The Children's Doctor and the Single Mom

by Lilian Darcy

‘Don’t make me laugh.’

  He grew serious again. ‘Is that what you’re asking for? A commitment? So soon?’

  ‘No. I’m asking for you to think about my children. And me. Think about me. You’re always telling me I don’t think enough about myself.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘So now I am, and I’m asking you to. Look at my baggage, and the reality of my life! Think about—oh, hell—the way I’ve been hurt before. By the man I once trusted with my whole life. Is there any way you’d ever be prepared to take on five of that man’s kids? What would you get in return?’

  ‘Do we have to—?’

  ‘Don’t tell me that question isn’t important,’ she cut in, a little shakily. ‘Or that I’m asking it too soon, that we don’t have to talk about it now. Now is exactly when it’s important, and exactly when I have to ask. When there’s still time to pull back, on both sides—just—without leaving my children hurt and confused. And me. Hurt wouldn’t begin to cover it.’

  ‘Are you confused?’ He tried to kiss her again. ‘Do you not know how you feel?’

  ‘I—I think I might know too well how I feel, and I’m scared of it.’

  ‘I did pretty well at the vineyard today, and afterwards.’ He was smiling, not angry, teasing her, taking it all too lightly, still not seeing how much she meant this, how hard she was prepared to fight for her family, even if it meant fighting against herself and her own heart.

  ‘You did brilliantly,’ she agreed. ‘For one day.’

  ‘That counts for nothing?’ His tone was still patient, gentle, still a little teasing. ‘The girls seem to like me, Tammy, and the boys did, too, last week. Hell, we kidded each other about the zoo being a big exam, but it really was one, wasn’t it? And so was today. I scored well on the ponies, I guess…’

  ‘Yes, you did, but—’

  ‘What else do I have to do? How many hoops are there that I have to jump through here?’ Now, finally, he sounded as if he was getting impatient and prepared to be angry if necessary, the way ambitious doctors often did when they struck incompetence or slow thinking.

  Tammy held her ground. ‘I’m not being unreasonable. You’re an intelligent man, Laird. You can flatten me with an argument, throw out your professional superiority if you want, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong and you’re right.’

  ‘So make me understand,’ he invited her quietly.

  ‘You do understand. You will if you think about it. Stop letting our bodies get in the way.’ Hers still was. Far too much. ‘My children are going to be around for the rest of my life.’

  ‘I do know that.’

  ‘They’re not a trivial impediment. They’re asleep under this roof right now. They—they matter. They’re expensive. They’re tiring. And they’re not teenagers yet! They’re in my life and in my heart twenty-four hours of every day. They make me vulnerable, and I would have been vulnerable even without them, after Tom left.’

  ‘And you need to know if they could be in my heart the same way.’

  ‘You need to think about it. Really and seriously think about it, in a way you’ve probably never had to think about a relationship before. Don’t…don’t sweep me off my feet and…and make love to me again, and expect it all to fall into place in the morning. It won’t. Sex…more sex…doesn’t answer the questions I need answered.’

  ‘This isn’t just sex, Tammy.’

  She ignored him. ‘Even worse, don’t plan to renege on it in the morning. I don’t want to sleep with a man whenever he asks, give myself to a man over and over in that vital, intimate way—maybe sex isn’t like that for you, but it is for me, I won’t pretend about it—and then have him say in a few days or a few weeks, Oops, yeah, the kids are a bit much, now that you mention it. And our different circumstances, too. Should have realised before. Think I’ll back off. Please, take some more time to think. Please, let’s both cool off for a while before we go any further with this and see if anything changes.’

  ‘That’s really what you want?’ He kissed her, brushing her mouth with his lips. ‘For us to cool off? You think that’s the only way to work this out?’

  ‘It’s the only way for me. I’m sorry. But it is. I—I probably should have…My body got in the way tonight.’

  ‘Your body is beautiful.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  There was a beat of silence. ‘OK, then, if that’s what you’re really asking for, that’s what I’ll do.’ He hugged and held her one last time, his arms strong but yielding, as if her body were some fragile thing that might break beneath his touch. How long since anyone had treated her as fragile? ‘I want to give you whatever you need, Tammy, that’s the bottom line.’

  ‘Do it now,’ she whispered, struggling. ‘Go now. Don’t let me change my mind.’

  ‘Might you?’

  ‘I might. So easily. And then I’d be angry with you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want that,’ he said lightly.

  They looked at each other for a long, frozen moment that might have lasted thirty seconds or a hundred and thirty, Tammy had no idea. Laird’s grey eyes were clouded. When he broke their eye contact, it was to look around the room, with that how-did-I-get-here expression on his face that she’d seen before.

  ‘You’re right,’ he finally said. ‘We do need to do this. There’s too much at stake to let our impulses and our instincts rule.’

  ‘They’re notoriously unreliable, aren’t they?’ she said, as light as he’d been through most of this.

  But her voice shook and they both flinched at the level of emotion in the air. Only a minute or two later she stood in the middle of the room listening to the fading sound of his car down the street.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘YOU’VE done the right thing,’ Tarsha decreed, over dinner at a little Italian place near her townhouse on Sunday night. ‘Absolutely the right thing.’

  ‘You haven’t heard the full story yet,’ Laird said, feeling an absurd need to confess every detail of his sleeplessness, his dizzy thoughts, the way his heart lifted when he thought about Tammy’s hair and her laugh and how she looked when she was bending over her children.

  Tarsha quirked her mouth and drawled, ‘Do I need to? You’ve said you’re not seeing her any more.’

  ‘No, I’ve said we’re not seeing each other for the moment. We’re cooling off and taking time to think. That’s different.’

  He’d been clinging to the difference all last night and through today, while at the same time feeling appalled at the strength of his own feelings. He’d come so close to turning his car around in the street last night and hammering on her front door.

  Let me in. I’ll love you forever. Marry me.

  But he wasn’t that kind of a man. He was rational, capable. When he had a big decision to make, he thought it through from all angles. How long had he thought about which medical specialty would best fit his skills? How many Yarra Valley properties had he looked at before settling on the vineyard? How many car dealers did he torment every time he bought a new car? He wouldn’t know how to mess up his life with a rash decision if he tried. Yet here he was—

  ‘How is it different?’ Tarsha demanded. ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s asked me to take some time to think. Which I really respect.’

  ‘Time to think? Laird, that’s exactly the easy out that both of you need. The whole thing will go away in a few weeks.’

  ‘I’m not looking for an easy out, I’m not looking for Tammy to go away, I’m looking for…’ Laird ground to a halt.

  ‘You see? You don’t know, do you?’

  Yes, I do.

  But that was too irrational a possibility to contemplate.

  ‘Certainty,’ he said out loud.

  ‘Any strategies for finding it? Share them with me, would you?’ Tarsha jibed.

  ‘Cynicism is very aging, Tarsh. Be careful.’

  She slumped suddenly. ‘Well, I am cynical about love. And certainty. I was certain a few months ago. He wasn�
��t. End of story. No happily ever after.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Olivier. You had to make me say it, didn’t you?’

  ‘And you can’t get him out of your system.’

  ‘No. And I’m not sure how I ever will.’

  No. Exactly.

  Laird felt as if Tammy was growing around his heart and his life like a flower-laden vine, entwined with him, necessary to him, making him better in half a dozen different ways than he could ever be on his own. So different. So new. So unexpected. And so right.

  ‘Infatuations can manifest that way,’ Tarsha said, as if she’d read his thoughts and was commenting on them. ‘Bad things happen. Love is one-sided, temporary, delusional. I’m cynical, Laird, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong!’

  ‘I—I— Yes, I know.’ He sighed.

  It was true. Sensible men fell hard for the worst women and destroyed their own lives. Well-grounded women got stars in their eyes and couldn’t see when a man was total bad news. Two people thought they’d found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and then the light changed and it turned to dust. Those things happened. How did you tell if it was happening to you? What part of yourself did you trust? What wisdom from friends did you listen to?

  But Tarsha had delivered her advice and was ready to talk about something else. ‘Cup Day on Tuesday, Laird,’ she said, businesslike. ‘We’re still on for that?’

  ‘Yes, if you want to.’ He attempted to drag his own thoughts onto a more sensible level. He had to function. He couldn’t fall into a gibbering heap over Tammy Prunty. Somehow, being able to function as a normal, rational human being seemed like a piece of necessary proof that what he felt for her was real.

  ‘I do want to,’ Tarsha said. ‘I need you.’

  ‘Handbag duty again?’

  ‘Exactly!’

  They’d arranged it weeks ago. She had hard-to-come-by invitations for a corporate marquee hosted by a major cosmetics corporation, L’Occidentale, and knew two or three of the racehorse owners. She planned on schmoozing with the right people, and had her eye on several women and a couple of men who were entering the Fashions on the Field contest, with the view to taking them on as models when her new agency launched in a few weeks’ time. The Melbourne Cup was Australia’s biggest race of the year, and the carnival was a huge event for fashion buffs, too.

  Laird had jockeyed for a day off this coming Tuesday the way the top riders would jockey for position during the race itself, because nobody wanted to work on Cup Day. Since he’d covered long hours for other doctors last Melbourne Cup Day, as well as at Christmas, New Year and Easter, he was owed this one.

  ‘I’ll pick you up,’ he told her manfully, and named a time, which she promptly countered with her own suggestion of an hour earlier.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘In case I need to fix you up.’

  ‘Fix me up?’

  ‘Your hair. Your suit. Your shoes.’ She tilted her head and gave a beguiling smile, but then her eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘Laird, I really need Tuesday to be a good day.’

  Several people in the NICU at Yarra Hospital needed Tuesday to be a good day, and Tammy knew it had nothing to do with which horse they were planning to bet on in the Cup. With big plans of her own for race day this year, she fully intended to have a flutter on the Cup herself, but she had to get through the rest of Monday first.

  Day Two of the rest of her life.

  Life after Laird.

  Life beyond the brief rainbow-butterfly-magical feeling of Laird.

  He’d gone away to think, and she was pretty sure what his thoughts would eventually tell him—exactly the same thing as they were telling her. It couldn’t last. It couldn’t work. He didn’t need a woman like her, he needed someone thin and single and gorgeous who would finish off his successful life with an attractive flourish, the way a decorative bow finished a gift-wrapped package.

  Tammy had spent two hours before her shift this morning driving out to the Yarra Valley garage near Laird’s place to pick up the van. She wasn’t convinced it was going to be drivable much longer, even if she spent hundreds of dollars more on getting bits of it fixed. This was her reality, not that wonderful day she’d spent with Laird and the girls at the vineyard on Saturday, and with Laird at her own house late into the night.

  Reality was the hospital and the babies she cared about.

  Harry Vitelli had his eyes tested that afternoon. Thirty minutes before the procedure, Tammy had to put in the eye drops he needed for local anaesthesia and to dilate his pupils.

  ‘Here we go, sweetheart,’ she murmured, then watched her own hand tremble and miss, so that the first drop ran down the baby’s cheek. Biting her lips and willing her fingers to stay steady this time, she got the drops where they belonged, thankful that Alison hadn’t been looking on.

  The ophthalmologist was coming to the baby, rather than the baby being taken elsewhere. Whenever possible, it worked this way in the NICU. Procedures and even surgery on premature babies was done in the unit to minimise the handling and disturbance of the baby, as well as making it easier to maintain ongoing treatment.

  ‘You’ve put the drops in?’ Alison asked, when she came back from the bathroom. Her mother was at home with baby Brittany, who should be weaned off her oxygen this week. ‘What happens if the doctor is late?’

  ‘He won’t be. He knows where we’re up to.’

  ‘Will we know right away if it’s at stage three?’

  Stage three retinopathy was the threshold for using laser treatment. The ophthalmologist would look at several key criteria, including the severity and location of the disorder and other clinical abnormalities in the cornea, lens or iris. But this was only the first of Harry’s eye tests, which meant that a good result at this point didn’t necessarily mean Alison or her husband could relax.

  ‘Yes, he’ll talk to you about all that once he’s taken a good look,’ Tammy told her. ‘How about you go and grab a coffee and something to eat, Alison? Get back a bit later, when Dr Tran is finishing up.’

  Alison nodded and pressed her lips together. ‘Maybe that’s best.’

  Laird walked past at that moment, and his eyes met Tammy’s—one brief flash of contact that she couldn’t interpret. She often caught him looking at her when she was talking to parents and it threw her off balance every time. She pushed him out of her mind while she assisted Dr Tran. Alison came back just as he was putting his equipment away.

  He’d found extensive stage two ROP in the baby’s left eye, but no problems so far in his right. Alison and her husband had been given information to read about retinopathy of prematurity, and Tammy told her after Dr Tran had given a clear and careful report, ‘If you have any questions now, or think of any later, please ask. Write them down as they come to you, so you don’t forget. This isn’t something we want you to have any uncertainties about.’

  ‘We can deal with it,’ Alison said. ‘It’s OK. If it gets to threshold level, they’ll treat it. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s it, yes.’

  ‘Hopefully it won’t progress. And I liked the doctor. I saw the way he touched Harry. Gentle. I appreciate that so much. When he’s had so many hands on him, so many things that make him flinch and make his oxygen go down.’

  But, still, the presence of stage two retinopathy wasn’t the good news Alison had hoped for. Tammy gave her a hug and told her gently, ‘Hang in, there,’ while wishing there were much better words.

  Meanwhile little Max Parry was still in the HDU and had taken no backward steps. His weight had climbed to over 1100 grams. Adam, however, weighed only just over 700 grams. They’d been trialling him for several days on full milk feeds and giving him regular and increasing breaks from CPAP to see how well he breathed on his own.

  Adam hadn’t shown any problems on CPAP at first and had seemed to be getting stronger and healthier in other ways, too, ‘And I was stupid,’ sobbed Fran to Tammy on Monday evening. �
�I said to Chris that it looked like he’d turned the corner, and then this happens.’

  ‘This’ was a serious apnoea episode earlier that afternoon, followed by three significant vomits. Now his gut had swollen and Fran knew enough about premature babies by now to understand the risks. Adam was put on increased antibiotics, put back on the ventilator after the scary episode of forgetting to breathe, and put back on intravenous nutrition instead of milk feeds.

  Backward steps, all of them.

  Tammy felt as if she understood too much about those. She’d been taking backward steps since Laird had left her house on Saturday night. Back to the doubt that any man could find her attractive with the amount of baggage she carried—precious baggage, true, but her baggage, not his.

  She knew she’d done the right thing, asking him to take some time, to really think about what he wanted and what he could give. But, oh, it didn’t feel like the right thing!

  She was such a fool! All she wanted was to find him at her front door with…what…a bottle of champagne, an armful of flowers, a pair of board shorts and a beach towel, a pile of his shirts to iron, for heaven’s sake! Anything, as long as it came with huge, wonderful promises and lifelong declarations and a great big passionate sweep off her feet and into his arms.

  I don’t need time to think, Tammy, sweetheart, I just need you.

  It didn’t happen.

  No phone call, no appearance, no flowers or board shorts or crumpled shirts or sweeping, just silence and the painful prospect of seeing him regularly at work for the next thousand or so years, while all the hurt and vulnerability that Tom had delivered into Tammy’s life became magnified a hundred times because of Laird.

  Meanwhile, if Adam developed necrotising enterocolitis at his current size, he wouldn’t survive. Surgery on such a small baby’s bowel would be so risky and delicate, it verged on the impossible. At nine-thirty on Monday night, Laird and surgeon Ralph Goode were still assessing the tiny boy, trying to work out what was going on and what, if anything, they could do.

  ‘The X-ray wasn’t clear enough,’ Laird said to Dr Goode, in the night-time quiet of the unit. ‘Tammy, can you please put it up so we can take another look?’