style="font-size:15px;"> Max tried to shut down the mental picture of Ellie sitting on the bed that day, naked to the waist. He’d known the gut feeling he’d experienced then had been highly inappropriate. It was worse now. For God’s sake, Ellie had just had a baby. Maybe the last time she’d been with a man had been when she’d been raped. This was sick.
And yet it hit him with all the force of a kick from a small mule. Suddenly Max was angry. With himself. With the situation he found himself in. Most of all, with the bastard who’d done this to someone like Ellie in the first place.
‘Of course I can,’ he hissed at Rick. Couldn’t his friend see how far he was going in order to protect her? Suggesting he might try something that had the potential to hurt her was an insult.
‘Hmm.’ Rick was staring at the screens again. ‘Good luck with that, mate.’ His tone was distracted and Max focused on what his colleague was seeing. He knew the significance even before another one of Rick’s silent whistles. ‘Look at that. Your gut’s on the money again. Subdural bleed…right there, see?’
Max could indeed. ‘And another one there. Look. It’s a coup-contrecoup injury.’ The brain had bounced in the skull on impact and created an area of damage at both the front and back. ‘Guess I’ll be handing him over to your team, then.’
Rick nodded, still studying the images, any personal exchanges forgotten. ‘Could well be heading for surgery. Good call, Max.’
Yes. Sometimes listening to that gut instinct could save lives.
What was Ellie’s instinct telling her in regard to whether or not to take up his offer?
Would she say yes?
As crazy as it was, Max hoped she would. He just knew—for the same kind of inexplicable reasons that had made him insist on further investigations for his patient—that it was the right thing to do.
For everybody.
Had he been serious?
Marriage?
Ellie had no reason to think Max hadn’t been serious given that he’d already claimed paternity of her daughter and given her the pretence of being his wife for the last week.
But this was huge. This would mean going through at least some form of a wedding ceremony with him to make it legal.
And that was wrong. Just so wrong.
She would say no, of course. He might be hugely relieved but he might ask her why not and what could she say to that?
That the offer was too over the top? Amazing?
Perfect?
Except it wasn’t and that was the problem. He wasn’t talking about anything like a real marriage here. He was offering her the gift of his name so that she would be legally entitled to use it. It was an abuse of what marriage was and that cut too deeply to be acceptable to Ellie.
She’d grown up with a single mother and had dreamed of being part of a ‘real’ family for her entire life. It wasn’t that she’d had an unhappy childhood, it was just that she had seen what others had had and had known there was something missing. And then she’d been given a stepfather when she’d been ten years old. He’d been willing enough to take on someone else’s child but the truth that there was never any real connection there had become blindingly obvious when they’d had their own child a couple of years later. Despite her mother doing her best to ensure she was an integral part of the household, Ellie had always felt she was on the outside, looking in on a real family.
At some point in her teenage years, childish fantasies of her real father turning up in her life had been abandoned in favour of her making her own family one day. Finding a man she could love with all her heart who loved her just as much. Having their own children. A home that was a family home. Full of laughter and love and the occasional smell of baking. A dog and maybe some hens out the back so she could collect her own eggs for that baking.
OK, so she’d messed up on part of it and the man who was the father of her baby was totally wrong but that didn’t mean it had to be completely over, did it? She could make a home for her child. She could have the dog and even the hens, dammit. And one day she might find a man who would love her and her child. He would offer marriage and become a part of her family. Having to explain that she’d become pregnant by a man she didn’t love would be bad enough. Telling him that she’d married the first time in name only would be even more shameful.
It would belittle something that meant the world to Ellie. Make a mockery of her accepting a proposal and saying vows that included ‘till death us do part’. She couldn’t…wouldn’t do it.
Was it fate that made Max appear at the very instant she knew why she couldn’t possibly accept his offer?
‘Hey…how’s it going?’
Ellie smiled. ‘All good. Very quiet. Mouse has been asleep for hours and I’ve been enjoying the view. I love how hilly Dunedin is.’
‘It’s a nice little town. I haven’t been here that long myself but I’m getting to know it. It’s a good place to live.’
‘Mmm.’ Ellie was trying to find the right way to tell him that she wasn’t going to be living here.
‘I went past the office and had a chat to your nurse. Looks like you’ll get the all-clear for discharge after rounds tomorrow morning. You can get out of here and go home.’
Ellie stared at Max.
Go home?
Where was that, exactly?
Most of her belongings were in storage in Wellington and all she’d come here with had been an overnight bag and her passport. If that became known it would ring alarm bells for the medical staff for sure. The kind of alarms that would set wheels in motion. Social service type wheels because they couldn’t let a mother who was only just on her feet after a life-threatening event go off and provide sole care for a newborn baby.
And if she got sucked into that system there would be no hiding her real identity. Marcus would be able to trace her in a flash. He would turn up and she would be weak and vulnerable and wouldn’t have Max or his friends to stand up for her. She could go further north to the town where her mother and stepfather were but they had a small house, two teenage boys and their own worries. Ellie hadn’t even told them she was pregnant. Turning up on their doorstep with a baby was an option that was definitely a very last resort.
Max was watching her. ‘You’re going to need help for a while yet, Ellie. You know that, don’t you?’
Ellie nodded. ‘I don’t expect you to provide it, Max. I’ve got to start standing on my own two feet. This is my fault, because I didn’t plan ahead. I was so busy taking it all one day at a time and relying on some airy-fairy plan that I would go and start a new life in a new place.’
‘You can still do that. Just not tomorrow.’
The small squeak from the crib was a welcome distraction from having to face a reality that had very scary blank patches. Ellie reached into the crib and gathered her daughter into her arms, holding her close enough to bury her face against her body for a moment.
