The Doctors’ Baby

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE days after Anna’s operation became a week. And then two.

Work and domesticity settled into a pattern Em found almost acceptable-if only her stupid emotions didn’t get in the way.

Once Anna’s drainage tube came out, she was allowed home. Her children went with her. She refused to let Jonas stay with her-he stayed on with Em, whether Em thought it was wise or not-but Anna did allow her brother to organise home help.

That was something, at least, Em thought. The prickly Anna of old wouldn’t even have allowed that.

And as for Jonas…

Jonas was frustrated with the little help he could give his sister. There was so little he could do!

He did insist on spending time each day with Ruby and Sam and Matt, using his wish to establish bonds with them as a way to give Anna much needed child care. He also threw himself into working for the town. He did what he could.

For both the women he was helping…

At least Em was a skilled doctor, he thought as he worked on beside her. He could trust her to look after Anna. And at least, with him staying on as her temporary partner, she had time to do it properly. Do house calls. Care…

She would have done it anyway, he knew, but in the equation without him, there would have been no time at all for Robby, or for Em herself.

She would have worked herself into a breakdown.

It wasn’t that she was driven to work, he decided, although he knew doctors who were consumed with their jobs. Em wasn’t like that. She simply found it impossible to reject pleas for help. She never said no, and it made no difference how tired she was, or how long the queue waiting in the surgery.

So he’d saved her from that-temporarily-but the more he saw of her-the more he saw of her medicine and her caring-the more he wondered how he could possibly leave at the end of Anna’s radiotherapy.

An idea was starting to stir and shift at the back of his mind…

Physically, Anna was recovering brilliantly, though neither Jonas nor Em were so sure about emotionally.

Anna read all the literature, and then deliberately left it behind in the hospital. Well over ninety percent survival, the books said, which backed up what the doctors had told her. She could live with that. Sure, the oncologist had said her chances would be even better if she had chemotherapy, but that meant months of depending on others for help, and she rejected it out of hand.

So live she did, but on her own terms. She went about organising the radiotherapy but, despite Jonas’s offer to rent an apartment in Blairglen for them all, she made the decision to travel to Blairglen every day.

‘So I can still be independent. Lori will look after the kids during the day and I can still be with them at night.’

And Lori, due to return to Bay Beach any day, was willing to take them on.

‘It’s not the easiest solution for you,’ Em told Anna. ‘The travelling will make you tired.’

But Anna wasn’t giving in. ‘I don’t want to be any more dependent on Jonas than I already am,’ Anna said definitely, and Em could only watch as his sister drove Jonas as far away as she could.

And Anna was also driving Jim away.

The fire chief came to see Em in surgery, ostensibly for a twisted little finger but in truth to tell her how concerned he was about Anna.

‘She won’t let me help,’ he told her sadly. ‘She won’t let me near.’

Em could only shake her head. There was no advice she could give. If she had any way of breaking down barriers, she’d be breaking them down herself.

The time she’d spent with Jonas and four children seemed now like an amazing dream. That sensation of family had eased now that Anna’s three children had left. With Amy’s help, Em could look after Robby without Jonas’s assistance, and Jonas seemed to want that. So there was less and less need for Jonas and her to be together.

But separation hurt. Em was hurting. Even her dog was pining. Bernard was back to his old, lethargic self.

And here was Jim, and he was hurting, too.

‘Do you really want me to do anything about this finger?’ Em asked the fire chief, examining the offending digit. ‘I could refer you to an orthopaedic surgeon for resetting, but it looks like it was broken years ago. Is it causing any trouble?’

‘Yeah, well, it was broken years ago and, no, it’s not causing trouble,’ he admitted. ‘I sort of wanted an excuse to talk to you.’

‘Now, why did I suspect that?’

‘Are you getting on any better with her brother than I am with Anna?’

Em frowned, and spent some more time unnecessarily examining his finger. Getting her face in order. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean there’s two Lunns,’ Jim said grimly. ‘There’s two people who are fighting shy of attachment. At least you have yours living with you. Working side by side…’

And a fat lot of good that was doing her, Em thought bleakly.

It might halve her workload, but in every other respect it was just making life impossible.

Lori returned to Bay Beach the following day, cheerful, optimistic and ready to return to being a home mother.

‘Ray’s out of danger. His operation went really, really well,’ she told Em and Jonas. ‘All he needs is a whole heap of advice from the dietician and he’ll be back at work. Like I will be tomorrow.’

‘We’ve missed you.’ It was Jonas. They’d just finished dinner, and Em was giving Robby his last bottle for the night. She’d been standing at the window, rocking him to sleep, when Lori had dropped in to see them all.

We’ve missed you…

Em flashed Jonas a quick look and couldn’t quite keep the resentment out of her tone when she added, ‘Yeah. Jonas has had to do some babysitting.’

‘I’ve done it really well,’ he said indignantly, and Lori smiled. Her smile was only surface deep, though. Suddenly her active mind was working overtime. There were undercurrents here that she couldn’t read.

‘Do you want me to take Robby home with me tonight?’ she asked, and Em almost gasped. Instead, she took a deep, steadying breath.

This had to happen some time, she told herself, trying hard not to look down at the baby in her arms. Well, why not? It was logical. Lori was Robby’s carer. Not her.

‘Maybe it’d be for the best,’ she said, but her voice didn’t sound like hers at all.

‘The best for whom?’ Jonas asked indifferently, and Em could have slapped him.

‘For Robby, of course,’ she snapped.

‘You’re only thinking of Robby?’

‘Who else would I be thinking of?’

‘Yourself,’ Jonas said mildly, and watched her face.

‘Why…why…?’

‘Because you love the kid,’ Jonas told her, as if she were a little bit stupid, and as if he didn’t see what the problem was. ‘I don’t see why you don’t adopt him yourself. Heck, anyone can see you think the sun rises and sets with him.’

‘And you think that’d be OK,’ Em snapped. ‘I’ve been able to spend heaps of time with him these last couple of weeks, but that’s only because you’ve been here to help with my workload. As soon as you go, I’ll have to depend totally on Amy-a teenager who’ll take off with her own life any minute. That’s no basis for adoption. Me being a mother for short bursts at night? I don’t think so!’

‘You’d be a mother who loves her baby, though,’ Jonas said thoughtfully. ‘That’s more than a lot of kids have.’

‘It wouldn’t work.’ Lori’s quick eyes had been assessing the pair of them. She was as concerned as Em as to Robby’s fate, and she was very, very interested in these undercurrents. ‘For a start, Tom wouldn’t allow it.’

‘Tom?’ Jonas’s eyebrows snapped a question.

‘Our director.’ Lori shook her head when she thought about him. ‘There’s an assessment committee, but the final decision comes down to Tom. He decides whether a couple-or a single person-would make good parents, and he’s very good at his job.’

‘You’re saying Em wouldn’t make a good mother?’

‘I’m saying Em wouldn’t stand a chance of being permitted to adopt,’ Lori said bluntly. ‘An overworked single mum… Tom would say that she’d never hack the pace.’

‘So he’d discriminate because she’s single.’

‘No. If she was working half-time she’d get a look-in-a good look-in because Tom would soon figure out how much she cares. But our Em works eighty-hour weeks or more. He’d discriminate, and rightly so because she doesn’t have time.’

‘But if she was married…’ Jonas said thoughtfully, and let the room fade to silence. ‘Would that make a difference?’

‘Of course it would,’ Lori told him, after a moment’s stunned silence. She frowned and very carefully didn’t look at Em. She concentrated on Jonas. They were all standing-Jonas from when he’d answered the door and Em still at her watching place by the window. Only she wasn’t watching the window. ‘Is it likely?’ Lori asked at last. ‘That our Em could be married?’

‘I suppose it could be,’ Jonas told her, as if the idea had only just occurred to him.

‘How could it be?’ Lori asked bluntly.

‘She could be married to me.’

For a moment there was absolute silence. Not even the clock ticked. The world held its breath, waiting for the bomb Jonas had just lobbed to explode into a million fragments and destroy everything around it.

Maybe it already had. For when Em’s breathing returned to a semblance of normality, her world had tilted on its axis, so much so that she felt like she was about to fall off.

What had he said?

‘I beg your pardon?’ Lori said, and Em could only cast her a grateful glance. For herself, she was totally unable to speak.

‘I mean Em and I could get married,’ Jonas said mildly. ‘It’s been done before. Marriages of convenience.’

‘Yes, but-’

‘Look, it’s simple,’ he said reasonably. ‘I’m not the least bit interested in marriage. I never have been. And Em doesn’t want-hasn’t time for-a proper husband. However, she wants Robby.’ He smiled, his gorgeous, crooked smile that did so much damage to Em’s heart. ‘I can see what the problem is, and I’m sure you can, too, Lori. I haven’t been staying with Em for this long without realising she’s tearing her heart out to keep Robby. And this way she could.’

‘How could she?’ Lori sounded fascinated.

Em, on the other hand, was just plain dumbfounded. She had to find a chair and sit. So she sat and held onto Robby like she was drowning, gazing up at Jonas in stupefaction.

‘Easy.’

‘It’s not easy.’ Lori had been under a fair amount of strain over the past couple of weeks and her normal placid self wasn’t what it should have been. She let an edge of annoyance show. ‘You’re a city surgeon. I assume you don’t want to practise here, in Bay Beach.’

‘No. Well, not totally, but…’

‘But what?’ Lori glared. She cast an uncertain glance at Em, then went right on glaring. She was starting to think this man was an insensitive oaf. The way Em looked… She looked like her world was crumbling.

She looked like she loved this man, Lori thought suddenly. She was watching Jonas as if he was close to the most precious thing in the world, rating as precious as the child she held in her arms.

And Jonas was talking as if the whole thing was a business proposition.

‘Tom’s going to want to know who’s intending to look after Robby,’ Lori snapped. ‘You’re not offering to be Robby’s daddy?’

‘No.’ But Jonas’s voice was suddenly uncertain. ‘Except…sometimes.’

‘This is crazy.’ Em interrupted them both from where she sat. ‘Just crazy! Lori, go home. The man’s talking nonsense.’

‘I’m not talking nonsense.’ Jonas’s voice firmed. ‘It could work.’

‘How could it work?’ Em’s voice was a desperate whisper, and Jonas gave a wry smile.

‘Hey, Em, there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist. I’m not offering human sacrifice here. I’m offering a business proposition.’

‘Which is?’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, and for the first time a trace of uncertainty entered his voice. Like he was a little unsure himself why he was doing what he was doing. But he had been thinking things through. It did make sense. Sort of. ‘You know I was offered a teaching job overseas before I came here?’

‘Yes.’

Em cast an uncertain glance at Lori, but Lori was riveted. She was listening to a proposal of marriage. Lori should get herself out of here and leave them to it, but she didn’t look like she intended moving for quids!

And Jonas kept right on speaking. ‘I really want at least a part-time teaching job,’ he told Em, and he was ignoring Lori now, speaking directly to her. To his intended…wife? ‘I enjoy teaching,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been doing some in Sydney but there’s not enough for a full-time position. For the rest of the time I’ve been doing increasingly technical surgery, which I haven’t been enjoying much at all.’

‘I don’t-’

But he wasn’t brooking interruptions, and he was still focusing on Em. Trying to make her see.

‘Em, increasingly, my area of expertise is patient-surgeon interaction. In fact, I’ve written papers and presented theories on healing times improving with better communication.’ He gave a self-conscious grin. ‘And they do. I’ve been working through guidelines for surgeons to discuss with their patients before and after surgery, including such things as fear of outcome, fear of pain-even such things as family problems. Things many surgeons don’t think they have time for. That’s my soapbox, really, and it’s what’s important to me. The surgery itself, although important, is no longer my chief priority.’

‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’ This was hard. Em could hardly find the strength to speak. What had he said? Marriage! She was rocking Robby back and forth, clutching him like a lifeline, and Lori was looking from Jonas to Em and back again with the alertness of a particularly interested sparrow.

‘Simply this.’ Jonas sighed. ‘I’ve been at a crossroads. I don’t want to work myself into the ground to become the world’s greatest vascular or any other specialist surgeon. But I’m being pushed that way in Sydney, and it’s taking all my time to keep up with the current technologies. That was why I accepted the teaching job overseas but, to be honest, I was still unsure about that. I thought, even though I didn’t want to be a specialist surgeon, I’d miss surgery-medicine-itself. Hands-on patient work. So I’d sort of like…’ He cast a quick glance at Em before he kept on speaking. ‘I’d sort of like to return to general surgery in the real sense. With maybe a bit of general practice on the side.’

‘You mean you do want to practise in Bay Beach,’ Lori breathed, and Em sent her a helpless glance. Good grief! She had an almost irresistible urge to drum her heels on the door and yell.

But she couldn’t. Jonas was still speaking.

‘I talked to Chris Maitland, the doctor who works south of here,’ he told her. ‘Did you know he’s a specialist anaesthetist?’

Em did. ‘Yes, but-’

‘He did the same as me,’ Jonas told her. ‘He became fed up with the lack of human contact in big city medicine, so he went back to general practice. But if I came here I wouldn’t have to give up surgery entirely, and Chris could resurrect his anaesthetics. I could do all the surgery for the district-we’d hardly have to use Blairglen-plus I could do a bit of general practice on the side. I could keep up my research and one or two days a week I could travel to Sydney and do my teaching.’

He frowned and he was looking inward, still thinking it through. Seeing possibilities…

‘And if I’m teaching through the training hospitals, I reckon I could get teaching status for this district. If we had interns on rotation, how much easier would that make life for everyone?’

How much easier?

It made Em’s mind go blank just to try to take it in. Jonas here, and first-year doctors rotating to do part of their training here as well…

Bliss!

But that wasn’t what they were talking about. They were talking about marriage.

‘I don’t-’

‘Hey, I’m leaving.’ Em had almost forgotten Lori’s presence, but now her friend leaned down and gave her a swift hug, including Robby in her embrace. ‘This is getting far too complicated for me. All I know is that you don’t want to give Robby up tonight.’ And she smiled warmly down into her friend’s eyes, sending her a silent message. ‘And you might not want to give him up-ever.’

‘Lori-’

‘Don’t be too hasty,’ Lori told her. ‘Listen to what the man has to say. And think about what you could get out of this.’

‘I wouldn’t-’

‘You might,’ Lori told her firmly. ‘I’m going. You just listen!’

Silence.

The silence went on and on and on. The echo of the door slamming after Lori seemed to reverberate for minutes, while Em sat and hugged Robby and tried to come to terms with what Jonas had just offered.

It still didn’t make any sense.

‘You want to stay here,’ she said at last. ‘Is that what it is?’

‘I want a base,’ he told her. ‘I’ve decided that. I like your kind of medicine. I’ve fallen for Anna’s kids in a big way. I see that her need of family will be ongoing, and this way-’

‘You could just work here,’ she said desperately. ‘Heavens, we need you enough. There’s no need for this ridiculous talk of marriage.’

‘No.’ His eyes turned thoughtful. ‘I didn’t think so either. But then there’s Robby. If I marry you, Robby will have a family.’

‘You don’t want to be Robby’s father. You just said so.’

‘I did,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t want to be anyone’s father.’ And then his voice changed.

He was watching Robby. Robby was very close to sleep. He’d been lying contentedly in Em’s arms, looking out at this bright wondrous world around him. Now he was snuggling close, his tiny lashes were fluttering closed and his little fist closed around Em’s fingers.

He was so damaged! The elastic bandages on his arm looked stark and white, real evidence of what was before him.

‘I don’t want him to stay in an orphanage,’ he said, and his voice was still changed-husky with emotion, and strained-as if he couldn’t believe what he was feeling, and he was fighting it every inch of the way.

‘You’ve fallen for him, too,’ Em said, watching his face, and he gave a reluctant nod.

‘Yes. I guess I have. He’s a brave little kid. So if by marrying you I could get him a home…’

‘That’s some sacrifice!’

He smiled at that, a wry, half-mocking smile. ‘Hey, you’re not that bad.’

But I’m not that good, Em thought desperately, and waited.

‘Would we live together?’ she asked curiously.

He raked his hair and thought about that for a bit. ‘I guess we’d need to if we were to formally adopt Robby, but I can’t see it as a problem. I’d be in Sydney a bit, and this house is plenty big enough for all of us. And if we had a trainee doctor living here as well, it wouldn’t get too personal.’

Not too personal!

Personal! A fate worse than death, obviously!

‘But this would be a long-term thing,’ Em said wildly. ‘You’d have to tell Tom you’d be prepared to be Robby’s father. If we…we, Jonas. Not me. If we were to adopt him then you’d need to be involved.’

‘I don’t see that. Not if he has you.’

She took a deep breath, fighting back the emotions surging around her so fast she felt her head was about to spin off her shoulders. ‘Jonas, I want Robby so badly it hurts,’ she told him. ‘But Robby needs a family.’

She closed her eyes, trying desperately to stay calm. To think clearly. Because what Jonas was offering was almost unbelievably tempting.

But she knew she couldn’t take it.

She had one small problem. And she had to tell him. The only way forward here was honestly, no matter how much pride was at stake.

‘Jonas, I think you should know that I’ve fallen in love with you,’ she said bluntly, and her eyes didn’t leave his face. ‘I think you should factor that into any equation you make. You see, I don’t think I could live in the same house as you-as your wife-and stay…impersonal.’

His face froze. He stared at her like she’d just uttered an obscenity.

‘You what?’

But the time for prevarication was over. There was only room for the truth.

‘I’ve fallen for you in a big way, Jonas Lunn,’ she told him, tilting her chin and meeting his look head on. With dignity and with courage. ‘So if you’re asking me to marry you-for keeps-then I’d say thank you very much, I’d love to, because I’d like nothing better than to be your wife. But I would be your wife, Jonas. In every sense of the word.’

‘Em!’ He was clearly flabbergasted.

‘Stupid, isn’t it?’ she said cordially. ‘Unprofessional. Self-destructive even. For me and for Robby. Because if I didn’t…love you…maybe I could accept what you’re offering.’

‘What I’m offering makes sense,’ he said explosively. ‘Whereas what you’re saying…’

‘Doesn’t make sense at all,’ she agreed.

‘So forget you said it. You don’t mean it.’

She closed her eyes again. How could he be so blind?

‘I do mean it,’ she said at last. ‘I mean it more than anything I’ve ever said in my life. I didn’t mean to fall in love. I never intended it. It just sort of happened. So…so it wouldn’t work. Having half the cake but not the half I want most. I’d have a child and a husband-but a husband who treats me as a professional colleague.’

‘What more do you want, for heaven’s sake? How can you need more?’ He sounded angry, and suddenly so was she. He was so damned insensitive. So…

So Jonas.

‘I want it all,’ she told him simply, and her chin was still tilted at that dangerous angle that said she was taking on the world. Or she was giving it up. ‘I knew when I came here that my chances of having a husband and children were about nil. I accepted that. But now you’re offering half of what I want most in life, and I find…I find that I’d rather not have anything at all than constantly living-seeing-the other half. The half that’s out of my reach.’

Silence.

He looked baffled, she thought. He so totally didn’t understand.

‘You want Robby,’ he said.

‘I do.’ She was close to tears. ‘But you don’t want us.’ She bit her lip. ‘Oh, sure, you say you don’t want Robby to have to stay in an orphanage. So you’ll sacrifice yourself for us. Marry me. But I’m not prepared to carry that load of sacrifice. Not marriage, Jonas. Not…not without love.’

‘We don’t…love,’ he said slowly. His anger was fading as he saw the distress on her face. ‘Not my sister and I. We can’t. Em, I’m sorry, but we’ve had love knocked out of us from an early age.’

‘And you can’t get it back?’

‘I don’t want to,’ he said honestly. ‘It hurts too damned much.’

‘It takes courage.’

‘No. It takes courage to be independent. If you knew how much I wanted…’ He caught himself, and almost perceptibly drew back. ‘No! I’m sorry, Em, but that’s the offer.’

‘And is it all or nothing?’ she said bleakly. ‘Either I marry you on your terms or you’ll ride off into the sunset without a backward glance?’

He glanced down at Robby. ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. You really won’t marry me?’

There was only the one answer possible. ‘No.’

‘I still need a base.’

‘Not with me.’

He thought about that, and then slowly nodded, readjusting his thinking. ‘OK. OK, I’ll accept that. I think it’s stupid, but maybe if I stayed anyway we could work things out. If I told Anna I was staying here so you could adopt Robby, she’d accept that. She wouldn’t think I was just doing it for her.’

‘Are you doing it just for her?’ Em asked curiously, and then watched Jonas’s face change. He didn’t know himself, she thought. He was trying so darn hard to be independent, but he wasn’t independent at all.

He’d told himself he was making this offer for Anna, but a part of him wanted Robby-and a part of him wanted the sense of community he’d found in Bay Beach.

If only a part of him wanted her…

But he wasn’t admitting to that! Concentrate on Robby.

He was thinking that, too. He could persuade her by thinking of Robby. ‘You might still be able to adopt Robby, if I was here to help,’ he told her, thinking it through as he spoke. ‘If I could arrange the medical needs of the community so you had free time, then Tom might be swayed to let you keep him.’

He might. That was something at least. Em’s heart gave a tiny lift, but she looked across at Jonas and the spurt of joy faded. Jonas was so near. So close.

And she had to drive him away.

‘It’d be so much easier if you married me,’ he said, and waited.

This was her second chance.

But she couldn’t do it. Not for Robby.

And not for herself. Marriage without love was the way of madness.

‘No, Jonas, it’d be much harder,’ she told him gently. ‘For all of us.’