Hearts of Gold: The Children's Heart Surgeon

ALEX could sense resistance in his companion as they made their way, with frequent stops, towards her house. Not resistance to his kisses—she was too honest and wholehearted in her response! No, it was to do with the past, and whatever it was it haunted Annie as she had haunted him.

They reached her place and he took her to the back door and waited while she unlocked it, calling to Henry to quieten him.

‘Would you like a coffee now?’ she asked, but lack of sleep and an evening swim had taken their toll and Alex shook his head.

‘I’ll say goodnight,’ he said, and took her in his arms again, kissing her thoroughly, winning sweet, hot kisses in return. But although his body hungered to take things further, his head decreed caution, and he knew it was the right decision at this stage of their relationship.

Especially if Annie was, as he suspected, trying to work out how to tell him it was over before it had begun.

He said goodnight and walked home up the lane, wondering if he was at the two steps forward or one step back part of this relationship. He also found time to wonder why he, with his aversion to emotional dependency, wanted so badly to find out about Annie’s past. Wanted so badly to make things right for her.

Wasn’t he better off just accepting the Annie of the present, enjoying a relationship with her and letting the past remain where it was—in the past?

Yes was the answer to that question, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. If he had a relationship with Annie then it was already tied to the past.

‘Give it up,’ he told himself, letting himself in through his back door and bending to lift a delighted Minnie and hush her excited yapping. ‘Think about work!’

He dialled the hospital, remembering as the phone rang at the other end that he hadn’t told Annie that Amy’s new catheter had worked and her kidneys were functioning if not perfectly then well.

The report from the PICU was all good, and he went off to bed thinking of work, but with a twist of Annie, because he’d be seeing her there in the morning.

‘So you see my dilemma, Henry,’ Annie said, when she’d filled him in on the Alex situation over a very early breakfast the next morning.

‘Just tell the man about Dennis,’ her father said, coming in on the tail end of the one-way discussion. ‘For Pete’s sake, it doesn’t reflect badly on you.’

Annie looked at her father. He’d been a policeman for over thirty years, yet he still had no real understanding of how victims of the crimes he’d fought—and now wrote about—felt. This wasn’t the first time she’d tried to explain it to him, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but still she tried.

‘Dad, you and I were closer than most fathers and daughters are—far closer—but it still took me four years to lift that phone and call you.’

Four years and a stranger’s kiss, she amended silently.

‘I’ve known Alex for a week. I can’t talk to him about it, and even if I could, don’t you think he’d run a mile? What sane sensible man would want a woman with so much baggage?’

‘A man who loved you, that’s who,’ her father growled, then he wheeled himself away, not, Annie knew, because he was angry with her but because he, too, still found it hard to cope with what had happened.

Annie said goodbye to her two protectors and walked to work, pleased not to have company because, after a weekend of emotional upheaval, she wanted to get her mind focussed back on the job. Especially as this would be the first week of full-time surgery, the patient first up this morning a young girl Alex had seen last week. Jamie Hutchins was a six-year-old with a previously undiagnosed atrial septal defect, or, in medical shorthand, an ASD, and Alex had scheduled a staff briefing for eight with the operation to start at nine. And because she wanted to be at the briefing, wanted to learn all she could about the work Alex did, here she was heading for work before seven.

And beating Alex, she found when she checked in at the special care unit and learned both patients had enjoyed a peaceful night. But she wasn’t the first on duty. As she pushed open the door that led to the suite of open-plan ‘offices’ she and the doctors used, she saw the light was on, and though her heart skipped an anticipatory beat it was Maggie, not Alex, already at a desk.

‘You want a coffee?’ Maggie used the question as a greeting. She looked and sounded tired, which puzzled Annie, given the status of their patients.

Annie said yes to coffee and watched Maggie as she poured, seeing tiredness in her actions as well.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, and Maggie gave a weary smile.

‘When Alex offered me the job up here, I thought it would be a good chance to catch up with my sister, who shifted up here when she married, and get to know her family a bit better. So I asked if I could stay with them until I found somewhere to live.’

‘Not a good idea?’ Annie sugared her coffee and stirred it.

‘A terrible idea,’ Maggie told her. ‘She’s got a spaced-out family—I mean in ages, although Pete, the eldest, is definitely spaced out in other ways. Pete’s fifteen and we go down through an eleven-year-old I swear has ADD and twins going through the delightful Terrible Twos.’

‘Not much peace and quiet?’

‘None!’

‘Do you have to stay?’

Maggie shook her head.

‘Not really. I think I’m probably as disruptive for them as they are for me. But finding somewhere else isn’t all that easy. I don’t know the city at all, and have no idea of where to start looking. Somewhere near the hospital, I suppose.’

Annie thought of the house she and her father shared. It had been converted before they’d bought it, so there was a self-contained suite for him downstairs with three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. More than enough room for an extra person.

Yet she felt reluctant to make the offer, and knew the reluctance was tied up with Alex and the relationship they didn’t yet have, and might never have, and really, when she thought about it, should never have.

Then she remembered the size of the hearts Alex operated on, and the skill he required from his anaesthetist.

Would an exhausted anaesthetist exhibit the same skill?

How could she not offer?

‘We’ve plenty of room at our place and it’s just down the road—you can walk to and from work. You don’t have to stay for the whole year, but at least it would be handy while you looked around. You can pop down and check the place out during your break between ops and meet my father, and if you like it, I can drive you to your sister’s after work and bring you and your gear back home.’

Maggie stared at her.

‘You don’t know me,’ she pointed out, and Annie grinned at her.

‘I know you’re an excellent anaesthetist and this unit needs one of those, so anything I can do to make your job easier, it’s yours.’

Maggie got up from where she’d been slumped behind a desk and came across to give Annie a big hug.

‘It needn’t be for the whole year,’ she assured Annie. ‘Just until I get my bearings in Sydney and find somewhere for myself.’

‘Whatever suits you,’ Annie said, though a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she’d have a boarder for a year. Where else would Maggie find so ideal a situation?

Maggie was chattering on, so obviously delighted by this change in fortune Annie had to feel happy for her.

‘You don’t need to drive me. I’ve got my own car. I’ll check out your place at lunchtime then go back to my sister’s for tonight to say goodbye to them all, pack my stuff into the car and bring it all over tomorrow.’

‘Bring what all over where tomorrow?’

Annie turned at the sound of Alex’s voice. Inside, her stomach turned as well, a happy little flip-type somersault.

She smiled at him—a unit co-ordinator greeting the main man smile—and saw a bit more warmth in the smile he gave her back. Although the warmth faded, and the smile grew forced as Maggie happily explained the situation.

‘Maggie’s coming to live with you?’ Alex asked, when Maggie had left the suite to check her new patient.

He sounded hurt, and puzzled, and Annie understood both reactions.