The Doctors’ Baby

mentally.

‘Radiotherapy starts next week,’ Em reminded Anna. ‘Unless you change your mind and have chemotherapy as well.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You know, even though the benefit for you is slight, I wish you wouldn’t completely dismiss it out of hand,’ Em said mildly. ‘The chances of recurrence now is really small, but with the added insurance of chemotherapy it’d be tiny. Why do I get the feeling you won’t even consider it-just because it’d make you more dependent on people in the short term?’

Anna flushed. Em had hit the nail on the head and she knew it.

‘I hate it,’ she admitted. ‘I hate it that I can’t hang up my washing. I hate it that I can’t lift Ruby…’

‘That’ll pass. Once your arm settles, you’ll be just as strong as you were before. Lymphoedema’s becoming more and more rare as surgical techniques improve, and Patrick’s a great surgeon. I’d be amazed if there’s any long-term problems at all.’

‘But I have short-term problems,’ Anna threw at her. ‘That’s enough. I hate being dependent at all, and chemotherapy would make things worse. I hate it that everyone worries. I hate it that Jonas is still here-watching me. I hate it that Jim calls in every night…’

‘Anna, they love you.’

‘And I don’t know what love is, and I don’t want to.’ She shook her head. ‘Neither does Jonas,’ she added bitterly. ‘The only reason he’s here is that I’m his kid sister. I’m something he has to care for because it’s his duty. Plus he’s staying on because he has this thing going with you that I don’t understand. But I’ll bet it’s not love as normal people know it. Is it?’

Em caught her breath, unable to think of what on earth to say in reply, but it seemed an answer wasn’t wanted. Anna hadn’t finished. ‘Whatever it is, it’s just silly that he’s staying,’ she told Em. ‘But he won’t budge. And as for Jim… Did you know he asked me to marry him? Marriage? Me. A woman with three kids and half a breast. If he thinks I’m such a charity case…’

‘I’m sure Jim’s not doing it because he feels sorry for you,’ Em said quickly, and she knew she was right.

‘So you think I should marry him?’

‘That’s your business.’ Em took a deep breath. ‘But you’d have to love him.’

‘Like you love my brother?’

That set her back. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean Jonas said he wants to marry you. He said that’s the main reason he’s sticking around. Because of you.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s because of you.’

‘Because of me. That’s a laugh.’ Anna shook her head. ‘No one cares that much for me, and no one’s going to.’

‘They would if you let them.’

‘No way.’ She shook her head. ‘Me and Jonas,’ she said bitterly. ‘We’ve seen what love can do. It destroyed my parents and it nearly destroyed us. And that’s my last word. I can’t believe Jonas wants to marry you, but if he does then you’re sensible for refusing him. Because he’s just as emotionally damaged as I am.’

And that was that. Em worked on in a fog of uncertainty and misery.

Sure, she had her Robby. Jonas’s presence meant that at least she could keep caring for her precious baby. Jonas did morning surgery now, which meant that Em woke to a morning free to spend with her beloved Robby. Which was blissful.

They started taking long walks, and even the somnolent Bernard began reluctantly to enjoy them, loping along beside the pram like a walking doormat. And all the time Em thought and thought. And thought some more.

She was being stupid, she told herself. She was pining for something that didn’t exist.

Jonas’s love. Ha!

But while Em looked increasingly haggard, Robby bloomed. His scarred little body began to heal faster than Em had anticipated, and she fell for him harder and harder by the day.

Talk to herself as she might, and chastise herself over and over again, it made no difference. She also fell harder and harder for Jonas.

He was always there, she thought desperately. Just there. He was either knocking on her door to check on a question about a patient, or asking her to do a minor anaesthetic for him, or finding out the background of a tricky patient. Or he’d be in the ward as she did her hospital rounds…

Or he’d be in her sitting room reading the paper, or working on his referrals or medico-legal stuff, or taking his turn cooking the dinner…

And even if he wasn’t physically present, he was in her thoughts.

They had to find some alternative living arrangement, Em decided desperately, a few days before Anna started her radiotherapy. She decided that even though she loved him living in her house. She loved it that Jonas was in her life-that he brought his niece and nephews around to cheer up Bernard and play with Robby…

She loved every part of it.

But it was breaking her apart.

‘There’s a fisherman’s cottage coming up for lease at the end of the month,’ she told him. He was cooking them a stir-fry, a silly, frilly apron of Em’s protecting his casual trousers and open-necked shirt. It didn’t make him look one whit less masculine. In fact, he looked impossibly handsome.

Bernard was lying adoringly at his feet, waiting for him to drop something, and Robby was waving his toes in the air in his carrycot-and the sight of so much domesticity was making Em’s heart do back flips.

‘You want me to look into the lease?’ she asked again, and Jonas’s hand stilled in his stir-frying.

‘Do you want me to leave?’

It had to be said. So she said it. ‘Yes. I do. This…this living arrangement can’t be long term.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not,’ she said desperately. ‘How often do I have to spell it out for you, Jonas? You’re turning us into a family without the commitment-and I want it all.’

He paused, went back to stirring and then shook his head. ‘This works for me,’ he said at last. ‘I like living with you.’

‘Well, I don’t like living with you,’ she snapped back. ‘It’s driving me nuts.’

‘But I do a great stir-fry.’

He did. It was a major attribute. A man who could cook…

But Em hardened her heart.

‘No,’ she told him. ‘You have to leave. Shall you enquire about the cottage, or shall I?’

‘Bernard doesn’t want me to go.’

‘I want you to go.’

He turned then, and looked at her, straight and direct across the room.

‘Really, Em? Really?’

‘Yes!’

He sighed. Did his shoulders slump just a little? Or was she imagining it?

‘OK,’ he told her. ‘I’ll go. If that’s what you really want.’

Only it wasn’t what she wanted at all! She lay in bed that night and asked herself if she was a fool. To reject marriage, to reject even sharing a house with him…

To reject the chance to stay with him for ever.

‘Maybe it’d work,’ she whispered into the dark, and her hand crept out to touch Robby’s cradle. ‘Maybe he’d learn to love us.’

But if he didn’t…

It was all just too hard. She turned over and thumped her pillows, and her mind twisted into a million different maybes.

But maybes were too hard!

Maybe Jonas was right. Loving was a big, big mistake.