From Doctor To Daddy

‘WHAT’S THAT THING stuck to your body?’ The kid in the bright green board shorts was pointing a finger at Esme’s catheter. ‘Are you an alien?’

Fraser’s brow creased where he sat three feet away on a beach chair, but Esme dropped the spade she was carrying and turned on her camcorder.

‘What do you know about kidneys? Three, two, one—go!’ She was challenging the kid, with five years of confidence behind her words. ‘I bet you don’t know anything.’

The boy’s face scrunched up. He put a hand over the lens as his mother called out from beneath a giant sun hat in the shallows. ‘Marcus! What are you doing?’

‘You’re weird,’ Marcus told Esme loudly, and ran off.

Sara was off her chair in a flash.

‘It’s OK, Mummy.’ Esme sounded tired. ‘I know he just doesn’t understand.’

‘No, he doesn’t.’

Fraser watched Sara reapplying her daughter’s sunscreen, listened to her chatter, trying to make her smile. She made a great mother. He’d always known she would make a good mother, and there had been a time when he’d actually thought they’d make a great team as parents some day—not that he’d ever told her that.

Sara had her work cut out for her, though. Esme was smart and resilient and beautiful, and who knew her fate, exactly? Some people on dialysis lived a long time. Others didn’t.

He stood and got them both to pose with their backs to the ocean for a photo. Jess, the carer, took the camera and urged him into the shot.

‘That’s OK,’ he told her, but Esme had other ideas.

‘Dr Fraser, come and be in our photo!’

He waded into the shallows, eyes on Sara. Her expression gave nothing away. The hot sun was playing on her blue bikini top as Esme clung to their hands in the middle of them and demanded to be bounced up and down in the waves.

‘Again!’ she cried as they lifted her up and down.

‘You’re a bossy little Spielberg,’ Fraser told her, picking her up and putting her on his shoulders in the surf. He pretended he was about to dunk her, lowering himself down into the water and then standing again quickly.

Esme screeched with laughter. When he caught her eye, Sara was laughing too.

‘Where is this place?’ Sara asked him later, taking his hand and letting him help her off the scooter he’d hired. He gestured widely in front of him, to the brownish-red boulders standing tall like fallen pieces of a distant planet in the middle of the desert.

‘I thank you, fine lady, for accompanying me to the Casibari Rock Formations.’

He helped her unbuckle her helmet and held it as she shook out her hair. The sky was a deep blue, the scalding sun was trying its best to break through his sunscreen, and all around them cactuses sprang like gnarly hands from the dusty ground.

They’d left Esme playing on the beach with Jess and some other kids, and he’d seized his chance to get Sara alone—finally.

‘They’re so smooth and weird-looking,’ she said about the rocks, stepping forward along the dusty path.

He couldn’t help but see her bikini bottoms through her sarong; the curve of her ass. ‘How did they get here?’

‘No one really knows,’ he said. Some people think aliens brought them here.’

She smiled. ‘“ET phone home”?’ Her fuchsia sarong was billowing softly around her in the breeze. God, she was so beautiful. He could tell she didn’t really know it. He wondered if there had been anyone serious in her life, since Esme’s dad, and felt a sharp twinge of jealousy.

Sprinting onto a nearby rock ahead of her, he held a hand down. On the top of the huge, flat boulder, he watched Sara’s face as she looked at Aruba, stretching out beneath their feet. They were about three kilometres from the capital, Oranjestad, where the ship was docked.

‘On a clear day you can see Venezuela from here,’ he told her, taking in the dusty browns, and then the emerald-greens and clear blues of the waters beyond. ‘The first inhabitants from the Arawak tribe used to climb on these boulders and watch for storms on the eastern horizon.’

Sara lifted her sunglasses to her head and looked at him. ‘You always did absorb this kind of stuff like a sponge. No wonder you took this job.’

He smiled, ran his eyes over her lips. ‘How long did you say you’ve been doing these cruises?’

‘This is only my second.’

He brushed a strand of hair from her face, gently. It coiled around his fingers. She didn’t move, but she averted her gaze. Did he make her uncomfortable out here? Memories were funny things. He wanted to say he remembered the curves of her body, the way she’d used to moan when he pressed kisses on her ticklish tummy. But she’d made it quite clear that she wanted things to stay professional between them. He had to respect that.

‘I know you love to see the world, but I still don’t get why you’re here—working, I mean.’

Sara lowered herself onto the rock and he did the same. She hugged her sarong-wrapped knees to her chest.

‘You were pretty married to your family’s practice, from what I recall.’

He was quiet for a moment and the birds sang in the silence.

‘My father died two years ago,’ he told her, watching a warbler flit from a tall bush. ‘I put a locum in—just to get away for a while, you know? I did the cruise and really enjoyed it, and they asked me back for a second this year.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Sara put a hand to his on top of his raised knee. Her voice was tight. ‘About your dad. Fraser, I didn’t know.’

‘It was a heart attack.’

He missed his father, of course—he’d grown up worshipping the guy—but he’d never come to terms with the fact that his dad had resented his and Sara’s relationship six years ago. Dr Philip Breckenridge had been an excellent doctor, but managing the finances of the practice had never been his strong point.

The money Fraser’s late grandfather had left in trust for him was to have been released to him when Fraser qualified, on the proviso that he spent it to further his career. By pumping it back into the practice, Fraser would appease the practice trustees and save his parents from an uncertain retirement.

But when he’d gone to tell Sara he needed some time to concentrate on qualifying, so the money for the practice could be released, even knowing it wasn’t great timing because her mother had just died, she’d already made her mind up.

‘We should just call it a day, Fraser. It’s too crazy right now; everything is changing.’

Her movement beside him startled him back to the present. Sara had turned to face him, cross-legged on the rock.

‘I mean it, you know; I really am sorry about your dad, Fraser.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I know what it’s like to lose a parent.’ She curled her fingers around his, holding both his hands in the space between them.

His mind flashed back to them walking hand in hand around Edinburgh Castle, taking photos of each other on the cannons. She’d known grief herself then, of course, and he’d wanted to keep on helping her through it. He’d wanted her with or without all the problems surrounding them at the time.

But when he’d gone to London to see her, shortly afterwards, to tell her that he missed her and ask if they could figure things out somehow, he’d seen her with that...that guy.

‘So, you live at home with your dad?’ he asked her now. ‘Because of Esme?’

He dropped her hands, took a bottle of water from his pack and took a swig, then splashed some against his face and chest.

‘That’s one of the reasons,’ she said.

He noticed her eyes giving his abs an appreciative glance through his open shirt. He handed her the water.

‘Haven’t you ever moved in with a boyfriend, or...fiancé or anything? What about Esme’s father? I saw you with him once, you know.’

Sara’s eyes grew wide. She paused with her lips to the bottle and he realised he probably shouldn’t have admitted it.

‘You saw us?’ she said. ‘When?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m assuming it was him. I came to see you in London a couple of weeks after you left. You’d already made it obvious you wanted to move on, but I guess I thought I could change your mind. I saw you with him outside that restaurant in your street...’

‘You really did that? Came to London to see me?’ She looked grief-stricken all over again for a moment. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’

He could see he’d upset her, but he had to ask. ‘Would it have made a difference? If you’d seen me?’

She was quiet. ‘I don’t know. That was the one and only time we met, Fraser. We spent one night together and then he left the country for a job without ever knowing I got pregnant. It was a stupid thing to do, but I was still grieving for mum, and missing you, and for once in my life I’d had way too much to drink...’

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘So Esme wasn’t exactly planned—not that I have any regrets.’

‘Of course not. She’s incredible, Sara.’

‘She really is. I never knew I could love another human so much after...’

She trailed off, but he knew what she was going to say. After him. He’d never understood why she’d felt compelled to cut him out of her life so completely.

‘Living with my dad seemed like the best way to care for him and Esme,’ she continued. ‘My grandparents lived in that house for over sixty years before they died. Did I ever tell you how the ceiling is peppered with marks from popped champagne corks? Over the years it’s become a sort of map of my family’s celebrations.’

‘That’s beautiful.’

He meant it. He’d been raised in a pristine house, where a champagne mark on a ceiling would have meant arguments, shouting, and a week of interior decorating right after.

Sara cast her eyes to the butterflies, swirling around another bush. ‘I suppose I keep on hoping that one day soon we can pop another champagne cork to mark Esme’s new kidney, and another for her sixteenth birthday, and one more for her wedding.’ She let out a disgruntled sound. ‘I just can’t think of ever celebrating anything again until that first one happens. Sorry—I know that’s weird.’

‘It’s not weird at all.’

Fraser kept his eyes on the ocean. To hell with the pain this woman was still going through, and the way it took the light from her eyes. It made her doubt herself and everything she did.

He took her face in his palms and she drew her hands over his impulsively. ‘It will happen. We’ll find a donor for Esme,’ he told her resolutely.

‘Help! Oh, my God, please help—is anyone there?’

The anguish in the voice caused them both to scramble up.

‘Help!’ The female voice came again. ‘Over here!’

Springing into action, Fraser grabbed his bag and scrambled down the rocks with Sara, making sure she didn’t slip. They raced further down the trail towards the sound until they found themselves face to face with a sight Fraser had never seen before.

Marcus, the kid in the green board shorts. who’d been mean to Esme on the beach, was lying on his stomach on the dusty ground. He was writhing around in pain with half a damn cactus sticking out of his backside.

Sara hurried to unfold a towel from their pack, so they could move him away from the dirt.

‘He fell on it—he was running too fast!’ his mother cried. Can you pull it out of him, Doctor? Should I?’

Fraser clasped her wrist. ‘No, don’t touch it!’

The woman in short blue dungarees and that giant sun hat was crouching over her son on the ground now, trying to hold him steady. ‘It’s not poisonous, is it?’

‘It’s not poisonous,’ Fraser told her, spotting some fabric from Marcus’s board shorts impaled on the offending cactus, just metres from two abandoned bicycles. ‘Just try not to move,’ he told the lad. ‘We don’t want these little suckers going any deeper—and don’t put your hands near your mouth if you’ve touched the cactus at all, OK?’

‘OK...’ Marcus was sobbing. ‘It hurts!’

‘I know it does.’ Sara’s voice was soothing as she took tweezers from a small case. ‘Luckily it looks like the glochids are mostly in one area, so just keep still like Dr Fraser said.’

Fraser readied the gauze and antiseptic as Sara went to work on Marcus’s poor inflamed skin. His backside was so swollen it resembled a bright red beach ball. It was very lucky they’d been so close.

Back on the Ocean Dream, they whisked a sore Marcus to the medical centre. He and his mother were both adamant that they didn’t want to leave the cruise, and Fraser tried to make them laugh by telling them all the things Marcus could still do standing up—like fishing, or tennis, or painting standing at an easel.

‘You can also help me make my video, if you like,’ Esme interrupted from the doorway, just as Fraser was handing Marcus’s mother a prescription for painkillers. The kid now had a significant amount of gauze taped to his behind.

Marcus’s cheeks flamed almost as red as his backside when he saw her.

‘Esme, why are you here?’ Sara walked over to her quickly. ‘Where’s Jess?’

‘In there,’ Esme said, pointing to the coffee house next door. In her long denim shorts and star-patterned shirt she walked past Sara and pointed at Marcus. ‘What happened to you?’

Marcus wrinkled his nose. ‘I fell on a cactus.’

Esme’s little brow furrowed as she took in all the gauze. For a second Fraser thought she might laugh, or say something mean. Marcus had been mean to her, after all.

‘That must have hurt,’ she said instead, her eyes narrowed in concern. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m OK.’ Marcus sniffed. ‘Sorry I called you an alien.’

Esme grinned. ‘I suppose I do look a bit like an alien sometimes. Do you want me to show you my robo-kidney when you’re better?’

Fraser stood next to Sara as Esme explained how she needed the dialysis machine for her kidney to function. He could practically feel Sara swelling with pride as Esme offered to play with Marcus, so he wouldn’t feel like the only funny-looking one on the ship.

‘She’s as compassionate as someone else I know,’ he whispered to her, nudging her arm. Sara looked up at him.

‘If only that was enough to make us a match.’

He felt his chest tighten. ‘I told you, Cohen,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s going to happen.’

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