LITMIR.BIZ

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What am I supposed to do—summon up a carer for a baby out of thin air? Make plans for what school she will attend?’

      ‘I’m sorry!’ This time Marty’s apology was heart-felt. ‘I didn’t realise you hadn’t known. It must have been terrible for you—to arrive and learn you had a child. Most people have nine months to get used to the idea—to make plans. But you don’t have to decide anything immediately. Sophie wants to keep Emmaline in for at least another fortnight. At best, she was a month premature and her birth weight was very low, so she’s vulnerable to all the complications of both premmie and low birth weight infants.’

      ‘But so far, has had none of them?’

      ‘She was jaundiced after two days but that’s common enough and phototherapy cleared it up. Gib told you she’s five days old?’

      Carlos nodded.

      ‘I assume Natalie’s deteriorating condition made a Caesar necessary earlier, possibly, than you would have liked?’

      ‘Her organs were shutting down,’ Marty agreed. ‘Life-support machines can only do so much. For Emmaline’s sake, it was advisable to operate.’

      ‘So now we have a baby.’

      Marty would have liked to correct him—to say he had a baby—but he’d spoken quietly, as if moving towards acceptance, and she didn’t want to antagonise him again. In the meantime, she was missing Emmaline’s feeding time and a subtle ache in her arms reminded her of how much she’d been enjoying her contact with the little girl—and how unprofessional her behaviour was to have allowed herself to grow so attached.

      She’d chosen to specialise in O and G rather than paediatrics so this didn’t happen—so she wouldn’t be forever getting clucky over other people’s children. In O and G you took care of the woman, delivered the baby, and after one postnatal check the family was gone from your life, or at least until the next pregnancy.

      But with Emmaline it hadn’t worked that way, and all the up-till-then successfully repressed maternal urges had come bursting forth and Marty, doomed to childlessness, had fallen in love with a tiny scrap of humanity with a scrunched-up face, a putty nose, let-me-at-them fists and jet-black hair.

      Misery swamped her, providing a partial antidote to the flutters she still felt when she looked at Emmaline’s father.

      Get with it, woman, the inner voice ordered, and Marty tried.

      ‘I should be going,’ she said, standing up, acting positive and in control, but still waiting until his pacing took him away from the door before heading in that direction herself.

      Just in case the antidote wasn’t working…

      He moved a different way, blocking her path.

      ‘I’ve kept you from your dinner. Do you have far to go to your home?’

      Politeness?

      Or did he want more from her?

      Positive! In control!

      ‘Dinner can wait,’ she said lightly, waving her hand in the air in case he hadn’t picked up the nonchalance in her voice. ‘And, no, my home’s not far. Walking distance actually. I live in an apartment by the river in a parkland area called South Bank.’

      Explaining too much again, but the antidote wasn’t working—not at all—and the man’s proximity—his body standing so close to hers—was affecting her again, making her feel shaky and uncertain and a lot of other things she hadn’t felt for so long it was hard to believe she was feeling them now.

      ‘South Bank? The hospital administrator to whom I spoke earlier was kind enough to book me into a hotel at South Bank. You know of this hotel?’

      Only because it’s across the road from my apartment building! How’s that for fickle fate?

      ‘I know it,’ she said cautiously.

      ‘Then, perhaps you will be so kind as to wait while I collect my backpack then guide me on my way.’

      He was a visitor to her country so she could hardly refuse, and to flee in desperate disorder down the corridor might look a tad strange.

      ‘Where’s your backpack?’

      ‘It is in the office on the ground floor, behind the desk where people enquire about patients or ask for directions. A kind woman on the desk offered to look after it for me.’

      ‘Of course she would,’ Marty muttered, then she remembered this man had super-sensitive hearing and was wise to mutterings. She’d better stop doing it forthwith.

      ‘I’ve got to change so I’ll meet you in the foyer,’ she suggested, leading the way out of Gib’s office and along the corridor to a bank of staff lifts. ‘If you turn left when you come out on the ground floor, you’ll find the information desk without any trouble.’

      Positive! In control!

      She was moving away, intending to sneak a few minutes in the NICU before changing—not one hundred per cent in control—when his hand touched her shoulder and she froze.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said, though whether his gratitude was for her directions, her explanations or her kindness to his daughter, Marty had no idea. He’d lifted his hand off her shoulder almost as soon as it had touched down, and then stepped into the lift and disappeared behind the silently closing doors.

      They collected his backpack and she led him out of the hospital, into the soft, dark, late January night. Humidity wrapped around them as they walked beneath the vivid bougainvillea that twined above the path through the centre of the park, while the smell of the river wafted through the air.

      Usually, this walk was special to Marty, separating as it did her work life from her social life—if going to the occasional concert, learning Mandarin and practising Tae Kwon Do could be called a social life.

      But tonight the peace of the walk was disturbed by the company, her body, usually obedient to her demands, behaving badly. It skittered when Carlos brushed his arm against her hip, and nerves leapt beneath her skin when he held her elbow to guide her out of the path of a couple of in-line skaters. If this was attraction, it was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before, and if it wasn’t attraction, then what the hell was it?

      She was too healthy for it to be the start of some contagion, but surely too old, not to mention too sensible, to be feeling the lustful urges of an adolescent towards a total stranger.

      ‘This is my apartment block and your hotel is there, across the road.’

      Given how she was reacting to him, it was the sensible thing to do but as she stood there, banishing this tired, bereaved, confused man to the anonymity of a hotel room, she felt a sharp pang of guilt, as if her mother was standing behind her, prodding her with the tip of a carving knife.

      ‘You’ll be OK?’ she asked, then immediately regretted it. He couldn’t possibly be all right after all he’d been through. But he let her off the hook, nodding acquiescence.

      ‘I will see you again,’ he said, before shifting the weight of his backpack against his shoulders and crossing the road to the hotel, a tall dark shadow in the streetlights—a man who walked alone.

      She turned towards her apartment building, free to mutter now, castigating herself for feeling sorry for him, but also warning him, in his absence, that the ‘seeing you again’ scenario was most unlikely.

      Emmaline had a family now—there’d be no need for her to provide that special contact all babies needed. Emmaline’s father was best placed to do this for her and it was up to him to decide where the little one’s future lay.

      Her heart might ache as she accepted these truths, but it was time to be sensible and make a clean break from the baby who had sneaked beneath her guard and professionalism, and had wormed her way into her heart.

      She rode the lift up to her floor, then opened the apartment door, walking

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