Second Chance with the Surgeon

by Robin Gianna

  Ellie thought of the motley lot she’d seen on the side veranda from time to time, and for the first time wondered just what Andy was up to with this soccer club he’d started. The ones she’d noticed were a very mixed bunch.

  There were a couple of gangly Sudanese lads from the group of refugee families who’d been re-settled in the country town, a young teenage girl who was often in trouble with the police, two girls from a remote aboriginal settlement who boarded in town for schooling, and a rather chubby lad she suspected was bullied at school...

  Ellie took the mail through to her consulting room, aware yet again of the painful arguments that had split their oneness, and the gulf that had widened between them. Once Andy would have shared his interest in the team, and she’d have shared his enthusiasm...

  This was no good, she needed to focus on work.

  Ellie scanned the patient list, surprised to see Madeleine Courtney back again. Madeleine was a puzzle—one she would have shared with Andy had things been different.

  But they weren’t, she reminded herself sharply, stamping down on the little kernel of unhappiness inside her before it could open, overwhelming her with memories and grief...

  Only one other name stood out—Chelsea Smith. She frowned, trying to remember a patient of that name, then rubbed at her forehead because she knew she’d be frowning and it wouldn’t be long before she had permanent frown lines, and became known as Grumpy Doc Fraser.

  ‘Who’s this Chelsea Smith?’ she called to Maureen.

  ‘She’s a new patient. She phoned earlier so I put her in that space you leave every morning for emergencies.’

  Thanks a bunch, Ellie thought, but she didn’t say it. New patients always took longer to treat as Ellie had to gather as much information as possible from them.

  But Maureen had done the right thing, they made a point of never turning anyone away.

  Shrugging off her rambling thoughts, she sorted through the mail, setting bills aside and tossing advertising bumf into the bin.

  * * *

  Andy sat in the tiny space that was his hospital ‘office’, scanning the internet for videos of soccer coaching, although images of Ellie as she’d sat in the kitchen again kept intruding. The hospital was quiet—too quiet—leaving him far too much time to think of Ellie and the mess their marriage was in.

  Shouldn’t losing a child have brought them closer together, not thrown up a wall between them?

  It was because thinking of Ellie caused him physical pain that he had thrown himself into establishing a Maytown soccer team, allowing soccer to block out all but his most insistent thoughts.

  Would their son have played soccer?

  The wave of pain that accompanied that thought sent Andy back to the videos.

  How could he not have known how much it would hurt—losing the baby, losing his son?

  He took a deep breath and went back to the videos. He needed to do something constructive and worthwhile.

  The call to the emergency room—hardly big enough to deserve the name ‘department’—sent him in search of work, which was an even better diversion than the soccer team.

  Although the ghost of Ellie always worked beside him, for this had been their dream: to work together in the country, bringing much-needed medical services to people who’d so often had to go without.

  The patient was a child, a young boy—maybe twelve—bravely biting his lip to stem the tears while he clutched at his injured side.

  ‘Bloody fence strainers broke,’ a man Andy assumed was the father said. ‘The barbed wire whipped around him like a serpent. I’m Tim Roberts, and this here’s Jonah.’

  Andy shook hands with the pair, then leant over to examine the wound. A red weal showed where the wire had hit the boy, but the serious wound was just above his right groin.

  ‘Bit of a barb got in there, but the wife pulled it out with tweezers and put some cream on it last night, but you can see how it is now.’

  The area was red, swollen, and obviously infected.

  ‘I’ll need to open it up,’ he said. ‘We’ll just give Jonah light sedation and clean out the wound.’

  There was no need to mention there could be damage to the bowel, but Andy would have to look carefully, which was why he’d chosen to give an anaesthetic over a local pain injection.

  His mind ran through the roster of staff on duty. Tony was a good theatre nurse but Andrea—who was the only nurse trained to give anaesthetic—was off duty. He’d have to phone Ellie to come in and do it.

  And the stupid flip of his heart when he even thought her name reminded him that the love he felt for his wife had never gone away.

  Yes, they’d parted—pushed apart by the pain of loss—but the love he felt for her was as strong as ever.

  Or was it longing more than love...?

  ‘I won’t be able to operate until later,’ he told Tim. ‘If you’ve other things to do in town, Jonah will be quite safe here. In fact, he’ll probably be thoroughly spoilt by the nurses.

  * * *

  Ellie was about to tackle her first patient of the day when her cellphone rang.

  Her heart leapt when she saw it was Andy.

  ‘Sorry, El, love, but could you grab a half-hour later in the day to do a mild anaesthetic for me? Kid with infection just above the right groin. X-ray shows foreign object in there. He’s had breakfast so I’m happy to wait a few hours. How’s your day looking?’

  Ellie switched back to her patient list.

  ‘I could do eleven-thirty,’ she said. ‘That would run into my lunch break so there’d be no rush.’

  ‘Grand!’

  And he was gone, so suddenly that Ellie found herself peering at her cellphone as if it, rather than Andy, had caused the abrupt farewell.

  Grand?

  How could their love have grown so cold that ‘grand’ had become ‘goodbye’?

  She was being silly, of course. It had been months since a telephone conversation had finished with ‘love you’.

  Although he had called her ‘love’, the way he always had done...

  That was just habit, she told herself firmly and hauled her mind back to work.

  For all their separate lives at home, their professional lives had barely changed, their work lives remaining stable as they followed their usual routine, assisting each other when needed, discussing patients they shared.

  They were even enjoying the togetherness of that side of things—well, Ellie did and she thought Andy seemed to...

  Although that would stop—and soon—if she went ahead and moved.

  Even thinking about it caused her pain.

  Putting the mail aside for later, she powered up her computer, checked test results that had come in, then switched to her appointments list.

  Back in work mode, she speed-read down the appointments, putting asterisks against the patients who’d be coming in for test results so she could be sure she’d re-read the results before the patient arrived.

  Busy with the list, she barely heard the outer door open, but Maureen was greeting the first arrival, no doubt handing her the patient information forms to fill in.

  She pressed the buzzer, and heard Maureen tell Chelsea to go on through.

  It was a pregnant young woman who came in. A very young, not very pregnant woman, slight and blonde, who seemed strangely familiar.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ she asked, smiling at the obviously nervous young woman.

  A nod in response.

  Ellie smiled again as she asked, ‘Do I have to guess how, or will you tell me?’

  Another nod, then Chelsea drew in a deep breath.

  ‘I thought Andy might be here,’ she said, ‘although Aunty Meg always worked here and Uncle Doug at the hospital.’

  Aunty Meg, Uncle Doug: Andy’s parents?

  Light dawne
d.

  ‘Of course I know you! You’re Chelsea Fraser. I’m so sorry I didn’t recognise you, but you’ve kind of grown since you were flower-girl at our wedding. Did you come here to see Andy?’

  Chelsea frowned.

  ‘Well, I came to see both of you really. I’m pregnant, you see, and I wondered whether I could stay with you until I have the baby, because you probably heard Mum and Dad split up and Mum’s gone off to find herself, whatever that means. She’s in India, or maybe Nepal, and Dad’s gone to Antarctica again, and Harry—you remember my older brother Harry?—well, he’s supposed to be looking after me but he’s at uni most of the time or out partying so he’s never there.’

  ‘You’re all on your own?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘Well, Alex—that’s my boyfriend—he comes over...’

  Tears began to stream down Chelsea’s face, and Ellie left her chair to walk around and wrap her arms around the unhappy, lonely child. Ellie held her tightly and let her cry out her tension, handing her the box of tissues when the sobs became hiccups as the tears dried up.

  ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ Chelsea whispered, patting the bump. ‘But I was so lonely and Alex loves me, and I was on the Pill but must have forgotten to take it or something and then I wasn’t sure, you see... But of course I was pregnant and Alex wanted to tell his parents and have me come and live with them, but then they might think Mum and Dad are really awful parents, and they’re not, you know, they’ve just kind of lost their way.’

  Tell me about it! Ellie thought, but didn’t say, although she did think Chelsea’s mother could have waited a little longer to find herself. She shook the thought away and pressed Maureen’s buzzer twice to warn her the next appointment would be late.

  ‘They brought us up to be independent,’ Chelsea explained, ‘and to think for ourselves, but I didn’t want everyone at school to know about this, or the cousins and all, so I thought if you and Andy let me stay here until the baby’s born, then I can go back to school and no one would know.’

  Except there’d be a baby somewhere, Ellie thought, but didn’t say.

  ‘No one back home knows because it’s been cold and I’ve been able to wear baggy jumpers back at home. I told my friends my uncle needed me out at his place in the bush and here I am.’

  She’d so obviously practised what she was going to say that it came out in a slightly garbled rush, and Ellie had to be careful not to smile.

  ‘Does anyone know where you are?’

  Chelsea nodded.

  ‘I told Harry and he thought it was a good idea. He said there wasn’t anything Mum or Dad could do to help at the moment and at least I’d be safe with you and Andy.’

  ‘Of course you will be,’ Ellie assured her, then, after a niggle of doubt, added, ‘I’ll have to talk to Andy, but I’m sure he’d be happy to have you. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of bedrooms in the old house.’

  ‘And there’s the little flat downstairs. We often stayed in it when we came for Christmas.’

  My little flat.

  And with Chelsea here how long would it take for word to travel along the family grapevine and Andy’s parents to realise things had gone wrong between her and Andy? They’d kept it from them while Meg had been going through chemo for breast cancer and they hadn’t wanted to heap more worries on her head.

  Meg had become more of a friend than a mother-in-law for Ellie, who’d known from the first time she’d met Andy’s family that she’d love to be one of their warm, happy household. Her own father was dead, and her mother drifted from one country to another, one man to another, much as Chelsea’s mother appeared to be doing. Family had been a big gap in Ellie’s life.

  So upsetting Meg with the story of their split had never even been a consideration.

  And now here was Chelsea, and there was no getting away from it, despite the current circumstances, the Frasers were Ellie’s family now, so Chelsea was her responsibility as well as Andy’s.

  ‘I should be examining you, not chatting,’ she said. ‘Do you want to hop up on the couch? Nothing invasive, I just need to feel what’s going on then we’ll take some blood for tests, and check your blood pressure and pulse, and Maureen will make an appointment for you to come in for a scan later in the week.

  ‘Relax!’ she told Chelsea as her patient lay rigid on the couch. ‘Do you know how pregnant you might be?’

  A quick shake of the head was the only answer.

  ‘No worries!’ Ellie told her gently. ‘We can do a measure of what we call the fundal height and that will give us an approximate time. It’s not entirely accurate, and is a better guide after twenty weeks, but let’s see.’

  The measurement of fourteen centimetres gave her a gestation period of twelve to sixteen weeks.

  ‘Does that seem about right to you? Can you remember when you had your last period?’

  Chelsea shook her head.

  ‘I was so sad and lonely when Mum went away, and then Dad did, too. Alex has been my boyfriend for ages, and he comforted me and stayed over a few times and it just happened.’

  Of course it did, Ellie thought, but didn’t say. Poor kid must have been totally lost, with her parents not only breaking up but taking off. Mum heaven knew where, and Dad—who Ellie remembered now was a climatologist—heading off to the ice and snow at the very bottom of the world.

  I need to talk to Andy.

  This thought had passed through Ellie’s head earlier, but now it became insistent.

  ‘Well, you seem totally fit to me,’ she told Chelsea, ‘and as you know there’s plenty of room for you. How did you get here? Did you bring clothes?’

  ‘Train, and not much, to answer both your questions. The train got in this morning, and as far as clothes, I knew it would be hot, and I didn’t really know what to get.’

  Of course, the train had come in this morning; it was the big weekly event in the town, for it not only brought people but fresh fruit and vegetables.

  ‘Well, how about you go upstairs and choose a room along the back veranda—Andy uses the side one for his soccer club and people come and go along the front one. Have a shower and then, if you’re up to it, you could walk uptown—it’s only two blocks—and check out the limited array of clothes in the general store. I’ll phone them and tell them to put anything you want on our account.’

  ‘Oh, no, I’ve got my own credit card,’ Chelsea protested. ‘But I’d like to get a few things.’

  ‘Great! And when you get back you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen. There’s bread and ham and cheese for sandwiches, and plenty of salad things. I might be late back for lunch as I have to help Andy with an op, but just look after yourself. And come and see Maureen down here if you need to ask anything. I know that doesn’t sound very hospitable, but I’ve got patients all morning. Will you be okay?’

  To Ellie’s surprise, Chelsea flung her arms around her neck and hugged her hard, tears in her voice as she said, ‘You’ve been so kind. I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m really grateful!’

  ‘Of course you deserve it,’ Ellie said, a little choked up herself. ‘You’re family!’

  How best to help her?

  What would Andy advise?

  Copyright © 2019 by Meredith Webber

  ISBN-13: 9781488048357

  Second Chance with the Surgeon

  First North American Publication 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Robin Gianakopoulos

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invent
ed, without the express written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.

  www.Harlequin.com