done.’ Out at the sinks the mood was one of quiet but deep satisfaction. There’d be no high fives, not yet—everyone knew the next few days would be critical—but the procedure had gone so smoothly surely they’d avoided embryo shock.
Tristan hitched himself up on the sinks and regarded his friend with satisfaction. He and Oliver had done their general surgical training together. They’d split as Oliver had headed into specialist surgical obstetrics and Tristan into paediatric cardiology, but their friendship was deep and longstanding.
Tristan alone knew the association between Em and Oliver. They’d had one heated discussion about it already …
‘The hospital grapevine will find out. Why keep it secret?’
‘It’s not a secret. It’s just a long time ago. Moving on …’
But now …
‘Are you telling me you and Em have really moved on?’ Tristan demanded as he watched his friend ditch his theatre garb. ‘Because, sure, Em’s your patient’s midwife and she was in Theatre as an observer in that capacity, but the contact you and she had … You might not have been aware how often you flicked her a glance but every time you were about to start something risky, it was like you were looking to her for strength.’
‘What the …?’ Where had this come from? As if he needed Em for strength? He’d been operating without Em for years.
He’d never depended on her.
‘You might say it’s in the past,’ Tristan went on, inexorably. ‘But she’s still using your name, and as of today, as an onlooker, it seems to me that the marriage isn’t completely over.’
‘Will you keep your voice down?’ There were nurses and orderlies everywhere.
‘You think you can keep this to yourself?’
‘It’s not obvious.’
‘It’s obvious,’ Tristan said, grinning. ‘Midwife Evans and Surgeon Evans. Sparks. The grapevine will go nuts.’
‘You’re not helping.’
‘I’m just observing.’ Tristan pushed down from the bench. He and Oliver both had patients waiting. Always there were patients waiting.
‘All I’m saying is that I’m interested,’ Tristan said, heading for the door. ‘Me and the rest of staff of the Victoria. And some of us are even more interested than others.’
Trained theatre staff were rostered to watch over patients in Recovery, but Isla had cleared the way for Em to stay with Ruby. With no family support, the need to keep Ruby calm was paramount. So Em sat by her bedside and watched. Ruby was drifting lightly towards consciousness, seeming to ease from sedation to natural sleep.
Which might have something to do with the way Em was holding her hand and talking to her.
‘It’s great, Ruby. You were awesome. Your baby was awesome. It’s done, all fixed. Your baby will have the best of chances because of your decision.’
She doubted Ruby could hear her but she said it anyway, over and over, until she was interrupted.
‘Hey.’ She looked up and Sophia was watching her. Sophia was a partnering midwife, a friend, a woman who had the same fertility issues she did. If there was anyone in this huge staff she was close to, it was Sophia. ‘Isla sent me down to see how the op went,’ she said, pulling up a chair to sit beside Em. ‘All’s quiet on the Western Front. We had three nice, normal babies in quick succession this morning and not a sniff of a contraction this arvo. Isla says you can stay here as needed; take as long as you want.’
‘We’re happy, aren’t we, Ruby?’ Em said gently, squeezing Ruby’s hand, but there was no response. Ruby’s natural sleep had grown deeper. ‘The operation went brilliantly.’ And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added a rider. ‘Oliver was brilliant.’
‘Yeah, I’d like to talk to you about that,’ Sophia said, diffidently now, assessing Ruby as she spoke and realising, as Em had, that there was little chance of Ruby taking in anything she said. ‘Rumours are flying. Someone heard Tristan and Oliver talking at the sinks. Evans and Evans. No one’s put them together until now. It’s a common name. But … Evans isn’t your maiden name, is it? Evans is your married name. And according to the rumours, that marriage would be between you and Oliver.’
Whoa. Em flinched. But then … it had to come out sooner or later, she thought. She might as well grit her teeth and confess.
‘It was a long time ago,’ she murmured. ‘We split five years ago but changing my name didn’t seem worth the complications. I was Emily Green before. I kind of like Emily Evans better.’ She didn’t want to say that going to a lawyer, asking for a divorce, had seemed … impossibly final.
‘As you kind of like Oliver Evans?’ Sophia wiggled down further in her chair, her eyes alight with interest. ‘The theatre staff say there were all sorts of sparks between you during the op.’
‘Ruby’s in my care. Oliver was … keeping me reassured.’ But she’d said it too fast, too defensively, and Sophia’s eyebrows were hiking.
Drat hospitals and their grapevines, she thought. Actually, they were more than grapevines—they were like Jack’s beanstalk. Let one tiny bean out of the can and it exploded to the heavens.
What had Oliver and Tristan been talking about to start this?
And … how was she to stop Sophia’s eyebrows hitting the roof?
‘You going to tell Aunty Sophia?’ she demanded, settling down further in a manner that suggested she was going nowhere until Em did.
‘You knew I was married.’
‘Yeah, but not to Oliver. Oliver! Em, he’s a hunk. And he’s already getting a reputation for being one of those rarest of species—a surgeon who can talk to his patients. Honest, Em, he smiled at one of my mums on the ward this morning and my heart flipped. Why on earth …?’
‘A smile doesn’t make a marriage.’ But it did, Em thought miserably. She’d loved that smile. What they’d had …
‘So will you tell Aunty Sophia why you split?’
‘Kids,’ she said brusquely. She’d told Sophia she was infertile but only when Sophia had told her of her own problems. She hadn’t elaborated.
‘He left you because you couldn’t have babies?’
‘We … well, I already told you we went through IVF. Cycle upon cycle. What I didn’t tell you was that finally I got pregnant. Josh was delivered stillborn at twenty-eight weeks.’
‘Oh, Em …’ Sophia stared at her in horror. ‘You’ve kept that to yourself, all this time?’
‘I don’t … talk about it. It hurts.’
‘Yeah, well, I can see that,’ Sophia said, hopping up to give her friend a resounding hug. ‘They say IVF can destroy a marriage—it’s so hard. It split you up?’
‘The
