Can this husband and wife...

...be reunited for Christmas?

Losing the baby they desperately wanted tore doctors Ellie and Andy Fraser’s marriage apart. Though they still share a home, they no longer share their lives. But when they find themselves caring for an abandoned baby, they must temporarily join forces, and as Christmas approaches, Ellie and Andy start to fall in love all over again. Is it time they created their own Christmas miracle?

MEREDITH WEBBER lives on the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, but takes regular trips west into the Outback, fossicking for gold or opal. These breaks in the beautiful and sometimes cruel red earth country provide her with an escape from the writing desk and a chance for her mind to roam free—not to mention getting some much needed exercise. They also supply the kernels of so many stories that it’s hard for her to stop writing!

Also by Meredith Webber

A Sheikh to Capture Her Heart

Healed by Her Army Doc

New Year Wedding for the Crown Prince

A Wife for the Surgeon Sheikh

The Halliday Family miniseries

A Forever Family for the Army Doc

Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh

A Miracle for the Baby Doctor

From Bachelor to Daddy

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Doctors’ Christmas Reunion

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09031-5

THE DOCTORS’ CHRISTMAS REUNION

© 2019 Meredith Webber

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

ELLIE FRASER STUDIED her husband across the breakfast table.

Rather stern profile, with a straight nose and high forehead—until he smiled, of course, when the crinkly lines fanning out from his eyes made you want to smile back at him.

Brown, those eyes were, and she knew them both warm and soft as a cuddly blanket and hard as stones.

Dark hair, cut stubble-short—a number one, but due for a cut, so nearly a number two at the moment. It would feel like the fuzz on her old teddy if she ran her hand across it, but it had been a while since that had happened.

And that funny little whorl of hair, just on the hairline above his left eyebrow. A whorl she’d touched so often, twirled around her fingers, back when his hair was longer...

Her heart ached, just from looking at him.

She’d loved Andy. She knew that with the deep certainty that had been with her from the day he’d asked her to marry him.

She loved him still—she knew that, too—but she had somehow lost him, and along with him the oneness of them as a couple that had seemed so normal for so long.

Ellie and Andy. Andy and Ellie. All through university; through the almost soul-destroying work schedules of their internship; through their volunteer work in Africa—where they’d seen the worst that human beings could do to each other—their oneness had remained. Their goals, dreams and futures had been inextricably entwined in a way she’d thought would never fray, let alone be pulled apart.

And yet right now they couldn’t have been further apart, for all that Andy had asked her up to his flat in the top section of the old house to discuss some idea he had about a soccer team that he was setting up, which seemed to be of far more interest to him than the split in their relationship.

Or was it a useful diversion from it?

She’d thrown herself into work, but still had far too much time to think of the past and what might have been...

Andy had even cooked her breakfast, though she could have done without the pain that the pretend intimacy of eating together brought with it.

‘So I thought I’d have a barbecue here on Saturday—about lunchtime, before the game. Until we get a proper clubroom there’s nowhere else. I’ll ask some of the older team members to organise the food—just sausages and onions and bread, or bread rolls.’ He looked up at her and grinned. ‘And, yes, I’ll make sure the boys do some of the shopping, not just send the girls.’

Heaven help me! We’ve barely spoken for months, apart from work stuff, and still that grin makes my stomach churn...

Ellie swallowed a sigh along with the last of her toast, left the dirty dishes on the table—after all he had invited her as a guest—and made her way downstairs to her own flat, with its well-set-up medical surgery, enclosed under the old timbered home.

Ellie and Andy had moved to Maytown six months ago—she pregnant at last and Andy excited to be back in his home town, doing the job he’d always dreamed of doing: providing medical care for people in the often harsh Outback.

Maytown, a small town in the mid-west, had been established when settlers had brought sheep to the area, although now it was mainly cattle country. A large coal mine, opened twenty kilometres north of the town, had brought in extra business in recent years, with some of the mining families settling in the town while other workers lived in the on-site camp, flying in and flying out from places on the coast, working shifts of two weeks on duty then one week off.

Ellie had become as keen as he was on the town, both from Andy’s talk of growing up there and her visits to his family, so they’d leapt on Andy’s parents’ suggestion they buy the old house and practice. Andy’s parents had both been doctors, his mother running the practice, his father working at the hospital. The senior Frasers had wanted to move closer to the coast, cutting back on their workloads as they prepared for retirement.

To Andy and Ellie, it had seemed a magical coincidence—a little bit of serendipity—because they’d both wanted to bring up their longed-for child in the country. And it had been an ideal situation, with Ellie working from the surgery downstairs, knowing when she had the baby she’d get help but would still always be on hand, while Andy took over his father’s post at the hospital.

They’d moved in late July, and Ellie had practically danced through the old house, imagining it festooned with Christmas decorations. With the baby due in November, their first Christmas in their new home would be spent celebrating his or her—they hadn’t wanted to know the sex—first Christmas, too.

Just the three of them this year, a family...

It should have been perfect.

Until, at twenty-three weeks, when they’d settled in, and everything seemed to be going so well, she’d lost the baby and somehow, in the ensuing pain and anguish, lost Andy, too.

They’d turned to each other for comfort and support in those first hard weeks, and had also discovered that they were part of a very caring community. The local people had helped them through their grief with comforting words and little acts of kindness, flowers left on the front steps, a picture drawn by a kindergarten child, and more food than they could ever eat.

And, slowly, they’d made their way back to a different kind of peace, each wrapped in their private sorrow, but together still.

Until, six weeks after the loss...

Ellie sighed again.

Had she been wrong?

Pushed too hard?

She didn’t know.

But when she’d talked to Andy about one last attempt at IVF—not immediately, of course, but when her body was ready—Andy’s response had staggered her.

He had been adamant—enraged, really. His answer had been an adamant no.

Their two—well, three now—failed IVF attempts had already cost them too much, both financially and emotionally, and no amount of arguing was going to change his mind. He was done.

Completely done.

And if she thought they needed a baby to make their marriage complete then it couldn’t be much of a marriage.

Stunned by his pronouncement, Ellie’s immediate reaction had been to pack her bags and head back to the city, but she’d grown far too fond of the town and its people to just walk out and leave them without a GP.

Early on, she and Andy had tried to talk—one or other of them calling a truce—but the talk had soon become a row and now too many bitter, hurtful words hung in the air between them. Although Ellie could concede in her head that they would never have a child, she found it so much harder to accept it in her heart.

Even harder to accept that Andy wouldn’t consider trying...

So she’d opted to stay, but had packed her bags, moving into the flat downstairs, built to house the locums his parents had hired to replace Andy’s mother during her own maternity leave.

Did the townspeople know?

Was there gossip?

Ellie assumed they did and that the gossip existed as it did in all country towns, but few attempted to discuss their situation, although she often felt the warmth of their compassion.

The separate living and work situation had turned out for the best, Ellie thought glumly as she made her way through to the surgery and nodded a good morning to Maureen, her receptionist-cum-nurse, who was busy hanging tinsel along the front of her desk.

Dismissing the idea that it could possibly be that close to Christmas when she herself felt so bleak, her thoughts tracked back to Andy... But how were they going to cope with Christmas?

Didn’t the very word conjure up togetherness?

Joy and laughter and sharing...

Happiness, and hope for the future...

Could they carry on with Christmas celebrations as if nothing had ever happened? Sit at one of their tables—just the two of them—with silly paper hats on their heads, reading even sillier jokes?

The ache in Ellie’s heart deepened, but suddenly she knew.

She couldn’t do Christmas, not here, not with Andy—she couldn’t go on with things the way they were. If she advertised now, she might find a young doctor, fresh out of GP training, who’d like the challenge of working in the bush. Or a skilled, well-qualified migrant, happy to spend three years working in the country before applying for permanent citizenship.

She was sure there’d be someone.

She wouldn’t actually get a new appointee until January, when staff changes were generally made, but if she stayed until just before Christmas, then Andy could manage any emergencies for a week or two.

She’d go—

Where would she go?

Where the hell would she go?

Back to the city?

To what?

Ellie shook her head. That idea had zero appeal to her.

And she’d grown to love this town and its people so maybe she should go to another country town—one without Andy in it!

Ellie could feel her heart weeping at the thought, but she had to accept they couldn’t go on as they were.

‘What’s Andy up to with this soccer club idea of his?’

Maureen interrupted her gloomy thoughts as she pushed the final tack into place on the tinsel and fetched Ellie the mail.

Ellie shook her head, clearing Christmas—and leaving—from her mind.

Why had Andy started the soccer club? Had he told her while she was busy checking out all the familiar bits of the man she knew so well?

Loved, even?

‘I know he’s having a barbecue for them on Saturday; our side veranda seems to have become the unofficial clubhouse. And some of the kids I’ve seen coming and going are far from athletic types, so I guess he’s doing it to raise their fitness levels.’

‘My Josie’s joined,’ Maureen said, ‘and you know the worry I have with her weight. I would have thought she’d be the last person picked for any team, so maybe fitness is behind it.’

Ellie thought of the motley lot she’d seen on the side veranda from time to time, and for the first time wondered just what Andy was up to with this soccer club he’d started. The ones she’d noticed were a very mixed bunch.

There were a couple of gangly Sudanese lads from the group of refugee families who’d been re-settled in the country town, a young teenage girl who was often in trouble with the police, two girls from a remote aboriginal settlement who boarded in town for schooling, and a rather chubby lad she suspected was bullied at school...

Ellie took the mail through to her consulting room, aware yet again of the painful arguments that had split their oneness, and the gulf that had widened between them. Once Andy would have shared his interest in the team, and she’d have shared his enthusiasm...

This was no good, she needed to focus on work.

Ellie scanned the patient list, surprised to see Madeleine Courtney back again. Madeleine was a puzzle—one she would have shared with Andy had things been different.

But they weren’t, she reminded herself sharply, stamping down on the little kernel of unhappiness inside her before it could open, overwhelming her with memories and grief...

Only one other name stood out—Chelsea Smith. She frowned, trying to remember a patient of that name, then rubbed at her forehead because she knew she’d be frowning and it wouldn’t be long before she had permanent frown lines, and became known as Grumpy Doc Fraser.

‘Who’s this Chelsea Smith?’ she called to Maureen.

‘She’s a new patient. She phoned earlier so I put her in that space you leave every morning for emergencies.’

Thanks a bunch, Ellie thought, but she didn’t say it. New patients always took longer to treat as Ellie had to gather as much information as possible from them.

But Maureen had done the right thing, they made a point of never turning anyone away.

Shrugging off her rambling thoughts, she sorted through the mail, setting bills aside and tossing advertising bumf into the bin.

Andy sat in the tiny space that was his hospital ‘office’, scanning the internet for videos of soccer coaching, although images of Ellie as she’d sat in the kitchen again kept intruding. The hospital was quiet—too quiet—leaving him far too much time to think of Ellie and the mess their marriage was in.

Shouldn’t losing a child have brought them closer together, not thrown up a wall between them?

It was because thinking of Ellie caused him physical pain that he had thrown himself into establishing a Maytown soccer team, allowing soccer to block out all but his most insistent thoughts.

Would their son have played soccer?

The wave of pain that accompanied that thought sent Andy back to the videos.

How could he not have known how much it would hurt—losing the baby, losing his son?

He took a deep breath and went back to the videos. He needed to do something constructive and worthwhile.

The call to the emergency room—hardly big enough to deserve the name ‘department’—sent him in search of work, which was an even better diversion than the soccer team.

Although the ghost of Ellie always worked beside him, for this had been their dream: to work together in the country, bringing much-needed medical services to people who’d so often had to go without.

The patient was a child, a young boy—maybe twelve—bravely biting his lip to stem the tears while he clutched at his injured side.

‘Bloody fence strainers broke,’ a man Andy assumed was the father said. ‘The barbed wire whipped around him like a serpent. I’m Tim Roberts, and this here’s Jonah.’

Andy shook hands with the pair, then leant over to examine the wound. A red weal showed where the wire had hit the boy, but the serious wound was just above his right groin.

‘Bit of a barb got in there, but the wife pulled it out with tweezers and put some cream on it last night, but you can see how it is now.’

The area was red, swollen, and obviously infected.

‘I’ll need to open it up,’ he said. ‘We’ll just give Jonah light sedation and clean out the wound.’

There was no need to mention there could be damage to the bowel, but Andy would have to look carefully, which was why he’d chosen to give an anaesthetic over a local pain injection.

His mind ran through the roster of staff on duty. Tony was a good theatre nurse but Andrea—who was the only nurse trained to give anaesthetic—was off duty. He’d have to phone Ellie to come in and do it.

And the stupid flip of his heart when he even thought her name reminded him that the love he felt for his wife had never gone away.

Yes, they’d parted—pushed apart by the pain of loss—but the love he felt for her was as strong as ever.

Or was it longing more than love...?

‘I won’t be able to operate until later,’ he told Tim. ‘If you’ve other things to do in town, Jonah will be quite safe here. In fact, he’ll probably be thoroughly spoilt by the nurses.

Ellie was about to tackle her first patient of the day when her cellphone rang.

Her heart leapt when she saw it was Andy.

‘Sorry, El, love, but could you grab a half-hour later in the day to do a mild anaesthetic for me? Kid with infection just above the right groin. X-ray shows foreign object in there. He’s had breakfast so I’m happy to wait a few hours. How’s your day looking?’

Ellie switched back to her patient list.

‘I could do eleven-thirty,’ she said. ‘That would run into my lunch break so there’d be no rush.’

‘Grand!’

And he was gone, so suddenly that Ellie found herself peering at her cellphone as if it, rather than Andy, had caused the abrupt farewell.

Grand?

How could their love have grown so cold that ‘grand’ had become ‘goodbye’?

She was being silly, of course. It had been months since a telephone conversation had finished with ‘love you’.

Although he had called her ‘love’, the way he always had done...

That was just habit, she told herself firmly and hauled her mind back to work.

For all their separate lives at home, their professional lives had barely changed, their work lives remaining stable as they followed their usual routine, assisting each other when needed, discussing patients they shared.

They were even enjoying the togetherness of that side of things—well, Ellie did and she thought Andy seemed to...

Although that would stop—and soon—if she went ahead and moved.

Even thinking about it caused her pain.

Putting the mail aside for later, she powered up her computer, checked test results that had come in, then switched to her appointments list.

Back in work mode, she speed-read down the appointments, putting asterisks against the patients who’d be coming in for test results so she could be sure she’d re-read the results before the patient arrived.

Busy with the list, she barely heard the outer door open, but Maureen was greeting the first arrival, no doubt handing her the patient information forms to fill in.

She pressed the buzzer, and heard Maureen tell Chelsea to go on through.

It was a pregnant young woman who came in. A very young, not very pregnant woman, slight and blonde, who seemed strangely familiar.

‘Don’t I know you?’ she asked, smiling at the obviously nervous young woman.

A nod in response.

Ellie smiled again as she asked, ‘Do I have to guess how, or will you tell me?’

Another nod, then Chelsea drew in a deep breath.

‘I thought Andy might be here,’ she said, ‘although Aunty Meg always worked here and Uncle Doug at the hospital.’

Aunty Meg, Uncle Doug: Andy’s parents?

Light dawned.

‘Of course I know you! You’re Chelsea Fraser. I’m so sorry I didn’t recognise you, but you’ve kind of grown since you were flower-girl at our wedding. Did you come here to see Andy?’

Chelsea frowned.

‘Well, I came to see both of you really. I’m pregnant, you see, and I wondered whether I could stay with you until I have the baby, because you probably heard Mum and Dad split up and Mum’s gone off to find herself, whatever that means. She’s in India, or maybe Nepal, and Dad’s gone to Antarctica again, and Harry—you remember my older brother Harry?—well, he’s supposed to be looking after me but he’s at uni most of the time or out partying so he’s never there.’

‘You’re all on your own?’ Ellie asked.

‘Well, Alex—that’s my boyfriend—he comes over...’

Tears began to stream down Chelsea’s face, and Ellie left her chair to walk around and wrap her arms around the unhappy, lonely child. Ellie held her tightly and let her cry out her tension, handing her the box of tissues when the sobs became hiccups as the tears dried up.

‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ Chelsea whispered, patting the bump. ‘But I was so lonely and Alex loves me, and I was on the Pill but must have forgotten to take it or something and then I wasn’t sure, you see... But of course I was pregnant and Alex wanted to tell his parents and have me come and live with them, but then they might think Mum and Dad are really awful parents, and they’re not, you know, they’ve just kind of lost their way.’

Tell me about it! Ellie thought, but didn’t say, although she did think Chelsea’s mother could have waited a little longer to find herself. She shook the thought away and pressed Maureen’s buzzer twice to warn her the next appointment would be late.

‘They brought us up to be independent,’ Chelsea explained, ‘and to think for ourselves, but I didn’t want everyone at school to know about this, or the cousins and all, so I thought if you and Andy let me stay here until the baby’s born, then I can go back to school and no one would know.’

Except there’d be a baby somewhere, Ellie thought, but didn’t say.

‘No one back home knows because it’s been cold and I’ve been able to wear baggy jumpers back at home. I told my friends my uncle needed me out at his place in the bush and here I am.’

She’d so obviously practised what she was going to say that it came out in a slightly garbled rush, and Ellie had to be careful not to smile.

‘Does anyone know where you are?’

Chelsea nodded.

‘I told Harry and he thought it was a good idea. He said there wasn’t anything Mum or Dad could do to help at the moment and at least I’d be safe with you and Andy.’

‘Of course you will be,’ Ellie assured her, then, after a niggle of doubt, added, ‘I’ll have to talk to Andy, but I’m sure he’d be happy to have you. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of bedrooms in the old house.’

‘And there’s the little flat downstairs. We often stayed in it when we came for Christmas.’

My little flat.

And with Chelsea here how long would it take for word to travel along the family grapevine and Andy’s parents to realise things had gone wrong between her and Andy? They’d kept it from them while Meg had been going through chemo for breast cancer and they hadn’t wanted to heap more worries on her head.

Meg had become more of a friend than a mother-in-law for Ellie, who’d known from the first time she’d met Andy’s family that she’d love to be one of their warm, happy household. Her own father was dead, and her mother drifted from one country to another, one man to another, much as Chelsea’s mother appeared to be doing. Family had been a big gap in Ellie’s life.

So upsetting Meg with the story of their split had never even been a consideration.

And now here was Chelsea, and there was no getting away from it, despite the current circumstances, the Frasers were Ellie’s family now, so Chelsea was her responsibility as well as Andy’s.

‘I should be examining you, not chatting,’ she said. ‘Do you want to hop up on the couch? Nothing invasive, I just need to feel what’s going on then we’ll take some blood for tests, and check your blood pressure and pulse, and Maureen will make an appointment for you to come in for a scan later in the week.

‘Relax!’ she told Chelsea as her patient lay rigid on the couch. ‘Do you know how pregnant you might be?’

A quick shake of the head was the only answer.

‘No worries!’ Ellie told her gently. ‘We can do a measure of what we call the fundal height and that will give us an approximate time. It’s not entirely accurate, and is a better guide after twenty weeks, but let’s see.’

The measurement of fourteen centimetres gave her a gestation period of twelve to sixteen weeks.

‘Does that seem about right to you? Can you remember when you had your last period?’

Chelsea shook her head.

‘I was so sad and lonely when Mum went away, and then Dad did, too. Alex has been my boyfriend for ages, and he comforted me and stayed over a few times and it just happened.’

Of course it did, Ellie thought, but didn’t say. Poor kid must have been totally lost, with her parents not only breaking up but taking off. Mum heaven knew where, and Dad—who Ellie remembered now was a climatologist—heading off to the ice and snow at the very bottom of the world.

I need to talk to Andy.

This thought had passed through Ellie’s head earlier, but now it became insistent.

‘Well, you seem totally fit to me,’ she told Chelsea, ‘and as you know there’s plenty of room for you. How did you get here? Did you bring clothes?’

‘Train, and not much, to answer both your questions. The train got in this morning, and as far as clothes, I knew it would be hot, and I didn’t really know what to get.’

Of course, the train had come in this morning; it was the big weekly event in the town, for it not only brought people but fresh fruit and vegetables.

‘Well, how about you go upstairs and choose a room along the back veranda—Andy uses the side one for his soccer club and people come and go along the front one. Have a shower and then, if you’re up to it, you could walk uptown—it’s only two blocks—and check out the limited array of clothes in the general store. I’ll phone them and tell them to put anything you want on our account.’

‘Oh, no, I’ve got my own credit card,’ Chelsea protested. ‘But I’d like to get a few things.’

‘Great! And when you get back you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen. There’s bread and ham and cheese for sandwiches, and plenty of salad things. I might be late back for lunch as I have to help Andy with an op, but just look after yourself. And come and see Maureen down here if you need to ask anything. I know that doesn’t sound very hospitable, but I’ve got patients all morning. Will you be okay?’

To Ellie’s surprise, Chelsea flung her arms around her neck and hugged her hard, tears in her voice as she said, ‘You’ve been so kind. I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m really grateful!’

‘Of course you deserve it,’ Ellie said, a little choked up herself. ‘You’re family!’

How best to help her?

What would Andy advise?

CHAPTER TWO

SHE SET ALL thoughts of Chelsea—and Andy—aside as she went through her list of morning patients, pleased with some, concerned about others, mostly elderly men who seemed more aimless and depressed than ill. In other places, they could have a community garden or an allotment to work on, but out here, where water was a very scarce commodity, such a thing would be a luxury.

But her thoughts returned to Chelsea as she walked briskly to the hospital, sighing as she went in through the side entrance, where more Christmas decorations were already in place.

But Christmas cheer was the last thing on her mind as she considered the discussion she’d have to have with Andy.

Not right now, when there’d be other people around, but later on they would definitely need to talk.

Chelsea’s arrival had thrown their arrangement into disarray. It had seemed sensible to live separately within the house, mainly to avoid gossip and speculation, but Chelsea would pick up on it immediately, and word would spread around the family, and Ellie knew it would cause distress to Meg.

She pushed into the theatre changing room and found Andy already waiting for her.

‘Sorry, I was held up on my first patient and I’ve been late all morning,’ she explained.

His beautiful Ellie looked so tired and stressed that Andy wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her—to find their way back to where they’d been. But pain and grief and too many harsh words had opened up a gulf between them, and as yet, he could find no way of bridging it.

And did he even want to?

He shook his head. That was a stupid question when there was a patient waiting.

Of course he wanted to! The thought of living without Ellie was...well, inconceivable.

‘The patient is a young lad who got hit by a strand of barbed wire when he was helping his father repair a fence. Apparently, the fence strainers snapped, the wire flicked back, and a piece flew into his lower abdomen. They got it out, and cleaned and dressed the wound, but there’s a bit still in there—one of the barbs, I’d say—and it’s badly infected. I need to go in and clean it out before it develops into sepsis. He’s on IV antibiotics, and I’ll leave a drain in place for a few days if it looks at all dubious.’

Andy watched as Ellie greeted Tony, a nurse who loved theatre work, then checked the drugs and instruments he’d laid out for her.

Once upon a time, in what seemed like another life—in another country, for that matter—they’d worked together like this. The lack of specialist doctors in some of the African countries where they’d lived meant you had to do whatever was required of you, and often it was surgery—he cutting while Ellie did the anaesthetic—basic though it had been.

He held back a snort, disgusted that he could be distracted by such trivial thoughts. All that was so far in the past it was history now.

Yet how could he not watch as she spoke quietly to the boy, explaining how he’d be getting sleepy, checking the cannula already attached to the back of one small hand and smiling gently. She was so good with children—the children they would never have...

Satisfied that all was well, Ellie took up the prepared anaesthetic, and with a nod to Andy injected it, waiting until the boy dozed off before securing the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.

How many times—?

Enough!

The past belonged in the past. Here and now, he needed one hundred percent concentration on Jonah. Electrodes already attached to his patient’s body told the monitor everything was stable, and Ellie would keep an eye on it while he cut carefully into the pale skin on the lower abdomen, Tony beside him to mop the blood and cauterise any small bleeders.

Andy glanced across the table, and by chance met Ellie’s eyes above her mask. She winked at him—something she’d done a thousand times before—a ‘going well’ kind of wink, but the sight of such a silly, insignificant facial tic brought an arrow of pain into his innermost being. One he tried to ignore...

The infection was obvious, the culprit a small piece of metal—a tiny scrap had broken free from a barb on the wire. No wonder the boy had been complaining of pain.

Andy irrigated the wound and searched for any secondary sites of infection, but everything was clean and clear.

‘I won’t leave a drain,’ he said, as much to himself as to the staff around the table. ‘In that position it could be easily dislodged, especially considering he’s an adventurous young boy.’

He closed the wound, and nodded to Ellie to reverse the anaesthetic, then stood back while Tony did the dressing.

He should go and change. This team knew what they were doing. The boy would be transferred to a bed and wheeled through to the small recovery room. Ellie was in charge of him now and would be watching over him until he was fully conscious and aware of his surroundings.

But sometimes Andy needed to watch his wife—to watch and wonder what had happened to them to end up on either side of what was now an abyss.

Was it his fault?

Those final, hurtful words about the state of their marriage had certainly marked the end of life as they’d known it, but what had brought them to that?

Did he still feel a lingering resentment about the money the IVF had cost?

But it had been he who’d first suggested IVF, so it couldn’t be that that burned inside him.

Yet something did.

He’d been keen to have a family—as keen as Ellie was—but that had been back before he’d known about the pain of loss; how much each failure would hurt, although that was nothing compared to the terrible piercing pain of losing the baby.

But worst of all had been watching Ellie’s pain and being unable to take it away from her. That was the part he’d found so bloody impossible...

It wasn’t that she’d pushed him away at the time, more that she’d wrapped herself inside it—made a cocoon of her pain—and had no longer been part of him, no, of them, cutting their oneness...

Now Andy watched Ellie sadly as she followed the trolley out of the theatre, before heading for the shower. There was nothing like water to wash away pointless suppositions and what-ifs that were too late...

Ellie waited as the youngster came around, checked he was sufficiently conscious to be given a few sips of water, and tell her who and where he was, then she departed, hurrying now, as she’d been due to see a patient at one-thirty and it was already close to two.

But her thoughts remained firmly stuck on Andy.

His skill as a surgeon was undeniable, and while still at university he’d even considered making a career of it, but during their time in Africa he’d realised that his skill lay with people; with helping them, comforting them and, yes, healing them when it was humanly possible.

And it had fired his determination to return to the isolated regions of Australia—areas always crying out for doctors—where his patients would be people he would get to know and care about, not simply a person needing an appendectomy or a new knee.

Ellie caught up as she worked through the afternoon’s patients, so had seen the last one out when Chelsea returned, laden with bags and filled with excitement.

‘You should rest,’ she told the young woman as she locked the surgery door then walked up the front steps and along the veranda to the room Chelsea had chosen.

It had belonged to one of Andy’s sisters, and although Ellie had put fresh sheets on the bed in case of unexpected visitors, she’d done little in the way of redecorating, so it still had posters of old rock bands on the walls and a bookcase full of science-fiction books that the whole Fraser family had loved to read.

Ellie half-smiled, remembering how she’d felt an utter alien herself among people who knew a genre she’d never read as well as the Frasers knew sci-fi.

After depositing Chelsea’s few possessions, Ellie showed her the nearest bathroom, then led her into the kitchen.

‘You’ll probably remember that the kitchen is the centre of the house, it’s where we mainly live,’ she said, adding rather ruefully, ‘That’s when we’re actually at home.’

And living together... She had to talk to Andy!

She’d barely finished the thought when her cellphone buzzed in her pocket.

‘Can you come back up, Ellie? Jonah’s temperature has shot up, and his heart rate is ninety-five. I’m afraid I must have missed something and he could be heading into sepsis.’

‘I’ll be right there.’

She looked at Chelsea, new in town, still uncertain of her welcome, and crossed the room to give her a hug.

‘I hate having to leave you like this on your first day here but I have to go up to the hospital, and from what Andy said I could be a while,’ she said. ‘There’s food in the fridge, or you could walk up the road and get a burger and chips. The TV in the sitting room only has a couple of channels, but feel free to use it, and there are plenty of books around the place. Do you think you’ll be okay?’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Chelsea assured her. ‘I sat up all night on the train and I’m exhausted. If it’s all right with you, I’ll just get a drink of milk and a sandwich and go straight to bed.’

‘Bless you,’ Ellie said. ‘But I’ll leave both my and Andy’s numbers and if you’re at all worried about anything, please phone one of us.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Chelsea assured her. ‘I have stayed here before and I know my aunt and uncle were often called out at night. You go and do your work.’

But as Ellie walked swiftly up the road to the hospital, she couldn’t help thinking of the young woman alone in the big house, and wonder just what she was thinking, not to mention what Andy was going to make of it all...

She arrived to find Andrea, a senior nurse who had specialist anaesthetic training, already in Theatre.

‘I’ll need you to assist,’ Andy said, as Ellie walked in. ‘There’s gear set out in the ante-room, and Tony will help you scrub.’

Ellie took a deep breath. It wasn’t that she hadn’t assisted in operations before. It was part of their medical training, and they’d done a lot in Africa, but surgery had always made her feel anxious, as if she had no business having her hands in someone else’s body. It was impersonal, yet at the same time deeply moving.

Shaking away the thoughts, she changed, scrubbed her hands and arms and held them up for Tony to slide on the gloves. He tied an extra apron around her waist, and she was ready.

‘Will you enlarge the wound you made earlier?’ she asked Andy as she took her place beside him.

A quick headshake.

‘It was big enough, but I must have missed something.’

The tightness of his voice told her how stressed he was—stressed because he felt he’d somehow failed the boy.

‘There was nothing obvious,’ she reminded him, ‘and you didn’t want to interfere with his bowel by poking around under it.’

She paused then added, in a deep, terrifying voice, ‘Never touch the bowel.’

Andy laughed. Her mimicry of a lecturer they’d had in third year had always been good, and the words took him back to when, as students, they and their friends had used the words in more earthy ways.

It broke his tension and he opened the wound, holding it for her to clamp so he had a clear view.

‘Think about the barb,’ he muttered, and although she knew he was talking to himself, she understood what he was getting at. The barb could have pierced a muscle, tendon or even the bowel, and infection had developed in the second site.

But there was nothing obvious. Lecturer or not, he was going to have to touch the bowel.

He gently lifted the nearest coil of the large intestine, checking all around it for damage.

Nothing.

They irrigated the wound again, and closed it up, then all stood frowning at the monitor, which had no good news for them.

‘Hang on,’ Ellie said. ‘Didn’t someone say he was fixing a barbed-wire fence? Imagine what happened. The fence strainers broke, the loose wire would have flicked back, one barb would have pierced his skin. How far apart are the barbs on barbed wire?

‘Roughly a hand span.’ It was Andy who answered, catching on quickly to Ellie’s train of thought.

So some things hadn’t changed...

‘That means the next barb would be here,’ he said, measuring across the boy’s abdomen with his hand.

They all peered at the spot but there was no sign of damage to the skin, or any indication of infection.

‘Imagine him with clothes on,’ Ellie said. ‘Jeans, most likely, and low slung how the kids wear them these days. That barb would have hit the double layer of the pocket, possibly even a stud, so the next barb would be here...’ She used her hand to measure the distance, brushing Andy’s hand then glancing up, meeting his eyes above his mask—a flash of something as sudden and powerful as lightning flashing between them. ‘If the wire wrapped around him.’

They found the wound beneath their patient’s left hip, a tiny pinprick of a mark, surrounded by swollen, angry redness.

While Tony went for the portable X-ray machine, Ellie and Andy propped the boy on his side, careful not to touch each other after whatever it was that had flashed between them earlier.

‘From the size of it, it’s just an infection rather than another foreign object,’ Ellie said, and Andy nodded, although she could tell he was furious with himself for not checking more carefully earlier.

She opened her mouth to say, ‘You weren’t to know,’ but Andrea beat her to it.

Not that Andy would have found any comfort in the assurance. He prided himself on his physical examination of all patients, although earlier this morning the pinprick of a mark could have been all but invisible.

The X-ray showed no foreign matter in the wound, but Andy opened it up anyway. Clearing out the infection already there would lead to a quicker recovery for the boy.

‘Do you still hate it?’ Andy asked Ellie as they left the hospital an hour later. It was only when she didn’t reply that he looked around to find she’d halted, twenty or so paces behind him, and was gazing up at the night sky.

‘Still gets to you, huh?’ he teased as he walked back to join her, resting his hand on the small of her back as he had so often in the past. Often just a touch in passing, often a prelude—but he wouldn’t go there.

She smiled at him.

‘I just cannot believe how many stars there are. I know they are there, in the city and we just don’t see them for the other lights, but out here...’

She waved her arms around as if to encompass the beauty she couldn’t put into words.

‘And all yours,’ Andy said, wondering if she remembered his promise to give her the moon and the stars...

And looking at her, her clear skin luminous in the starlight, her golden-brown hair framing a face he’d always thought perfection, he wanted to take her in his arms again, take her back to that time, make her really his once more.

‘Did you ask me something?’

Her question broke the moment, although he knew the moment he’d felt had never been possible.

Thought back to his question.

‘Oh, I just wondered if you still hated surgery?’

She’d started forward but now paused again, turned back to him.

‘I’ve never really hated it so much as felt very uncomfortable. It seems so intrusive to be fumbling around inside someone else’s body.’

Ellie sighed, and shook her head as if to chase the thoughts away.

‘And speaking of bodies, I really need to talk to you about something that came up today. Shall we get a pizza and sit in the park to eat it?’

‘You’ve hidden a dead body somewhere, and need my help to bury it?’ Andy said, hoping the teasing words hid a sudden panic inside him.

Was she tired of their pretend marriage?

Was she leaving him completely?

Did she want a divorce?

Nonsense! he told himself. She’d mentioned bodies. It was something from work she wanted to discuss.

But the tension she’d aroused remained with him as he ordered their pizza, half with anchovies and half without, took extra paper napkins as they’d be eating in the park, and waited while Ellie chatted with the young girl behind the counter, blithely unaware of the torment her words had caused him.

Their marriage as a marriage might be virtually over, but could he live without the woman he loved?

The woman, he was fairly certain, who still loved him?

And could their marriage really be over?

He thought of the times when they’d tried to talk about it, as two intelligent people working out their differences. But the problem with loving someone was that you knew their sore and vulnerable spots—knew the words that would stab them in those places...

Worse still, you used those words as weapons.

So not talking had seemed easier, although Ellie deciding to make the move downstairs had left him feeling hollowed out inside. He was aware it could be a prelude to her leaving altogether for all she’d said they both needed their own space for a while.

Andy carried the pizza up to the park, which was deserted at this time of night, and set it down on a table, aware as he always was of Ellie’s warmth by his side.

But worry about this ‘talk’ now nibbled at his mind so, as he placed a piece of pizza—from the anchovies’ side—on a napkin, and passed it to his wife, he said, ‘Okay, talk. What’s up?’

Ellie turned, questions in her night-dark eyes, and he realised he’d spoken too abruptly.

‘Right!’ she began, apparently reading his anxiety in his face. ‘Chelsea arrived this morning—your cousin Chelsea—and she’s pregnant and wanted to get away from home and people who know her until after the baby’s born. Apparently both her parents are off somewhere and Harry’s been looking after her—’

‘Not very well, if she’s pregnant!’ Andy muttered. ‘Does he know she’s here?’

‘Apparently so,’ Ellie said, ‘although I will phone him when we get home to tell him she’s arrived safely. I tried earlier but his phone was switched off.’

‘But where’s her mother, for heaven’s sake? I know her father’s probably off saving whales somewhere, but her mum? And Harry’s what? All of nineteen, I imagine, and far more involved in his own life at university than caring for his sister. Of all the irresponsible—’

He realised he was yelling now and it really wasn’t Ellie he should be yelling at, but she simply smiled at him and said, ‘She’s off finding herself, apparently.’

‘Mad, they’re both mad, they always have been. How Dad and Ken can possibly be brothers beats me. And as for Jill, why isn’t she at home, looking after a kid who’s barely out of childhood? I would have thought teenage years were when young girls, in particular, needed their mothers around.’

‘She’s sixteen,’ Ellie told him, ‘and twelve to sixteen weeks gestation. A bit hard to be precise at that stage and she has a very slight build.’

She paused, and Andy wondered what worried her about the situation. Apart from it being Chelsea. Teenage pregnancy was far from uncommon these days.

Was she thinking of their arrival here in town—of the coincidence of her being sixteen weeks pregnant when they’d first begun their move to Maytown?

Andy watched as Ellie ate her slice of pizza, chewing and swallowing it before she smiled at him, then shrugged as if uncertain where to begin.

‘I can understand her turning to a boyfriend for comfort, with her parents gone, and that the pregnancy was an accident, but I didn’t want to push her to talk too much about the future.’

He saw the worry in the little crease between her eyebrows, and read it in her voice.

‘The thing is, Andy, we’ll take her in, I was sure you’d agree with that, but I wondered if she—if we...’

It was so unlike Ellie to be this hesitant over something that he reached out and took her hand, feeling her fingers curl into his, warm and sticky from the pizza but accepting his support.

‘I wouldn’t like your mum to find out about our marriage right now and be upset, which she will if I’m downstairs and you’re upstairs while Chelsea’s with us. I mean, it’s a bit like shouting it to the world.’

Her head lifted so she could watch his face as he considered it.

‘Easily fixed,’ Andy said, barely suppressing his delight because the top part of the house was desperately empty without Ellie in it. A cool, contained and even frosty Ellie was better than no Ellie at all.

If only he’d realised that before she’d made the move downstairs. He should have talked to her about feeling shut out; about his own pain, and how much it had frightened him; about feeling cast adrift after she left —

‘You’ll move back up? I’m still sleeping in Dad’s old room, so you can go back into Mum’s.’

She half smiled and he guessed that life in the downstairs flat hadn’t been entirely joyous either.

‘I didn’t take all that much,’ she said, ‘but, yes, I think that would be best.’

‘And Chelsea? Has she planned anything beyond escaping to Maytown for the period of her pregnancy?’

Ellie shrugged.

‘We barely talked, and right now she’s confused, and lost, and really needs to know she’s safe and loved and cared for. I do wonder about Jill going off like that when Chelsea is still so young. Do you think because her husband is always off somewhere, she felt it was her turn?’

Andy grinned at her.

‘Who knows what goes on in other people’s relationships?’ he said, and she responded with a small smile, turning her fingers so she could squeeze his hand.

‘Too true. Look at ours!’ she said with a smile.

The smile and something in her tone of voice suggested there was more hope than defeat in the words but before he could pursue it, Ellie was talking again.

‘Well, all we can do is be there for her. I can only help her with her pregnancy at the moment, and perhaps you and I can both talk with her about the future. About the baby, maybe—’

‘No!’

The word seemed to echo around the park, far too loud, far too strong, far too emotionally charged...

Andy breathed deeply, counted to ten then another five, and regained a semblance of control over the dark fear that had seized him.

‘I know she’s family and I’m happy to take her in, but just what is going to happen to the baby when it arrives? Will you want to keep it, too? Is this your way of getting back at me for refusing more IVF? How long before you start thinking of it as your baby?’

Obviously, the counting hadn’t helped because he was shouting now. Ellie’s face looked white and strained in the gloom.

The silence that fell between them was somehow louder than his words, broken only when Ellie stood up and said quietly, ‘I was only thinking we might help her. Yes, take her in, she’s family. It’s up to her to decide about the baby but while she’s with us we might both be able to help her find a path ahead—at least begin to plan for her future.’

She stepped backwards away from the bench she’d been sitting on, and turned away, pausing only to say, ‘And it was our baby I wanted, Andy, not someone else’s.’

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