by Amy Andrews
There was silence for the next few minutes as they finished their breakfast. Leo put his utensils down on his plate and looked at his brother. ‘I thought you and her might...’
Ethan glanced up from his breakfast. The possibility of he and Olivia glimmered for a moment. Her touch on his leg last night was almost tangible again, the way they’d been together settling around him in a fine mist he could almost taste.
But then memories of another woman—a woman he’d loved, a woman he’d left to die—pushed into the possibilities, beating them back, drowning them in a tide of guilt.
Aaliyah.
Ethan threw his napkin on his plate. ‘Let’s go.’
CHAPTER THREE
RUNNING EARLY THIS time, Olivia smiled at Leo as she walked into his office an hour later. She’d always had a soft spot for the incredibly hard-working elder Hunter brother and it hadn’t been killed by time, distance or past wrongs. Yes, she’d told them their relationship was toxic but that hadn’t really been Leo’s fault.
Leo had been caught in the middle between his father and his brother and had practically killed himself to do right by both of them.
It was Ethan’s bitterness that had been the true destructive force.
She thrust the whisky decanter she’d hauled all the way back in the taxi at him as she neared. ‘I relieved Ethan of this last night.’
‘Yes, he mentioned it.’ Leo grinned taking it from her and then sweeping her into a huge hug.
‘I can’t believe it’s been ten years,’ he said as he pulled back. ‘How have you been?’
Olivia gave her standard reply. ‘Fine.’ Because the truth was less than fine, and she refused to give it power over her. ‘But now...what about you? Not only married but a baby on the way? I have to meet this girl!’
Easily deflected, Leo chatted for ten minutes about Lizzie and babies and their life together and Olivia was heartened to hear that Leo had found the happiness he’d always deserved. She’d valued and enjoyed his friendship and had been saddened by its becoming another casualty of Ethan’s destructive streak.
If she’d only been smarter she would have chosen the older Hunter brother. But the heart wanted what the heart wanted, and from the moment she’d laid eyes on Ethan she’d been officially off the market!
She’d fallen hard for his good looks, charm and intelligence. Yes, he’d been angry, and hurting too, but he’d oozed undeniable potential from every cell in his being. She’d just known that one day he would do great things.
And that had been pretty damn irresistible.
But she would have resisted had she known she was going to cause an even bigger rift between the two brothers. She’d thought she’d be able to help them reconnect, to heal the cracks in their relationship that had been gutting to watch.
Her tender heart had been touched by the suffering they’d endured—their mother’s death and the scandalous details of her life that had come to light after, and their father’s messy slide into the bottle. Coming from a background that placed family above everything, she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of what the Hunter boys must have been through growing up and she’d desperately wanted to help.
She’d wanted to show Ethan, and Leo by extension, how wonderful a loving relationship—like the one her parents had—could be. And to bring them back to each other.
But Ethan had been on a different page and she hadn’t got the memo.
The light chatter stopped as soon as Ethan entered the room. Olivia was relieved to see him looking much more human this morning. Back to his usual level of ooh la la in a suit and tie. He’d hadn’t shaved, but the lines around his eyes had disappeared. His gait was strong and sure even with the slight limp as he strode towards the desk.
She’d lain awake half the night thinking about their reunion and the state of his health. He seemed even more messed up than he had been a decade ago. Lucky for her, life had hardened her sappy little heart over the years, and the urge to fix Ethan Hunter had withered and died a long time ago. He was a big boy who could take care of himself.
Leo looked from one to the other as she and Ethan stood awkwardly in front of his desk. ‘Let’s get down to it, shall we?’ he suggested.
‘Yes,’ they both said in unison, and then glanced guiltily at each other before simultaneously looking away.
Leo sighed. ‘Take a seat,’ he said, indicating the chairs opposite him, and Olivia wasn’t sure whose butt was on whose respective chair faster—hers or Ethan’s.
Clearly Ethan was keen to get this over with.
Good.
That made two of them.
* * *
Ethan strode into the Lighthouse Children’s Hospital just prior to lunch. He’d walked from Harley Street. Last night the thought of walking any distance had been beyond him, but he usually walked from the clinic to the Lighthouse, and also to Princess Catherine’s Hospital, time permitting.
The Hunter Clinic and its team of surgeons had operating privileges at both hospitals and neither was far to walk. Still, after Olivia’s dressing-down last night he was using his stick, even if he did have plans to abandon it just prior to seeing his patients.
Olivia had accused him of vanity last night and he’d set her straight on that. Drawing attention to himself, to his injuries, wasn’t something he was keen on. But it was more than that. A surgeon with a walking stick just sent the wrong kind of message. Especially in the world of plastics and reconstructive surgery. Patients wondered about a surgeon who couldn’t heal himself.
Leaving his stick in one of the empty offices, he did his rounds. Being a visiting surgeon, he didn’t have any junior doctors to accompany him but always made sure one of the nursing staff on each ward did. Nothing annoyed the nurses more than a doctor coming in and making changes to treatment and then leaving again without informing them.
And Ethan had learned a long time ago never to upset the nursing staff. That nurses were a vital part of the medical team—the interface between the doctor and the patient.
And you annoyed them at your own peril.
He prided himself on having good relationships with the nursing staff wherever he went, and at the Lighthouse particularly.
He left Ama to last. There was a lot that needed to be done before she went to Theatre next week and he wanted to have a clean plate today so he could focus solely on her. Plus Olivia was with her, and for some reason he was unaccountably nervous. It was obvious from her briefing this morning that this case was dear to her and he found himself not wanting to disappoint her.
He’d done that once already and was desperate to make amends.
He made his way to Ama’s room by himself, assuring Ama’s nurse, who was busy with another of her patients, that he would keep her up to date with the tests and procedures he was ordering. He heard laughter as he approached—Olivia’s laughter. With her petite frame she looked as if she’d have one of those light and tinkly girly laughs, but it was surprisingly deep and throaty and it always came out at full roar—coming not just from her belly but from her heart.
He remembered it well from back when she used to smile at him, when she used to laugh.
It evoked powerful memories of a turbulent time in his life. A time when her laughter had helped ease a lot of his frustrations.
She had her back to the door when he pulled up and he lounged against the frame, observing her for long moments. She was sitting on the bed opposite a little girl who sat cross-legged in the lap of an older woman. Their skin was as dark and burnished as the finest ebony.
Ama and her mother, he assumed. Although he could only see them in profile and therefore the defect, which he knew to be quite significant, wasn’t showing, given that it was the other side of Ama’s face. He also noted the colourful headscarf that Ama wore draped over her affected side, ob
scuring it completely.
Looked at from this vantage point, Ama looked perfectly normal. But he’d seen the pictures—NOMA had ravaged the right side of her face, leaving her terribly disfigured.
A chequerboard sat between them and they were engrossed in a lively game. A third person—a young woman with skin more of a mocha colouring—sat on a chair beside the bed, also involved, switching between English and an unfamiliar language and laughing as Ama made a run of the board.
‘Ama, you are getting much too good at this,’ Olivia said, and laughed that full throaty laugh again.
The woman in the chair spoke to Ama in what he presumed was her own language and the girl giggled, her eyes sparkling in absolute delight.
Ethan was struck by how intimate the cosy little circle appeared. They all seemed very comfortable in each other’s company. Ama’s mother was looking at Olivia as if she was some kind of saint and Ama was smiling so big at Olivia, her eyes sparkling so brightly, it was like the sun shining.
Olivia passed over a red chequer piece to Ama and Ama laughed again, the whites of her eyes flashing as she held on to Olivia’s hand for long moments before accepting the spoils and crowning her victorious piece.
Ama said something in her own tongue and the woman Ethan assumed was the translator said, ‘Ama thinks she’s winning.’
Olivia laughed again, and even with the distance between them, it whispered against his skin.
‘Oh, does she, now?’ Olivia said with mock indignation. ‘We’ll see how easy it is for her to win when I’m tickling her,’ she announced, raising her hands and wiggling her fingers in Ama’s direction before launching a tickle attack on a giggling, squealing Ama.
The chequerboard was upended, but nobody seemed to mind as general pandemonium ensued.
Ethan was struck by the genuine connection between Olivia and Ama and her mother. There was nothing forced or stilted—just an easy familiarity. But there was also an unspoken trust in their byplay, and Ethan knew how hard Olivia would have had to work to gain that trust. To take them out of their own country, away from everything they knew and trusted, and bring them to a strange place with strange people and strange customs.
But most of all it was just a joy to see the return of the Olivia he’d once known. Last night she’d fluctuated from reserved to distant to tense, and this morning she’d been polite and professional. Hell, even when she’d been angry with him there’d been an aloofness that he’d never seen in her before.
But this was the Olivia of old. The one who got way too close to her patients. Who’d spend time at the end of a very long intern shift playing games or reading books to the kids in her charge, or stopping in at the shop to buy a favourite snack or a goofy toy for a child in her care.
Their bosses had frowned upon it, and he had teased her about it endlessly, but it was what made Olivia so good at what she did—she wasn’t just their doctor, she was their friend.
That had, of course, led to tears on occasions. Every death or negative outcome she’d taken to heart. She’d considered herself a partner in a patient’s journey and she’d felt it deeply when things went wrong.
Many a time he’d been a shoulder for her to cry on.
And he’d been worried last night, when she’d looked at him with such reserve and distance, that the old Olivia was gone forever. That maybe he’d been responsible for killing her off.
He was glad to see he hadn’t.
She might have developed a harder shell, but it was good to know that she still had her gooey centre. It wasn’t a particularly smart trait, or conducive to longevity in the profession, but as someone who also became a little too invested in the lives of the people he operated on Ethan recognised, on a subliminal level, that Olivia Fairchild was a kindred spirit.
It was why he’d chosen the army and humanitarian work over the more lucrative field of cosmetic surgery, unlike his father.
Because people mattered.
Ethan took a steadying breath and walked into the room. ‘This looks like fun,’ he said.
Olivia started at the sound of his voice and Ama, who took her cues in this strange new world from Olivia, shrank into her mother’s arms, quickly pulling the headscarf covering the right side of her face closer, patting it, checking its position.
‘Ethan,’ Olivia said, scrambling off the bed. ‘I thought you weren’t going to be here until after lunch.’ She turned quickly to Ama and smiled at the girl, who was still a bundle of nerves. ‘It’s okay,’ she assured her, and Dali, the interpreter, repeated the assurances to Ama and her mother in their own language. ‘This is the doctor I was telling you about. Dr Ethan.’
Ethan smiled as Ama peeked out at him from her mother’s shoulder. ‘Very pleased to meet you, Ama,’ he said, bowing slightly.
The girl’s gaze darted to Olivia, and Olivia nodded and smiled again. She moved closer to Ethan, conscious of his tall breadth in her peripheral vision, trying to divorce herself from the sexual pull of him as she placed her hand on his forearm. ‘We are old friends,’ she said to Ama. ‘We did our training together, here at this hospital.’
Ethan nodded. ‘We sure did. Olivia used to tell us stories about having a pet kangaroo at home in Australia.’
That elicited a small smile from Ama and Olivia gave Ethan a grateful squeeze on the arm before she dropped her hand. Ethan’s bedside manner had always been fantastic, but it had been a long time since she’d been familiar with his doctoring skills. A lot of surgeons tended not to be very good with their people skills.
Olivia introduced Ethan to Dali and to Ril, Ama’s mother. He was at his charming best, but she was still nervous as to how he was going to go forward with Ama. Olivia knew he needed to see her face, but she also knew he needed to approach it very carefully.
‘You like chequers?’ Ethan said to Ama.
She gave a slight nod after Dali had translated.
‘Do you mind if I watch while you and Olivia play?’
Ama looked at her mother, as the interpreter translated, and then at Olivia, who smiled. Very slightly she nodded her head.
‘Excellent,’ he said, smiling down at Ama.
Ethan drew up a chair opposite Dali on the same side of the bed. It was the side of Ama’s defect and he was hoping that she’d become engrossed enough in the game to drop the fabric so he could get a good look. He was going to need a much closer examination before he operated, but for today he had to build some trust and he was happy to stay hands-off.
* * *
Two hours later Ethan knew a lot more than any photo could tell him about Ama’s defect. Sure enough the girl had forgotten about trying to shield her face from him after about fifteen minutes, and he’d been able to get a much more thorough feel for the mechanics of what he was dealing with as the scarf slackened.
The extent of the destruction of her facial tissue and the functional impairment of her mouth and jaw were clinically challenging. He was going to need extensive imaging, but he was sure it was going to involve maxilla and palate losses as well.
It was shocking to look at. Ama essentially had a huge hole in the right side of her face, exposing the inside of her mouth, her jaw and nasal cavity. It was all the more shocking because it was a perfectly treatable condition caught early enough.
He knew from Olivia’s briefing and studying Ama’s chart that her NOMA had started the way it always did—with a simple mouth ulcer when she’d been four years old. But poor nutrition and poor oral hygiene had led to the ulcer developing quickly into full-blown NOMA. Her cheek had begun to swell and over the course of a few days it had developed blackish furrows as the gangrene set in. It had festered over weeks, forming horrible scabs. When the scabs had finally fallen away, she’d had a gaping hole in her face.
But Ama was one of the lucky ones—she’d survived. Ninety per cent of suff
erers—usually children—didn’t.
Just looking at Ama as she played chequers with Olivia swamped Ethan with a sense of hopelessness. NOMA was the face of poverty in poor, underdeveloped countries. And young children living in such extreme conditions where malnutrition was rife were at the highest risk.
He glanced at Olivia. The jacket she’d worn this morning to the debrief had long been discarded and her pencil skirt had rucked up her thighs slightly as she sat on the bed with her legs tucked up to one side. Her long-sleeved blouse fell softly against her breasts and was rolled up to the elbows. The top three buttons, which had been primly fastened all the way to the collar this morning, were now undone and gaping occasionally to reveal flashes of cleavage.
She looked perfectly at home and one hundred per cent unaffected by Ama’s facial deformity as she played chequers. As if Ama was just another of her patients. But he knew Olivia’s gooey centre well, and he knew she would be distressed by what this little girl had been through and the suffering she must face on a daily basis.
She glanced at him then and it was confirmed. Her gaze was a melted puddle of warm chocolate and it was begging him for help. To do something. To fix it.
And in that moment he’d have fixed it with his own bare hands if it had been within his power.
Instead he smiled at her and nodded.
He stood and smiled down at Ama and her mother. ‘I’m going to get some tests organised,’ he said, nodding reassuringly. ‘They’ll do them after lunch and Olivia will be with you the whole time, right?’ he said, glancing at Olivia who had scrambled off the bed and was standing next to him.
‘Right,’ Olivia said, also smiling and nodding at Ama. ‘I’m just going outside with Ethan for a moment,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’ She narrowed her eyes and wagged her finger playfully at Ama. ‘Don’t you cheat.’