Yet he hadn’t been able to do it.
He’d loved his wife, but he just couldn’t let down his barriers enough to let her properly close, the way a husband should. He didn’t want children and he knew he’d be rubbish as a father—with his past, how could he be otherwise? He hadn’t a clue how a real father behaved.
Having a family with his wife should’ve been the easiest thing in the world. He hadn’t done it. His relationship had crashed and burned. And how much harder would it be to start a relationship with someone who’d experienced such a terrible loss already? Where he might not measure up against her late husband?
So it was better not to let his thoughts even go there. Whatever his libido might like to hope, it wasn’t going to happen.
Georgie had a case that worried her. Baby Jasmine was a day and a half old, and had been feeding well so she’d gone home with her mum the day before; but, unlike most newborns, she’d slept completely through the first night. This morning she was lethargic, not opening her eyes. When the midwife arrived for her follow-up visit, Jasmine still wouldn’t feed and then she started trembling. On the midwife’s advice, Jasmine’s parents had brought her straight into the paediatric assessment unit at St Christopher’s.
Small babies could get very sick, very quickly; and Georgie really wasn’t happy when she noticed Jasmine’s breathing becoming more rapid.
It could be dehydration, it could be a blood sugar level problem, or it could be a virus. But, most importantly, she needed to keep Jasmine’s breathing supported. She called up to the special care baby unit to get Jasmine ventilated and monitored, and ordered a battery of tests.
But later that morning all the tests came back clear. No dehydration, no blood sugar problems, and none of the other obvious things.
What was she missing? Some kind of allergy, perhaps?
She really needed input from someone with more experience. Even though the person she needed help from wasn’t the easiest to deal with, her patient’s needs came first. So she went to find Ryan in his office. ‘Dr McGregor, do you have a moment, please?’
He looked up from his desk. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’ve got parents in with a very sick baby and I can’t work out what’s wrong. As you have more experience than I do, I was hoping you might see what I’m missing,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Run me through it.’
She explained Jasmine’s symptoms. ‘I’ve got her on prophylactic antibiotics, in case it’s a bacterial infection, but the SCBU says she’s unresponsive, her face is swollen, she’s deteriorating, and there just doesn’t seem to be a reason for it because all the tests have come back clear.’
‘A swollen face,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Given that she’s a newborn and there’s progressive lethargy, it might be a urea cycle disorder. It’s pretty rare—maybe one in a hundred thousand babies suffer from it, so that’d be six or seven each year in the UK—but try checking her for argininosuccinic aciduria.’
‘So get her blood tested for ammonia?’ she asked. At his nod, she added, ‘I’m on it. Thanks.’
‘Let me know how it goes,’ he said. ‘And it’s nearly lunchtime, so would you like to grab a sandwich with me?’
That was the very last thing she’d expected. He’d done his best to avoid her at the cottage. Had he had some kind of sea-change and decided to make her feel welcome in Edinburgh? Or was this the real Ryan, the man she hadn’t met yet—the man Parminder had said all the team adored?
She decided to give him the chance. ‘If you could tell me everything you know about argininosuccinic aciduria, then yes, please,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, I’ll be spending my lunchtime online, researching it.’
‘Come and get me when you’ve ordered the tests,’ he said. ‘You’ve enough time for a sandwich and coffee before the results come back, and I’ll fill you in.’
She sorted out the tests, then went to the canteen with him.
‘How are you settling in, other than having a case that would make anyone panic slightly?’ he asked.
‘OK. I’m starting to understand more of the accent up here, provided I can persuade people to slow down a bit when they talk.’ She gave him a rueful smile. ‘And I think I’m going to have to learn a lot about football.’
He grinned, surprising her—and she was also shocked to feel as if her heart had just done an anatomically impossible somersault. When he was nice, he was very nice indeed. Then again, she knew his flip side: Grumpy McGrumpface.
Behave, she told her libido silently. He’s off limits.
‘Be very careful about which team you pick,’ he said.
‘London?’ she asked hopefully.
He laughed. ‘Which gives you at least fifteen to choose from.’
‘I think,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to find a list of them and toss a coin.’ And she needed to concentrate on work, before her libido got the chance to have control of her tongue and came out with something inappropriate. ‘So can you run me through argininosuccinic aciduria?’
‘It’s an autosomal recessive trait where the child lacks the enzyme argininosuccinic lyase,’ he said, ‘so that means either both her parents are carriers, or one of them maybe has the late onset form.’
‘So between them they would have a one in two chance of a child being a carrier, a one in four chance of the baby having the
