Slowly, slowly, his brain began to pick up speed.
‘I have a daughter,’ he repeated, his hand dropping from Evie’s hair as he pushed himself away from her. ‘I have a three-month-old baby, and you didn’t tell me until now?’
Evie crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to meet his eyes.
‘Five months old,’ she answered shakily.
‘Sorry?’
‘Imogen is five months old. Not three.’
He turned to pin her with a narrow gaze as she reached for his glass and took a generous gulp as though she was parched. It took a moment for him to register.
‘That’s enough,’ he bit out, taking the juice from her and setting it out of reach before pushing himself up from the couch and moving over to the window, reinforcing the space between them.
‘Drinking that won’t help you,’ he muttered, staring out at the uneventful street scene.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered so quietly he almost missed it.
He could certainly go for a drink himself. A drink of the large, stiff variety, not a glass of orange juice. And he rarely drank.
‘We slept together a year ago. You’re telling me the baby was two months premature?’
‘That’s not unusual given my...condition.’
He had to strain to hear her.
‘The baby was born at thirty-two weeks? Thirty-three?’
‘Thirty-two weeks. I went onto dialysis five days a week to carry her for as long as I could, but my body was under pressure, so they made the decision...’
Part of his brain told him that she’d done well to get that far. Her health would have been deteriorating rapidly as the growing foetus put more and more strain on her already stressed organs. It certainly explained why she’d gone from healthy when they were together a year ago, to being taken in for her transplant within the week.
‘You never thought to...not to have it? For your health? For the baby’s health?’
Even the words tasted bitter in his mouth.
He knew instantly that he’d said the wrong thing. If he’d felt he’d somehow passed some unknown test earlier, he knew he’d clearly fallen short of the mark now. A shuttered expression dropped over Evie’s features and her voice turned cold.
‘That’s all I needed to know.’ Her voice was shaking. Whether from anger or distress, he couldn’t be sure, but his own emotions were too uprooted to care.
‘Please leave, Max.’
How had this turned around so that she was the one furious with him?
He swung around incredulously.
‘Really, Evangeline? For the last twelve months you have wilfully kept the knowledge of my baby from me, and now you’re the one acting hard done by?’
‘Because you’ve just told me you thought I should have...never had her.’
‘Don’t put words in my mouth,’ he bit out. ‘I was only concerned about the impact on your health as well as the baby’s. You admitted yourself that the stress of carrying a baby was too much for your body and they had to carry out a C-section when it was only seven months old.’
‘She.’
He looked at her in confusion.
‘Pardon?’
‘My baby is a she, not an it,’ Evie choked out at him.
‘Fine. She.’ Had he really said it?
He hadn’t meant to but he was still processing the news. Dead air compacted the room, making it hard to catch a deep breath. Hard even to think.
‘So the baby is all right? She’s well?’
The look of pride that lit up her eyes was unmistakeable.
‘Yes, she’s well.’
‘How long was she in NICU?’
‘Only thirty days. She weighed three pounds and four ounces when she was born. She needed to weigh around four and a half pounds, and be able to feed, breathe, and stay warm on her own before they would let her come home.’
‘Of course,’ he managed hollowly.
‘She was actually pretty good at maintaining a good body temperature without the help of an incubator,’ Evie babbled on. ‘But she couldn’t breathe and swallow at the same time, so feeding was the big issue.’
‘Thirty days.’ He blew out a deep breath at last. ‘Our baby was in the NICU for thirty days and you never once called me. Never once tried to contact me. In fact, you didn’t just need that single month to get in touch with me, Evie, you had seven months before that.’
Evie stared at him mutely.
‘Nothing to say for yourself?’
‘The snide tone is beneath you,’ croaked Evie.
‘Call it shock,’ he bit back.
A bleak thought suddenly leapt out at him and he rounded on her.
‘What do you want? Money?’
‘No.’
He might have believed her cry of indignation five minutes earlier. Now, he didn’t know what to believe.
‘Really?’
‘Do you...think I did this deliberately?’ she croaked. ‘To trap you?’
‘Did you?’ he demanded.
Her aghast look didn’t sway him. He couldn’t make sense of it.
‘You told me categorically that you couldn’t get pregnant.’
‘I’d been told that was the case,’ she replied weakly.
‘Come on, Evie, we’re both medical professionals. Just because you have PKD doesn’t mean you can’t have kids, it doesn’t even mean you’d have necessarily developed renal failure. Plenty of women with PKD have one or two successful pregnancies without increasing their risk. In fact, the last figures I read suggested that only fifty per cent of people with PKD will have renal failure by the age of sixty, and about sixty per cent by the age of seventy. There’s no reason to suggest you would have even had renal failure if you hadn’t been kicked by that kid.’
Max stopped, hoping that was enough. Instead, Evie just stared at him as though she didn’t recognise him, making him feel like the bad guy when, surely, it should be her?
‘I didn’t say I couldn’t have children because of my PKD.’
Her voice cracked with emotion but she didn’t elaborate. Max barely stifled his frustration.
‘Then what? The dialysis?’ He scrambled to calculate everything she’d told him. ‘You said you went onto dialysis after you realised you were pregnant. But even if that hadn’t been the case, the chances of a woman of child-bearing age falling pregnant whilst on dialysis are slim but not impossible, one to seven per cent, right? So however you spin it, there’s no medical reason to support your assurances to me that it was impossible for you to get pregnant. So, I ask again, did you deliberately set out to trap me?’
Her desperate look disconcerted him more than he cared to admit.
‘I would never have set out to trap you. Or anyone,’ she defended herself. ‘When I was diagnosed with PKD, I was also diagnosed with an ovulation disorder. I was told that I would likely need fertility treatment to conceive, which would only be given if my PKD wasn’t a factor.’
‘I see.’ His brain felt as if it were working through treacle to process the information. How could he be sure she wasn’t lying to him now? He took in her ashen pallor, her pinched nose, her shaking hands. Was he being churlish?
‘I’m sorry. I should never have said all that.’
‘No, you...you shouldn’t have.’
‘It doesn’t make sense for you to have set out to trap me, to want money from me, because if you had then you’d have hit me up for it as soon as she was born. So at least you have that in your favour. But right now, it’s the only thing you’ve got in your favour, Evie.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yes, it is that simple. How could you have failed to tell me about the baby? If I hadn’t had a plastics consult in that transpl
ant unit yesterday, if I hadn’t walked into that corridor at that moment, would you ever have sought me out to tell me about her?’
She didn’t respond and the silence settled over them like a heavy shroud, bleak and suffocating. Trees moved in the breeze outside the window, creating a gap to allow the sunlight through. The heat warming up his back was a discordant sensation.
‘Well, would you have?’
‘I wanted to tell you.’ She shook her head at last. ‘But things were...are...more complicated than that.’
‘Bull,’ he snorted. ‘I have a daughter. I deserve to have been told about her. You should have told me about her.’
‘I wanted to...’ Evie began uncertainly. ‘But you were in Gaza and when I tried to—’
‘That’s pathetic, Evie,’ Max cut her off. ‘You could have found a way. You could’ve got a message to me if you’d wanted to.’
‘It isn’t that simple, Max. Please believe me.’
‘Regardless of your claim that it isn’t about money, I intend to meet my financial obligations.’
‘I don’t want you to do anything out of some sense of obligation,’ Evie cried. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell you. Imogen and I don’t need resentment in our lives because you never wanted to be drawn into a family.’
‘And yet here I am.’
She pushed up off the couch with a sudden burst of energy and made for the living-room door. But it didn’t escape him that she was clinging onto it for support as much as holding it open for him.
‘Then let me make it clear that you’re free to leave. I will never contact you again. Imogen will never need you.’
‘It doesn’t work that way.’
The harsh bark didn’t sound like his own voice. His head was swimming, emotions he couldn’t identify crowding his brain—all bar one.
Fear.
He was a highly regarded surgeon on his way to the top of his profession. He controlled crisis situations and managed people through some of the worst times in their life. He relished the feeling of being calm and in control.
None of that was helping him now. He hadn’t felt such fear since he’d been a kid. Helpless and vulnerable. All because of his parents. He’d sworn he’d never have a family, never put a child of his through the hell that his parents had laid on him without them even meaning to. And Evie was offering him the chance to walk away from a situation he would never, ever have chosen to put himself into.
But the choice had been taken out of his hands. He was a father. There was a child out there who needed him to be that father. He could never turn his back and walk away.
But so help him he had no idea what he was supposed to do. The only thing he could do was begin with the practical, the bit he knew.
‘I’ll start making arrangements straight away.’
‘What kind of arrangements?’
‘I told you.’ He straightened his shoulders. ‘Financial arrangements.’
‘And I told you that we don’t need your money.’
‘Look around you, Evie. You’re living in your brother’s home, which is barely big enough for his family, and you’ve got a baby of your own. My baby. You need money. My daughter needs money.’
‘The only thing my baby needs right now is love. And I have plenty of that. Clearly, you don’t.’
And just like that, Evie hit on his darkest fear.
She was right, he thought, about providing for his daughter materially, but beyond that he didn’t know how to love anyone. How could he?
He’d been given everything that a child could materially need, but he’d never learned what it was like to be loved.
* * *
Evie watched her knuckles turn white as she clung on to the door for all she was worth. He’d talked about obligations and arrangements. All the same things his parents had so calmly and logically presented to her. It seemed they were right after all: they knew their son better than Evie did. Of course they did. And they had been right that he didn’t want a child in his life.
And she knew how damaging it would be for him to stay only to resent her and Imogen every day that he was in their lives. Better for him to go now. But Max didn’t look as though he had any intention of leaving. Instead he started pacing the floor as he raked his hands through his hair.
‘If you and Annie are due at Silvertrees for the transplant within the next few days, what’s happening with Imogen?’ Max demanded abruptly.
What did that have to do with it?
‘My brother will look after Imogen.’ She couldn’t keep the shake out of her voice. ‘Although I’ll be at Silvertrees, Annie will undergo her operation at her local hospital. She should be able to be discharged within a matter of days, so it’ll be easier for her to be nearer home.’
‘Whereas you’ll be kept in for longer, and the transplant team at Silvertrees will want to do as many of your follow-ups as possible themselves, before transferring you back to a local unit.’
‘Right.’
‘So I’m guessing they’ll complete the nephrectomy on Annie in the morning, prepare the kidney for transport to Silvertrees and operate on you by the afternoon?’ he guessed.
What was his point?
‘Yes, I think that’s the plan,’ she replied stiffly. ‘Obviously the Silvertrees team need to monitor me closely but with any luck it will go smoothly, the kidney will start working straight away, I won’t need dialysis and I’ll be out and back home with Imogen within a week.’
‘And your check-ups?’ He frowned, unconvinced. ‘Even if you are discharged that quickly, and frankly I think you’re being unrealistic, you’ll need to go in every couple of days for the first week or so, then at least twice a week for several weeks after that. To ensure your body isn’t rejecting the new kidney and to balance your immuno-suppressants.’
‘I’ll make the journey.’ She jutted her chin out mutinously. She wasn’t going to stay in hospital, away from her daughter, any longer than she had to.
‘You won’t be able to drive, so you’re going to ask your brother to drive a three-hour round trip every couple of days? Taking a five-month-old baby with you? Unless you’re planning on leaving her with Annie, of course, who’ll still be recovering herself? Or are you intending that all four of you make the journey?’
He was angry, and he had every right to be, but every cruelly thrown word felt like a physical blow. She knew it was asking a lot of Annie, of her brother, but what choice was there? This conversation was painful, and she didn’t see it getting them anywhere other than the mess they had now.
‘You’ve already made your position pretty clear, Max. And that’s fine. You didn’t ask for this, and I gave you no say in the matter. But I’m releasing you now, from any obligations relating to our baby. You have my word I will never come to you again.’
‘I’m not walking away from the baby,’ Max snarled at her.
The fire in his eyes could have burned the house down around her.
‘I am this baby’s father, and I will not allow you to push me out of her life now. I won’t allow you to let her grow up thinking her father didn’t want her. I will be there, whenever she needs me.’
It could have just been grand rhetoric but there was an unshakeable resolve behind the words, which made Evie take stock. And Max looked just as stunned as she felt.
Maybe she needed to remember what a shock this must all be to him, learning about his daughter, and her own kidney transplant, all at once. It had been a big enough shock to her and she’d had the advantage that it had all been staggered over the last year, at least.
And hadn’t shock also made her act in a way she’d almost instantly regretted, when she’d taken the money from his parents the day after Imogen’s birth?
Yet as a low cry began from the room down the hallway Evie was spare
d the need to respond to his declaration.
‘Imogen,’ she cried, scrambling out of the room.
She moved quickly down the narrow hallway to the temporary bedroom she shared with her daughter, but as she became aware of Max following her an image of his luxury designer home came to mind. Spacious and minimalist, it screamed wealth. All the things she didn’t have—not if she was going to stick to her promise to herself that the cheque his parents had thrown at her would be kept in a trust for Imogen in the event that Evie’s transplant didn’t work. But money that Max, as he’d so pointedly reminded her earlier, could offer Imogen. In spades.
‘Wait back there,’ she sputtered.
‘You’ve got no chance.’
With the cry of objection at being left alone becoming more insistent, she didn’t have time to argue further. Stuffing down the sense that she couldn’t offer their daughter the kind of home to grow up in that Max must have enjoyed, Evie set her teeth and continued down the short hallway and into her room.
She practically had to climb over her single bed to get to Imogen’s hand-me-down cot, sniffing the air, which smelled, as always, of lavender baby bubble bath and aloe vera baby lotion. Although, to Max’s sensitised nose, she couldn’t help fearing it would somehow smell of baby sick or dirty nappies, giving her yet another area in which she fell short in his eyes.
But as soon as the tiny, flushed, screwed-up face saw her and eased into a wide smile Evie forgot their surroundings. She lifted up Imogen, cradling the baby to her chest, and inhaled her unique baby smell.
She would never let anyone take her daughter from her, no matter how much money they had.
By the time she turned around, Max was standing braced against the doorjamb and apparently unsure whether to come in or stay put as he searched for somewhere, anywhere, to place his feet. This time, she wouldn’t be intimidated.
‘This is where you both sleep?’
She feigned a casual shrug.
‘It used to be their downstairs office. They made it a bedroom for Imogen and I because upstairs is only two-bed and I wasn’t about to turf either them or my nine-year-old nephew out of their bedrooms.’
‘No need to sound so defensive.’
The Surgeon's Baby Surprise Page 5