LITMIR.BIZ

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I have to look good, I have to be seen. That’s all. I just need a part-time, very presentable man.’

      She spread her hands, did that dazzling pretend smile again and he realised how vulnerable she was beneath the glamorous façade, thanks to this unknown man in Europe. He realised, too, how little value beauty could have to a woman in the wrong circumstances.

      He told her sincerely, ‘Sure, Tarsh, I can be your presentable man, occasionally. I don’t see anything getting in the way.’

      She nodded and kissed him quickly, not on the mouth, but close. ‘Good. And if I haven’t made this clear, sex is not included in the deal. I—I…’ Still smiling, she blinked back more tears. ‘Somehow—and, please, don’t grill me on the details here—I turn out to be a lot more monogamous than I would have thought.’

      And that was that.

      At the restaurant Laird and Tarsha had to wait for their table, wait for the menu, wait to be asked for their order and then wait for it to arrive. Neither of them seemed to have much to say, having dealt with the principal matter of interest between them before they had even left her house.

      Laird fought hunger, irritability and fatigue, and Tarsha finally appealed to him, ‘Talk to me, Laird! Talk shop, if you want, rather than the two of us sitting here like this. It’s what you’re thinking about, isn’t it?’

      He admitted that it was. ‘We have some very fragile babies in the unit at the moment. Delivered two of them last night, and we were short-staffed. Fortunately, we had a terrific new nurse. I don’t think both babies would have made it out of the delivery suite without her. She was fabulous. Down-to-earth, unflappable, knew her stuff inside out.’

      ‘Pretty?’

      He thought for a moment, and remembered the shiny forehead and the unflattering angle of Tammy Prunty’s disposable cap. ‘Um, I don’t think so. Not really.’

      Tarsha’s attention had wandered. ‘Is this ours?’ she murmured, watching a waiter with laden hands. ‘No, it’s not…’

      Laird was still thinking about the fact that he’d just completely slammed the Tammy nurse in the looks department. He felt guilty and impatient with himself, which was ridiculous. ‘Although I never saw her hair,’ he said, wondering about it, remembering the blue of her eyes. ‘I have an idea she’ll be a redhead, though.’

      ‘She will be?’

      ‘When I see her without her cap.’ He looked forward to resolving the question, for some reason.

      Tarsha fixed him with a suspicious look that he didn’t understand, and then their waiter came towards them at last.

      * * *

      ‘And it was green, and we thought, Good grief, what is this? I mean, neon green newborn milk curds. The intern went pale. Poor thing, it was his second day, he didn’t have a clue. He’s about to call the senior surgeon, who has no patience with new doctors.’

      ‘None of them do!’

      ‘And then we see an empty bottle on the floor, and it’s not from the baby at all. His big brother had one of those athletic power drinks, those “-ade” ones, and he’d spilled some of it, right on top of where the baby had spat up, only he was too scared to say.’

      There was a chorus of laughter, cutting off a little too quickly when the three women in the staff break room saw Laird.

      Red, he thought.

      Just as he’d suspected from her colouring. Tammy Prunty had a magnificent head of gleaming bright carroty, goldy, coppery, autumn-leafy hair with a natural, untamed wave that would absolutely require full confinement beneath a cap any time she was anywhere near surgery or vulnerable babies. No wonder he hadn’t been able to glimpse it before.

      She smiled at him, her face receptive, friendly and polite and her blue eyes still alive from her recent laughter. The eyes and the hair went together like burnished gold and lapis lazuli in a piece of Ancient Egyptian jewellery, and the smile was so warm and dazzling it rendered him temporarily without words.

      He’d heard her voice, coming past the break room, and had decided to settle the question of her hair now, at the first opportunity, because it had been nagging at him after he and Tarsha had talked about it on Friday night. He hadn’t expected to feel so awkward, standing in the break room doorway the following evening.

      The three nurses waited for him to get to the point. What did he want them to do? Which of them did he want to yell at? What information was he seeking?

      ‘Just checking something,’ he murmured vaguely, and left again, unsettled.

      He heard the chorus of female voices pick up before he reached the end of the corridor, and had a weird desire to go back, make himself a coffee and sit down to join in. He would sit across the table from Tammy, so he could try to work out just what it was that he found so appealing about her colouring when he hadn’t thought her pretty before.

      He resisted the impulse, squared his shoulders and got on with his life instead.

      Back in the NICU, the Parry babies had lived through their first two days but still had a long way to go. No one was even thinking about discharge yet. And they had a new thirty-four-weeker, Cameron Thornton, delivered via Caesarean and now five days old.

      He wasn’t on a ventilator and was only here because he had a bright, vocal mother and because, despite the recent scarcity of beds, several babies had been upgraded, transferred or discharged since Thursday night so the NICU now had two places spare, while the high dependency unit and special care unit were overflowing.

      ‘Something’s not right,’ the mother had been saying since a few hours after his birth, even though he was breathing and feeding and doing all the right things.

      Many six-week prems required almost no medical intervention and could be discharged within days of birth. According to Mrs Thornton’s dates, he should have been a thirty-six weeker but a range of well-defined developmental signs had led Dr Lutze, who’d been on hand at the birth, to lower the estimate to thirty-four weeks or even a few days less, and Mrs Thornton had admitted she might have got it wrong.

      She didn’t think she was wrong about her current sense of concern, however. ‘He’s my sixth child. A mother knows.’

      And sometimes they did.

      This mother, Laird wasn’t sure about. The baby’s dad, Alan Thornton, was a senior administrator in the Faculty of Medicine at Yarra University, which meant he had contacts and influence. The mother was supposed to go home tomorrow, and Laird wondered if, with such a large family awaiting her attention, she simply wanted another night alone with her baby, or more time to rest in the relatively cushy environment of her private hospital room.

      She did seem genuinely anxious, however. She was hovering over the baby, watching every change in his breathing and in the numbers on his monitor. Alison Vitelli, the mother of the triplets born at twenty-nine weeks, gave her a couple of the same resentful looks she’d given the other mother in here on Thursday night.

      It had begun to look as if one of Alison’s babies wouldn’t make it, although two of them were doing better now. The smallest at birth, little Riley, had a whole raft of cascading problems, including a serious bleed in the brain, and Alison was again finding it very hard to deal with a mother whose child seemed barely unwell at all.

      This mother wasn’t making a song and dance to earn Mrs Vitelli’s disapproval, however. She sat quietly, very sensitive to the presence of other babies and parents around her.

      ‘How’s he doing, Mrs Thornton?’ Laird asked her in a murmur.

      ‘His temp is up—37.8 degrees.’

      A tiny bit higher than normal, Laird registered, but a baby wasn’t considered febrile until its temp went over 38. The little guy still had nasal oxygen prongs for several hours each day, but the rate had been turned right down. They’d increased his periods of weaning

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