Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit: Bachelor of the Baby Ward / Fairytale on the Children's Ward. Meredith Webber
Kate said gently. ‘Being on bypass takes a lot out of them, and we stop his heart while the switch happens, poor wee mite, but there’s no cause for anxiety. I stay because I like to watch until I’m certain he’s over the effect of the anaesthetic and sleeping naturally. I can’t always do it, because I’ve usually other ops scheduled, so today it’s a bit of a treat for me.’
Pete Stamford eyed her with great suspicion and Kate was glad he hadn’t come when all three of the specialists had been in the room. Then he would have been truly alarmed.
And she was even gladder—or should that be more glad, she wondered—when she realised that Mrs Stamford had wheeled herself closer to the cot, put her hand through the vent and was softly stroking her baby’s arm, talking quietly to him at the same time.
Kate felt her heart turn over at the sight, then realised Baby Stamford’s father was also looking at his wife, while tears streamed down his cheeks.
Unable to resist offering comfort, Kate put her arm around his shoulders and he turned to her and sobbed, his chin resting on her head.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, more or less to both of them. ‘You’ve been through such an ordeal and it isn’t over yet, but the worst part is behind him, so maybe, little champ that he is, he deserves a name.’
To Kate’s surprise, Pete straightened. He stepped towards his wife, taking her hand as they both chorused, ‘Bob.’
Bob?
They were going to call the baby Bob?
What about Jack and Tom and Sam, simple syllable names that were in vogue right now? What kind of a name for a baby was Bob?
It was Mrs Stamford who eventually explained.
‘We had a dog once, a border collie, who was the most faithful animal God ever put on earth. Even when he was dying of some terrible liver disease, he would drag himself to the doorway to greet Pete every night, and every morning he’d bring in the paper and drop it at my feet, right up to the day he died. He had more strength and courage than any human we’ve ever known, so it seems right to name this little fellow after him.’
Now Mrs Stamford was crying, too, and Kate quietly backed out of the room, wanting to leave the pair of them to comfort each other—and to get to know their little son.
Bob!
Angus returned as she was standing by the main monitors in the PICU. He peered into the room where the couple were, then turned to Kate, his eyebrows raised.
‘They’re okay,’ she told him. ‘They’ve called him Bob.’
‘Bob?’ Angus repeated. ‘Ah, after a grandfather no doubt.’
‘After their old dog,’ Kate corrected, then she laughed at the expression on Angus’s face. ‘Thinking how it would be to have a child called McTavish?’ she teased, and although he smiled, once again the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
‘I meant it when I said earlier there’d be no more children in my family,’ he said, and Kate sensed he was telling her something else.
Telling her he, too, felt an attraction between them but it couldn’t be?
She was not sure, but her body seemed to take it that way, disappointment forming a heavy lump in her chest.
Chapter Three
‘HIS name’s Pete—Mr Stamford, that is,’ she said to Angus, anxious to get him out of her company. ‘I’m sure he’d appreciate meeting you and talking to you about the op and Bob’s expected progress.’
Her tongue stumbled over ‘Bob,’ and Angus smiled at her, restarting all the sensations she didn’t want to feel. Surely if she ignored them they’d go away, and for all the fancy she’d had earlier, she doubted Angus would be attracted to her. Especially not with a beauty like Clare around.
Or perhaps he no longer felt attraction for anyone. Perhaps his adamant declaration that Hamish would be an only child was because he was still in love with his dead wife—that was a possibility.
In which case he should do something to dampen down his attractiveness, Kate thought gloomily.
He walked away and she looked through the window to where he stood, talking to Pete and Mrs Stamford, and though she couldn’t hear what they were saying, in her imagination she heard his seductive accent and knew ignoring the manifestations of attraction would be difficult to do.
Perhaps an affair—
He’s not interested in you!
One part of her head was yelling at the other part. She tried to remember back to lectures on the brain and which bits controlled what. She’d never been particularly interested in neurology and worked quite happily on the theory that half her brain did emotion while the other half did common sense. And while the common-sense half—maybe that part was more than half in her case—usually held sway, she knew once the emotion part was awoken, it could be difficult to ignore.
Double damn again.
‘You talking to yourself?’
The nurse sitting at the monitor looked up and Kate realised she’d sworn aloud.
‘Probably,’ she told the nurse. ‘Early dementia setting in.’
‘Not surprising, the work you do, anaesthetising tiny babies. I couldn’t do it. I find it hard enough to watch them on the monitor. I’m getting married next week and we want to have kids, but I’ll have to transfer out of the PICU before I can even think about it. Pregnancy’s scary enough without knowing all the things that could be going wrong with the baby!’
Kate watched the monitor and considered this. It was what she did, caring for babies during lifesaving operations, so she’d always seen the work as positive, but as Angus and the Stamfords left Bob’s room and she returned to it, she wondered if knowing the things that could happen would make pregnancy better or worse.
Better, surely, for there would be no unknowns.
But had she chosen it, subconsciously steered her career this way, because of the baby she’d lost?
No, that had been back in second year at university, before she’d begun her medical training, when medicine had still been only one of the options she’d been considering.
But her affinity for babies came from somewhere…
She shook her head, shaking away thoughts that had been safely locked in some dusty closet in her mind for many years.
‘You handled Mrs Stamford very well. Are you able to feel that empathy for all your patients’ parents?’
Angus appeared when Kate, some hours later, was in the surgeons’ lounge checking the operating list for the following day, baby Bob now in Clare’s care.
Kate turned towards him, but though looking at him usually produced a smile, this time it was forced.
‘That’s a strange question,’ she told him, still puzzling over the man who’d asked it. ‘I would think anyone would feel empathy for someone with a sick child.’
‘Perhaps!’ He shrugged off her assertion with that single word, as if to say he didn’t, but she’d seen glimpses of an empathetic man behind the cool detachment he wore like a suit.
Or maybe armour?
‘Not “perhaps” at all,’ she argued. ‘I bet you feel it or have felt it. In fact, I’d like to hazard a guess it’s because of the children you see with problems that you’ve decided not to have more children.’
‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’
The blunt statement struck her like a slap and she felt the colour she hated rising in her cheeks. He must have seen it, for his next question was conciliatory, to say the least.