A Family Made in Rome

by Annie O'Neil

  So she proved it by acting normal. She popped on a bright smile and said, ‘I’d really like to meet the parents. See a scan. Earn the kudos you gave me, yeah?’

  Leon held his arm out towards the doors to the ward. ‘After you, m’lady.’

  There, thought Lizzy, the smile on her face broadening as she swanned in front of him, that’s more like it!

  * * *

  ‘Ooh, there they are!’ Lizzy smiled in wonder as she ran the scanning wand over Gabrielle’s stomach, all her wild emotions from just moments ago forgotten. This was what she loved. Seeing tiny little lives starting out in the world.

  ‘It does look like they’re hugging doesn’t it?’ Gabrielle asked, her eyes flitting between the screen and her husband.

  Everyone agreed—it did look as if the girls were hugging. Lizzy guessed that warm thought added a level of comfort to what must be a terrifying experience for both Gabrielle and her husband Matteo. There were a lovely couple. She was from Switzerland and had, on a work secondment, met and married Matteo, who lived in Northern Italy. They’d both come to Rome on their doctor’s advice, when they’d made the discovery about their babies.

  A thick tumble of ebony curls cascaded over Gabrielle’s shoulders, framing features softened by her advancing pregnancy. She was both frightened and brave. Stoic and nervous. Matteo, thankfully, was a picture-perfect doting husband. Holding her hand, checking she was warm enough, not too cold, not thirsty, or hungry, in need of a foot rub...

  It made Lizzy smile. It also made her a little jealous, seeing the easy love they shared. They were a couple well and truly devoted to one another’s happiness. What confidence that must take, she thought. To trust and believe in someone never to hurt you.

  She glanced at Leon, then just as quickly looked away. History was powerful, and the reason it repeated itself was because people didn’t learn from it. She didn’t want to be one of those people.

  She cleared her throat and focused on the screen. ‘Shall we take a little look at...? Ooh...look there. Ten little toes on Baby A—’

  ‘Oh, scusi!’ Matteo interrupted her. ‘We’re not calling them Baby A and Baby B any more, if that’s all right.’

  Lizzy turned away from the screen, giving them both her full attention. ‘Absolutely. What would you prefer?’

  ‘Grace and Hope,’ Gabrielle said, taking hold of her husband’s hand.

  ‘Beautiful names.’ Lizzy smiled, her eyes catching Leon’s as he concurred with a soft, ‘Bellissima...’

  Collectively, they went back to the screen, taking the baby anatomy tour—or, as Lizzy liked to call it, head, shoulders, knees and toes. Lizzy loved this part of being an antenatal doctor. Showing a couple their child, the heartbeat...or in this case the one shared heartbeat. It sounded romantic, an ideal to strive for, but in this case it could prove lethal.

  Had that been the problem with her parents’ marriage? They hadn’t been able to survive without the other? Divorce had never been discussed—and yet her father’s powerful heartbeat had seemed to dominate her mother’s more fragile, birdlike rhythm. The way he’d said things like ‘That’s the way we see things—isn’t that right, Genny?’ or ‘We’re not interested,’ or any number of things her father had decided on behalf of both of them gave Lizzy a cold chill down her spine to this day.

  She glanced again at Leon, who had moved to the far end of the bed, having turned things over to her once he’d made the initial introduction. Perhaps he’d read her mood. Realised she’d felt put on the back foot by having to meet the medical team without having so much as met the parents yet. Or perhaps, like her father—and this was a scary thought—she was a control freak.

  She stuffed that thought into a box and squirted a whole load of mental superglue all over the lid.

  The easy part of the ‘tour’ was done. Now it was time for trickier terrain. The conjoined chests and hearts.

  Lizzy pointed towards the arrow on the sonogram. ‘Dr Lombardi and his team will work out how best to approach the separation surgery, but if you look at the arrow, this little spot here is where Hope’s and Grace’s hearts are fused together.’

  Gabrielle gave a little cry of despair.

  Lizzy took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘You have got the very best medical team in the world at your disposal.’

  ‘And you’ve done this surgery before? The HLHS?’

  ‘Absolutely. Many times.’

  ‘On conjoined twins?’

  Lizzy shook her head. ‘This is a first. But I know the surgery inside and out, and the aortic valve the twins share shouldn’t change the standard procedure. If anything, it should enable their hearts to work better together up until the separation surgery.’

  ‘There’s a standard procedure for this sort of thing?’ Matteo’s eyes widened.

  ‘Absolutely. I know having conjoined twins is a rarity, but one in four thousand babies is diagnosed with HLHS. There are specialised units around the world to help, and one of them is right here.’

  ‘But you’re not from here. Should we have gone to Sydney instead?’ The couple shared an anxious look.

  Lizzy could feel Leon’s eyes on her, but he didn’t jump in and make a case for his hospital. Interesting... He really was doing his best to show her he trusted her.

  ‘This is the best place for the two of you. The four of you,’ she corrected herself with a laugh. ‘You’re as close to home as you can be and, thanks to the hospital’s facilities for parents, you don’t have to be parted. Being together during your pregnancy is the very best thing you two can do to keep yourself happy. Those babies will feel your love. Your strength.’

  She kept her eyes firmly on the Bianchis, vividly aware that she’d pretty much said the exact opposite to Leon.

  What was it her father had used to say? Do as I say, not as I do?

  The thought lurched uncomfortably close to the child in her own belly.

  Tapping her pen officiously on her knee, she continued, ‘Any specialist hospital will have a team of brilliant surgeons and physicians. This one is no exception. The fact that I’m here is—’

  Foolishly, she looked at Leon. In the microsecond of eye contact they shared she finally believed him when he’d said he hadn’t invited her here for the surgery. Well, obviously he had—but the real reason ran much deeper.

  ‘I don’t want to live my life alone!’

  She tore her eyes away and put on her sensible doctor’s voice. ‘We’ve got around forty people dedicated to supporting you through this pregnancy, with Dr Cassanetti helming the ship as it were. And after the babies are born Dr Lombardi will literally have dozens of highly specialised medical staff ready and waiting to help your two little girls to the best of their ability.’

  Lizzy felt but did not see Leon pressing himself up to his full height as she talked the couple through the Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome surgery. They nodded, asked questions, stopped and doubled back when they didn’t understand something.

  Given the fact she’d just bitten his head off for making promises he couldn’t keep, she knew she was standing on thin ice when she wrapped up the consultation by saying, ‘We will do everything we can, Dr Cassanetti and I, to make sure Hope and Grace have the very best start in life.’

  ‘But what if that start instantly comes with problems?’ Gabrielle sniffed and, unsurprisingly, tears began to slip down her cheeks.

  Lizzy startled herself by saying. ‘That’s life, isn’t it? It’s full of risks. Which ones do we take? Which ones do we leave for the more foolhardy? Or, more to the point, which ones do we regret not taking?’ She smiled at the couple, who had to be so frightened. ‘I know the surgeries Dr Cassanetti and I perform come with a long list of potential problems, but we humans are a pretty resilient bunch. We’re able to separate the bright side from the dark side and focus on the one that’s going to bring the be
tter outcome.’

  It was a statement ‘old Leon’ would’ve billed as psychological poppycock, but she caught him nodding out of the corner of her eye, murmuring ‘Si...’ and ‘Absolutely...’ as the Bianchis pulled them in for hugs of gratitude for their attention and care.

  When it was Leon’s turn to be caught in a fierce hug from Gabrielle, he looked over her shoulder and caught Lizzy’s gaze with his own.

  ‘Some risks are worth taking, aren’t they?’ he said.

  And she knew he was talking about their future when he continued.

  ‘I believe this is one of them. Don’t you, Dr Beckley?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘BUONGIORNO.’ LEON KNOCKED on the doorframe of the hospital on-call room where, once again, Lizzy had spent the night on the premise of ‘monitoring’ Gabrielle’s babies.

  It was a job the overnight staff were well-equipped to do, and they were, of course, under strict instructions to ring either of them the moment they sensed trouble. It looked as if he wasn’t the only ostrich who stuck its head in the sand—or, in this case, in the antenatal unit—when there were personal problems to confront...

  ‘Oh, my God, you’re an angel.’ Lizzy grabbed the coffee, then flashed him a questioning smile. ‘Decaf?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Pistachio?’ she asked, already taking a bite of the flaky pastry he knew she favoured.

  ‘Si,’ he confirmed, enjoying watching her devour the pastry, and then another.

  This had been how they’d done things since that first day of working together. She’d insist she needed to stay at the hospital to get a proper grasp of the overall medical situation with the Bianchis, and would send him home with a promise that she’d use the spare key he’d given her. The next day, her bed untouched, he’d find her, courtesy of a nurse, in an on-call room, either asleep or poring over case files. They would go over her thoughts, meet with Giovanni after they’d checked in on Gabrielle and the twins, and then he’d go on his rounds. Sometimes with her. Sometimes without her.

  He knew better than to push, because he didn’t like to be pushed either—and if he was the pot she was the kettle. In other words, it took a control freak to know one. Neither of them liked having matters taken out of their own hands, and that was precisely what having a child together did. Because life wasn’t just about ‘me, myself and I’ any more. It was about ‘us’ and ‘we’ and ‘it’. ‘It’, of course, being the baby, which would require changing and feeding and cuddling during bouts of late-night crying. Elements of life he’d never thought would be a part of his own.

  Lizzy yawned and stretched, pressing her hands to her lower back, and then glared at the on-call bed. ‘They could do with slightly comfier mattresses here.’

  ‘You can sleep at the flat, you know,’ Leon said, although an image of her tangled in his bedsheets inconveniently popped into his mind.

  She barely glanced at him, but her thoughts had clearly gone in the same direction his had because her cheeks coloured. The only times that happened was when she was thinking saucy thoughts or when she was fuming—and she definitely wasn’t fuming.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I just... I’ve got a funny feeling.’

  Leon rocked back on his heels and nodded. Okay. The Lizzy he’d worked with before hadn’t often spoken of feelings dictating her decision-making, but now, pregnancy hormones aside, he’d felt it himself. That kick in the gut that told him something wasn’t quite right with a medical situation.

  ‘Do you think we’re wrong to wait to do the operation?’

  She’d suggested holding back by only a few days, but he knew as well as she did that sometimes life and death hung in the balance of a handful of seconds.

  ‘No, but I...’ She hesitated, scrubbing the sleep out of her eyes and then swooping her hair up into a messy and strangely adorable ponytail. ‘Yes.’ She gave him a solid look as she stood up and then added a foot-stamp. ‘I was going over the scans a couple of hours ago—’

  ‘You were up a couple of hours ago?’

  She shrugged. ‘Woke up full of beans, I guess. Then ran out of them. Anyway... Yes, I do think we’re wrong to wait. These little girls are facing enough hard work in the womb as it is. Sharing a critical aortic valve means the left side of Hope’s heart is having to work that much harder than it already is, and as such I think we should ease the burden. Then again...if it can gain strength on its own that’s a plus. Also, the stent that would go in now would be minuscule—not that that’s a problem—but...’

  She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, hashing through the countless variables that factored into heart surgery for a twenty-three-week-old baby.

  Leon leant against the doorframe, enjoying watching Lizzy whirl round the room, picking up her watch, her phone, trying to tie her hair up into a ponytail, again, even though she’d just done it. Even watching her scrub a toothbrush against her teeth was fun. Was it possible to miss something you’d never properly had? A routine?

  Sure, they’d spent a lot of time together in New York, but that had been different. They’d been a classic romcom. Two ambitious surgeons battling it out to be the best whilst fighting—and ultimately succumbing to—a fierce mutual attraction.

  Back then, they’d always known that whatever it was they’d shared was going to end. Now, with a baby in the picture, there was a real chance—if the pair of them could sort themselves out—that they would be in each other’s lives for ever. Scrap that. They’d have to sort themselves out. Because their child wasn’t going through life without a father. End of.

  ‘Earth to Leon?’ Lizzy spat out her toothpaste. ‘I’m asking for your professional opinion here. C’mon. What do you think? Am I being paranoid?’

  He straightened up. ‘A lot of doctors would argue that it’d be better to wait until the babies are born. The fact that Hope has HLHS and a restrictive atrial septal defect could mean waiting until they’re delivered—’

  ‘No!’ She made a strangled noise of frustration. ‘You wouldn’t have flown me halfway across the world if you believed that. You wanted this operation.’ She turned the full blaze of her aquamarine eyes on him.

  Unblinking he replied, ‘And you agreed. You also decided that rather than race into an operation, we should wait until you had “the full picture”.’

  Why was she getting herself tied up in knots about this? She was Hope’s doctor. If she thought they should do the operation, they should do it. As a maternal medicine specialist, he was technically Gabrielle’s doctor. But as Gabrielle was carrying Hope and Grace he had to make the call, too. And right now he needed to force Lizzy’s hand.

  ‘I brought you in because I knew you would know when to operate. It’s not my specialty. It’s yours.’

  Lizzy pursed her lips at him, then whirled round the room doing a very uncharacteristic final check for her belongings. This from a woman who had a photographic memory...

  It made him wonder... What were they really talking about here? The Bianchi babies? Or their baby?

  He decided to test the theory. ‘Lizzy...there are many doctors who would caution waiting before making a decision.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Lizzy turned indignant. ‘Well, “many doctors” aren’t me!’ She poked herself in the chest and unexpectedly hiccoughed.

  They stared at one another in silence for a minute and then, when the intensity of their eye contact began to morph into something else...something verging on a sexual frisson, Lizzy broke contact and began to laugh. ‘Oh, goodness. Listen to me. I’ve lost the plot. I’m going to blame pregnancy hormones. Can I blame pregnancy hormones?’

  Leon shrugged amiably. ‘All you like—but please do bear in mind we have actual, real patients waiting for you to decide when you want to wheel them into the operating theatre.’

  ‘I know.’ She hung her head, that intense burst of energy now humming at a
more manageable level. She looked up and met his gaze. ‘I think we should do a scan.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll book them in. MRI? Echo?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not talking about the Bianchis. I’m talking about us. You. Me. Before we see the Bianchis.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘We have half an hour before they’re expecting us, and I can’t focus any more. Not with this vagueness hanging over everything. I need clarity, then I can proceed.’

  It took all his power to bite his tongue. She was the only thing standing between vagueness and clarity. He had proposed to her. Offered to shoulder the load. Said he’d let her move in. Move somewhere else. Live in Sydney. Or had he taken it back? They’d definitely agreed to disagree on something.

  Hell. She was right. It was a mess, and seeing the baby would definitely push them into making a decision.

  Five minutes later, after Lizzy had downed a couple of glasses of water and he’d prepared the scan room, with the door firmly locked, Leon applied gel to the slight arc of Lizzy’s belly, then picked up the wand.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘If you are.’ She smiled nervously.

  He put the wand to her skin and... ‘Oh, Dio. Amore...look.’

  He felt Lizzy’s fingers wrap around his wrist as he moved the wand slowly over her belly, and then that magic moment he’d borne witness to for so many couples happened for him. He heard his child’s heartbeat for the very first time.

  ‘Hear that?’ Lizzy asked.

  ‘Si.’ It was all he could manage.

  He looked at her, and when their eyes met and meshed he felt that same perfect connection he’d felt when they’d first met. She was a kindred spirit. A woman who understood him perfectly because she was the same. Someone who wanted to be judged for what she was now—not who she’d been or where she’d come from, but for the future she hoped for.