by Lilian Darcy
Gian wasn’t. He leaned forward, defying etiquette with his strong forearm resting squarely on the table, and said something that took her completely by surprise.
‘Did James ever ask you to marry him?’
She felt as if she was riding in an express lift to a high floor, and it had left her stomach behind on the ground. ‘No, he didn’t.’ Could have stopped there. Should have stopped there. ‘He didn’t believe marriage was necessary, or important.’
‘Did you agree?’ Gian watched her face closely.
She hated this subject—James, their relationship—and didn’t want to go into the details.
‘It hurt just as much when we broke up,’ she said. ‘But in some ways, it was easier. I’d have felt…royally conned by him…if I’d had to endure a divorce as well. So on the whole—’ She tried a cool smile, but it wobbled, so she pressed her lips together to keep it in place. ‘—I guess that’s one thing that James and I still agree about. Marriage wasn’t necessary. It actually helped that we’d pretended living together was the same, when we split up and I discovered that living together wasn’t the same at all. Can we drop it now, Gian?’
‘Sure,’ he growled. ‘Finish your coffee.’
‘I—can’t.’
The meal was no longer ambrosial. Instead, it sat in her stomach as if it had taken up permanent residence there.
Gian was silent for what seemed like too long. She didn’t know just how she’d ruined the mood, but somehow she had. His fault. Why had he asked about James? The bad memories his question had brought up shattered her determined illusion that she and Gian could keep on living for the present, the way they’d been doing.
They couldn’t.
‘Then we’ll leave,’ he said at last.
‘No, you finish. I’m happy to watch.’ She tried to make it into a suggestive reference to the way they’d watched each other dressing tonight, but it didn’t work. She had that cloud-crossing-the-sun feeling again, only much worse than it had been this afternoon.
‘I don’t want any more, either,’ he said.
Until they’d left the restaurant and were on their way to Gian’s car, their comments to each other skated across the surface of emotion like a dragonfly darting across a pond. Gian pressed the button on his key fob and his car doors unlocked as the vehicle gave a whooping sound, as obedient as a dog.
He came to the passenger door to open it for her, then stopped so that she ended up in the subtle wash of his body heat, surrounded on all sides by car and man. She felt the familiar shape of him, close against her, but knew he didn’t want to turn her into his arms. He was too angry for that, in a slow-burning way that almost frightened her.
‘I’m not James, Kit,’ he said, his tone dark and knotted with frustration. ‘Get that straight. I’m not James.’
‘You brought him into the conversation,’ she answered. ‘I didn’t.’
‘You didn’t need to. For you, he was already there.’
‘No, that’s not true. I wasn’t thinking about him at all. Not then.’
‘Perhaps I’m being unfair. Making complications when they’re not necessary. The mood was ruined, though, wasn’t it?’
‘Do we have to back-date it? We’ve had a fabulous evening, and a perfect day. Haven’t we? Wasn’t it enough?’
He responded to the urgency of her demand with a slow, and almost bitter smile. ‘I guess I really am an optimist,’ he said. ‘Because I’d hoped for even more. Shall I take you home?’
‘Yes,’ she said, defeated and confused. ‘I think we’re both too tired to go on with this tonight.’
He kissed her in his car, in the yard outside Aunt Helen’s back door, with only the sleeping hens as witnesses. The kiss was sweet, coffee-flavoured and long enough to melt her bones, but the disappointment of the ‘even more’ he’d hoped for had settled on her own shoulders now, as well, and she knew she’d failed him and frustrated him somehow.
‘I’m going to be pretty busy over the next few days,’ he told her, sitting back in the driver’s seat with his hands locked behind his head. ‘Marco gets here on Friday night.’
‘I won’t phone you, then, or expect to hear from you.’
He hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. ‘You probably won’t, no.’
‘Thanks, Gian, for the meal.’ It seemed very inadequate. She kept feeling that the evening wasn’t supposed to end like this.
‘Next week,’ he promised her. ‘We’ll see each other. And we’ll talk. In the meantime, perhaps this gives us both a chance to ask ourselves what we really want from this, what’s possible, and where we want it to go.’
‘Yes,’ she answered uncertainly. ‘I suppose it does.’
‘We need that, Kit. I was wrong to hope for more tonight. I can see that now.’
‘Oh. OK. I—OK,’ she answered lamely.
He drove away as soon as she’d reached the back steps.
In the early hours of the morning, Kit awoke from a dream that immediately fled from her memory, leaving a new understanding deposited in her mind, whole and complete, like one of Bonnie’s beloved fresh laid eggs.
He was going to ask me to marry him tonight, and I blew it, and in the end he was glad.
All those bitter things I said about James changed Gian’s mind. Why didn’t I see it?
Sleep evaporated completely, and she lay there till dawn, aching with regret.
I blew it. If I’d kept my mouth shut…
Would that really have helped?
She didn’t know.
Megan Ciancio checked into the unit at just after five on Thursday afternoon, earlier than they were expecting her, in her wheelchair, and on the wrong side of the building.
‘There’s a reason for that,’ she said. ‘This baby doesn’t like Dr Di Luzio’s timetable. I don’t think I’m going to be waiting until tomorrow for a Caesarean. I’m in labour now!’
‘Take Room One, just here on the left, Megan,’ Jane Cameron said. ‘Kit, I’ll assign her to you. How are you feeling, Megan? Anything we should know about?’
‘Well, the contractions aren’t coming that often. Only about every fifteen minutes, but when they do, they’re pretty intense, really pushing on my spine, even though the baby still feels very high. Dr Di Luzio said it might be like this, because I’m not quite the right shape down there, after the accident. That’s why he won’t let me try for a vaginal delivery, and it’s why we didn’t hang around at home for too long.’
‘We’ll phone him straight away,’ Jane told her. ‘You’re in the wheelchair. Is that more comfortable for you?’
‘No, it’s worse. But I knew I wouldn’t manage the walk. The past couple of weeks, it’s been really tough. I’m so big, and I just don’t have the strength or the control. I’m really just concerned for the baby, that it’s being squeezed too hard, or something.’ Her voice fogged.
As Megan’s husband pushed her wheel-chair into Room One, Kit saw that she was shaking and sweaty, and asked her, ‘Are you feeling all right between contractions, Megan? No other symptoms?’
‘Awful headache. It’s getting worse, actually. Things are starting to look blurry. Is—is that normal?’
‘Let’s check you out and see.’ Kit was concerned, although she didn’t betray the fact.
Megan had brought a nightgown and slippers, and Joe Ciancio helped her into them. She went to the bathroom, and then got as comfortable as she could on the bed. As soon as she was ready, Kit took her temperature, pulse and blood pressure. The first two were fine, but her blood pressure was too high, and almost at danger level.
Quickly, Kit felt the position of the baby and listened to its heart. As Megan had said, it was high and seemed a little oddly positioned, although it was head down. The baby’s heart rate was fast and strong, but as she listened, Megan had a contraction, knifing pain through her body and making the heart rate dip perceptibly.
‘Let’s see where Dr Di Luzio’s up to,’ Kit said, staying calm. This should
be all right. There were some problem signs, but Gian hadn’t expected this to be straightforward, and Megan and Joe had very sensibly come in early. Early enough? She hoped so, fervently.
She went back out to the nurses’ station and found Jane. ‘You reached him?’
‘Yes, he’s on his way.’
‘Good, because her b.p.’s up pretty high, and she’s right, the baby doesn’t like getting squeezed.’
‘The obstetric theatre is free and ready for you, and Clive’s on his way, too,’ Jane said. ‘I wonder if he’ll go for a general. I know she wanted epidural. Different now that this isn’t the scheduled procedure she had booked for tomorrow!’
‘Babies have ideas of their own!’
Kit felt a rush of complicated relief when Gian arrived and they met up outside Megan’s door. He had time for a brief smile, which she tried to return, then she quickly reported the dangerous blood pressure figures and he nodded.
‘I wondered about that,’ he said, resting his hand on the door-frame and glancing into the room. ‘It can be a problem for paraplegic patients during labour. I didn’t know how Megan’s system would respond, since her nerve damage is only partial. Really hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with it.’
‘Will she need general anaesthesia, so we can get the baby out more quickly?’
‘No, we’ll go with the epidural, as planned, and that should bring it down.’ His calm tone settled her own fears, until she saw the hard set of his face and the calculation in his narrowed eyes. He was sketching out scenarios in his mind, preparing for problems.
‘You talked about nerve damage,’ Kit said. ‘But she’s feeling a lot of pain in the contractions.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me. The pain’s strong enough to overcome the lessened sensations. Her body’s trying to do a job it’s really not meant for, since the accident. I don’t think we’d have a hope of getting this baby out vaginally. Let’s get her into theatre, fast.’ He strode into the room, dropping the frown from his face at once as he greeted Megan and her husband.
Within another minute, they were wheeling their patient along the corridor to the Obstetric Operating Theatre, where Clive was already waiting for them, as well as Juliet Woo, who would act as circulating nurse, and GP Alison Cairns, who’d handle the baby.
Megan was prepped quickly, while Joe hovered nearby, holding her hand whenever he could. Clive inserted the cannula for the epidural with efficiency and speed. The blood pressure figures had climbed even higher, and Kit was tense. If Megan began to convulse and lost consciousness…Megan and Joe remained unaware of the potential danger, although Megan’s headache made her suffer badly.
‘OK, Megan, can you feel this?’ Clive finally asked, touching her foot with a cold surgical instrument.
‘No, I can’t feel anything.’
‘Contraction coming,’ Kit noted, and Megan couldn’t feel that, either.
‘This?’ Clive persisted. ‘Blood pressure figures dropping, by the way.’
‘Nothing,’ Megan said.
‘And how about this?’
‘No.’
‘All yours, Gian. Starting to look nice, now.’
‘Thanks.’ His voice was as calm and controlled as ever, and Kit thought she was probably the only person present who realised he’d been far more concerned than he’d let on. She looked at his eyes above the mask he wore, hoping stupidly for the flash of his gaze in her direction, but it didn’t come. ‘Megan and Joe, you’ll see your baby in just a few minutes, now.’
His hand was completely steady as he made the first incision, and he didn’t look up again until he’d lifted the baby free. Standing close beside him, Kit was aware of every movement he made.
It was a darling little girl, around the seven and a half pound mark on the old scale. She cried vigorously at once, and had a healthy Apgar score at one minute, and again at five. She wasn’t very pretty just yet. Her head was a little misshapen, her legs very bowed and her shoulders uneven after her last months of growth in Megan’s abnormally shaped frame, but those things would correct themselves with time.
‘Fantastic!’ Gian said. The whole atmosphere in theatre was light and happy, now. ‘I’m so pleased for you, Megan, and Joe.’
‘It’s great!’ Megan’s husband said. Like so many people in the area, he was of Italian origins, and still had a perceptible accent. He had an openly emotional Italian temperament, too, and didn’t mind that people could see his freely flowing tears. ‘Megan, you’re a star.’
‘What are you calling her?’ Kit asked, as Alison Cairns laid the baby high on Megan’s stomach. ‘Do you know yet?’
‘Dorina Alessandra. Dorie.’ With her arms still strapped to the table, Megan tried to kiss the baby, but couldn’t quite reach. They’d be in Recovery together very soon, however. ‘She’s adorable! Oh, I love her!’
Gian’s eyes met Kit’s over their masks, and she wondered what he was thinking. He’d said they wouldn’t be able to see each other until after Marco’s visit, but she badly wanted to. And not like this, during a birth that might so easily have gone wrong. She just wanted a moment with him. Not long. Next week seemed too far away, when she didn’t know what he was thinking and feeling, when she was so sure that she’d blown it badly the other night, and didn’t know whether to confront him, or to let it pass.
Her own emotions had set into a desperate certainty that frightened her.
If he’d asked me to marry him, I would have said yes. Just closed my eyes to all my doubts and answered yes.
She didn’t know how she could ever learn to let this man go, and yet she didn’t have the answers as to how she could make love work. It was an impossible situation, and the only way she could see to resolve it, to even have a chance, was to talk to him, and to ask him about the other night.
She got her chance to see him a little over half an hour later, when Megan was in Recovery under Juliet’s care, and Kit herself could take a snatched break. She’d brought some left-over quiche from home to heat in the unit’s microwave for her evening meal, and wanted a cup of coffee to go with it. She’d just set the microwave going when Gian entered.
‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’ she said to him at once, snatching at the opportunity she’d thought she wouldn’t have for days longer. He’d headed for the sink and picked up a glass from the draining basket, but a quick glass of water wouldn’t keep him here for long enough.
He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Coffee would be good.’
Clearly, he knew she wanted to talk. Circling back to the kitchen door, he eased it towards the jamb with his foot, so that it protected their privacy a little but didn’t signal to anyone who might enter that they’d interrupted something important. Kit busied herself with mugs and boiling water.
‘OK, Kit, shoot,’ Gian said. ‘This isn’t the ideal place for a private talk, is it, so we’d better—’
‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘Better get on with it.’ She put a tea-bag in one mug and instant coffee granules in the other, and the microwave gave several metallic pips, announcing that her quiche was hot. She ignored it. ‘You were going to ask me to marry you last night, weren’t you? And I—’ She gave a sharp little laugh, although it wasn’t funny. ‘I totally blew it.’
There was a beat of silence, then he said slowly, ‘I think we both did.’
‘How did we do that? Oh, I blew it because I didn’t understand. But how did you?’
‘I’m in love with you, Kit.’ Perhaps he was, but he didn’t make any attempt to touch her. It was a declaration that came with contingencies attached, not happy ever afters, and she didn’t want contingencies, any more. ‘And I think you’re in love with me,’ he went on.
‘Gian—’
‘It would have been very convenient if we’d agreed to get married as well, but what if it isn’t enough? If love and even marriage aren’t enough. I can tell you that I don’t mind if we don’t have a baby, and it’s true. I’d rather have you. But to you it still m
atters. What you said the other night proved it. You’re still so afraid that your own feelings about it would blow us apart eventually, and I realised last night that I couldn’t promise you that you were wrong.’
‘No, but—’
‘So I didn’t ask, after all.’
They seemed like the bleakest words she’d ever heard, and a huge part of her wanted to wrap her arms around the familiar strength of his body, look up into his dark eyes and say, ‘No, but I don’t care. I’ll take the risk. Please. Ask. Right now. Ask, Gian, and I’ll say yes.’
There was a problem with this, though.
He was right.
Somehow in the way they felt they’d passed the point of no return, but nothing else had changed. He saw the tears welling in her eyes and stepped forward, ready to kick that useful door the final six inches towards the jamb, take her into his arms and kiss her till the tears dried away, but she shook her head and whispered, ‘Go away. It’s all right. I’m not going to sob on your shoulder. I just need to think. About a lot of things. You’ve got Marco coming tomorrow, and it’s late.’
He nodded, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a clean, folded handkerchief. ‘Dry your eyes. I want this handkerchief back next week’
She laughed through her tears. ‘Starched and ironed?’
‘Still salty and wet, for all I care. I just want it back.’
She understood. This was his way of saying, ‘This isn’t finished yet.’ She would have paid dearly for a little of the same casual arrogance, right now.
‘Look at her, Marco, can you really give her up?’ Gian said. ‘You have to be sure about this. More sure than you’ve ever been about anything in your life.’
Bonnie sat in her favourite swing in the playground near Gian’s unit, laughing in delight as Marco pushed her higher and higher. Gian stood beside his younger brother, watching the two of them. In particular, he watched Marco’s reaction to the crucial question.