The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child

by Meredith Webber

  And never would, given the failure he’d made of his marriage and engagement and his determination not to repeat a long-term commitment.

  Although, thinking of an infant’s clasp on his finger was sentimental nonsense, surely brought on by the emotional discussion he’d had with Lauren the previous evening.

  Compartmentalise!

  ‘The sooner the operation is done, the sooner little Brooke will be able to develop normally,’ he said, ruthlessly focussed on the present—on work! ‘No surgeon likes operating on newborns, mainly because the heart muscle is so weak and—I do not know the word to use in English.’

  Lauren smiled at him.

  ‘Phil says soggy. Like sewing Camembert, he says.’

  Jean-Luc nodded, unable to reply because his compartmentalisation was failing him and Lauren’s smile had made him think things he didn’t want to think.

  Fortunately more members of the team arrived and the morning ward round commenced, every child examined, every detail of his or her status reviewed, tubes removed or inserted, drug changes ordered, notes taken. Then finally little Brooke was prepared for surgery, her mother accompanying her on the short journey to the theatre where she was given time alone with her daughter.

  Jean-Luc watched Lauren, hovering in the background, and knew she was there to support the mother, who looked as young as Lauren had been when he’d first met her. Was it her injury that led her to have such empathy with parents, or the fact that she too had a child with heart problems?

  Zut! He was thinking of Lauren again when he should be focussed on what lay ahead. But he was glad that Brooke’s young mother had someone with her, someone to lead her back to the parents’ room where she would wait through the agonising hours that lay ahead.

  How had Lauren felt when told her son had Down’s syndrome? And had a heart defect? Fool that he was, Jean-Luc had failed to ask what kind of defect, although now he thought about it, atrioventricular septal defects were quite common in children with Down’s syndrome.

  Had Joe’s been fixed?

  And though Lauren claimed there was no man in her life, Joe must have had a father, so there had been.

  He was wondering why the thought of Lauren with another man would disturb him as much as it did when Theo touched his arm.

  ‘This way,’ Theo said. ‘Time to scrub. Aldo Stephens is doing the opening—he’s Alex’s registrar—and personally I’d like you to be ready to step in as well. It’s not that Aldo isn’t up to speed—he’s very good—but if there’s anything that can go wrong in an op, it will happen when poor Aldo is operating. The man has a curse on him.’

  Jean-Luc pictured the face of the good-looking young man he’d met on his first day—a man who looked more like a rugby player than a surgeon. He thought of baby Brooke and said a silent prayer that today would not be one of Aldo’s cursed days.

  Inside the theatre, Brooke looked even smaller, her tiny body supine on the operating table, little eyes taped shut, a heavy plastic cage arrangement erected around her so an accidentally dropped instrument wouldn’t harm her.

  Any harm she suffered would not be accidental, and hopefully the surgery would ensure she went on to live a full and happy life.

  ‘Jean-Luc, hello again,’ Aldo said. ‘I think you’ve met all the team.’

  And team it was—an inner circle of theatre nurses and surgical assistants, an anaesthetist and Theo near the head of the table, then an outer circle of more nurses who were the gofers, each with their own responsibilities, whether to the surgeons, the anaesthetist or the perfusionist.

  Jean-Luc greeted them all in a general way then moved so he was behind Aldo where he could see but not be in the way. When operating himself, he used a stool, as indeed many surgeons did, but today he needed to be mobile so he could duck and weave as the almost balletic movements of an operation swirled around him.

  Lauren had led Brooke’s mother, Katie, back to the parents’ room, but one look at the two couples already inside had made Katie back away.

  ‘I can’t go in there!’ she protested to Lauren. ‘Those women both have men to hold them—seeing them makes me feel worse, not better.’

  ‘What about the canteen? We can find a quiet corner and sit there, have a coffee, talk?’

  Katie shook her head.

  ‘I hate the canteen—the smell there makes me feel sick.’

  Lauren studied the pale, exhausted-looking teenager in front of her. Only seven days ago Katie had given birth and rather than having the joy of a healthy baby to help her recover from the birth, she’d had one shock after another. No wonder she was looking—and no doubt feeling—fragile.

  Neither, as far as Lauren had been able to fathom, did the young woman have any support—no family, no friends, and certainly no partner had been sighted during the time she’d sat vigil by Brooke’s bedside.

  ‘Walk in the park?’ Lauren suggested hopefully. ‘The operation will take hours and the fresh air might do us both good.’

  Suspicion flared in Katie’s eyes as she studied Lauren.

  ‘Why are you doing this for me? Why do you care?’

  Lauren paused. She rarely talked about herself or Joe, but Katie was very young, very alone and at breaking point.

  ‘Nine years ago—actually, it’s nearly ten years ago—it was me,’ Lauren said quietly, putting her arm around Katie’s shoulders and guiding her towards the lift. ‘I was luckier than you in that my mum and brother stood by me and were there for me, and lucky because Joe, that’s my son, although he had a small heart defect, didn’t need major surgery. But he has Down’s syndrome and that was a shock. We all expect our babies to be perfect so it’s always a real blow when we find out things aren’t perfect.’

  ‘What about his father?’ Katie asked, but the lift doors opened at that moment and the mass of people inside saved Lauren from answering.

  But only until they’d safely negotiated the crossing to the park and had reached a tree-shaded garden seat beside the small ornamental lake.

  ‘Did his father know? Did he want the baby?’

  How to answer? Suddenly, Lauren was faced with questions she hadn’t heard for ten years and back then hadn’t been able to answer. But now she could and an image of Jean-Luc as he’s stood beside Brooke’s crib that morning flashed into Lauren’s mind.

  He’d looked…bereft! That was the only word that fitted.

  Because he didn’t have a child of his own?

  She realised with a shock as sudden as a lightning strike that she knew nothing whatsoever about his current circumstances. She hadn’t thought to ask him. She might have been kissing a married man last night!

  ‘Did he want the baby?’

  Katie’s insistence brought Lauren back to the present but it was getting harder and harder to shove her thoughts away.

  ‘I’d had an accident,’ she said, wondering whether coincidences really happened or if she was just a pawn in some grand plan of life, suddenly thrust into a situation so impossible it could only have been conceived so the fates could laugh at her. ‘I couldn’t remember the man, or getting pregnant, or anything.’

  Still couldn’t remember, even though the past was no longer quite such a black hole, but she didn’t say that and was pleased that Katie didn’t ask, too caught up in her own misery to want to share Lauren’s.

  ‘My boyfriend died,’ Katie whispered. ‘Before I knew about the baby. But he would have wanted her, I know he would, no matter what Mum and Dad said.’

  ‘Do your mum and dad know Brooke needs this operation?’ Lauren asked.

  ‘They don’t know she’s born even—they don’t want to know. They kicked me out when I wouldn’t have an abortion.’

  ‘You don’t want to tell them?’

  Katie shook her head, the misery in her eyes almost too much for Lauren to bear. But she knew Katie would have had a hospital social worker assigned to her, and that person would be trying to find someone to support the young woman. She, Lauren, had to be a
friend, although she did need to ask one question.

  ‘What about your boyfriend’s parents? Did you tell them about the baby?’

  Katie shook her head.

  ‘They were so upset after Darren died I didn’t want to bother them, then Mum and Dad did their carry-on and I left town and Mum doesn’t talk to Darren’s mum—not good enough to be her friend, she reckons, although Mrs Malone is really kind and she was always nice to me.’

  ‘With Darren dead, she might like to know some of him lives on in Brooke,’ Lauren suggested tentatively, and Katie turned to her, big eyes wide as if such an idea had never occurred to her.

  ‘Do you think so?’

  Lauren nodded then decided she needed to be more assertive. If Mrs Malone was kind—and Katie certainly needed support…

  ‘I do!’

  But even as she said it she wondered about Jean-Luc’s mother—did she have a right to know she had a grandson? And as suddenly as the image of her sandcastle on the beach had come to her, another image came—no, not an image, but a voice, French-accented, sounded in her ears. ‘Do not feel bad for me because I have no siblings, for I have a mother and father, a grand-mère and a multitude of tantes—aunts—’

  She couldn’t see a figure, just hear the voice, and as surely as if the live Jean-Luc was standing beside her, telling her these things, she knew he was an only child. If he hadn’t married and had children, then Joe would be his mother’s only grandchild.

  ‘Would you tell her for me?’

  Lauren dragged her attention back to Katie, although a part of her was so excited over the little snatch of memory. Would more come back? Soon? How much? This was surely Jean-Luc’s doing!

  ‘Tell who?’ she managed, forcing herself to focus on the distressed young woman.

  ‘Mrs Malone. Darren’s mum! I couldn’t—not without crying—but you could if I gave you her phone number.’

  ‘Me? Don’t you have a social worker who would do it?’

  ‘She’s bossy and she doesn’t understand. She keeps saying I have to tell Mum and Dad, but they knew I was pregnant and they didn’t care then, so why would they care because Brooke is sick?’

  Lauren shook her head.

  ‘I suppose I can talk to Mrs Malone for you,’ she said reluctantly, sorry now she’d got herself into this mess. Although thinking of Jean-Luc’s mother, she felt a twinge of guilt and wondered if, in taking on Katie’s request, she might in some way atone. ‘But where does she live? This is the kind of thing that might be better told in person rather than over the phone.’

  ‘Thirroul,’ Katie replied, naming a seaside village south of Sydney that had become a suburb of the large city of Wollongong. ‘Mum and Dad live there, too.’

  So Katie hadn’t run far from home, and both sets of parents were close enough to be visiting her and their new granddaughter.

  And providing emotional support for Katie!

  They walked back to the hospital, Katie happier now, intent on getting the Malones’ address for Lauren, hopeful instead of depressed.

  ‘The nurse said I wouldn’t be able to see Brooke until this afternoon so I’ll have a sleep now,’ she announced when she’d handed over a slip of paper with all the details on it. ‘I didn’t sleep at all last night. Thanks, Lauren!’

  Lauren accepted both the paper and the gratitude but Katie’s dilemma had stirred up a sludge of emotion in Lauren’s head. Joe’s rights, Jean-Luc’s rights, his family’s rights…

  She was thinking about all of this when she bumped into him outside the theatre, where she’d gone to find out how the operation was faring.

  ‘Brooke’s done, the operation went well, and she’s through in Recovery. Is her mother all right?’

  Lauren nodded, but as she looked up into his face—into those intense blue eyes—the only thought in her head was that she had to tell him about Joe.

  Soon!

  Because now she knew he was the father, what reason could she later give for not telling him?

  ‘Are you finished for the day?’

  ‘I believe so. Phil is operating this afternoon but Grace is working with him. You are asking for a reason?’

  The simple answer was yes, except it wasn’t simple at all.

  She said yes anyway, adding, ‘I’m driving down to a place on the coast south of here, and the views on the drive are magnificent. I thought—you’re a visitor—you might…’

  Fortunately, as she wallowed in a swamp of half-sentences he rescued her.

  ‘I would love to accompany you,’ he said very formally, then he smiled and she remembered all the reasons she shouldn’t shut herself into the close confines of a car with this man who had such a powerful effect on all her senses.

  But she had to tell him, and in the car—perhaps after visiting the Malones—surely an opportunity would present itself.

  ‘You are visiting friends, perhaps?’ he asked as they drove in ever-present traffic through the southern suburbs of Sydney a little later.

  ‘Visiting Brooke’s grandparents, although they don’t know they are grandparents yet.’

  ‘That would be sad. My mother is forever regretting the fact that I failed to give her a grandchild.’

  It was a casual comment as far as Jean-Luc was concerned, but from the look on Lauren’s face, she hadn’t taken it that way. Or maybe it was the traffic making her frown.

  He studied her, wondering if their talk the previous evening had awoken any memories, wanting to ask but afraid of how he’d react if she said no.

  Wondering, too, if she was feeling any of the manifestations of physical attraction he felt whenever he was near her—these manifestations so much stronger within her small car.

  She’d responded to his kisses the previous evening, but he’d had a feeling that for her they had been experimental—kissing him a test of memory or an attempt to jog something loose in that sealed-up part of her brain.

  But as the silence grew and thickened with, he felt, the charges that sparked between them, he had to speak.

  ‘You will visit Katie’s parents?’

  The traffic had lessened, possibly because they’d turned onto a less busy road and were passing through bushland with strange-looking trees and plants.

  Lauren turned towards him and shook her head.

  ‘This is all national park,’ she said, waving her hand towards the bushland, although her attention was back on the road. ‘Katie’s boyfriend was killed in a motorcycle accident before she knew she was pregnant and we’re going to tell his parents who also don’t know there’s a baby.’

  Jean-Luc digested this information but it seemed odd to him that Lauren would be doing this, odder still that she would ask him to accompany her and, most odd of all, that she seemed so tense and uptight—far more strained than he would expect someone removed from Katie’s family dynamics to be.

  ‘This is part of your job?’ he probed, and when she glanced his way this time she grinned at him.

  ‘No, not at all, and no doubt the social worker would disapprove, but I felt these people had a right to know they had a grandchild.’

  She paused and took a deep breath, then blew it out between her lips.

  ‘Just up ahead there’s a place I can stop—Stanwell Tops. There’s a spectacular view—you can leap out over the cliff if skydiving appeals to you.’

  She wasn’t stopping for the view, or so he could harness a parachute to his back and leap off a cliff. There was something more, and somehow it affected him, for all her talk of Katie and Brooke and grandparental rights!

  He felt his stomach tighten but when she did pull into a parking area and brought the car to a halt, he forgot everything but the panorama spread below him, the long line of cliffs and beaches, the blue Pacific Ocean crashing against the rocks below, the white foam of the surf fringing the waves that washed on golden sand.

  ‘This must be one of the most spectacular views in the world, yet one hears of Sydney and the Opera House and Harbour and no on
e talks of this—so close!’

  Lauren had joined him on the viewing platform and seemed delighted at his praise.

  ‘I love it, too, and now we can drive right along the coast. The old coast road slid away in heavy rain and landslides but now there’s a new road built like a bridge out over the ocean. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  Probably instinctively she’d taken his hand as if to lead him back to the car, but though the touch was warm and stirred his blood, he didn’t move.

  ‘You stopped here to tell me something,’ he said quietly, and knew he’d guessed correctly when colour leached from her face, making her freckles stand out, dark flecks on her pale skin.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I…’

  SHE stared into his face, desperate appeal in her eyes.

  ‘I thought,’ she began again, ‘that it would be easy but, honestly, Jean-Luc, I haven’t a clue how to say what I need to say.’

  She walked away, back to the viewing platform, but though she looked out to sea he doubted she saw anything.

  Had she sensed his presence that she spoke as he came up behind her?

  ‘Last night, I told you about Russ finding me in hospital. But what you don’t know is that, as well as a concussion and amnesia, I brought home Joe, my son, a tiny embryo who had clung stubbornly to life inside me while I lay as if dead.’

  Jean-Luc tried to translate the words into French, sure they’d have more meaning to him in his own language, but his brain had stopped working, the enormity of what she’d told him too much to take in.

  She turned now so she was facing him, her eyes pleading for understanding.

  ‘I could have had an abortion—in fact, Russ suggested it, though not because Joe had Down’s syndrome. We didn’t know that then. He thought, with my fragile state of health and memory loss, it would be for the best. But apart from the fact that I felt anyone who’d managed to hang in there with me deserved a chance at life, I knew…’

  She stopped, sighed and turned back to the view before adding in a voice so low he barely heard the words.

  ‘I know this will sound stupid, Jean-Luc, but I knew that I must have loved whoever had fathered Joe. I knew that I wouldn’t have—wouldn’t have had sex, not casually, not with just anyone…’