The Nurse's Christmas Gift. Tina Beckett

as well?

      Of course not. But on that note, he’d better go and get something into his stomach. Before he did something stupid and went back down to the first floor to check on a very ill baby, and the protective nurse who hovered over her.

      Annabelle wasn’t good for his equilibrium. And she very definitely wasn’t good for his objectivity. And no matter what, he had to keep that. Because if he allowed his heart to become too entangled with her as he cared for his patients, he would have trouble doing his job.

      What Baby Hope and the rest of his patients needed was a doctor who could keep his emotions out of the surgical ward. No matter how hard that might prove to be.

      * * *

      Annabelle grabbed a tray and headed for the line of choices. She wasn’t hungry. Or so she told herself. Her stomach had knotted again and again until there was almost no room in it for anything other than the big bowl of worry she’d dished up for herself that morning. Baby Hope was getting weaker. The crisis she’d had this morning proved it. If Max hadn’t been there, Hope might have...

      No, don’t think about that. And Max had not been the only one in that room who could have saved her. Sienna would have called for the exact same treatment protocol. She’d seen the other woman in action.

      Once upon a time, Annabelle had expected Max to play the role of saviour. It hadn’t been fair to him. Or to her. He’d finally cracked under the pressure of it all. And so had she. At least her body had.

      A few days after she’d lost her last babies, her abdomen and legs had swelled up with fluid from all of the hormones she’d been on and she’d been in pain; Max had rushed her to A&E. They’d given her an ultrasound again, thinking maybe some foetal tissue had been left behind. But what they’d found was that her ovaries had swelled to many times their normal size from harvesting the eggs.

      There’d been no magic-wand treatment to make it all go away. Her body had had to do the hard work. She’d worn support hose to keep the fluid from accumulating in her legs, and had had to sleep sitting up in a chair to make it easier to breathe as her hormone levels had gradually gone back to normal. And the look on Max’s face when the doctors had told him the cause...

      It had come right on the heels of him telling her that he was done trying to have babies. It had made everything that much worse. But she’d still desperately wanted children, so she’d started keeping secret recordings of her temperature. Only the more secretive she’d got over the coming weeks, the more distant he’d become. In the end, the death knell had sounded before he’d ever found that journal.

      Back to food, Annabelle.

      She set her tray on the metal supports running parallel to the food selections and gazed into the glass case. Baked chicken? No. Salad? No. Fruit? Yes. She picked up a clear plastic container of fruit salad and set it on her tray, pushing it a few feet further down the line. Sandwiches? Her stomach clenched in revulsion. Not at the food, but at the thought of trying to push that bread down her oesophagus.

      Broccoli? Healthy, and she normally loved it, but no. She kept moving past the selection of veggies until she hit the dessert section.

      Bad Annabelle. What would your mum say?

      She peered back down the row, wondering if she should reverse her steps and make better choices. Except when she glanced the way she’d come, her gaze didn’t fall on food. It fell on the very person she was trying to forget. Max.

      And he was with Sienna. Both were holding food trays, which meant...

      Oh, no! They were eating lunch too.

      It’s what people do. They eat. They sleep. Her throat tightened. They move away to far-off places.

      Sienna waved to her. ‘Hey, Annabelle. Hold on. Would you like to join us? We can talk about Baby Hope, and you can help catch Max up on the case.’

      It was on the tip of her tongue to say she was going to eat back in her office, but she’d just been worrying about the baby. Any light they could shed on her prognosis should outweigh any awkwardness of eating with her ex. Right?

      Right.

      ‘Sure. I’ll save you a spot.’ She tossed a container of yoghurt onto her plate and then a large slice of chocolate cake for good measure. Handing her personnel card to the cashier and praying she scanned it before the pair caught up with her, she threw a smile at the woman and then headed out towards the crowd of people already parked at tables.

      Setting her tray on one of the only available tables in the far corner, she hesitated. Should she really be doing this?

      Yes. Anything for Baby Hope.

      She shut her eyes. Was she becoming as obsessed with this infant as she had been with her quest to become pregnant all those years ago?

      No. Looking back now, those attempts seemed so futile. Desperate attempts by a desperate woman. Max’s childhood had been pretty awful, and she’d wanted to show him how it should be. How wonderful hers had been. And since he had no blood relatives left alive, she’d wanted to give him that physical connection—for the roots she’d had with her own extended family to take hold and spread. Only none of it had worked.

      If her sister hadn’t had a devastating experience when trying to adopt a baby, Annabelle might have gone that route after her first miscarriage. But if the grief she’d felt after losing a baby she’d never met was horrific, how much worse had it been for her sister, who’d held a baby in her arms for months only to have to hand him back over to the courts weeks before the adoption was finalised? The whole family had been shattered. And so Annabelle had continued on her quest to have a biological child, only to fail time and time again.

      She popped open the lid to her fruit, realising it was the only truly healthy thing on her plate. She’d just wanted to get out of that canteen line at any cost.

      Her mouth twisted sideways. It looked as if the final cost would be paid by her waistline and hips. She shoved a huge blueberry into her mouth and bit down hard just as Max and Sienna joined her. Juice spurted over her teeth and drummed at the backs of her lips, seeking the nearest available exit.

      Perfect. She covered her mouth with her napkin as she continued to fight with the food, finally swallowing it down with a couple of coughs afterwards.

      Max frowned as he sat. ‘Okay?’

      ‘Yes.’ Another cough, louder this time, a few people at neighbouring tables glancing her way. Probably wondering who they were going to have to do the Heimlich on this time. She swallowed again, clearing her throat. ‘Just went down the wrong pipe.’

      Sienna, who arrived with only some kind of green bottled concoction that made Annabelle horrified at what her own plate contained, twisted the lid to her liquid lunch and sat down. She nodded at the selection. ‘I’m finding smaller portions are easier to handle when I’m working. I’ll eat a proper meal when I go off duty.’

      Forcing herself to cut a chunk of melon into more manageable pieces, she wished she could be just as disciplined as the surgeon. Well, today was not a good day to stand in judgement of herself. Was it any wonder she was seeking out comfort food? Her husband had just landed back in her life.

      She couldn’t even pretend to have a boyfriend, because if there’d been anyone serious she obviously would have wanted to pressure Max into signing the divorce papers. But she hadn’t.

      Ugh! She chewed quickly and then swallowed, thankful that at least this time she wasn’t choking.

      A phone chirped and all three of them looked down at their devices, making her smile. Her screen was blank, so it wasn’t Ella, who she hadn’t heard from all day, which was unusual. Maybe she hadn’t heard that Max was back.

      Or maybe she had.

      Sienna frowned, setting her drink down on the table so quickly the contents sloshed, almost coming over the rim of the bottle. She stared at her phone for several seconds, not touching the screen. Either it was very good news...or very...