A Return, a Reunion, a Wedding
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Annie O'Neil
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CHAPTER ONE
JAYNE SHOULD HAVE been getting fist-bumps right now. High-fives. A group hug. Not watching a mass exodus from her operating theatre.
What on earth was going on?
She pulled off her surgical gown, gave her face a quick scrub, and deposited it into the laundry bin.
‘All right there, Dr Sinclair?’
The hospital’s favourite surgical nurse, Sana, didn’t body-block her, exactly, but... Why was the rest of the surgical team high-tailing it out of there?
Peculiar.
Maybe they all had hot dates. Or on-call rooms to collapse in.
Ten hours of heart transplant surgery was tiring. For most people, anyway. Sana looked as energetic as ever. Maybe it was the dancing unicorns on her scrubs.
Sana fixed Jayne with her bright smile. ‘Somebody’s frown is upside down. And we don’t do that here at the London Merryweather Children’s Hospital. Not after a successful surgery.’
‘I’m not frowning.’ Jayne fought to smooth the furrow between her eyes.
Okay, fine. The surgery had been tough...but it wasn’t as if she wanted to talk about it.
‘The Jayne Sinclair I know doesn’t frown. So...’ Sana popped her hands on to her hips. ‘Are you going to explain to me what’s broken your smiley face or am I going to have to start pulling teeth?’
Jayne tried to look away and couldn’t.
Oh, crumbs. So this was The Sana Look.
Five years at the Merryweather and she’d never once seen it. If the rumour mill was anything to go by it was pointless to resist.
The Sana Look, as it was known in hospital parlance, was something to actively avoid. It was responsible for all sorts of madness. The Head of Paediatric Surgery had buckled under its strength, finally fulfilling a lifelong dream to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Registrars fled to cosy cottages in Devon to tackle long-neglected ‘To Read’ piles. Nurses skipped around theme parks in Florida. Even the aptly named Dr Stayer, who was rumoured never to have once taken a day of holiday in his thirty years of practice, had handed in his notice and was learning how to surf in Bali at this very moment.
No one was immune.
When Sana gave The Look, the HR department listened. As did the hospital’s Chief Executive. It was that powerful. It meant one thing and one thing only: someone needed to take a holiday.
Jayne shuddered. Already she could see her six weeks of unused holiday waiting to pounce and attack.
Nooo!
She didn’t do breaks. Or downtime. She certainly didn’t casually hand in holiday requests. She did surgery. And extra shifts. And proactively offered a helping hand wherever she could in the hospital so that she could become the best paediatric cardiologist possible. This was her happy place. Here she could fix things. Out there she... Well, she and London had never exactly bonded.
She swept her hands across her face and turned her frown into a smile. ‘Nothing to worry about on this front, Sana. See?’ She struck a jaunty pose. ‘Happy face!’
Sana gave her one of those slow head-to-toe scans that said, Girlfriend...try telling that to the judge.
Jayne shifted uncomfortably.
‘You did a great job...’ Sana said, in a way that had a big fat ‘but’ lying in wait.
‘Always a good day when I can fix a heart.’ If only she could fix her own.
Sana arched an eyebrow as if she’d heard the silent plea.
It had been one tear. Just the one! A tear that had been shed well after the critical part of the surgery had been finished. Jayne’s hands had been clear of the patient. The other surgeons had been closing under her supervision. Nothing for Sana to get all Looky over.
Sana crossed her arms over her chest and started humming. She was patient. More than that... She was well-versed in cocky young surgeons lying about their feelings after particularly tough surgeries.
If only she knew just how tough this one had been...
Jayne’s patient—a gorgeous, bright and very funny fourteen-year-old called Stella—had been on a mechanical heart for five months now. An epic stretch of time for anyone to endure that level of heart failure, let alone a kid. Her family was exhausted from putting on a brave face. Not to mention bearing the weight of constant fear that came with the simple fact that one day Stella’s body simply might not be able to handle being put through the mill any more.
When a donor heart had become available early that morning Jayne and her team had been elated. They’d pulled in every favour in the book to get it to London and into the patient’s chest, where it was now beating away all on its own.
It should have been a landmark moment. For Stella, obviously. But for Jayne, too.
She’d spent over ten years of her life training, studying, and fine-tuning herself to become a paediatric cardiologist—just as her twin sister Jules had imagined she would be one day.
Her heart seized so hard and tight she could hardly breathe. She needed to get out of here.
Her eyes darted to the doors of the operating theatre and once again Sana’s brown eyes appeared in front of her. Looking.
This wasn’t how she’d pictured this moment. Completing a full heart transplant surgery was meant to have been an epically happy day for her. The day that she finally fulfilled her sister’s dream.
As she shrank under Sana’s unblinking gaze she felt her blood begin to chill in her veins. Maybe fulfilling someone else’s destiny didn’t work that way.
If she were Jules she’d be leading a parade to the pub right now. Buying the first round. Toasting her team of fellow surgeons, nurses, nephrologists, immunologists and all the other medical professionals who’d helped make this critical surgery a reality. Daring everyone to join her in a charity skydive.
Not being stared down by Sana.
Okay, fine! Blubbing over a patient wasn’t the done thing in transplant surgery. Which was why there were rules in place. And yet the one rule...the only rule...of her operating theatre when she was about to place one person’s vital organ into another person? Oh, that rule had been well and truly broken.
No. Unnecessary. Details.
A good heart was a good heart. Origin stories weren’t necessary. They made her emotional. There wasn’t a person on earth who was served well by an emotional surgeon.
Committed? Passionate? Intense?
Absolutely. Jayne admitted to all those things. Proudly.
Sure, it was important to know some things about donor organs. Suitability. Viability. Accessibility. Jayne always checked the facts. She also ran a slew of tests. Bloods, X-rays, tomography, MRIs, ultrasounds. Not to mention the coronary angiography and the cardiac catheterisation. She’d done each and every one of them with the exacting scientific precision they had required. And then asked for the flow of information to stop there.
One of the junior surgeons on her team simply hadn’t got it. Just as she’d lifted the heart into her hands he’d blurted out the origin story of the donor.
That was when the first sting of tears had hit.
She’d crushed them, of course.
But it had been tough.
The donor heart had come with strings attached. Strings that went all the way back to the worst day in Jayne’s life. The heart she had successfully transplanted into Stella had belonged to a young woman who’d been out for a bicycle ride on a country lane.
Just like Jules. Jayne’s twin.
Neither young woman had returned home. Neither had heard their sister calling frantically for the car to stop. Neither one had lived to fulfil their destinies. Because both of them had been declared brain-dead at the scene. So if Jayne’s smile wasn’t hitting her eyes she had a damn good reason why.
She heard a page on the intercom and made a dash for the door. ‘Pretty sure that’s Stella’s room.’
Sana started laughing and body-blocked her. ‘Easy there, tiger. That was for Dr Lewis. It’s his wife.’
‘How do you even know that?’ She’d not heard a single word of the page.
Sana’s face softened with one of those warm, all-knowing smiles of hers. ‘She always rings around now, to find out whether or not she should put his supper on.’
‘Ah.’
A twist of envy squeezed the air out of her chest. She could have had that too. Someone who loved her enough to make her supper...cared enough not to burn it...cared if she came home at all...
An image of Sam popped into her head and swiftly she swept it away. No point in swan-diving into ancient history. Even so, she’d bet he wouldn’t be fazed by Sana’s Look. He’d shoot her one of those crooked smiles of his. Give her a wink, a hug, and promise they’d sit and talk all she wanted over a cup of tea and a scone down by the river.
He was one of those men who made time for everyone and the expression on his face when she’d handed him back his ring...
Sana gave Jayne’s arm a gentle squeeze. ‘Go home. Take a bath. Do whatever you do to unwind. Then take some real time off. You’ve dedicated yourself to Stella for months. This is when you let the rest of the team look after her.’
Jayne bristled. ‘No way. Until her body accepts that heart I’m staying.’
The Look reared up, strong and powerful. ‘When’s the last time you took a holiday? And I’m not talking about the two days a year you take off to throw some Christmas presents at your parents, either.’
Ouch.
‘You cried. In surgery.’ Sana rolled her finger. ‘And the reason why was...?’
Jayne tried to turn away, but it was as if Sana’s eyes were pouring invisible cement into her trainers. Lemon juice into her seven-years-old wounds.
Was this what The Sana Look did? Brought things to the surface that you’d tried for years to hide?
Sana blinked. Deliberately.
The tiniest hint of perspiration broke out on Jayne’s forehead.
Suddenly Jayne was beginning to see the advantage of taking a break. A chance to regroup. Get her emotions back under control. She could go to a boot camp. Or a Mastering Your Inner Ninja week.
The flash of another option sent a complication of emotions pouring through her heart. Maybe she could just...go home?
Sana had a point. Everyone’s life needed balance, and her life was one hundred per cent devotion to her job. She had no life outside the hospital. She’d tried clubbing, rock-climbing, wild city breaks in Europe’s party places, and yet, years later it turned out partying till she dropped, terrifying herself with adrenaline-laced activities and fixing someone else’s heart, was never, ever going to bring her sister back.
Which meant...maybe going home to heal some wounds might be a good thing.
Oh. My. Word. What was happening to her?
It was The Look. No doubt about it.
Sana put her hands on Jayne’s shoulders, forcing her to meet her eyes.
‘Jayne.’ Sana’s voice was kind—loving, even. ‘You need some time off. What about your parents? They’re out near Oxford somewhere, aren’t they? Surely they’d love a visit from their surgeon daughter?’
Jayne shook herself free of Sana’s hands. Her relationship with her parents had altered irrevocably the day Jules had died. She knew they loved her, but Jules had been one of those rare souls who’d taken people’s breath away for all the right reasons. Beautiful, vivacious, crazy, smart...
Risk-taker. Unsettled. Adrenaline junkie.
All the things Jayne wasn’t.
‘My parents tend to go away in the summer.’
It was Scotland this year. Was it the Outer Hebrides? Somewhere remote, she knew. The fewer cars the better. She had the address in her phone, but the remit was always the same. No cars. Her mother, who’d once shone with a bright passion for life, had been all but literally wrapped in cotton wool ever since the accident.
‘Friends, then?’ Sana persisted. ‘Surely you’ve got someone back in Whitticombe who’d love to see you?’
‘Not really,’ she lied.
Her bestie, Maggie, would put her up in a heartbeat.
As if Sana’s inquisition was wringing the truth out of her, she silently admitted there were two very simple reasons she hated going home.
One: she couldn’t think of Whitticombe without thinking of her sister’s death. A death that never would have happened if she hadn’t asked Jules to come home that day to celebrate her engagement. Which led to reason number two. The only thing more painful than helplessly watching the life slip away from her sister had been handing her engagement ring back to Sam.
Urgh!
Sana’s suggestion was impossible. Six whole weeks of avoiding The Romance That Might Have Been? The Marriage She’d Always Wanted? The Life She Could Have Had?
Impossible.
She’d missed that boat a long time ago—had practically thrown him the oars. Besides, if Maggie’s newsy emails were anything to go by there’d been a whole lot of water under Sam’s bridge over the last few years. A marriage. A divorce. His mother’s death.
And yet here she was, still stuck on That Day...
If she shut her eyes she could see it all in fine detail. It had been sunny. Tourists had been beginning to flood into town to enjoy the iconic sandstone cottages and, of course, the beautiful stone-lined river that lazily wound its way through the heart of the village. It had been early June, as it was now. The usual riot of flowers had been in bloom.
She’d had a shiny new diamond solitaire on her finger.
Jayne had come home from med school to see Sam and he had proposed. Of course she’d said yes. He was the love of her life. Had been since the first perfect kiss they’d shared the day she’d turned sixteen.
Jules had dropped everything and raced home from London. The family’s golden girl. They’d all adored her. As usual, she hadn’t wanted to settle for anything simple like a toast to celebrate. Jayne had suggested they ride their old bicycles down the lane and on to the pub they’d visited when they were in pigtails. Only this time they’d order a glass of fizz instead of the squash they’d used to ask for.
Jules had been pulling out their bicycles as soon as the suggestion was out there.
Their father had thrown them a distracted wave from his easel—another landscape. Their mother had laughed from her sculpting table and, before waving them off, had done what she’d always done—kissed them each on the cheek, then told them to be safe.
Then she’d thrown in an extra warning to Jayne, as though they were still kids rather than grown women, ‘Keep an eye on your sister. You know what she’s like.’
Stop at the end of the lane. Check for traffic a hundred times. Proceed to pub. That was the procedure.
Only this time Jules hadn’t followed it. She’d taken off at high speed and turned it into a race.
Three hours later...after the ambulance had gone and neighbours had flooded the house to make her parents cup after cup of sweet, milky tea... Jayne had slipped the sparkling ring on and off her finger.
A few months later she’d taken it off for good.
She’d changed in those months. No longer had she been the carefree, optimistic girl Sam had asked to marry him. In her place had come someone more steely-eyed, driven, determined to fulfil the dreams her sister never would.
Jules had always been a bit mad. Her interests wide and varied. But the one thing—the only thing—that had captured Jules’ high-octane energy had been her desire to perform a paediatric heart transplant.
As the days and then months of grief had built and festered after her death, Jayne had felt every bit as helpless as she had performing CPR on her sister, waiting for help to arrive. Her failure to overcome her sister’s catastrophic injuries had set something alight in her that had steered her away from the life she’d planned. A fierce, intense need to make amends for causing her sister’s death. To live the life her sister wouldn’t. Perform the surgeries her sister wouldn’t. Save the lives her sister wouldn’t.
She had done that today. Fulfilled her dream. It was meant to have drawn a line in the sand. Loosened the reins on the strict, driven intensity with which she had pursued this goal. Instead it had only proved what she had feared all along—that she hadn’t moved on at all.
‘Dr Sinclair.’ Sana’s voice forced her back into the operating theatre. ‘If you don’t take care of this...’ she pointed at Jayne’s heart ‘...you aren’t going to be able to look after your patients with this.’ She pointed at Jayne’s head.
Jayne shifted from one hip to the other, then pretended her phone had buzzed.
‘Dr Sinclair at your service!’ Jayne gave Sana a cheeky wink and mouthed Sorry, pointing at the phone. ‘Yes! Absolutely. No. No... Nothing on my schedule. I have all the time in the world.’
Sana rolled her eyes.
A code red sounded. Their eyes clashed. They both knew whose room it belonged to. They both knew exactly what it meant.
Three days later, when Jayne heard her own hollow voice call the time of death at the end of Stella’s bed, she looked straight into Sana’s eyes. She saw everything she needed to know.
It was time to go home.
Sana was right. She had to heal her heart before she could care for any more patients. They deserved her absolute focus, and Stella’s death had thrown her right back to the starting line of a race she’d thought she’d finally finished.
Trying to outrun her past was impossible. She almost laughed as she thought of the advice she regularly gave her own patients.
If you ignore the problem it will only get worse. If you face it head-on you have a chance to live the rest of your life with a few scars. Scars that will make you stronger.
Sam read the final page of the report, then put it on his desk. He turned and looked at his patient. ‘So, if I’m reading this right, it’s bedrest for the next couple of months, then...eh, Mags?’
‘Madness! I can’t do that,’ his patient wailed. ‘There are the children, first of all. Connor’s got all sorts of things on, and Cailey’s set to have her first ever sports day. The teashop has Dolly, of course, but that place needs my cake-baking skills. Then there’s the village fete. I’m on the committee. Obvs.’
Sam smiled. Maggie was on all the committees.
‘And then there’s the fundraiser for the automatic external defibrillator that the village desperately needs. The art fair that I haven’t even begun to—’
‘Whoa! Slow down. What’s most important here, Mags? You and the babies. The ones in there.’ He pointed at her generously arced tummy. ‘Everything else we’ll get it sorted, all right?’
Tears pooled in Maggie’s eyes as she pressed her fingers to her mouth and nodded.
It was at moments like these that Sam Crenshaw understood exactly why some GPs preferred to start their practices in villages where they hadn’t known their patients since they were toddlers. Delivering bad news to someone he used to make mud pies with wasn’t easy.
Maggie had been to the maternity and children’s hospital just outside of Oxford earlier in the day, and had come to him in tears with a sheaf of paperwork detailing just how complicated her pregnancy had become. She’d also told him she’d come up with a solution, but they hadn’t quite got to that part yet. Sometimes a patient needed to vent before they could listen...so for now he’d listen. And dole out tissues.
Wiping away a friend’s tears was hard...and yet it was precisely why he’d wanted to be a general practitioner right here in Whitticombe. Just like his grandfather.
Their shared love of medicine wasn’t genetic. He’d been adopted. Too early to have remembered otherwise but even so the generosity of the Crenshaws, bringing a stranger’s child into their already full home, lived in his heart like a beacon. Their credo was to treat people as you wanted to be treated. Lovingly and honestly. That way you never had to hide anything. He liked that.
His family’s honesty, openness and love were his foundation. The reason why he’d decided to pursue medicine in the very building where his grandfather had worked for the last forty-odd years. The very building his grandfather refused to retire from!
The bright-eyed rascal loved it. Said he’d have to be dragged from the building rather than retire. Sam was the last person to suggest otherwise. His grandfather was still a highly valued member of the community, and even though Sam had been a GP here for three years now some people still thought of him as the little boy in shorts who’d used to refill the boxes of cotton buds and tongue depressors.
All of which culminated in moments like this. If a person felt vulnerable they should have someone they trusted to come to. If they were frightened or scared? Same thing. And if they were going to hear some very bad news it should come from someone who knew them.
Which was why now he wheeled his chair over to Maggie, took her hands in his and looked her straight in the eye. ‘Maggie. I know you’re Wonder Woman, but you cannot do this alone. Pre-eclampsia is serious. You need someone who knows you to help out. With your parents in Australia, I’ll do what I can. We can set up a rota to help with the kids. I can make some calls about your committees—’
His very pregnant patient cut him off with a roll of her eyes. ‘You think I haven’t thought of all that? I’ve got it covered. Someone’s coming to stay. She’s just...’ She picked up her phone and gave it a couple of swipes with her finger. ‘She should be here any minute. I was hoping you might be able to talk her through everything. With Nate gone and all—’
Maggie’s voice hitched and she only just managed to stem another sob. Sam’s heart ached for her. Her day had been riddled with bad news. Pre-eclampsia. Danger of premature birth for her twins. Enforced bedrest. And all of this with her Air Force pilot husband stuck in the Middle East until the twins were due. Not to mention taking care of their two little ones.
He hoped this friend of hers had stamina. He could already tell that Maggie was going to run whoever it was ragged.
He went to the supplies cupboard to get a fresh box of tissues and gave himself a stern look in the mirror as he passed. He should carve out more time for Maggie. He was meant to be going for a casual drink with his receptionist’s niece tonight. His divorce had gone through over a year ago, so technically it was time to move on. Old news. Today’s fish and chip paper, as his grandad would say.
His mum’s death earlier in the year had really kicked him in the teeth. Cancer wasn’t kind to anyone, and the only blessing that had come from it was that his mother was no longer suffering.
‘So who’s this friend, then? Why don’t you tell me about her? It is a she, right?’
‘Yup. Yes.’ Maggie suddenly refused to meet his eye. ‘She’s female all right. Um...’
A quiet tapping sounded at his door. Maggie sat as bolt upright as a woman pregnant with twins could.
‘That might be her now.’
Sam crossed the office, opened the door—and there, looking every bit as perfect as she had the day she’d handed him back his diamond solitaire, stood Jayne Sinclair.
She gave a shy little waist-height wave and then, as if they’d rehearsed it, she and Maggie said in tandem, ‘Surprise!’
