she is.’
Max’s chest tightened. His parents had never actually abandoned him physically, except for those long cruises and trips they’d taken, leaving him in the care of an aunt. But emotionally?
‘Anyway,’ Sienna went on, ‘I’m assigning the case to you. Make sure you become familiar with it. Your best bet for doing that is to get with Annabelle and go over her patient file. She has followed that baby from the beginning. She knows more about her than anyone, maybe even me, and I’m Baby Hope’s doctor.’
Max’s heart twinged out a warning. The last thing he wanted to do was spend even more time with Annabelle, because it was...
Dangerous.
But what else could he do? Say no? Tell Sienna that he couldn’t be a professional when it came to dealing with his almost-ex? Not hardly.
Maybe Sienna saw something in his face. ‘Is that going to be a problem considering the circumstances? I’m sorry, I had no idea you two even knew each other.’
If there was one thing Max was good at, it was disengaging his brain from his heart.
‘It won’t be a problem.’
‘Good.’
He’d work with Anna. Until it was over. Because one way or the other it would be. The baby would either have a new heart, or she wouldn’t. The twinge he’d felt seconds earlier grew to an ache—just like the one he’d dealt with on an almost daily basis while working in the Sudan. He rubbed a palm over the spot for a second to ease the pressure.
‘How often do hearts come available?’
‘Do you mean here in Cheltenham? Some years there are more. Some years, less.’
‘How many transplants have you done?’
‘One. In my whole career. We deal with lots of holes in the heart and diverting blood flow, but hypoplastic cases are rare at Teddy’s.’
So why was she handing the case over to him? This was a chance that she’d just admitted didn’t come across her desk very often. ‘Are you sure you don’t want it?’
‘Very.’ Something flashed through her brown eyes. A trickle of fear? His gaze shifted lower. Was she worried about the health of her own baby?
He remembered well the worry over whether a foetus would make it to term. In fact he remembered several times when he’d prayed over Annabelle as she’d slept. Those prayers had gone unanswered.
‘When are you due?’
‘Too soon. But right now it feels like for ever.’ Her glance caught his. ‘Everything is fine with the baby, if that’s what you’re wondering. My handing that case over has nothing to do with superstition. I just don’t think I have the endurance right now for what could be a long, complicated surgery.’ She pressed a hand to the small of her back. ‘And if for some reason I go earlier than I expect, I don’t want to pass Baby Hope over to someone else at the last second. I want it to be now, when it’s a deliberate decision on both of our parts.’
That he could understand. The need to be prepared for what might happen. Unlike in his relationship with Annabelle when he’d impulsively issued an ultimatum, hoping to save her from the grief of repeating a tragic cycle—not to mention the dangerous physical symptoms she’d been experiencing.
It had worked. But not quite in the way he’d expected.
This was not where he wanted his thoughts to head. He’d do better to stick with what he could control and leave the rest of it to the side at the moment.
‘Your patients will be in good hands. I’ll make sure of it.’
‘Thank you. That means a lot to me.’ She sent him a smile that was genuine. ‘Do you have any other questions before we officially end our tour and go on to discuss actual cases?’
‘Just one.’
‘All right.’ The wariness he’d sensed during his mention of Montanari filtered back into her eyes. She had no need to be worried. He was done with discussing personal issues.
‘Is the food as bad here as it was at my last gig?’
Sienna actually laughed. ‘I’ll let you be the judge of that. I don’t mind it. But then again, I eat almost anything, as long as it isn’t alive or shaped like a snake.’
‘Well, on those two points we can agree. So I take it Teddy’s doesn’t serve exotic fare.’
‘Nope. Just watery potatoes and tasteless jelly.’
He glanced at his watch and smiled back at her. ‘Well, then, in the name of science, I think I should go and check out the competition. Can we save the case discussion until later?’
‘Yes, I’m ready for a break as well. And you can tell me what you think once you’ve sampled what the canteen has to offer. Just watch out for the nurses.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Some of them have heard you were coming. While you’re checking out the food, don’t be surprised if they’re checking you out.’
Would they be? He’d made it a point not to get involved with women at all since his separation. And he wasn’t planning on changing that.
And what of Annabelle? She was a nurse. Had she been checking him out as well?
Of course not. But on that note, he’d better go and get something into his stomach. Before he did something stupid and went back down to the first floor to check on a very ill baby, and the protective nurse who hovered over her.
Annabelle wasn’t good for his equilibrium. And she very definitely wasn’t good for his objectivity. And no matter what, he had to keep that. Because if he allowed his heart to become too entangled with her as he cared for his patients, he would have trouble doing his job.
What Baby Hope and the rest of his patients needed was a doctor who could keep his emotions out of the surgical ward. No matter how hard that might prove to be.
* * *
Annabelle grabbed a tray and headed for the line of choices. She wasn’t hungry. Or so she told herself. Her stomach had knotted again and again until there was almost no room in it for anything other than the big bowl of worry she’d dished up for herself that morning. Baby Hope was getting weaker. The crisis she’d had this morning proved it. If Max hadn’t been there, Hope might have...
No, don’t think about that. And Max had not been the only one in that room who could have saved her. Sienna would have called for the exact same treatment protocol. She’d seen the other woman in action.
Once upon a time, Annabelle had expected Max to play the role of saviour. It hadn’t been fair to him. Or to her. He’d finally cracked under the pressure of it all. And so had she. At least her body had.
A few days after she’d lost her last babies, her abdomen and legs had swelled up with fluid from all of the hormones she’d been on and she’d been in pain; Max had rushed her to A&E. They’d given her an ultrasound again, thinking maybe some foetal tissue had been left behind. But what they’d found was that her ovaries had swelled to many times their normal size from harvesting the eggs.
There’d been no magic-wand treatment to make it all go away. Her body had had to do the hard work. She’d worn support hose to keep the fluid from accumulating in her legs, and had had to sleep sitting up in a chair to make it easier to breathe as her hormone levels had gradually gone back to normal. And the look on Max’s face when the doctors had told him the cause...
It had come right on the heels of him telling her that he was done trying to have babies. It had made everything that much worse. But she’d still desperately wanted children, so she’d started keeping secret recordings of her temperature. Only the more secretive she’d got over the coming weeks, the more distant he’d become. In the end, the death knell had sounded before