The Surgeon's Doorstep Baby (4 page)

It was the way he’d looked at Ruby—and the way he’d looked at her when he’d asked her to stay.

Under that strength was pure vulnerability.

Maggie had lived most of her life in this valley and she’d heard stories about this family; this man. His mother had been glamorous and aloof and cold, and she’d walked out—justifiably—when Blake had been six. His father had been a womanising brute.

Blake may come from the richest family in the district but the locals had felt sorry for him when he’d been six, and that sympathy hadn’t been lessened by anything anyone had heard since.

What sort of man was he now? Like his mother? Like his father?

She couldn’t tell. She was seeing him at his most vulnerable. He was wounded, shocked, tired and burdened by a baby he didn’t know.

Don’t judge now, she told herself. Don’t get any more involved than you already are.

Except...she could stay while he rang his sister.

She sank down on the settee and put her feet towards the fire. This was a great room. A family room.

She lived on the other side of the wall. Remember it, she told herself.

Meanwhile, she cuddled one sleeping baby and she listened.

Blake had switched to speakerphone. He wanted to share.

She could share, she decided, at least this much.

* * *

Blake punched in the numbers Maggie had given him and a woman answered on the second ring. Sounding defensive. Sounding like she’d expected the call.

‘Wendy?’

There was a long silence and Maggie wondered if she’d slam down the receiver as she’d slammed it down on the district nurse.

‘Blake,’ she said at last. She sounded exhausted. Drained. Defeated.

The baby was three weeks old, Maggie thought, and wondered about postnatal depression.

‘You know my name,’ Blake was saying, tentatively, feeling his way. ‘I didn’t even know yours.’

‘That would be because our father acknowledged you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Bit late to be sorry now,’ she hissed. ‘Thirty years.’

‘Wendy, what my father did or didn’t do to you isn’t anything to do with me.’

‘You got the farm.’

‘We can talk about that,’ he said evenly. ‘But right now we need to talk about your daughter.’

‘She’s not my daughter,’ she snapped.’I didn’t even want her in the first place. Now Sam says he won’t even look at her.’

‘Too right, I won’t,’ a man’s voice growled, and Maggie realised it wasn’t only Blake who was on speakerphone. ‘We never wanted kids, neither of us. We’re going to Western Australia, but there’s no way we’re taking a deformed rat with us. By the time Wendy realised she was pregnant it was too late to get rid of it but neither of us want it. We should have left it at the hospital, but all them forms... Anyway, she’s getting her tubes tied the minute we get settled, and that’s it. If you want the kid adopted, we’ll sign the papers, but we don’t have time for any of that now. Meanwhile, the kid’s yours. Do what you like with it. We’re leaving.’

‘Let me talk to Wendy,’ again, he said. ‘Wendy?’

Wendy came on the line again, just as defensive. ‘Yeah?’

‘Is this really what you want?’ he asked urgently. ‘This shouldn’t be about our past. It’s now. It’s Ruby. Do you really want to abandon your daughter?’

‘Yeah,’ Wendy said, and defence gave way to bitterness. ‘Yeah, I do, but I’m not abandoning her. I’m giving her to you. My family’s done nothing for me, ever, so now it’s time. I don’t want this kid, so you deal with it, big brother. Your problem.’

And the phone was slammed down with a force that must have just about cracked the receiver at the other end.

Silence.

Deathly silence.

Blake put the phone back in its charger like it might shatter. Like the air around him might shatter.

Maggie looked at his face and looked away.

She looked down at the little girl in her arms.

Deformed rat.

Thank God she was only three weeks old. Thank God she couldn’t understand.

Suddenly the way her mother had looked at Maggie’s brothers and sisters flooded back to her. Over and over she remembered her mother, exhausted from childbirth, arriving home from hospital, sinking onto her mound of pillows in the bed that was her centre, handing over the newest arrival to her eldest daughter.

‘You look after it, Maggie.’

Her mother wasn’t close to as bad as this, but there were similarities. Her parents did what they had to do, but no more. Life was fun and frivolous, and responsibility was something to be handed over to whoever was closest.

Her mother liked being pregnant. Her parents liked the weird prestige of having a big family, but they wanted none of the responsibility that went with it.

Deformed rat.

She found herself hugging the little one closer, as if she could protect her from the words. From the label.

Abandoned baby.

Deformed rat.

And then the baby was lifted from her arms. Blake had her, was cradling her, holding her as a man might hold his own newborn. The way he held her was pure protection. It was anger and frustration and grief. It was an acknowledgement that his world had changed.

‘She won’t change her mind,’ he said grimly, and it was hardly a question.

‘I suspect not,’ Maggie whispered. ‘Not after three weeks. Mothers often reject straight after birth if there’s something seriously wrong—or if depression or psychosis kicks in—but she’s cared for her—after a fashion—for three weeks now. And the anger... I’m thinking this is a thought-out decision, as much as either of them sound like they can think anything out. After three weeks with this one, there should be an unbreakable bond. If there’s not, it won’t form now. All we can hope for is to maintain contact.’

‘You’d want Ruby to maintain contact with a family who think of her as...?’ He broke off, sounding appalled. ‘We’ll have to organise adoption. Surely there’s a family who’ll want her.’

‘There will be,’ Maggie said. ‘Of course. But without the papers...she’ll need to go into foster-care first.’

‘And let me guess, there’s no foster-carers over this side of the river.’

‘I’m organising evacuation,’ she said, and he stared at her. As well he might. This decision had been made a whole two seconds ago.

‘Sorry?’

‘For both of you,’ she said briskly. ‘I read up on talipes last night. I haven’t seen a baby with it before but I know what needs to be done. She needs careful manipulation and casts, starting now. The Ponseti technique talks about long casts on both legs, changed weekly. I can’t do that. Then there’s the fact that you had appendicitis with complications a week ago.’

‘I didn’t have complications.’

‘So why didn’t you have keyhole surgery?’ She fixed him with a look she’d used often on recalcitrant patients. ‘Right. Complications. So in summary, I have a man who may end up needing urgent help from previous surgery. I have a baby who needs urgent medical attention. The rain has eased this morning but the forecast is that more storms will hit tonight. I can get you out of here right now. You can have Ruby back in Sydney in the best of medical care, organising foster-care, organising anything you need, by this afternoon. I’ll make the call now.’

‘You’re kicking me out?’

‘You have medical training, too,’ she said. ‘You know it’s for the best.’

She was right.

Of course she was right. If she made the call, all problems would be solved. Evacuation was justified. If he didn’t accept the offer—the order?—he could well end up stuck here with a baby for a couple of weeks.

He could take Ruby back to Sydney, right now.

He could be home in his own, clean, clinical apartment tonight, with Ruby handed over to carers, and all this behind him.

Maggie was waiting. She stood calmly, her bucket of eggs in her hand, ready to take action.

He thought, stupidly, Who’ll eat the eggs if I go?

It was sensible to go.

The phone rang again. He picked it up without thinking. It was still on speakerphone—his father’s landline. He half expected it to be Wendy, but it was a child’s voice, shrill and urgent.

‘Maggie?’

The eggs were back on the floor so fast some must have broken, and Maggie had the phone in an instant.

‘Susie, what’s wrong?’

‘Christopher’s bleeding...’ On the other end of the line, the child hiccupped on a sob and choked.

‘No crying, Susie,’ Maggie said, and it was a curt order that had Blake’s eyes widen. It sounded like sergeant major stuff. ‘You know it doesn’t help. What’s happened?’

‘He slid on the wet roof and he cut himself,’ Susie whimpered. ‘His blood is oozing out from the top of his leg, and Mum’s screaming and Pete said to ring and say come.’

‘I’m coming,’ Maggie said, still in the sergeant major voice. ‘But first you listen, Susie, and listen hard. Get a sheet out of the linen cupboard and roll it up so it’s a tight, tight ball. Then you go out to Christopher, you tell Mum to shut up and keep away—can you do that, Susie? Imagine you’re me and just do it—and tell Pete to put the ball of sheet on his leg and press as hard as he’s ever pressed in his life. Tell him to sit on it if he must. He has to stop the bleeding. Can you do that, love?’

‘I... Yes.’

‘I’ll be there before Mum even stops yelling,’ Maggie said. ‘You just make Pete keep pressing, and tell everyone I’m on my way.’

CHAPTER FOUR

O
NE
minute she
was readying Blake for medical evacuation. The next she was heading a mile down the road to the ramshackle farmhouse where her parents and four of their nine children lived.

With Blake and baby.

How had it happened?

She hardly had time to wonder. Her entire concentration was on the road—apart from a little bit that was aware of the man beside her.

She’d headed for the door, out to the wagon, but by the time she’d reversed and turned, Blake had been in pants and shirt, standing in front of the car, carrying Ruby.

‘If he’s bleeding out, you’ll need me,’ he’d snapped, and she hadn’t argued. She’d fastened a seemingly bemused Ruby into the baby carrier she always carried—as district nurse her car was always equipped for carting kids—and now she was heading home and Blake was hauling his shoes on while she drove.

Christopher was twelve years old. He’d had more accidents than she could remember.

‘I should never have left them,’ she muttered, out loud but addressed to herself.

‘You should never have left home?’ Blake had tied his shoes and was now buttoning his shirt. He was almost respectable. Behind them, Ruby had settled into the baby carrier, like this was totally satisfactory—baby being taken for an after-breakfast drive by Mum and Dad.

Mum and Dad? Ha!

‘My parents aren’t responsible people,’ Maggie said through gritted teeth. ‘They should have been neutered at birth.’

‘Um...there’s a big statement.’ Blake looked thoughtful. ‘That’d mean there’d have been no Maggie.’

‘And none of the other eight they won’t look after,’ she snapped. ‘But Nickie, Louise, Raymond and Donny are out of the valley now, studying. Susie’s ten—she’s the youngest. I thought they were getting independent. With me only a mile away I thought they’d be safe.’

‘They’re as safe as if you were living there and gone to the shops for milk,’ Blake said, and she let the thought drift—and the tight knot of fear and guilt unravelled a bit so that only fear remained.

And the fear was less because this man was sitting beside her.

But she still didn’t know what she was dealing with. If Chris had cut his femoral artery...

‘She said oozing,’ Blake said, as if his thoughts were running concurrent with hers. ‘If it was the artery she’d have used a more dramatic word.’

The fear backed off a little, too. She allowed a glimmer of hope to enter the equation, but she didn’t ease her foot from the accelerator.

‘No hairpin bends between here and your place?’ Blake asked, seemingly mildly.

‘No.’

‘Good,’ Blake said. ‘Excellent. No aspersions on your driving, but Ruby and I are very pleased to hear it.’

* * *

They pulled up outside a place that looked like a cross between a house and a junkyard. The house looked almost derelict, a ramshackle, weatherboard cottage with two or three shonky additions tacked onto the back. The veranda at the front was sagging, kids’ toys and bikes were everywhere and Blake could count at least five car bodies—or bits of car bodies. An old white pony was loosely tethered to the veranda, and a skinny, teenage girl came flying down from the veranda to meet them.

‘Maggie, round the back, quick...’

Maggie was out of the car almost before it had stopped, and gone.

Blake was left with the girl.

Maggie had left her bag. The girl was about to dart off, too, but Blake grabbed her by the shoulder and held on.

‘I’m a friend of Maggie’s,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m a doctor. Will you stay with the baby? Take care of her while I help Maggie?’

The girl stared at him—and then stared into the car at the baby.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Blood makes me wobble.’

As long as babies didn’t, Blake thought, but it was cool and overcast, Ruby was asleep and in no danger of overheating, and Maggie might well need him more.

He thrust the girl into the passenger seat and she sat as if relieved to be there. Then he hauled open Maggie’s bag. Maggie was methodical, he thought. Equipment was where he expected it to be. He couldn’t handle the whole bag but he grabbed worst-case scenario stuff and headed behind the house at a run.

His stitches pulled, but for the first time since the operation, he hardly noticed.

Behind the house was drama. Maggie was already there, stooped over a prostrate child. Around them was a cluster of kids of assorted ages, and a woman was down on her knees, wailing. ‘Maggie, it’s making me sick. Maggie...’

The kids were ignoring the woman. They were totally intent on Maggie—who was totally intent on the child she was caring for.

Christopher was a miniature version of Maggie, he thought as he knelt beside her to see what they were dealing with. Same chestnut hair. Same freckles.

No colour at all.

Maggie was making a pad out of a pile of sheets lying beside her. An older boy—Peter?—his face as white as death—was pressing hard on a bloodied pad on his brother’s thigh. As Blake knelt beside her, Maggie put her own pad in position.

‘Okay, Pete, lift.’

The boy lifted the pad away, and in the moment before Maggie applied her tighter pad, Blake saw a gash, eight to ten inches long. Pumping. Not the major artery—he’d be dead by now if he’d hit that, but bad enough.

Leg higher than heart.

Maggie had replaced the pad and was pressing down again. Blood was oozing out the sides.

Whoever had grabbed the sheets had grabbed what looked like the contents of the linen cupboard. He grabbed the whole pile and wedged them under the boy’s thighs, elevating the leg. Maggie moved with him and they moved effortlessly into medical-team mode.

The oozing blood was slowing under her hands, but not enough. Pressure could only do so much.

Maggie was looking desperate. She knew what was happening.

Blake was already checking and rechecking the equipment in his hands. Hoping to hell her
sterilisation procedures were thorough. Knowing he had no choice.

He’d wrapped the stuff in a sterile sheet he’d pulled from plastic. He laid it on the grass, set it out as he’d need it, then hauled on sterile gloves.

‘On the count of three, take your hands away,’ he said to Maggie, and she glanced up at him, terror everywhere, saw his face, steadied, and somehow moved more solidly into medical mode.

‘You’re assisting, Nurse,’ he said flatly, calmly. ‘Don’t let me down. Pete, hold your brother’s shoulders, tight. Christopher, I’m about to stop the bleeding. It’ll hurt but only for a moment. Grit your teeth and bear it.’

He’d swabbed and slid in pain relief while he talked but he didn’t have time for it to take effect.

‘Ready?’ he snapped to his makeshift theatre team.

‘R-ready,’ Maggie faltered.

‘You stay calm on me,’ he snapped. ‘Pete, have you got those shoulders? Not one movement. Use all your strength to hold your brother still. Chris, are you ready to bite the bullet, like they say in the movies? We need you to be a hero.’

‘I... Yes.’

‘Good kid,’ Blake said. ‘You don’t need to pretend—you are a hero. I need to hurt you to stop the bleeding but I’ll be fast. This is superhero country. Pretend you’re armed with kryptonite and hold on.’

* * *

Maggie was terrified.

She was a nurse assisting a surgeon in Theatre, and somehow the second took priority over the first. Blake’s calm authority, his snapped, incisive instructions, the movements of his fingers...it was all that mattered. It had to be all that mattered.

Instead of being a terrified sister, she was a theatre assistant and only that. She was focussed entirely on anticipating Blake’s needs, swabbing away blood so she could see what he was doing, handing him what he needed as he needed it.

A torn artery...

Worse, it had retracted into the wound. She could see the blood seeping from the top of the rip in the skin. This was no exposed artery to be simply tied off.

If there was time for anaesthetic...

There wasn’t, and she held her breath as Blake produced a scalpel and fast, neatly, precisely, extended the tear just enough...just enough...

Chris jerked and cried out, but magically Pete held him still.

She swabbed and could see.

He was before her. The scalpel was back in her hand—not dropped when they might need it again—and forceps taken instead. Somehow she’d had them ready.

Blake was working inside the wound, manoeuvring, while she tried desperately to keep the wound clear, let him see what he was dealing with.

‘Got it,’ he said, amazingly calmly, as if the issue had never been in doubt, and almost as he said it, the bleeding slowed.

He was using the forceps to clamp.

‘Suture,’ he said.

She prepared sutures faster than she’d thought possible. She watched as his skilled fingers moved in and out, in and out.

She swabbed and cut and cleaned and she thought, Thank you, God.

Thank you, Blake.

* * *

He’d done it. The bleeding had slowed to almost nothing. He sat back and felt the same sense of overwhelming dizziness he always felt after such drama.

Cope first, faint second? It was an old edict instilled in him by a long-ago surgery professor when he’d caught his knees buckling.

‘There’s no shame in a good faint,’ the professor had said. ‘We all suffer from reaction. Just learn to delay it.’

He’d delayed it—and so had Maggie. In no other circumstances would he have permitted a relative to assist in a procedure on a family member. For her to hold it together...

She’d done more than that. She’d been calm, thorough, brilliant.

They weren’t out of the woods yet. What was needed now was replacement volume. He felt Chris’s pulse and flinched. With this blood pressure he was at risk of cardiac arrest.

They needed fluids, now.

But Maggie’s capacious bag had provided all he needed. Thank God for Maggie’s bag. Thank God for district nurses.

While Maggie worked under orders, applying a rough dressing that kept the pressure up—he’d need to remove it later when the pain relief kicked in fully to do a neater job—he lifted the boy’s arm, swabbed it fast and slid in the IV. A moment later he taped it safely, grabbed a bag of saline and started it running.

He checked the pulse and checked again that he had adrenalin close.

He checked the pulse again and decided not yet.

‘Do we have plasma?’ he asked.

‘At the clinic,’ Maggie said. ‘Ten minutes’ drive away.’

It wasn’t worth risking driving for yet. He’d run the saline and wait.

The lad seemed close to unconscious, dazed, hazy, hardly responding, but as the saline dripped in and the drugs took effect, they saw a tiny amount of colour return.

The pulse under Blake’s fingers regained some strength.

Around them the family watched, horrified to stillness, willing a happy ending. As did Blake. As, he thought, did Maggie. Her face was almost as white as the child’s.

This child was her brother.

Brothers and sisters.

He thought suddenly of the baby he’d seen thirty years before when he’d been six years old. His sister. He’d never had this connection, he thought, and then he thought of Ruby and wondered if this was a second chance.

It was a crazy time to think of one tiny baby.

Think of Christopher.

The saline dripped in. He kept his fingers on the little boy’s pulse, willing the pressure to rise, and finally it did. Christopher seemed to stir from semi-consciousness and he whimpered.

‘Christopher, love, keep still,’ Maggie said urgently, but he heard the beginnings of relief in her voice. ‘It’s okay. You’ve cut your leg badly, so you need to keep it still, but Dr Samford’s fixed it. It’ll be fine. What a duffer you were to try and climb on the wet roof.’

‘You slide faster when it’s wet,’ he whispered. ‘But it hurts. I won’t do it again.’

Blake let out his breath. He hadn’t actually been aware that he hadn’t been breathing but now...

He remembered another rule instilled into him a long time ago by the professor who’d taken him for his paediatric term. ‘Rule of thumb for quick triage. If a child is screaming, put it at the end of the queue. If it’s quiet but whinging, middle. If it’s silent, front, urgent,
now
.’

Christopher had suddenly moved from front of the line to the middle.

He glanced at Maggie and she seemed to sag. There was relief but also weariness. Desperation.

He glanced around and he thought, How many times had this scene played out? Maggie, totally responsible.

The mother—a crazy, hippy-dressed mass of sodden hysteria, was incoherent in the background, slumped on the grass crying, holding onto yet another kid, a little girl who looked about ten. As Blake watched, the little girl tried to pull away to come across to Maggie, but her mother held her harder.

‘Hold me, Susie,’ she whimpered. ‘I’ll faint if you don’t. Oh, my God, you kids will be the death of me.’

Let her faint, he thought grimly, and glanced again at Maggie and saw a look...

Like a deer trapped in headlights.

How much responsibility did this woman carry for this family?

‘Swap places and I’ll bind it,’ he told her. He needed to take the pressure off Maggie so she could react to the needs of these kids—to Chris but also to brave Pete, who’d held his brother all this time, and to Susie, who’d held her mother. ‘Do we have somewhere we can stitch it properly?’ He glanced at the house—and Maggie’s mother—and thought, I just bet it’s not clean inside.

‘Maggie’s not stitching me,’ Christopher whimpered. ‘She hurts.’

‘You’ve stitched your brother before?’ he demanded, astounded.

Maggie gave a rueful smile. ‘Not unless I’ve have no choice,’ she told him. ‘But Christopher doesn’t give his family many choices.’

‘You have a choice now,’ he said, still seeing that trapped look. ‘I can do this. You said you’ve set up a clinic. With a surgery?’

‘A small one.’

‘Excellent.’ He smiled down at Christopher. ‘If you’ll accept me as a substitute for your sister, we’ll bind your leg so you don’t make a mess of her car, then we’ll take you to the clinic she’s set up. I’ll fix your leg properly where I have equipment and decent light. I need to check for nerve damage.’ But already he was checking toes and leg for response, and he was thinking Christopher had been lucky.