The Marry-Me Wish

by Alison Roberts

  ‘You’ve got a lot going on. Mentally and physically.’ She wasn’t herself. He had to remember that. She’d said she’d missed him like she’d meant it but she wasn’t herself so it didn’t mean anything. ‘You’re not…well.’

  ‘I’m not sick.’ Anne gave her head a shake. ‘Childbirth is a natural process, not some kind of disease.’ She gave her face a final wipe, pushing her hair back and then holding it in a ponytail with one hand behind her neck. It made her look much more in control.

  ‘I’m fine, really,’ she said as she stood up.

  David watched her. He could almost see the way the strength it had taken to stand up ebbed from her body. The way her eyes, made so much darker by her pale face, seemed to glaze over. He was on his feet by the time she began to sway. He had scooped her into his arms by the time she lost consciousness.

  Ignoring the horrified stares of people on the riverbank, he strode back towards the emergency department of the hospital. He was barely aware of the weight in his arms and it certainly didn’t slow his pace.

  She was waking up from the deepest sleep.

  Or maybe she was still dreaming. She could feel the strength of a man’s arms around her and feel the warmth of his skin close to her face. Anne’s eyes flickered open. It was his neck. Her head was cradled on his shoulder and he had one arm around her back and the other under her knees.

  Her bones had melted away. She had never been this relaxed. So secure she didn’t want to move in case she broke the spell. The ground was moving fast beneath them and it made her feel sick so she closed her eyes again, rolling her head a little so that her mouth and nose were even closer to that skin.

  She could even imagine she recognised the smell of this man. That the arms around her were David’s. That he was carrying her somewhere safe where nothing could hurt any more and she would never feel lonely ever again.

  The rocking continued. Even more comforting was the murmur of his voice, telling her she was going to be fine. That she would be looked after. That he would look after her because he cared. He’d missed her so much. The words weren’t all that clear, maybe, but she could understand them perfectly.

  But the movement changed and became jerky. The words became clearer.

  ‘Complained of abdominal pain…’

  ‘Gave birth three days ago. Twins.’

  A new voice then. ‘She’s lost a fair amount of blood.’

  The security of those arms was loosening. Anne felt herself being tipped. Put down on something firm and cool. Felt the softness of a pillow next to her face. The loss of those arms was enough to make her groan in distress.

  ‘You’re all right, Anne. You’re in the emergency department now.’

  ‘W-what?’ She forced her eyes open and blinked, trying to focus on the face close to hers. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You’ve had a bit of a postnatal bleed. You fainted, down by the river. You don’t remember?’

  ‘I…’ How much had been reality and how much a dream? Had David really been telling her how much he’d missed her? How much he still cared? It would be safer to assume that those impressions had been the workings of an unconscious mind. ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t remember much of anything.’

  Surely that wasn’t disappointment she could see in his eyes? She tried to hang onto the contact so she could interpret the fleeting expression properly but David was standing up now. And the sharp pain in her arm was distracting.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Try and keep still.’ David had a hand on her arm. ‘We’re just getting IV access. Your blood pressure’s well down and you need some fluids. Possibly a transfusion.’

  She heard orders being given. For blood tests that needed to be done. For an urgent call for an ultrasound technician. The blood-pressure cuff she hadn’t been aware of tightened on her other arm. Someone was hanging a bag of saline overhead. An oxygen mask was being slipped onto her face and someone was peeling away her clothing.

  Anne shut her eyes. This no longer bore any resemblance to a dream. It was far more like a nightmare.

  Except that David was still here. Looking after her. He didn’t have to be because Anne had heard someone sounding very surprised that he was here at all because his shift had finished ages ago.

  ‘I’m staying,’ he told whoever it was. ‘Anne and I go back a long way. We’re…friends.’

  Friends?

  Were they?

  It didn’t feel true but it would be nice if it was. Friends cared about each other and made life less lonely. Anne didn’t have many close friends. She had her work and colleagues and she had her family and…not much else.

  Fighting a strong need to sleep, Anne pushed her eyelids open, hoping to find David amongst the people crowding around her bed. A technician was squeezing gel onto her stomach.

  ‘Sorry, this is a bit cold.’

  Anne ignored the apology, looking from one person to the next. If David was there, she could smile at him, maybe, to let him know that she liked what he’d said. That she wanted the statement about being friends to be the truth.

  But she couldn’t see him anywhere.

  He could have been home again by now.

  Why on earth had he said he’d stay? That he and Anne were friends. An unfortunate distortion of the truth…or wishful thinking?

  David was pacing back and forth in his office. He’d said he would stay but that didn’t mean he had to be in the room with her the whole time, did it? She was safe. The doctors on duty were taking good care of her and treatment was under way. He could go and check up on how she was doing and then go home.

  He wanted to leave.

  He wanted to stay.

  No. What he really wanted was to be in that room with Anne. Beside the bed. Holding her hand.

  How stupid would it be to get sucked even further into what was going on in her life?

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  So what if the attraction was still there? That it had hit him like a brick that moment he’d first seen her again, looking so rounded and luscious and glowing with her pregnancy. There had been nothing sexual about the way he’d held her as she’d cried today but it had revealed something a lot deeper. That he still cared. A lot. Too much. Carrying her towards medical help like that, not knowing what was wrong or how serious it might be, had smashed through more than one of those defensive barriers he’d carefully constructed. Or maybe that first wall had fallen when she’d said she had missed him.

  With a sound rather like a growl of frustration, David circled his office again, ramming his fingers through his hair as he tried to think through the turbulent mix of emotions tearing him apart.

  There was absolutely no point in this agonising and he’d done far too much of it already. He knew the way forward, he just had to pull himself together. He could deal with this. The whole purpose of coming back here had been to tie up loose ends. The end of his relationship might have seemed like a tight knot but it had completely unravelled in the last week. There were loose ends all over the place, snapping at him like tiny emotional whips.

  David left the office only a minute or so later. Much calmer.

  In control.

  He would check up on Anne’s condition—as any friend would. He would offer support if she needed it because there was very little danger of her accepting, and then he could escape. Never mind that daylight was fading fast. He would go home, ignore his aching muscles, and find something that needed doing with a pickaxe in his garden.

  The feeling of safety that being carried here in David’s arms had engendered was long gone.

  Anne was in a side room now, with the kind of privacy a consultant automatically received if it was available. A privileged space that should have been a peaceful refuge from the bustle of the emergency department.

  But there were two tiny babies cocooned in their car seats on the floor beside Anne’s bed and they were both whimpering. Their mother wasn’t any happier.

  ‘I still ca
n’t believe you didn’t call when you were feeling so lousy. My God, Annie…’

  ‘Don’t fuss, Jules. I’m all right.’

  ‘You might not have been. We should never have let you go home by yourself. The plan was stupid.’

  ‘No.’ Anne shook her head wearily. The whimpering of the babies was increasing in strength and the sound felt like a chainsaw inside her head. ‘I was doing fine.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Mac’s at your house right now, collecting the stuff you’ll need. You left the stove on, Annie. And the tap.’

  Anne winced. Again. ‘I know. I’d been planning to make some lunch before I went for a walk. I…must have got distracted, that’s all, and forgot I’d turned anything on.’

  ‘You’re lucky the house just flooded and didn’t burn to the ground with you lying unconscious on the floor.’ Julia was shaking her head in consternation but then her chin jerked up. ‘David!’

  ‘Is that true?’ came the familiar voice from the doorway. ‘Anne flooded her house?’

  ‘Tried to burn it down as well. It’s my fault. I should never have agreed to let her go home by herself.’

  David was staring down at the babies. ‘Are they hungry?’

  ‘I’ll feed them in a minute. I had to come and see Anne first. We just threw everything and everyone in the car when they rang to say Anne was in here. Someone found her down by the river, would you believe? Carried her here, unconscious.’

  ‘Mmm.’ David’s glance towards Anne held a sparkle of amusement. ‘I would believe it. It was me that carried her.’

  ‘Oh…’ Julia’s jaw dropped and she dragged her gaze from David back to Anne. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘You haven’t given me a chance to say much at all.’

  Julia ignored the implied reprimand. ‘Mac’s gone to collect Annie’s stuff,’ she informed David. ‘We’ll be taking her home with us.’

  ‘No.’ Anne managed to find the strength to sound decisive. ‘I’m not going home with you, Jules.’

  ‘But you have to.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ The babies were howling now. Anne closed her eyes in a desperate attempt to shut out her surroundings, but not before she caught sight of a nurse entering the room, closely followed by Mac who was carrying a suitcase.

  ‘Dr Bennett really needs some peace and quiet to rest,’ the nurse told Julia.

  Mac looked at David and then at Anne. He put the suitcase down and picked up a handle of a car seat in each hand. ‘Come on,’ he ordered his wife. ‘Let’s go and deal with these two. We can come back when they’re quiet enough not to be upsetting anybody.’

  The nurse nodded her approval. ‘I’ll take you to the relatives’ room.’ She closed the door behind the noisy procession.

  Anne cautiously opened her eyes. David was still here.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked.

  She gave a tiny huff of sound. ‘Better now, thanks.’

  David glanced at the door as though still seeing the babies being taken away. His face was expressionless as he turned back.

  ‘I hear the final verdict was a patch of retained placenta.’

  Anne nodded. ‘Probably a succinturiate lobe that didn’t get missed at the time, being an extra bit. Hardly surprising when they had two to check in somewhat unusual circumstances.’

  David ignored the reference to her surrogacy. ‘But you’re not up for a D&C?’

  ‘No.’ Anne’s sigh of relief was heartfelt. ‘Not that they’d do one immediately anyway, with the uterus being so friable, but Emily thinks that bleed I had when I fainted must have cleared the last of it. Going by the ultrasound, it’s all good.’

  ‘Infection? You looked a bit feverish.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been cooking a few bugs. Nothing that the antibiotics I’m on now won’t fix.’

  ‘And your haemoglobin?’

  ‘Down a bit but not enough to warrant a transfusion, thank heavens. I’ll be a bit wobbly for a day or two, that’s all.’

  ‘So you’ll go and stay with your sister?’

  Anne shook her head slowly. ‘I’d prefer not to.’

  ‘Why?’ The word was crisp. Cool, even. ‘Because you’d rather not see the babies?’

  Anne bit her lip to stop the prickle of tears. She couldn’t expect him to understand, so why did it hurt so much? She might have won the battle with the tears but she couldn’t help the tremor in her voice.

  ‘It’s more that I want to see them too much.’

  David’s face went very still. It was impossible not to let her gaze rest on him. Tracing lines she knew so well while she tried to gauge whether he was prepared to try and understand. Those tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The deep furrows that joined his nose to the corners of his mouth that would deepen when he smiled. Not that he was smiling right now. He seemed to be returning her gaze with equal intensity.

  ‘They’re not my babies,’ she explained softly. ‘Not even part of them. Jules had her eggs collected and Mac’s sperm fertilised them. I had the embryos implanted. My head knows perfectly well that they’re not my babies but…but my body’s not quite singing from the same hymn book yet.’ Her smile was even more precarious than her voice. ‘I’m a bit of a mess emotionally, to tell you the truth.’

  An eyebrow quirked on David’s forehead. ‘Really? Can’t say I noticed.’

  His smile was as gentle as his humour. It was the kind of smile that Anne hadn’t seen since way back…way before things had begun to fall apart. It touched something deep inside her. Something that brought tears to her eyes that were even harder to control this time.

  She blinked. Hard. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said with a good attempt at bravado. ‘In fact, I think the worst is over now. I probably didn’t realise how much it was all due to this complication. Being sick on top of everything else. I’ll bounce back in no time now.’

  ‘But you can’t go home by yourself.’

  ‘No. She can’t.’ Mac, with a sleeping infant in his arms, had come quietly into the room.

  David saw something like fear flare in Anne’s eyes. Did she think that Mac might have overheard what she’d been saying? It was obvious she didn’t want her sister or Mac to know how difficult she was finding this situation. She was still protecting her baby sister, wasn’t she? Prepared to go through hell herself. By herself.

  He almost groaned aloud as he felt himself getting entangled a little further in that complicated web of emotion, past and present. There was respect. And caring. And…a moral duty, perhaps.

  ‘I could stay here overnight, I suppose,’ Anne said. ‘If things don’t get too busy. I’ll have to go home in the morning anyway and sort out what needs to be done to sort out the mess.’

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ Mac said. ‘I’ll get hold of your insurance company. They can send their assessors and they’ll know what needs to be done to dry things out and what will have to be replaced.’

  Anne looked like she was trying hard not to cry. Seeing the damage to her home and belongings was the last thing she needed when she was, by her own admission, an emotional basket case.

  Julia had come into the room again now and she was holding a baby in her arms that was as quiet as the one Mac was holding. She stood beside her husband. Had the babies been fed and changed already or had they only needed a cuddle from their parents to settle? Not that it mattered. They were content and their parents stood close enough for their bodies to touch. They were the picture of the perfect family and suddenly David could see that picture through Anne’s eyes. Could see the babies she had given birth to but had to distance herself from.

  How much harder would it be to have to stay in the same house?

  ‘I have an idea,’ he heard himself saying aloud. His words held the confidence of a brainwave and it was no surprise to find three sets of adult eyes focusing on him. He couldn’t not say it now.

  ‘Anne could come home with me.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GOOD grief!


  Had David really said that?

  Anne stared at him, her lips parted but there were no words available to emerge. Her brain felt fuzzy. Short-circuited in some way by that simple statement.

  Come home with me

  Could it be that simple? Did he want her back? Enough to compromise the dreams he’d had for the future? How good would that be, to have David in her life again? And her career uninterrupted. And a little nephew and niece to include in their world. It was going to be enough for her to have that extended family. Maybe it could be enough for David, too?

  No. Of course it couldn’t. The stupid, romantic fantasy was just an indication of what a basket case she was at the moment.

  ‘No,’ she said aloud into the stunned silence.

  Julia was biting her lip. She looked up at Mac.

  ‘It’s a big house,’ David added. ‘And I’m working pretty long hours. I’d be around but she probably wouldn’t even see that much of me.’

  ‘She’? They were talking about her as if she wasn’t there. Mac was actually nodding at what David had said. ‘Be more peaceful than our place,’ he said. ‘And it would only be for a few days.’

  Anne tried very hard to keep any tremor out of her voice. ‘So I’d be by myself in a big house. And that would be better for me how? I could go to a hotel. I’d have plenty of peace and quiet that way. Room service as well.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be alone at my place,’ David said.

  He said it so calmly. As though she shouldn’t be surprised. But she was. More than surprised. She was shocked. David was sharing his house with someone. Another woman? Entirely plausible. It had been more than a year after all. How many men went that long without finding a companion? Especially when they were pushing forty and they’d made no secret about their need to find a life partner that shared their dreams.

  David was still talking. With an effort, Anne tuned back in.

  ‘…coming and going all day. The guest suite is private enough but there would certainly be company, or assistance, if it was required.’

  Anne tried to fish missing clues from her head. Words that had floated past without being listened to while she dealt with that shock. He’d mentioned builders. Decorators. Gardeners perhaps?