself into?

  She sat up and drank a glass of water. She hadn’t seen or spoken to Leo since yesterday morning because he’d gone into self-imposed hiding to get through the anniversary of Dom’s death. It hadn’t surprised her at all when his text had come through saying, Delayed at work. Tomorrow night, I promise. Leo X.

  Leo, the man she loved. The father of her baby.

  Her phone beeped and she read the screen. We’ll cook gnocchi together at your place. L X

  She smiled and a warm cosy feeling pushed aside all her anxieties. Food is not just for a hungry belly. It feeds the soul. She hadn’t understood what Maria had meant when she’d told her that but now she did. When you cooked with someone or for someone you loved then the love transferred to the food.

  Leo wanted to cook with her. Leo wanted to stay the whole night with her. He wanted to be with her. The hope that had sprouted yesterday grew taller and, like the grapevine, tendrils curled around her heart, anchoring fast. Would he want to stay for ever because he wanted to?

  She bit her lip again, this time tasting blood. During the early hours of the morning, with his masculine scent still on her sheets from the previous night, and with his tender voice in her head, she’d conjured up fairy tales of them together as a couple, together as parents of a black-haired, black-eyed baby and surrounded by the love of his family. A family so unlike her own, a family who adored children. The urge to ring him right then and blurt out the news had almost overpowered her.

  But she’d held back. She wanted to do this the right way. She’d have the ultrasound first, check if the IUD was going to cause a problem and get all the facts before she spoke to him face to face. She had a plan and it was important to stick to it. The plan was the only thing she had.

  She picked up the phone and dialled Mildura hospital’s obstetric department. ‘Hello, it’s Abbie McFarlane, GP from Bandarra speaking. I need an urgent appointment with Alistair Macklin.’

  Leo couldn’t settle. He’d had the worst night’s sleep in a long time, tossing and turning with snatches of dreams where Abbie lay in his arms one minute and had vanished in the next. He’d searched everywhere for her—running and calling, but he hadn’t been able to find her. He’d woken with a start, his heart pounding and with a rushing return of the same unease he’d had when he’d first arrived back in Bandarra. He hadn’t even realised he’d been living without it for the last few weeks until this morning.

  He’d left home before the family were up and completed his rounds early. All his patients from yesterday were stable, which was great for them but left him with nothing much to do. He’d tossed a few balls to Alec, who’d now joined the Bandarra under-thirteens cricket team and was completely focused on improving his game. Then he’d gone for a long, hard bike ride with the Murray-to-Moyne crew. Hell, he’d even gone grocery shopping for tonight’s dinner with Abbie, but nothing had completely banished the simmering sense of unease that bubbled inside him.

  He checked his watch again. Abbie wasn’t due to finish at the clinic for a few hours and he wasn’t rostered on today but he had an increasing need to see her. He needed to breathe in her scent, lose himself in her clear rainforest-green eyes, wrap his arms around her and let her voice wash over him. Her voice, which could be soft and soothing one minute and deep and husky the next, and he couldn’t get enough of it.

  As he walked towards the clinic’s front door, ominous black clouds gathered in the west. Leo frowned, his years in the city never completely removing the country’s preoccupation with the weather. Bandarra always needed water but rain during harvest was never welcome. His hand turned the large door handle and he stepped inside the cool and welcoming clinic.

  He was immediately struck by the quiet. The front desk, or ‘command centre’ as Abbie jokingly called it, was empty and Jessica, the receptionist who kept command, was nowhere to be seen. No patients waited in the comfortable chairs and the toys that usually lay scattered were stacked neatly into a box. Had he got the roster wrong? He glanced at the movement board and saw Abbie was signed in and a zip of delight shot through him. As there were no patients, perhaps he could convince her to cut out early.

  He walked down the corridor to her office and knocked on the door. After a moment’s silence he pressed his ear to the door and, as he couldn’t he
ar the murmuring of voices, he opened the door. ‘Surprise.’

  But the room was empty, although the computer purred away, so he decided to wait for Abbie and deal with his email on a big screen rather than his phone. With only a few days before he returned to Melbourne, his receptionist was firing emails to him every hour as she adeptly juggled his schedule between his rooms and Melbourne City.

  ‘Abbie, Alistair Macklin’s—oh, Leo.’ Jessica stalled in the doorway, her hand on her watch. ‘Sorry, I thought Abbie was here doing paperwork.’

  He smiled at the flustered receptionist. ‘I’m looking for her too so I thought I’d check my emails while I waited. Do you want me to give her the message?’

  Jessica hesitated as if she was in two minds and then she rechecked her watch. ‘Do you mind? It’s just I was supposed to have left half an hour ago. Abbie can’t be far away because she didn’t sign out with me.’ She slid a fax onto the desk. ‘Just make sure she gets this message about Alistair Macklin changing the date and time. I’ve moved all her patients over to your clinic in the morning so she’s got the whole day off.’

  ‘Can do.’ He grinned at Jess, who was usually so efficient and well organised. ‘Does that mean I have to start at eight tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry.’ The words floated on a wail. ‘I know I should have asked you first but all of this happened so quickly and—’

  The sound of an impatient horn beeped three times. ‘And Gavin’s waiting for you. It’s fine, Jess, just go.’

  ‘Thanks, Leo, I owe you one, but make sure you give Abbie the paper.’

  He waved her out of the door. ‘Consider it done.’ He was glad to help out while he was here so Abbie could attend one of the professional development seminars at the Mildura Base hospital. As he picked up the paper to place it under his phone so he didn’t forget about it, his gaze caught the word Obstetric. Was Abbie brushing up on her baby-catching skills? He looked more closely and read, Obstetric Clinic, patient Abbie McFarlane #71892.

  His mouth dried as his throat constricted, and the paper crumpled in his hand.

  Abbie was pregnant.

  His hand jerked up to his head as dread skittered through him, screaming. Pregnant.

  No way, not possible.

  Somehow his brain managed to kick in, all rational and matter-of-fact. Abbie had an IUD and there’d only been that one time they hadn’t used a condom. One time. Once. What were the odds?

  But, despite the reassurances, his eyes stayed glued on the words Obstetric Clinic. It didn’t say ‘gynaecology’, meaning an annual check-up and pap test; it said Obstetrics. That meant pregnancy.

  A baby.

  His blood pounded so hard and fast it roared in his ears. He heard Dom’s voice, Christina’s grief and his chest seized. I hate you. The past hauled him down, back to black and bleak days. He couldn’t do this again. He dragged in a ragged breath, desperately trying to push away the voices.

  A baby.

  His baby.

  An image of a plump, round-faced baby with curly hair and large round eyes rose in his mind and the panic eased slightly. His baby. For a second, an incredible feeling of warmth spread through him before the fear returned, along with Christina’s bleak and miserable expression.

  A clap of thunder broke overhead, making him jump. He turned towards the window as huge drops of rain pelted against the glass, quickly joining together to form wide rivulets of water. The rumble of more thunder sounded in the distance.

  I don’t want to have a child on my own. Abbie’s words rumbled in his mind before striking him like lightning and burning into him. She’d been adamant she didn’t want a child. He could clearly see the straight set of her shoulders and the legacy of Greg’s treatment of her still hovering around her. He could hear her firm voice as she spoke about her miserable childhood, and her determination that no kid would go through what she’d been through.

  Never dependent on anyone ever again. His breathing sped up, coming in hard and fast runs, and he was barely able to force air down into his tight chest. There could only be one reason for this appointment. Only one reason for the urgency and reorganisation of the clinic and patients.

  He dry retched. The thought of a baby terrified him, the thought of even trying to have a future with Abbie scared him rigid, but the realisation of what Abbie planned to do completely gutted him.

  Abbie walked through the door. ‘Oh, hello. Isn’t the rain wonderful?’

  Leo dragged his gaze upwards, his knuckles white, still clutching the paper. Her trademark glossy caramel curls framed her face as usual but he caught the vestiges of strain in the creases around her generous mouth. ‘Not for the grapes.’

  Her brow creased slightly. ‘Oh, right, I didn’t think about that. Still, you’re a lovely surprise.’ She sounded distracted and rounded the desk, putting her arms around his neck, kissing him lightly. Almost absently. ‘I didn’t expect to see you until dinner.’

  Leo’s brain struggled to function. Part of him wanted to haul her against him and kiss her hard and part of him didn’t want to touch her. Somewhere in the ‘common sense’ zone of his mind he knew he should just let things play out as they would have done if he hadn’t come into the office. But the reverberating words ‘Obstetric Clinic’ boomed in his head, driving out every coherent thought.

  ‘Are you pregnant?’

  Leo’s black eyes glittered with anger as his scorching and accusatory words burned into her. Memories of Greg stormed in and she started to shake. How do you know? Her breath picked up, fast and shallow. This wasn’t how she’d planned to tell him. Not like this, when she could hear and see his acrimony. See the terrors of his past so clearly on his face. She bit her lip and faced him down. ‘What sort of question is that?’

  ‘One that deserves an answer.’ He shoved a piece of paper at her, his hand rigid with a vibrating fury that clung to every part of him.

  A flash of lightning lit up the room and with trembling hands she saw the familiar logo of the Mildura Base hospital, read her name and the details of her appointment at the obstetric clinic. A jet of self-righteous resentment surged through her. ‘This is private. How did you get this?’

  He met her glare with one of his own, completely devoid of any contrition. ‘Jess had to leave and I took the message. But that’s irrelevant.’ He shot out of his chair and towered over her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  The oxygen in the air vanished, immediately replaced by fear. Because of this reaction. ‘It’s my problem.’

  Leo roared. ‘It’s a baby.’

  The deafening sound of the rain on the tin roof seemed to amplify his anger. She shuddered at his rage, pushing down the memories that threatened to swamp her and forcing herself to stand firm. ‘I know it’s a baby.’ Against all odds, it’s the gift of a baby. ‘A baby who, given the fact I have an IUD, shouldn’t even exist but does.’

  ‘Dio mio, so your solution is a termination?’ He slammed his fist into his palm, his eyes wild and his gaze filled with disgust.

  Her stomach dropped to the floor, nausea swamping her, and she gripped the edge of the desk as her head spun. Her chest burned at his betrayal, turning four glorious weeks into bitter dust. ‘That’s what you think I’d do?’

  His arms flew into the air, gesticulating passionately. ‘Your secrecy, the urgency of the appointment; what else was I to think?’ But for the first time a hint of uncertainty ringed him.

  Cloaking sadness made her gag and she dragged in a breath. ‘You really don’t know me at all, do you.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. We only met a month ago.’

  His words knocked all the air out of her lungs, leaving nothing but aching cramp.

  His defiant stance matched his words. ‘You told me you didn’t want to have children.’

  ‘And, just like that, you tried and judged me.’ She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to stop herself from shaking. ‘Leo, I know this is a shock. I’m still reeling too but listen to me. I’m see
ing Alistair to have a scan. The IUD could cause problems and I wanted to have all the information first-hand so you and I could discuss it.’ A sigh shuddered out of her. ‘So we know exactly what we’re dealing with.’

  ‘We’re dealing with our baby.’

  She nodded in silence. At least they agreed on that much. For a moment his face softened and she thought he’d extend his arms out towards her like he did so often, and then pull her gently against his chest before burying his face in her hair and whispering, tesoro. But he didn’t.

  ‘Right.’ He dragged a hand through his hair and started to pace, the surgeon-in-charge. ‘And if everything’s fine then you’ll come to Melbourne.’

  She started and hope spluttered. ‘You want me to come to Melbourne with you?’

  He rubbed the scar on his chin. ‘It’s not really a choice now, is it?’

  Resignation and anger simmered through his stark words, hurling hurt at her. Abbie braced herself. ‘We have a choice, Leo; I’m not like Christina, I’m not an unskilled eighteen-year-old from a tiny town in rural Italy.’

  He stiffened and spoke through tight lips. ‘But you’re pregnant with my child so we have to do what’s right by the child.’

  She’d expected this and her legs trembled and she locked her knees. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘We give it a go.’

  She stared into his eyes, trying to read them, but got nothing. Give it a go. What was that code for? ‘Give what a go?’

  ‘Us.’ His mouth flattened into a resentful line full of past hurt. ‘You never know; this time the odds might fall my way.’

  Might. Her heart thundered hard against her chest, each beat excruciatingly painful as he seemingly ignored all the wonderful moments they’d shared in the last few weeks. ‘And if it doesn’t work out, what then?’

  He frowned. ‘Abbie, we’ve only known each other a month. You understand what that means? Believe me, I know that’s not long enough to predict anything.’

  You understand. Like rose thorns tearing through skin, his words ripped through her. The same words her father had used against her. The same words Greg had flung at her. He doesn’t love you. The agony of that realisation bore down on her so hard she could feel herself crumpling under the weight.