… anything. I’m so sorry. Can you wipe it? I know you love Gretta …’
‘Are you talking about Emily’s little girl?’
They both turned to face the newcomer, and it was a relief to turn away from each other. The tension between them was so tight it was threatening to break, to fly back and hit both of them.
Oliver recognised the young man heading towards them. Oliver had been introduced to Noah Jackson earlier in the week. He was a surgical registrar, almost at the end of his training. ‘Technically brilliant,’ Tristan, the paediatric cardiologist, had told him. ‘But his people skills leave a whole lot to be desired.’
And now he proceeded to display just that.
‘Hi, Em,’ he called, walking up to them with breezy insouciance. ‘Are you discussing Gretta’s progress? How’s she going?’
‘She’s … okay,’ Em said, and by the way she said it Oliver knew there was baggage behind the question.
‘You ought to meet Gretta,’ Noah told Oliver, seemingly oblivious to the way Em’s face had shuttered. ‘She’s worth a look. She has Down’s, with atrioventricular septal defects, massive heart problems, so much deformity that even Tristan felt he couldn’t treat her. Yet she’s survived. I’ve collated her case notes from birth as part of my final-year research work. I’d love to write her up for the med journals. It’d give me a great publication. Em’s care has been nothing short of heroic.’
‘I’ve met her,’ Oliver said shortly, glancing again at Em. Gretta—a research project? He could see Em’s distress. ‘Now’s not …’ he started.
But the young almost-surgeon wouldn’t be stopped. ‘Gretta wasn’t expected to live for more than a year,’ he said, with enthusiasm that wouldn’t be interrupted. ‘It’ll make a brilliant article—the extent of the damage, the moral dilemma facing her birth mother, her decision to walk away—Em’s decision to intervene and now the medical resources and the effort to keep her alive this far. Em, please agree to publication. You still haven’t signed. But Tristan says she’s pretty close to the end. If I could examine her one last time …’
And Oliver saw the wash of anger and revulsion on Em’s face—and finally he moved.
He put his body between the registrar and Em. Noah was tall but right now Oliver felt a good foot taller. Anger did that. Of all the insensitive …
‘You come near Em again with your requests for information about her daughter—her daughter, Noah, not her patient—and I’ll ram every page of your case notes down your throat. Don’t you realise that Em loves Gretta? Don’t you realize she’s breaking in two, and you’re treating her daughter like a bug under a microscope?’
‘Hey, Em’s a medical colleague,’ Noah said, still not getting it. ‘She knows the score—she knew it when she took Gretta home. She can be professional.’
‘Is that what you’re being—professional?’
‘If we can learn anything from this, then, yes …’
Enough. Em looked close to fainting.
The lift was open behind them. Oliver grabbed Noah by the collar of his white jacket, twisted him round and practically kicked him into the lift.
‘What …?’ Noah seemed speechless. ‘What did I say?’
‘You might be nearing the end of your surgical training,’ Oliver snapped. ‘But you sure aren’t at the end of your training to be a decent doctor. You need to learn some people skills, fast. I assume you did a term in family medicine during your general training, but whether you did or not, you’re about to do another. And another after that if you still don’t get it. I want you hands-on, treating people at the coal face, before you’re ever in charge of patients in a surgical setting.’
‘You don’t have that authority.’ The young doctor even had the temerity to sound smug.
‘You can believe that,’ Oliver growled. ‘You’re welcome—for all the good it’ll do you. Now get out of here while I see if I can fix the mess you’ve made.’
‘I haven’t made a mess.’
‘Oh, yes, you have,’ Oliver snapped, hitting the ‘Close’ button on the lift with as much force as he’d like to use on Noah. ‘And you’ve messed with someone who spends her life trying to fix messes. Get out of my sight.’
The lift closed. Oliver turned back to Em. She hadn’t moved. She was still slumped on the wall, her face devoid of colour. A couple of tears were tracking down her face.
‘It’s okay,’ she managed. ‘Oliver, it’s okay. He’s just saying it like it is.’
‘He has no right to say anything at all,’ Oliver snapped, and he couldn’t help himself. She was so bereft. She was so gutted.
She was … his wife?
She wasn’t. Their long separation to all intents and purposes constituted a divorce, but right now that was irrelevant.
His Em was in trouble. His Em.
He walked forward and took her into his arms.
She shouldn’t let him hold her. She had no right to be in his arms.
She had no right to want to be in his arms.
Besides, his words had upset her as much as Noah’s had. His implication that she could replace Gretta …
But she knew this man. She’d figured it out—the hurt he’d gone through as a kid, the rejection, the knowledge that he’d been replaced by his adoptive parents’ ‘real’ son.
Noah was just plain insensitive. He was arrogant and intelligent but he was lacking emotional depth. Oliver’s comments came from a deep, long-ago hurt that had never been resolved.
And even if it hadn’t, she thought helplessly, even if he was as insensitive as Noah, even if she shouldn’t have anything to do with him, for now she wanted to be here.
To be held. By her husband.
For he still felt like her husband. They’d been married for five years. They’d lain in each other’s arms for five years.
For five years she’d thought she had the perfect marriage.
But she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. There had been ghosts she’d been unable to expunge, and those ghosts were with him still. He couldn’t see …
Stop thinking, she told herself fiercely, almost desperately. Stop thinking and just be. Just let his arms hold me. Just feel his heart beat against mine. Just pretend …
‘Em, I’m sorry,’ he whispered into her hair.
‘For?’
‘For what I said. Even before Noah, you were hurt. I can’t begin to think how I could have said such a thing.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ But it did. It was
