Fairytale on the Children's Ward

She bent her head as she answered, presumably checking some component of the machine, and Oliver found himself studying her, once again imagining he could sense tension in her voice.

‘It can’t have been easy, handling training and a child.’

It was a throwaway remark, the kind anyone might make, yet he saw her tense. No sensing it this time; he actually saw her stiffen.

Why?

‘Mum helped out.’

Obviously that was the only answer he was going to get, so should he keep the conversation going?

Might as well; it was awkward enough as it was without silence extending between them.

‘How old is she?’

More silence, then Clare looked up at him.

‘She’s nine,’ she said, before returning to whatever she was doing, fiddling with the machine.

‘Nine? As in nine years old?’ he muttered as a rage he’d never felt before, not even when his real father had denied him, burnt through his body. ‘You’re telling me you were so desperate for a child you went from me to him, whoever he was? Or were you already seeing him? Cheating on me? Did he offer marriage? Is that what swayed you? And did he offer before or after you announced you were pregnant, eh?’

Clare had never heard such anger in his voice, yet this was hardly the time to refute his hateful accusations. He was about to operate on a vulnerable infant. He needed to be calm and composed, totally focused on the job, not struggling to comprehend the fact that he had a daughter.

What’s more, she had to be calm and composed as well! Later she’d get angry. Later she’d tell him.…

Right now, she had to defuse the situation somehow.

‘It is none of your business what I did or didn’t do, Oliver, and right now I really need to get on with this.’ She looked up at him again, saw the harsh anger in his face and hated the contempt she read in his eyes. And though her own anger burned at the injustice of his words, she pushed it aside, adding calmly, ‘And you probably want to check out the theatre, although didn’t Alex say you’d worked with them before?’

For a moment she thought he’d reject the conversational shift, but when he nodded she knew she’d succeeded in tempering the tense emotional atmosphere in the room.

At least for the duration of the operation!

‘I have worked here before.’ Clipped, crisp words, but Clare knew he was turning his focus to work.

‘Do we know yet if we have a patient?’ she asked, pursuing professional conversation, although he was still unsettling her, prowling around the perimeter of the theatre, distracting her with his presence when she didn’t need distraction.

‘Last I heard about the TGA Alex listed yesterday was that he hadn’t arrived,’ he said, and this time his voice sounded more relaxed—his professional self taking over.

‘So we wait,’ Clare responded, determined to match his tone. ‘If Angus is as good at doing a switch of the great arteries as Alex seems to think, it will be exciting to watch him at work. Do you know any more about the patient?’

Oliver shook his head.

‘But you still have more contact with them than I do,’ she added. ‘I usually only get to meet patients when they come into Theatre, although with older children I sometimes do blood collection for autologous blood transfusions should one be necessary. My main contact with newborns is after the op if they go onto ECMO.’

Could she really be having this conversation with Oliver, when the echo of his accusations and the spectre of Emily hung in the room like twin thunder clouds?

‘Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation—of course, you’re in charge of those machines as well.’

‘Terrible necessities,’ Clare said. ‘Some babies need them post-op but they can do so much damage to the organs if we’re not really careful.’

She continued on about the problems the machine could cause, but Oliver had stopped listening to the actual words, hearing instead the confidence and professionalism in her voice, noticing the tension had lessened.

Maybe it had never been there. Maybe he’d imagined it!

Or maybe she was as good as he was at compartmentalising her life. It had taken him a mammoth effort, a few minutes ago, to block out the implications of the age of Clare’s child, but he’d done it, because the baby they were about to treat had to be his sole focus for the next few hours.

His pager buzzed against his belt and he glanced at the message.

‘Looks like it’s all systems go,’ he said, and heard Clare’s pager buzz at the same time.

‘Good luck,’ she said, smiling now, no hiding the excitement in her eyes. She was rising to the challenge that lay ahead, totally professional, the adrenaline rush in her veins lighting her up from within.

So why was he seeing black shadows hovering over her—the shadow of another man, another man’s child? Why was totally inappropriate anger festering inside him?

‘Good luck yourself,’ he said, blotting the dark clouds from his mind, repelling the anger from his body. In eighteen years of professional life he’d never allowed his work self to be distracted by outside issues and he wasn’t about to start now.

And the tension he was feeling at the base of his spine was because he was working with a new team, nothing else.

Other members of the team breezed in, inconsequential chat filling the air as people went about their allotted tasks while the atmosphere in the theatre seemed to tighten in expectation of the operation that lay ahead.

‘You’re opening?’ the circulating nurse asked Oliver.

In work mode now, totally focused, he nodded, then examined the instruments she’d laid out on a trolley. It would be his job to open the tiny chest, cutting through skin and the rib cage, using retractors to hold the ribs open and allow a clear field for operating.

‘Do you need a small suture?’ the nurse asked, and Oliver thought about what lay ahead. As he separated out the pericardium—the fine sheath of protective tissue that surrounded the heart—he would often take a tiny piece of it, and secure it to a spot in the baby’s chest, in case the surgeon needed it later to repair a hole in one of the interior walls of the heart.

The baby!

It seemed impersonal to think of him or her that way, but every one of them was very real to Oliver and every one he was involved in saving was special, even though his contact with them, at this stage, was minimal.

The baby!

His mind wavered for a moment—Clare’s baby, the one he hadn’t wanted, intruding—but only for a millisecond.

‘Leave a suture there—I’ll ask Angus when he comes in. I know from working with Alex that he always likes to have a piece of tissue in reserve.’

The nurse slipped the threaded needle onto the tray, while Oliver checked he had all he needed, shifting a couple of instruments into an order he was used to, in spite of the fact he would rarely pick up an instrument himself.

‘Okay, folks, we have a baby to save.’

Kate Armstrong, the anaesthetist, erupted into the room, nodding and smiling at everyone, then stopping beside Clare to discuss drugs and dosages. Oliver studied the two women—Clare, tall and straight, Kate smaller, but with so much animation in her face she seemed more of a presence. Her vibrant red hair was wrapped in a scarf, but its energy seemed to escape so she had an aura of liveliness about her.

Yet it was Clare who drew his eyes, although he didn’t know this Clare at all.…

He likes her. The thought came to Clare as she watched Oliver looking at Kate, and it niggled in her chest in a way it had no right to niggle, especially after the angry, hateful accusations he’d thrown at her earlier.

No, apart from whatever relationship he developed with Em, Oliver was no longer her concern. He could like whomever he cared to like, though for a moment Clare wished she had the same kind of lively personality Kate had—a personality that attracted men. Instead, she had a face and figure—outward things—that drew their attention.