saw his companion’s lips tighten to a thin line as she described what she saw as Peter Richards’s shortcomings. But she was right, Natalie had been beautiful. So beautiful she’d bewitched him, and he’d pursued her with an ardour and determination he’d never felt before, though beautiful women hadn’t been lacking in his life.
Anger stirred briefly—directed not at Peter Richards for his behaviour, or at Natalie for not loving him, but at himself for his folly in wanting her anyway, then he dismissed it, for the matter at hand was the baby.
A tap on the door, then a nurse popped her head around the jamb.
‘Dr Quintero, I’m about to change the baby and feed her. Would you like to see her? Hold her?’
He could feel Marty’s eyes on him but refused to look her way.
‘Not this time,’ he said, then felt obliged to make an excuse. ‘I have flown halfway around the world through too many time zones and am tired enough to maybe drop her.’
The nurse disappeared and he was unable to avoid turning back to Marty, who watched him, one mobile eyebrow raised in his direction.
‘What can I do with a baby?’ he demanded, so irritated by her attitude he was practically growling.
‘Bring it up?’ she suggested, and now he did growl.
‘You know nothing of my life. You sit there, so prim and righteous, passing judgement on Peter Richards, passing judgement on me. I work in Sudan, among people who lose their babies every day, so wretched is their existence. Children die because I cannot save them, because they have had nothing but stones to eat, and their mothers are so malnourished they cannot feed them. They might walk as long as six days to seek treatment for themselves or their children, then leave our small, makeshift hospital and walk back home again. That is my life!’
Marty was sorry she’d prodded. Like most people, she was overwhelmed with helplessness when she considered the death and destruction in famine- or war-ravaged countries. But that didn’t alter the fact that Emmaline was this man’s child. His responsibility.
‘So this baby doesn’t count?’ she persisted, and he stood up and paced around the room, a tall, angry stranger with a face that might be carved from teak, so strongly were his bones delineated beneath his skin, so remote the expression on those graven features.
‘I will deal with the baby!’ he said, after several minutes of pacing. ‘I come because a message reaches me—my wife is injured, dying perhaps. Do you think she told me she was pregnant before she left me? Do you think I would have let her go, carrying my baby? The baby is news when I reach the hospital. What am I supposed to do—summon up a carer for a baby out of thin air? Make plans for what school she will attend?’
‘I’m sorry!’ This time Marty’s apology was heart-felt. ‘I didn’t realise you hadn’t known. It must have been terrible for you—to arrive and learn you had a child. Most people have nine months to get used to the idea—to make plans. But you don’t have to decide anything immediately. Sophie wants to keep Emmaline in for at least another fortnight. At best, she was a month premature and her birth weight was very low, so she’s vulnerable to all the complications of both premmie and low birth weight infants.’
‘But so far, has had none of them?’
‘She was jaundiced after two days but that’s common enough and phototherapy cleared it up. Gib told you she’s five days old?’
Carlos nodded.
‘I assume Natalie’s deteriorating condition made a Caesar necessary earlier, possibly, than you would have liked?’
‘Her organs were shutting down,’ Marty agreed. ‘Life-support machines can only do so much. For Emmaline’s sake, it was advisable to operate.’
‘So now we have a baby.’
Marty would have liked to correct him—to say he had a baby—but he’d spoken quietly, as if moving towards acceptance, and she didn’t want to antagonise him again. In the meantime, she was missing Emmaline’s feeding time and a subtle ache in her arms reminded her of how much she’d been enjoying her contact with the little girl—and how unprofessional her behaviour was to have allowed herself to grow so attached.
She’d chosen to specialise in O and G rather than paediatrics so this didn’t happen—so she wouldn’t be forever getting clucky over other people’s children. In O and G you took care of the woman, delivered the baby, and after one postnatal check the family was gone from your life, or at least until the next pregnancy.
But with Emmaline it hadn’t worked that way, and all the up-till-then successfully repressed maternal urges had come bursting forth and Marty, doomed to childlessness, had fallen in love with a tiny scrap of humanity with a scrunched-up face, a putty nose, let-me-at-them fists and jet-black hair.
Misery swamped her, providing a partial antidote to the flutters she still felt when she looked at Emmaline’s father.
Get with it, woman, the inner voice ordered, and Marty tried.
‘I should be going,’ she said, standing up, acting positive and in control, but still waiting until his pacing took him away from the door before heading in that direction herself.
Just in case the antidote wasn’t working…
He moved a different way, blocking her path.
‘I’ve kept you from your dinner. Do you have far to go to your home?’
Politeness?
Or did he want more from her?
Positive! In control!
‘Dinner can wait,’ she said lightly, waving her hand in the air in case he hadn’t picked up the nonchalance in her voice. ‘And, no, my home’s not far. Walking distance actually. I live in an apartment by the river in a parkland area called South Bank.’
Explaining too much again, but the antidote wasn’t working—not at all—and the man’s proximity—his body standing so close to hers—was affecting her again, making her feel shaky and uncertain and a lot of other things she hadn’t felt for so long it was hard to believe she was feeling them now.
‘South Bank? The hospital administrator to whom I spoke earlier was kind enough to book me into a hotel at South Bank. You know of this hotel?’
Only because it’s across the road from my apartment building! How’s that for fickle fate?
‘I know it,’ she said cautiously.
‘Then, perhaps you will be so kind as to wait while I collect my backpack then guide me on my way.’
He was a visitor to her country so she could hardly refuse, and to flee in desperate disorder down the corridor might look a tad strange.
‘Where’s your backpack?’
‘It is in the office on the ground floor, behind the desk where people enquire about patients or ask for directions. A kind woman on the desk offered to look after it for me.’
‘Of course she would,’ Marty muttered, then she remembered this man had super-sensitive
