Falling for Her Wounded Hero Read online

  ‘Why not?’ she flashed. ‘Paul left it to me in his will. I could bring our baby up knowing the good things about Paul, feeling like it knew its dad. It seemed better—safer—than using an unknown donor, so I decided I’d be brave enough to try.’

  And then she hugged her swollen belly, and the tears at last welled over.

  ‘I wanted this baby,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted her so much...’

  Wanted. Past tense. The word was like a knife to her heart. She heard it and tried to change it.

  ‘I want her,’ she said, and her voice broke on a sob, but there was no changing what the scans had shown.

  And Tom leaned forward and put his hands over hers, so there were four hands cupped over her belly.

  ‘Has your baby died, Tasha?’

  And there it was, out there in all its horror. But it couldn’t be real. Please...

  ‘Not yet,’ she managed, and his grip on her hands tightened. I wonder if this is the way he treats all his patients, she thought, in some weird abstracted part of her brain that had space for those things. He was good. He was intuitive, empathic, caring. He’d be a good family doctor.

  A good friend?

  ‘If anything happened to me, Tasha, I reckon you could go to him.’

  Paul had been right, she thought. For just about the only time in his life, Paul had been right.

  Oh, but laying this on him...

  And he was a Blake. He even looked like his brother.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, and it was an order, calm and sure, a direction she had to follow no matter how she was feeling. And she took a deep breath because this was what she’d come for. She had no choice but to continue.

  ‘My baby’s a girl,’ she whispered. ‘Emily. I’ve named her Emily after my grandma. I had to come back to Australia to access Paul’s sperm. I’m Australian and I have Aussie health insurance so I stayed here during my pregnancy. I’ve been doing locums. Everything was fine until the last ultrasound. And they picked it up. She has hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The left side of her heart hasn’t developed. That...that’s bad enough but I thought...well, the literature says there’s hope and there are good people in Melbourne. With the Norwood procedure there’s a good chance of long-term survival. I hoped. But two days ago I went for my last visit to the cardiologist before delivery and the ultrasound’s showing an atrial septal defect as well. And more. Nothing’s right. Everything’s wrong. While she’s in utero, she doesn’t need her heart to pump her lungs, so she’s okay, but as soon as she’s born...’

  She took a deep breath. ‘As soon as she’s born the problems will start. The cardiologist says I need to wait as long as possible before delivery so she’s strong enough to face the faint possibility of surgery, but I’m not to hope for miracles. He says she’ll live for a little while but it’ll be days. Or less. The defect is so great...’

  Strangely her voice was working okay. Strangely the words didn’t cut out. It was like the medical side of her was kicking in, giving her some kind of armour against the pain. Or maybe it was simply that the pain was so unbearable that her body had thrown up armour of its own.

  Tom’s face had stilled. He’d be taking it in, she thought, like a good doctor, taking his time to assess, to figure what to say, to think of what might be the most helpful thing to say.

  There wasn’t anything to say. There just...wasn’t.

  * * *

  Hypoplastic left heart syndrome...

  He’d never seen a case but he’d read of it. He’d read of the Norwood procedure, a radical surgical technique giving hope to such babies, but with an atrial septal defect as well...

  His hands were still gripping Tasha’s. They were resting against the bulge that was her baby, and he felt a faint movement. A kick...

  In cases like this there usually weren’t any outward signs during pregnancy. A foetus only needed one ventricle. It didn’t use its lungs to get oxygen to the body, so while it was in utero there was nothing wrong.

  If the experts were right, Tasha was carrying a seemingly healthy baby, a little girl who’d only survive for days after she was born.

  This woman was a doctor. She’d have gone down every path. Her face said she had, and she’d been hit by a wall at every turn.

  ‘Transplant?’ he said, still holding her hands, and he thought maybe it was for him as well as for her. He had a sudden vision of his half-brother as a child, a tousled-haired wild child, rebellious even as a kid. A bright kid who’d tumbled from scrape to scrape. Paul had done medicine, too. Their father had been a doctor so maybe that’s why it had appealed to both of them, but the moment Paul had graduated he’d been off overseas. He’d helped out in some of the wildest places. He’d been a risk taker.

  And now he was dead and his baby was facing the biggest risk of all. Being born.

  A transplant? Without research it sounded the only hope.

  ‘You must know the odds,’ Tasha said flatly, echoing his thoughts.

  He did. To find a suitable donor in time... To keep this little one alive until they found one, and then to have her fight the odds and survive...

  He glanced up at Tasha’s ravaged face and he thought, Where are your friends? Where are your family? Why are you here alone?

  And something inside him twisted.

  He’d been a family doctor for ten years now. He loved the work. He loved this little community and when his patients were ill he couldn’t help but be personally involved.

  But this woman was different.

  She was his half-brother’s widow and as such there was a family connection. Her story was heartbreaking.

  And yet there was something more. Something that made him want to loosen the grip on her hands and gather her into him and hold.

  It was almost a primeval urge. The urge to protect.

  The urge to take away her pain any way he knew how.

  Which was all getting in the way of what she needed from him, which was to be useful. She was here for a reason. She didn’t need him to be messed up with some emotional reaction he didn’t understand.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Tasha?’ he asked, in a voice he had to force himself to keep steady. ‘I’ll help in any way I can. Tell me what you need me to do.’

  She steadied. He could see her fighting back emotion, turning into the practical woman he sensed she was.

  She let go his hands and sat back, and he pushed back too, so the personal link was broken.

  ‘I need an advocate,’ she told him. ‘No. Emily needs an advocate.’

  ‘Explain.’

  She had herself under control again now—sort of.

  ‘I’m only part Australian,’ she told him. ‘My dad was British but Mum was Australian. I was born here but my parents were in the army. We never had a permanent home. Mum and Dad died when I was fifteen and I went to live with my aunt in the UK. That’s where I did medicine. Afterwards I took a job with Médecins Sans Frontières, moving all around the world at need, which is when I met Paul. Paul owned an apartment here so Australia was our base but we still travelled. I’ve never stayed still long enough to get roots, to make long-term friends. So now I’m in a city I don’t know very well. I’m about to deliver Emily by Caesarean section and straight after her birth I’ll be expected to make some momentous decisions.’

  She faltered then, but forced herself to go on. ‘Like...like turning off life support,’ she whispered. ‘Like accepting what is or isn’t possible and not attempting useless heroics. Tom, I don’t trust myself but Paul said I could trust you. He spoke of you with affection. You’re the only one I could think of.’

  And what was he to say to that?

  There was only one answer he could give.

  ‘Of course I’ll be your advocate,’ he told her. ‘Or your support person. Tasha, wh
atever you need, I’ll be there for you. You have my word.’

  ‘But you hardly knew Paul.’

  ‘Paul’s family and so are you,’ he said, and he reached out and took her hands again. ‘That’s all that matters.’

  * * *

  ‘Hilda?’

  Hilda Brakenworth, Tom’s housekeeper, twin of Rhonda, answered the phone with some trepidation. She’d just finished making beef stroganoff and was contemplating the ingredients for a lemon soufflé. ‘Make it lovely,’ Tom had told her before he’d left for work. ‘Alice will be here at eight, just in time for sunset. Can you set the table on the veranda? Candles. Flowers. You know the drill.’

  She did, Hilda thought dourly. Tom’s idea of a romantic evening never changed. But she was used to his priorities. Medicine came first, surfing second. His love life came a poor third, and the phone call she was receiving now would be like so many she’d received in the past. ‘Change of plan,’ he’d say and her dinners would go into the freezer or the trash.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, mentally consigning her lemon soufflé to oblivion.

  ‘Change of plan. I’ve invited a guest to stay.’

  This was different. ‘You want a romantic dinner for three?’

  He chuckled but Hilda had known him for a long time. She could hear strain in his voice—strain usually reserved for times when the medical needs of the community were overwhelming.

  But did a guest staying warrant stress? She needed to phone Rhonda and find out what was going on.

  ‘I’ll put Alice off,’ he said. ‘She’ll understand.’

  No, she won’t, Hilda decided, thinking of the beautifully groomed, high-maintenance Alice, but she didn’t comment.

  ‘Do you want me to make up the front room?’

  ‘I... Yes. And could you put flowers in there?’

  ‘It’s a woman?’

  ‘It’s a woman called Tasha.’ He hesitated and then he told it like it was. ‘She’s my half-brother’s widow and she’s in trouble. I’m hoping she’ll stay as long as she needs us.’

  * * *

  Cray Point was a tiny, seemingly forgotten backwater, a village on a neck of land stretching out from Port Philip Bay.

  ‘It’s one high tide away from being an island, but the medical emergency chopper can get here from Melbourne within half an hour,’ Tom told her. ‘Your Caesarean’s booked in a week and you’re not due for two weeks. We’re both doctors. We can surely detect early signs of labour and get you to the city fast.’

  So a couple of hours after she’d arrived she was on the veranda, trying to eat the beautiful dinner Tom’s housekeeper had prepared.

  Somewhat to her surprise she did eat. She’d looked at the meal and felt slightly nauseous, which was pretty much how she’d felt since that appalling last consultation with the cardiologist, but Tom had plonked himself down beside her, scooped stroganoff onto both their plates and directed her attention to the surf.

  ‘It’s too flat tonight,’ he told her. ‘It’s been great all day but the wind’s died and the waves have died with it. That’s the story of my life. I sweat all day trying to finish but the moment my patients stop appearing, so do the good waves. Dawn’s better but once I hit the water I forget what I’m booked for. So I have a great time and come in to find Rhonda ready to have my head on a platter and the waiting room bursting at the seams.’

  ‘Rhonda...’

  ‘Rhonda’s my receptionist. She and Hilda—she’s the housekeeper you just met leaving—are sisters. They rule my life.’

  ‘So no family? No wife and kids?’

  ‘With my family history?’ He grinned, a gorgeous, engaging grin that reminded her a little of Paul. ‘Paul must have told you about my dad. He did the right thing twice in that he married my mum and then Paul’s mother when they were pregnant, but he never stayed around long enough to be a father. He fancied the idea of his sons as his mates but the hard yards were done by our mums, and while they were raising us he went from woman to woman.’

  ‘You think that’s genetic?’

  He grinned again. ‘I reckon it must be. Dating’s fun but I’m thirty-four years old and I’ve never met a woman I’d trust myself to commit to spending the rest of my life with.’ His smile faded. ‘But, unlike Dad, I won’t make promises I can’t keep. This life suits me. Mum was born and raised in Cray Point and this community nurtured both of us when Dad walked out on her. I left to do medicine but it’s always called me home. The surf’s great and the wind here in winter is enough to turn me into a salted kipper. I have a theory that the locals here don’t age, they just get more and more preserved. If you dig up the graveyard you’ll find old leather.’

  ‘That sounds like you have nothing to do as a doctor.’

  ‘Preserved leather still falls off surfboards,’ he said, and the smile came back again. ‘And tourists do dumb tourist things. I had a lady yesterday who rented a two-bedroom house for an extended family celebration and wanted it beautifully set up before they arrived. So she blew up eight air beds. On the seventh she started feeling odd but she kept on going. Luckily her landlady dropped in as she keeled over on the eighth. Full infarct. We air ambulanced her to Melbourne and she should make a good recovery but it could have been death by airbed. What a way to go.’

  And for the first time in days—weeks?—months?—Tasha found herself chuckling and scooping up the tasty stroganoff. This man may well be a charming womaniser like his father and brother, but at least he was honest about it, she thought. And that side of him didn’t affect her. Just for the moment she could put tragedy aside.

  As she ate he kept up a stream of small talk, the drama of being a small-town doctor in a town where access could be cut in a moment. As a doctor she found her interest snagged.

  ‘We can’t rely on the road,’ Tom told her as he attacked some lemon soufflé. ‘It floods. It also takes one minor traffic accident or one broken-down car to prevent access for hours or even days. As a village we’re pretty self-reliant and the medical helicopter evac team is brilliant. You sure you don’t want more of this?’

  ‘I... No.’ She’d surprised herself by eating any at all.

  ‘We’ll feed you up for the next week,’ Tom said calmly. ‘You and Emily. Did you know there are studies that say taste comes through? This is a truly excellent lemon soufflé. Who’s to say that Emily isn’t enjoying it, too?’

  It was an odd thought. Unconsciously her hands went to her belly, and Tom’s voice softened.

  ‘Cuddling’s good,’ he told her. ‘I bet she can feel that as well, and I know she can hear us talking.’

  ‘She might...’ Her voice cracked. ‘But the doctor said...’

  ‘I know what’s been said,’ Tom told her, and his hand reached over and held hers, strong and firm—a wash of stability in a world that had tilted so far she’d felt she must surely fall. ‘But, Tasha, your baby’s alive now. She’s being cuddled. She’s sharing your lemon soufflé and she’s listening to the surf. That’s not such a bad life for a baby.’

  It was a weird concept. That Emily could feel her now...

  And suddenly Emily kicked, a good solid kick that even Tom could see under her bulky windcheater. They both looked at the bulge as Emily changed position, and something inside her settled. The appalling maelstrom of emotions took a back seat.

  She was here overlooking the sea, feeding her baby lemon soufflé. It was true, Emily could hear the surf—every book said that babies could hear.

  ‘Maybe you could take her for a swim tomorrow,’ Tom suggested. ‘Lie in the shallows and let the water wash over you—and her. She’ll feel your body rocking and she’ll hear the water whooshing around. How cool would that be, young Emily?’

  And he got it.

  She looked up at him in stupefaction but Tom was gazing out to sea again, as if
he’d said nothing of importance.

  But he’d said it.

  How cool would that be, young Emily?

  No matter how short Emily’s life would be, for now, for this moment, Emily was real. She was her own little person, and with that simple statement Tom was acknowledging it.

  The tangle of grief and fear and anger fell away. It was there for the future—she knew that—but for now she was eating lemon soufflé and tomorrow was for tomorrow. For now Emily was alive and kicking. She had no need for her faulty heart. She was safe.

  And for the moment Tasha felt safe, too. When Tom had suggested staying she’d thought she’d agree to one night, when she could get to know him so she could figure whether she really could trust him to be her advocate. She knew if the birth was difficult and there were hard decisions to be made then she’d need a friend.

  And suddenly she had one.

  Thank you, Paul, she thought silently, and it was one of the very few times when she’d thought of Paul with gratitude. He had pretty much been the kid who never grew up, a Peter Pan, a guy who looked on the world as an amazing adventure. His love of life had drawn her in but she hadn’t been married for long before she’d realised that life for Paul was one amazing adventure after another. Putting his life at risk—and hers too if the need arose—was his drug of choice.

  And as for Tom saying his father’s womanising was a genetic fault...yeah, Paul had pretty much proved that.

  But now... He’d died but he’d left his sperm and it seemed he’d also left her a link to a man who could help her. Tom might be a womaniser like his brother. He might be any number of things, but right now he was saying exactly what she needed to hear. And then he was falling silent, letting the night, the warmth, the gentle murmur of the sea do his talking for him.

  She could trust him for now, she thought, and once more her hands tightened on her belly.

  She could trust this man to be her baby’s advocate.

  And her friend?

  * * *

  By the time dinner ended Tasha looked almost asleep. Tom had shown her to his best spare room and she hit the pillow as if she hadn’t slept for a month. As maybe she hadn’t.