From Doctor To Daddy

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT ARE YOU doing here?’

‘You didn’t know I’d be on board?’ He ran his eyes over her green dress, noting the way it nipped in at her slender waist. She’d barely put on a pound. In fact, maybe she’d even lost weight. Her bronzed cheekbones were sharper than he remembered. Perhaps her hair was shorter...

She bit her lip. He still remembered the feel of his tongue running along that lip.

‘I can’t do this,’ she said. ‘Please, Fraser, not here.’

She turned from him quickly again, pulled the door open and headed down the top floor corridor of the ship.

He followed her and caught her arm gently. ‘Sara, come on.’ He forced his voice to remain calm. ‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’

A look of discomfort verging on pain flashed across her features before she pulled away from him. ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ she said, standing against the wall in the corridor. ‘But I’m here with my daughter and I’m here to work. This is just...’ She folded her arms. Then she closed her eyes, appearing unnerved by his proximity. ‘This is just not what I was expecting.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He stepped closer anyway, on the anchor-patterned carpet, till his feet were almost touching hers. ‘I thought you knew I’d be here,’ he said honestly. ‘I assumed you’d have seen the list of medical staff and would have called me, or not taken the job if you had a real problem with it.’

He could smell her perfume—different from the one he remembered. It was like an extra layer to her he’d never known, and it served to widen the gap that had clearly grown between them over the years.

‘How would I have called you?’ she challenged him. ‘I don’t have your number any more.’

‘I never changed it. You also know where I work. Remember? It’s the house you walked out of with no credible explanation?’

Flecks of amber flickered around her pupils, launching him straight back to those nights when he’d spent for ever just lying in bed next to her, observing the colours in her eyes.

‘Well, maybe I would have tried calling you if I’d known what was coming,’ she said. ‘But for now I suppose I should just try and transfer ships. If you’ll excuse me?’

She continued towards the elevator at the end of the corridor. He followed her. He hadn’t expected that. ‘Cohen, we need to talk about this like adults.’

‘Why?’

Her arms were still folded as she waited for the elevator. She scanned his tall frame as she dug her own nails into her flesh, exhaling a harried sigh.

‘Fraser, seriously, what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be running the Breckenridge Practice in Edinburgh?’

‘Things change.’ He lowered his voice. This wasn’t the place to explain about that.

A voice called out behind him. ‘Watch out, mister!’

‘Sorry, man!’ Fraser had almost caused a deck hand to crash into them. The young lad was carrying a heavy crate of what looked like fruit towards them.

Pulling Sara against the wall with him, to make room, Fraser covered her hand with his against the smooth wooden wall and squeezed it tight.

‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he found himself saying. ‘I like your hair like that.’

He swore he felt her shiver. For a second he saw a glimmer of the old her, the way she’d been before she’d taken it upon herself to end things just six months after they’d started something really good. The last time they’d exchanged any words at all she’d been just twenty-five, and he twenty-six.

‘Let’s go somewhere and clear the air,’ he said, seizing his chance as the elevator doors opened. ‘Sara, you never really let me have my say back then. I understand you were grieving for your mother, but a lot was going on and—’

‘A lot is going on now,’ she said.

Her walls were back up, clearly.

‘Listen, I’m getting my stuff, then I’m going to see if Esme and I can be put on another cruise. This is beyond unprofessional Fraser. What makes you think you can trap me on a ship and tell me you’ve missed me, and expect me to just—’

‘Trap you on a ship?’ He smiled in spite of it all. The door shut behind them. The deckhand pressed the button reading ‘Deck Four’ with his elbow, still holding the crate. ‘I would never trap you anywhere, Sara. I let you go six years ago, didn’t I?’

She chewed on her cheek, looking at the floor. ‘We let each other go, Fraser. The past is the past and it’s where it should stay. I have Esme to think about now.’

‘I never even knew you had a daughter.’

‘She was a surprise for me, too.’

He frowned internally at this new information. ‘I’m so sorry—about the dialysis, I mean.’

‘We don’t need your pity.’

‘That’s not what I...’ He shut his mouth, seeing she was clearly uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as the deck hand, now staring at his crate. What a tragedy for the family, though—as if Sara losing her mother hadn’t been tragic enough.

Sara had been inconsolable after her mother had died. It had been extremely sudden. Cancer, stage three, terminal. After it had happened he’d flown to London to be with her. He’d skipped classes and his duties to stay beside her, then he’d invited her back to Scotland.

His father had been less than impressed.

He’d been under so much pressure back then, to help his parents secure the future of the practice. Remodelling had been needed, and new equipment, more staff. They’d needed money—his money, from the family trust fund.

He’d been juggling extra studies with extra work for his father, in order to qualify faster, when Sara had ended their relationship out of nowhere, citing the need to focus on her own family back in London. When she’d left him it had hit him like an avalanche.

The elevator doors were flung open. The deck hand shuffled off with his crate, without a word.

‘Stop following me,’ Sara huffed as he followed her down the corridor. She swiped her ID, which doubled as a key card, and went to shut the cabin door after herself.

He was ready for it. He wedged a foot in the door to stop it closing. ‘Have you thought about Esme upstairs, all excited about this trip, while you’re down here thinking about leaving? ‘We have a job to do, here, Cohen.’

‘Have I thought about Esme? She is all I think about!’

He regretted his words. ‘I’m sorry. I just... God, woman, just let me in.’

She tutted loudly as she moved from blocking the door, and he squeezed into the cabin after her.

Looking around, he let out a small laugh that he stifled before she got even more annoyed. ‘This is where they put you?’

‘Why? Where did they put you?’ Sara looked confused now, forgetting her anger for a second.

He bit his tongue. It probably wasn’t the best time to tell her that he’d been given a double suite all to himself. He had a leather couch, a balcony, a mini-bar and a TV, complete with a shelf full of DVDs. One of them was Titanic. He couldn’t imagine anyone watching Titanic on a cruise ship...

Sara was gathering up items from the tiny bathroom to put in her suitcase. ‘Wow... OK, Cohen, you’re serious.’

‘Stop calling me that.’

‘I always call you that—it’s your name, isn’t it? Unless you’re married.’ He feigned indifference. Anton had told him she was single—as far as he knew, at least.

‘I’m not married,’ she confirmed quickly. ‘I never was. Esme’s father is long gone.’

He saw her cast a glance to his finger—checking for a ring, perhaps?

‘I’ve been too busy to date much, never mind get married. The practice takes a lot of work,’ he explained.

‘I’m sure it does. It always did.’

Her dig stung.

‘Don’t you think it will look a wee bit strange to our patients if one of their trusted dialysis nurses disembarks before we’ve even gone anywhere?’ he pointed out. ‘You’ve come a long way for this, Sara. You both have.’

Sara ignored him, though she’d started packing more slowly already. She knew she had no intention of leaving—not really. She was just feeling put on the spot, out of her depth.

‘So, how long has Esme been on dialysis?’ He lowered himself onto the single bed and noticed two knitting needles and a ball of red wool sticking out of the case before she pulled a sweater on top of them.

‘Too long. She was eight months old when she got E. coli. It got worse and turned into HUS.’

‘Haemolytic uremic syndrome?’ He was well aware of how such a disease could destroy the kidneys.

‘She’s on the transplant list but there’s never been a match for her. I tell her it’s because she’s special—which she is. She’s so special that none of her family can help her with a new kidney.’

The tone of her voice made him reach a hand to her arm again, briefly. ‘That must be tough, Sara.’

She studied his long fingers. ‘It’s OK. We live with Dad and he helps out at home. We have things under control...most of the time. So where exactly is your cabin, hotshot?’

She clearly wanted to change the subject. ‘Hotshot?’ he said out loud. Sara was pretty hot too, from what he remembered.

They’d met in Edinburgh, where she’d been in training for an advanced nursing degree. At the time he’d been in and out of St Enid’s hospital, in his last year of a three-year residency, and he’d noticed her at first because of her knitting. Sara Cohen had knitted whenever she’d had a spare moment. Baby clothes, she’d told him later, on their first date, for the kids on the children’s ward.

He’d only really taken notice of her that time in the treatment room, when she’d done some tests on him ahead of a marathon he’d been about to run. He recalled it again now—that day the sparks had first flown—and couldn’t help smiling ruefully.

‘My cabin’s up on the second deck,’ he told her, picturing them both in his bed as he said it. He couldn’t help it.

The Tannoy cut in.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be leaving port in approximately fifteen minutes. Please do join us on the top deck for your welcome drink and to wave goodbye to land for a couple of days. We wish you all a safe and happy journey!’

‘I have to go.’ Sara dragged her suitcase off the bed, narrowly missing his foot with it.

Fraser took it from her hands with ease. ‘Give me a break, Cohen. You know you don’t really want to go.’

‘I told you to stop calling me that.’

She flung the cabin door open and heaved the suitcase from his hands, hauling it out into the corridor. She made it to the elevator again, panting, and pressed the button.

Part of him was impressed. ‘You’re seriously going to get off this ship? In front of everyone up there?’ he asked in the elevator. The mirrors reflected an infinite number of Saras. He didn’t miss her looking at him, though.

‘Yes, Fraser, that is exactly what I’m going to do.’

‘I can’t wait to see this.’ He could tell she thought she’d gone too far with her dramatics to back down now. As stubborn as ever.

Back on deck, he held his hand up to stop a porter rushing to help her. Esme wandered over to them. She was holding a camcorder. He noticed her catheter now, the pink of her cheeks.

‘Well, hello again, you.’ He bent down to her height, held out his hand. ‘We never officially met.’

The kid had Sara’s eyes—almond-shaped pools filled with questions. What kind of father would abandon his kid? He didn’t know the full story, of course, but he couldn’t imagine it was a happy one.

‘Are you having fun?’ he asked her.

‘Kind of. What’s my mum doing?’

Sara was trying her hardest to stop three men from pulling in a walkway that led down to the pier. Someone blew a whistle. People were waving goodbye to others below.

‘Your mum’s just processing some new information. She’ll be fine. I see we have the ship’s film-maker on board already. Have you got any good stuff yet, Miss Spielberg?’

She giggled. ‘Some.’

‘Maybe we can take you behind the scenes sometime? Show you the kitchens and the bridge?’

Her eyes lit up. ‘Yes, please! Can I get some film of you?’

‘Only if you capture my good side. Which side do you think that is?’ He turned his head from side to side, pulling different faces as he did so, and Esme giggled again, her whole face lighting up.

From the corner of his eye he saw Sara watching them. He stood straighter and took Esme’s little hand as the ship juddered. It was too late for her to make her exit.

‘No luck? You can always swim for it,’ he teased as she approached them.

She rolled her eyes, but he didn’t miss the slight smile on her lips. Esme skipped off to view the ship’s departure through the railings.

‘Thanks for that—she seems a bit happier now, at least,’ Sara said with a sigh.

Her green dress blew against his legs. ‘She’s going to have a great time,’ he assured her.

‘She’s bullied, you know. The kids call her names because of the central line in her neck. I got her the camera so she could make a video diary—show people she can live a normal life, doing stuff like this. I thought she could put it on her donor page.’

Sara swept her blonde hair behind her ears, following Esme with her eyes. Fraser thought again how messed up it was that they hadn’t found a donor for her yet. ‘That’s a great idea.’

‘I don’t want anything to ruin this trip for Esme, Fraser.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘What’s this doing here?’ Dr Renee Forster had walked over and was pointing down at Sara’s suitcase in the middle of the deck. ‘Everything OK?’

‘She spilled some water on it downstairs,’ Fraser said quickly. ‘She thought the sun would dry it off faster.’

Sara held up her hands. ‘Silly me. But it worked; it’s already dry.’

Renee raised her eyebrows. ‘I see. Good to have you both on board. You know each other well, I take it?’

‘We did a long time ago.’

Sara shifted uncomfortably on the spot and he tried not to smirk.

‘We dated for six months, actually,’ he said. ‘We’re in a kind of the-one-that-got-away situation.’

Sara turned to him in shock, but he shrugged his shoulders. Staff on these cruises had no secrets. And anything that needed to be addressed was bound to come out, one way or another.

As the ship finally pulled away to the cheers of the crowd, the thought made him anxious almost as much as it thrilled him.

CHAPTER THREE

‘CAN I HAVE pizza tonight?’ Esme asked. ‘Because we’re on holiday?’

Sara finished unhooking her daughter from the dialysis machine. ‘Sorry, sweetie, but you already know that’s not a good idea. Your diet should stay the same, so you’re not poorly.’

Esme groaned and laid her head down heavily on the pillow.

‘I know it’s hard,’ Sara sympathised. ‘There’s a lot of great food on this ship.’

That was an understatement. The food on the Ocean Dream was unlike anything she’d ever seen or tasted. Each buffet was like a dream, with everything from lobster sushi rolls to king crab soufflé, to marinated steaks and more cakes than she could count.

‘If I can’t have pizza, can I have ice-cream? Just a bit?’

Sara turned off the dialysis machine and readjusted the lines from Esme’s catheter. ‘We’ll see. You have to stop pointing that thing at me!’ She play-swiped at the camcorder lens that was pointed at her face.

‘Dr Fraser doesn’t mind being on camera.’

‘Yes, well...’

Sara snapped off her gloves a little too loudly. She was burning to know more about Fraser—why he’d left the family practice, how often he did these cruises, whether he’d met anyone else since her. Especially that. But she didn’t want to appear as if she was invested in anything Fraser Breckenridge had going on any more.

She’d meant what she said. Esme came first. She was all that mattered. Besides, they were professionals, and Renee was already looking between them like Cupid eyeing up the perfect target for an arrow.

Fraser had asked if they could talk privately once they reached Aruba and left the ship. She’d refused, maintaining she was there to concentrate on her work and Esme, not dwell on their past relationship. But a mish-mash of memories had kept her up the last two nights—things she hadn’t thought about in years.

‘Code Blue. Is anyone close to the casino? Can we get help in the casino, please?’

The Tannoy was practically screaming. Jess stood up from her chair in the corner. ‘Code Blue in the casino? That’s just next door!’

‘Take Esme to the playroom, will you?’ Sara unhooked another dialysis patient beside her and hurried outside.

The flashing lights and jingling slot machines in the ship’s casino launched an attack on her senses. She gripped her Ocean Dream branded medical case harder as she started down an aisle, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

‘Sara! Over here.’

People were being ushered away by a security guard wearing the ship’s smart grey uniform. Fraser was crouched on his haunches over a large balding gentleman in his mid to late fifties.

‘What happened?’ She dropped to her knees beside him. It could have been the sight of him, knee-deep in an emergency, but her heart immediately upped its pounding.

‘Cardiac arrest. Help me intubate him. I’ve already called for a stretcher.’ He paused for a beat to meet her eyes. ‘They said he won some pretty big money. He obviously got so excited he collapsed.’

Sara felt stabs of adrenaline, as if she was hot-wired to Fraser as he started CPR. Nosy onlookers in cruise ship attire and enough bling to sink the ship stood out against others who were happily still playing on the slot machines, only feet away.

She finished fixing the Ambu-bag and an oxygen cylinder, then quickly lifted out the nasal tubes. Fraser took over. His Adam’s apple rose subtly above the collar of his white shirt and she followed it up to the dark line of stubble around his jaw as he pumped on the rich man’s hairy, tanned chest. A Rolex watch caught her eye. A golden wedding band.

Fraser held the man’s head back so she could help, and she lifted his puffy eyelids, noting the pale green irises. Behind her a slot machine dispensed more coins with a happy jingle. So bizarre.

She inserted the tube into the man’s trachea slowly, while the efficient blur that was Fraser administered more CPR. His biceps flexed through his shirt. Sweat glistened on his neck. Someone was talking about a stretcher. It was close. But she could barely hear a thing against the pinging and spinning and chinking of the coins.

‘Go again!’

Holding the man’s head on her lap, she put two fingers to his neck as Fraser commenced with another set of compressions. His hair was falling almost into his steely blue eyes. He was completely focused.

She held her breath. Still no movement under her fingers. Fraser watched her shake her head and used the Ambu-bag for rescue breaths. Their shoulders were touching. A stretcher was being carried down the aisle.

‘Everyone move aside, please. We have a medical emergency. Move aside, please.’

People responded quickly to Fraser, reading the waves of urgency in his words. Where was this man’s wife? Sara wondered. Was she on board too? Maybe he’d come here without her? Lots of people came on cruises alone—some kind of escapism, she supposed, from whatever they hoped could be left on shore.

They lifted the man onto the stretcher together.

Was Fraser Breckenridge escaping something out here? He’d tried to call her after she’d left him six years ago, but she hadn’t answered. When she’d fallen pregnant, after an out-of-character, grief-stricken, vodka-fuelled one-night stand, she’d seen it as one more sign that she and Fraser were truly over—especially when he’d stopped trying to contact her. Even if Fraser had wanted to be with her, there was no way she would have asked him to help raise another man’s baby.

‘Let’s get him on life support,’ Fraser said, jolting her back to the moment.

The medical centre, which was more like an infirmary, was located on the second deck. The smell of disinfectant was an extra punch to her swirling gut as they hurried in, and she clicked onto autopilot as they passed oxygen masks and pads and the IV.

Fraser arranged the patient on one of the few beds. It was just the two of them in the room. She started tugging the man’s shirt open even further, noting the soft gleam on his bald forehead, the dents around his ears from his glasses. Where were his glasses?

She prepped him for the defibrillator, just as Fraser rushed to hook it up. She watched him administer the jolts at one-fifty, eyeing the defib screen for signs of life, and noticed, despite herself, the faint lines on Fraser’s face that hadn’t been there six years ago—extra layers of thought around his forehead.

There was still no pulse.

‘Give me more,’ he instructed.

She obeyed and prayed it would work. The room was getting hotter. It felt as if hours had passed in the tiniest space she’d ever had to work in, packed with lab test equipment, immobilisation boards, X-ray and EKG machines and bottle after bottle of pills. Through the window land was now in sight, shimmering green under bright sunshine.

It was still a whole new world to her. It clearly wasn’t to Fraser.

‘We have a pulse!’ she announced finally, and relief flooded her veins.

A knock on the door minutes later made her jump, and she found her hand on Fraser’s arm. He steadied her, and at his touch she felt something inside her waking from a deep slumber.

‘Is he alive? Oh, God, please don’t tell me he’s dead. He always said he wanted to die on a cruise ship... He blimmin’ well said that before we left...’

A busty, tanned woman was talking at the speed of an auctioneer as she tottered over on high heels and placed two leathery brown hands on their patient’s cheeks, peering with squinty eyes into his big round face.

‘He’s breathing,’ she stated.

Sara couldn’t tell specifically if the woman thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.

‘You’ll be happy to know he has more than a few years left in him yet,’ Fraser told her.

Sara watched the woman pull something from her glossy designer handbag. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry. I was in the wine club with the ladies.’ She placed a pair of glasses on his face before dropping a tender kiss on his forehead.

Maybe she really did love poor old Harry, Sara thought, glancing at Fraser, who promptly shot her a wink. Love wasn’t always black and white, after all. Perhaps she should give Fraser a chance to say his piece. What had happened between them hadn’t all been his fault, after all; maybe they owed it to each other at least to get the past out, so that they could put it behind them and work together without it hanging over them.

Right?

No. Bad idea.

Hearing Fraser explain himself might mean she’d open a door that was better off closed. No matter the attraction that would never go away, everything was different now. Esme needed her mother’s full attention. What if they couldn’t find a donor for her?

Oh, God, she couldn’t lose Esme.

CHAPTER FOUR