Steve was studying her as if trying to read her thoughts, but she was surprised by his question.
‘Would it have saved your marriage? Was that your reason for going through IVF?’
She slid the straw she’d been working on into the cane, checked the labelling and put it into the unit that would slowly take it down to the required temperature for storage. The machine did this automatically so, having set the final temperature, there was nothing more for her to do.
Except consider Steve’s question, which had startled her, only now making her realise it was something she hadn’t considered.
She looked into his eyes and swallowed the lump, answering honestly.
‘I kept telling myself it would, but in truth I doubt it, and probably I knew it even as I put myself through those endless cycles and weeks of hope, then dashing disappointments.’
She thought about it now. Yes, she and Nigel might have stayed married, but what would have been the point?
Steve reached out and took hold of her hands again, turning her to face him.
‘Tell me,’ he said, and she shrugged her shoulders.
‘Thinking about it now, bringing a child into my and Nigel’s marriage would have been a mistake. Yes, I wanted a child, longed for a child, ached for a child, but looking back I know I was being selfish. A child would have made my life complete.’
She looked at Steve, looked deep into those dark eyes that saw too much.
‘I suppose it would have filled the gap that Nigel’s playing around had caused in my life.’
She gave a huff of laughter.
‘How’s that for a reason to have a child?’
Steve drew her close, held her, then kissed her gently on the forehead.
‘Go, if you feel you have to,’ he said quietly. ‘I understand now. But can I call you when I get back?’
She tightened her grip on him—holding him one last time.
‘No, Steve,’ she said quietly. ‘You know it was only ever going to be for here.’
‘Because you can’t have children? There’s more to a marriage than children. More to life than family.’
She kissed him then, just lightly on the lips.
‘You know full well you don’t believe that, not for a moment.’
Another kiss.
And now she moved more forcefully away, kissed him a quick goodbye, and hurried back to her bedroom, his offer of a lift to the airport floating in the air behind her.
‘You’ve got an appointment,’ she called back, all business, ‘and I’ve ordered a taxi.’
Steve made his way back up to the clinic, his mind in a turmoil. But trying to sort out his thoughts was impossible, mainly because what he felt most strongly was anger. It was happening again, a woman he loved walking away from him.
Loved?
That thought brought him up short.
Yes, loved...
And suddenly it seemed as if his whole life had been a series of losing loved ones—his parents, Sally, Liane, and now Fran.
Nonsense, his practical self muttered. People lost loved ones every day, and what’s more he detested self-pity.
But this loss felt different, his whole body seeming to be affected by Fran’s imminent departure.
Not that he had time to brood, or analyse it.
He’d see the Hopoates and think about it later.
CHAPTER NINE
‘YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED to be back yet,’ Andy said, coming upon Fran in the lab three days after she’d returned.
She’d actually spoken to him on her first day back, answering a question about a patient’s frozen embryos, but it obviously hadn’t clicked with him then that she’d been away.
‘Did everything work out all right?’ he was asking anxiously. ‘You got on well with Steve? Got the job done?’
Fran had to smile at her absent-minded but still very caring employer.
‘Got the job done,’ she said, ignoring his other questions, though the pain in her heart reminded her just how well she’d got on with Steve. ‘I’m back a little early because I wasn’t needed for that last week of pregnancy testing.’
He nodded and touched her briefly on the arm, saying more about his understanding with that touch than a hundred words would have said.
‘Well, good to have you back anyway,’ he said. ‘I want to take some immature eggs from a woman who’s coming in this afternoon and I really would rather trust them to you than to one of the others, good though they might be.’
‘Well, I’m here and happy to look after them,’ she told him, and won a warm smile.
‘I’m glad you’re back too,’ Mike, her second in command said when Andy had wandered off. ‘I know what to do and how to do it, but the one lot of IVM eggs I’ve looked after while you were away didn’t look nearly as healthy as the ones you’ve cared for.’
He smiled at her.
‘Must be the woman’s touch, you make a more natural clucky hen.’
The description took her right back to Vanuatu and the Hopoates, and for all she didn’t want to hear about the failures of the couples she’d met, she did hope that the Lords of the Heavens and Canoes had success.
She realised that her face must have revealed her thoughts when Mike asked, ‘You’re back there, aren’t you? Back in the islands? You liked it?’
She smiled, remembering the sheer joy of waking up in that tropical paradise, the beauty, the lush plant growth—Steve—then shook her head.
‘Not liked but loved it,’ she admitted. ‘The place, the people, the beauty—there was a lot to love.’
‘Yet you came back early?’
‘Not you, too,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had Andy on about that. I wasn’t needed, okay?’
The snap in her words had Mike shrugging and holding up his hands in an ‘I surrender’ gesture.
‘I only asked,’ he muttered as he walked away.
Fran sighed.
She’d told herself that once she’d settled back into work everything would be okay. Her three weeks in the islands would be locked away in a deep compartment of her mind, the door only to be opened now and then so she could relive the happy memories.
But that door wouldn’t be opened for a while.
Not until the rawness of leaving Steve had healed and she could remember all the good parts without pain.
Would that day ever come?
‘Fran?’
She looked up to see one of the juniors standing in front of her, a specimen dish in her hand. She’d obviously asked a question.
‘Sorry, miles away,’ she said. ‘What was it you wanted?’
So it was back to work and no more dwelling on the past. She’d managed to get through three failed IVF cycles, Clarissa and a divorce, by concentrating on work. She’d get through this as well.
Only getting through this was harder, she realised a couple of weeks later, when the sight of a hibiscus flower on a bush near her apartment sent pain coiling through her body again.
It was because she wasn’t feeling well that it was so hard, she told herself. Give it time...
A week later she was wondering just how much time she’d have to give it. And how could she get over it, when every day the rebellious part of her brain reminded her of how long Steve would have been back in Australia, even suggesting she check up on where he lived and driving by there.
No way—that was just too pathetic!
Could he have called?
She’d told him not to...
It was the weather, still miserable and rainy, and her feeling a bit off. Could lovesickness really exist?
Whatever it was, it stayed with her, until ten days later she sat in the bathroom at her apartment, staring in disbelief at the positiv
e pregnancy test in her hand.
‘Honestly!’ she said at her image in the mirror. ‘Call yourself a scientist! How could you not have thought of this earlier?’
Because of all the failures, came the whispered answer.
Or because her gynaecologist had told her quite bluntly, after the third cycle had failed to produce viable eggs, that she had only a few of her life’s allotment of eggs left in her ovaries and would probably go through early menopause as a result.
But that was the end of rational thought for quite some time, as her brain whirled with ifs and buts and maybes, delighted excitement mixing with doubt and dread.
Not to mention confusion...
To tell or not to tell was the really big one.
Normally it would be a no-brainer. A man deserved to know he’d be a father, that he’d have a child.
But with Steve?
Steve, who didn’t want just one child, he wanted a family—lots of children—well, more than one anyway.
Not that one child couldn’t be a family, but not for Steve, not for someone with parents who had so wanted a sibling for him they’d been killed in the endeavour.
If she told him, he would insist they marry and for all the surge of heat that thought generated in her body, and the hippity-hoppity bounds of joy in the totally unrealistic bit of her brain, marrying Steve would not be a good thing.
This one pregnancy was probably a fluke—so unlikely she’d never given contraception a thought, though she vaguely remembered in the heat of passion that first night Steve asking and her assuring him it was safe.
Because it always had been in the past.
And apart from the fact that she’d be denying him the large family he wanted, marrying her for the sake of the baby was hardly a good basis for a marriage. What would happen if she lost the baby? Or even if the baby lived but their marriage lacked love?
Would he walk away from her, as her father and Nigel had done?
She made a cup of tea then tipped it out because it tasted awful. Everything tasted awful! She’d have to tell him.
Or leave Sydney?
That was a better idea...
Get a job somewhere else—Perth maybe, or in the UK. Her skills would always be needed. Overseas would be better, less likely that Andy would find out, because Andy and Steve were friends...
The glass of water tasted awful but she drank it anyway, then began to occupy her mind with things other than Steve and telling or not telling. Determined to treat this in a purely practical manner, she sat down and wrote a shopping list of healthy foods, lots of fruit and vegetables and meat for iron, although she could supplement that.
Which was when the sheer miraculousness of what had happened struck her and she laughed with joy and hugged herself and forgot about all the unanswerable questions and went shopping.
* * *
Steve had told himself he would wait at least a month after he got home before he would even consider phoning Fran, but the days dragged by so slowly it was beginning to feel like a year since he’d seen her.
He’d thought of a dozen excuses he could use to call in at her hospital’s IVF clinic, and had discarded all of them.
He’d lifted the phone to call Andy to assure himself she was all right, and put the receiver down again.
At work, by forcing himself to concentrate on his clients and the huge step they were taking, he could forget for a while. Then someone would say something and he’d be back in the lab at Vanuatu, Fran in shorts and lab coat, her lovely hair hidden by an incredibly ugly cap, and his heart would miss a beat then gallop to catch up and he’d have to breathe slowly and deeply to banish the picture from his mind.
But at home, particularly now with the bloody hibiscus bushes planted by his great-grandfather flowering with gay abandon in his garden, it was impossible not to think about her.
He had to see her—had to talk to her—at least find out if she was all right.
But why wouldn’t she be?
He’d begun to hate his sensible self.
So he concocted a plan, phoning Andy for her address, explaining that she’d left before the staff could give her a farewell gift, a thank-you for her help. He told Andy that he’d post it to her.
Steve had half expected Andy to suggest he send it to the hospital, in which case he’d just have to visit the place and try to talk to her in front of colleagues.
But Andy had surprised him, not only handing over the address but also by suggesting that he might like to deliver it in person. Andy was sure Fran would be pleased to see him.
Steve turned the idea over in his head. He wasn’t so sure about the pleased to see him part—but, hang it all, what could she do?
Or what could her boyfriend do if he opened the door to Steve?
No, she didn’t have a boyfriend, of that Steve was certain. She’d given herself too openly and fully to have been cheating on someone.
And the staff had given him a present for her, a frangipani lei with ‘Come back to Vanuatu’ written on the tag, and a pretty sarong that would complement her eyes.
He drove to the address, pleased to find she lived in a small apartment block so he didn’t have to press a bell and announce his presence to get into the building.
She could have checked the monitor and chosen not answer her door.
He found a parking space for the car two doors away and walked back, apprehension so tight in his chest he had to force himself to breathe.
Then, there she was, bent over the boot of a small red car in the carport beneath the building, pulling shopping bags out and resting them on the ground while she got the others.
‘Bought the shop out?’ he asked, coming up beside her and bending to pick up six of the bags, three in each hand.
She turned and looked at him, and he watched the blood drain from her face.
He dropped the shopping bags in time to catch her, although she recovered almost immediately and pushed away from him.
‘What are you doing here, frightening the life out of me?’ she demanded, blue-green eyes spitting fire.
‘I brought a gift from the staff,’ he muttered, bending to capture oranges that were rolling from one of the dropped bags.
‘Then you can leave it here and go,’ she said, and though she probably wanted to sound firm he heard the slight wobble in her voice.
‘I’ll carry these things up to your apartment first,’ he said—no wobble in his firmness.
She didn’t answer, instead collecting the last two bags and closing the boot, locking the car with a key fob and stomping away towards the steps that led into the old Art Deco building, then up the inner steps, and up, and up, and up.
‘You were going to carry all of this up yourself?’ he asked, stopping on the second floor landing to catch his breath.
‘I do it every week,’ she snapped. ‘And for someone who runs every day, you’re not doing too well on the climb.’
She’d reached the top floor and was unlocking the door when he caught up.
‘You can just leave them at the door,’ she said, busying herself hanging up the keys to avoid looking at him.
‘I’ll bring them in,’ Steve told her, aware she wanted nothing more than for him to go. But being here, with her again, seeing her, even from behind, had filled him with such happiness he couldn’t walk away.
He walked into the apartment and although he’d guessed from the address that she’d have a view towards the harbour, he was surprised to find he could pick out his house from her windows.
Not that he’d mention it right now.
Neither would he mention seeing the sarong he’d given her thrown over the sofa or the pebble from the Blue Hole on the window ledge.
He put the bags on the kitchen bench alongside the ones she�
��d carried up, then reached out and caught her hand.
‘Can we not just meet as friends, if only this once?’ he asked, although every cell in his being was scoffing at the idea they might just be ‘friends’.
She looked at him then, studying his face as if she’d never seen it before—or maybe trying to read what lay behind his words.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said quietly, then she removed her hand from his and began to unpack the bags.
She hadn’t told him to leave so he didn’t, instead watching her unpack the first bag, and then, intrigued, he began peering into the others.
‘Have you turned vegetarian?’ he asked, registering they contained only fruit and vegetables.
‘I only shop once a week,’ came the reply, which didn’t answer the question or explain the extent of the fruit and vegetable shopping.
Deciding it was too hard to carry on a conversation with someone whose head was stuck in the refrigerator as she disposed of the shopping, he looked around and saw the list she must have been working off—items neatly crossed off.
Of course neatly—this was Fran!
Oranges, apples, celery, tomatoes, on and on until right at the end an item not crossed off—an item not available at the markets or greengrocer.
Iron supplement.
And suddenly the shopping and the sudden faint and her avoidance of his eyes made sense.
‘You’re pregnant!’ he said, waving the list in her face when she stood to get more produce to stack away. ‘And just when were you going to tell me?’
Fran could feel the anger coming off him in waves, and suddenly the answer to her ‘will I, won’t I’ questions became clear.
‘I was still deciding but I think probably I wasn’t going to tell you,’ she answered honestly, because she couldn’t lie to Steve.
‘You weren’t going to tell me? And just how was that going to play out? You’d swear Andy to secrecy? Have everyone in the relatively small world of IVF know except the father?’
He had every right to be angry, but she, too, had rights.
‘I’m going away,’ she said. ‘No one will know. Especially not Andy.’
A Miracle for the Baby Doctor Page 13