Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit

by Meredith Webber

  He threw up his hands.

  ‘How do I know? You started the box thing—I don’t see it like that at all!’

  If he’d argued that he just wanted to keep things quiet at work, Kate knew she might have had a hope of a reasonable relationship with the man she loved, but he’d not answered the Hamish question, which hurt her more than she could say.

  ‘Don’t you?’ she said. ‘Okay, enough of boxes. I don’t like them anyway. I like my world to be in circles, overlapping rings that encompass all I do and all the people I love. So tell me about the baby. You feel there’s no hope?’

  Angus stared at her, seeing the pale oval of her face against the richness of her hair—curling wildly again.

  ‘Angus?’

  Had he been silent too long? What had she asked while he’d tried to analyse a very nasty constriction in his gut? The baby!

  ‘I’ll discuss it with Alex—in fact, I’m seeing him this evening before he flies to Melbourne for a conference. But I think the best we can do is list the baby for a heart transplant and hope that one becomes available while he’s still well enough to survive an operation.’

  ‘Poor kid—poor parents. Did you speak to them?’

  Angus shook his head.

  ‘Not until I’ve spoken with Alex so we can present them with all the information and options—however limited those might be. I’ve not been here long enough to know the ins and outs of the transplant listing system, how long a donor waiting list might be, how cases are prioritised.’

  He might have been talking work but as he watched Kate lift her wineglass and drain the last mouthful, he couldn’t help looking at her lips, thinking of the magic they’d wrought on his body such a short time ago.

  Would he ever taste them again?

  He wanted to ask, to find out how she felt about continuing a relationship with him, but what could he say? Can we have sex again?

  Of course he couldn’t.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ he finally blurted out. ‘I’m nearly forty years of age, sitting with a woman to whom I am incredibly attracted, and I don’t know how to ask her if we’ve got anything going between us.’

  Kate stared at him, then smiled and shook her head.

  ‘Perhaps you should have got out a bit more and learnt a little about the way of the world.’ She paused and the smile slid off her face. ‘Yes, we’ve got something going between us, Angus. It’s called attraction—a very strong attraction—strong enough for us to end up in bed together last Friday night. I’ve had a few days to think about it and, believe me, I did a lot of thinking. But I’ve always known that relationships that are simply for sex are not for me. I know they work for some people, but as far as I’m concerned, apart from the purely physical release, there’s no fulfilment in them.’

  Anger filtered into his head but he squashed it down. He wanted this woman in ways he didn’t fully understand, and although so far in this conversation he’d done nothing more than turn her off him, he was determined to make a reasonable argument.

  ‘You’re making a judgement call on our relationship before we’ve even got to know each other properly. I won’t accept it’s just for sex. I like you, and I’d like to see more of you out of hospital hours. Are you afraid of what might happen? Are you afraid it might turn into a deeper relationship than you can handle? Is that why you’re dodging it?’

  ‘I’m dodging it? That’s a laugh!

  But although she’d snapped the argument at him, Kate knew he was right. Of course that was why she was dodging it. Because at the end, whatever happened, it wasn’t going to lead to the family she had craved for so long.

  So instead, she’d forgo any pleasure the relationship could provide? What if a grandfather for her grandchildren never came along?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she finally admitted, her head and heart so at war with each other she felt exhausted.

  ‘“I don’t know” will do me for the moment,’ Angus said, his tone exultant. ‘Now, I’m meeting Alex at his house so I’ll walk you home through the park. You are going home?’

  She nodded, though walking home through the park was the last thing she wanted to do. The park was special to her, a favourite place, and she didn’t want it tainted by the uneasiness she was feeling with Angus.

  ‘You said the house where you live had been your family home, so you grew up with the park as a playground?’

  Had he read her thoughts? They were on the path that led directly across it towards the street where they lived. It ran under spreading poinciana trees, already in bud, some showing the beginnings of the red-andgold flowers that would shortly make a vibrant canopy overhead.

  ‘We moved there after Susie died,’ she said, not exactly answering his question.

  She thought about it some more, then honesty propelled further explanation.

  ‘Yes, I loved the park. I escaped to it as often as I could.’

  ‘Escaped?’

  She stopped by a sundial in the centre of a small piazza where several paths converged.

  ‘You of all people would know that grief doesn’t go away just because you move house,’ she said. ‘It came with us, and it haunted my parents’ lives, so yes, I escaped to it. The park was light and sunny and even in the shadows it was warm.’

  Angus felt a tension in his chest as he imagined the child Kate had been, alone with grieving parents, using the park as an escape from the darkness grief brought in its train.

  Was his grief haunting Hamish?

  He took Kate in his arms and kissed her gently on the lips, then simply held her, trying to work out the upheaval going on in his mind. He’d always put down the gap between himself and Hamish to Hamish’s resemblance to his mother, but had he deliberately shut himself off from his child, as well as his colleagues?

  Was Kate right about his behaviour, about his shutting himself away?

  He’d have to think about it later, because right now the woman in his arms, held lightly but still held, was more important.

  ‘Are your parents both dead now?’ he asked, and she looked up at him and nodded.

  ‘My mother died when I was eighteen. She’d been ill for a long time, or so it seemed. My father died three years ago. That’s when I moved out of the house.’

  ‘And you had no-one?’

  She moved out of his embrace.

  ‘Not really. I had someone after my mother died,’ she said. ‘Although probably no-one would have been better.’

  The words weren’t bitter but they had a hint of tartness in them, then suddenly she smiled, a proper smile, a ‘Kate smile.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you once not to make me maudlin! I had, and still have, a group of wonderful friends. I’ve had a great life and intend to continue enjoying it. Okay, so it had its share of bumps but all lives have their bumps. You have to live with that so you can enjoy the smooth bits all the more because of them.’

  She marched off down the path so he had to hurry to catch up with her. There was more—he sensed that—more about the ‘no-one’ she’d probably have been better without. Not her father. A man, no doubt! No wonder she was wary about a relationship with him.

  But wasn’t he just as wary?

  Wanting to keep it quiet?

  Wasn’t that unfair?

  Belittling her some way?

  He rubbed his hands through his hair, aware his mind was more confused than it had ever been. His mind, the mind he prided himself could work through any problem.

  They walked in silence, crossing the road together, then parting without farewells, he to see Alex in the house further down the street, she to disappear into her house.

  ‘So that has done a lot of good!’ he muttered to himself as he walked through Alex’s front gate.

  ‘Talking to yourself, Angus?’

  He looked up to see Alex’s wife, Annie, heavily pregnant with their second child and positively radiant, cutting roses in the front garden.

  And in his mind’s eye he saw not Jenna bu
t a pregnant Kate, and the image shocked him so much he stopped as if he’d hit a telegraph pole.

  ‘Incipient madness!’ he said to Annie.

  ‘Comes with the job, I think,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Go on in, I think Alex is doing something about cold drinks.’

  In a corner of the big living room a toddler played with coloured blocks, knocking over the towers Alex was building for him, then gnawing at random blocks.

  ‘He’s teething,’ Alex explained, standing up to greet Angus. ‘But then they always are, it seems. You’d know about it.’

  Another stab of guilt. Had he known much about Hamish’s developmental milestones? He supposed his mother had told him when teeth came through, and he’d dutifully admired them, but as a father?

  This was doing his head in. Thank heavens Juanita had picked up their car today. He’d talk to Alex, then head for the beach, take a walk to clear his head. He’d heard you could walk for miles along a headland path from Coogee. He’d do that—

  He caught up with Alex’s conversation, saying yes to a cold drink, but thinking now, as Alex disappeared to get drinks, not of a solitary walk but perhaps a trip to the beach with Hamish. They could swim and play in the sand.

  Ask Kate?

  Not this time, there was a lot of catching up to do, but soon he’d ask Kate—

  Ask Kate what?

  Chapter Nine

  ‘I HATE transplants.’

  They were in Theatre. Oliver was preparing baby Karl. Angus was to do the operation as Alex was still in Melbourne, but it was Clare who voiced the emotion Kate also felt.

  ‘Why?’ Oliver asked as he cut open the tiny chest of the patient.

  ‘For me it’s because some other baby has to die.’ It was Kate who answered. ‘I know it means this baby will live, and one lot of parents will have the joy, but I always think of the other parents, the ones going home with empty, aching arms, and bruises on their hearts that will last for ever.’

  ‘Just slightly melodramatic, Kate?’ Angus had returned from speaking to the patient’s parents in time to hear her words.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, barely glancing at Angus, who’d been avoiding her assiduously since their coffee and walk through the park a week earlier. Although, to be fair, with Alex away, Angus was busier than usual…

  She’d been avoiding him, as well, although she’d seen plenty of Hamish, who, having been reunited with McTavish, was spending a lot of time adventuring in her backyard.

  But when Angus spoke again, she was startled and just a little put out, for he was opening the box that was Jenna, not just to her but to his colleagues.

  ‘My wife died suddenly,’ he was saying, while Kate tried to concentrate on her job and ignore the emotion bumbling around in her chest. ‘As a physician, she’d always been an advocate of organ donation, yet at the time of her death, when a woman from the organ donor program approached me, all I felt was revulsion. I was about to refuse when I remembered how vocal Jenna had been about it, and although it ripped me apart at the time, I agreed that they should take whatever they could use.’

  He paused, and the normal sounds of the operating theatre seemed louder in his silence, then he added, ‘But it does bring comfort later, when you can think more clearly, and to parents of a child that died to know their child didn’t die in vain, I think that must, in time, be helpful.’

  Kate stared at him, and though his dark eyes, all but hidden behind the magnifying loupe, turned her way, she could read nothing in them. Yet she sensed that this was probably the first time Angus had spoken openly to colleagues about his wife’s death, and wondered if perhaps this, too, would be helpful to him.

  Her love for him made her want to go to him, to put her arms around him and hold him tightly, but this was work, and here in this place, they were colleagues and nothing more.

  Perhaps that’s all they were anywhere; nothing had been resolved…

  The talk around the operating table was purely professional now, with the circulating nurse offering the latest information on the expected arrival time of the donor heart, the operating team counting down the minutes, preparing precisely, so little Karl’s time on the machine would be as short as possible. And as the operation proceeded, Kate lost her reservations about transplants. Angus did the switch so swiftly it seemed impossible to think dozens of tiny stitches had been inserted as the new heart was set in place and connected to Karl’s blood vessels, but now, as the heart beat on its own for the first time in Karl’s chest, Kate felt the joy that this baby had survived.

  Angus was in the PICU with Karl’s parents when she and Clare wheeled the baby through. Clare was really in charge now he was on the ventilator, but Kate wanted to see him settled before she left the hospital.

  And not only was Angus with the parents, but he had his arm around Karl’s mother, who had tears welling in her eyes as she thanked him and his team.

  ‘You’ve humanised me again, Kate Armstrong,’ he told her later, catching up with her as she walked through the early-evening light along their street. ‘And for that I thank you.’

  He slung an arm around her shoulder and drew her close.

  ‘I’m not saying you were right about the boxes, mind,’ he added, ‘but I’d lost my way and now I see a faint hint of a path ahead of me.’

  Which meant what? Kate wondered but didn’t ask, simply enjoying the feel of his arm around her, the solidity of his body against hers.

  ‘So, dinner tonight at Scoozi’s? Or somewhere else if you’d prefer? I don’t know the places to go so you choose.’

  Kate shook her head, remembering another conversation—dinner and sex, a movie and sex…

  ‘Why?’ she asked, perhaps a little bluntly, as they reached his front gate.

  ‘Because,’ he said, and kissed her, right there and then for all the world—or any of it that happened to be around at the time—to see. ‘We’re starting again. I’m courting you. We’re not going to get tangled up in where we’re going or what might happen in the future—we’re going to take it one day at a time and see what happens.’

  He kissed her again.

  ‘That suit you?’

  All Kate could do was nod, too overwhelmed by the sudden change in this man to take it in. Perhaps…

  ‘Then why don’t you come to my place for dinner,’ she suggested. ‘That way we can get to know each other a little better than we would in a restaurant.’

  A sexy smile greeted this pronouncement, and before she could protest that that wasn’t what she’d meant, he was kissing her again.

  ‘I’ll read Hamish his bedtime story and be in at eight,’ he promised as they drew apart, and though Kate was reasonably sure her feet were touching the ground as she made her way next door, it felt as if she was dancing at least a yard above the ground, flying like a fairy in a bright bubble of happiness.

  He came, they talked, and ate, and talked some more. They wandered through the park, hand in hand, kissing in the shadows, prolonging the agony of desire for as long as they could. Then suddenly both needing more than kisses, hurrying back to her house, to her bedroom, stripping off their clothes and lying together once more, not talking now, but letting their hands renew the exploration of each other’s bodies.

  It was a dream yet not a dream, Kate decided as the escalation of her desire blasted thoughts of the future from her mind. For the moment there was only now, and right now, here with Angus, was where she wanted to be.

  His teasing fingers brought her to a whimpering, tremulous climax, and as he slid inside her, she shivered again, knowing that she would surely splinter into a million pieces the next time. But it was Angus who cried out loud when the moment came, his body shuddering with his release, his arms clamping her to his body as if she was a lifeline in a very turbulent sea.

  They lay together, Kate holding him close, knowing so much had changed in his life recently he might feel totally adrift, and as she held him, he drifted off to sleep, and she watched ove
r him in the moonlight that streamed through her window.

  Would it go anywhere, this relationship?

  Did it matter if it didn’t?

  Couldn’t she simply take what she could out of it, and if a time came to move on, then she’d have memories to treasure in the future?

  But even as she assured herself this was possible, she knew that she was wrong. The more time she spent with Angus, the more she learned of his convoluted personality, the more she loved him, and the harder any parting would eventually be.

  So she held him as he slept and tried not to think, simply reliving the pleasure of the evening they’d spent together—the walk in the park, the kisses under the trees, the magic of his lovemaking.

  ‘You should have woken me!’

  It was two in the morning and she was sitting up in bed, still watching over him, having decided that was far more satisfying than sleeping beside him, when he came awake so suddenly she was startled.

  But the accusation in his words startled her even more, and as she watched him pull on his clothes, she felt her happiness seep away, leaving only emptiness. How had she fooled herself that Angus had changed? Why had she thought that two kisses outside his gate meant he was willing for people to know they were in a relationship?

  ‘I would have woken you soon,’ she muttered, angry now at his reaction. ‘I know you like to be home before Hamish wakes.’

  ‘I’ve got to go—I’ll see you later. You’re on call this weekend? You’ll be here?’

  He was out the door, doing up his shirt with one hand, his shoes and socks in his other.

  Kate stared at the empty doorway, then heard him call from the bottom of the steps.

  ‘Don’t forget to come down and lock the door before you go back to sleep.’

  Go back to sleep? Ha! She was so confused she might never sleep again.

  Maybe he hadn’t meant to be so offhand?

  Who was she kidding?

  Dinner and sex, movies and sex—that was Angus’s idea of a relationship and she’d known that from the start. Just because he was becoming more human in other areas of his life didn’t mean he was going to fall madly in love with his next-door neighbour.