Midwife in the Family Way (6 page)

She sighed. What she needed was a relationship with a man that dissolved before she was forty. Then again, she'd tried a twenty-four-hour one and been broken-hearted from that.

Just the thought of Gianni or any man in the same position as her own dear dad made her want to cry. This was why she didn't want love. She'd given up wallowing in self-pity years ago.

She needed to concentrate on her daughter. Grace was her most important concern. To create a world of wonderful memories for her daughter. She needed to stay focussed and plan for the day she might not be capable of being there. Like her own mother couldn't be for her.

Emma glanced at the mess in front of her and cleared her mind of fruitless yearnings. He'd removed his own sharps—good—and hadn't spread himself around as much as most people did when they were suturing. She swept the neat pile of paper litter into the bag hanging off the trolley and sprayed the area with detergent before she wiped it over and put a clean sheet on the bed ready for the next patient.

She glanced back towards the overflowing waiting room. Calling the next person in sounded like a good idea. For her own peace of mind as well as the patients'. But before she could call a name, the automatic doors
opened to admit Emma's brothers, both local ambulance officers, and a stretchered patient.

‘This way, boys.' Emma beckoned them through to her. Her brothers would ground her, too. Both of them were positive for the gene. Now, that was reality right in the face.

As the busy afternoon wore on Emma remembered why she preferred midwifery to Emergency. The peace and passions of birth were poles away from the adrenalin rush of the emergency department, although a little of the fight-and-flight stuff had come in handy as she'd tried to ward off the onslaught of memories she'd been bombarded with just by working with Gianni Bonmarito.

With weak fascination she'd watched him connect warmly with patients, children, staff, and even the grumpy one-eyed cat one older lady had tried to smuggle into the ward with her own admission, and each positive encounter had made her more aware of what she was missing. And more reason not to short-change him when he'd already suffered in love. The lump in her throat grew to such mammoth proportions she didn't even fancy her lunch.

By the end of the shift Emma couldn't inflict the exposure of more gorgeous Gianni on herself and slipped out the garden door as soon as handover was completed. Lucky Christine was away and rushing home to the man she loved. Emma envied her.

This afternoon Emma would be happy if she could get to the safety of her house so she could immerse
herself in all the good things she held in her life. She needed to batten down the impossible dreams that were beginning to haunt her with ten times more persistence since that morning.

‘Our day has been busy.' Gianni's voice brushed over her shoulder like the branch she'd just ducked under. Her neck stiffened and she slowed her steps. Reluctantly she abandoned evasion as a non-starter.

‘Very busy.' So much for grand plans, she grumbled silently, but a tiny shiver of excitement disputed her grumbling. Liar. You're pleased to see him, the voice inside her head quibbled. Her lips compressed as she drew in a long breath through her nose, one, two, three, four, and her mouth pursed as she exhaled in a silent whistle and allowed her shoulders to relax.

She saw the branch skim lovingly across his broad shoulders like her own fingers had done a month ago and then he stepped out onto the path beside her. Emma watched the bush spring back. Lucky branch. She glanced at his tousled hair and her hand tightened on her bag in acknowledgement of that fleeting desire to comb it with her fingers. How could she be irresponsibly infatuated so quickly?

Gee, maybe the promise of more mind-blowing sex? that internal smart Alec suggested. Her cheeks burnt and she ducked her head.

He tilted his head at her with a question she couldn't help but see. ‘You don't look pleased I have followed you. Would it be better for you if I left you alone?'

She sighed again. It was even more embarrassing
her distress showed. ‘Look…' She paused. ‘Gianni. I'm sorry.' How to tell him? ‘It's not you.' She grimaced. ‘Well, it is you but it's not your fault.'

He raised his black brows and spread his hands in exasperation. ‘There is no doubt it is my fault.' They'd stopped when they reached the path outside the hospital that ran along the front of the lake.

Gianni needed to cross to the doctor's residence and she needed to follow the path all the way to her house. Alone.

His eyes were on her face, as if searching for the woman he'd held a month ago. ‘Of course. You have been let down before? Grace's father?' Now he'd planted himself directly in front of her. ‘Can we not be friends, Emma?'

Grace's dad, Tommy, didn't have a mean bone in his body. They'd been children when they'd been together. No. Gianni couldn't be more wrong about the reason she didn't want to tie herself to a man.

But it was still impossible to be mere friends. She raised her own brows and tilted her head. ‘Is that what you want to be, Gianni? “Friends” with me?'

His gaze caught hers and the sultry chocolate of his eyes darkened as they travelled as if to imprint her features on his mind. The sounds of the birds and the swish of the trees overhead faded into the stillness between them.

The air thickened as they stared at each other and Emma felt suspended like a piece of fruit in a jelly. Far too much awareness.

Finally he said, ‘No. It is not only your friendship I want.'

She dragged her eyes away to sever a connection that wobbled her knees. ‘I thought not.'

He raised his hand to touch her shoulder and hastily she stepped back because then she would be lost. His hand dropped and he frowned down as she tucked her fingers away behind her back. ‘It meant something to you, didn't it, Emma? Between us runs a current. You feel it too?'

She could almost laugh at that. Oh, yes. She gave him a sweeping glance of her own. From the top of that thick hair, past his beautiful jawline, across those strong upright shoulders and that chest she'd love to rest her head on again.

She sighed as her eyes fell away. Stop looking. Yeah, well… She swallowed and wished she hadn't indulged. Maybe honesty would work. ‘I feel the vibration of you every time you walk past, Gianni, but I can't be interested. I told you that a month ago.'

He went to speak and she lifted her hand to silence him. ‘I don't do one-night stands.' She grimaced. ‘Except once. And I don't do long term. So where does that leave you?'

He lifted his head and his gaze narrowed. Another silence lay suspended between them and then finally he raised one eyebrow. Wickedly, and her heart kicked out of rhythm.

‘Neither short nor long. A leisurely sojourn for the month I am here? Then we would see?' His measured
voice raised the gooseflesh on her arms and she couldn't help the mental leap of her imagination to a slow sip of sensation with Gianni.

Wrapped in his arms she'd be safe from the world and the future. Her cheeks burned in case he read the sudden sleepiness in her eyes.

She rubbed her elbows to banish the bumps. What was wrong with her? She rarely thought about sex. Except for every minute for the last four weeks.

She shook her head. Vehemently. Twice. Once for him and once for her. ‘I don't think so, Gianni, but thanks for the offer. I have commitments. A daughter and no time.' She couldn't believe she was having this conversation.

He closed the small distance between them again until his chest almost touched hers. Then his eyes drifted down to her mouth. She could sense the brush of an imaginary finger and she had no control over the return of gooseflesh that gave her away again.

His voice dropped. ‘So, don't think commitments. Think no commitments. Mutual nourishment in a world separate to our daily lives. I have no time either.'

Suddenly she felt like crying. Then why were they teasing themselves? She threw her head up and gave him a level stare. ‘Leave it, Gianni.'

He said, almost to himself but she heard the words, ‘
Si.
For today.' He leaned forward and kissed her cheek
just like she'd kissed his the first day. ‘Goodnight, Emma. Sleep well.'

‘As if,' she muttered to herself as she walked briskly along the path towards home. Alone.

G
IANNI
stood beside the kitchen table and helped Louisa crumb pieces of veal for their dinner. ‘So, tell me about Emma Rose, Louisa.'

‘What do you mean?' Louisa glanced up, and her merry eyes even twinkled a little at him. Louisa liked to spoil a man. It made her smile. But she also enjoyed learning the Italian way to treat the veal. This was good.

Gianni returned to his dilemma of Emma and shrugged. ‘She won't talk to me.'

‘That doesn't sound like Emma.' Louisa's hand stilled as she considered his statement. ‘Or do you mean she won't flirt with you?'

Gianni shot a glance at the older lady and then looked down at the crumbs on his fingertips. ‘Perhaps.'

‘Ah.' Louisa nodded. ‘Emma has issues and if she hasn't told you…' she shrugged ‘…then really it's not my place to discuss it.'

Some nuance in Louisa's voice warned him. Something that made Louisa sad again. Maybe there was more to Emma's distance than met the eye.

He couldn't prevent the sliver of ice that crept in under his ribs, and suddenly he needed divine reassurance. Please, God, nothing terrible. ‘Medical issues?'

Louisa looked out the window to the lake. She sighed. ‘I suppose it's common knowledge. Emma's never hidden it.' She met his eyes and at the sympathy in hers the ice around his ribs thickened. ‘Emma doesn't believe she can guarantee her future beyond her fortieth birthday. That's when her mother was diagnosed. She's even published her own story to help others.'

Gianni bit his lip to stop himself from asking the obvious question. Surely Louisa would get to the point.

She went on after a long sigh. ‘But it all boils down to her belief of her own end.'

He couldn't stand it. ‘But what cause? What illness?'

‘Huntington's disease.'

Gianni felt the shudder internally if not externally, and suddenly he was staring at the wall opposite and not seeing the picture of a hen scratching the ground. Huntington's? His mind flew back to a patient he'd known very early in his medical career. A young man, early forties, his convulsive arms and legs uncontrolled as he tried to walk.

The mental deterioration that wasn't kind enough to completely remove the realisation that you were helpless and reliant on others until your disease progressed so much you died.

There were lesser degrees, and some of those with the gene passed away without signs of the dormant time
bomb, but the worst-case scenario—the definition reeled off his brain and he murmured it out loud. ‘Hereditary disorder with mental and physical deterioration, leading to death.'

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. ‘Emma inherited the gene?'

Louisa spread his hands. ‘I never did understand the genetics, though my late husband tried to explain it. I was always under the impression she did. But that's something you'd have to ask Emma.'

Of course. But perhaps not something you could mention as you ducked under a branch.
Dio.
Poor sweet, adorable Emma. Another sinister thought followed and Gianni winced and looked down at his own steady hand. ‘And her daughter? Grace?'

‘Aye. The wee one is Emma's main concern.'

Of course. He needed to research.
Adesso.
He washed his hands. ‘I will return shortly.'

‘Off you go, then. Dinner will be half an hour and I can stretch it for another fifteen if you hit a snag.' Louisa nodded. She understood.

Gianni switched on his computer a few minutes later.

He read up on the disease process for Huntington's to refresh his memory, the statistics of having the gene and the worst-case scenario and, finally, he made a search with Emma's name. Louisa had said she'd told her story.

There she was.

Her photo stared out at him, smiling into his with
an apparent serenity that made him ache, the face of Huntington's in Queensland, and her family story.

He read how her mother's diagnosis had been unexpected, a run of early accidental deaths of close relatives had masked the genetic footprints that led to expected diagnosis, and only the progression of the disease, awkward and jerky movements, changes in mood and ability to cope with daily tasks, and the slow deterioration of both physical and mental self-sufficiency had pointed to the answer. One in ten thousand sufferers. Around three hundred and fifty sufferers in Queensland. Was Emma one of those?

His eyes skimmed as he searched for the place where she discussed her own testing and results and couldn't see it. He searched again, and still didn't know whether she'd been tested. But she must have. How could anyone not want to find out?

What he did see were her brothers and that both were positive. Gianni sighed. Cruel fall of the dice for a fifty per cent chance. He eased his neck and stood up. He would eat and return to this site.

 

The next morning, still bereft of birthing women, Emma returned to Emergency. Today, Emma felt Gianni's eyes on her wherever she walked. There was something different in his appraisal this morning.

Grey smudges darkened his eyes and frown lines came and went on his forehead. He smothered another yawn with his hand. What had he done last night? Had he also had trouble resting or had he been too merrily
oblivious to the turmoil he'd left for Emma? She gave up the struggle not to ask. She'd had very little sleep and most of the reason could be laid at the door of Gianni Bonmarito. ‘Big night, Gianni?'

His gaze flicked to the empty doorway and back. No patients to distract him. ‘I was studying a case on the internet.'

And she'd thought it was because of her and their conversation by the path. Silly girl. ‘Was that wise with a work day ahead?'

The gravity in his face as he considered her question made her frown. ‘We all make choices,' he said.

Huh? She'd been teasing but apparently his sense of humour was way different to hers. ‘You're too deep for me today.' The emergency doors opened and she looked up. ‘You need to see these people. This little boy, Lucas, has haemophilia. He's probably had a fall.'

Gianni looked across and nodded.
‘Grazie.'

He strode across in that unhurried walk of his that covered ground with deceptive speed and Emma watched him greet the newcomers. Even with the little exposure she'd had to him she could tell there was something on his mind. Maybe there was someone at his home who'd become sick. She needed to remember he had a family and a life away from here. Another reason it would never work.

She'd decided last night there'd be no happy ending to an affair with Gianni Bonmarito. Even a brief one. It was just that the inner Emma had argued there was
no happy ending anywhere, so maybe she should grab what she could of the good life.

But that's what she was doing already. Enjoying her daughter, she'd made fabulous friends in the Huntington's network, had been privileged to talk to those affected from all over Australia, and the community of Lyrebird Lake cared for her like an extra family.

A broken heart was the last thing she needed when she had enough to concentrate on. And she had no doubt her heart would break when Gianni Bonmarito left for Italy because already it ached just looking at him from across the room.

But it was lonely while she waited.

The emergency doors opened and Emma's brothers, Russell and Craig, brought in another stretchered patient. Every time she saw her brothers she winced. Russell, the second of her brothers to test positive for the gene, had now gone on to make a life for himself. Happily married to a wonderful woman, and with genetic help at conception, they planned to have babies in the future. She considered her brothers the bravest people she knew. She just wasn't that brave.

Emma smiled at them but they didn't return it, which made her gaze sharpen. She recognised the patient. Seamus.

Christine's Irish husband. The truck whisperer, they all called him. His rapport with anything mechanical was legendary. He had recently returned from Africa where he'd been paid handsomely to resurrect a rare
vintage fire engine for a minor dictator, but it seemed Christine's big anniversary night had been short-lived. Seamus lay with his pale skin blotched with fever and his red hair a damp sweaty mop, tossing on an ambulance stretcher.

His eyes squinted as he groaned in distress and guarded his knees when Emma helped to slide him across to the bed. Joint pain? She stood back and rubbed her fingers where the heat from his body had been absorbed into hers. He was burning up. Ominous, Emma fretted, and glanced at her brothers. ‘What happened?'

‘We had our weekly fishing trip yesterday and he was fine. Today he's as sick as a dog and he seems even worse now than when we picked him up,' Russell said. ‘He didn't have a hope of driving in.'

Emma waved to catch Christine's attention as she began to hook up the cardiac and oxygen saturation monitors.

‘Gianni.' Emma's voice carried to where Gianni was chatting with Lucas's mother and he looked up. He too made his way down to the bed.

They both arrived at the same time and Christine took her husband's hand in shock and with her other smoothed his brow. ‘What happened? What's wrong?'

‘Seamus is Christine's husband, Gianni.' Emma glanced at the other woman. ‘Will I take over up there, Christine?'

Christine dragged her eyes away from her man's face. ‘Oh.' She blinked worried eyes. ‘Thanks. Yes, please, Emma. I'll call you if I need help here.'

Emma left them to it but her concentration was divided between the two ends of the room as she helped ice the swelling above little Lucas's knee from his fall.

‘The bleeding under the skin seems to have stopped,' Lucas's mother said.

‘Did the doctor say you could go?' Emma picked up the notes and scanned them to see Gianni's orders.

Lucas's mum nodded. ‘It stopped sooner than we'd thought it would.' She looked at her husband. ‘We probably didn't need to bring him in and waste your time but I always worry when he falls.'

‘You absolutely did the right thing.' Emma nodded her head to reinforce the message. ‘Never hesitate. Listen to your instinct.' Emma believed that passionately and that went for midwifery, as well. ‘A worried mother never wastes our time, and it gave Dr Bonmarito a chance to meet your Lucas without a big emergency.'

The little boy's parents looked relieved. ‘As long as you're sure?' They all looked at Gianni down the end of the room. ‘He was very good with Lucas. We need more good doctors now Dr Ned has gone. Is he here long?'

‘A month, while Dr Angus is away, and then he has to leave.' There was no uncertainty. Emma needed to remember that herself.

The little boy spoke up. ‘Can we go home now?' Emma recognised the darting looks Lucas directed at the door and she bit back a smile. He'd had enough. Lucas wanted out of hospital before someone did something
to him, like stick a needle in him or put up a drip, which usually happened.

Emma shook her head. ‘Soon, buddy. I just need to take some blood first. Is that okay?'

Lucas sighed resignedly. ‘I knew it.'

They all smiled and his father ruffled his son's hair. ‘Have I told you how proud I am of you today, Lucas?'

Lucas brightened. ‘Do I get a treat?'

‘You don't have to make your bed this morning,' his mother teased, but everyone knew a treat was in the offing.

After they'd gone, Emma finished up the last of the patients to be allowed to go home and tidied her end of the ward before she drifted back down towards the critically ill Seamus. They'd taken blood, run through two litres of fluid and given paracetamol for the fever and his aches and pains, but there was talk of transferring him to Brisbane if he worsened.

By lunchtime the pathology results were back and as Gianni had suspected Seamus had brought home an infection from Africa. Dengue antibodies were isolated and at least they knew what had caused his fever. The implications for his family were something nobody discounted. Seamus must have incubated the bug since he'd been home and now three weeks later he was sick.

‘The real threat is cross-infection to others if he's been bitten by the local mosquitoes,' Gianni told Christine. ‘I've seen epidemics like this in disaster areas. In the normal cycle of dengue, the female mosquito feeds on
an infected and viraemic human, and in ten days the salivary glands of that mosquito become infected for life. That way the disease is spread to other humans before you know it you have an outbreak.'

He glanced at the wall clock. ‘We'll notify the local infectious-diseases department but I doubt they'll do anything with only one case.'

Christine held her husband's hand. ‘So how soon will he feel better?'

‘It will take a week at least,' Gianni said, ‘though sometimes patients can relapse for a few days.'

Emma remembered that adults were more likely to be infected than children, because the town had had a small outbreak a few years ago, but children could become quite ill with the worst forms of the disease. She'd have to watch Grace.

Gianni went on. ‘His headaches and muscle pain will probably get worse and he may get gastric symptoms. This part of the disease process has to pass before he'll improve sufficiently to feel normal.'

Christine stroked her husband's forehead. ‘Does he have to stay in hospital? Can we do anything for him by keeping him in that I can't do at home?'

‘Perhaps not now he's rehydrated, and as you're a nurse. As long as he drinks. He'll be sick and uncomfortable, if you think you can manage.'

Christine looked at Seamus who muttered, ‘Let's try home, love.'

Emma touched Christine's arm. ‘I'll set up a roster so someone comes to see you morning and afternoon to
give you a hand.' That was how it worked in Lyrebird Lake. If someone needed help, the load was shared through the network of friends, especially with those who worked at the hospital. ‘I'll come around in the morning and help with his sponge and changing the bed,' Emma promised.