Now, sitting beside the hospital bed, she was able to look at her father and remember the man who’d first taught her to bait her fishing hook—the father she’d loved …
‘So, where have you come from?’ one of the nurses in the ICU asked as Alex, her luggage stacked in a corner of the room, held her father’s hand, and talked to the sleeping man about fishing in the dark shadows of the mangroves that arched over the little inlets off the river.
‘Here,’ she told him. ‘I’ve just been away for a while.’
Away when the girls she’d been at school with had been marrying and having babies …
Away when her mother had died without forgiving her for ‘making a fuss’ …
Away, but always waiting for a letter that said two simple words, ‘Come home.’
‘How long’s a while?’ the nurse asked, making conversation, Alex knew, but welcoming it in the sterile room, the silence broken only by her voice and the machines.
‘Sixteen years.’
‘Long time!’
And it had been.
When the Armitage family, with their darling twins, had shifted to Melbourne so Isobel and Dave could continue specialist careers, Alex had chosen to go north to Brisbane to finish her medical training.
From there, on Isobel’s advice, she’d contacted her parents, writing to them to tell them where she was and what she was doing. Although she’d received no response, she’d continued writing—birthdays and Christmas—always somehow hoping …
Then, three weeks ago, in far-off Glasgow, she’d received a letter from her father. Her mother was dead, Rusty, the dog, was dead, Mr Spencer had died, and he, her father, was going into hospital for open-heart surgery to replace a wonky valve.
The letter hadn’t asked her to come home, but here she was, sitting in the intensive care unit in the new modern hospital at Heritage Port, talking quietly to her heavily sedated father, and remembering happy times.
Will Kent, head intensivist, doing a round of the ICU, was surprised to see the woman there, her arms cradling her head on the bottom of the bed, apparently deeply asleep. Mr Hudson might be his patient in this unit, Will’s fiefdom, but the man had been unconscious since he’d arrived.
‘Who’s the woman in with Mr Hudson?’ he asked one of the nurses.
‘His daughter—Alexandra, I think she’s called—just arrived from Scotland. Apparently hasn’t been home for years. Some daughter!’
Alexandra Hudson—Alex!
Of course she hadn’t been home for years—banished as she’d been at sixteen. Ending up with his next-door neighbours, Isobel and Dave Armitage, as a nanny for their twins.
He peered more closely at the patient.
There didn’t seem to be anything familiar about the man—old now, and grey with illness—but he did remember the day Isobel had asked him to accompany her and Alex back to the Hudson home so Alex could get some clothes. Dave had been working, and Will had felt enormously proud that Isobel had chosen him to go along. He’d seen himself as the protector of the two women—a tall, lanky, bespectacled, twenty-two-year-old protector!
Mrs Hudson had thrown Alex’s clothes from an upstairs window, ranting all the time about ‘whores’ and ‘sluts’, while Mr Hudson had barred the door, standing there like an ancient biblical prophet, his only prophecy doom.
Poor Alex had been scarlet with humiliation and hurt, tears leaking from behind the big dark glasses she’d worn even inside in those days. He’d wanted to put his arm around her—to give her a hug—but he’d known she’d shy away, as she had from all but the twins’ hugs and kisses.
Not that he’d have kissed her—she’d been, what? Fifteen? Sixteen?
He couldn’t remember—remembered only the deep pity he’d felt for the so obviously damaged teenager.
Was this patient, here in the ICU, recovering from an operation for a heart valve replacement, that Mr Hudson?
Was the sleeping woman really Alex?
And had his thoughts disturbed her that she stirred and lifted her head?
Huge blue eyes she’d hidden behind darkened glasses for all the years she’d lived next door stared unseeingly at him.
Huge blue eyes framed by golden blonde hair tipped with silver here and there and softly tousled by sleep. The early beauty she’d tried to hide with shorn hair and the glasses had come to fruition. Even sleep-tousled, she was stunning.
‘Alex?’
She straightened up from the bed and frowned at him.
‘I’m Will, Will Kent—from next door to the Armitages, remember?’
The frown deepened and she shook her head, so obviously puzzled he had to smile.
‘You pinched my job,’ he added, remembering how he’d pretended to complain about losing the occasional babysitting he’d done for the Armitages.
‘Superman?’ she whispered, disbelief filling the words.
He flourished a pretend cloak and bowed low.
‘At your service, ma’am! But also head intensivist at the hospital. Your father’s in my care until he’s well enough to be transferred to the coronary care unit.’
He saw her face light up as things fell into place and she shot to her feet and advanced to give him an all-enveloping hug.
‘Oh, Will,’ she murmured, ‘it’s so good to see a familiar face.’
She eased back, looking at him, then laughed.
‘Not so familiar—you’ve grown up!’
‘Not even Superman can stay twenty-two for ever,’ Will said gloomily, and she laughed again, her face lighting up with delight—so gloriously beautiful Will felt his lungs seize.
Breathe, he told himself, and tried to remember how.
Fortunately, as his brain seemed to be similarly paralysed, instinct took over and his lungs filled with air while he tried to catch up with Alex’s conversation.
‘Intensivist? Weren’t you heading towards O and G when you left Port? What made you change your mind? It can’t have been the late night callouts, you’d get more of them in this job.’
‘Whoa!’
Will held up his hand, pleased to see his limb was obeying messages, although other parts of his body were obviously still in shock.
‘I’m on a ward round and really need to check your dad and the other patients.’
‘Can we catch up later?’ Alex asked. ‘I couldn’t get home before the op, but I’ve spoken to the surgeon who did the operation. He gave me the impression he wasn’t too positive about the outcome.’
As Will was still feeling startling and unfamiliar reactions to Alex’s hug, he wondered if this was wise, but she was entitled to ask questions about her father’s health.
But beyond that, he was intrigued. The damaged teenager who, in the beginning, would duck away if she saw him over the fence, and who’d shrunk back from any physical contact—even a simple handshake—had emerged, like a caterpillar from a cocoon, as this beautiful butterfly.
He wanted to know just how she’d managed the transformation—and how deep it went. He knew Isobel in particular had worked hard to restore Alex’s self-esteem, but there’d been a fragility about the teenager that couldn’t be hidden behind dark glasses and a dreadful haircut.
‘As far as your father’s concerned, the operation went well,