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‘All right…all right.’ She sighed, and tucked in the corners of her mouth. ‘You win.’
They’d known each other for a long time as their parents moved in the same well-heeled social circles and were friends. They had first gone out together more than twelve years ago while Laird had been a medical student, but then Tarsha had chosen the lure of modelling in Europe and they’d called it quits, with no hard feelings on either side. There’d always been something missing at heart.
‘What is it, Laird?’ Tarsha had said once, back then. ‘It’s like a hundred-dollar bill that you know is a forgery. It looks right, but something still tells you it’s not.’
Maybe they just hadn’t been ready at that point. Too young. Too ambitious. Not enough time for each other.
A few months ago, after a successful modelling career, followed by several years spent working in the field of public relations in Paris, Tarsha had come home without the intended notch of a fabulous marriage on her belt. She was now in the process of starting her own modelling agency in Melbourne, which involved a lot of networking and schmoozing, as well as getting the right faces and bodies in her stable.
Laird had the vague idea that something had turned sour for Tarsha in Europe—that she was running away from a professional or personal disaster—but so far she hadn’t shared the details with him.
Some conniving between their two mothers several weeks ago had led to a choreographed cocktail party encounter— ‘You remember Laird, don’t you, darling?’—and Laird had understood at once that he was supposed to pick up again with Tarsha…no, not quite where they’d left off. People changed in twelve years.
Close, though.
The prospect had appealed on some levels. There was something out there that he hadn’t found yet—a core of happiness and stability that he saw in the best couples and that he wanted in his own life. Maybe this time with Tarsha, the timing would be right. It was hard to question a relationship that was so perfect on paper, especially when it had been so neatly deposited in his lap, gift-wrapped.
Before Tarsha’s timely return to southern shores, and after a long and carefully selected series of suitable girl-friends, his mother had asked him in exasperation a couple of times, ‘What are you looking for in a woman, Laird, that you haven’t managed to find yet?’
‘Is that a rhetorical question?’
‘You’re thirty-four!’
He hadn’t attempted to give her a list of attributes, but had half-heartedly tried to come up with a private one for himself.
He couldn’t.
Somebody different. A breath of fresh air.
Not exactly a precise description.
‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ he had predicted to his mother, confident and a bit grumpy.
Suddenly, looking at Tarsha’s set face, he realised that this relationship…this woman…wasn’t it.
It turned out she knew it as well as he did.
‘I’ve realised this isn’t working, Laird,’ she said. ‘Us, I mean.’ And when he was silent for a fraction of a second too long, she went on quickly, ‘To use the old cliché, it’s not you, it’s me. Something happened in Europe. A man. I’m not ready, and you’re not the right person. And you know it, don’t you?’ She gave him a narrow-eyed look, and then she laughed. ‘Hell, you really do know it! I can see the relief in your eyes.’
He couldn’t deny it. ‘I like you very much, Tarsha.’
‘And I like you.’ But she hadn’t yet relaxed. He wanted to put an arm around her purely for reassurance, didn’t quite know why she was turning this into a problem, as it was clear neither of them had any regrets.
‘So we’re fine, aren’t we?’ he said gently. ‘We’ve both realised. We both feel the same. We can forget dinner tonight, if you want.’
‘No, you see, that’s what I don’t want.’ She took a deep breath, gave a big, fake smile.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The it’s-not-you-it’s-me thing was the easy part.’
‘Pretend I’m not getting this, and explain.’
‘Laird…look at me!’ Were those tears she was blinking back? ‘I’m not the kind of woman who goes out with her single women friends in a big group and doesn’t care what anybody thinks. I want to be honest with you about this. Pathetic and needy, but honest. Can we still go out sometimes? Would you be the man on my arm when I need one? I’m setting up this agency, I have to look good, I have to be seen. That’s all. I just need a part-time, very presentable man.’
She spread her hands, did that dazzling pretend smile again and he realised how vulnerable she was beneath the glamorous façade, thanks to this unknown man in Europe. He realised, too, how little value beauty could have to a woman in the wrong circumstances.
He told her sincerely, ‘Sure, Tarsh, I can be your presentable man, occasionally. I don’t see anything getting in the way.’
She nodded and kissed him quickly, not on the mouth, but close. ‘Good. And if I haven’t made this clear, sex is not included in the deal. I—I…’ Still smiling, she blinked back more tears. ‘Somehow—and, please, don’t grill me on the details here—I turn out to be a lot more monogamous than I would have thought.’
And that was that.
At the restaurant Laird and Tarsha had to wait for their table, wait for the menu, wait to be asked for their order and then wait for it to arrive. Neither of them seemed to have much to say, having dealt with the principal matter of interest between them before they had even left her house.
Laird fought hunger, irritability and fatigue, and Tarsha finally appealed to him, ‘Talk to me, Laird! Talk shop, if you want, rather than the two of us sitting here like this. It’s what you’re thinking about, isn’t it?’
He admitted that it was. ‘We have some very fragile babies in the unit at the moment. Delivered two of them last night, and we were short-staffed. Fortunately, we had a terrific new nurse. I don’t think both babies would have made it out of the delivery suite without her. She was fabulous. Down-to-earth, unflappable, knew her stuff inside out.’
‘Pretty?’
He thought for a moment, and remembered the shiny forehead and the unflattering angle of Tammy Prunty’s disposable cap. ‘Um, I don’t think so. Not really.’
Tarsha’s attention had wandered. ‘Is this ours?’ she murmured, watching a waiter with laden hands. ‘No, it’s not…’
Laird was still thinking about the fact that he’d just completely slammed the Tammy nurse in the looks department. He felt guilty and impatient with himself, which was ridiculous. ‘Although I never saw her hair,’ he said, wondering about it, remembering the blue of her eyes. ‘I have an idea she’ll be a redhead, though.’
‘She will be?’
‘When I see her without her cap.’ He looked forward to resolving the question, for some reason.
Tarsha fixed him with a suspicious look that he didn’t understand, and then their waiter came towards them at last.
* * *
‘And it was green, and we thought, Good grief, what is this? I mean, neon green newborn milk curds. The intern went pale. Poor thing, it was his second day, he didn’t have a clue. He’s about to call the senior surgeon, who has no patience with new doctors.’
‘None of them do!’
‘And then we see an empty bottle on the floor, and it’s not from the baby at all. His big brother had one of those athletic power drinks, those “-ade” ones, and he’d spilled some of it, right on top of where the baby had spat up, only he was too scared to say.’
There was a chorus of laughter, cutting off a little too quickly when the three women in the staff break room saw Laird.
Red, he thought.
Just as he’d suspected from her colouring. Tammy Prunty had a magnificent head of gleaming bright carroty, goldy, coppery, autumn-leafy hair with a natural, untamed wave that would absolutely require full confinement beneath a cap any time she was anywhere near surgery or vulnerable babies. No wonder he hadn’t been able to glimpse it before.
She smiled at him, her face receptive, friendly and polite and her blue eyes still alive from her recent laughter. The eyes and the hair went together like burnished gold and lapis lazuli in a piece of Ancient Egyptian jewellery, and the smile was so warm and dazzling it rendered him temporarily without words.
He’d heard her voice, coming past the break room, and had decided to settle the question of her hair now, at the first opportunity, because it had been nagging at him after he and Tarsha had talked about it on Friday night. He hadn’t expected to feel so awkward, standing in the break room doorway the following evening.
The three nurses waited for him to get to the point. What did he want them to do? Which of them did he want to yell at? What information was he seeking?
‘Just checking something,’ he murmured vaguely, and left again, unsettled.
He heard the chorus of female voices pick up before he reached the end of the corridor, and had a weird desire to go back, make himself a coffee and sit down to join in. He would sit across the table from Tammy, so he could try to work out just what it was that he found so appealing about her colouring when he hadn’t thought her pretty before.
He resisted the impulse, squared his shoulders and got on with his life instead.
Back in the NICU, the Parry babies had lived through their first two days but still had a long way to go. No one was even thinking about discharge yet. And they had a new thirty-four-weeker, Cameron Thornton, delivered via Caesarean and now five days old.
He wasn’t on a ventilator and was only here because he had a bright, vocal mother and because, despite the recent scarcity of beds, several babies had been upgraded, transferred or discharged since Thursday night so the NICU now had two places spare, while the high dependency unit and special care unit were overflowing.
‘Something’s not right,’ the mother had been saying since a few hours after his birth, even though he was breathing and feeding and doing all the right things.
Many six-week prems required almost no medical intervention and could be discharged within days of birth. According to Mrs Thornton’s dates, he should have been a thirty-six weeker but a range of well-defined developmental signs had led Dr Lutze, who’d been on hand at the birth, to lower the estimate to thirty-four weeks or even a few days less, and Mrs Thornton had admitted she might have got it wrong.
She didn’t think she was wrong about her current sense of concern, however. ‘He’s my sixth child. A mother knows.’
And sometimes they did.
This mother, Laird wasn’t sure about. The baby’s dad, Alan Thornton, was a senior administrator in the Faculty of Medicine at Yarra University, which meant he had contacts and influence. The mother was supposed to go home tomorrow, and Laird wondered if, with such a large family awaiting her attention, she simply wanted another night alone with her baby, or more time to rest in the relatively cushy environment of her private hospital room.
She did seem genuinely anxious, however. She was hovering over the baby, watching every change in his breathing and in the numbers on his monitor. Alison Vitelli, the mother of the triplets born at twenty-nine weeks, gave her a couple of the same resentful looks she’d given the other mother in here on Thursday night.
It had begun to look as if one of Alison’s babies wouldn’t make it, although two of them were doing better now. The smallest at birth, little Riley, had a whole raft of cascading problems, including a serious bleed in the brain, and Alison was again finding it very hard to deal with a mother whose child seemed barely unwell at all.
This mother wasn’t making a song and dance to earn Mrs Vitelli’s disapproval, however. She sat quietly, very sensitive to the presence of other babies and parents around her.
‘How’s he doing, Mrs Thornton?’ Laird asked her in a murmur.
‘His temp is up—37.8 degrees.’
A tiny bit higher than normal, Laird registered, but a baby wasn’t considered febrile until its temp went over 38. The little guy still had nasal oxygen prongs for several hours each day, but the rate had been turned right down. They’d increased his periods of weaning from the machine, and he should be safely on room air by tomorrow.
Laird felt somewhat annoyed with Melanie Thornton, even though he was possibly being unfair. ‘A mother knows’, plus a tiny elevation in temperature, on top of a low-risk level of prematurity. How could he justify a barrage of expensive or time-consuming tests on that basis? If the NICU hadn’t been, briefly and unusually, the only place with a spare newborn bed, this baby wouldn’t even be here at all.
‘I think you’re worrying too much,’ he told her, managing to keep his voice gentle.
‘He’s my sixth child.’
‘So you’ve said.’
‘Don’t you think I’d be worrying less after five babies?’
‘Not if this is your first premmie. Of course it must feel different. He’s smaller, his skin is thinner, his lungs are less developed, he tires more easily when he tries to feed, all sorts of things.’
‘It’s more than that,’ she insisted. ‘I just feel it.’
Tammy Prunty was back from her break and ready to swap places with Eleanor Liu, who’d briefly taken over care of the Parry twins. Laird experienced an exaggerated wash of relief when he saw her coming, her hair now back under the unflattering blue pancake of its cap, which as usual made the smooth skin of her forehead look too shiny and white. He intercepted her before she reached Eleanor, and lowered his voice.
‘Listen, can you do something about the Thornton baby? Or the Thornton mum, really. She’s bugging me with her earth-mother intuition, and I’m really not convinced anything is wrong.’
‘Do something?’ She made a face. Her mouth went crooked, which drew Laird’s attention to a detail he hadn’t noticed until now. She had the most beautifully shaped lips, soft and smooth and pink.
‘Work out what’s going on,’ he said, as if it should be easy.
‘Work it out? Just like that?’ It was cheerful, just a tiny bit reproachful, as if he was presuming too much on very slight acquaintance, which he probably was. Just because they’d saved a life or two together a couple of days ago. How dared he make the assumption that she was that good at her job? said the twinkling blue eyes.
‘I’ll buy you coffee,’ he said, surprising both of them, then added, to make it clear he’d been joking…half, anyway, ‘Provided your diagnosis is correct, obviously.’
She kept it light, too. ‘Deal! Coffee it is. And not bad coffee in a paper cup either, or it doesn’t count. The proper stuff, in good china. You want me to diagnose via the laying on of hands? Or are we more into reading animal entrails at this hospital?’
‘You’re good with that?’
‘I was seconded to the animal entrail department at Royal Victoria for a whole week.’
‘Mmm, and I’ve heard their facilities are state of the art.’
‘I’ll do what I can, Dr Burchell, but, you know, apparently this hospital does do tests occasionally.’ Her blue eyes were still teasing him, inviting him to share the joke. ‘You could order a couple of those.’
OK, time to reassert his authority before this whole exchange got out of hand. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, ‘when I’ve narrowed down the options. That’s what I need you for.’
Great, Tammy thought. What have I just promised? And why did I keep smirking at him like that, and trying to make him laugh?
Because you wanted to see him smile, said a sneaky little voice inside her.
He’d smiled at her just now from the doorway of the break room, and she’d smiled back, as if they knew each other quite well. She hadn’t noticed in the delivery suite on Thursday night how good-looking he was—not exactly male model material, because he was too seasoned for that and he frowned too much, she could tell from the lines that had begun to etch into his forehead, but definitely at the more attractive end of the male doctor spectrum.
She had only looked after the Thornton baby during Eleanor’s break, and hadn’t taken much notice of little Cameron or his mum, except to note that he looked far too big and strong for this unit, while Mrs Thornton looked too experienced and sensible to be worrying this much.
Hmm. So maybe that meant that she was right.
As a mother of five herself, Tammy trusted the great unwritten rule of paediatrics—listen to the mothers. She’d known her third pregnancy was different two days after she had missed her period. And she’d picked up Ben’s prematurity-related eye problems when his next follow-up test was weeks away.
The day around six years ago when Sarah, her eldest, then aged almost three, had innocently entertained herself by heaping three thick feather pillows on top of four-month-old Lachlan in his bassinet while Tammy had been in the bathroom, something about the quality of the silence coming from the baby’s bedroom had alerted her. She’d stopped mid-moisturise, so to speak, with three blobs of white goo dotted on her face.
She’d raced down the passage and snatched the sound-muffling pillows out of the bassinet, while Sarah had started to giggle at such a funny joke—Mummy looked so silly, throwing the pillows on the floor—to find the baby red-faced and screaming healthily, thank heaven, before any damage had been done.
Yes. Very often, a mother knew.
But what did Mrs Thornton know?
She couldn’t say. ‘Something,’ she repeated stubbornly.
Tammy began to understand why the highly intelligent, highly capable, highly non-vague and non-intuitive Dr Laird Burchell had found this particular mother so irritating and why he had opted for the doctor’s privilege of passing the problem on to a lower hospital life form such as Tammy herself.
The Parry boys were behaving themselves at the moment, and she had a window of eight whole minutes before their next clustered care routine. She decided to stop for a chat beside Cameron’s special premmie crib.
