ago.’
‘I thought shift changes were at eight.’ Her fingers went to her belt, quickly undoing the knot.
He nodded. ‘They are. I had an emergency to see to, so I came in early.’
Her breath caught with an audible sound, her hands stopping all movement. ‘Hope?’
‘No, another surgery. It was urgent, but it came out fine.’
‘I’m so glad.’ She finished shifting out of her jacket and stepped into her office, where she hung the garment on the back of the door. Her lanyard was already hanging on a cord around her neck. ‘Have you been to see Hope yet?’
‘Once. She’s still stable. I was just getting ready to check on her again. Care to join me?’
‘Yes. I was halfway afraid something would go terribly wrong during the night.’
A cold hand gripped his heart. It had indeed. He shook off the thought.
‘I would have called you, if something involving Hope had come up.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘So your day has already been tough?’
‘Kind of. I’ve been on the second floor.’
‘Oncology?’ Some kind of eerie premonition whispered through his veins.
‘Yes.’ Her voice quavered slightly. ‘We found out this morning that one of my nephews has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I went to ask Dr Terrill a few questions about the type and prognosis. Just so I could hear first-hand what he might be facing.’
He hadn’t yet met any of the doctors or nurses on the second floor, as each area was kind of insulated from each other. ‘I’m sorry, Anna. Who is it?’
‘It’s Nate. Jessica’s son...the one I mentioned.’
A band tightened around his chest. ‘How old is he?’
‘Just two.’
Jessica, the youngest of Annabelle’s sisters, had already had a couple of children by the time he’d left. In fact, the huge size of Anna’s family was one of the things that had created such pressure on her to have children of her own. She would never admit it, but with each new niece or nephew the shadows in his wife’s eyes had grown. She’d wanted so desperately what her sisters had...what her parents had had. If the family hadn’t been so close, it might not have mattered quite so much. But they were—and it did.
He wanted to ask what Dr Terrill had said, but, at two years of age, the tumour had to be something that didn’t take years to emerge.
‘Jessica noticed he wasn’t keeping up with his peers on the growth charts like he should. And recently he’d been complaining that his head hurt. So they ran a series of tests.’
Headaches could be benign or they could signal something deadly. ‘Do they have the results?’
Annabelle could say it was none of his business. And it wasn’t. Not any more. He’d lost the right to know anything about her family when he’d walked out of their home and flown to Africa.
‘A craniopharyngioma tumour. They’re in discussing treatment options with their doctor today.’
He went through the catalogue in his head, searching for the name.
Found it.
Craniopharyngiomas were normally benign. But even though they didn’t typically spread outside the original area, they could still be difficult to reach and treat.
‘Why don’t you get someone to cover you for a few hours, so you can be on hand if they need you? Or maybe you should go to London early.’
That might solve his dilemma about the Christmas party.
‘I need to work. And Mum and Dad are there with Jessica and her husband. At this point there are too many people. Too many opinions.’
Kind of like with Annabelle’s in-vitro procedures. There had always been someone in her family stepping up with an opinion on this or that. It hadn’t bothered him at first, but as things had continued to go downhill Max had come to wish they would just mind their own business. A ridiculous mind-set, considering Max himself had hoped to have a family as large and connected as Annabelle’s had been—and evidently still was.
‘If you’d rather not go to the party—’
‘I want to go. It’ll give me a chance to run by and check in on Nate while I’m in London.’
‘Of course.’
Well, if fate didn’t want to help him, he was stuck. Besides, he didn’t blame her for wanting to go, if it meant making a side trip to see them. It was doubtful her family would want him there, though. Not with everything that had happened. But he could think about that later.
He decided to change the subject. ‘Are you ready to go see Hope?’
‘Yes, just let me check in and make sure there are no other urgent cases I need to attend to.’
Five minutes later, they were in Hope’s room, gowned and gloved to minimise exposure to pathogens that could put the tiny girl in danger. She was still sedated, still intubated. But her colour was good, no more cyanosis. Something inside Max relaxed. Her atrial fibrillation hadn’t returned after the scare yesterday, and her new heart was beating with gusto.
The empty chair next to the baby’s incubator made a few muscles tense all over again. This child would never have a concerned loved one sitting beside her to give her extra love and care. At least not her mum.
As if Annabelle knew what he was thinking, she lowered herself into that seat, her gaze on the baby inside. She murmured something that he couldn’t hear and then slid her hand through one of the openings of the special care cot. She stroked the baby’s hair, cooing to her in a quiet voice. More muscles went on high alert.
Had she done this for each of her nieces and nephews? The fact that she would never hold a child she’d given birth to made him sad. And angry. Sometimes the world was just cruel, when you thought about it. Here was a woman who could give unlimited amounts of love to a child, and she couldn’t have one.
But life wasn’t fair. There were wars and starving children and terrible destructive forces of nature that laid waste to whole communities.
Annabelle glanced up at him. ‘The difference between how she looked thirty-six hours ago and right now are like day and night.’
He remembered. He also remembered how they’d almost lost her an hour after her surgery.
But this tiny tyke was a fighter, just as Anna had said she was. She wanted to live. Her body had fought hard, almost as if she’d known that if she held on long enough, relief would come.
And it had.
Maybe life was sometimes fair after all.
He laid a hand on top of the incubator.
