The Doctors' Christmas Reunion / Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart - Meredith Webber Mills & Boon Medical

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asked, her face alight with so much joy Ellie could hardly find fault.

      Not that she did.

      ‘It looks great,’ she said. ‘But you don’t want to sleep with the paint fumes tonight, so take one of the other rooms, then, in the morning, Andy will give us a hand to move the furniture back in. Unless…’

      She hesitated.

      ‘You might like to paint the furniture as well. I’d say the bed and desk and dressing table were painted white years ago, but they might look shabby in here now. There’s probably white paint in the shed. What do you think?’

      Chelsea settled on the bottom rung of the ladder she’d been using for the top of the high walls. She studied Ellie for a while before she spoke.

      ‘Are you this kind to all the strays who land on your doorstep?’ she asked softly, her eyes now bright with tears.

      ‘Not all of them,’ Ellie said gently. ‘Only ones who know how to paint, and can help Andy with his soccer team, and bring a lot of pleasure to our house with your smile and enthusiasm—especially your smile!’

      She went to squat beside Chelsea as the tears that had shone in her eyes now trickled down her cheeks.

      ‘Besides,’ she said, hugging the girl, ‘you’re family and if there’s one thing Andy and I feel very strongly about, it’s family.’

      Her heart felt heavy as she said the words, but in spite of all that had happened, she knew family was important to them both.

      ‘We’ll do whatever we can to keep you safe and comfortable,’ she said, ‘and you can talk to either one of us about anything at all, but in the end everyone has to take responsibility for his or her own life, and that includes their own happiness.’

      ‘And my baby?’ The words came out as a quavery whisper. ‘What should I do about that?’

      Ellie hugged her.

      ‘Let’s wait and see,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty of time to think about what you want both for yourself and for the baby. Have you thought much about it?’

      She felt Chelsea nod against her chest.

      ‘Only every day!’ the girl whispered. ‘It’s my responsibility, isn’t it, but what kind of life can I give a baby?’

      She raised her head to look directly at Ellie, and added, ‘But can I just give it away? As if it were an old bicycle I don’t need any more? I’m not sure I could do that. Then I think that plenty of adopted babies grow up happy and contented and they bring joy to their new parents, so would I be selfish not letting it be adopted? Not giving the joy of a baby to someone who can’t have one?’

      The words cut into Ellie’s heart. How easy would it be—

      No! She mustn’t think that.

      Thrusting the thought away, Ellie drew Chelsea into her arms again, dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

      ‘There’s a lot to think about but nothing has to be decided right now. Any time you want to talk about it, Andy and I are here to listen. But right now you’ve had a busy and probably exhausting day, so why don’t you have a shower and go to bed? Remember you’re helping Andy with his soccer team tomorrow.’

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      Andy had arrived at the hospital as the ambulance pulled in. He greeted Madeleine and walked beside her as the ambulance men wheeled her into the observation room in the hospital’s small Emergency Department. Her health records were already up on the screen and he checked the tests Ellie had previously ordered, and read the results.

      As she had said, there was nothing to indicate any underlying cause for Madeleine’s various symptoms, but there was still the possibility of delayed concussion from the accident.

      He watched as the nurse on duty hooked Madeleine up to the monitor and wrapped a blood-pressure cuff on her arm.

      ‘This will drive you nuts,’ the nurse said cheerfully. ‘It inflates every hour to record your BP, and it’s usually just as you’re dropping off to sleep. But we have to know what your body’s doing, and if there’s any major change then bells and whistles will let us know you need attention.’

      ‘Bells and whistles?’ Madeleine said faintly, perhaps regretting her decision to phone a doctor.

      ‘More like a loud beeping noise,’ Andy told her, as the nurse dashed off to answer a loud beeping noise elsewhere. ‘Are you in any pain?’

      ‘Well, my neck and shoulders ache, but they often ache, and I took some paracetamol for my headache about an hour ago, but the pain’s not so bad. I’m used to it. It’s the dizzy feeling I’ve got that worried me.’

      Andy felt her head, his fingers seeking any lump he might have missed earlier, but the only sign that there’d been an accident was a slight graze and a tiny bit of swelling on her forehead.

      He checked Madeleine’s eyes but both pupils reacted evenly to the light, and asked her some basic questions to test for confusion, but nothing obvious showed up.

      ‘Try to get some sleep,’ he said, and went back to the desk to go through Madeleine’s file again.

      Ellie arrived as he was checking the X-rays they’d done earlier.

      ‘You’ll be busy tomorrow and I thought we could go through her history together,’ she said.

      He smelt the bath soap she’d used, and felt her freshness against his shoulder, her head so close to his that a single turn of his head and he could kiss her again…

      But he wouldn’t. They were at work.

      ‘I’m checking the X-rays—’ as if she couldn’t tell ‘—wondering if I’ve missed a hairline fracture anywhere.’

      ‘There’s nothing I can see. Are there scans as well?’ Ellie asked.

      But the scans showed Andy hadn’t missed a bleed at the back of the brain from a contra coup injury. Ellie used a light beam to search every section of the brain.

      Finding nothing, Andy shook his head, sorry Ellie had straightened up as he’d enjoyed her closeness.

      ‘Well, all that’s left is to go back through her medical history.’

      Thanks to a government initiative, more than seven million people now had their health records available to doctors and hospitals all over Australia. Would Madeleine’s be online?

      It was, and this time Ellie squeezed onto the chair beside him. It was uncomfortable but, oh, so, comforting!

      ‘As you can see,’ Ellie said, ‘she rarely visited her GP back in Sydney. She’s had the usual flu vaccinations, scripts for oral contraceptives and apart from a bad case of laryngitis she suffered two years back, she’s had no real health issues.’

      ‘Until she came to Maytown,’ Andy pointed out.

      Ellie leaned over his shoulder again, resting her hands on the desk beside the keyboard.

      She was so close he could feel the contours of her body against his back and was reminded of how they’d slept, spooned together.

      ‘You can see everything seems trivial,’ Ellie said, using the mouse to scroll down the visit list. ‘Sore hip, bad neck, not sleeping, feeling of exhaustion even when she did sleep…’

      But when Andy saw the battery of tests Ellie had run, he knew she was taking Madeleine seriously. He read on through the file, Ellie pulling up a chair and sitting beside him now.

      Some months ago she had prescribed Madeleine a mild anti-depressant, which was good thinking when nothing could be pinned down clinically, but apparently the tablets had made Madeleine feel nauseous and hadn’t improved her aches and pains.

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