‘Just being with these children brings me indescribable joy,’ Lauren had once said, talking of the children in the orphanage, and in his head he had often echoed those words, thinking her long gone yet finding comfort and confirmation in them.
Except she wasn’t long gone—wasn’t dead at all.
He strode out along the footpath, aware his steps must have slowed as he thought about Lauren, so he was trailing behind Grace who moved with athletic ease.
‘Did you leave a beautiful woman behind in France? Is that why you’re dreaming your way up the road?’ Grace asked, stopping at the lights to wait for him to catch up.
‘No beautiful woman left behind,’ he told her. ‘No non-beautiful woman either, except, of course, my mother and my grandmother, a brace of aunts and a horde of female cousins.’
Grace studied him.
‘You’re far too good-looking not to have women falling over themselves to be with you, so what’s the story?’
He had to smile. His new colleague didn’t know the meaning of subtle—all her questions and observations were equally blunt and often intrusive.
‘Maybe I’m not interested in women,’ he said, hoping to stop her probing, but she greeted this remark with a laugh, then took his arm to cross the road, the lights now showing green and a crowd hustling all around them.
‘The consulting rooms and team-meeting rooms are above the theatre and PICU,’ Grace reminded him as they went into the big building.
‘I remember, but I’ll stop on the floor below and check the babies before I go up,’ he said. ‘I’ve plenty of time.’
Grace seemed surprised, but checking the babies in his care was always the first thing he did when he entered a hospital. It was more than a habit, because even when he didn’t need to see them to boost his spirits, he felt it centred him—concentrated his mind on his work, and most of all reminded him why he did what he did. So the tiny scraps of humanity on whom they operated would have a chance to live normal, useful, happy lives.
‘You do your thing with the babies and I’ll go on ahead,’ Grace told him, her tone of voice and the look she gave him suggesting she was humouring him in some way.
Well, Grace could think what she liked. He was going to visit the babies!
Jean-Luc found his way into the PICU, where he spoke to the sister watching the monitor and learned that all the babies in the unit were stable, some doing better than others, but all progressing. He visited each one of them, learning names—Mollie, Jake, Tom—finding himself translating them into the French equivalents because that made them more personal to him. He talked to parents sitting by the cribs, introducing himself to those he hadn’t met before, assuring and reassuring them.
But always the focus of his attention was the infants, most of whom slept peacefully or watched him pass with wide-open eyes.
He was leaving one of the single rooms after a quiet chat with the parents of a three-year-old recovering from a septal defect repair when a voice, so familiar he shivered at hearing it, penetrated his consciousness.
Movement on the far side of the bigger room attracted his attention and he watched as a tall woman in the smock and headscarf of a nurse led a distressed couple out of a door.
They disappeared from view but now they were outside the room he could hear their voices more clearly.
‘But he’s so tiny, how can he survive?’ a woman wailed.
‘Because he’s had the best team in Australia operating on him,’ came the confident answer. ‘Yes, it was a traumatic operation for such a tiny baby but, believe me, the men and women in that theatre know their jobs. If anyone can sort out the problems your Jake had with his heart, that lot could. Now all we have to do is get him better.’
Impossible! Coincidence couldn’t stretch that far. Although his mother always said things happened in threes and here was Lauren alive, number one, then living all but next door, number two, now working in the same unit, number three.
Impossible!
Yet this third coincidence—or twist of fate—had shaken him and he went into the small tearoom and sat down for a moment. Could he work with Lauren and not tell her of their shared past?
All their shared past?
She had a child and presumably a husband although she was still using her maiden name.
Lauren married?
It shouldn’t hurt—it had been ten years…
And if she’d forgotten him, then surely that was that. No need to tell her, to remind her.
The idea made him feel extremely uneasy, and digging deep into his confused mind he decided it was pique. He felt upset that she’d forgotten him—betrayed…
Lauren led Brian and Shelley Appleton out of the PICU and into a small quiet room, one of several set aside for parents. She offered them tea or coffee but Brian was too uptight to do more than wave away the offer with his hand, pacing back and forth in the small space between the four comfortable chairs and the coffee-table.
Lauren knew she had to try again to calm the man.
‘There’s no guarantee he’ll need another operation,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ve been reading up on it and know that in some cases children with coarctation of the aorta do need further surgery as they grow, but it doesn’t happen in all cases. The surgeons have removed the narrow part of Jake’s aorta that was causing him problems and rejoined the blood vessel without any difficulty or the need for a man-made tube so the outlook for him is really good.’
She looked hopefully at Brian, and knew immediately he hadn’t been mollified. Though Shelley had sunk down into one of the armchairs and closed her eyes, as if removing herself from the discussion.
‘Except that he’ll have to keep seeing specialists, and he could get endocarditis or even golden staph.’
‘Brian!’
Shelley’s voice held appeal, but beyond that was exhaustion. Lauren shifted her attention.
‘Can I get something for you, Shelley? A cup of something or a cold drink, a sandwich?’
‘We’ve been living on sandwiches for the last month!’ Brian stormed. ‘What makes you think we’d want more of them?’
Lauren swallowed a sigh. Baby Jake had been in hospital since his birth a month earlier—of course his parents would be sick of sandwiches. But Shelley obviously needed food, and probably a change of scenery.
‘Look,’ Lauren said, touching Brian’s arm to make him stop pacing and look at her. ‘I know you’re upset, and you’ve reason to be, but you’re being too negative about this. You’re also both exhausted, mentally and physically. Why don’t you get out of this place for a while? Go for a walk in the park. Stop in the shade for a hug and a kiss. There’s a terrific Italian restaurant on the other side of the park—get some breakfast there and a cup of real coffee, breathe fresh air, and be thankful young Jake was born in a hospital where there are facilities to treat his condition, and extra thankful he’s got through the operation so well. I’ve spent the last three years in this kind of unit and I’ve never seen a baby come through an op like his as well as he did. So go somewhere and think about yourselves for a change. Think about each other, talk to each other—about yourselves not Jake.’
Brian stared at her and Lauren wondered if he’d heard a word she’d said, then he grinned, looking about ten years younger, more like his real age, which she knew was thirty.
‘A hug and a kiss sounds OK,’ he said, then he turned to his wife. ‘Shell?’
Shelley smiled, though