The Doctors' Christmas Reunion / Unwrapping The Neurosurgeon's Heart. Meredith Webber

SET ALL thoughts of Chelsea—and Andy—aside as she went through her list of morning patients, pleased with some, concerned about others, mostly elderly men who seemed more aimless and depressed than ill. In other places, they could have a community garden or an allotment to work on, but out here, where water was a very scarce commodity, such a thing would be a luxury.

      But her thoughts returned to Chelsea as she walked briskly to the hospital, sighing as she went in through the side entrance, where more Christmas decorations were already in place.

      But Christmas cheer was the last thing on her mind as she considered the discussion she’d have to have with Andy.

      Not right now, when there’d be other people around, but later on they would definitely need to talk.

      Chelsea’s arrival had thrown their arrangement into disarray. It had seemed sensible to live separately within the house, mainly to avoid gossip and speculation, but Chelsea would pick up on it immediately, and word would spread around the family, and Ellie knew it would cause distress to Meg.

      She pushed into the theatre changing room and found Andy already waiting for her.

      ‘Sorry, I was held up on my first patient and I’ve been late all morning,’ she explained.

      His beautiful Ellie looked so tired and stressed that Andy wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her—to find their way back to where they’d been. But pain and grief and too many harsh words had opened up a gulf between them, and as yet, he could find no way of bridging it.

      And did he even want to?

      He shook his head. That was a stupid question when there was a patient waiting.

      Of course he wanted to! The thought of living without Ellie was…well, inconceivable.

      ‘The patient is a young lad who got hit by a strand of barbed wire when he was helping his father repair a fence. Apparently, the fence strainers snapped, the wire flicked back, and a piece flew into his lower abdomen. They got it out, and cleaned and dressed the wound, but there’s a bit still in there—one of the barbs, I’d say—and it’s badly infected. I need to go in and clean it out before it develops into sepsis. He’s on IV antibiotics, and I’ll leave a drain in place for a few days if it looks at all dubious.’

      Andy watched as Ellie greeted Tony, a nurse who loved theatre work, then checked the drugs and instruments he’d laid out for her.

      Once upon a time, in what seemed like another life—in another country, for that matter—they’d worked together like this. The lack of specialist doctors in some of the African countries where they’d lived meant you had to do whatever was required of you, and often it was surgery—he cutting while Ellie did the anaesthetic—basic though it had been.

      He held back a snort, disgusted that he could be distracted by such trivial thoughts. All that was so far in the past it was history now.

      Yet how could he not watch as she spoke quietly to the boy, explaining how he’d be getting sleepy, checking the cannula already attached to the back of one small hand and smiling gently. She was so good with children—the children they would never have…

      Satisfied that all was well, Ellie took up the prepared anaesthetic, and with a nod to Andy injected it, waiting until the boy dozed off before securing the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose.

      How many times—?

       Enough!

      The past belonged in the past. Here and now, he needed one hundred percent concentration on Jonah. Electrodes already attached to his patient’s body told the monitor everything was stable, and Ellie would keep an eye on it while he cut carefully into the pale skin on the lower abdomen, Tony beside him to mop the blood and cauterise any small bleeders.

      Andy glanced across the table, and by chance met Ellie’s eyes above her mask. She winked at him—something she’d done a thousand times before—a ‘going well’ kind of wink, but the sight of such a silly, insignificant facial tic brought an arrow of pain into his innermost being. One he tried to ignore…

      The infection was obvious, the culprit a small piece of metal—a tiny scrap had broken free from a barb on the wire. No wonder the boy had been complaining of pain.

      Andy irrigated the wound and searched for any secondary sites of infection, but everything was clean and clear.

      ‘I won’t leave a drain,’ he said, as much to himself as to the staff around the table. ‘In that position it could be easily dislodged, especially considering he’s an adventurous young boy.’

      He closed the wound, and nodded to Ellie to reverse the anaesthetic, then stood back while Tony did the dressing.

      He should go and change. This team knew what they were doing. The boy would be transferred to a bed and wheeled through to the small recovery room. Ellie was in charge of him now and would be watching over him until he was fully conscious and aware of his surroundings.

      But sometimes Andy needed to watch his wife—to watch and wonder what had happened to them to end up on either side of what was now an abyss.

      Was it his fault?

      Those final, hurtful words about the state of their marriage had certainly marked the end of life as they’d known it, but what had brought them to that?

      Did he still feel a lingering resentment about the money the IVF had cost?

      But it had been he who’d first suggested IVF, so it couldn’t be that that burned inside him.

      Yet something did.

      He’d been keen to have a family—as keen as Ellie was—but that had been back before he’d known about the pain of loss; how much each failure would hurt, although that was nothing compared to the terrible piercing pain of losing the baby.

      But worst of all had been watching Ellie’s pain and being unable to take it away from her. That was the part he’d found so bloody impossible…

      It wasn’t that she’d pushed him away at the time, more that she’d wrapped herself inside it—made a cocoon of her pain—and had no longer been part of him, no, of them, cutting their oneness…

      Now Andy watched Ellie sadly as she followed the trolley out of the theatre, before heading for the shower. There was nothing like water to wash away pointless suppositions and what-ifs that were too late…

      Ellie waited as the youngster came around, checked he was sufficiently conscious to be given a few sips of water, and tell her who and where he was, then she departed, hurrying now, as she’d been due to see a patient at one-thirty and it was already close to two.

      But her thoughts remained firmly stuck on Andy.

      His skill as a surgeon was undeniable, and while still at university he’d even considered making a career of it, but during their time in Africa he’d realised that his skill lay with people; with helping them, comforting them and, yes, healing them when it was humanly possible.

      And it had fired his determination to return to the isolated regions of Australia—areas always crying out for doctors—where his patients would be people he would get to know and care about, not simply a person needing an appendectomy or a new knee.

      Ellie caught up as she worked through the afternoon’s patients, so had seen the last one out when Chelsea returned, laden with bags and filled with excitement.

      ‘You should rest,’ she told the young woman as she locked the surgery door then walked up the front steps and along the veranda to the room Chelsea had chosen.

      It had belonged to one of Andy’s sisters, and although Ellie had put fresh sheets