‘Ditto.’ Her brows went up. ‘I think.’
His hand came up, the backs of his knuckles trailing down the side of her face, leaving fire in their wake. ‘We did good in that surgical suite. We gave her a chance that she wouldn’t have otherwise had.’
‘You did good. You made this happen.’
‘Sienna could have done just as well.’
Annabelle was sure the other surgeon could have. But there had been something about the way Max had looked at that baby that had turned her inside out. Something more than simply a surgeon treating a patient. Hope had touched him as much as she’d touched Annabelle.
A wrench of pain went through her. Max would have made such a great father.
She’d wanted to do that for him more than anything. To give him what he hadn’t been given by his own parents: the chance to watch a normal, happy childhood unfold. To love. And be loved. Only it hadn’t worked out that way.
‘Sienna didn’t do it, though. You did.’
The fingers that had been slowly caressing her face curved around to the back of her neck.
Oh, Lord. He was going to kiss her. Right here in the hospital corridor. Was that the act of a man who was about to finalise a divorce?
Maybe. Weren’t there exes who had sex as they travelled down the path to divorce?
Not her.
And yet, every nerve ending was quivering with awareness. With acceptance. Her lips parted.
‘Sorry. Is your last name Ainsley?’
‘Yes.’ Their necks cranked around at the same time, foreheads colliding as they did so. Ouch. Damn it!
Only then did she remember that she didn’t go by Ainsley any more.
She slid away from Max as a male nurse came towards them, horrified that she’d been caught red-handed flirting with her ex-husband.
He’s not your ex. Not yet. And she wasn’t flirting. She’d been... Oh, hell, she had no idea what either of them had been doing.
The nurse’s eyes went from one of them to the other. Of course. He wasn’t sure exactly who he was looking for. ‘Max Ainsley?’
‘That would be you,’ Annabelle said, glancing sideways at Max.
The nurse frowned. ‘There’s been a complication with the transplant patient.’
‘Oh, God.’ Annabelle’s stomach clenched. She should have been in that room monitoring Baby Hope, not hanging around in the corridor mooning after her ex.
She hadn’t been mooning. And she’d been heading for the recovery area when Max had stopped her to talk. Had asked her to go with him to some gala. Neither of them had expected the moment to morph into something more.
Didn’t it always, though, where Max was concerned?
They hurried down the hallway following the retreating nurse. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘I have no idea.’ He took his smartphone out of his pocket. ‘No one tried to page me that I see.’
They arrived in Recovery, and Max slid through the door with Annabelle close behind. ‘What’s the problem?’
Two nurses were at the baby’s head watching the heart monitor on the side. Annabelle saw it at once.
‘A-fib.’
Her eyes swung to Max, waiting for his assessment. And the concern on his normally passive face sent a wave of panic through her.
* * *
Damn it!
Max went into immediate action. While post-operative atrial fibrillation was a fairly common complication of cardiac surgeries, POAF wasn’t the norm for heart transplants, and, when it did show up, it typically showed up a couple of days down the line. That made it a very big deal. Especially in an infant that had already been in crisis in recent days.
The possibilities skated through his head and were legion. Problem with the pulmonary vein? Probably not. The isolation of that vessel usually helped prevent POAF. Acute rejection? Not likely this soon after transplantation. Pericardial inflammation or effusion? Yes. It could be that. Fluid could be building around the heart—the body’s reaction to inflammation. And it could cause a-fib, especially if it came on this quickly.
‘Let’s see if she’s got some effusion going on and work from there.’
The baby, awash in tubes and bandages, looked tiny as she lay in the special care incubator, a tuft of soft blonde hair turning her from a patient into a person. He glanced to the side to see that Annabelle’s face was taut with fear, her hands clenched in front of her body.
Was she worried about losing this one, the way she’d lost baby after baby due to miscarriage?
He’d been helpless to prevent those, but he damned well wasn’t right now. He could do something to turn this around. And if he had anything to do with it, this baby was going to live.
He belted out orders and over the next three hours they ran several tests, which confirmed his diagnosis. They pumped in anti-inflammatories, and he and Annabelle settled in to wait for a reaction. Four hours after the initial alarm was raised, Baby Hope’s heart had resumed a normal sinus rhythm.
Annabelle sank into a rocking chair, her elbows propped on her knees, her back curving as she sat there with her eyes closed. ‘Thank God.’
Unable to resist, Max went over and used his palm to move in slow circles between her shoulder blades. ‘We’ll keep a close eye on her over the next twenty-four hours, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got this licked. As long as the fluid doesn’t start building again, the rhythm should hold.’
‘And if it starts building?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Anna.’
The other nurses had moved on to other patients, now that the crisis was over, leaving Max and Annabelle alone with the baby.
Annabelle reached into the incubator and smoothed down that tuft of hair he’d noticed earlier. The gesture caught him right in the gut, making it tighten until it was hard to breathe. ‘I think you’re too close to this case. Maybe you need to take a step back.’
‘Social services handed me her care.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Please don’t make me stay away.’
He could do just that. Let someone know that her emotions were getting in the way of her objectivity. And he probably should. But Max couldn’t bring himself to even mention that possibility. He hadn’t been able to comfort her during those awful times in their marriage, but he could give her this. As long as it didn’t take too big a toll on her.
She was a grown woman. She could make her own decisions. Unless it adversely affected their patient.
‘I
