The Heart Surgeon's Secret Child

by Meredith Webber

  ‘There’s John,’ he shrieked. ‘Let’s stop and talk to him. Tell him all I did at Cubs tonight.’

  Lauren took one look at the woman by Jean-Luc’s side—Rosemary Willis in a very small little black dress—and kept driving.

  ‘Let’s not,’ she said, trying to swallow the bitterness in her mouth—telling herself the woman had just lost a child and needed whatever support she could get.

  He knocked on the door the next evening.

  ‘Is Joe still up? I wanted to apologise for missing Cubs. I had an important meeting.’

  With Rosemary Willis? Lauren wanted to say, but didn’t, ashamed that she could feel so jealous.

  ‘Well, can I come in?’

  And something in his voice made Lauren really look at him, study him with eyes stripped of her own emotions. He looked grey and tired, far worse than he had the day Jeremy had died, and she opened the door wider and stepped away so he could pass by her.

  Except that he didn’t. He stopped beside her and touched her gently on the shoulder.

  ‘I have neglected you as well—but I did not wish to push my demons onto you, Lauren. I must deal with them myself.’

  ‘Why?’

  The question came out far too bluntly, but she, of all people, knew about demons.

  He half smiled at her.

  ‘Because they are mental. These demons are inside my head—and only I can exorcise them.’

  ‘That’s probably because you haven’t tried any other way,’ she said. ‘Because you think, man-like, that you should be able to overcome all the obstacles in the world just through your own intelligence and persistence and strength, and if all else fails a bit of duct tape. Man stuff. And because you’re a man you won’t ask for help or even accept it when it’s offered. You need to talk about your feelings, Jean-Luc, not keep them all bottled up inside you. OK, so talking might not provide an answer but it’s a release valve—believe me, I know. As you said the other night, I’ve been there and done that!’

  He looked at her, really looked at her, and she knew she’d snagged his attention.

  ‘You had demons? After the accident?’

  She had to smile.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ she said softly, touching his hand and feeling relief flood through her when his fingers turned to grip hers in a tight hold.

  ‘I did, but mine were mostly vanity, though at the time I couldn’t see that, but you, with no memory—how did that affect you?’

  ‘Got all night?’ Lauren joked, and then realised what she’d said and blushed. ‘I meant to talk,’ she amended hurriedly, but Jean-Luc had tugged her closer so their bodies were almost touching.

  ‘I have all night for you,’ he said quietly. ‘For talk or whatever else you want.’

  She stared at him.

  This wasn’t right.

  He’d wound her round his little finger once again and here she was mentally packing a toothbrush and heading for his house to spend the night.

  And last night he’d been out with Rosemary Willis and though she hadn’t watched all night, she was reasonably certain he hadn’t come home early…

  ‘But first I must see Joe.’

  The reminder of why Jean-Luc had come broke through Lauren’s wild imaginings.

  Joe was sitting at the kitchen table, painstakingly writing names on envelopes, Lucy under the table at his feet.

  As Jean-Luc came in, Lucy eased out from under the table and though she wagged her tail in greeting, she gave a low growl as well.

  Come near my charge at your peril.

  Lauren had printed the names of his friends in large letters on a sheet of paper and Joe was copying them. He looked up when Jean-Luc came in and beamed with delight.

  ‘You come to my birthday party, John?’ he asked, waving an invitation with a picture of a clown and balloons. ‘We’re having cake.’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ Jean-Luc replied. ‘When is it?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  Satisfied he had another guest, Joe returned to his laborious task.

  ‘It’s Saturday week, in fact,’ Lauren said. ‘Though Joe’s getting so excited he’ll probably be over it by then. We only have a party for him every second year. The in-between year we go to the zoo, or Underwater World, or somewhere special.’

  She’d spoken without thinking but seeing the despair deepen on Jean-Luc’s face—the look of loss and longing in his eyes—she immediately regretted it.

  ‘I didn’t know—we couldn’t change things!’ she said, and knew he understood when he nodded, but although he’d come to talk to Joe, he now said goodbye, his departure not affecting Joe in the slightest, so intent was he on his task.

  Lauren followed Jean-Luc down the hall where she stopped him with a touch on the shoulder. He turned and took her in his arms and held her close.

  ‘Now it would be pity,’ he said, the words muffled by her hair as he’d spoken with his lips against her neck.

  ‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘I feel regret that you missed so much of Joe’s life, but not pity for you, Jean-Luc. You are far too strong a man to generate that kind of emotion in a woman.’

  He raised his head and looked at her in the dim light of the passage.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. You have mapped out your path and you follow it, in spite of sidetracks and diversions. Jeremy’s death was terrible, particularly because right now it’s inexplicable, but think of all the children your work has saved.’

  He smiled but there was little joy in the expression.

  ‘You can’t balance the living against the dead, Lauren,’ he said, ‘as if one death equals fifteen children saved. But you are right, it isn’t self-pity or thoughts of myself that is destroying my sleep, but what happened. I have been over it with Alex and over and over it again in my head and there is nothing to explain what happened. Even last night, when I should have been taking Joe to Cubs, we were meeting, Alex, Phil, Maggie and I, at Scoozi to discuss it with his mother. Jeremy had had cardiac catheterisation before, and the catheter hadn’t reached his heart. The septal occluder hadn’t been introduced—that little boy’s death is a mystery.’

  The information about the meeting made Lauren feel about an inch tall! If only she’d seen the other team members!

  But right now she had to comfort the man she was coming to love.

  ‘And while it’s a mystery you worry about other children—other procedures?’

  His arms were linked around her waist so they stood with their bodies touching, but she knew his mind was on work, not on the attraction between them, for all it might have been stirring her senses.

  ‘I would,’ he said, frowning now, ‘if I hadn’t done similar procedures hundreds of times. What bothers me is that we somehow failed Jeremy in our pre-op tests—that he had an underlying condition we didn’t know about.’

  ‘But he was a referral from another hospital. You can’t be expected to start again from scratch and test him for every condition known to science.’

  His arms tightened and he hugged her closer.

  ‘You wouldn’t think so but if we discover the cause was an underlying condition, maybe we have to change our ways with outside referrals. Alex and Phil have been discussing that today.’

  ‘Mum! I’m finished.’

  Joe’s call broke them apart, but Lauren was pleased to find Jean-Luc following her back into the kitchen.

  ‘Your flat is very quiet this evening,’ he said, as he settled into a chair beside Joe. ‘Usually someone is dropping in, or I can hear your mother moving about upstairs in her flat.’

  ‘Mum’s at the gallery, bugging the director about the positioning of her paintings for her next showing, and Russ and Bill are both working.’

  ‘Will you help me put the cards in envelopes?’ Joe asked Jean-Luc, pushing the pile of cards and envelopes along the table.

  ‘I will help but I won’t do them all,’ he said, halving the pile and pushing one half ba
ck to Joe. ‘But it was a good try,’ he added, and Joe smiled his delight.

  His stubby fingers struggled with the simple exercise, but with his friend John at his side he kept going until the job was done.

  ‘Bedtime,’ Lauren said, and felt rather than saw Jean-Luc’s gaze switch from Joe to her.

  ‘You want to read the story?’ she asked, and though Jean-Luc agreed, especially as Joe had added his pleas, Lauren knew it wasn’t Joe’s bedtime that had been in Jean-Luc’s mind.

  But what to do?

  The night they’d made love she’d crept from his bed in the early hours of the morning, hurrying home, uncomfortable about leaving Joe with her mother overnight. But the idea of Jean-Luc staying over at her place was even more disturbing.

  Especially right now, when she wanted whatever it was going on between them unnoticed. It was too new, too fragile, and its future definitely too uncertain for her to want to share it, let alone for it to become hospital gossip.

  All at once she understood why she hadn’t included mention of Jean-Luc in her emails home. She’d been enjoying being in love so much she’d wanted to hold it to herself.

  In love?

  She stood in the bedroom door as Jean-Luc read a story about a very sleepy wombat to Joe, and tried to work out if what she felt for the man was love. She understood the love she felt for Joe, and her mother, and Russ, and even Bill, but what she felt for Jean-Luc was different.

  Joe fell asleep at the same time as the wombat and Jean-Luc put down the book and came quietly out of the room.

  He pulled the bedroom door closed behind him, and once again took Lauren in his arms.

  ‘Things might have been so different,’ he said, then he kissed her, but with no hint of regret for what might have been. This kiss was for now, and as it deepened and heat burned through her body, causing tremors in her flesh, Lauren forgot the puzzling aspects of love and gave in to the physical delight of kissing Jean-Luc.

  ‘Presumably you have a bedroom,’ he eventually murmured, and she eased away from him, aware her clothing was twisted and her hair a wild muddle about her head.

  ‘I have and it even has a bed, but…’

  She hesitated, unsure how to put her concerns into words, certain they would sound pathetic.

  ‘You have reservations? About me, perhaps?

  ‘Not about you,’ she assured him, still trying to find the words she needed to explain.

  Or is it? Is it Jean-Luc in particular or relationships in general? I haven’t handled other relationships particularly well, and for all you think you love him, this could well be some leftover attraction from the past—stuff my body remembers but my mind doesn’t!

  Her mind was off on a tangent, debating, and Jean-Luc was talking again.

  ‘You are worried about your family perhaps. Do they know I am Joe’s father?’

  ‘Yes, they know that much.’

  ‘And you do not wish them to know more?’

  ‘What more is there to know?’ Lauren demanded, so irritated by this conversation—and by the fact she couldn’t freely and easily make love to Jean-Luc—she wanted to hit out, to hurt. ‘It’s not as if our relationship is going anywhere. You said as much yourself.’

  ‘But it could still be a relationship,’ he pointed out. ‘We are as attracted to each other as we were when we first met. We are adults, so surely we can enjoy where that attraction leads.’

  Put like that it made Lauren’s objections seem petty—or maybe childish.

  ‘OK,’ she agreed, ‘you’re right, but—’

  She took his hand.

  ‘Let’s sit in the kitchen,’ she suggested, but looking at him, so at ease in her kitchen—so darned at home—it didn’t make things any easier.

  ‘When I came home,’ she began, although she knew this wasn’t where she should have begun, ‘the family closed around me, cared for me. It took me a long time first to gain the confidence I needed to be independent…’

  She smiled at him and shrugged. ‘OK, so living in a flat beneath my mother and my brother isn’t hugely independent, but that was for Joe’s sake more than mine. And I am independent. But relationships—well, there’s Joe, you see. He’s not stupid.’

  ‘You do not want men sleeping over in your house and Joe seeing them next morning—that is what you’re trying to say?’

  She nodded, so embarrassed now her throat had closed up, although she had to get her thoughts said somehow.

  ‘And having you sneak out in the middle of the night—well, that doesn’t seem right either.’ Her voice was a bit squeaky, but at least she’d got it out, then, realising she’d sounded rude, she added, ‘Not right for you, as if I’m ashamed of you when I’m not.’

  He stood up and came around the table, taking her in his arms.

  ‘I understand what you are saying,’ he said. ‘I will not stay tonight, but we will work out something else that suits us both. And now, if I am not mistaken, that is your mother’s car coming down the back lane, and knowing her she will tap on your door before she goes up to her flat so I had better go.’

  He smoothed his hands across her hair, then kissed her hard on her lips, his hands now mussing up her hair again.

  ‘When is the exhibition?’

  ‘A week on Friday—drinks and nibbles at six. Would you like to come? We go along en masse, Mum and I, Russ and Bill, various neighbours who are hospital folk.’

  ‘I would love to attend but that is the day the toxicology report is due—I may be tied up with Alex and Phil.’

  The words were so full of pain Lauren wanted to kiss him again but, as he had surmised, her mother was already knocking on the front door of the flat.

  She gave him a quick goodnight kiss, touching his face for he was looking worried again, no doubt thinking of the meeting that lay ahead.

  The mood in the team meeting the next morning was grim, particularly as it was attended by various members of the hospital hierarchy and a member of the hospital’s legal firm.

  ‘This is not an inquisition,’ Alex began, ‘is simply an opportunity to put every stage of the event into writing.’

  Lauren glanced at Jean-Luc and saw him pale at the word ‘event’. But she could hardly offer sympathy in this situation—not that he’d have accepted it anyway.

  ‘Lauren,’ Alex continued, ‘let’s begin with you. Jeremy came in when, and who was with him?’

  ‘He was admitted at six the evening before the operation so we could ensure he went nil by mouth from midnight. According to his mother, he’d had a meal at four-thirty. On arrival at the hospital, he was put into bed and watched television until eight-thirty. Mrs Willis came in with him and was provided with a reclining chair so she could stay the night, which was what she wished to do.’

  Lauren closed her eyes as she tried to picture the events of that evening.

  ‘Jeremy was restless and thirsty and had a small drink of water at nine. He had no medication at all that night. I was going off duty as Mrs Willis had asked me to be present at the operation. I checked Jeremy before I left the hospital at ten and he and Mrs Willis were both sleeping soundly.’

  ‘Why do you say soundly?’ Jean-Luc asked, and Lauren turned to face him, wondering why she had said the word, again recalling images of the evening.

  ‘He was breathing deeply, not snoring but making those snuffly noises as he breathed in, giving the impression he was deeply asleep.’

  Everyone, even the legal eagle, nodded their understanding, and Alex called on Jasmine, who’d been on duty overnight, to give her account of the night.

  ‘He slept all night. I wasn’t beside his bed the whole time, but I checked him regularly, as did the other nurses on duty. You can see from his chart that someone went in every hour and recorded the fact that he was asleep.’

  And so it went, all the accounts recorded to be transcribed later and signed by the various staff involved. And as they grew closer to the moment when Jeremy’s heart had stopped beating, the tens
ion in the room grew and grew until Lauren at least began to find it unbearable.

  ‘We’ll break for coffee,’ Alex decreed, and Lauren shot him a relieved smile, certain he, too, had been feeling more and more uncomfortable. She hoped the break would give her a chance to speak to Jean-Luc but he had buttonholed Alex as soon as the break was announced and the two took their coffee to a corner of the room, obviously wanting a private conversation.

  Fifteen minutes later the meeting continued, everyone giving statements so the entire operation was documented from at least six and sometimes a dozen points of view.

  ‘The frustrating thing,’ Lauren said to Jean-Luc when they found themselves going down in the lift together, ‘is that we might now have it all recorded but we’re no closer to finding answers.’

  ‘We might be,’ Jean-Luc said, and he sounded so positive Lauren stared at him.

  ‘You’ve an idea?’ she asked, and he shook his head.

  ‘The shadow of one, nothing more, but having a record of everything that happened means we can refer to it when we have more information to hand. Dinner?’

  The question, coming as it did, made little sense.

  ‘Dinner?’ Lauren repeated, not sure she’d heard right.

  Jean-Luc smiled and she felt her knees buckle.

  ‘I thought maybe you didn’t have a previous engagement, and it’s not Cub night, and that being the case you might join me for dinner, not at Scoozi, as half the hospital is always there, but perhaps at one of the restaurants we drive past when we go to Coogee.’

  Dinner at Coogee with Jean-Luc?

  Lauren could feel excitement building in her chest, and a different excitement building lower down.

  Would he ask her to stay the night?

  Time to pack a toothbrush?

  ‘Well?’

  Now heat rose in her cheeks and she was glad they’d finally reached the ground floor and she could hurry out of the lift so he wouldn’t see her blushing at her thoughts.

  She turned back to him and smiled.

  ‘Sounds good,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to check someone’s available to mind Joe, but that shouldn’t be a problem. What time?’