‘Who was the paediatric surgeon? Couldn’t they have talked the parents round? Explained things?’
‘Not enough knowledge of the boy’s mental-health history.’
‘Why not?’ Evie frowned. ‘Where were all my notes?’
‘It’s not your notes they needed. It’s the passion, the conviction. You’re what sells these cases, not a set of emotionless black and white notes.’
‘Well, what about my replacement?’
‘No one can replace you,’ Max said, then coughed as he realised the way it sounded.
She felt the flush tingling from her toes to her legs, into her torso and up. It might not have been what he meant, but it felt good to hear nonetheless.
‘Listen, how about I go to the centre and speak to the manager, see if I can’t get him to set up a meeting with the Morrisons?’ Max offered, his professional tone firmly in place. ‘Give them my professional opinion and go from there?’
‘That would mean a lot, especially to Vince. But why would you do that for me, Max?’
She knew he’d started the conversation in order to find some common ground between them. Talking about the case was the first real conversation they’d had without awkwardness or disagreement in the last forty-eight hours and it felt like a real step forward. Proof that they could work together and agree on a solution that would be in their daughter’s best interests.
‘I want to do it to show how I appreciate your earlier apology,’ Max said unexpectedly. ‘And I think it’s time I made one of my own.’
‘An apology?’
‘I feel I guilted you into coming to stay with me. As though you owed it to me for not telling me about the baby. Deep down, I think I can understand some of your reasons even if I don’t agree. But I wanted you to know this isn’t just about the baby...sorry, Imogen...this is about wanting to help you, too.’
‘Really?’
She watched him carefully, surprised as he took his eyes off the road for a moment to meet hers.
‘Yes, Evie, really.’ He turned back to the road. ‘I think you should stay with me because I think it will be better for your recovery to stay close to Silvertrees for as long as possible, in order to be checked over by the transplant team themselves, rather than being handed off to a follow-on team too early.’
‘And you do want to get to know your daughter, right?’ She had to check.
‘Of course I do. It’s important to me that my daughter knows she is loved and never feels she wasn’t wanted. More important than I think you can realise. To that end, I want to make sure I do what’s best for her, yes.’
He was choosing his words carefully, but it wasn’t necessarily helping her. Was he alluding to his parents? She couldn’t even ask, without revealing her own experience of them. It left Evie feeling thwarted.
‘Which brings me back around to how you and I are going to proceed from here.’
‘You and I?’ Her mouth felt suddenly dry again.
‘You and I,’ he confirmed calmly. ‘I’ll admit I’ve been angry that I didn’t know about Imogen before now, and I’ve been punishing you for it. I was too wrapped up in myself to consider that you’ve got enough to deal with at the moment with your imminent transplant without additional stress from me.’
Evie squirmed in her seat. This was the perfect opportunity to admit the truth to him.
‘You do have every right to be mad...’ she began.
‘Maybe so, but it won’t help you get through this transplant. You know as well as I do that a patient’s mental well-being can influence not only how their body copes during the operation itself, but how their recovery goes afterwards. In your case, how your body responds—or rather doesn’t—to a foreign organ.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she managed shakily, not fooling him for a moment.
‘I understand that you’ve felt like you have to stay strong for your family all this time, especially with Annie being your donor. But you can let go a little now and lean on me.’
Hope flickered tentatively, but she still couldn’t relax.
‘You must still be angry, Max.’
‘Evie, I don’t know what happened, or why you...didn’t get in touch. But I’m not going to push you on it any more. However, when you’re ready to talk to me, I’d like that.’
‘As easily as that?’ She tried not to feel suspicious.
‘Why not? We can’t dwell on what’s happened if we want to find the best future for our daughter.’
It sounded too good to be true, but Evie wasn’t about to spoil it by arguing. It didn’t change the real issues, not least the money, or the fact that she still hadn’t told him about it. But it did go some way to re-establishing a rapport between the two of them so that, when she did eventually find the right moment and place to confess, Max wouldn’t be so inflexible and impersonal in how he reacted to everything she needed to tell him.
She just needed to buy herself, and Imogen, some time.
‘You can’t go forwards into the past,’ she said softly.
‘Say again?’
She startled, not realising she’d said it aloud.
‘Oh, nothing. It was just something my mum used to say. You can’t go forwards into the past.’
She listened as Max repeated it, mulling the words over as he did so.
‘It’s a good way to put it.’ He smiled. ‘So, what do you think, Evie?’
‘I think,’ she began thoughtfully, ‘I’d appreciate that very much.’
‘So, friends?’
Evie licked her lips and offered him the first genuine smile since their five nights together.
‘Friends.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘THAT’S ANOTHER FAIL,’ Max exclaimed to his baby daughter as he lifted her off the changing mat only to watch the downward drop of his third nappy attempt in as many minutes.
This was his first morning in charge of his daughter, having taken Imogen off Evie late last night and telling Evie to get a full night’s sleep. The drugs Evie would be on for the transplant made breastfeeding an impossibility, so he’d felt free to take Imogen and give her a feed in the night, subsequently going through more nappies than he cared to count trying to change her. Unsurprisingly, his daughter didn’t look overly impressed with his performance so far.
He was a skilled, sought-after surgeon—how the heck could a tiny scrap of absorbent material for a tiny baby defeat him? He wasn’t accustomed to failing at things, and he didn’t like the feeling one bit.
‘Right, nothing else for it.’
He carried Imogen over to the LCD home automation panel on the wall. ‘Hmm...’ he murmured, flicking through the online tutorials. ‘Here we go: Changing a baby’s nappy.’
To her credit, Imogen didn’t cry but simply watched him with big, clear, expressive eyes, which were perfect replicas of her mother’s, but it didn’t make Max feel any more relaxed around her.
Funny, but he’d dealt with babies week in, week out in a medical and surgical setting, not least with all the work he’d done with the charity, from cleft lips and palates to club-feet, burns to reconstructive. But he’d never changed a nappy. He’d never wanted to change a nappy. That much hadn’t changed. He was beginning to realise that his solution of looking after the baby, his daughter, whilst Evie was in hospital might not have been one of his most inspired ideas. He clearly wasn’t cut out for it and being in charge of such a tiny life, outside the comfort of the operating theatre, was a weighty responsibility.
‘Having trouble?’
He swung around, cradling Imogen against his chest as he did so.
‘We’re fine.’
‘So I see.’ She grinned, gesturing first to the tutorial, then to the nappy, which was partly over Imogen’s hip and partly over her knee.
/> ‘Okay,’ he conceded sheepishly. ‘So I might have a few things to learn. Anyway, you’re meant to be resting.’
He’d insisted on giving her his master suite so that she could get as much rest as possible before her transplant, whilst he moved into the second bedroom, with the annexed dressing room now a nursery.
‘I am resting. I forgot how comfortable your bed was—’ She stopped abruptly, flushing a deep red.
Max quickly shut down any memories of the last time—the only other time—Evie had been in his home. Those five, intense days.
‘Wait, this is Imogen’s nursery?’
‘It is.’ He stepped back to let her have a full look around. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s very...expensive-looking.’
It should be. He’d paid handsomely to have a designer come in and transform the room in one day, with less than twelve hours’ notice. Still, he surveyed the room again, this time through Evie’s eyes. It occurred to him that it was very different from the makeshift yet altogether cosier homely set-up she and Imogen had shared at her brother’s house.
The interior designer had insisted on an oak sleigh cot, matching oak changing table—fully stocked—and oak wardrobe. A jungle theme ran throughout—Max having just about talked her out of a princess theme—from the bedding to the curtains, and the pastel walls with bright jungle mural to add some interest. On one wall a bookshelf overflowed with soft toys and books.
‘I don’t know why there are so many books.’ He shrugged. ‘It isn’t as though Imogen will be reading for a while.’
‘No, but it’ll be nice to sit on that wicker chair over there and read to her at night.’ Evie offered him a warm smile, but there was a hint of sadness behind it.
‘I hadn’t really thought of that,’ he admitted with surprise.
‘My mum used to have this big chair she called the reading chair, and at night we’d snuggle together and she would read to us for hours and hours. Even as a baby I think she used it to get us into the habit of reading.’
That would be why the idea hadn’t occurred to him. He couldn’t remember either of his parents reading to him. Ever. They’d always been too busy.
‘How about your mum?’
‘What?’ he asked sharply, before checking himself.
‘Did your mum read to you, too? Is that why you thought to put the chair and the books in here?’
He peered at her closely but there was nothing in her expression but innocence and interest. Slowly the tense feeling receded.
She hadn’t meant anything by it—how could she have? She didn’t know the first thing about his parents, and he intended to keep it that way.
‘I don’t recall,’ he lied. ‘She probably did. But it was the interior decorator who did this room.’
He didn’t want his parents to have anything to do with his daughter. He didn’t want them to create the same lack of self-worth in their grandchild as they had in him throughout his childhood. He’d been lucky to have that one teacher who had seen what was going on and taken a young Max under his wing. He wouldn’t be a surgeon—a top surgeon, no less—without that one gentle, guiding hand.
‘Oh, right, of course.’ Evie accepted his explanation without question, and he felt simultaneously relieved and guilty.
‘So, what are they like?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘Your parents. Are they in the medical profession like you? Is that where you got such skills from? And the way you care so much for your patients?’
‘No, it wasn’t.’ He just about held back the bitterness from his tone.
Of all people, his parents could have been his teachers, his heroes. They had expected him to follow them into a surgical career, and they’d certainly pushed him on the academic side. But they had never shown him a caring or loving side. He sometimes wondered why they had even bothered to have a kid, but the answer was simple: it had been expected. It hadn’t been something they’d wanted.
Not that he was about to load his, or his parents’, shortcomings onto Evie. She didn’t need to know any of this.
In fact, he was beginning to realise that they didn’t really know anything about each other at all. Evie was the mother of his baby and yet they might as well have been strangers. Maybe, if they were really serious about being friends for the sake of their daughter then he should actually start talking to her, asking about her life and her family. He had to admit, he was interested.
Max observed in silence as she watched her daughter, her eyes filled with affection. Her innate love for Imogen was beyond doubt. It made him feel...good, just to see it. Almost subconsciously, she skimmed her lower abdomen with her hand and he knew immediately what was going through her mind. He’d seen it time and again with his patients over the years.
‘You’re going to be fine,’ he said quietly. Convincingly.
She shot him an unconvincing smile in return.
‘I hope so. Thanks to Annie. Just as long as my body doesn’t reject the new kidney.’
‘You can’t afford to think that way, Evie. You have to stay mentally strong. Be positive.’
‘I know.’ She bobbed her head but the way her shoulders hunched told a different story. ‘But let’s be fair, Max, we’re effectively trying to disguise a foreign organ from my body. My PRA levels were high enough to warrant plasmapheresis. If my body spots it, it’ll really attack it.’
‘You know it’s more complicated than that,’ Max began, then stopped. Even doctors were allowed to get scared; it wouldn’t help to simply censor everything Evie said.
He searched for something more constructive to say. To help her. But everything that came to mind didn’t encapsulate what he wanted to tell her. He’d dropped pat phrases to patients and their families throughout his career, given them words of comfort whilst being sure not to make promises he couldn’t fulfil. Promising to do everything he could for a patient wasn’t the same as promising them that everything would be okay, because he would do everything he could but the outcome would never be exactly the same because every patient was different.
He had no way of knowing how Evie’s body would react to the transplant. He couldn’t say what the future held. Yet right now, for the first time in his life, he had to hold himself back from pulling Evie into his arms and promising her that everything was going to be okay.
He’d never wanted to believe it so much in his life.
Max cradled Imogen closer, grateful for occupying his hands and the inadvertent barrier she created between himself and Evie.
‘All I can promise you is that you’re in good hands. Arabella Goodwin is one of the best nephrologists in her field,’ he declared brightly. ‘All the tests and pre-op care she has carried out, the method she has selected for the transplant itself, the balance of immuno-suppressants, they’re all to maximise your chance of success.’
‘I know that.’ Evie nodded and bit her lip. ‘Logically, as a doctor, I know it. But as a patient, I hate not being the one in control.’
He could relate to that.
‘So, forget you’re a doctor for ten minutes and pretend you’re a patient like any other. Talk it through like any other patient would.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’re scared.’
She was going to argue, he could see it. Then she changed her mind.
‘I am scared, yes. My body’s antibodies are so high. The plasmapheresis is just to get me even close to being able to undergo the transplant, but after the operation there’s bound to be more.’
‘So think of it like both the transplant and the induction drugs are a mortgage deposit, and the maintenance drugs are your monthly mortgage payments. The bigger your initial deposit, the lower your monthly repayments need to be. In other words, the better the transplant takes and your body
responds to those initial immuno-suppressants, the less chance your body will reject the kidney in the future, so the less maintenance drugs you’re going to need.’
‘It doesn’t mean that a month, six months, twelve months down the road, my body might not suddenly decide to reject it.’ She sucked in a breath.
‘No, but we have to start somewhere. There’s no way to predict who will suffer a rejection episode, but if you do we adjust the medication to attempt to reverse it. You know that a good percentage of transplant patients go through at least one rejection episode but it’s mild enough to counter.’
‘I know, and some patients have the same transplanted kidney twenty, forty years down the road, and might have had a handful of rejection episodes they’ve been able to reverse.’
‘Right, and the lower your maintenance drugs are, the more room we have to play with to increase them.’
‘Yes.’
Without warning, Evie smiled.
‘You know, I actually do feel a bit better about it all.’
‘Good.’
One little word, which didn’t come close to how he was feeling. She looked genuinely less tense and his chest swelled a little to think that, together, they’d talked it out.
It wouldn’t be the last time she’d need to run through things, to steady herself, but he’d be here for her every time she needed him. But right now, she needed him to move on.
‘Are you hungry? If you fancy it I could make something to eat?’
She hesitated.
‘It isn’t a problem to make breakfast,’ he cajoled.
‘Breakfast would be nice.’ Evie finally held her hands out. ‘Shall I sort out Imogen’s nappy?’
Max looked at the falling nappy and grinned wryly.
‘I’ll learn soon enough.’
The buzz of contact as he handed their daughter to Evie caught him off guard. Quickly he retreated to his temporary bedroom to snatch up a fresh tee shirt from the drawer before heading to the safety of downstairs.
* * *
Evie watched him go, her heart beating faster.
The Surgeon's Baby Surprise Page 7