The Baby That Changed Everything

Gently she examined his knee. ‘Tell me where it hurts, and don’t be stubborn about it—because I can’t help you if you’re not honest with me.’

‘Do you talk to all your patients like this?’ he asked.

‘Just the awkward ones.’

He guessed he deserved that. ‘OK. It hurts there. And there.’ He gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘And there.’

‘All righty.’ She grabbed a towel and spread it across her lap. ‘Leg. Here. Now.’

His bare leg astride her body.

Uh-oh. How on earth was he meant to stop his thoughts doing a happy dance?

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he drawled, hoping she didn’t have a clue what was going through his head right now.

Her hands had been gentle when she’d examined his knee. Now they were firm. There wasn’t anything remotely sexual about the way she touched him, and he had to grit his teeth on more than one occasion.

But when she’d finished the deep-tissue massage, he could move an awful lot more easily.

‘You’re very good at that,’ he said when she’d finished and he’d put his tracksuit bottoms back on. ‘Thank you.’

‘Better?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Sorry for being snippy with you.’

She shrugged. ‘You were in pain. Of course you were going to be snippy. It’s forgotten.’

‘Thanks. I owe you one,’ he said lightly, expecting her to brush it aside.

To his surprise, she looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder.’

‘Wonder what?’

‘I do need a favour, actually, and you’d be perfect.’

He still wasn’t following this. ‘For what?’

She took a deep breath. ‘My best friend’s getting married in three weeks’ time. And I’m under a bit of pressure to take someone to the wedding with me. My family’s convinced that I need someone in my life, and I can’t get them to see that I’m perfectly happy just concentrating on my career.’

‘You want me to go to a wedding with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘As your partner?’

She grimaced. ‘I’m not asking you on a date, Jared. I’m asking you to do me a favour.’

‘To be your pretend boyfriend.’

‘For one day. And an evening,’ she added.

Go with her to a wedding.

She’d just made his knee feel a lot better. And this would be payback.

But … a wedding.

Where people promised to love, honour and cherish, until death did them part.

Vows he’d taken himself, and had meant every single word—although it turned out that Sasha hadn’t. For all he knew, Tom hadn’t even been her first affair. He’d been so clueless, thinking that his wife was happy, when all the time she’d been looking for something else.

Sasha had broken every single one of her vows.

She’d lied, she’d cheated—and then she’d made a crucial decision without talking it over with him. A decision that had cut Jared to the quick because he really couldn’t understand her reasoning and it was totally the opposite of what he’d wanted. Even if the baby hadn’t been his, it would still have been hers. They could’ve worked something out.

Except she hadn’t wanted to. The only person she’d thought about had been herself. Not him, not the baby, not the other man who also might’ve been the baby’s father—as she’d been sleeping with them both, she’d had no idea who the father of her baby was.

To go and celebrate someone else making those same vows when he’d lost his faith in marriage … that would be hard.

‘If it’s a problem …’ her voice was very cool ‘… then forget I asked.’

He didn’t want to tell Bailey about the mess of his divorce, Sasha’s betrayal and the termination. He didn’t want her to pity him. Besides, he owed her for helping him with his knee. ‘OK. I’ll do it.’

He knew it sounded grudging, and her raised eyebrow confirmed it. He sighed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound quite so—well—Herod-ish.’

That netted him the glimmer of a smile. ‘Knee still hurting?’ she asked.

It would be an easy excuse. But he thought she deserved the truth. ‘Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot of divorces.’ He’d been through a messy one, too. Not that she needed to know that bit. ‘So I guess my view of weddings is a bit dark.’

‘This one,’ Bailey said, ‘is definitely going to work. My best friend used to be engaged to a total jerk, but thankfully she realised how miserable her life was going to be with him, and she called it off.’

Interesting. So Bailey was a realist rather than seeing things through rose-tinted glasses? ‘I take it you like the guy she’s marrying?’

She nodded. ‘Aaron’s a genuinely nice guy. And he loves Joni as much as she loves him. It’s equal.’

Did that mean Bailey had been in a relationship that hadn’t been equal, or was he reading too much into this?

‘Plus,’ she said, ‘I happen to know the food’s going to be good—and the music. Joni’s brother has a band, and they’re playing at the evening do.’ She paused. ‘Dinosaur rock. They’re seriously good. So I think you’ll enjoy that.’

‘You don’t need to sell it to me. I’ve already said I’ll go with you, and I keep my word.’

Funny how brown eyes could suddenly seem so piercing. And then she nodded. ‘Yes. You have integrity. It’s better to be grumpy with integrity than to be charming and unreliable.’

That definitely sounded personal. And it intrigued him. But if he asked her any more, then she’d be able to ask him things he’d rather not answer. ‘Let me know when and where the plus-one thing is, then,’ he said instead.

‘Thanks. I will.’

Bailey couldn’t stop thinking about Jared on the way home. The world of football was pretty high profile—as much as the worlds of music and Hollywood were—and the gossip magazines were forever reporting divorces and affairs among sporting stars. But something in Jared’s expression had made her think that it was a bit more personal than that. Was Jared divorced? Not that she’d pry and ask him. But it made her feel a bit as if she’d railroaded him into agreeing to be her partner at the wedding. And that wasn’t fair.

When she got home, she texted him: You really *don’t* have to go to the wedding.

The answer came back promptly: I said I’d do it. I’ll keep my word.

Typical Jared. Stubborn.

Well, she’d given him the chance to back out. But hopefully he wouldn’t hate it as much as he seemed to think he would. OK, thanks, she texted back, and added all the details of the wedding.

The next day was one of Bailey’s clinic days at the London Victoria. Her first patient was a teenager who’d been injured playing tennis.

‘Viv landed awkwardly in training,’ Mr Kaine said. ‘She said she felt her knee give and heard a popping sound. And her knee’s started to swell really badly.’ He indicated his daughter’s knee. ‘It hurts to walk.’

‘It’s just a sprain, Dad. It’ll be fine,’ Vivienne said. ‘Let’s stop wasting the doctor’s time and go home.’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘You’re going to get this checked out properly.’

It sounded as if Mr Kaine was putting his daughter’s welfare first and would support her through any treatment programme—which was a good thing, Bailey thought, because what he’d just described sounded very like the injury that had finished Jared’s career. Damage to the anterior cruciate ligament.

She pushed Jared to the back of her mind. Not here, not now. Her patient came first.

‘Thank you for giving me the background, Mr Kaine. That’s very useful,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Vivienne, would you mind if I examine your knee?’ she asked.

The girl rolled her eyes, as if she thought this was a total waste of time, but nodded. She flinched when Bailey touched her knee, so clearly it hurt to the touch and Bailey was very, very gentle as she finished examining the girl’s knee.

‘I’m going to send you for an MRI scan to confirm it,’ she said, ‘but I’m fairly sure you’ve torn your anterior cruciate ligament. I’m afraid you’re going to be out of play for a little while.’

Again, she thought of Jared. He must have had a similar consultation with a doctor at a very similar age.

‘What? But I have to play! I’ve got an important tournament next week,’ Vivienne said, looking horrified. ‘I’ve been training for months. I can’t miss it!’

However bad the girl felt about it, she had to face up to the severity of her injury. She wouldn’t even be able to have a casual knockabout on the court for a while, let alone play an important match on the junior tennis circuit. Not even if her knee was strapped up.

‘Viv, you have to listen to the doctor. She knows what she’s talking about,’ Mr Kaine said. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Randall. You were explaining to us what Vivienne’s done to her knee.’

Bailey drew a couple of diagrams to show Vivienne how the ligaments worked and what had happened to her knee. ‘You have a complete tear of the ligament—it’s the most common type, and I’m afraid it also means you’ve damaged the other ligaments and your cartilage.’

‘Will it take long to fix?’ Vivienne asked. ‘If I miss this tournament, can I play in the next one?’

‘I’m afraid that’s unlikely,’ Bailey said. ‘You’re going to need surgery.’

‘Surgery?’ The girl looked totally shocked. ‘But—but—that means I’ll be out for ages!’

‘The injury won’t heal on its own and unfortunately you can’t just stitch a ligament back together. Vivienne, I’ll need to send you to a specialist surgeon. I know Dr Martyn here quite well, and he’s really good at his job, so I promise you’ll be in the best hands.’ She looked up at Vivienne’s father and gave him a reassuring smile, too. ‘He’ll replace your torn ligament with a tissue graft, which will act as a kind of scaffolding for the new ligament to grow on. You’ll be on crutches for a while afterwards.’

‘Crutches. I can’t play tennis with crutches.’ Vivienne shook her head. ‘This can’t be happening. It just can’t.’

‘Crutches will stop you putting weight on your leg and damaging the structure of your knee further,’ Bailey said. ‘I can also give you a brace to protect your knee and make it more stable. But I’m afraid it’s going to be at least six months until you can play sports again. After the surgery, you’ll need a rehab physiotherapy programme—that means exercises tailored to strengthen your leg muscles and make your knee functional again.’

‘Six months.’ Vivienne closed her eyes. ‘Oh, my God. My life’s over.’

‘Viv, it’s going to take six months for you to get better. I know it feels bad, but it’s not the end of the world. You’ll come back stronger,’ Mr Kaine said.

It was good that her dad was so supportive, Bailey thought. But Vivienne was clearly finding it hard to adjust.

‘If you go back to playing too soon, you might do more damage to your knee and you’ll be out of action for a lot longer,’ Bailey said. ‘The good news is that the way they do surgery today is a lot less invasive. It’s keyhole surgery, so that means you’ll have less pain, you’ll spend less time in hospital and you’ll recover more quickly.’

‘When will the surgeon do it?’ Mr Kaine asked. ‘Today? Tomorrow?’

‘Not straight away,’ Bailey said. ‘We need the inflammation to go down a bit first, or there’s a risk of scar tissue forming inside the joint and you’ll lose part of your range of motion.’

‘And that means I won’t be able to play tennis the way I do now.’ Vivienne bit her lip. ‘Not ever.’

‘Exactly,’ Bailey said. ‘What you do next is going to make the biggest difference. For the next seventy-two hours you need to remember RICE—rest, ice, compression and elevation.’ She talked Vivienne through the treatment protocols.

‘What about a hot-water bottle to help with the pain?’ Mr Kaine asked.

Bailey shook her head. ‘Not for the first three days—and no alcohol, either.’

Vivienne rolled her eyes. ‘Fat chance of that. Dad’s part of the food police. We were told in sixth form that as soon as you’re sixteen you’re allowed a glass of wine with your meal in a restaurant. But Dad won’t let me.’

‘Alcohol slows your reactions and you can’t play tennis with a hangover,’ he said. ‘At least, not well—and I should know because I’ve tried it.’

Bailey smiled at him. He was definitely going to need a sense of humour to help coax Vivienne through the next few months of a total ban from tennis. ‘No running or massage, either,’ she said. ‘But I can give you painkillers—ones that will help reduce the inflammation as well as the pain.’ She looked at Mr Kaine. ‘Are there any allergies I need to know about?’

‘No,’ he confirmed.

‘Good.’

‘Six months,’ Vivienne said again, making it sound like a life sentence.

‘Better to make up a bit of ground in a couple of months,’ Bailey said softly, ‘than to go back too soon, do more damage and then have to spend even more time recovering.’

‘She’s right, love.’ Mr Kaine rested his hand briefly on his daughter’s shoulder. ‘So what happens after the operation?’

‘For the first three weeks the physio will concentrate on increasing the range of motion in the joint but without ripping the graft,’ Bailey said. ‘By week six Vivienne should be able to use a stair-climber or a stationary bike to maintain the range of motion and start strengthening her muscles, and then the plan will be to work to full rehab over the next few months. You need a balance between doing enough to rehabilitate the knee,’ she said gently to Vivienne, ‘but not so much that you damage the surgical repair and make the ligament fail again.’

‘Six months,’ Vivienne said again, looking totally miserable.

‘There are other things you can work on that won’t involve your knee,’ Mr Kaine said cheerfully. ‘Chin up.’

Vivenne just sighed.

Once Bailey had sorted out a compression bandage and painkillers, she said, ‘I’ll see you again in a couple of days and then we’ll see the surgeon. Reception will make an appointment for you. Call me if you’re worried about anything. But we’ll get your knee fixed and you’ll be back to playing tennis again.’

And, some time before their next appointment, there was someone she needed to talk to who might just be able to give her some really, really good advice to help Vivienne cope with the next few months.

She hoped.

CHAPTER FIVE

THERE WAS NEVER going to be a perfect time to ask Jared, Bailey knew, and she certainly wasn’t going to ring him outside office hours to talk it through with him. But once the next training session with the team was under way and she was seated on the bench next to him, she turned to him.

‘Can I ask you for some professional advice—something that’s a bit personal?’

He looked completely taken aback. ‘Why?’

She’d known before she asked that this was going to be difficult; Jared had never talked to her about his injury. But he was the only one who might be able to help. ‘I have a patient, a teenage female tennis player. She landed awkwardly from hitting a ball.’

‘And?’

‘She, um, has a complete tear to her ACL.’

He went very, very still and guilt flooded through her.

‘I know I’m being intrusive,’ she said, ‘and I apologise for that. I really don’t mean to dredge up bad memories for you about your own injury. And, yes, I did look you up, so I know what happened. I could hardly ask you, could I?’

‘I guess not.’

Talk about inscrutable. Jared’s voice and his face were completely expressionless, so she had absolutely no idea how he was feeling right now. Worrying that she was risking their newfound truce, but wanting to get some real help for her patient, she said, ‘The reason I’m asking you is because when it happened you were about the same age as she is now, so you know how it feels. Her dad’s really supportive and he’s trying to get her to rest her knee sensibly so she’ll recover well from the operation, but she’s distraught at the idea that she’s going to lose a lot of ground over the next year. So I guess what I’m asking you is if there’s anything I can tell her to help her deal with it a bit better.’

For a moment she thought Jared was going to blank her, but then he blew out a breath. ‘That really depends on whether she’s going to recover fully or not.’

Clearly he hadn’t recovered fully enough to be able to resume his sports career. But she knew that if she tried to give him a hug—out of empathy rather than pity—he’d push her away, both literally and figuratively. So she kept the topic to a discussion about her patient. ‘I think there’s a very good chance she’ll recover fully. The surgeon’s brilliant,’ Bailey said.

‘Good.’

A complete tear to the anterior cruciate ligament. Jared knew exactly how that felt. Like the end of the world. When all your dreams had suddenly exploded and there wasn’t any meaning in your life any more. You couldn’t do the one thing you knew you were really good at—the thing you were born to do. In a few moments it was all gone.

At seventeen, it had destroyed him. Knowing that his knee wouldn’t hold up in the future—that if he played again he was likely to do more damage to his knee and eventually he’d be left with a permanent limp. Knowing that he’d never play for his country again. He’d been so sure that nothing would ever be that good for the rest of his life.

Although it hadn’t actually turned out that way. He enjoyed his job, and he was still involved with the game he loved.

He blew out a breath. ‘It’s a lot to deal with. Especially at that age. Tell her to take it one day at a time, and to find someone she can talk to. Someone who won’t let her wallow in self-pity and will talk her into being sensible.’ He’d been so, so lucky that the team’s deputy coach had been brilliant with him. He’d let Jared rant and rave, and then told him to look at his options, because there most definitely would be something he could do.

What goes around comes around. It was time to pass on that same advice now. ‘Tell her there will be something else. At first it’ll feel like second best, but she’ll find something else she loves as much. Even if it doesn’t look like it right now.’

‘Thank you,’ Bailey said quietly. ‘I appreciate it—and I’m sorry I brought back bad memories. That really wasn’t my intention.’

He shrugged again. ‘It was a long time ago.’

She said nothing, simply waited, and he was surprised to find himself filling in the gap. ‘At the time, it was bad,’ he admitted. ‘I wanted someone to blame for the end of my dreams—but I always knew that the tackle wasn’t deliberate. It was just something that went wrong and it could’ve happened to anyone. The guy who tackled me felt as guilty as hell about it, but it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just an accident. Wrong time, wrong place.’ He paused. ‘And I found something else to do.’

‘Did you think about coaching?’ She put a hand across her mouth. ‘Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.’

He liked the fact that she wasn’t pressuring him. There was no malice in Bailey Randall. She just wanted to help her patient, and he’d had first-hand experience of what her patient was going through right now. Of course she’d want to know how he’d coped. ‘I thought about it,’ he said. ‘Though I knew I was too young to be taken seriously when my knee was wrecked. At seventeen, you don’t really have enough experience to coach a team.’

‘So why did you choose medicine? That’s—well, a huge change of direction.’

‘My family are all GPs,’ he said. ‘I’d always thought I’d join them. I guess it was a surprise to everyone when I was spotted on the playing field at school and the local team took me on for training.’ He shrugged. ‘Then I had to make a choice. Risk trying for a career in football, or do my A-levels. My parents said to give it a go—I could always take my A-levels later if it didn’t work out. And when I was picked for the England squad … they threw one hell of a party.’

He smiled at the memory. ‘When my knee went, it hit me pretty hard. But I was lucky in a way, in that I could fall back on my original plans—I just took my A-levels two years later than I would’ve done if I hadn’t tried for a career in sport.’

‘So you trained as a GP?’ she asked.

‘No. I ended up training in emergency medicine,’ he said. ‘I liked the buzz. Then, like you, I had a secondment to a sports medicine department. And then it occurred to me that I could have the best of both worlds—I could be a doctor in the sport I’d always loved.’

‘That’s a good compromise,’ she said.

Again, to his surprise, he found himself asking questions and actually wanting to know the answers rather than being polite. ‘What about you? Is your family in medicine?’

‘No—my family has a restaurant. Mum’s the head chef, Dad’s front of house and my brothers are both kitchen serfs.’ At Jared’s raised eyebrows, she added swiftly, ‘Joke. Gio is Mum’s deputy—he’s going to take over when she retires. And Rob’s probably the best pastry chef in the universe and he makes the most amazing wedding cakes. They’re planning to expand the business that way, too.’

‘Didn’t your parents expect you to join the family firm?’

She shook her head. ‘Mum and Dad always said that we should follow our hearts and do what we love, and that they’d back us whatever we decided. Rob and Gio were always in the kitchen making stuff, so it was obvious what they wanted to do. And I was always bandaging my teddies when I was a toddler.’ She grinned. ‘And the dog, if I could get him to sit still.’

He could just imagine that. He’d bet she’d been the most determined and stubborn toddler ever. ‘A born doctor, then?’

‘I’ve no idea where it came from. It was just what I always wanted to do,’ she said. ‘And I guess I was lucky because my family’s always supported me. Even when I nag them about healthy eating and saturated fat.’ She laughed. ‘Though the nagging has at least made them put some super-healthy options on the menu—that’s gone down really well with the customers, so I feel I’ve made some kind of contribution to the family business, apart from volunteering to tastetest any new stuff.’

Clearly Bailey was very close to her family and Jared had a feeling that they adored her as much as she obviously adored them. And she cared enough about her patients to do something outside her comfort zone; he knew that it must’ve been daunting to ask him about the injury he didn’t talk about, but she’d asked him to see if he could help her patient rather than because she wanted to pry into his life.

‘Your patient,’ he said. ‘When are you seeing her next?’

‘Friday morning.’

‘I could,’ he suggested, ‘come and have a word with her, if you like.’

‘Really?’ The way she smiled at him made him feel as if the sun had just come out at midnight.

‘It might help her to talk to someone who’s been there and come out just fine on the other side,’ he said.

‘I think it would help her a lot. If you’re sure.’ She bit her lip. ‘I mean, I don’t want to rip open any old scars.’

He smiled. ‘It was a long time ago now. And I was lucky—I had someone who helped me. It’s my chance to pay it forward.’

She rested a hand on his arm; even through his sleeve, her touch made his skin tingle. ‘Thank you, Jared. I really appreciate it.’

‘No worries,’ he said.

On Friday, Bailey saw Vivienne in her clinic at the London Victoria and examined her knee. ‘Obviously you’ve followed my advice about rest, ice, compression and elevation,’ she said.

Vivienne nodded. ‘I want to play again as soon as possible. That means doing what you say.’

Bailey smiled. ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know you’re good to go for surgery and you can see the surgeon this afternoon.’

‘That’s great news,’ Mr Kaine said, patting his daughter’s shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

‘Actually, there is something else,’ Bailey said. ‘Obviously I wouldn’t dream of breaking patient confidentiality, but I happen to know someone who had an ACL injury at your age, and I asked him for some advice for someone in your position.’

‘Was he a tennis player?’ Vivienne asked, looking interested.

‘No, he was in a different sport,’ Bailey said, ‘but the injury and the rehab are the same. Actually, he offered to come and have a chat with you. He’s waiting outside, if you’d like a word.’