Dr. Right for the Single Mom Read online

  ‘I can come back later,’ he offered. ‘If you’ve had too many visitors already.’

  ‘No, come in, Tom.’

  ‘Just for a minute, then.’ Tom shook the outstretched hand of the paramedic who had become a trusted colleague in recent months. ‘Congratulations, Joe. And there you were telling me only yesterday that you thought this was a week or two away.’

  ‘Bella had other ideas.’ It was Maggie who spoke. ‘I have a feeling we’re going to be scrambling to keep up with this little one.’

  Tom smiled at Maggie, another paramedic who worked at the Aratika Rescue Base. Her blonde curls looked a little tangled and she looked exhausted but the glow of joy in her eyes nearly blinded Tom.

  He’d seen that look before.

  He’d worn it on his own face, once.

  And yes...it was hard to drop his gaze to the bundle in Maggie’s arms. To the tiny, slightly scrunched-up face of a baby who’d been born within the last few hours. The pain never really went away, did it? You’d think it had faded or been safely locked away somewhere but sometimes all it took was something like seeing that tiny starfish hand poking up from out of the blanket folds and there it was again. So sharp, it could have been yesterday.

  So poignant, it could have brought the sting of tears if he’d allowed it. But, of course, that was never going to happen.

  ‘Would you like to hold her?’ Maggie offered.

  ‘Ah...no...’ Tom actually took a step backwards. ‘I really can’t stay. We’re pretty busy in Emergency.’

  He knew Joe was watching him. He also realised that Joe had respected the confidence of a personal discussion they’d had a while back now. That he hadn’t even told Maggie that he’d learned something about Tom that he never told others. And Tom could feel the understanding in that gaze he was under. Joe knew that this was tough. That being with a couple who were so much in love and welcoming their first child had to be a painfully sharp reminder that he’d lost his own wife and son.

  He didn’t want that understanding. Or rather, he didn’t want anybody feeling sorry for him because he had no desire to start feeling sorry for himself.

  But Joe was nodding as he spoke. ‘We heard about the anaphylactic shock you guys had to deal with. Fizz said it was touch and go for a while there.’

  ‘It was. I’ve left her in charge, too, and it’s about time she went home.’

  ‘Did Laura come back? With Harry?’

  Tom had his hand on the door already, but he turned back. ‘Harry? Her little boy?’ He was frowning. ‘I didn’t realise she’d gone anywhere.’

  ‘She got a call from Harry’s school and she had to go and pick him up because he was feeling sick. It’s been happening quite a bit lately. If you see her, tell her to text me? She said she’d take him to the GP but if she was really worried, she said she might bring him in to see you.’

  ‘Oh?’ Tom shook his head. ‘I’m not a paediatrician. I’m sure her GP can handle it. Or refer her. Laura knows that Emergency is just for emergencies.’

  * * *

  Laura knew she was bending the rules.

  Okay, so a lot of people came to the emergency department when they had problems that could—and should—be dealt with by a general practitioner. And the fact that people did turn up when they had a minor injury or illness could mean that the department could get overloaded and the patients that really needed the attention of the staff might have to wait too long or even miss getting a critical treatment in time.

  But this was Harrison—Laura’s precious little boy.

  And something wasn’t right.

  He’d had tummy aches before. He’d been sick at school more than once in recent months but there’d been something about him, when Laura had arrived at the sick bay to collect Harry today, that had sent a chill trickling down her spine. Maybe it was his skin colour. Or the air of listlessness about him. Or perhaps it was just the expression in those dark brown eyes he’d inherited from her. A sad look, as if he couldn’t understand why life was so miserable right now.

  Anyway, it was done. Laura was back at the Royal and had Harry in her arms, balanced on her hip. She was still in her scrubs with her official lanyard on so nobody would question her presence in the department and, technically, she was still on duty so she could tell people she’d come back to finish her shift and Harry was just going to wait quietly for her in the staffroom.

  But the first person she encountered was Tom and the way he held her gaze for a moment or two longer than you would with a normal acquaintance provided one of those lightning-fast, telepathic conversations.

  You’re worried about your boy, aren’t you?

  Yes.

  Too worried to go to your GP?

  Yes.

  Okay, then...that’s fine...you’ve done the right thing bringing him in.

  The lines around Tom’s eyes softened and Laura felt herself relax just a little thanks to that understanding and trust in her judgement she could see in Tom’s face.

  She trusted him just as much and it was a trust that was rock solid because it had grown slowly to begin with when Tom had begun working in this emergency department. On both sides.

  Laura was always wary around men she didn’t know, especially when they were single and as good looking as Tom Chapman was. She had to make sure they got very clear signals that she wasn’t interested in being anything more than a colleague. That she didn’t want anyone trying to get close. It hadn’t taken long to realise that the new consultant was giving off exactly the same signals but that hadn’t stopped almost every other single woman she’d seen him interact with trying to catch his attention. A sympathetic glance on one occasion had cemented the unspoken knowledge that, for whatever reason, they had both built solid barriers to protect themselves.

  Maybe that was what had given the level of trust between them such a solid foundation—that they both recognised those barriers and knew that neither was going to attempt breaking through them. They were workmates. Not quite friends, because they didn’t choose to spend any time away from work together, like Laura did with Maggie and Joe and Fizz and Cooper, but they were more than simply workmates because there was that trust on both sides. That confidence that it was totally safe to be near each other. And that meant they didn’t have to be on their guard on any level, which was probably why it was so easy to communicate, even without any words.

  ‘Let’s find him a cubicle,’ Tom said. ‘You fill in the paperwork and I’ll come and check on him as soon as I can.’

  He smiled at Harry before he turned away. ‘Hey, buddy...who have you got there? T Rex?’

  Harry clutched his plastic dinosaur more tightly to his chest and curled closer to his mother. Laura could feel the sudden tension in his small body from being too close for comfort to a man he didn’t know. But her heart squeezed hard when her son was brave enough to say something back to Tom.

  ‘His real name is Tyrannosaurus Rex,’ Harry whispered.

  ‘It is,’ Tom agreed. ‘Did you know that he had sixty teeth? And they were all razor sharp and could be this big?’ He held his hands with a large gap between them.

  Harry’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Laura grinned at Tom. Way to go, she told him silently. He had just won the heart of a six-year-old who was passionate about dinosaurs and he might have even erased much of the fear that this small boy had of men he didn’t know well.

  She headed towards the central desk, to pick up the forms she needed to fill in and to check the board to see what cubicle might be free.

  Fizz was on her way out of the department. ‘Oh, no... Harry... Are you still feeling sick, sweetheart?’

  Harry nodded.

  Fizz caught Laura’s gaze. ‘Want me to stay? Cooper’s just gone with Harley to get the car but we could come back.’

  ‘No...we’re good.’

  Fizz
raised an eyebrow. She knew that Harry was shy with men he didn’t know. She also knew that her husband had won Harry’s trust very early on, when he’d been one of Laura’s flatmates.

  ‘You remember Cooper, don’t you, Harry? He helped you when you broke your arm last year.’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘It’s all better now, isn’t it? Your arm?’

  Harry nodded again.

  ‘Well, Doctor Tom will help make whatever it is that’s making you feel sick all better, too.’

  ‘He will,’ Laura agreed. ‘And who knew that he knew so much about dinosaurs?’

  Fizz chuckled. ‘There you go. A match made in heaven.’ But her smile faded as she looked back at Laura. ‘Text me,’ she said, ‘if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine,’ Laura told her. ‘You go and enjoy the rest of your day with your boys. I’m probably overreacting.’

  ‘I’d be exactly the same with Harley. And we both know that you need to listen when a mum’s feeling worried. Instinct should never be ignored.’

  ‘Mmm...’ But Laura didn’t want to think about a mother’s instinct. Because hers was trying to send messages that were too scary.

  She just knew too much. She’d seen too much in this department. People that came in, occasionally, with symptoms that should be of no great significance but turned out to be something really awful.

  Laura collected the paperwork and settled Harry onto the bed in a spare cubicle. She left the curtain open enough to be able to see what was happening in the department because she wanted to see the moment Tom started heading in their direction.

  She wanted him to come and make her feel safe.

  More than anything, she needed the reassurance that Harry was safe.

  * * *

  Tom collected the new patient file from the central desk and was reading through the information Laura had provided about Harry as he walked to their cubicle. Perhaps that was why it came as a bit of a shock to look up and see Laura and Harry through the gap in the curtains.

  He saw Laura McKenzie almost every day he was at work but he’d never seen her looking like this. She was normally on her feet and always busy, caring for her patients or fully involved in an assessment or resuscitation scene. Even if she was taking a break, she’d be reading while she ate a sandwich, or chatting to one of her friends like Fizz.

  Right now, however, she was half on the bed with her son, perched on one side and lying across the pillows so that Harry was tucked under the shelter of her arm. She was gently smoothing the dark spikes of his hair, quietly watching as Harry made his plastic dinosaur hop slowly across the blanket she had tucked around him.

  Tom had never seen Laura staying this still, her body language shouting its focus on only one thing—her precious son. Or with an expression like that on her face. That mix of tenderness and concern—the picture of a mother’s love—hit him like a punch in the gut and Tom found himself swallowing hard. To get a flashback twice in one day was more than a little disturbing when he’d been so sure he was well past that part of his life. Or perhaps this was simply an aftershock of how he’d felt seeing Maggie and Joe with their newborn baby and getting dragged back into the past like that.

  It felt like longing, this sharp twinge of discomfort.

  Or a renewed flash of grief for a future that was never going to happen.

  Whatever it was, he knew he could handle it but it was certainly giving him a new perspective on this woman he’d worked with for so long. Someone he had learned to trust because she’d never attempted to get past the guardrails he had in place in his personal life. And, in this moment, he felt closer to her than he ever allowed himself to get to a colleague or a member of a patient’s family, for that matter. It was already under his skin. That note of tenderness. The knowledge that Laura was very vulnerable right now. All he could do was try and contain it. To make sure it didn’t grow any stronger.

  ‘Hey...’ Tom pasted a smile on his face as he pulled the curtain shut behind him. ‘How’s it going in here? Is Tyrannosaurus Rex finding enough to eat?’

  Harry hid his toy under the blanket. ‘He’s not hungry.’

  ‘Oh...’ Tom pulled out a chair and perched on the edge of it, so that he wasn’t looming over the bed. ‘How ’bout you, Harry? Are you hungry?’

  Harry shook his head. ‘I was sick,’ he told Tom. ‘At school. I was sick on the mat at story time.’

  ‘Oh, no...’ Tom could feel Laura’s gaze on his face but he kept his gaze on his young patient. ‘And you’ve got a sore tummy, too, I hear.’

  Harry was silent. His chin was going down and his head tilting further into the crook of Laura’s elbow.

  Tom raised his glance. ‘How long has the cream been on his arm?’

  Laura touched the clear plastic cover that was keeping the generous blob of anaesthetic cream in place over the easiest vein to get a blood sample from. ‘Needs another ten minutes or so.’

  ‘Okay. So, tell me about what’s been happening. This isn’t the first time for a sore tummy, is it?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘It’s been happening off and on for a long time. Almost since he started school, which made me think it was an anxiety thing, you know? Not wanting to go to school? The vomiting is more recent, though.’

  ‘What’s vomiting?’

  ‘Being sick, sweetheart. It’s what we call it here.’

  Tom was watching closely as Harry looked up at his mother when he asked the question. Was that a tinge of yellow he could see in the whites of Harry’s eyes?

  ‘Can I have a look at your tummy, Harry? Is that okay?’

  He could see the visible shrinking back further into his mother’s arms but, with Laura’s encouragement and reassurance, Harry let the blanket get pushed back and his tummy exposed.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ Tom promised. ‘If it’s really sore, you tell me and I’ll stop.’ He eyed the dinosaur in Harry’s hand. ‘Or T Rex can bite me on my arm, okay?’

  Big, brown eyes looked up at him. Exactly like his mother’s eyes, Tom thought. Harry hadn’t inherited Laura’s auburn hair, though. The ruffled spikes of Harry’s hair were very dark, almost black, which could be contributing to how pale that little face was. There was a hint of a smile there now, however.

  ‘’Kay.’ He lay back but kept the toy dinosaur in a raised hand, ready to strike if it became necessary.

  Tom was as gentle as possible. His hand looked so large against Harry’s abdomen as he carefully palpated each quadrant. He left the upper right quadrant till last, probably because he had that suspicion of possible jaundice at the back of his mind.

  ‘Can you take a big breath in for me, Harry? Like this?’ Tom demonstrated and Harry complied.

  And there it was...

  A firm, irregular edge to this little boy’s liver as he could feel it coming down with the lungs filling.

  ‘Ow...’ The plastic dinosaur tapped against Tom’s arm.

  ‘Sorry, buddy.’ Tom lifted his hand but his heart was sinking. That prickle at the back of his neck was something he recognised all too easily and it came from the instinct that there was something significantly wrong here. That Harry could be in trouble and it might be impossible to protect him from painful things to come. Pain that would be felt by his mother, as well.

  Tom didn’t dare catch Laura’s gaze just then. He didn’t want to scare her. Not until he was sure about what his instincts were telling him. Maybe he just wanted to put that moment off for as long as possible because he knew, all too well, how it could turn your world inside out and upside down.

  Destroy it even...

  Or maybe it was because he was suddenly aware of a desire to protect Laura McKenzie.

  Where on earth had that come from...?

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE REST OF that day became a bl
ur.

  A desperate attempt for Laura to hang onto something solid enough to not allow herself to get swamped by a terror that was becoming more and more real as the minutes and then hours ticked past.

  Blood tests came next for Harry and they were still distressing despite the anaesthetic cream and how brave her little boy was being. Maybe it was so distressing for Laura because of how brave Harry was being. Her love for him was so huge, it was filling her chest to an extent that made it seem very hard to breathe.

  There was an ultrasound after that and even though Laura was not trained to interpret the blobby images on the screen, she could see that there was something in Harry’s liver that shouldn’t be there. That was when the real fear kicked in. Fear that had to be hidden from Harry because Laura knew how sensitive he was to how his mother felt. He had been right from when he was a tiny baby and Laura still felt guilty that his fear of strange men had been instilled in that part of his life due to the aftermath of the trauma from the abusive relationship she had escaped.

  Thank goodness Tom was there, at least until Harry was admitted for the raft of other tests he was going to need. It was Tom who introduced Laura and Harry to Suzie, a paediatric surgeon who was absolutely lovely, and he was there when the paediatric oncologist was also called in for a consultation. As Laura’s world was being tipped upside down, Tom’s presence felt like an anchor. Something safe when almost nothing else could be trusted any more. That something solid that she could hang onto.

  ‘Can I call someone for you?’ he asked when an orderly came to wheel Harry’s bed up to the paediatric ward. ‘Have you got family?’

  Laura shook her head, stepping far enough away from Harry not to be overheard. ‘No one close. It’s just me and Harry.’

  Tom was frowning. ‘What about his father?’

  ‘Not in the picture. Never has been.’ Laura wanted to shut down this line of conversation. She’d been alone for a very long time, apart from Harry, and she preferred it that way. More than preferred it, actually. Changing it had never even been an option to consider.