‘If it’s an open ductus, the operation itself isn’t that complex any more, is it?’ Emma asked.
‘In relative terms, I guess. It’s a closed-heart procedure.’
‘They don’t have to open the heart itself.’ Emma understood this.
‘And no heart-lung machine required,’ Pete confirmed. ‘Start to finish, less than an hour. They make an opening in the left side of her chest, tie off the PDA and divide it. It’s about the width of a piece of string.’
‘Oh, huge!’ she drawled.
‘As I said, simple is relative. It would still need to be done in a major children’s hospital, by a paediatric surgeon. And what parent wants to think of a baby as small as Alethea in surgery when she’s just a few days old, no matter how skilled those guys are?’
‘I know.’ Emma leaned against the fridge and rubbed an aching calf with the side of her shoe. ‘Nell has hopes the murmur doesn’t mean anything. The baby’s oxygen saturation is up in the high nineties.’
‘That’s great! Are you heading back to Special Care now?’ He tipped out the rest of his coffee, rinsed the mug and rested it upside down on the sink.
‘Yes, I just wanted to catch up with you and make sure everything was still in hand on this side of the unit.’
‘Come on, then,’ he said.
He slipped past her and she followed in his wake at once. They walked along the U-shaped corridor together in a comfortable silence, and found Nell scribbling notes on Alethea’s chart, while Lucy slept peacefully. Both babies looked like tiny red frogs in the white expanse of their special, warmed humidicribs.
‘I’m heading off,’ Nell said, capping her pen. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Or sooner if you need me, Emma. If that oxygen sat rate drops, if the heart rate changes, you know what I’m looking for. Pete, she’s not as strong as you hoped. And there may—may—be a heart problem.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Emma told me. You’re going to wait before doing any tests?’
‘Yes, as long as her levels are this good, but I want to talk to the mother about whether to send her to a higher level unit even if she doesn’t need surgery. There may be other problems. I just have that feeling, despite what the machines are saying. And this is a stretch for us.’
‘I know, Nell, but if there’s nothing specific, and if the mother is already too detached to get properly—’
‘Look, I’m not saying it’s an easy decision,’ she cut in. ‘There are pros and cons.’
‘There are always those.’
She ignored him. ‘We have to consider the downside of transporting a fragile baby, for a start. And you’re right. Taking a premmie away from a mother whose bonding is already tenuous could cause its own problems. But let’s think about it,’ she urged, her eyes bright. ‘Let’s get it right.’
She left without giving him time to reply, and Emma saw his jaw set.
Anger, or determination?
She wasn’t sure.
She didn’t think Pete was the kind of doctor who’d make up his mind and then stick to his guns out of ego and pride. She’d only ever seen him put the interests of his patients first. But she knew he was under pressure at the moment in his personal life, and there were pulls in both directions for Alethea.
Pete looked again at the baby and at the fluctuating red figures on the monitor, and Emma couldn’t help doing the same. The heart rate, respiration and oxygen saturation all showed up on screen at a glance. The baby’s nappy was as small and flat as an envelope. The little hat covered the whole of her tiny head, and her face looked as crumpled and ancient and inscrutable as that of an Eastern mystic.
‘Should we start trying for a bed in Sydney or Melbourne straight away?’ Pete muttered. He might have been talking to himself. ‘On paper, we’ve got the facilities and the staff. I’m glad I called in Nell.’
‘She’s good,’ Emma agreed.
So was he. Thorough and caring and imaginative in his approach. He wasn’t afraid to try something new, or to go out on a limb.
He was way out on a precarious one right at this moment, putting Rebecca’s chance to bond with her baby on a par with the baby’s potential need for a higher level of care. On the other hand, skin-to-skin human contact had been shown in repeated studies to be as physically important to a premmie’s development as oxygen, medication and specialist expertise.
He looked up.
‘Sorry. I’m still e-mailing you. Only verbally this time.’ He grinned, and there was a warm glint in his brown eyes that she responded to at once with a laugh.
‘Are you?’
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ he conceded. ‘But it was nice, Emma. Did I say that?’
‘You said it was a slice of paradise. My house. In your card, I mean.’ Emma cleared her throat. ‘You didn’t specifically mention the e-mails.’
She felt absurdly self-conscious beneath the warm wash of his words. In the confined space, they were standing closer than she felt comfortable with. It was ridiculous to be so aware of him, to feel this sense of closeness and this sense of knowing him, which was based on such a thin foundation.
‘Well, the e-mails were good,’ he said. ‘They helped.’
Emma blurted, ‘Is it Claire? Is that why you’re looking so stressed?’ Then could have cut out her tongue. He’d said nothing to encourage her to ask such a personal question. It was all coming from her.
He sighed, then muttered, ‘Yes, of course it’s Claire.’
‘I’m sorry, you don’t have to—’
‘I thought that we were in the home stretch.’ His mouth tightened and turned down. He spoke in a low, rapid way, and didn’t look at her. ‘We had decisions made and arrangements worked out. I thought. But Claire’s thrown that to the four winds, and I would have done so even if she hadn’t, because of the way she’s been behaving. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.’
He stopped, and looked up suddenly, with a ravaged expression that struck Emma to the heart. She felt the same need to touch him that had tingled in her fingers before. The same need to smooth out those creases around his eyes and softly stroke the brown skin at the back of his neck, to press his lips with her fingertips until they relaxed, and to tell him everything would be all right.
‘Oh, Pete!’ she said. It was heartfelt, but so inadequate.
‘I haven’t talked to anyone about this.’ His eyes were narrowed, and glittered with fatigue. ‘I don’t know why I’m talking to you.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Because you’re listening, I guess. Because you asked. You were here at the right moment, basically. The wrong moment, perhaps.’
‘I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.’
‘No, it was fine. Only now I’m not offering you much choice about listening to a far more detailed reply than you wanted.’
‘I-it’s fine, Pete,’ she stammered, echoing the same word he’d used—safe and vague. ‘I’m happy—that is, I want to listen. If it’s a help.’
‘I’m petitioning for sole custody. Please, don’t talk to anyone about this!’
‘As if I would!’
He glanced around to check that the door was closed and that they were fully alone.
‘Couldn’t find a house I liked as much as yours,’ he said quietly.