The Italian Surgeon's Christmas Miracle

by Alison Roberts

‘It’s not your fault,’ Amy said firmly. ‘And you’re all safe, that’s all that matters.’

  Except they weren’t all safe, were they?

  Where was Luke?

  The fireman was obviously thinking the same thing. He looked over his shoulder. ‘He was supposed to follow us out. Where the hell has he gone now?’

  Amy helped guide Chantelle towards the others. The twins had been persuaded to get into the shelter of the ambulance and they were both cocooned in red blankets. Wide-eyed, they stared out at the scene.

  ‘Firemen!’ Marco said, awed. ‘And policemen!’

  ‘And doctors,’ Angelo added, looking at the uniform of the paramedic.

  ‘There’s flames,’ Chantelle sobbed. ‘Our Christmas tree is burning up.’

  Could that have been what had caused the fire? All those paper streamers and an open fire not that far away and a rogue draft, maybe? But Amy had checked the fire carefully. The guard had been in place. The children all knew how important it was to be careful not to knock the guard.

  Self-recrimination hovered but the extent of the damage was an unknown.

  Nothing material mattered, anyway.

  Where was Luke?

  ‘Where is he?’ Amy shouted at the scene commander. ‘You have to find Luke. Mr Harrington. The man who went in first….’

  ‘We’ll find him. Go back to your children, lady. They need you.’

  So does Luca, Amy thought desperately.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ the man beside her growled. ‘He risked his damn life for a mutt?’

  ‘What?’ Amy whirled back to face the house and there was Luke, stumbling a little with a fireman on either side of him, his arms full of a large, limp-looking dog.

  ‘Monty!’ Amy had completely forgotten about the newest member of their family. Luke’s face was blackened by smoke and she could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing as he came closer.

  ‘Monty!’ Children poured from the back of both ambulances and crowded around as Luke laid the dog down gently.

  Zoe was crying again. ‘Is he dead?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Too…much…smoke.’

  ‘Same for you, mate. Here.’ A paramedic slipped an oxygen mask over Luke’s face.

  ‘Monty needs one, too.’ Robert’s voice was deep. It had a new edge to it that Amy hadn’t heard before. A commanding edge. The teenager eyed the paramedics’ raised eyebrows. ‘He’s not just a dog, OK? He’s one of us now.’

  Luke had taken as deep a breath of the oxygen as he could. He coughed, took another breath and then slipped his mask off. He held it over Monty’s huge black nose.

  ‘Hey!’ The paramedic sounded concerned. ‘You need that more than the dog.’

  But Luke shook his head and the paramedic shrugged. ‘Guess I’ll find another cylinder, then.’

  ‘And a blanket?’ Chantelle pleaded. ‘It’s awfully cold out here.’

  A minute or two later the children were red blobs crouched beside Monty, who was also covered in a red blanket. Luke’s breathing sounded almost normal again and to everyone’s intense relief Monty was recovering. He tried to get up but Marco and Angelo were hugging him too tightly so he gave up and thumped his tail a couple of times instead.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ breathed Amy. She turned to thank Luke for saving the dog, but he was standing beside the scene commander.

  ‘The kitchen seem’s fine,’ he was saying. ‘A lot of smoke but nothing was burning. The dog was still trying to bark and warn everybody but he’d lost his voice and then he got another lungful of smoke and collapsed.’

  There were people all around. The numbers and levels of activity had been steadily increasing but Amy hadn’t noticed because she had been standing with an arm around both Chantelle and Kyra, watching for any sign of Monty’s recovery.

  ‘Fire’s out!’ A fireman was reporting to the scene commander now. ‘Started in the main room, by the look of things, with a Christmas tree by the fire.’

  ‘Is the house structurally damaged?’ Luke asked.

  ‘It will need to be properly assessed and that isn’t likely to happen today. It’s uninhabitable for the moment, that’s for sure. Smoke and water creates one hell of a mess.’

  ‘What about the occupants?’

  He sounded so clinical, Amy thought with dismay. ‘The occupants’? She was the woman he’d made love to so recently and these were all children that had already had more than their fair share of heartbreak in their lives.

  ‘The police will deal with that side of things,’ the scene commander told Luke. ‘And Social Services. You don’t need to worry about it.’

  Paramedics were trying to herd Amy and the children back to the ambulances.

  ‘We’re taking you all to the hospital,’ they said. ‘You’ll all need proper check-ups.’

  Amy could hear Luke’s pager sounding and saw him flip open his mobile phone. The thought that he might be being summoned because of some complication with Summer added a new level of anxiety. She broke away from the children and hurried towards Luke. Only days ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting a telephone conversation he was having, but things had changed.

  ‘Is that about Summer?’

  He gave his head a curt shake. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m five minutes away.’ He snapped the phone shut.

  ‘Is Summer all right?’ Amy asked. ‘I need to get back to her but I’ll have to go with the others. They’re taking them to hospital, hopefully Lizzie’s, seeing as it’s the closest, but—’

  But Luke was looking down at himself rather than at Amy. The white gumboots were black and the scrub pants wet and filthy from the knees down. ‘I’ll have to get changed,’ Luke said. ‘I can’t appear in ICU and talk to Liam’s parents looking like this, can I?’

  ‘Miss Phillips?’ A policeman approached them. ‘Can I talk to you, please? We need names and details for all the children involved here. And does this belong to you?’

  It was Amy’s red tote bag that she must have dropped ages ago when they had been running towards the house.

  ‘Yes, it’s mine.’ She almost didn’t want to claim it, knowing that her cellphone was in there. And that she was going to have to call her mother and tell her about this disaster.

  ‘I have to go,’ Luke said.

  ‘Please…check on Summer? I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ Amy was being torn in too many directions and she was close to tears. She wanted to be with the children. To be with Summer.

  To be with Luke.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘And…and thank you.’

  ‘No need. Anyone would have done what I did.’

  No, Amy thought, watching him stride away, dismissing a paramedic’s renewed attention with a wave of his hand to indicate he needed no further attention. Not everyone would risk themselves to save other people’s children, let alone their dog.

  Even fewer people would brush off the chance to be seen as a hero. Or to get involved with the people that had been rescued.

  Maybe Luke didn’t want to be involved. With any of them.

  Amy turned to look at the house. Her home. The front door stood open, snow swirling in to land in puddles in the hallway. Windows were blackened and broken and the reek of hot timber and sodden ash was everywhere. A policeman was putting tape across the gate to forbid entry.

  She and the children were now officially homeless. Their clothing, toys and Christmas presents were being closed off from being claimed. Maybe those gifts had been destroyed. They were under Uncle Vanni’s bed and his room was right beside the drawing room where the fire had started.

  The engines of the ambulances were running and they were about to all be taken away. Amy would have to start answering questions about the children. Who they were and why they were in the house and why the level of supervision had clearly been inadequate.

  Another child who needed her lay in the intensive care unit, fighting for her life, and the only other adult members of
her family were still twenty-four hours away.

  Amy had never felt more alone.

  Luke had vanished through the crowd of onlookers, presumably intent on getting back to Lizzie’s and his work as soon as possible. He hadn’t looked as though he would have preferred to stay and help.

  He had looked almost relieved.

  And why not? He had got what he’d wanted all along, hadn’t he?

  The house was, at least partially, destroyed. The authorities were going to make sure that Amy and children couldn’t return in the near future. It was possible that even minor structural damage from the fire would be enough to tip the balance and have the house condemned.

  With dawning horror, Amy took in the implications.

  It was the day before Christmas and she and her family were homeless.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘SO WHERE are you going to go? Have you got family in London?’

  Amy tried to smile at the young constable because he was only trying to be helpful, but her ability to smile seemed to have deserted her. It just made her lips wobble.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘My mother and sister are in Italy until tomorrow. My only other family is my grandmother and they’re bringing her back with them.’

  ‘We’ll have to get Social Services to organise placement for all the children, then.’

  ‘No. Please, don’t do that. We need to be together for Christmas. Isn’t there any way at all we could go back to our house? If we stayed out of the damaged rooms?’

  ‘You’ll be shocked when you see how much damage gets done by thousands of gallons of water being sprayed everywhere. The place is saturated and the electricity and gas are shut off. There’ll be no way of heating it and you’d all freeze.’

  ‘What about getting our clothes? Christmas presents?’

  ‘They’re probably all wet. Stinking of smoke, anyway. Look, I’m really sorry but there’s no way any of you will be going back to that house for the next few days.’

  Maybe never, his expression said.

  ‘So you’ve all got to go somewhere. You can’t stay here.’

  They couldn’t. They’d already been in the emergency department of St Elizabeth’s for hours. The children had all been given thorough physical check-ups. They’d been given lunch. They were all in clean, dry hospital pyjamas and still had the red ambulance blankets for extra warmth. Having been allocated a relatives’ waiting room and provided with toys, books and DVDs, they had also been visited by Claire—a kind, middle-aged woman from Social Services.

  Claire came into the office where Amy was talking to the police constable.

  ‘They’re all happy,’ she told Amy. ‘Except that Zoe wasn’t too pleased at being collected by her mother. They wanted to know how Monty was getting on so I rang the vet. He’s fine.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good news!’

  ‘The clinic’s not far from here and he can be collected any time. The children are also asking if they can visit Summer.’

  ‘Not today.’ Amy shook her head. She had been able to spend some time in the intensive care unit herself while the children were being assessed, and while Summer was doing brilliantly, she was still sedated and on a ventilator. It would be distressing for the other children to see her like that. Amy had wanted to find out when the life support would be deemed unnecessary but the ICU consultants were busy with a new arrival and Summer’s surgeon had been nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Did you get through to your mother and sister?’

  Amy nodded this time. That conversation had been dreadful. Rosa had panicked about her sons and Marcella had cried with despair.

  ‘Did they have any ideas about where you can all stay for a few days?’

  Inspiration struck Amy. ‘We’ll go to a hotel,’ she said.

  ‘Can you afford that?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was a bill that wouldn’t need to be paid until they left, wasn’t it? Surely the house was insured.

  ‘Have you checked availability? It’s not a good time of year to be looking for last-minute accommodation. We do have foster-parents available.’

  ‘We need to stay together,’ Amy said stubbornly. ‘We’ll manage.’

  ‘What about clothes? You’ll need to go shopping. You’ll need help with babysitting. There’s meals to consider.’ Claire was looking more and more doubtful. She also looked as though she was gearing herself up to do her duty, however unpleasant the repercussions might be.

  ‘I know these children will be very upset if they’re separated,’ she began, ‘but I really can’t see any way around this.’

  The office door opened as she spoke. Luke was back in his pinstriped suit. An authoritative figure that managed to take control before uttering a word.

  ‘I need to talk to Amy for a moment. Excuse us, please.’

  She looked dreadful.

  As though this was the end of the world.

  And, in a way, it was.

  In an astonishingly short space of time Amy’s world had disintegrated. Because of one family crisis, she had been left responsible for her home and the welfare of a large group of children. Now her home was damaged, possibly beyond repair, one of those children was critically ill and the others were in danger of being split up and having to spend Christmas in a foreign environment, away from anyone who knew and loved them.

  Amy looked pale and worried but there was no air of being defeated, and Luke found that immensely admirable. There was no suggestion of accusation in her face, either, but Luke couldn’t help a twinge of guilt, even though it had been purely coincidence that the disintegration of Amy’s world had accelerated from the moment he had stepped into her life.

  He had already decided not to evict the family prior to Christmas. At all, in fact. Not that he’d been able to tell Amy of his decision to hand over the house. It had hardly been the time when they’d seen that the house in question was on fire and the lives of its inhabitants in danger. And there hadn’t been a chance since.

  The system had enclosed them all. Luke had been juggling his patient commitments, monitoring Summer’s condition and had had interviews with both the police and that woman from Social Services.

  She had asked how much he knew about the Phillips family.

  ‘Just how well are these children being cared for?’

  ‘They have everything they need,’ he had responded. ‘Things are difficult at present with Amy’s mother being away and the house might not be in perfect condition but these children are warm and well fed and…they’re loved.’

  ‘They do seem happy,’ Claire had mused. ‘And very close to each other. That oldest boy, Robert, is determined that they’re going to stay together.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Amy yet?’

  ‘Not properly. I’ll do that soon, when I’ve had a chance to decide what we need to do.’

  Luke looked at the way Amy was standing tall in front of him now, her chin raised and determination lurking in anxious eyes, and he knew Claire would find her even more determined than Robert to keep the family together.

  It reminded him of their first encounter. Had it really been only two days ago that she’d tried to shut the door in his face? She had demonstrated how fiercely she was prepared to fight for her family.

  She’d do anything, she’d said.

  Anything.

  The word had been echoing in the back of Luke’s mind with increasing intensity. His notion of gifting her the house and judging by her reaction whether her love-making had been as genuine as it had seemed was pointless now. The house was damaged and uninhabitable. Such a gift might even be seen as insulting.

  So, amongst all the other duties that had kept him running, physically and mentally, for the last few hours, Luke had decided on another approach.

  One that was out of character enough to be making him nervous.

  Very nervous.

  Not only was he going to listen to his heart properly for the first time in his life, he was going to act on what it told him even if i
t went against what was obviously more rational.

  At least, he would, depending on the answer Amy provided to the question he was about to ask.

  ‘You said you’d do anything to save your house, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Amy’s smile was wry. ‘It’s a bit late now to put my plan into action, though, isn’t it?’

  It wasn’t too late for his plan, though.

  ‘When you said “anything”?’ he asked softly. ‘Did that include what happened last night?’

  The play of emotions on Amy’s face was so clear Luke could actually feel the emotions they represented. Her first reaction was confusion. What had happened last night of such significance? A frown of anxiety appeared. Summer’s transplant? No. Amy couldn’t see the connection between Summer’s surgery and the house. What else had happened?

  Amy’s expression softened. Her eyes darkened and her lips parted and Luke could see—feel—the memory of their time together. A time that had no connection to anything else because it had been simply theirs.

  That it had been difficult for Amy to make a connection was all the answer Luke really needed.

  But, ‘No,’ Amy whispered. ‘No, no, no!’

  Luke drew in a careful breath. ‘Are you still prepared to do anything? To keep the children together and safe for Christmas?’

  ‘Of course.’ Amy looked puzzled now. Her gaze was fixed on him. She didn’t understand. Their immediate future was about to be dictated by social authorities who had more clout than Luke did in such matters. How could he be in any position to suggest an alternative?

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Luke’s smile was crooked. ‘Trust me.’

  It was the strangest meeting Amy had ever attended and it was just as well that input from her didn’t appear to be required.

  Dazed by the events and emotional turmoil of the last few days, she sat on a couch in the relatives’ waiting room with the twins on her lap, a girl cuddled close on each side and two older boys flanking the arms of the couch like sentries, watching and listening while Claire asked the questions she should have asked Luke herself.

  ‘What arrangements? What on earth are you planning to do with six children?’