The Surgeon's Second Chance

by Meredith Webber

  Not that any defence had protected Fanny…

  Brad’s voice brought her out of her dismal thoughts.

  ‘I’ve got the films of the official opening from all the television studios,’ he told them. ‘Our men have been through it and spliced it together so you only have to watch one video. I can play it as many times as you like, but what I really need are the names of everyone who was there.’

  He slotted the video into Steph’s player and turned to Bob.

  ‘With the help of the hospital admin staff, we’ve identified most of the invited guests and a lot of the staff, but there are a number of people—you’ll see their faces ringed by white lines—we can’t put names to. Harry went through it last night—’

  ‘Harry went through it last night?’ Steph echoed. ‘When last night? He was here.’

  Bob and Brad exchanged a look, then Bob shrugged.

  ‘He phoned Brad and offered to take a look at it when you went to sleep last night,’ he explained. ‘He knew he might not be able to be here this morning and went across to the station at about eleven.’

  ‘But he was supposed to be sleeping himself,’ Steph protested. ‘You both said you’d sleep if I agreed to take a sleeping tablet.’

  ‘To get back to the video,’ Brad interrupted. ‘If you could both concentrate on the faces ringed in white.’

  Steph nodded, and Brad used the remote to start the tape rolling. She saw a shot of herself, and brushed away useless tears as her beautiful daughter cut the ribbon. The sound had been removed, but as she watched Bob make his speech, she remembered parts of what he’d said, and felt the heaviness of regret that it had taken so long for her to get over not Martin’s death but his betrayal.

  The first circled head was that of a man who seemed vaguely familiar. Brad stopped the tape so they could look at the fuzzy image.

  ‘Kent Cross, one of the security men employed by my building firm. I had a few of them there to boost the hospital security numbers,’ Bob told Brad, and Steph knew from the hopelessness in Bob’s voice he was thinking how useless security had been.

  Another man, and this one Steph knew.

  ‘Bill Jackson—he’s a local GP who works at the practice where I do a session on Fridays. I didn’t see him there.’

  Brad wrote down the name, and moved the film on.

  Steph saw herself again, this time with Rebecca—head circled.

  ‘That’s my friend—Harry’s new receptionist.’

  ‘Of course,’ Brad said. ‘I should have recognised her. I interviewed her myself.’

  Because you had—or still have—suspicions I might have taken Fanny myself, Steph thought as the agony of the situation swept over her again. She put her hands to her face, wanting to cry until she had no tears left, but Bob squeezed her shoulder, alerting her to the fact the tape was rolling again.

  Another woman—again a sense of familiarity. Only this time the familiarity was accompanied by a feeling of nausea.

  Steph shook the bad memories away and waited for the film to move on.

  It didn’t.

  Brad was looking at her.

  ‘You know that woman?’

  Steph shook her head.

  ‘She reminded me of someone, that’s all. It brought back…’

  Remembering what it had brought back, and Bob’s presence right beside her, she didn’t finish.

  But Brad persisted.

  ‘Bad memories? She’s someone you don’t like?’

  ‘It couldn’t possibly be her,’ Steph said, angered by his persistence. ‘And it’s more than four years since I saw her and then it was only once, so I wouldn’t recognise her well enough to positively identify her anyway.’

  ‘Any tiny thing might help,’ Brad reminded her. ‘Anything slightly out of sync. Even someone you haven’t seen for four or five years appearing in your life again.’

  Steph closed her eyes, but images of the one and only time she’d seen the woman were imprinted in her mind, and now played back in vivid Technicolor.

  ‘Who might she be, Steph?’ Bob asked. ‘Someone who could want to harm you or Fanny?”

  ‘No!’ Her protest was a cry of pain, and she began to shake. ‘It’s not her, and if it is, it’s coincidence. It was all so long ago—I don’t even know her second name.’

  ‘If there’s even a tiny chance she might know something about Fanny, we have to look into it,’ Bob said, urging her to talk—not knowing why she didn’t want to mention the woman’s name, or her connection to the family.

  ‘Harry thought it might be someone called Stella,’ Brad said, and Steph, who’d thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, realised they could. It seemed as if the entire world was falling apart. ‘Is that who you’re thinking of?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely, ‘but I only met her once.’

  Yet even as she said the words, she wondered. There’d been publicity about the hospital opening in the Brisbane papers as well as Summerland’s local rag. Could Stella have seen it and been reminded of what might have been?

  Brad, meanwhile, had moved away, and was talking on his mobile.

  ‘Who is she?’ Bob asked. ‘Someone you both once worked with? Someone who knew Martin as well, so came to the opening of the hospital? But wouldn’t that be natural? Not suspicious?’

  Steph looked at Bob, then back to Brad, still busy on the phone. She took a deep breath. A choice between saving Fanny and hurting Bob was no choice at all.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bob, I never intended you to know this,’ she began, turning towards him so he could see how serious she was. ‘But Stella was Martin’s girlfriend.’

  She shrugged as the burden of saying the words aloud landed, far too heavily, on her shoulders.

  ‘I didn’t know about her, but apparently they’d been involved before he married me. The relationship might have stopped for a while but, according to Stella, who visited me in hospital the day after Martin died, she was the only person he’d ever loved and they’d become lovers again within months of our marriage. In Stella’s version of what happened, Martin only married me because he realised Harry was showing interest in me. While the three of us were just good friends, everything was fine, but when he thought Harry and I might get together, he felt he’d be cut out of the friendship.’

  Aware Bob was staring at her like a man turned to stone, she shrugged again, then continued.

  ‘I guess you should also know that, according to Stella, she wasn’t the only woman he was playing around with. That’s what hurt me so much when Martin died, Bob. The fact that he’d betrayed me, not just with Stella but with other women. And that he’d never really loved me! That hurt, too. I didn’t tell you and Doreen because I didn’t want to spoil your memory of him, but I couldn’t live with you any more, or hear you talk about how wonderful he was, when I was hurting so much.’

  She brushed at the tears now rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘Stella hated me—blamed me for Martin’s death. She told me all of that in one short visit. But it was so long ago. Why would she wait till now to hurt me? It’s impossible!’

  ‘You say Harry knew this?’ Bob’s voice was as hoarse as hers had been, and Steph realised he was feeling the grief of losing his son all over again.

  ‘Harry knew!’ Steph said. ‘I asked him about it when he visited later that day, and he admitted it. Said he’d kept quiet because he didn’t want to hurt me, and Martin had kept promising to break off the relationship with Stella.’

  She shook her head as the memories threatened to overwhelm her, adding more pain to the pain of Fanny’s disappearance.

  ‘This woman could be the one, then, if she hated you,’ Bob said, turning to Brad and demanding to know what he was doing.

  ‘We started tracking her down as soon as Harry mentioned her name last night,’ Brad explained. ‘I just phoned in to confirm Stephanie had recognised her as well. She’s not at her flat at the moment. According to the hospital where she works, she’s curre
ntly on leave. We’ve alerted all road patrols to look out for her car but, remember, she’s only one of many people who were at the ceremony and we need to talk to all of them.’

  He’d just finished explaining this when his phone rang again.

  ‘I have to get back to the office,’ he said, when the phone call was completed. ‘I’ll leave the video with you. If you could go through and put names to any of the other faces. Stella was number four, so just number them and write the name—or “unknown”—against the numbers. One of my men will call for the video and list later.’

  He stood up, and Steph stood with him—wanting to be where the action was.

  ‘No! There’s nothing new. I’m wanted back there on another matter, but I’ll keep in touch. We’ll do this carefully.’

  Was Stella a lead or a false trail?

  Steph wasn’t sure.

  She made coffee for herself and Bob, then started the video running again. Together they identified four more faces as staff members, and in the end had only two labelled as unknown. Now, as the policeman hadn’t arrived to collect the tape, she ran it again, pausing on the face that might be Stella’s.

  Wondering whether or not to hope this woman was responsible for Fanny’s disappearance.

  On the hope side—surely someone who had loved him wouldn’t harm Martin’s child…

  On the down side—Stella’s confrontation with Steph all those years ago had been laced with such hatred she could harm Fanny to strike out at Steph…

  Then there was the possibility they’d confronted right from the beginning—that a total stranger had taken her…

  CHAPTER TEN

  HARRY checked his patient, then talked to Ty about what they would be doing that day in preparation for the operation, and the following day during it. But his mind was only half on what he said, the rest of it desperate to discover a way to find Fanny, while on a deeper layer he agonised over what would happen to Steph if the unthinkable happened and they didn’t find her beautiful child.

  At this stage of his cogitation his lungs cramped, and he forced his mind back to his patient, explaining now what would happen in the days immediately after the op.

  ‘Steph told me all about it. Have they found her little girl?’

  Ty’s note rekindled Harry’s anxiety, but he fought it down and said firmly, ‘No, but they will.’

  Did positive thinking work? And how badly was it affected by the dread he also felt?

  Once satisfied that Ty understood what was to happen to him, Harry checked that Rebecca was keeping things going in the office, then headed back to Steph’s house, calling at the police station on the way for the most recent news.

  ‘Did you know this Stella?’ Brad asked.

  Harry shrugged.

  ‘Not well, but as a co-worker, yes, I guess so. She was a nurse in the O and G ward at the time Martin and I did a clinical term there. Steph was doing paediatrics at the time, I think.’

  ‘Would she remember you?’

  Harry frowned at Brad while he thought about the question.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I mean, I recognised her, so maybe she’d recognise me—well, she would, if that was her at the ceremony, because all the specialists were introduced by name and we had to stand and kind of be acknowledged.’

  ‘That could be useful,’ Brad said. ‘If we find her and there’s a chance she has the child, she might be less freaked out by someone she knows.’

  ‘Page me if you need me,’ Harry told him, giving him the contact number for his pager. ‘I’ll call you back. That way we won’t raise Steph’s hopes unnecessarily.’

  Brad nodded, then shook his head, and Harry knew what he was thinking. The longer this went on, the less chance there was of finding Fanny alive.

  He left the building, and drove towards Steph’s house, his heart heavy in his chest as he considered the situation. He’d come back to Summerland hoping he and Steph might stand a chance of finding happiness together. And once they’d met again that hope had become a possibility.

  Oh, there’d been setbacks, but somehow he’d sensed he was getting closer to achieving his dream—that he, Steph and Fanny would somehow become a family. That he could make up for the hurt she’d suffered in the past and teach her to trust again.

  But now?

  Harry shook his head, thinking instead about Fanny—and Stella Spence, who’d been the cause of so much pain to Steph once before.

  Could she be the cause again?

  The day dragged on. Harry had returned at midday but with no news by late afternoon, he’d been paged and called away again, presumably to go to the hospital for the briefing with the other specialists involved in the operation. Steph thought of Ty, but couldn’t feel her usual hope and apprehension for the young lad and what lay ahead of him. Her exhausted body and mind were so concentrated on Fanny’s safety, an atom bomb exploding beside her would have failed to elicit a reaction.

  At ten that evening, a young policeman arrived at the house.

  ‘Brad sent me to tell you we’ve located Stella. She’s in a motel near the beach at the southern end of Summerland. Long-range microphones have picked up television noise and what could be conversation masked by the TV. The motel owners thought she was alone when she checked in at about nine on Saturday night, but admit there could have been a child asleep in the car.’

  Hope was hammering in Steph’s heart as she heard the news, and she grasped the young man’s arm, wanting to shake more information out of him.

  ‘Apparently Stella told the owner she wanted to be left in peace,’ he said. ‘She explained she was a nurse on leave and all she wanted to do was sleep for a few days, but the owners have heard the television going most of the day, starting from children’s programmes early in the morning.’

  ‘If she checked in on Saturday evening, it fits. And Fanny loves TV, though I don’t let her watch a lot of it,’ Steph said, excited yet dreading that Fanny might not be with the woman. ‘Why don’t you just go in and see if Fanny’s there?’

  ‘Brad’s watching the room. He’s waiting until later. It’s safer if we go in when Stella’s asleep. I’m here to collect you. We’ll leave as soon as I get a message to say the light has gone out in the unit. You can sit in the car so if Fanny is there, we can give her straight to you.’

  ‘If Fanny’s there alive,’ Bob muttered brokenly, and Steph turned on him.

  ‘Of course she’ll be alive. We’ve got to believe that, Bob! We have to have faith.’

  She ran into Fanny’s room and grabbed her bear, still sporting his bright ribbon bow-tie from the day he’d been to kindy. Then she picked up a blanket which had been on Fanny’s cot when she’d been a baby. Clutching both these talismans, she returned to the living room.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  ‘It’s too early,’ the policeman protested.

  ‘Then we’ll sit outside. You must have other cars parked there, listening and keeping watch. We’ll keep watch with them.’

  She led the way to the car, the young man following, while Bob had the presence of mind to find her keys and lock the door behind them.

  The motel was down a quiet side street, and on a Monday night had only two cars parked outside it. The lighting outside was dim, so the light shining from behind the curtain in the window of the fifth unit along threw a square of pale yellow on the path that ran along the front of the building.

  ‘That’s one of our cars ahead of us,’ the policeman said, pointing to a car in the deep shadow of a huge fig tree. ‘They’ll wait about an hour after the light goes out,’ he added, as Steph fought the urge to leap out of the car, race across the driveway, smash open the door and seize her daughter. Though tortured by anxiety, she still realised such an action could provoke Stella to harm her child.

  If Stella had her child…

  They sat in the darkness, seemingly for ever, while Steph’s limbs grew chilled and heavy, matching the cold fear in her heart.

  Then the squ
are of yellow light disappeared, and she tensed.

  ‘Soon,’ the policeman said. ‘They’ll need to give her time to get properly to sleep.’

  He turned to Steph.

  ‘You realise she might not have Fanny.’ He spoke soberly, reminding her this was an off-chance. ‘She could be here on leave, tired after night duty, just wanting to sleep for a few days. And being in Summerland, maybe she just joined the crowd to see the opening of a hospital named after her lover.’

  ‘I realise that,’ Steph told him. ‘But I feel this is right. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help sensing Fanny’s near.’

  She squeezed Bob’s hand.

  ‘And alive.’

  The next fifty minutes were interminable, then there was movement at the car in front, doors opening silently and dark figures walking in shadows towards the motel. Steph saw the black shadows of two back-up men move to the rear of the building, and two more figures, one a woman, fall in on either side of Brad.

  The policeman had explained what they would do. Using a key he’d procured from the motel owner, Brad would unlock the door and turn on the light. Even if Stella woke immediately, the three policemen would be in the room, and if Fanny was there, she would be the main priority, the three law officers moving directly to cover her from any attack.

  Steph didn’t like to think about what form the attack might take, or about possible harm to the three people who would put their lives at risk to save her child.

  If she was there…

  As the threesome approached the building, light from the front office lit up their silhouettes.

  ‘The tall one—that’s not a policeman, it’s Harry!’ Steph gasped, as the shadows became people. ‘Why’s he there? What’s he doing?’

  She was clutching Bob’s arm, and shaking with an unnamable dread, but before Bob could answer—if he’d had an answer—she saw the door of the unit they’d been watching open. As a light flashed on, it was Harry who went first into the room.