Maggie Kingsley - The Good Father

‘With the result that three of her babies were born stillborn last night, and the surviving baby weighs just 720 grams.’ Jonah sighed. ‘Not good.’

‘No,’ Gabriel murmured, and it wasn’t. Although advances in modern technology meant that many babies now survived who would previously have died, there was a limit to how small the baby could be, and at 720 grams little Diana Scott was very small. Perhaps too small.

He finished his coffee in one gulp but, as he reached for the cafetière on his desk to pour himself another, Jonah gazed at him severely.

‘That’ll be your third in forty-five minutes.’

‘Not that you’re counting.’

‘I’m counting,’ Jonah said. ‘Gabriel, you don’t need more caffeine. You need sleep. You’ve been at the hospital for the past seventy-two hours and nothing’s going to happen here that I can’t cope with.’

‘Even so—’

‘Damn it, Gabriel, I’m your specialist registrar, not some first-year medical student you can’t trust!’ Jonah snapped, and a half smile curved the neonatologist’s lips.

‘I agree, but you’re also not my mother, nor do I ever envisage choosing curtains with you, so quit with the advice.’

‘Gabriel—’

‘OK, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll go home after lunch.’

‘But—’

‘The first twenty-four hours are always the most critical for a preemie, and Diana’s a full sixteen weeks premature.’ Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair, making it look even more dishevelled than it already was. ‘I have to be here.’

Jonah let out a huff of exasperation. ‘Gabriel, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone any more. Three years ago this department was underachieving big time but you’ve pulled it round, and not just pulled it round but made it the best in the city. You’ve succeeded.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it,’ the specialist registrar exclaimed. ‘Hell’s bells, you were even right about Maddie Bryce. I know she’s only been with us a week but she’s efficient, on the ball—’

‘When Tom arrives, I think I’ll ask her to go along with him to the unit,’ Gabriel said over him, and Jonah groaned.

‘Don’t you ever think about anything except work?’

A small smile curved the neonatologist’s lips. ‘Nope.’

‘Then you should—especially in Maddie’s case,’ Jonah observed. ‘All these errands you keep sending her on to the unit. She’s not stupid, Gabriel, and if she finds out you’re trying to manipulate her…’

I’m dog meat, Gabriel thought, remembering the anger he’d seen in her large brown eyes when she’d told him he had no manners.

‘I think I know how to handle Miss Bryce,’ he said, and Jonah grinned.

‘So how come you’re still calling her “Miss Bryce” when the rest of us are calling her Maddie? You always used to call Fiona by her first name.’

He had, but then, Fiona had been plump and jolly and non-threatening.

Not that Madison Bryce was threatening. She just made it abundantly clear that she didn’t like him. Well, he could live with that. He’d always thought personal popularity a highly over-rated commodity and, though he might occasionally have liked to have seen her dark brown eyes smile up at him the way they smiled at everybody else, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it if they never did.

‘I like her,’ Jonah continued. ‘She’s good company, easy to talk to—’

‘So when’s the wedding?’ Gabriel interrupted with an edge to his voice. An edge that was all the more ridiculous because he wasn’t interested in Madison Bryce, not in a personal way.

‘I’m only saying she’s nice,’ Jonah protested. ‘She has lovely hair, too.’

Beautiful hair, Gabriel thought. Hair that gleamed like fire when the late May sunshine streamed through her office window. The kind of hair which just cried out for a man to touch it, to see if it was as soft and as springy as it looked, but to be able to touch a woman’s hair without having your teeth knocked down your throat you had to get to know her, and after Evelyn he’d decided to take a break from dating. A very long break.

‘Maddie isn’t going to change her mind about returning to nursing, you know,’ Jonah continued, clearly misinterpreting his frown. ‘I’ve been speaking to her about her niece and nephew and it’s obvious she adores them.’

‘She can adore them as much as she wants and still be an NICU nurse,’ Gabriel declared irritably, and she could.

Good grief, it had been proven over and over again that children who were looked after by childminders performed just as well academically as children who were looked after by their mothers. He had himself. He’d hardly seen his mother when he’d been young and it hadn’t done him any harm.

‘Gabriel—’

‘Any problems with the staff this morning?’

‘The man with the one-track mind.’ Jonah sighed, and Gabriel leant further back in his seat with a half-smile.

‘Perhaps, but you still haven’t answered my question.’

Jonah busied himself with his clipboard. ‘Everything’s fine. There was one very minor tiny incident, but I sorted it out.’

‘What very minor tiny incident?’ Gabriel said, his smile disappearing.

‘It was no big deal, Gabriel,’ Jonah said awkwardly. ‘Student Nurse Barnes wasn’t aware of the rule, and the soft toy was only in the incubator for a couple of minutes—’

Gabriel sat up so fast his feet hit the floor with a crash. ‘What soft toy—which incubator?’ he demanded, and with a sigh of resignation Jonah told him.

‘Only a complete and utter idiot would have allowed a parent to put an unwrapped soft toy into an incubator with a preemie but then, complete and utter idiot just about sums you up, doesn’t it, Nurse Barnes.’

Oh, nice one, Gabriel, Maddie thought, pausing in the middle of her work to listen to the sound of his footsteps growing fainter in the corridor outside, followed by the slamming of a door, which probably meant Nurse Barnes had disappeared into one of the toilets to have a good cry. I bet that really makes Naomi think she made the right career choice.

She glanced at her watch. Twelve o’clock. He was late this morning. Normally he’d managed to tear somebody apart by midmorning. He must be slipping.

‘Maddie, have you managed to print out those case notes for me yet?’ Jonah asked, hurrying into her office, looking harassed and anxious. ‘The ones I forgot had to be up to date by today?’

‘Just finished.’ She smiled, clicking the ‘Save’ button on her computer and slipping some paper into the printer. ‘I’ve even made duplicates for you, and filed the originals.’

‘Maddie, you’re a lifesaver.’

‘And Gabriel Dalgleish is an arrogant, overbearing sadist.’

Jonah sighed. ‘You heard what he said to Nurse Barnes.’

‘Jonah, the people out in the street probably heard what he said to Naomi Barnes!’ she exclaimed. ‘OK, so she should have known that all soft toys need to be wrapped in plastic before they’re put into an incubator to guard against possible infection, but she’s a student nurse, only in the unit to observe, and yelling at her—destroying all her self-confidence—isn’t the best way to give her information.’

‘He’s had a bad morning—’

‘I don’t care if he’s had a lifetime of major catastrophes,’ she interrupted. ‘Nothing gives him the right to talk to people the way he does.’

A tide of uncomfortable colour crept across the specialist registrar’s cheeks. ‘I know he can sometimes be a little rough—’

‘A little?’

‘But Gabriel and I have known one another since med school and he sets himself—and others—very high standards. There’s no room for failure in his life. His background…let’s just say his family has a lot to answer for, but he truly doesn’t mean to be cruel. He just speaks before he thinks.’