Their Special-Care Baby

CHAPTER TWO

THE room swam and it was hard to focus. Distant throbbing in her arm forced her eyes open. A vaguely familiar backpack rested on the shelf opposite and she stared at it until the blurred lines firmed and stopped their dance.

There was something comforting about having that much control of her vision again.

Then she noticed the serene-faced older lady in the wheelchair. The lady knitted sedately with her bright blue eyes fixed like a white-feathered bird watching her young.

‘Hello, Desiree. You’re awake.’ She knitted with incredible speed without reference to the garment.

Desiree? She looked around but there were only two of them in the room. Desiree?

The lady smiled and allowed her words to sink in before explaining. ‘I’m Leanore, your mother-in-law. See, I remembered.’

She looked so pleased. ‘Stewart said I haven’t met you before, which is such a relief because I don’t remember you. It’s such a pain when your brain goes, dear.’

Desiree blinked at the word usage and then moistened dry lips and nodded weakly to Leanore. She cast around for a reason to be lying in a bed surrounded by flowers but couldn’t find one.

It seemed Leanore wasn’t the only one whose mind had gone. ‘Where am I?’ Fragments of memory and the crawl from the train crash came back. The man’s eyes. She remembered the baby’s cries.

‘Where’s the baby?’ Desiree’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat at the end of the sentence to calm the semi-hysterical note she could hear in her own voice.

Leanore concentrated and then recited as if she’d been coached. ‘You’re in St Somebody’s Hospital, in Sydney.’ The lady frowned and then shook her head. ‘No. Can’t remember the name of the place.’ She shrugged and moved on. ‘The little girl is fine, Stewart said. I remember that. I’m sure that’s what he said. He’s just ducked out for a minute and will be right back. Apparently it’s a miracle you both survived.’

A sad expression crossed the old woman’s face. ‘Your little girl is my granddaughter and she looks just like my darling Sean. I remember he is dead. Now, that’s one of those things I’d gladly forget.’

A flutter of panic, like a child’s balloon caught by the wind, rose in a bubble in Desiree’s chest.

‘She’s a little girl, not my little girl.’ Desiree began to cast more frantically around in her memory. ‘I’m sure she’s not my child. I don’t think. I don’t remember…’ Then it struck her. ‘Anything!’

The woman’s eyes darkened with compassion. ‘I know. Horrible, isn’t it? My son said you mightn’t. Don’t worry. At least your mind will all come back. I’m getting dottier by the day.’ Leanore chewed her lip, upset at causing distress. ‘I’ll call my son, shall I?’

The old lady felt for the bulky necklace around her neck and pressed the centre. She tilted her head at Desiree and winked. ‘He makes me wear this and I’m not to stand up unless he’s here. He’s a good son.’

Desiree had no idea what the lady was talking about but she felt as if she’d woken in a farce. Who was her wheelchair companion and what kind of place was this?

A train crash? She remembered the baby but surely it wasn’t her baby? She didn’t have a baby. Or did she? Perhaps somewhere in the past she may have been pregnant.

Frantically her eyes darted around the room as she tried to force memories that wouldn’t come. Who was she? How could she have had a baby if she didn’t remember? How long had she been here?

The blankness of the past rose like nausea in her throat and crowded her already crowded mind until it was all too much. The room swirled as her eyes closed and with relief she allowed the room to fade away until she floated like a balloon again.

‘The lady was awake but she didn’t know me.’ The voices were distant but she couldn’t respond.

‘She will remember, Mother. You’ll have to wait a little longer to be a mother-in-law. Desiree lost a lot of blood.’ The man’s voice was gentle, as if he found the whole scenario disturbing, and there was something about his compassionate tone that cut through the airiness in her brain and grounded her again.

She opened her eyes reluctantly. The owner of the voice was tall and dark-haired with kind eyes. She registered that his eyes were as blue as his mother’s and there was something reassuringly familiar about his strong face.

The brightness of his doctor’s white coat made her blink.

Stewart Kramer stared intently at the ghostly pale woman lying back on the pillows. It was a miracle she had lived, he thought. Dark smudges lay under her eyes and her bruised cheek was swollen and purple from the accident.

She confused him. Desiree didn’t have that flashy racehorse quality about her that had consistently seemed Sean’s type and her obviously fierce will would not have sat comfortably with Sean’s need to dominate.

This woman had curves in abundance and her dark waves of hair lay softly against her cheek. Maybe Sean had acquired a more genuine taste in women because there was a lot about Desiree that made Stewart think more of wholesome warmth and strength of character than fashion magazines and the fast lane.

Desiree’s grey eyes glistened with tears but she blinked them away as he watched her grapple with her situation. Inexplicably Stewart had to fight against the urge to scoop her up and cradle her head on his shoulder.

No doubt the urge would be to do with the horror of when he’d first seen her surrounded by those who had died and the gritty hold she’d maintained on her life despite her massive blood loss.

Desiree eased higher in the bed and closed her eyes briefly, and Stewart presumed she felt light-headed.

‘You seem vaguely familiar,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘Maybe you know the answers to some of my questions?’

Stewart tried to imagine what it would feel like to wake up after such an event.

His mother, with her illness, lived in confusion every day to some degree, and he thanked God for her unfailing good humour. He didn’t fancy the idea for himself. ‘I’ll try, but I’m a paediatrician here, not your doctor.’

She looked at him with those big silver-grey eyes, eyes shadowed with pain and bewilderment, and a sudden twist of jealous rage against his careless brother stunned him with the raw emotion. It wasn’t Sean’s fault the train had crashed so his sentiment didn’t make sense.

It was just that she seemed so different to what he’d imagined Sean’s wife would be like. Sean had never cared for real people. What the hell had she been doing with Sean? He wanted to throttle the truth out of his brother but it was too late now. So too was being unexpectedly affected by meeting Desiree.

He ground his teeth and forced the useless emotions back into a deep cave in his chest and sealed the door. When he spoke his voice sounded coldly clinical, even to his own ears. ‘You have amnesia, probably retrograde, involving memory from the time prior to the blow to your head.’

‘When will I remember?’ Her voice shook, and with compunction he reached out and covered her fingers. Her hand was soft and defenceless under his.

‘In the accident you were knocked unconscious for a short time. Goodness knows what you hit on impact. With the swelling near your brain your memory could take hours to return or even months.’

She watched him as if he had all the answers and Stewart felt inadequate for the first time in a very long time.

‘Will my memory definitely come back?’ she asked, and he felt the weight of her need as if it were his obligation to make her world right.

That was the rub. ‘In the majority of amnesia cases, most of the patient’s memory does come back in time.’

‘So reassuring,’ she murmured ironically, and turned her head away from him on the pillow. Strangely, she left her fingers curled safe in his, though. Stewart found himself absurdly touched by her trust.

He left the silence between them and it built until she turned back to face him. There was resolution on her face that he could only admire and the urge to comfort her returned with force. What was it about this woman that made it so easy to read her thoughts? What was it about her that made him want to read them? The concept elbowed for room in his own crowded mind.

She cleared her throat. ‘So you can tell me anything you like and I have to believe you until my memory returns?’ she said.

He had to applaud her dry sense of humour because he doubted he’d be up to jokes in Desiree’s position.

He glanced at Leanore and his mother stared vaguely out the window, sidetracked in confusion caused by her tumour. He did it for Leanore every day.

At least he was practised at orientating lost people. ‘So it appears. You will just have to sue me for any incorrect answers.’

Desiree had no choice but to trust him for the moment. She steeled herself for the question she dreaded the answer to. ‘Who is Desiree?’

Obviously this was not the question he’d expected, by the lift of his dark brows. Well, it was the one she needed an answer to the most, and she held her breath as she waited.