A Father for Her Son (Medical Romance)

by Rebecca Lang

  ‘The last thing I want is to feel sorry for myself, or to have anyone feel sorry for me. It was an immense relief to get out, and once I’d made up my mind, it was easy. I didn’t look back. I’m telling you this, Anna, in case I seem inexplicable to you. I’m screwed up, you might say. I find that I can’t just let it roll off me. One day maybe I’ll be able to.’

  She nodded.

  ‘She—my ex-wife Belinda, could possibly have had the operation reversed because, as you know, most such operations are done with metal and silicone clips which can sometimes be removed,’ he went on, no inflection in his voice. ‘But she didn’t want to. You see…she didn’t want to.’

  There was silence for a while. Then she said, ‘You did the only thing you could do. What you did was right for you. I mean, it was the honest thing to do. Perhaps it was just as well that she didn’t want to…if you didn’t love her. Sooner or later, child or no child, you would have known that, and it would have been impossible to live with. One day, you will be able to put it behind you.’

  ‘Have you ever been with a person and found that you have absolutely nothing left to say to them? It usually comes out of a betrayal of trust, a misrepresentation of some sort, perhaps cruelty. It isn’t a conscious decision not to speak to them. It’s that there is nothing more that you can possibly say to them,’ he went on. ‘It’s all so totally finished.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know it.’

  ‘I hope that hasn’t spoiled the evening. Now I’ve said it, I’m glad I have.’

  ‘I’m glad, too,’ she said. ‘It helps me to know you…and I want that, Seth.’

  I love you…I love you so much. The words spoke themselves in her head, as though she had spoken them aloud, and the apparent certainty of it frightened her. She didn’t know where it was coming from, as though from another aspect of herself. She was in danger of becoming very mixed up herself. Now that the evening was almost at an end, she found that she did not want it to end. Although she would be seeing him tomorrow, working with him, that seemed like a long time in the future.

  ‘I’d like to make love to you,’ he said softly. ‘But I’m not going to until Simon is no longer haunting you—assuming, of course, that you want me. I can be arrogant, I know…’

  Because she felt that he was waiting for an answer, that she had to give one, she said hesitantly, ‘I do want you. As you say, the time is not right…’

  They lay together quietly for long moments, absorbing that information, basking in the intense emotion, thinking of the implications. The tension of attraction between them seemed to hold them together in a circle of warmth. Neither one of them was ready for anything else. Yet there was a promise that was almost a tangible thing.

  Anna was the first to get up, reluctantly. ‘I’d better take Finn home,’ she said.

  Seth got up and put his arms round her. ‘The next thing that will happen where Simon is concerned,’ he said, ‘is that I’ll hear from Sophie about when they’ll come to Boston. It’s likely to be in January, she said. Just before they’re due to come, she’ll tell Simon about you, that you want to see him, but she won’t say anything about Finn. As I said before, I think that will be up to you, as you assess the situation.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Anna nodded. ‘I’ve waited for this for so long, imagined what it would be like. Now it’s going to happen, I’m apprehensive.’

  ‘That’s natural.’

  They carried the dishes out to the kitchen where they would be dealt with by Daphne in the morning. Then when they had their outdoor things on, Seth carried Finn out to the car, put him to lie flat in the back seat and put a seat belt around him, all without waking him up. There was a smattering of snow on the ground, on the trees and shrubs.

  At her house, he carried the sleeping child inside to his bed.

  ‘Goodnight, Anna,’ he said softly. ‘It’s been a pleasure. I wish I could stay with you, but I know I can’t. See you in the morning, bright and early.’

  ‘Goodnight, Seth, and thank you again.’

  He kissed her on the cheek as they stood at the door, then on the mouth. ‘Take care, sweetheart. Don’t agonise too much.’

  Then he was gone, striding away from her around the side of the house, leaving another set of footprints in the snow.

  As she closed the door she thought that she would have no reason to see him outside work now in the business connected with Simon. They would be together when they made the trip down to Boston…if he did not change his mind about going with her. After that trip, any contact that she had with Seth would be about them, her and Seth…if there was going to be anything.

  Perhaps he would follow through with the invitation to take her out for a drink. He wanted to make love to her, that was clear, but did he actually love her? That was a question that would be going over and over in her mind. They would both tread carefully now because of what had happened to them in the past, out of their own choices.

  Later, as she lay in bed, there was an increasing sense of panic when she thought of Simon.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DURING her lunch-break the next day, Anna telephoned Hector Smythe from a public pay phone outside the operating suite.

  ‘I have all the information, as far as it goes,’ she said to him. ‘Dr Ruelle has offered to come with me to Boston to meet Simon and his sister. We don’t have a date yet. It’s likely to be in January.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Before you go, I’d like to see you in my office to go over some possible rights that you might have, if you want to claim any support from Simon. I would prefer to see you face to face, as is my policy. He would have the right to a DNA test, of course, to prove or disprove paternity.’

  That scenario was suddenly distasteful to her. ‘I’m not sure that I want to go through with that,’ she said. Now that she was working and earning a reasonable salary, the money issue was becoming less prominent.

  ‘It will be up to you,’ Hector Smythe said, with his usual equanimity. ‘But we should talk about legal implications, even if the need for them never arises. You can’t really make up your mind until you have seen him and talked to him. Also, your situation could change in the future with regard to money, and you may need something for your son’s education, if you decide to go the private route. Then there is higher education.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘although it’s difficult to think that far ahead.’

  ‘I know it is,’ he agreed. ‘But you must think that far ahead in this regard.’

  ‘I think that marriage is out of the question,’ she said. ‘Simon has another woman who wants to marry him, and I assume he wants her. Also, it isn’t what I want…even assuming it was an option. And it’s not because he’s an invalid.’

  ‘This has been a learning experience for you, I can tell, Ms Grey,’ he said tactfully, a smile in his voice. ‘Call me again when you can come to talk. Give me about a week’s notice.’

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  In the operating room coffee-lounge she poured herself a cup of coffee from the urn that was always on the go there, glancing at the large wall clock as she did so. One thing she had had to re-learn about the operating rooms, she thought ruefully, was that you had to watch the clock all the time, as the schedule was tight. She had about five minutes left of her lunch-break in which to down the coffee and relax a little. Some things were falling into place, and that was a relief. Yet at the same time she felt tremulous and sad, in mourning for Simon, not for herself in relation to him.

  Seth came into the coffee-room, with two of his senior colleagues. As he walked past her, where she was standing drinking her coffee, he gave her a surreptitious wink. The unexpected gesture made her smile, then she turned away quickly to look out of a window as she felt her face flushing. They had been working together that morning as usual, and now she was to scrub with him for an abdominal-perineal resection, a long operation which would probably take them the remainder of her shift. It was usually
done for cancer of the rectum.

  After quickly drinking the remainder of her coffee, she hurried back to her unit, where she planned to help Emma open up the sterile packs, then get scrubbed well before Seth appeared ready for action.

  All morning Anna had felt oddly bemused, with a certain dissonance in her mind when she tried to reconcile the Seth she had come to know over the past few days, outside work, with the more formal one in the operating rooms. His off-duty confidences about his wife not wanting children, and the lies she had told about it, were preying on her mind. It was all right not to want children, of course, but to lie about it was not all right.

  ‘Hi,’ Emma said, coming in to room one from the attached clean prep room, just as Anna had opened a gown pack and was putting latex gloves on it. ‘Do you reckon we’ll finish this case before three-thirty?’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Anna said, starting on opening up the main packs for the case.

  ‘Neither would I.’

  For this case they needed two main tables of instruments, plus the bowl stands and other equipment. By the time Seth came into the room, with another experienced surgeon, who was to be his assistant, and the surgical resident and the intern, Anna was more or less ready. She and Em had just finished counting the sponges, instruments and suture needles.

  ‘Are you all psyched up for this, Anna?’ Seth asked, as she helped him into a sterile gown.

  ‘Pretty well,’ she said.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he said quietly, while the others were energetically drying their hands on sterile towels.

  Emma was hurrying around like a flea in a fit, as she would have put it, trying to do the usual three things at once or, rather, going quickly from one to the other.

  ‘You’re doing a great job, Em,’ Seth said to her, taking in her flushed face and her slightly frenetic air. ‘I’ll do what I can to get this finished by half-past three.’

  ‘No problem,’ Emma said. ‘I can stay a little late.’

  Hearing her, Anna wondered if she would be required to stay late. Having her mother look after Finn was an added bonus, although she did not take her for granted.

  The other three surgeons were gowned and gloved, the patient was under the anaesthetic and Seth began the skin prep. There was more or less concentrated silence from then on as each person focussed on his or her job, while trying to keep a handle on the whole picture. The patient was prepped and draped, the instrument tables in position.

  ‘Can I go ahead, Ray?’ Seth said to the anaesthetist.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Knife.’

  Anna handed up the scalpel for the skin incision. It was going to be a long afternoon, during which she could not let her concentration drop for one minute.

  * * *

  As it happened, it was almost half past four when they got out of the room, after their patient had been wheeled to the recovery room just down the main corridor of the operating suite. The evening shift nurses had been busy with other cases, so had not been able to relieve them until then.

  ‘Leave it all to us, girls,’ one of them said to Anna and Emma as she came into the room that was now a bit of a mess, with overflowing laundry bins and bowls of dirty instruments, and piles of bloodstained sponges that they had counted off in fives.

  ‘Thanks,’ Emma said, pulling off her face mask. ‘Come on, Anna, let’s hightail it to the lounge to see if there’s any tea. I’m going to pass out if I don’t get something inside me.’

  It was a relief to divest herself of the disposable cap, mask and soiled gown. After washing their hands thoroughly at the scrub sinks, they went to the lounge. As luck would have it, someone had already plugged in the electric kettle so Anna began to rummage through the cupboard for tea bags. ‘Do you fancy lemon tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. Anything hot and wet.’

  ‘Sit down, Em. I’ll make it. I’ve found some biscuits that look reasonably fresh.’

  ‘Great.’ Em sat with her feet up on a small table, her head thrown back against the chair, her eyes closed. ‘This is heaven.’

  ‘My feet hurt so much,’ Anna said, ‘that all I can think about is plunging them into a bowl of icy water.’

  Before they had finished the tea, the surgeons who had been working on the case came in, Seth with them. The other senior surgeon spoke to the two nurses. ‘Would you both like to join us for a quick drink at the pub over the road?’ he asked. ‘You did a great job in there. It’s my treat.’

  ‘Well, in that case…’ Emma said, looking at Anna, ‘How about it?’

  ‘Well…’ she said, thinking of Finn waiting for her. Emma obviously wanted to go.

  ‘Come on, Anna,’ Seth said. ‘Just for ten minutes. I’ll drive you home, if my pager doesn’t go off before then.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, standing up. ‘We’ll get changed and meet you over there.’

  ‘What’s with you and him these days, if anything?’ Emma said as they hurried down the outside corridor to the nurses’ change room.

  ‘Nothing much, apart from the fact that he’s helping me look for Simon,’ Anna said, trying to ignore the ache in her heart because of her attraction to Seth, and the uncertainty.

  ‘Would you like there to be something? I sense vibes. I told you he liked you.’

  ‘You’re very sensitive all round, Em.’ Anna laughed. ‘Yes, I would like there to be something, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. He’s just a nice guy who doesn’t want to get entangled with a woman at the moment. I don’t suppose he leads a celibate life and I don’t suppose he would mind adding me to the list.’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘More or less. But, please, don’t spread it around, Em.’

  ‘As if I would! I don’t suppose he’s promiscuous, he’s too sensible for that, and he works a lot, from necessity, so I don’t think he’s got time for a great love life. He’s a full-blooded male, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right. But he’s out of my sphere, Em.’

  Their remarks came to an end as they entered the change room and found several others there, who had worked late. There was a general air of exhaustion about them, with chatter at a minimum, as everyone was anxious to get home. Someone was in the shower that was off the change area.

  On her cellphone, which she kept in her locker, she called her mother to apologise for being late, saying that she would be leaving soon. If Seth did indeed drive her home, she would not be particularly late.

  ‘Do you often go out for drinks with the surgeons?’ Anna asked as they were leaving the main entrance of the hospital to cross the road to a small side street and the pub, called The Stalled Ox, which was modelled after a typical English pub with a homely, well-used atmosphere.

  ‘No, almost never. They don’t often go themselves. This place is full of pagers going off and doctors dashing in and out. I think they feel good because the case went so well today.’

  The doctors were already there when they walked into the crowded pub, to find that two seats had been saved for them at a small round table.

  Anna ordered a glass of soda water with a dash of whisky. When it came, she was tempted to drink it down in one go, as she was thirsty after the gruelling case, but forced herself to sip it.

  Seth, on the other side of the table, looked at her, but she avoided his gaze, knowing that she was sensitised to his presence and might give herself away to their mutual colleagues. Any liaisons between staff members were usually kept very quiet, as no one wanted to tune into the passions of others in the work place.

  Anna told herself that Seth’s regular attentions simply came out of his kindness and empathy in her situation, the help he was giving her and the fact that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with her. Beyond those things she should not read anything very personal into them or risk making a fool of herself.

  ‘Ready to go?’ Seth asked, as soon as she had finished her drink. ‘I’ll take you too, Em.’

 
; ‘Thanks,’ Emma said, standing up. She lived not far from Anna, in the same general direction.

  Emma was dropped off first, then in no time they were in front of Anna’s house, at which point Seth’s pager went off.

  ‘Wait, Anna,’ he said, putting a hand on her arm. ‘I’ll be having a pre-Christmas party soon for the junior members of my department and some of the nurses. Will you come?’

  ‘I’d like to,’ she said. As he called a number on his cellphone, she got out of the car. ‘Thank you for the ride.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  As she let herself into her apartment, she experienced a peculiar sense of loss, even though she told herself that she had not had anything much with him, really, so was not justified in feeling loss. Yet she did, a sense of what might have been. She felt Seth was holding back with her until the issue of Simon had been resolved. She would go to his party, where she would be one of the crowd.

  * * *

  As it turned out, Seth gave three Christmas parties at his home, to which she was invited, where he danced with her and talked to her. It felt odd to be in that beautiful house again as one of a crowd, and as she walked around the rooms, looking at pictures and objects that were familiar to her, she longed for that previous intimacy. Perhaps only she had thought of it as intimate.

  As he held her there were vibes between them that could not be denied. But, then, he danced with every woman in the place, being the gallant host. Now the search for Simon was over, there was a subtle change that she could not define.

  ‘How will you spend the holiday, Seth?’

  ‘My sister and her man are coming to spend Christmas with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll miss you, Anna.’

  At the last party, a week before Christmas, he gave her a parcel for Finn. ‘Not to be opened until Christmas Day,’ he said, having handed it to her unobtrusively as she was leaving. ‘There’s something in there for you as well.’