The Doctors’ Baby

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EM WOKE to the sound of the sea.

The hospital was built on a bluff overlooking the town and her bedroom faced the beach, just as it had at her grandpa’s when she was a child. Which was how she was feeling right now-like a child-as if all the adulthood had been shaken right out of her.

She lay there, still and silent, letting the events of the past twenty-four hours soak into her consciousness. Slowly. Taking it step by step, for fear of being overwhelmed.

There’d been the dread. The terror that Sam would fall, the fear that she couldn’t bear her own physical discomfort and the unexpected claustrophobia on top of it.

And then there’d been the relief of tension that had been so great that, on reaching the surface, she’d wept and wept, like an inconsolable child instead of a mature, dedicated doctor. So much so that after Jonas had made sure Sam was OK, he’d turned to her and ordered tranquillisers and bed, and he’d brooked no argument.

He’d wanted to carry her home himself. She’d seen that. But Sam had been his greatest need, and Em had pulled herself together enough to tell him to get his priorities right. As he had to. Chris, the doctor from down south, had arrived so, thank God, she hadn’t been needed to assist medically.

Which was just as well. She couldn’t have fought her way out of a paper bag, much less assist in treating Sam.

So here she was, alone in her own safe bed, and suddenly she was grateful for that loneliness. There were so many things crowding in on her-things she needed time to come to terms with.

Ghosts, she thought, suddenly-irrelevantly. With the sounds of the sea came the whispering echoes of the past-Grandpa and Charlie. They’d taught her to love the sea. They’d taught her to love Bay Beach, so much that she’d dedicated her life to being its doctor.

And now a tremulous hope was building and building that maybe the sacrifices she’d made were no longer necessary.

Jonas… What had he said?

‘I’ll never leave you…’

It was just something he’d said to allay her fears, she told herself shakenly. It had been said in the urgency of the moment.

It had been for comfort. Not the truth.

Robby… Think of Robby. She should get up and check on her baby.

Why wasn’t he here? Beside her? She glanced at her watch and blinked her surprise. Eight a.m. It looked like early morning outside, but it couldn’t be…

It was. She’d slept the clock around and then some.

But no one was here to verify it. Not even Bernard the dog. There was only the sound of the sea for company, but the need for solitude was over.

She needed more. Just as she put a hand on her covers, the door opened-and it was Jonas.

But this was a different Jonas. This was a Jonas she’d never seen before. He looked lighter, she thought. Younger. He looked like a man who’d had the weight of the world taken from his shoulders. His burnt red hair was bright in the morning sunshine, his green eyes twinkled, he looked clean and groomed and a thousand miles from the distraught man she’d seen the day before.

Her Jonas…

He peeped around her bedroom door, and his smile as he saw that she was awake broadened into a full-sized grin. Then, before she could say a word, he was across the room and she’d been taken firmly into his arms.

‘My Em.’

He held her close, his chest crushing her breast, and it was the action of a man who was claiming his own.

His heart.

She was dreaming. Wasn’t she?

She must be. ‘My Em…’ It was a dreamy whisper, wafting round and round the room, and the echo and its uncertainty made Em pull away.

That made her know she was awake. Heavens, she hurt. Every muscle in her body screamed in protest. Hanging in harness in the one position for so many hours had caused more bruising than she would have believed possible. She’d also hit the sides of the shaft on the way up.

Jonas had seen the wince and frowned swiftly in concern.

‘What is it? Something I missed? Em…’

He’d examined her as she’d emerged from the shaft, she remembered, but only just. She remembered his hands running over her body as she’d sagged in his arms, checking, making sure she hadn’t crashed too hard against the wall on the ascent which had proved more difficult than the descent.

She’d swayed-she hadn’t been able to stop herself swaying when the urgency not to had been removed-and she’d hit the shaft sides over and over again. But to wait until they’d widened the gap where Sam had stuck so she could be lowered further and go out by the same route would have taken longer than she could stand.

No matter. She smiled her reassurance, and if her smile was wider than reassurance deserved, she couldn’t help it. This was only bruising. What was at stake here was far more important. What had he called her? ‘My Em…’

‘I’m fine,’ she lied, and looked up at Jonas though a dreamy mist. ‘What did you say?’

His gaze narrowed, and he looked confused. “‘What is it?’”

‘No.’ She was onto something important here, and she was holding on to it like a pit bull terrier. ‘Before that.’

‘Before that?’

‘You said “my Em”.’

‘So I did,’ he said, and there was a touch of triumph in his voice. He pulled her against him again and kissed the top of her hair. ‘I did at that. My Em.’

‘Mmm.’ This was definitely satisfactory. More than satisfactory.

‘Your hair has dust all through it,’ he said softly, kissing the top of her head. ‘I really, really need to unbraid it.’

‘You can chop it off for all I care.’

‘Emily!’ His voice was shocked, but filled with laughter. ‘Sacrilege.’ There was also something else in his voice, Em noticed.

Love?

And it was. He cupped her chin in his hands, and he looked deep into her eyes. ‘You know I want to marry you?’ he said tenderly. ‘You know that, don’t you, love?’

Her heart almost stopped, right there and then.

‘But you said that before,’ she whispered. ‘That you wanted to marry me.’

‘Yeah, but for all the wrong reasons.’

‘So you have some new ones?’

‘Let’s say I had ’em all along-I was just too stupid to see them. I wanted to marry you because I thought you and Robby needed me. And that was fine. What I was too stupid to realise was that I needed you far, far more.’

‘I…I see.’

‘Poor love, you’re still half-exhausted. It’s not fair to spring this on you now.’ But all the same, his hand went to the knot at the base of her braid. He slipped off the band holding it secure and then very, very slowly he started unbraiding.

The feeling was incredible. It was so sensual it made Em want to cry out with pleasure.

Or take him into her arms and…

‘You know Sam’s fine?’ he said, and she blinked.

‘What? Oh, Sam. Yes.’ She nodded. She’d made sure of that before she’d let anyone give her any pills. He was one tough little boy.

‘He has one badly broken arm, which Chris and I set last night. He also has massive bruising and a fair few abrasions, but as far as we can see the damage is external only. He’s also suffering from shock. He’s asleep at the moment. Anna is with him. She slept in the hospital beside him, and she’s still there now.’

‘Anna…’ That stirred her. She glanced at her watch. Anna had so much on her plate. For heaven’s sake, wasn’t this the day…? ‘Anna was supposed to start radiotherapy today,’ she managed. ‘Did someone remember to cancel for her?’

‘Ever the doctor.’ Jonas was laughing at her. His hand was halfway up the braid now, moving through her silky tresses with the tenderness of a lover. ‘Actually we’ve put radiotherapy off for a while. For three months, in fact. Quite a lot has happened while you’ve been sleeping, my love.’

My love. Em liked that. She definitely liked it. But she still had to concentrate on Anna. ‘Why?’ she managed, and it was all she could do not to shudder with pleasure as his hands reached her shoulders.

‘Because Anna has decided to have chemotherapy first.

That reached her. She pushed Jonas away and stared. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, and he shook his head and smiled at her. And his smile was a caress all by itself.

‘I’m not sure I do either, completely,’ he told her. ‘I only know that Anna and Jim carried Sam into the hospital together, they’re still sitting side by side, hand in hand, there have been vows made that Anna never thought she’d make in her life, and she’s elected to change her mind about chemotherapy.’

‘But why?’

Jonas’s smile deepened in satisfaction. ‘Anna tells me she has a great chance of life now, and she wants to increase that chance to every last possibility she can get her hands on of living to a hundred. Even if it means depending on the whole town. Because…’

Jonas’s voice broke with emotion. His hands came out and caught hers, and he forced himself to continue. ‘Because, like me, she’s realised that dependence cuts both ways. She saw Jim’s face while he fought for her son’s life. She knows how much he cares for her kids as well as for her, and she wants that love very much.’

‘So much that she’ll give up her independence to have it?’

‘Independence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,’ Jonas said carefully. ‘For me and Anna both. Like Anna, I’ve been working on it for a long time now, and suddenly I figure it’s not that great.’

‘Because?’ Em could scarcely breathe.

‘Because it doesn’t work,’ he said roughly, and the strain of the past hours told in his voice. ‘Oh, sure, I was happy for Anna to depend on me-for you and Robby and even Bernard the dog to depend on me-and then when you were down that damned shaft I realised that if you were lost…’

‘Hush,’ she said softly as his voice cracked, and her hand went up to rake those beloved curls. ‘Hush.’

‘No.’ He broke away and looked at her. ‘I need to say it. Em, nothing could be worse than losing you. Nothing. I’ve tried to keep my independence and I’ve failed. First I told myself it was just that I’d fallen for Robby-that it was one courageous baby I was working for. He needed me and Robby was the reason I offered marriage. But then there was you.’

‘Jonas-’

He was brooking no interruption. ‘And I could see that his mother needed me, too. Only then she dared to say she loved me, and that threatened my independence. It was all right to be needed, but not to be loved.’

‘I don’t-’

‘You don’t understand because you’ve never needed to.’ His hand went back to her hair and the final few twists were unbraided. In triumph he splayed it out over his fingers, the gorgeous dark curls slipping through his hands over and over again. ‘You’ve known all along what it is to love, and you do it. You give and you give. You love this town. Its people. You love Robby. You even love that misbegotten floormat you call Bernard who, by the way, is having a rollicking good time with Lori and Matt and Ruby. He’s not faithful in the least. Whereas I…’

‘Whereas you…?’ Joy was building in Em-a joy so great that her world felt it was exploding into a million multicoloured shards. Here, then, was the happy ending she’d never dreamed of finding.

Or the happy beginning.

‘Whereas I intend to be faithful-to you and to our Robby and to Bernard and whoever else just happens to come along-’ his eyes glinted down at her with dangerous laughter ‘-for a very long time.’ Then he pulled her into his arms and held her with such tenderness she wanted to weep.

But she couldn’t, because he was cupping her face, he was lifting her mouth to be kissed, and he was kissing her for ever.

Not quite for ever.

Jonas pulled away-at last-and his voice was a hoarse whisper of passion.

‘How about sixty years of marriage?’ he said at last. ‘Bare minimum. Sixty years of happy-ever-after. Let’s work on that, my love, and then, when we’ve achieved it, we’ll see if we can do better than even Anna and Jim intend to do.’

And it sounded OK to Emily.

In fact, it sounded just fine!