by Annie O'Neil
“Thank you, Raphael,” she said. “Merci.”
He nodded his acceptance for the gratitude, but remained silent.
“You were amazing. You looked like you deliver babies every day of the year,” Maggie couldn’t help saying, feeling a puff of pride that her friend had handled the birth with such ease.
She, too, received a silent nod of thanks.
“I think,” Divine continued, her eyes brightening again, skidding from Raphael to Maggie and then across to the group of women who were with them in the room, “I will call my son...”
Everyone leaned forward to hear the name of this precious new life, born into an entirely new world, his whole life stretching out in front of him with a perfectly clean slate...
“Walter.”
“Walter?” Maggie clapped her hand over her mouth.
A sea of heads nodded in unison, as if it were the perfect choice. Maggie bit down on the inside of her cheek. Hard. She glanced to the side to see Raphael nodding too, as if it were the ideal name for the tiny infant.
Maybe the name wasn’t funny in France, but Maggie was straining not to break down in a full fit of giggles.
Walter!
“Shall we go?” Raphael was impatient now, shifting his run bag from hand to hand as if the incident had unbalanced him.
Maybe it was being stationary that had him so fidgety. He had that faraway look in his eyes again. The unsettled one that needed the immediacy of work to dull its jagged edges.
“Sure.” Maggie picked up the other run bag full of supplies, relieved to hear her radio crackling with another call-out.
As she took down her notes she tried to shrug off the disquiet that had formed between herself and Raphael.
This was a que sera sera situation if ever there were one.
Whatever would be would be.
Shouldering her own run bag, she received pats of thanks on her shoulder as she passed through the group of men outside with a grim smile, furious with herself—and Raphael, if she were being totally honest—that her joy had been so thoroughly diluted.
Moments like these were her daily gold dust! Unexpected names for children. A singing birth support group. Plates full of exotic sweets being passed around as if it were Christmas Day itself. What other job gave a person access to the most intimate, personal moments in someone else’s life? Sure, the bulk of them were horrible—but some, like this one, were pure sunshine.
From the look of his glowering expression, Raphael didn’t really seem to “do” sunshine moments. He’d moved to the wrong country, if that was the case. Aussies were optimists. And she’d thought he was one as well.
There had been countless times when they had rolled around on the green grass at the base of the Eiffel Tower in absolute stitches. Imitating a teacher. Trying to outwit each other. Wondering what Jean-Luc was getting up to with his latest girlfriend. Or Raphael finding it hilariously funny that her favorite place in Paris was so clichéd.
She’d insisted it wasn’t clichéd—it was essential. She hadn’t come to Paris to hang out in burger joints or milk bars, like she could at home. She wanted all her memories to resemble the pages of the tour books she’d read before coming over.
Perhaps this—Raphael’s new curmudgeonly persona—was evidence that she was the butt of another one of life’s cruel jokes. The man of her dreams had come back into her life, only to be dangled in front of her like a carrot she could never catch. A carrot she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to catch.
“You sure you’re all right?” she finally asked as they began restocking their run bags.
He shot her a look. One demanding an explanation.
“You did a great job in there. I mean, obviously. It’s not like you’re underqualified or anything...”
“But...?” He scraped a tooth across his lower lip and held it there—as if in anticipation of drawing blood if she said the wrong thing.
“It’s nothing, really.” She broke eye contact to reorganize the immaculately laid out supply tubs.
“Maggie, if there’s something I’m not doing properly you need to tell me. Before we get any more calls.” He tapped the face of his watch as if she were holding him back from a super-important meeting. On purpose.
Maggie’s lips thinned. Someone had stolen Raphael and replaced him with a robot. She was becoming more certain of that by the minute.
She turned and faced him. “Your medical skills are not in question. Surprise, surprise—you’re perfect.” In more ways than one. “It’s just... I thought your bedside manner would be a bit more... I don’t know... French.”
He tipped his chin to the side. “What exactly does that mean?”
Nice. Warm. Kind. Compassionate. Letting a woman name her child Raphael instead of Walter.
“Just...you know...a bit more Casanova than clinician.”
“He was Italian.”
She turned away and rolled her eyes. This was going to be a long shift.
Mercifully, the radio crackled, and again she tipped her head to the side to press her ear closer to the speaker on the clipped-on unit at her shoulder.
“We’ve got a slip and fall about ten blocks away, and then another call after.” She picked up her pace to get to the ambulance, forcing herself not to register Raphael’s implacable expression.
Whatever. She’d done her bit. Helped him get a job. Taken him out for a so-so night on the town. He was a big boy.
A grown man who looked as if he was truly hurting inside.
The radio crackled again. There was a third call for them to do a hospital transport as soon as they’d dealt with their first two calls. Good. No time to worry about feelings. They got in the way of everything. They reminded her of all the dreams she’d let go of in an instant.
An unexpected film of tears fogged her eyes as she opened up the back of the ambulance to put her gear in. She grabbed Raphael’s bag without looking and said she’d meet him up in the cab as the sting of emotion tore at her throat. How she longed to share her hopes and dreams with someone. And not just any someone. Raphael.
But he was no longer the bright-eyed optimist she’d known back then. They each bore invisible scars from the harsh realities life had thrown at them and would have to find a new way to relate to one another.
“You ready?” she asked unnecessarily as Raphael buckled up beside her after closing his door with a solid thunk.
“Always,” he said, his eyes intently focused on the road as she pulled out into traffic.
Are you going to be this stoically bereft of charm forever? Or just when you’re with me?
“All right, then.”
Maggie tried to shake her head clear of the nagging thought that there was something edgy behind his response. As if he’d missed a step somewhere along the way and it had had devastating consequences. But until she knew what was really wrong, it wasn’t fair to judge.
She flicked on the blue lights and siren.
“Let’s get this show on the road.”
CHAPTER FOUR
STROKE. STROKE. STROKE.
Raphael’s arms were a blur the instant he surfaced from his dive into the seawater pool.
She’d been fine when he’d left to attend the next surgery.
As fine as someone could be when their proximal descending aorta had been near enough sheared off the heart and stitched back on again. But he had fixed it. He’d repaired the tear.
He went through the steps of the surgery again.
Traumatic aortic rupture. The tear had been sited near the subclavian artery branch, adjacent to the aorta. Sudden deceleration saw far too many injuries of this type present themselves. Surgery worked sometimes. And that time it had. He had been sure it had.
High blood pressure in the upper body. Very low below the waist. Standard stuff. Renal failure. Inter
nal bleeding in the abdominal cavity. The accident hadn’t been kind to the little girl, but he’d gone about repairing each and every tear and shear as if his own life depended upon it.
Again the water foamed and churned around Raphael as he hit the far end of the pool, dove under, circled round, then kicked off to get to the other side, oblivious to the families playing in the sea water around him.
He’d gone through the injuries in order of importance. He’d focused on her heart first. A partial aortic tear. The possibility of a pseudoaneurysm had lurked. He’d been relieved—elated, almost—to see the outermost layer of the partially torn blood vessel was still intact. This meant her small body stood a better chance of avoiding severe blood loss.
Other thoughts had lurked in the back of his mind as he’d worked his way through the cardiovascular surgery. The possibility of paraplegia. Renal failure if the sluggish blood pressure in her lower limbs was indicating what he thought it was. Renewed aortal tears if a moderate blood pressure wasn’t maintained. The ever-present threat of anesthesia taking the child’s life.
But if he hadn’t called the anesthetist and begun surgery she would have died within minutes of being brought into the hospital.
Two hours in, he’d been certain Amalie’s cardiac functions were normal. Or as normal as they could be before he began repairing the blood vessels sheared from her kidney. Stitch by meticulous stitch he had restored blood flow to her kidneys. Renal function would return to normal once she’d had a chance to recover. It would be a long road, but she was a survivor.
He remembered telling himself that when the call had come for another surgery.
All that had been left to do was close her up. Something any junior doctor could be relied on to do.
He’d had to make a choice. There hadn’t been any other qualified surgeons available to help. He’d simply had to make a choice.
He gasped for air when he hit the far side of the pool and then began again.
He should have known that even so much as a hint of high blood pressure would exacerbate the tears he’d so diligently stitched back together. That she would go into cardiac arrest. That the junior surgical staff wouldn’t be able to massage her poor, damaged heart back to life.
All this while he had been saving a life in the next room. That patient had lived. Had told him he was a hero.
Jean-Luc had called him something else. Lots of things he simply couldn’t shake.
A murderer. Careless. Reckless.
Raphael knew grief made people say things they didn’t really mean, but later, when he’d shown up at the funeral, Jean-Luc had known exactly what he was saying and the damage it would do to their friendship. Making it as irreparable as the injuries Amalie had been unable to survive.
“All you do is take!”
No matter how hard he pushed, how powerfully the blood roared between his ears, Raphael still couldn’t drown out the memories.
Coming to Australia had been a mistake.
The Arctic, Brazil, the moon... Nowhere was far enough to outrun the burden of guilt chasing him down like a pack of savage wolves.
He’d thought seeing Maggie again would be the salve he needed. A reminder of the man he had once hoped to become.
She was trying. God knew she was trying her best to elicit a bit of good-natured fun from him as they went from patient to patient, but he just didn’t seem to be able to do it. The whole idea of getting someone to the hospital and leaving their care to someone else echoed the situation with Amalie and knocked his response time out of sync. As if his timing was permanently a beat or two behind what it had once been, diminishing his ability to relate to people in real time.
In the refugee camps in Mozambique he had convinced himself it didn’t matter. The mass of humanity there had been so overwhelming, their need for care so urgent, that patient had blurred into patient as the weeks had turned into months without his seeming to have noticed.
So he’d moved to Vietnam. The free clinic there—funded by a wealthy French businessman—had been built specifically to allow physicians more time to establish a doctor-patient relationship. There he’d been allowed to have the follow-through he hadn’t been able to provide in the A&E. And he’d tried. Tried to make connections. Tried to open his heart.
It had been like tapping blood from a stone in the end. No dice.
He’d told himself it was the language barrier...conveniently forgetting the fact that many of his patients spoke French in some form or another.
He just didn’t seem to have it in him to connect anymore.
Not with the beautiful newborn he’d held in his arms. Not with the grandmother who had slipped in the shower and seemed to have bruised her ego more than her hip. Or the drug addict who had, after refusing treatment twice, finally begged them to take him to rehab, give him a chance to start again.
Another chance. That was all he wanted. Another chance to prove that he was a good man beneath this ever-darkening cloak of grief he didn’t seem to be able to shake. Another chance to look into Maggie’s eyes and feel worthy.
He swam until his lungs burned with exertion and then pushed himself up and out of the seaside pool. Without turning back or looking down he began his long-legged stride, with the cock-eared mutt faithfully matching his pace.
What the little monster saw in him he’d never know...
Before he turned down the walkway leading to his rental cottage he stopped and stared at the dog.
“Qu’est-ce que tu veux, eh?”
What is it you want from me?
He stared at the scrubby-looking mutt. No collar. A little ribby beneath the multi-colored wire-haired coat, but not starving. Definitely not a pure breed. A slightly crooked gait, as if he might have had a broken leg at some point, or endured some form of trauma he’d never properly healed from. He would carry traces of that injury forever.
Raphael knew the feeling.
“Life’s not fair—is it, mon petit monstre?”
The dog shook his head at him, maintaining eye contact the entire time.
The corners of Raphael’s mouth tugged downwards in one of those rueful smiles he’d used to see his father give when Raphael had presented him with his latest set of exam results.
“Eh, ça va,” his father would say, disguising any pride he might have felt with chastisement. “You’ll do better next time, won’t you, boy?”
His mother had never looked once—too busy “catching up” with her friends over yet another bottle of red wine.
And his marks had always been perfect.
Raphael opened the low wooden gate and let the dog into the small garden. Everyone deserved a break.
Leaving the dog outside, he went into the kitchen and pulled a takeaway container out of the refrigerator—some grilled chicken he’d bought a couple of days earlier but never got around to finishing.
Back outside on the small veranda he unceremoniously sat down on the steps leading into the garden, where the little monster waited with a patient expression on his little furry face.
“Asseyez-toi. Ici,” he said gruffly, handing the dog a piece of chicken once he’d obeyed the command to sit beside him.
A few moments passed in companionable silence until he felt as if something had begun to thaw within him. Perhaps one day Jean-Luc would see he had done the best he could. Would know a surgeon’s life was full of critical choices and that at the time... No. He’d had to make a choice and he’d made the wrong one. He was the one who would have to own the mistake. Jean-Luc had enough to bear without adding forgiveness to the mix.
Raphael reached out and gave the dog’s head a rub. “Alors, mon ami. How about I teach you some French?”
CHAPTER FIVE
MAGGIE HELD THE mobile phone at arm’s length and stared at it in disbelief. Had her brothers gone completely mental? Why would she want to
drive twelve hours to make a birthday cake...for herself? The least they could do was crack a couple of eggs into a bowl and throw in some sugar and flour.
“Aw, c’mon Daggie,” her older brother cajoled.
Maggie flinched at the childhood nickname and took a deep breath as he continued.
“You know Daddo would love it. He hasn’t had your choccy cake in I don’t know how long.”
Maggie did. About five years, eleven months and a handful of days ago. The day she’d turned twenty-four, called enough enough and packed her meagre stash of belongings into the rusted-out ute her brothers had refused to drive.
She’d upgraded her car in the years since, but she wasn’t so sure how much progress she’d made on achieving her dreams.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Dad’s not getting any younger, Mags,” her brother said, his voice completely sober this time.
“I know. I didn’t say I wasn’t coming, I just said I couldn’t believe you’re putting in recipe requests.”
Maggie swallowed away a thousand other things she could have said. Facts she could throw back at him. Like the simple reality that Sydney didn’t exactly have a fortress wall around it, forbidding them from visiting her. They had cars. The ability to book a train. There were flights. Daily.
Who said she was the one who always had to rearrange her life to accommodate them? To go back to a place that held so many bad memories?
Her mother’s voice rang in her ears, clear as a bell. “They love Broken Hill, Maggie-moo. Let them. You’re my little wandering star. Now, go shine and make the world a brighter place.”
The ache that never seemed to have lessened since her mother had passed tightened in Maggie’s chest as her brother continued his campaign for her to make sure she included her birthday in her next trip. There’d be a barbie. And a bonus: the washing machine was broken so she wouldn’t even have to worry about catching up on laundry.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw her old ambo partner Steve approach the bulletin board she’d parked herself in front of but had yet to examine.