said, ‘from what I can make out. Then he had nothing to do with her the next day. I would say he wasn’t a good caretaker of lovely young hearts.’
‘Oh, he’s St Gerry now.’ Steele rolled his eyes.
‘And I shall be St Macey for a while after I die and then people will start to remember what a cantankerous old thing I really was.’
He laughed and looked into her wise eyes. ‘You don’t miss anything, do you?’
‘Not with the new medication.’ She smiled. ‘I’m back.’
‘God help us, then.’ Steele smiled.
‘You wouldn’t have met him, though,’ Macey said, and the smile was wiped off his face at her perception.
‘Sorry?’
‘He was in Greece, had been there a couple of months when it happened, well, according to the porter who took me for my X-ray … That’s what he said to the radiographer anyway.’
‘I believe so.’
‘So why are you going to his memorial service if you never met?’
Steele said nothing, just gave Macey a small nod and walked off.
He sat at the desk and tried to write notes, but he ached. He actually ached sitting there.
He missed Candy, more than he had ever missed anyone.
He’d never missed anybody really, apart from his grandmother when she’d died.
It felt like grief. It really did.
It was grief because he missed her. He even missed the bump of her twins, or was he just imagining that?
He pulled up his emails and looked at the image of Gerry and it wasn’t jealousy he was feeling. Steele understood that now.
It was guilt.
Guilt because this young man had died. Guilt that he might be swooping in and raising his babies because he couldn’t have any of his own.
Steele let out a breath and then jumped slightly as a voice startled him.
‘I’m here to see Macey Anderson …’ Steele glanced up and saw a good-looking middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie and carrying a huge bunch of flowers.
He was nervous, he was anxious and he was hers, Steele knew.
‘I’ll take you over.’ He stood and as they walked to the bed he would never forget the small cry of recognition that escaped Macey as she looked down the ward and for the first time saw her son.
He ran to her.
Those last two steps he actually ran and Steele pulled the curtains around them as Macey held her fifty-five-year-old baby for the very first time.
Some things were private but Steele knew he’d just witnessed love.
Steele checked in on Macey a couple of hours later. She had gone to bed for a lie down, but he found her sitting up, smiling, with a huge bunch of flowers beside her bed and a photo album that her son had brought for her.
‘I’m a grandmother,’ she said, showing Steele a photo. ‘And in two weeks I’ll be a great-grandmother. He was a bit worried about telling me that.’ Macey gave a delighted smile. ‘His daughter, Samantha, is only eighteen. They’re coming to visit me when I’m home.’
‘You’re going to be busy, Macey,’ Steele said.
‘I shall be. I’d say I’m going to have to hang around for a while yet.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you know, I always worried what sort of home he’d gone to, more than I worried about what he thought of me. He was raised beautifully. They loved him from the moment they got him and still do … It’s a huge weight off my mind.’
‘I’m very glad,’ he said, and then he moved to go because she was cutting a bit close to the bone.
‘I wondered if they’d love him as their own,’ Macey said. ‘I wondered if he’d resent them if he found out he wasn’t biologically theirs, but they were just so open about it …’
‘I’m very pleased to hear that,’ Steele responded. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’
As he went to do that Macey’s words stopped him.
‘So she’s in Hawaii…’
‘Sorry?’ he said, and turned.
Macey gave him an odd look. ‘Are we going to pretend that you don’t know who I’m talking about?’
‘I don’t,’ Steele said.
‘Do you think you stop being a matron? I used to know everything that went on in my department. Do you really think I just lie here?’
Steele had never had anyone meddle in his love life, or lack of a love life, and he wasn’t going to start now. ‘I have to go, Macey.’
‘You just interrupted me, Doctor. Why is she in Hawaii and you’re here?’
‘I don’t discuss my private life …’
‘But you’re fine with me discussing mine?’
‘You’re my job,’ Steele said to her, but she just smiled at him.
‘And you’re hard work!’ she said. ‘You’re certainly not so chipper these days.’
‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t bring my problems to work with me.’
‘How are you, Steele?’ she said. ‘And that’s Matron asking.’
Steele remembered Candy sitting here, crying, on this very bed. It had been Macey who had told them both that Candy was pregnant after all. He sat on the bed and this time he was there for himself rather than Macey and he told her how he felt.
‘Sad.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I miss her.’
‘You don’t have to miss her, though.’
‘She needs this break.’
‘Perhaps, but she’ll come back and you’ll be gone, living miles away, immersed in your new job. That’s not the start that you two need.’
‘She needs time to think.’
‘Of course she does,’ Macey said, ‘but you can have too much time and get yourself into a space that it’s very hard to get out of.’
She was right. Steele knew that. Of course, Candy’s parents would soon come round. From the little he knew about them, he knew that they loved their daughter. They would want to help. They would probably suggest that she move back in with them. He thought about trying to forge a relationship with her parents as gatekeepers.
They didn’t need to forge anything, Steele realised.
He didn’t need to question himself about his motives towards the pregnancy.
He loved her.
It was that easy.
Macey watched the smile that spread on his face and, yes, some things were private but she knew too that she’d just witnessed the realisation of love.
Steele sat through the long memorial service and heard what an amazing man St Gerry had been, but it didn’t hurt him now.
Indeed, he could laugh at a few of his antics.
By all accounts he had been a bit wild, a bit bold, and now, as the shock of his death started to recede, the real Gerry started to appear.
They all stood as his parents cut a ribbon for the new resuscitation ward and everybody headed up towards Admin for drinks and nibbles and more talk about Gerry, but Steele chose not to go there.
‘Steele!’