me anything you like as long as it’s beneficial to Lucy,’ he told her, and sent up a prayer of thankfulness that this woman had known what she was doing.
‘I’m living in hospital accommodation at the moment in a flat at the other side of the grounds,’ she was explaining. ‘I’m going there to get some sleep once I’ve made sure that your daughter is all right. If you need me for anything, don’t hesitate to ring me. I’ve already told Sister to call me the moment she wakes up, but it could be some time before Lucy surfaces from the trauma of the operation and the effects of the anaesthetic. When she does, that will be crunch time.’
Aaron nodded.
‘I realise that, and if you need sleep by all means go and get it. A tired doctor is not a good one. It would seem that you came to us at a bad time, with two of our paediatric surgeons not available.’
Her smile was wry.
‘Yes...and you weren’t around either.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ he agreed sombrely. ‘I wish I had been.’
‘But Lucy’s grandma was there.’
‘Yes,’ he said levelly. ‘My mother is always there when we need her. Our three generations jog along together very well.’
* * *
As Annabel Swain threw herself down on top of sheets that hadn’t been slept between for two days she was thinking about the man she’d just met. Since becoming involved with Lucy she had discovered that the absent head of Paediatrics at Barnaby’s Children’s Hospital was someone of note.
He was referred to with respect and deference and she’d wondered why. Now that she’d met him she understood in part. He had a commanding presence...and a very attractive one, too. She might be disenchanted with the opposite sex but a man like him was so easy on the eye she wasn’t going to overlook that.
She’d sensed back there in the ward that he’d had his doubts about her, would have preferred his daughter to be operated on by one of the regular surgeons, but if that was the case it was too bad. Yet she couldn’t blame him. It was clear to see that he was a loving father and it must have been horrendous to come home to find his daughter had been given emergency surgery in his absence by a stranger instead of a close colleague.
There didn’t appear to be any mother in the family set-up, so he must be either divorced or a widower. Neither situation very unusual. Both the kind of set-up where a loving grandmother would be welcome.
His mother had arrived at the ward just as Annabel was leaving and the two women had spoken briefly.
‘How is Lucy now?’ Mary Lewis had asked anxiously when they’d come face to face, and Annabel had thought how lovely it would be to have a mother like this kindly, chubby woman.
She’d managed a tired smile. ‘Progressing satisfactorily,’ she’d told her. ‘Pulse and temperature normal. No post-operative complications at the moment. But as her father is only too aware, there is still a possibility of brain damage.’
The colour had drained from the older woman’s face.
‘Oh, no!’
‘I’ve told your son that there were no signs of damage to the brain or the meninges, but one can’t be sure until the patient is fully awake and over the effects of the operation,’ Annabel had told her. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going off duty for a while to get some sleep.’
The anxious grandmother had flashed her a sympathetic smile.
‘Yes, of course, my dear. You must be exhausted. Thank you for taking such good care of our little one.’
‘It’s my job,’ Annabel had told her, and as she’d walked through the hospital grounds to the utilitarian flat she was renting because she couldn’t be bothered to start house-hunting, she’d thought that there hadn’t been any thanks coming from Aaron Lewis. But she could forgive him for that. He would be on a knife edge until Lucy opened her eyes. Praying that he would see lucid normality there.
She’d been looking forward to being a parent herself not so long ago. But a fall on a wet tiled floor in a hospital corridor while moving at speed had sent her crashing down and had brought an end to all her hopes and dreams.
If it had been in the first weeks after she’d found out she was to have a child, Annabel might have felt she’d had a lucky escape after her affair with an American doctor had dwindled and died when she’d discovered he had a wife and family back in the States. But at four months into the pregnancy Annabel had settled into the role of prospective single parent and had been eagerly looking forward to the birth of her child. Now, bereft and lonely after her shamefaced lover had returned to his homeland, she was doing the job she’d always done, using her skills to try to save or improve the lives of other people’s children, and all the time she was mourning the loss of her own baby.
As she lay looking up at the drab ceiling the memory of her affair with Randolph Graham was preventing sleep. They’d worked together in Paediatrics in a big Middlesex hospital where he’d come to do a twelve-month exchange and Annabel, in her thirties, having spent all her working life caring for the children of others, had been happy to discover her pregnancy with the amiable American as her partner.
But when he heard that the two of them had made a child, everything had changed. He’d confessed that he was married and that had been the end of the affair. After the first shock of his deceit and the realisation that she was faced with the prospect of becoming a single mother, Annabel had rallied and had been looking forward to having a child of her own. Since she’d lost it the days were empty and her heart like a stone.
It was the reason why she’d moved north to get away from painful memories of betrayal and loss. But agonising parents such as Aaron Lewis need have no fear. Her dedication to the job was as strong as ever. No one would be able to say that she put her own heartache before that of others, and as an autumn sun poked its head through the curtains she rolled over and slept.
* * *
Lucy was awake and crying.
‘My head hurts, Daddy,’ she whimpered.
‘Yes, I know,’ Aaron said gently. ‘We’ll give you something to make it feel better in a moment, Lucy, but first tell me, can you see me all right?’
She blinked weakly.
‘Yes. You’ve got your blue shirt on.’
‘Can you see Grandma?’
Without moving her head, Lucy looked sideways to where Mary was sitting.
‘Yes. Why is she crying?’
‘Because you’re awake...and getting better.’
‘What happened to me?’
Aaron took a deep breath.
‘Let’s see if you can remember.’
Her bruised little face was crumpled with the effort of thinking back but she didn’t disappoint him.
‘I fell off the climbing frame and there was something there.
