A Family Made in Rome

by Annie O'Neil

  ‘Could you maybe consider putting some more clothes on?’ he asked.

  His eyes dropped to her thighs and swept back up her body with such specificity that she felt her nipples grow taut against the soft cotton of the loose top. That was when it hit her. Leon still found her attractive. She didn’t know why she had discounted that as an option. She gulped. He might have actually meant it when he’d asked her to marry him.

  Heat sprang to her cheeks and, unable to sustain the eye contact he’d locked her in, she shot out of the room, took a quick, very cold shower, put on her most shapeless clothes and marched back into the kitchen, ready to deliver the little speech she’d rehearsed on the plane.

  ‘I didn’t come here to corner you into marrying me.’

  Leon handed her a plate of antipasti, his lips parting in protest.

  She held up a hand. ‘Please. I’d like to get through this—mostly because I’ve been practising it for so long. I just need to get it out, okay?’

  He nodded, poured her a glass of fizzy water, then joined her at the breakfast bar, giving her his full, undivided attention. Something her father definitely wouldn’t have done.

  ‘Okay. So... As you have probably guessed, my being pregnant is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you—but, as you say, I’ve had more time to digest. And, having given it a lot of thought, I definitely want to keep the baby.’

  He nodded, his eyebrows burrowing together as if not keeping it hadn’t even factored on his radar. It was another arrow into her heart. The warm, fuzzy kind that made saying the next part more difficult.

  ‘My plan is to live in Australia. There will be no financial burden on you. Or emotional. Or anything else that you don’t want. However, when the baby—my child—is old enough, I want to secure your permission for him or her to reach out to you... You know... To meet their biological father.’

  ‘No.’

  Lizzy physically recoiled at the bluntness of his response. ‘What do you mean, no?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  LEON ALMOST REGRETTED not pouring himself a glass of wine, but he knew keeping a clear head was critical.

  He took Lizzy’s hand in his, trying not to react when she pulled it away, balled it into a fist and tucked it onto her lap under the counter. This wasn’t just her child they were talking about. It was theirs. Their child. Their future. And that meant everything he’d believed before was now rendered null and void.

  Did he know if he was capable of being a good husband? No. Would he be a good father? Perhaps better than his own, but that wasn’t saying a lot. It would be a learning curve. A sharp one. But he’d never shied away from anything that scared him. Apart, of course, from relationships.

  He started again. ‘I meant our child won’t have to seek me out because it is going to be a part of my life—our lives—from day one, so there will be no need for him or her to reach out, because I will already have been there every step of the way.’

  His insides were echoing Lizzy’s expression. One that very clearly asked, Who stole the real Leon and replaced him with you?

  But rather than smile and relax with relief at the prospect of shared parenthood, her frown deepened.

  It stung him to know that the deepest impression he’d made on her was one of non-interest. It stung more to realise she hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she didn’t want him to be part of their child’s life.

  ‘Leon...’ She teased at a loose string on her cuff. ‘I live in Australia.’

  He waved his hand between them. ‘Logistics. You could live here. I could move there. We commute. Whatever it takes.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Che cosa?’

  ‘I said bullshit. You don’t want to be married and have a family. I mean—’ She gestured towards his flat. ‘Look at this place. This isn’t the type of home you’d buy if you wanted little ones and a wife around, is it?’

  He took a look at the flat through her eyes. Chrome. Glass. Clean, clear lines. Nothing out of place except the jumper Lizzy had thrown on the back of a chair—which, he had to admit, he’d been itching to fold into an exact square and put back in her room.

  La merda. She was right. Not a solitary thing in this flat spoke to a latent craving to be part of a family. And yet with Lizzy here, the place already felt nicer to come home to.

  He gave himself a psychological thump on the back. She was right. He liked things as they were. But a child... A child changed everything.

  ‘I could move. We could find somewhere together.’

  ‘Oh!’ She laughed. ‘Sure! You could absolutely move. But not with me.’ She said it with a smile, but her voice was fuelled by fierce protectiveness. ‘I repeat: you don’t want to be a father, Leon. You don’t want to be married.’

  ‘Nor do you,’ he countered. ‘At least you didn’t back in New York.’

  ‘I don’t exactly remember you asking!’ she snapped in a way that betrayed a vulnerability he’d never seen before.

  Oh, hell. She’d wanted him to ask.

  But they’d both talked so often about pursuing their careers—hers in Sydney, his in Rome—he’d just presumed it really was what they’d both wanted.

  She flicked her hair over her shoulders and continued the speech she’d clearly rehearsed. ‘You’d have to change your approach to work. And home-life, such as it is. There will be toys everywhere. And laundry. You’ll be woken up in the middle of the night by the crying of a baby that you don’t get paid to look after. And let’s be honest, Leon. The only thing you want to be woken up by in the middle of the night is your beeper.’

  ‘Lizzy,’ he began, using his now, let’s be sensible voice, ‘if you can change, what makes you think I can’t?’

  She gave one solitary bark of laughter and shook her head in a vague way, her eyes not leaving his, as if answering the question would give him an opportunity to pounce and take control.

  ‘I’ve met you, Leon.’ Her features softened. ‘Look. I’m not trying to be cruel. Honestly. I’m trying to be realistic. So...can we just take this whole “marry me” thing off the table?’

  He scrubbed his hand over his face. He wanted to do the best by her. And now that he’d seen that glimpse of a part of her he’d never seen before—the part that had hoped for a long-term relationship...

  No. She was right. He wasn’t equipped for love, marriage or a baby carriage. How could he be? He’d been trained from an early age to think that love brought pain. Parenting equalled abandonment. But if Lizzy, a woman who had been very clear about not wanting children herself, could climb aboard the bandwagon, why couldn’t he?

  Because she didn’t want him to be a part of it.

  She was walking away years before his father had. Which, in some ways, was kinder than his father had been. But in other ways...?

  His chest flooded with emotion, clouding his judgement as he tried to figure out the best way to proceed.

  Lizzy, eagle-eyed, saw his indecision and slapped her hand on the marble countertop in frustration. ‘We’re not discussing real estate here, Leon. Or career moves. Or beepers. We’re discussing a child. A baby. One I hadn’t planned on having and one I know for sure you hadn’t. Marrying you isn’t going to put a nice pretty bow on everything and make it better.’ She swept her hands along her cheeks and gave the back of her neck a rub. ‘Look... How about this? Tomorrow, let’s put our focus where it should be. On the twins. Then, after a few days, when we’re both thinking a bit more clearly, let’s do a scan together.’

  ‘Have you seen it? The baby?’

  She threw him a look as if he’d lost his marbles. ‘I’m thirteen weeks pregnant, Leon.’

  Yes. She’d seen it.

  ‘Seen it and heard the heartbeat,’ she confirmed.

  His breath left his chest with such force it was as if he’d been kicked. In its place a memory shot to
the fore.

  A couple completely in love with each other who had been unable to physically be with their child during the Covid outbreak when it had developed pneumonia. He’d told himself at the time that heartache like theirs was exactly why he didn’t want to be in a relationship. Now he saw how wrong he’d been. If he messed things up with Lizzy, he’d be the one on the outside looking in and he didn’t like it. Not one damn bit.

  He refilled Lizzy’s water glass and took a sip of his own before speaking. ‘I don’t know how things were for you in Sydney during the Covid outbreak, but at St Nicolino’s we had people standing outside the hospital, hoping and praying their children would know they were there. Making video calls if they could...showing their child how close they were. One carer per family was eventually allowed in the hospital, but even then they often weren’t allowed in the room. Siblings weren’t allowed in at all. For far too many families the more relaxed visiting rules came too late. It was absolutely heartbreaking. As if the loss of a child wasn’t enough, they weren’t able to comfort one another as the situation worsened.’

  ‘Yes...’ she nodded, clearly having had a similar experience ‘...and your point is?’

  ‘My mum. Her death.’ He held up a hand to stop any flow of sympathies. He wasn’t digging. He was explaining. ‘When she died...the truth was, it was hard for me to feel anything.’

  She furrowed her brow, clearly confused. ‘What do you mean?’

  He shook his head, still trying to figure it out himself. ‘It was like my mother had created her own lockdown bubble around herself twenty-five years ago when my father left. I hadn’t realised just how much she’d restricted access to herself until after she passed, when there was very little change in my life. In anyone’s, really.’

  Shockingly little. And although he’d only admitted it to himself as he’d shouldered the weight of her coffin along with five strangers he’d realised he’d barely known her. No wonder he approached life so scientifically. So clinically. It was the only emotional toolbox he’d been given access to.

  Lizzy slid her arms into a tight cross over her chest. ‘I thought you liked to keep yourself apart from all that messy emotional stuff.’

  ‘I do. Emotional distance as a surgeon is essential. You know that. Emotion clouds judgement.’

  She harrumphed.

  ‘I believe that. Professionally,’ he clarified. ‘But as a son I was never given the chance to be emotional about my family.’

  Not in public anyway. He’d felt the pain of abandonment when his father had left. The gradual cooling of affections as his mother had withdrawn her own.

  He tapped his finger on the countertop, then looked up to meet Lizzy’s eyes. ‘It took my mother dying in the way she did—isolated, friendless—for me to realise that no matter how much you convince yourself keeping people you care about at a distance will help, it doesn’t. It just means you’ll be alone when you die.’

  ‘And that’s your big revelation from all this? You don’t want to be alone when you die?’ Lizzy couldn’t keep the scepticism from her voice.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, then looked her square in the eye. ‘I don’t want to be alone when I live.’

  He watched his words land and take hold of her the same way the news he was going to be a father had gripped his heart and pressed the air out of his lungs in one swift blow.

  She squeezed her eyes tight, then opened them, the aquamarine clarity of them piercing through to his chest. Somewhere deep within that kaleidoscope of blues and greens a yes was floating about, waiting to find purchase. A yes to the question he’d never imagined himself asking. Will you marry me?

  Everything in him stilled as he waited for her to speak. If she said yes, he was going to have to throw himself at the relationship learning curve with the same blind focus he’d used when he’d poured himself into his career.

  Lizzy shifted in her chair and ran her finger round the rim of her glass. ‘Maybe we should hold off deciding exactly what we’re going to do. Like you said, I have jet lag and you have...’ she scrubbed the air between them ‘...your “issues”.’

  It wasn’t a no. It wasn’t a yes, let’s all move in and play happy families either, but they had time to figure out what to do without... Ha! Without letting all this emotion cloud their judgement. As if.

  Just as he was about to suggest they move to the table out on the terrace and eat some of the antipasti he’d bought at the local salumeria, his mobile rang.

  ‘Pronto?’

  He locked eyes with Lizzy as he took in the details of the call. This was much more familiar terrain. An infant needing immediate surgery. The prematurely born boy had struggled with necrotising enterocolitis and the situation, which had been steadily monitored throughout his stay in the NICU, had reached critical. It was one of the most common problems for premature infants, but its likelihood made it no less lethal.

  He rattled off a few instructions, ending the call with a promise to be there and gowned up within fifteen minutes.

  ‘NEC?’ Lizzy asked when he’d ended the call.

  He nodded, then did a double-take. ‘Your Italian’s a lot better than you let on back at the hospital.’

  She shrugged, as if it was completely natural that she should have added Italian to her list of skills over the years. ‘I know enough to get by.’

  No. She knew enough to move to Italy if she’d ever been asked.

  He pocketed the information for later, pulled his jacket off the back of the chair he’d hung it on, scooped his keys from the ceramic bowl where he always deposited them at the end of a long day, when he propped himself up on one of the stools to eat yet another takeaway meal before crawling into bed and, a few hours later, waking up to start another day.

  He looked up when Lizzy pointedly cleared her throat. Rather than looking annoyed that he was leaving, she looked expectant. As if awaiting an invitation. An invitation he knew she would accept.

  ‘Want to come?’ he asked. ‘You don’t have to. You can stay and sleep, eat—’

  ‘No. I’d like to come.’ She ran to her room and came back out tugging a sweater over her shoulders. ‘Are we running or jumping on the scooter?’

  ‘Scooter.’

  Waiting for the lift seemed a waste of time, so by silent agreement they began to jog down the stairs, with Leon filling her in as they went.

  ‘Luca Ricci was born fifteen weeks premature. He’s been poorly for the duration of his stay in the NICU—infections in his bloodstream, problems with breathing—but lately he’s been exhibiting intolerance to milk feeds. We’ve been trying to keep the intestinal inflammation to a minimum by introducing intravenous feeds, antibiotics and an abdominal drain, but it looks as though some of the bowel has become so damaged it’s begun to necrotise.’

  ‘What signs is he showing just now?’

  ‘Swollen stomach. Dark external colouration indicating a further perforation. Bradycardia.’

  Lizzy doubled her speed on the stairs. ‘I’ve had a few of those back in Sydney.’ She scrunched up her face. ‘Do the parents know the risks?’

  ‘Fifty-fifty chance of survival?’ Leon put the cold hard truth into words. ‘Yes. They know. But it’s that fifty percent of children who make it that we’re focused on, si?’

  ‘Si, Dottore.’ Lizzy gave him a small salute before accepting the helmet he was handing her.

  None of the awkwardness of their first ride returned as, focused on the surgery ahead, the two of them climbed onto the scooter. Lizzy’s hands slipped around his waist as if they’d done it for years and off they went.

  Half an hour later the pair of them were in scrubs, standing on either side of an operating table with the small infant between them, all the earlier hostilities and tensions that had been vibrating between the pair of them evaporated.

  It was just as it had been back in their sur
gical internships. Two focused, perfectionist surgeons working together with a harmony he’d let himself forget they shared. The Dream Team, the residents had called them. The Down Under Wonder and Da Vinci.

  She’d come up with that one, Da Vinci, because he’d look at the same ‘canvas’ they all did and, where many of their peers only saw dead ends, see nothing but possibility.

  ‘You just have to find the right path.’ His mantra.

  He looked across at her and she gave him an Are you ready? nod, hands up, ready for action. It was a silent signal to let him know that wherever he would go, she would follow.

  For the first time the gesture spoke volumes.

  She trusted him. Here at least. In the operating theatre.

  Had there been a time when Lizzy had seen a completely different path? One that had included their careers and the two of them together. Dio mio. That must have been why she’d learned Italian. Because she’d believed that one day he would call. Admit he’d been wrong not to admit that he’d heard her whisper that she loved him and tell her that he felt the same way.

  He threw the thought away, needing to focus on the surgery ahead of him. Besides, the very first thing that had attracted him to Lizzy was her single-minded focus on becoming the best. She would’ve spoken up if she’d thought he was being an idiot—just as she had today. Lizzy was nobody’s fool—and certainly not his.

  He channelled a fresh surge of energy and forced himself to see the infant’s body afresh. What could they do to ensure this small, helpless child lived a healthy, happy life?

  ‘How’re the oxygen levels?’ he asked.

  Lizzy’s eyes flicked up to the monitor. ‘Okay for now. There are spare bloods to hand?’

  ‘Si.’

  Both of them looked back at the screen, where the images from the laparoscope showed the delicate workings inside the baby’s abdomen.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be any damage here, which is good. The drainage system seems to have kept the area clear of infection.’