Get him to tell Max?
‘Of course not, you wuss,’ she was muttering to herself when Bob picked up.
‘Are you calling me a wuss?’ he demanded.
‘Not you, me,’ she told him. ‘Are you at the hospital?
‘Just leaving,’ he said.
‘Could I ask a favour?’
Bob agreed he’d come straight to her room, and by the time he arrived she’d calmed down enough to be able to explain what had happened and ask him to do a DNA test on Harry for her.
‘Max isn’t going to like this,’ he said, adding to the already unbearable load of anxiety Joey was feeling.
‘I can’t help that, I just need to know,’ she snapped. ‘You’re Harry’s doctor, not Max’s friend right now, so will you do it? And rush it through if you can?’
‘You know it’ll take three to five days for a familial test even if I rush it, and you’ll need a sample from Max as well.’
Joey flopped back onto the bed.
‘Of course I will. I hadn’t thought of that. Let it go for now, Bob. I’m sorry to have held you up.’
‘No worries,’ he said, and turned towards the door. Joey stood up to say goodbye, and he turned and gave her a hug.
‘Call me if you need me for anything at all,’ he said. Then he kissed her cheek and added, ‘You’ll work it out.’
As if!
How could she possibly work it out?
And what of Max?
Just how hurt was he going to be, learning Harry wasn’t his child?
Max had held him, sat with him through the long nights, chatting to him, singing silly songs—Joey had crept in one night and heard him—fed him and even bathed him.
Max loved him.
But he had to know!
Or did he?
Didn’t he argue about truth at all costs?
Oh, hell!
There was no way she couldn’t tell, because not telling would tie Max to her through a lie and what sort of a basis for a relationship would that be?
Joey looked at the ring that had been on her finger for such a short time and sighed, and she felt like little bits of her so recently mended heart were breaking off.
* * *
The meeting with the dean had taken longer than Max expected, so it was dark as he headed back towards the city. Joey’s text, early in the day, had told him Harry was rooming in with her, preparatory to them both going home.
It had been okay at the hospital where, as Harry’s father, he’d had equal access to his child, but home?
Somehow he was engaged to a woman he barely knew, with a son he hadn’t ever expected to have, and a future with the two of them that was a complete blank.
Though an exciting blank, he was sure.
Somehow, intent on getting Harry through the first few weeks of his life, the subject of what happened next hadn’t been discussed.
Did a convenient marriage mean they’d live together?
His body wanted this and from the kisses they’d shared he was fairly certain Joey’s body wanted it as well.
But was that enough?
And if they did live together, then where?
Joey’s apartment was close to her work—convenient for her—and he had no fixed abode, although if he agreed to the Sunshine Coast research base after he returned from Africa, he’d be working two hours north of the city. A long commute.
Driving gave you too much time to think, he decided. But his mind kept going round in circles, question after question, and no answers anywhere, because although they’d kissed and agreed to parental responsibilities, beyond that the future remained blank.
Hugely, frighteningly blank.
We’ll work it out, he told himself, but even to himself it didn’t sound convincing.
He drove straight to the hospital, although it was well after visiting hours. He assumed Joey would be asleep, but after the agonising uncertainty of the drive, he had to see her.
Had to see Harry too, but this time it was Joey he really needed to see.
She was asleep.
As was Harry, nestled in his wrappings in the crib beside her bed.
One of Joey’s hands rested on the edge of the crib, the other lay on top of the sheet that covered her.
The sight of them, both ringless, struck panic into Max’s heart, although when he saw the little ring box on the shelf beside the bed, he kind of settled down.
Perhaps some women didn’t wear their rings to bed.
Or perhaps Joey was just afraid of wearing it while feeding Harry, afraid she might scratch him.
Max sank into the one comfortable chair hospitals seemed to allow to each room and tried to still his still irregular heartbeats.
There’d be an explanation.
Something so simple he’d feel stupid.
He reminded himself that this was his family, right here in this room with him, and closed his eyes.
* * *
Harry’s cry was muted, almost apologetic, but Joey was attuned to it. She eased herself up on the bed, bent over the crib and lifted out the still tiny baby.
Change him first so he can go back into his crib if he falls asleep while feeding, she reminded herself.
Everything was to hand, and it took only seconds to get him dry and comfortable. He was more insistent now, although still quiet in his grizzling as he nuzzled at her chest in search of food.
‘Hey, you, be patient,’ she said, then she smiled as he found her nipple and began to suckle, his eyes wide, fixed on her face, telling her all kinds of things she knew were mostly love.
It was only when she reached out on the other side of the bed to find another pillow to prop behind her back that she noticed Max, sleeping quietly in the chair in the darker corner of the room.
‘Max!’
She barely breathed the word, but his eyes opened and, seeing her there, the baby at her breast, he smiled.
And more bits broke away from her heart.
‘We have to talk,’ she said, speaking softly so as not to disturb Harry’s feed.
‘Now?’
He made the word sound incredulous, as if it was the last thing they should be doing in the middle of the night.
‘I think so,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know how to say this. There’s no easy way. We’re kind of back where you first burst into my life, so I guess I do as I suggested you do then and just spit it out.’
Her heart was faltering, her pulse fluttering and she was struggling to keep breathing, but it had to be said because prolonging what would be a deception was unthinkable.
‘David’s parents were here today. They both agreed he’s the spitting image of David as a newborn and there’s more—the thistle.’
‘What the hell has a thistle to do with my child?’
The words came out as a muted roar, and Max congratulated himself that he’d kept it muted. Somehow, some way he sensed what was coming and he wanted to rage against the entire world—and very loudly.
He did not want to hear this.
Maybe he had to.
‘I’ll explain,’ Joey was saying, moving Harry from one breast to the other, ‘when he’s finished. And I know we’ll have to do DNA tests on him and on you, and I spoke to Bob today—’
‘You told Bob this before you told me?’
Less muted now but how was he expected to feel, to handle this betrayal?
‘I wanted to ask him how long the test would take. He didn’t take a sample from Harry, I wouldn’t let him do that until I’d spoken to you, but if the clinic made one mistake it could just as easily have made two. And it’s three to five days for familial testing, but as you’re due to go to Africa... I’m sorry...’
She’d rus
hed her explanation—getting all the devastation slammed down on his head at once, but her voice had trailed away at the end and he guessed telling him this had been as hard for her as it had been for him to listen.
Except she got to keep the child!
Anger vied with pain inside his chest, and he struck out at her.
‘So the ring’s back in its box? You’re returning it? No convenient marriage after all! You must be relieved.’
He might as well have slapped her across the cheek, the way she flinched and from the pain he read too clearly on her face.
But she pulled herself together—she was made of steel, this woman.
‘If you think that you didn’t know me very well,’ she said. ‘So perhaps...’ She took a deep breath and he saw the pain wash over her face. But when she spoke the resolution was back. ‘Perhaps I should be relieved.’
She reached across and picked up the ring from the bedside table, passing it to him.
‘Harry’s finished now. I’ll show you.’
She put him down on the bed between them and unswaddled him, turning him gently on his side, lifting the little shirt he was wearing to reveal a very faint but distinctive birthmark.
Definitely a thistle!
‘I hadn’t noticed, hadn’t given it a thought,’ she was saying, ‘but David had it in the same place and his father, Paul, showed me his today. I don’t think it’s coincidence, Max, although of course we should have the tests.’
He could tell she was hurting, but what did she know of hurt? This revelation—even before the bloody thistle show—had been like a punch in his gut. He could barely breathe, let alone think.
Harry wasn’t his?
This little sprog he’d sat with, held, bathed and fed wasn’t his?
But he’d delivered him, helped to name him, taken him wholly and completely into his heart.
He had to get away, had to leave before he betrayed himself in some way—yelling, screaming out the anguish deep inside him, or, even worse, howling like a madman, howling with grief for his son.
‘I’ll be going, then,’ he said, and he pocketed the ring.
And he walked straight out. He almost ran.
He left the room, leaving Joey sitting on the bed, Harry sleeping in her arms, pain and blood seeping from her shattered heart.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE SETTLEMENT IN ZAMBIA showed Harry the human face of the AIDS epidemic, the number of orphans there unimaginable to Western minds. He was collecting statistics, assessing the success of earlier education programmes and also assisting with the anti-malarial steps the community was taking. His work kept him fully occupied.
Almost fully occupied.
A young woman with a baby strapped to her breast could send his heart into overdrive and plunge his mind into gloom, but he kept going, determined to do whatever he could to help the smiling, gentle people among whom he worked.
The medical team was accommodated in Lusaka, not far from the village where they were concentrating their energies, but Harry chafed against the time it took to travel to and from their makeshift clinic and research centre. The separation from the locals made them more outsiders.
‘I’m sure we’d get more people taking part in our programmes if we were closer to them,’ he argued with the team leader.
‘By living out there? You have got to be joking!’
‘But there are other aid workers living in the settlement,’ he pointed out. ‘Anyway, I’d like to do it. I can find somewhere to stay.’
‘It’s no skin off my nose,’ the leader told him. ‘Do what you want, only don’t kill yourself in the process. You’re already working twice as hard as anyone else on the team, helping out in the village.’
Because I need to be exhausted before I can sleep, Max could have explained, but didn’t. He’d found that only by working all the hours he could was he able to, for a while, put Joey and Harry out of his mind.
Most of the time!
So he shifted into the village, sharing a patched-up hut with a volunteer from America, who was helping dig new wells as the older ones had become polluted.
Digging, Max found, when he offered to help after his day’s work was finished, was a very satisfactory way of exhausting himself, although his new American friend suspected something was amiss, asking questions about Harry’s life back home.
‘I have no life,’ Harry snapped, rolling over so his back was to his friend.
But the words echoed around the room, and the defeat he heard in them shocked him to the core.
When had he ever been defeated?
Sleep didn’t come. He woke and went back to work. At midday he paused to watch a girl walking along the dusty track to the central well. She had a toddler in her arms, and a little girl was clinging to her hip.
She was surely too young to be their mother? And how could she possibly carry water?
But as he watched, a man came up behind her. Gnarled and stooped with age.
The little girl left the older girl’s side and greeted him with delight.
He had pots. He and the girl did the filling, then both of them, teenager and grandfather, walked slowly back along the track.
To home?
They were a family. He knew it with a certainty he didn’t understand. Grandfather, granddaughter, nieces, nephews or younger siblings? Whoever was left in this AIDS-ravaged district.
And he’d walked away from Joey and Harry.
Why? Because he was afraid to love? Because he didn’t know how to love?
He did. He watched the retreating group and thought it was as hard and as easy as that.
Throw your heart in the ring and love.
If he hadn’t messed it up forever.
* * *
Joey gave the window she was cleaning a final rub, put down her cloth and looked at her watch, wondering when Harry would wake up for another feed.
And a bath, and maybe a walk in the park across the road!
The awareness that she was wishing her life away struck her like a physical blow. Was it the fact that she’d cleaned the same window two days ago that had made her realise just how pointless her life had become?
Not pointless as far as she and Harry were concerned, but he was practically the perfect baby, eating and sleeping—sleeping longer and longer between feeds—and once she’d put the washing on, fed herself and Harry, swept the floor and fluffed the cushions, she would find herself at a loss as to what to do.
She had a locum doing her work for six months, after which she’d intended to return to work part-time, taking Harry with her, with a nanny doing a few hours a day to entertain him when she couldn’t.
Now, she realised, this was when she should be working, while all he did was sleep and eat.
How could she, a paediatrician, not have known something so fundamental?
Because she’d never had a baby?
Although not all of them were as placid as Harry.
She sighed.
Used to being organised, the daily tasks of housekeeping were a simple routine, done within an hour at the most, which left an awful lot of the day to be filled in.
Max would have filled them in!
He wouldn’t have had to be there with her, but thinking about him, deciding what to cook for dinner, shopping for things he might like to eat...
The realisation that she didn’t really know what he liked to eat—apart from big breakfasts and T-bone steak—sent a spurt of sadness through her body.
One more spurt to join all the others. Sadness was dogging her heels every day.
If Max were here, she could redecorate the apartment—buy a new bed, new bed linen—take Harry to the shops and go crazy.
Can’t you do that anyway? the sane
voice in her head enquired.
But there was no impetus to do it—no one to say, yes, that would be great, or, no, I don’t like bright blue.
For the first time in all the years since David had died she realised just how hard it was to be alone, to have no one there to share today and tomorrow—all the tomorrows.
No one to learn to know. To find out why he hated bright blue.
And she felt like weeping.
* * *
The programme ended, and although Harry would have liked to stay on digging wells for a little longer, he had to get home.
Home to Harry and, more importantly, home to Harry’s mother. For the more he thought about it, the more certain he’d become.
She’d handed back his ring as if the only connection between them had been a tiny baby they both happened to love.
For the time in Africa had cemented things in his mind. He’d watched kids looking after kids, extended families, women taking children whose parents had died from AIDS. He’d watched the love shared, growing, expanding to encompass all comers.
And things had settled in his heart. Forget the DNA. Harry was more his than any other man’s, although, in a way, he was glad for Joey’s sake, and for David’s parents, that he had David’s DNA.
But Harry was his, that much he knew.
And so was Joey.
He kept seeing the little family, grandfather and kids, and he thought it wasn’t just about care of the little ones. He saw the deep affection between them.
He knew without being told that their lives had been shattered, yet they were open to love again, in whatever guise it took.
If not love, what was there? A great gaping void. A void he no longer had room for.
So now...now all he had to do was convince Harry’s mother of the fact and sort out a few things. Like when they could get married and where they’d live. If she’d have him.
The university had a lovely apartment for him up at the coast—high on a hill looking out over the ocean. Joey was on maternity leave, she might as well be near the beach...
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