want to go. It’ll give me a chance to run by and check in on Nate while I’m in London.’
‘Of course.’
Well, if fate didn’t want to help him, he was stuck. Besides, he didn’t blame her for wanting to go, if it meant making a side trip to see them. It was doubtful her family would want him there, though. Not with everything that had happened. But he could think about that later.
He decided to change the subject. ‘Are you ready to go see Hope?’
‘Yes, just let me check in and make sure there are no other urgent cases I need to attend to.’
Five minutes later, they were in Hope’s room, gowned and gloved to minimise exposure to pathogens that could put the tiny girl in danger. She was still sedated, still intubated. But her colour was good, no more cyanosis. Something inside Max relaxed. Her atrial fibrillation hadn’t returned after the scare yesterday, and her new heart was beating with gusto.
The empty chair next to the baby’s incubator made a few muscles tense all over again. This child would never have a concerned loved one sitting beside her to give her extra love and care. At least not her mum.
As if Annabelle knew what he was thinking, she lowered herself into that seat, her gaze on the baby inside. She murmured something that he couldn’t hear and then slid her hand through one of the openings of the special care cot. She stroked the baby’s hair, cooing to her in a quiet voice. More muscles went on high alert.
Had she done this for each of her nieces and nephews? The fact that she would never hold a child she’d given birth to made him sad. And angry. Sometimes the world was just cruel, when you thought about it. Here was a woman who could give unlimited amounts of love to a child, and she couldn’t have one.
But life wasn’t fair. There were wars and starving children and terrible destructive forces of nature that laid waste to whole communities.
Annabelle glanced up at him. ‘The difference between how she looked thirty-six hours ago and right now are like day and night.’
He remembered. He also remembered how they’d almost lost her an hour after her surgery.
But this tiny tyke was a fighter, just as Anna had said she was. She wanted to live. Her body had fought hard, almost as if she’d known that if she held on long enough, relief would come.
And it had.
Maybe life was sometimes fair after all.
He laid a hand on top of the incubator. ‘And so far she’s handling all of this like a champ.’
‘Where will she go after this?’
The question wasn’t aimed at him. But he felt a need to answer it anyway. ‘I’m sure there are a lot of people who would take Hope in a second. She’ll get a lot of love.’
‘I hope so.’
‘There’s no chance that her mum will come back and want her later?’
‘It’s been over two weeks. She knew that Hope was born with a heart defect. There’s always a chance, but if she’d wanted to find her, surely she would have come back to the hospital by now?’
He nodded. ‘What do social services say?’
‘That if her mum doesn’t return, she’ll be placed in a foster home and then put up for adoption.’
That brought up another point. He took his hand off the cot. ‘You’ve never thought again about adopting?’
That had been another sticky subject towards the end of their marriage. She’d refused to even entertain the idea.
‘My sister’s experience made me afraid of going that route. But after spending so much time with Hope, I’m more open to it than I was in the past. Not every case ends in heartache, like Mallory’s did. I don’t know if I’d be able to adopt Hope, but surely they would let me consider another child with special needs. I love my nieces and nephews, but...’ She stopped as if remembering that she had a very ill nephew.
She withdrew her hand, staring into the special care cot.
‘But it’s not the same. I get it.’ He wanted to make sure she knew that there was nothing wrong with wanting someone of your own to love. He’d once felt that way about Anna. That she made his life complete in a way nothing else could, not even his work in Africa, as worthy as that might be. But in the end, his dream had been right about one thing: she hadn’t wanted him to stay.
‘You’ve probably seen plenty of needy children in Africa.’
‘Yes. There are some incredible needs on that continent. I’ve sometimes wished...’ He’d sometimes wished he could give a couple of kids a stable home without poverty or fear, but with the way his parents had been... Well, it wasn’t something he saw himself tackling on his own.
Then there was the unfinished business with Annabelle. It didn’t lend itself to making a new start. Especially when the previous chapter was still buzzing in the background. It was another thing his dream had got right. Annabelle was out of reach. She had been for a long time. He needed to sign those papers. Only then could he move forward.
He’d been thinking more and more along those lines over the last several days. She was here. His excuse of old was that he wasn’t quite sure where to find her. But that no longer held water.
He couldn’t have hired a solicitor to track her down back then? Or have gone through her parents?
Probably. But he’d believed if she wanted that divorce badly enough, she would find him.
‘You’ve sometimes wished what?’
‘That I could make life better for a child or two.’
She swivelled in her chair, her face turning up to study his. ‘You once told me you no longer wanted children.’
Yes, he had. After her last miscarriage, he’d told her that to protect her health and to save what was evidently unsalvageable: their marriage. So he’d told a lie. Except when he’d said the words, they hadn’t been a lie. He’d just wanted it all to stop.
And it had.
‘I was tired of all the hoops we had to leap through. Of all of the disappointment.’
‘I’m so sorry, Max.’ Her face went from looking up at him as if trying to understand to bending down to stare at the floor.
What the hell?
Realising she might have misunderstood his words, he knelt down beside her in a hurry, taking her chin and forcing her to look at him. ‘I wasn’t disappointed in you, Anna. I was disappointed for you. For both of us. I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make everything right, and when I couldn’t... It just wore me down, made me feel helpless in a way I’d never felt before.’
‘Like Jessica must feel right now with Nate.’ Her eyes swam with moisture, although none of it spilled over the lower rim of her eyelids.
‘She has a great support network in you and the rest of the family.’ Something Max hadn’t felt as if he’d given to Annabelle. He’d withdrawn more and more of his emotional support, afraid to get attached to a foetus that would never see the light of day. And towards the end, that was what he’d started thinking of them as. Foetuses and not babies. And he’d damned himself each time he’d used that term.
‘She does. Her husband has been her rock as well.’
Unlike him? His jaw tightened, teeth clenching together in an effort to keep from apologising for something that he couldn’t change.
Her eyes focused on him. And then her hand went to his cheek. ‘Don’t. I wasn’t accusing you of not being there, Max. I was the one who pulled away. You did what you could.’
‘It wasn’t enough.’
Her lashes