Miracle Baby, Miracle Family
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Alison Roberts
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CHAPTER ONE
ISOBEL MATTHEWS HAD fully expected him to be here.
Her brother-in-law. Raphael Tanner.
Rafe...
Of course he was here. He would also have been here in plenty of time—not late enough to have actually missed the ceremony, as Isobel had unfortunately managed to do despite her very best efforts. When the draught caught the heavy wooden door of the church hall and made it slam behind her as she tried to close it, it was also only to be expected that he would turn, along with everybody else, to see who was arriving so unacceptably late.
What Isobel had not expected was this awareness of him to be so astonishingly powerful. With no more than a split second of eye contact, memories that were embedded in every cell of her body and stored away in her heart were in danger of being triggered again. She’d been so sure she was completely over this man. That she could have lived the rest of her life without ever wanting to see Raphael Tanner again. Without ever being derailed by those memories again.
That certainty had just been blown out of the water.
It was Rafe who broke that eye contact almost as soon as it happened, turning back to the priest standing beside him, but it was obvious to Isobel that he hadn’t expected to see her here. The speed with which he looked away and the impression that every muscle in his body had just stiffened was more than enough to suggest that he might have been relieved that she hadn’t shown up. That maybe she wasn’t the only one who would prefer not to have memories triggered?
The pull was simply too strong for Isobel to look away quite that quickly as she took a breath and gathered her courage to face these people and this situation. She could feel her heart thumping as she registered the difference nearly seven years had made. Rafe’s face was thinner and there were deeper lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth. And was he already going grey in his late thirties or was the shimmer from fine raindrops still clinging to those dark waves of his hair after being outside in the driving rain?
Isobel had noticed the still dripping umbrellas propped under the coat hooks in the entranceway of this old church hall but a lot of people were still wearing heavy coats as if they hadn’t had time to warm up yet. They were also queued in front of a table laden with cups and saucers, huge teapots and an urn of boiling water, waiting for catering staff to serve them a hot cup of tea or coffee. She’d only missed the graveside part of this service by minutes, hadn’t she?
Now she would have to deal with the possibility that having missed the most significant part of this funeral would haunt her for the rest of her life. That the people here would no doubt add it to their existing disapproval of her estrangement from her family. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy coming here, but she had no choice but to deal with it so she might as well start by joining the end of the queue and talking to people who’d cared enough to come out in this inclement April weather to pay their respects to Sharon and Lauren Matthews. After all, there were going to be a lot of things she would have to face in the coming days and weeks that weren’t going to be easy but when they were sorted she could leave again.
And never come back.
Rafe was ushering the priest to the front of the queue to get a hot drink as Isobel joined the back. With her first impressions already gathered, Isobel could clearly read the emotion behind his features and there was enough sadness there to trigger a fresh wave of the grief that Isobel had been struggling with for days now. Ever since she’d received the shocking news of the accident that had killed both her mother and her sister.
The long, long flight from New Zealand back to England, with the addition of a mechanical fault that had kept her grounded in Singapore for thirty hours, had given her too much time to get below that first layer of grief. Time to sink into feelings of deep guilt that she’d left it too late and that any opportunity to try and repair such badly fractured relationships had been lost. There was a new, unexpected loneliness mixed in with both the grief and the guilt. The only family Isobel had ever known was gone. For ever.
This fresh wash of grief wasn’t for what she had lost herself, though. This was empathy for Rafe, which was something else she would not have expected. It was, in fact, beyond disconcerting because it suggested that she cared too much about whether he was happy or not. The way her breath came out in a dismissive huff reminded her that Rafe’s happiness had not been her concern for many years. It also made the woman standing directly in front of Isobel in the queue turn around.
She recognised her mother’s next-door neighbour and closest friend, Louise, and saw real sympathy in the older woman’s eyes.
‘I knew you’d come if you could,’ Louise murmured. ‘Such a terrible, terrible tragedy. I’m so sorry for your loss, love.’
‘I feel awful that I’m so late,’ Isobel said. ‘I came as soon as I could. I should have been here the day before yesterday but we got delayed. And even with this rain I wasn’t expecting London traffic to be so heavy so early in the morning.’
‘You’re here now. No doubt you’ll have time to come back here before you go away again.’ Louise turned to take a step closer to the table. ‘Some things are best said or done in private, anyway, aren’t they? It was a lovely service under the circumstances.’ She reached for a cup and saucer, already glancing towards the plates further along the trestle table, where club sandwiches, savouries and cakes were being provided as refreshments. ‘I must say, Dr Tanner’s done a wonderful job of organising everything. Especially when he didn’t really have to, did he?’
Didn’t he? What an odd thing to say, Isobel thought. This was his wife’s funeral. And his mother-in-law’s. The mother and grandmother of his sons. Surely nobody would have expected Isobel to have been the person to organise this funeral?
Louise was balancing her cup and saucer in one hand, reaching for a serviette and a sausage roll with the other. ‘So very sad,’ she added, shaking her head. ‘Especially for that poor baby...’
Baby?
Isobel had picked up a cup but she didn’t move to spoon coffee into it or hold it out for tea to be poured because she was still trying to process what Louise had just said. The twins would be six years old by now, she realised. Why had it not occurred to her that Rafe and Lauren would have added to their family? Maybe there was also a toddler in between the twins and...the new baby. A perfect family, with Grandma just down the road to help with the busyness of so many young children.
An echo of Rafe’s voice snuck into the back of her mind.
‘Once bitten, for ever shy in my case. I should be clear right from the start about that, Belle. I’m never getting married again. Or having kids. Never, ever...’
Not with her, anyway. And it still hurt that her own sister had been the one to change his mind. Even having grown up knowing that Lauren was always the favourite. Always the chosen one if both sisters were available. Even after so many years and a totally new life on the other side of the world, it still hurt and it was only natural for her gaze to roam until it found the person who had been the catalyst for that unspoken competition to have finally become unacceptable. For her life to have fallen apart. Isobel knew she’d have to talk to Rafe at some point in the next few days as she dealt with her mother’s estate but this wasn’t the time or place.
Rafe wasn’t looking at her this time. He was still standing beside the priest and now Louise was heading towards them, possibly to tell Rafe how impressed she was by his organisation of this funeral. And Isobel found her gaze shifting to the priest because there was something a little odd in the way he was smiling at Louise or, rather, the way that smile was fading so rapidly. He was losing his grip on his cup of tea as well, the contents spilling onto the silk stole and white surplice he wore over a dark robe.
In the same instant, she could see the robe beginning to puddle on the wooden floorboards of the hall as he crumpled, seemingly in slow motion. Slow enough for Rafe to be able to put his arms out and catch the large man to at least cushion his fall.
The dramatic slump and then the unnatural stillness of the man when he was on the floor made it quite obvious that he was unconscious and Isobel’s training meant that it was automatic to move in swiftly. To start doing what needed to be done to potentially save a life. Her cup and saucer clattered as she abandoned it on the table.
Rafe was already crouched over the priest by the time she got to his side. He had tipped the man’s head back and had his ear close to the nose and mouth, one hand resting on the diaphragm to try and feel for movement beneath the layers of clothing, the other on the neck to feel for a pulse.
‘Is he breathing?’ Isobel asked.
‘No.’ The word was terse. ‘No pulse either.’
Rafe raised his arm, clenched his fist and brought it down with a hard thump onto the middle of the priest’s chest. A horrified gasp could be heard from the group of people, including Louise, who were all staring, open-mouthed, at the unexpected drama unfolding in front of them. They didn’t understand that even the small impact of such a thump, if it was delivered soon enough after a witnessed cardiac arrest, could potentially have the same effect as an electrical shock in providing an opportunity for a heart to start beating again.
‘Someone call an ambulance.’ Rafe had his fingers on the priest’s neck again, feeling for a pulse. ‘Tell them it’s a cardiac arrest and CPR is underway.’
With his other hand, he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a set of keys, turning to give them to the closest person. ‘Louise, my car is parked right in front of the church,’ he told her. ‘Black SUV by the gate. Get my medical kit and the defibrillator out of the back. Hurry...’
‘What does a defibrillator look like?’
Rafe didn’t even blink. Instead of giving Louise the keys, he turned and looked straight at Isobel.
‘Belle?’
By way of a response, she held out her hands to catch the bunch of keys and then turned to run to the door that led outside. She could see Rafe positioning his hands on the priest’s chest now, one palm flat on the sternum, the other on top, fingers interlaced. He was starting the chest compressions and he knew exactly what needed to be done but the sooner he got his medical equipment the better. CPR alone could keep someone oxygenated and cells alive but it was not going to restart a heart that had stopped for whatever reason. Isobel increased her pace as soon as the door slammed shut behind her again, thankful she had flat-soled boots on and not heels. She could already see the big black vehicle parked by the gate so there was nothing that was going to interfere with her focus. Not even the fact that someone had called her ‘Belle’ for the first time in nearly seven years.
With the odds well against a successful outcome to dealing with a cardiac arrest, having it happen at a funeral was almost ironic but that wasn’t even a background thought for Rafe Tanner as he kept his arms straight and continued the rapid chest compressions needed to keep this man’s blood moving. With the priest being considerably overweight and the need to depress the chest by a third for the pressure to have the desired effect, Rafe was feeling the physical effort by the time Isobel came running back with both his medical kit and the small portable defibrillator he always carried.
She was panting a little from her own effort. Her boots were spattered with mud and her hair was wet from the rain that clearly hadn’t stopped yet. That golden blonde hair was starting to curl. Like it always did when it got wet...
Good grief. Where the hell had that random memory sprung from?
He didn’t have to waste extra breath on telling Isobel what to do. She was kneeling on the floor now, opening the lock on his kit. She lifted the lid and went straight for the pair of shears that could cut through any clothing, even leather shoes, but put them down to one side because they would not be interrupting compressions until absolutely necessary. With a speed that suggested the actions were pretty much automatic, Isobel grabbed some other items and wriggled herself into a position at their patient’s head. She snapped a mask onto the end of an Ambu bag, tilted the man’s head well back and curled her fingers under his jaw to hold the cushioned edges of the mask firmly in place. With a single nod, Rafe paused his compressions so that she could deliver two breaths. With a patient this size, it wasn’t always easy to keep a perfect seal around the mouth and nose, or to push air in enough to make the chest rise but Isobel managed both with apparent ease.
‘Ambulance is on its way,’ someone called from behind Rafe. ‘They said they’ll be about six minutes.’
‘Okay...thanks.’ Rafe was slightly out of breath as he began compressions again but he needed to keep them up until the last possible moment when he needed to cut the man’s clothing to allow the sticky pads from the defibrillator to be placed on his skin.
Again, without direction, Isobel was doing exactly what was required. She dropped the bag mask, reaching to lift the lid of the automatic external defibrillator, which made it spring to life and immediately begin issuing instructions in a calm robotic voice.
‘Peel off pad labelled one and stick to the skin of the patient exactly as shown in the picture.’
Isobel had the shears in her hands and was slicing through the thick layers of the white surplice and the black robe beneath, using the fabric to make sure that any sweat was wiped from the skin. There was no need to cut the soft woollen singlet that was a poignant reminder that the priest had dressed himself with only having to stand outside in bad weather in mind, having no idea what was about to happen to him. Keeping their patient warm would be another consideration if the ambulance was delayed for some reason but Rafe dismissed the thought for now. Just like he was easily able to dismiss any thoughts related to Isobel Matthews having suddenly stepped back into his life.
She didn’t look at the picture on the pad before pressing it into place beneath the collarbone and caught up with the machine’s instructions as she placed the second pad on the side of the chest.
‘Stop CPR. Do not touch the patient,’ the device said.
Rafe lifted his hands and stopped compressions.
‘Analysing heart rhythm.’
The brief pause felt so much longer than the ten seconds or so Rafe knew it was. Especially when he was kneeling directly on the other side of the man’s chest to Isobel and they’d both looked up in the same moment. When they both seemed incapable of looking away before the moment stretched into something significant because it was so much longer than you would hold eye contact with anyone that wasn’t an intimate acquaintance. The faint background realisation that they were being watched, and that some of those people might well remember they’d once been an item themselves, did not seem to be enough to break this hold.
Just how many impressions and/or memories was the brain capable of producing in a space of only a few seconds? Enough for them to be indistinguishable individually, apparently, but not enough to completely blur an emotional response. And that response, which was quite surprising after all these years, included a good dollop of anger.
Why had Isobel bothered showing up at this funeral when she’d never bothered doing the right thing in the past seven years?
‘Shock advised,’ the device told them. ‘Stand clear.’
They both looked down to ensure their bodies weren’t in contact with their patient. They leaned away from the patient but it also felt as if they were leaning away from each other.
‘Press the flashing orange button now. Shock delivered. Begin CPR.’
Isobel picked up the bag mask again and positioned her fingers to get a perfect seal around the man’s nose and mouth. She held her other hand on the squashy bag, ready to squeeze it when the compressions stopped for long enough. There was no point trying to push air inside lungs if they were being pressed hard from above. Rafe began counting aloud to give her warning that he was about to stop.
‘Twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Thirty...’ His hands were still touching the sternum but they weren’t moving.
Isobel squeezed the bag but the air didn’t go in as expected. She could feel it pushing out from the sides of the mask she was holding in place on their patient’s face with an audible puff. She heard a shout from behind as she let the bag inflate to try again.
‘The ambulance is here.’
Isobel squeezed the bag again and then realised why it wasn’t working. It wasn’t the chest being pressed that was working against her, it was their patient trying to breathe for himself. Rafe was also aware of what was happening. He put his fingers against the priest’s neck and caught Isobel’s gaze as he nodded a moment later, to confirm that he could feel a pulse.
This time, it felt very different to that uncomfortably long eye contact they’d had when the defibrillator had been analysing their patient’s heart rhythm. Isobel couldn’t have said whether that palpable hostility had been all Rafe’s or whether he was reflecting what he’d seen in her eyes but she could certainly be confident it wasn’t there this time. This was an acknowledgement between two professionals that a job had been well done. That their team work had made a difference to the world because a life had been saved.
It took all of a nanosecond to remember another shared glance that had been the way they’d met that first time. On either side of a patient in the emergency department of St Luke’s Hospital, here in Balclutha. During a shift where the department was so run off its feet that the only staff available to answer the cardiac arrest alarm had been one doctor and a nurse who’d just begun working there. Rafe. And Isobel. Sadly, they hadn’t been able to share the triumph of a successful outcome that time but maybe that was why Rafe had come to find her at the end of the shift. Why he’d spent the time talking through the case and reassuring her that the outcome was no reflection on her skills.
Why Isobel had fallen head over heels in love, right then and there, with Dr Raphael Tanner.
Oh, help...
She’d kept a lid on all those memories for so long but they were seeping out through cracks that had been appearing ever since she’d heard the news of that dreadful accident and had widened considerably with the emotional impact of being here at the funeral. At least Isobel found herself capable of breaking the eye contact this time. And, thanks to the arrival of the paramedics beside them, she could dismiss the memory as no more than an unwelcome passing thought.
What helped even more was that the priest was regaining consciousness. He was raising his hand, in fact, as if he wanted to push the mask away from his face.
‘Hey...looks like you’ve done all the hard work for us,’ one of them said. ‘Good job, guys. Let’s get him on the stretcher, get some oxygen on and then we’ll get him into the ambulance and give him a thorough check.’
If anything, the rain was even heavier by the time the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance. The paramedics had been grateful for the extra help in getting a heavy patient on board, but it had still taken enough time for them to have got cold and wet. Isobel was shivering.
‘You’re frozen,’ Rafe said. ‘You should go back into the hall and have a hot drink.’
Isobel shook her head. ‘I’d rather not, to be honest,’ she told Rafe. ‘I just need some dry clothes. I’ve got my suitcase in my rental car and I’ll go to Mum’s house. I’m hoping she’s left a spare key under a flowerpot like she always used to do, otherwise I might need to wait for Louise to get home. I’m sure she’ll have one.’
‘I’ve got a key,’ Rafe said. ‘Just in case of an emergency.’
Of course he did. He was the sort of man who’d make sure he was always available to help his mother-in-law. Isobel kept her gaze on the flashing lights of the ambulance as it disappeared around a corner up the road. She wrapped her arms around herself as well, trying to suppress another shiver.
‘I might come with you,’ he added. ‘I’d like to pick up a couple of things the boys left behind the last time they visited her. Then I can give you the key to keep.’
Isobel turned towards her rental car. ‘You’re not going to follow the ambulance in, in case they need high-level assistance?’
‘The patient’s stable. He’s got an IV line in and he’s getting oxygen and being well monitored for his heart rhythm. I know those paramedics and they can deal with another arrest, if that happens, as well as I could on the road. I’ll go into the hospital later and follow up then.’
Isobel nodded. ‘I expect everyone in the hall will want to talk to you.’ She was biting her lip as she began walking away. ‘I should also say that I’m very sorry for your loss.’
The incredulous huff of sound behind her made Isobel turn back. She could see muscles moving in Rafe’s face and jaw as if he was trying to stop himself saying something. Then he appeared to take a deep breath.
‘I haven’t seen Lauren since she walked out on me nearly five years ago.’ Rafe’s voice was controlled enough to sound icy. ‘I’ve seen your mother once in the last six months because I arranged for the boys to visit her. I’m only here to pay my respects to the mother and grandmother of my sons.’
‘I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do...’
The new echo of Rafe’s voice from years ago was simply another memory seeping out of that supposedly secure place. Isobel mentally tried to slam the lid shut more tightly. Starting to ask the questions that were suddenly tumbling around in her head was not going to help anything. She was here to finish things, not start anything that might complicate her permanent escape.
But he had been estranged from both her sister and her mother? What on earth had happened?
His sons? Had Lauren walked out on her children as well?
And what on earth had her mother’s friend Louise been talking about when she’d mentioned that ‘poor baby’?
‘Do you remember the way to your mother’s house?’ It sounded as if Rafe was carefully keeping his tone neutral. ‘Or shall I wait so you can follow me?’
‘The address the solicitor sent me is the house I grew up in.’ Isobel also kept her tone completely flat. ‘I think I might be able to remember how to get there, thanks.’
Was Rafe just trying to rub in the fact that she’d been gone for so long? That she’d been the first member of her family to walk out on people? To somehow make that whole mess in her life her own fault?
Despite how miserably cold she was, Isobel straightened her back as she walked back to her car. She wasn’t going to take the blame here.
Was Rafe actually not aware that what hadn’t been his own fault had been Lauren’s? If so, maybe that was something else that she could add to the list of things that needed sorting out before she left. It might even be a good way of finding a new lid for that box of memories.
One that was heavy enough to stay closed for the rest of her life.
