Friends to short-term lovers...

Could a miracle unite them forever?

Surgeon Noah only expected one night of abandon with physiotherapist Abby. But crossing the line of friendship ignited a hidden chemistry...leaving Abby pregnant and the once carefree Noah struck by memories of his painful past. But when his son’s premature arrival makes him a father sooner than expected, Noah must fight against the odds to become the man his family deserves...

ALISON ROBERTS is a New Zealander, currently lucky enough to be living in the South of France. She is also lucky enough to write for the Mills & Boon Medical Romance line. A primary school teacher in a former life, she is now a qualified paramedic. She loves to travel and dance, drink champagne, and spend time with her daughter and her friends.

Also by Alison Roberts

Melting Her Trauma Doc’s Heart

Single Dad in Her Stocking

Rescue Docs miniseries

Resisting Her Rescue Doc

Pregnant with Her Best Friend’s Baby

Dr Right for the Single Mum

Medics, Sisters, Brides miniseries

Awakening the Shy Nurse

Saved by Their Miracle Baby

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Saved by Their Miracle Baby

Alison Roberts

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90231-5

SAVED BY THEIR MIRACLE BABY

© 2020 Alison Roberts

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

 Change of font size and line height

 Change of background and font colours

 Change of font

 Change justification

 Text to speech

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

IT CAME OUT of nowhere.

A sickening crunch. A thump as the back of Abigail Phillips’s head hit the headrest and the car lurched as the engine stalled. The fear that worse was about to come made Abby her screw her eyes shut for a few seconds and grip her steering wheel as if her life depended on it. Was her car going to get hit again and go spinning off into oncoming traffic or the nearest lamppost?

But there was only silence now and her car was just as stable as it had been before the crunch, when Abby had been the first to stop at this red traffic light. She’d only been rear-ended, she realised, and it was probably no big deal. She’d love to jump out of the car and go and inspect any damage to the vehicle that was her pride and joy but that wasn’t going to happen. What she did do was take a couple of deep breaths and try to control the way her heart was still hammering against her ribs. Instead of slowing down, however, it completely missed a beat when someone rapped on her window and gave her another fright.

Her eyes flew open. There was a face at her window now. A very concerned-looking face.

‘Oh, my God...’ she heard him say. ‘I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?’

He tried the door but it was locked. Abby wasn’t stupid—she knew to lock her door and keep herself safe from something like carjacking. She also remembered some advice she’d heard about never admitting culpability at the scene of an accident because of potential legal ramifications. Either this man had never heard the same advice or he was just too honest not to admit something was entirely his own fault and then apologise for it. Abby liked that enough to make her reach for the switch to lower her window so she could talk to him.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. He had blue eyes, she noticed. Very, very blue eyes and a tangle of dark lashes that any woman would envy. There were a lot of little creases at the corners of his eyes, too. As if he spent a lot of time smiling. Or focusing on something very small.

He certainly wasn’t smiling right now.

‘Are you sure? Can I check your neck, at least? I’m a doctor.’

They were only a couple of blocks away from where Abby worked at St John’s Hospital so it was quite possible he’d been heading in the same direction. Not that Abby had ever seen him in the hospital corridors or cafeteria. She could be quite sure of that because she would have noticed him. He was rather an attractive man.

Okay...make that very attractive. Those intensely blue eyes beneath black hair that was tousled enough to suggest that he didn’t bother looking in a mirror very often, along with a bit of designer stubble, was a combination that made it unlikely that Abby’s heart rate was going to slow down anytime soon. Especially when he was looking at her like that—as if it was absolutely critical that she wasn’t injured.

And then he reached into the car to slide his hand beneath her long hair, which was loose at the moment, to touch her neck.

‘Does this hurt at all?’ he asked.

‘No...’ It didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite. She’d never had a man’s hand cupping the nape of her neck before, Abby realised, and it felt rather nice. More than rather nice, in fact. He had gentle hands but she could tell he knew exactly what he was doing and it was sending odd little spirals of sensation right down her spine.

Abby wasn’t at all sure that it was appropriate to be feeling that tingle when this was the purely professional touch of a doctor checking for a physical injury but it felt like something far more personal. Had she avoided letting any men this close to her for so long she’d forgotten that it could be something rather nice?

‘Try putting your chin on your chest. Very slowly. Stop if it starts hurting.’

The traffic lights had changed but Abby wasn’t going anywhere. A car driver tooted irritably as he pulled out to get around the obstruction the two cars were making. Someone else rolled down their window and shouted.

‘Everything okay? Want me to call an ambulance?’

‘I think we’re okay,’ the man shouted back. ‘But thank you.’ He turned back to Abby. ‘Look over one shoulder and then the other. Carefully...’

Abby did as she was told. The second direction sent her gaze back to him.

‘No pain?’

‘No pain,’ she confirmed.

‘And nothing else hurting at all? Can you take a deep breath? Oh, God...that’s the first thing I should have asked.’ His grimace was so like a face palm that Abby almost laughed.

He was so worried about her but she was quite sure she was fine. It had only been a little bump, really, and it probably hadn’t even done much damage to her beloved car. The relief came in such a strong wave that Abby felt slightly light-headed. Happy enough to make a joke.

‘I really am fine,’ she told the stranger. ‘Except...’

‘Except...?’

‘I can’t move my legs.’ Abby kept a straight face. ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to walk again.’

The way the colour drained out of his face made her realise that her attempt at humour had backfired.

‘Sorry... Maybe I should have said I’ll never play the violin again.’

The poor man was looking bewildered now.

‘You’re supposed to ask if I could play the violin before,’ Abby said helpfully. ‘And then I say “no” and it’s, you know...funny...’ It clearly wasn’t funny, though, so Abby offered up her brightest smile and used her hand to indicate what was folded up and fitted behind the passenger seat of her modified car.

Her wheelchair.

He wasn’t slow, that’s for sure. It took only a split second for him to realise that she was paraplegic and that she’d been making a joke about it. His breath came out in a strangled sound—as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He chose to laugh, albeit shaking his head and catching Abby’s gaze at the same time. She could feel her smile stretching into a delighted grin. She was enjoying this, she realised. How inappropriate was that? Especially when she heard the blare of a siren trying to get through traffic that had been slowed down enough to be turning into the kind of traffic jam nobody wanted at peak rush hour. The flashing light of a police motorcycle could be seen threading its way through the traffic and Abby knew there was going to be even more of a hold-up while they sorted this minor accident out.

She was going to be late for work—something that she never allowed to happen—but, strangely, she was actually quite pleased she had an excuse to stay here a bit longer. With the blue-eyed stranger whose face had just become even more attractive when he’d laughed.

Good grief... Noah Baxter had just rear-ended the car of some young woman who was already living with a probable spinal injury that had made her paraplegic, standing in the middle of a traffic jam he was responsible for, and he was laughing about it?

Not just a wry chuckle either. It was a real laugh that came from somewhere deep in his gut and it felt like...

...it felt like he’d just stepped back in time, that’s what. To a life that was so utterly different to the one he led now. A life where things were funny and tender or stupid and you could simply enjoy the absurdity. Where laughter had been such a normal part of life that he hadn’t given it a second thought—never imagining for a moment that even the desire to laugh would be obliterated in a matter of only two terrible days.

A police officer was getting off his bike and coming towards them.

‘Anyone hurt here?’

‘No.’ It was the young woman in the car who spoke first. She still had a twinkle of amusement in her eyes after making that joke about never walking again. Hazel eyes, he noticed now, in a pale face that was framed by long waves of golden red hair. A rather striking-looking woman, in fact. And that smile...it was astonishingly contagious. Noah found himself smiling again as well.

‘It was entirely my fault, Officer,’ he said. ‘I’d been looking for a street sign to make sure I was going the right way and I braked a second too late. Do you need my details?’

The police officer was scanning the road around them. ‘What we need to do is clear this obstruction. Nobody’s hurt?’

‘No.’ Both Noah and the attractive redhead spoke together this time.

‘Any damage to the vehicles?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Noah hadn’t noticed a bumper lying on the road or anything when he’d rushed to the car in front to see if anyone had been injured. Now he followed the police officer to see that there were only very minor bumps and scratches. No big deal at all.

‘No need to write this up, then,’ the police officer decided. ‘I’m going to start directing the traffic. If you can both move your cars and get going, that would be very helpful.’

Noah nodded. He went back to the car in front. ‘There’s very little damage,’ he said. ‘Probably not worth losing a no-claims bonus with our insurance companies for either of us. And there’s no reason for the police to be involved.’

‘Oh...thank goodness for that. I love this car.’

‘He wants us to move our cars and head off asap. Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m sure. Are you?’

‘Yes.’ Although there was an odd knot in his gut. Left over from that unfamiliar laughter? Maybe it was also responsible for Noah to do something he hadn’t done in more than a decade. ‘Can I have your phone number?’ he asked. ‘Just in case...?’

In case of what? That he’d want to check that symptoms of whiplash hadn’t become obvious? Or that her insurance company wouldn’t cover the damages if she decided to make a claim? Or...simply because he’d like to see her again? Was her smile this time, as she held his gaze for a heartbeat longer than he might have expected, because she was thinking that she might like to see him again?

‘Just in case you decide you do want to make an insurance claim and you need my details,’ he added hurriedly. He always kept a small notepad in his shirt pocket, with a pen attached. A leftover habit from his days as a junior doctor when there had been just too many things to remember at times and keeping notes of anything important had been vital.

She was telling him her phone number. And then she turned the key in her ignition and started her car up again.

‘Oh...’ she said, catching his gaze again as she slid the car into gear, using controls that were attached to her steering wheel. ‘My name’s Abby, by the way.’

‘Noah,’ he responded. He was smiling again, too, as he slipped the notepad back into his pocket and got into his own car. How weird was this? He’d had a stupid, thankfully minor, accident that was a disruption he certainly didn’t need on his way to a meeting with the new colleagues he would be working with in a matter of days and yet it felt like the best thing that had happened to him in quite a while? Like...a few years?

The police officer was overruling the traffic lights to direct vehicles. He waved Abby through the intersection but then put his hand up to stop Noah going through yet. He watched Abby’s car getting further and further away and then the indicator went on and she turned, disappearing from his line of sight.

He still had the remnants of that knot in his gut.

Yeah...it was weird all right...

The routine was so well rehearsed, Abby could go through the steps without even thinking about it. Her disabled parking slot, on the ground floor of the hospital’s parking building, was extra wide, which made it easy to open her driver’s door and leave it wide open. The special controls on the central console allowed her to move the car seats. She could tilt the back of her own seat and then pull the passenger seat forward to make it easy to lift out the folded frame of her chair to put it on the ground beside her door.

The wheels, which were removed for transport, came out next and Abby clicked them back into place, pulled the bar at the back of the chair that unfolded it and then locked the brakes on.

It took less than sixty seconds after that to manoeuvre the chair into the best position, put the cushion on the seat, sling her shoulder bag over a push handle, lift her legs out of the car and then, with one hand on the cushion of the wheelchair and the other on the car seat, Abby used her upper body strength to swing herself into her chair. She pressed the remote to lock her car as she turned her chair and started rolling towards the parking building’s exit. She was ready for her work day and she was only a few minutes late, despite the delay caused by that minor accident.

Abruptly, Abby stopped and then swung her chair to go back to her car. How on earth had she forgotten to go and check the damage? Because she’d been thinking about a pair of dark, blue eyes with crinkly corners, perhaps, and that tingle of something she’d felt when they’d met her own gaze, not to mention that other tingle that his hand on her neck had generated? About a name that was unusual enough for him to be the first Noah she’d ever met? Wondering how soon he might ring her?

She would know it was him as soon as he spoke because his voice was etched into her memory as well. Abby could hear an echo of his voice right now, telling her that there was very little damage to her car as she inspected the rear bumper. He was right, there was only a scratch or two and one small dent that she traced with her fingers. It really wasn’t going to be worth either the hassle of the paperwork or losing any discount in the cost of her insurance policy.

It wasn’t the first ever scratch in that shiny red paintwork. She’d had the car for over two years now after all, and Abby had knocked the side more than once with the frame of her wheelchair but she still needed to get less precious about this vehicle. The problem was that it had been—and still was—such a big deal in her life.

Her older sister, Lisa, had gone into huge debt to cover the massive cost of a car with the kind of modifications Abby needed because she’d understood how life-changing it would be to have this kind of independence. She would also understand how unsettling it was to have been involved in an accident. She took a photo of the damage and texted it to Lisa.

Oops. Got rear-ended at a traffic light. Not the best way to start my day, huh?

Lisa’s response pinged in almost instantly.

OMG. U ok??

All good. Need to get to work now. Will come down and see you later.

Come now. Just to be on the safe side.

Both Lisa and her husband worked in St John’s Hospital’s emergency department now, although Lisa would be leaving before too long to start her maternity leave. Abby loved both her sister and her brother-in-law dearly but she wasn’t about to go and visit them. She had far too much work of her own to get on with. She shouldn’t have sent the message at all—she could have told Lisa about it later—but maybe she was still a little shaken up and had needed to touch base with her only family.

No need. Stop...

Abby found a picture icon she’d used in the past—a little helicopter. It was a private code that told Lisa she didn’t need a parent any more, especially of the hovering and overprotective type. She followed it with a smiley face, however.

Lisa had been a parent to her all her life. Six years older than Abby, she’d filled in the gaps left by a mother who had been unable to cope and had then died, leaving a grandmother to step in. It can’t have been easy for either of them after the accident that had left Abby in a wheelchair when she’d been little more than two years old. For good measure, Abby added a heart to finish her message.

She propelled herself out of the elevator, through the doors of the parking building and onto the footpath. She was reaching to push the button that would activate the lights for the pedestrian crossing when someone beat her to it.

‘Let me do that for you, love.’

It was never going to go away completely, was it? That beat of awareness of what could happen when a man assumed that her lack of physical ability gifted him the opportunity to take total control. She’d learned to deal with it, of course. To subdue fear and protect herself by becoming even more fiercely independent and not worrying about bruising anyone’s feelings by rejecting unwelcome advances. She’d even learned to do it quite politely so she bit back a retort that, actually, her hands worked perfectly well, which was why she was using a manual rather than an electric wheelchair, and instead she gave the man a tight smile, her sweet tone disguising a slightly sarcastic thank-you.

He was probably in his early forties, wearing jeans and a T-shirt under a jacket and carrying a laptop bag. It must be her morning for good-looking men, Abby decided, although this one had blond hair and looked like he might enjoy spending his downtime surfing or skiing or something. Anyway...she preferred dark hair. Especially with blue eyes...

The lights changed and Abby moved onto the pedestrian crossing. To her dismay, the man walked out ahead of her holding up one hand, not unlike the police officer who’d overridden the traffic lights to clear the jam, as if the drivers might be considering taking off before the lights went green again and running a poor defenceless disabled person over. It was obviously done to be of assistance to Abby but it made her feel like everybody was staring at her and unwanted assistance had always been a pet peeve from a very early age. One of Abby’s earliest memories was trying so hard to climb into a swing and pushing her sister’s helping hands away.

‘Go ’way. I can do it by myself...’

It was nothing like someone taking sexual advantage of her disability, of course, but it was on the same spectrum as far as Abby was concerned, and while she had learned to deal with the aftermath of that appalling incident, it was never going to be forgotten.

She sped up on the other side of the road, eager to disappear into the steady stream of people already heading into what was a large, busy regional hospital, but the blond man was keeping pace.

‘Hey...could I buy you a coffee or something?’

‘No.’ Her negative response came out as being curt this time. Rude enough to make Abby feel a little ashamed of herself so she offered another tight smile. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. Don’t think my boyfriend would approve.’

‘Oh...’ He looked comically disappointed. ‘I should have guessed. See ya.’

Not if I see you first, Abby thought, but she let her breath out in a sigh as she took the corridor that led both to the hand clinic and, further on, to the emergency department. She didn’t have a boyfriend—it was just one of the more polite ways she had to brush off any interest that men showed in her. Especially men who saw her disability before they saw anything else about her.

She hadn’t brushed that Noah off, though, had she? She’d not only given him her phone number, the thought that he might ring her was creating an unfamiliar ripple of sensation that was...oh, help...embryonic excitement? Whatever it was, it was enough for Abby to fish in her shoulder bag to retrieve her phone as soon as she reached the clinic. It was also enough to feel disappointed that she hadn’t missed any messages or calls yet and that, no, her phone wasn’t on silent.

It had been a very, very long time since she’d felt that “waiting for a call” anxiety but it only took Abby a matter of moments to put two and two together about why she wanted to hear from the man who’d driven into the back of her car this morning. He hadn’t seen her disability, had he? He’d been shocked to see her wheelchair, which meant that when he’d met her, he hadn’t been influenced by any kind of social stereotyping or personal prejudice about disabled people.

He’d only seen her. Abby Phillips. A specialist hand therapist, which was something she was very proud of being, although he didn’t know that yet. Mind you, she was also a twenty-six-year-old virgin, which Abby was definitely not proud of being, but thank goodness she was the only person who knew that.

And why on earth had it occurred to her to think of that right now?

Abby opened her locker to get her white coat off the hook and then she went to the mirror to brush her hair and scrape it up into a ponytail that wouldn’t get in the way of her work this morning. It was the touch of her own thumbs on the back of her neck that gave her the answer to that question. Because she was thinking of the touch of someone else’s hands on her neck. Of how it had made her feel. She wanted Noah to call because she was attracted to him. Possibly more attracted than she’d ever been to anyone else. Ever...

Could this possibly be, perhaps, a case of love at first sight?

Abby caught a glimpse of the grin on her face as she turned away from the mirror.

A kind of “watch this space” grin...

Talk about being thrown in at the deep end.

It was specialist hand surgeon Noah Baxter’s first day on the job at St John’s Hospital and his very first call was to the emergency department for a serious injury to someone’s hand. He’d met quite a few of the senior members of his departmental staff the other day but this was his first visit to the ED. The first person he encountered was a nurse who was obviously quite well along in her pregnancy. She greeted him with a friendly smile.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I’ve been paged for a consult. By a Hugh Patterson?’

The nurse’s smile widened. ‘I know him well. I’ll let him know you’re here.’ She turned and went swiftly in the direction of one of the closed resuscitation rooms.

A tension he hadn’t actually been aware of started to recede the moment she turned her back. It wasn’t anything to do with meeting new colleagues or not knowing what he’d been asked to come and see. It was just that he still hadn’t got to a stage when he could see a pregnant belly and not feel a pang of loss. Maybe he never would, but he’d become very good at distracting himself by deliberately noticing something else.

It was her hair that snagged his attention now. Red hair, quite dark. Nothing like that vibrant red gold shade on the woman whose car he’d bumped into the other day on the way to his first visit to St John’s. That shade of hair had proved quite memorable.

Too memorable.

Which was why he hadn’t yet called that number he’d requested from her. He’d intended to, of course, on more than one occasion in the last few days but when he’d been about to press the call button, he’d just been unable to do it.

Because he really wanted to...

Which was quite ridiculous. He was a single man in his mid-thirties. If he was attracted to a woman he shouldn’t be short of the confidence to do something about that. But that was the whole problem, wasn’t it?

He was attracted to someone. For the first time in years. And he didn’t want to be, any more than he wanted to be affected by seeing a pregnant belly. He never wanted to be attracted to anyone again because he knew where that road could lead. Been there, done that and once was more than enough.

Still, it was inexcusable that he hadn’t made contact yet and, at the very least, given her his insurance company details. He didn’t actually need to ring and hear her voice for that either. He could simply text her the details and he would do that, Noah decided—just as soon as he had a moment to spare later today.

One of the department’s consultants emerged from the resuscitation room and strode swiftly towards Noah.

‘Hugh Patterson,’ he introduced himself. ‘And you’re Noah Baxter, yes?’

‘Indeed.’ He shook Hugh’s hand.

‘We’re delighted to have you at St John’s. The word is that you’re the best in the field. I think that’s what our patient might need today.

Noah raised an eyebrow. ‘No pressure, then?’

Hugh’s smile had a grim edge. ‘Come and see. Not pretty. Patient’s a thirty-eight-year-old gentleman who got his hand caught in some food-processing machinery a couple of hours ago. Crush injury to several fingers and partial amputation to his thumb. It took a while to get him free. And it’s his dominant hand.’

“Not pretty” was a good description for what Noah found when he lifted the dressings on the man’s hand. His fingers and—more importantly—his thumb were all mangled enough for it to be impossible to tell exactly what was, or was not, salvageable, despite the help of the X-rays illuminated on the screen behind the head of the bed. Even if bones could be wired or plated together, there might be too much damage to nerves, tendons and tissues to make reconstruction possible.

‘I can’t look.’ The patient, Steve, had his head firmly turned away and his uninjured hand shielding his eyes. ‘Don’t touch it...’ His breath came out in a sob, ‘Please don’t touch it...’

Noah glanced at Hugh. ‘He’s got a good level of sedation and ten milligrams of morphine on board. Might need a top-up?’

‘I’ll be as gentle as I can be, Steve,’ Noah told him. ‘And I don’t need to do much at the moment other than assess what’s going on with your blood vessels and nerves. I can already see that we need to take you up to Theatre and get things cleaned up. I’m just going to touch your wrist, here, and the palm of your hand, okay? I want to see what’s happening with the blood supply.’

‘I can’t lose my hand, Doc...’ Steve sounded desperate now. ‘I can’t lose my job. I’ve got three kids and it’s hard enough as it is...’

‘I know...’ Noah’s tone was gentle. ‘Try not to panic, Steve. We’re going to do everything we possibly can to save your hand, okay?’

He put his fingers on Steve’s wrist to occlude the radial and ulnar arteries at the same time as he squeezed gently on the palm of the badly injured hand. Releasing one artery at a time give him good information about the patency of important vessels. Even while he was conducting this test, Noah was gathering other impressions. The colour and temperature of this hand was poor compared to Steve’s uninjured hand, which meant that the sooner they got him to Theatre the better to debride these injuries and repair blood vessels. An inadequate blood supply could mean complications in delayed healing, fibrosis and infection.

With the injured hand covered again with sterile dressings, an operating theatre being set up, additional assistance from orthopaedic, vascular and neurosurgical staff requested and Steve’s panicked wife arriving in the department with a baby in her arms, Noah had a few minutes to pull up a chair, introduce himself properly and talk through what he was going to do.

‘So we’ll do our very best to save whatever we can,’ he finished up. ‘Especially with your thumb because it’s so important in achieving useful function of your hand, but we won’t know how much we can do until we can see exactly what the damage is. And there are risks, as I’ve explained. Are you happy to sign the consent form or do you have any more questions?’

Steve’s wife, Pauline, was still looking terrified. ‘They told me when I arrived that you’re the best in the country for hand surgery, Mr Baxter. One of the best in the world so we’ll leave it up to you.’

Steve had his uninjured hand covering his eyes again and his voice was choked. ‘I need my hand,’ he managed. ‘How am I going to be able to work, otherwise? Or look after my family...?’

Pauline shifted the baby to one arm as she reached to touch Steve’s shoulder. ‘We’ll manage, babe,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure Mr Baxter is going to be able to save your hand...’ Her glance at Noah was a plea that was made even more eloquent as this young couple’s baby began crying as she turned back to her husband. ‘But whatever happens, we’re going to get through this. I love you...’

‘You’ll have to sign the form for me,’ Steve was clutching his wife’s hand now and there were tears on his cheeks. ‘You know how useless I am with my left hand...’

He was confident, that’s for sure, but maybe that came with the territory of being renowned as the best in the field.

Fancy being about to start your first surgery in a new hospital, leading a large team of people he’d only just met, and this Mr Baxter had given permission for the gallery to be open. Word had spread like wildfire, of course, but staff in the hand clinic were well up in the priority list, and Abby had been thrilled that she could go and watch because her next appointments were with inpatients and they could be fitted in later in the day. She was more than happy to skip her lunch break, if necessary, to compensate.

That the operating theatre gallery had rather steep stairs could have been an issue but one of the orthopaedic registrars, Alex, who was in the clinic when the news came through, had smiled at her.

‘Let’s go early,’ he’d suggested. ‘And get the good seats up front.’

Abby appreciated the unspoken part of his suggestion—that they could tuck her wheelchair out of the way before there were too many people around to notice and that Alex would carry her up the awkward entrance to the gallery that had certainly not been built with disabled access in mind. This wasn’t the kind of self-important and uninvited assistance like someone directing traffic on her behalf. This was help that was there automatically from someone who knew her well. Someone who knew how much she loved watching the initial repair on a hand she might well end up working on herself further down the track.

So, here she was, in a front row seat that gave her a great view into the theatre below, where there were at least a dozen people busy setting up for what would undoubtedly be complex and lengthy surgery. Abby had a clear view of one of the television screens, too, which would give a close-up view of the microsurgery needed to repair tendons, blood vessels and nerves.

The patient had been anaesthetised and was lying with his arm and hand positioned on a side wing of the operating table. Nurses and registrars were busy making sure that everything was ready for the stars of the show—the surgeons. There were trays of instruments being checked, lights being positioned and headsets with both cameras and magnifying technology being readied.

All they needed now was the lead surgeon and he came in from the scrub room, already gowned and masked, with his gloved hands crossed in front of him to prevent him touching anything not sterile.

He nodded towards the team of people waiting to work with him and then he glanced up towards the gallery. Just the briefest glance that raked the packed seating available and acknowledged the people who were interested in what he was about to do. Only his eyes were visible because he hadn’t yet had the headgear placed but there was something familiar about his face that made Abby frown as she tried to focus more clearly.

‘Who’s that?’ she asked Alex. ‘Mr Baxter or one of the orthopaedic guys?’

‘Yep... Noah Baxter. Let’s hope he’s as good as they say he is.’ Alex glanced up at the screen above them, which was filled with the close-up image of the mangled fingers. ‘That hand’s a mess.’

A bit like Abby’s head right now, then, and it was going to take a breath or two for her to get it back under control. Her excitement at being able to observe such major surgery had evaporated. Replaced by something that should have been anger but, pathetically, felt much more like a surprisingly sharp disappointment.

Noah...of course it was. She would never forget those eyes.

She hadn’t been about to forget him at all, for that matter. Or forgive him.

He hadn’t called her. He had probably never even intended to.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.