Twins for Christmas by Alison Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

in his voice that had caught her attention in the first place.
    His   mother had lost a child, as Mary had. Had she not been strong? Had she never been able to face the world with positive determination again? It was possible that such a tragedy could have caused a depression severe enough to contribute to the deterioration of her mental function.
    How old had Rory been?
    He’d said they would talk later. Kate was going to have a raft of questions by then. Was she way off beam thinking that he might be of Mary’s ilk—had devoted his life to medicine in order to help people who were at risk of suffering the same kind of loss he had?
    Except it didn’t quite fit.
    It was lucky that Rory was concentrating on his task of trying to bring the edges of the cut together neatly enough to leave Florence with very little scarring. He wouldn’t notice how intently Kate was staring at him as she supported the older woman’s head to keep it perfectly still, unaware of the deep furrow on her own forehead.
    Surely such a tragedy in his past would have left a mark? The Rory she remembered had always been so upbeat. Not so much ‘eat dessert first’ as ‘why bother with vegetables at all?’
    And life’s ‘vegetables’ had been things like commitment. Marriage and mortgages.
    And babies.
    Maybe she wasn’t so far off beam. His tragedy might have affected him in a similar way as Mary’s had affected her. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that he had also made a conscious decision not to have children of his own.
    If that was the case, Kate was not only presenting him with the certainty of unwanted parenthood, she was unwittingly twisting the knife because it was twins.
    The heaviness pulling at her spirits was sympathy for Rory.
    Or was it? Maybe Kate was feeling sorry for herself.
    How could she have forgotten the way Rory had neatly sidestepped any hint of a long-term relationship?
    ‘You’ll be feeling a bit of tugging,’ Rory was telling Florence as he tied off a stitch. ‘Not painful at all, is it?’
    ‘No, lad. You keep going. I need to get out of here and help with the children. Lucy’s probably got her hands full with those little scamps.’
    ‘I think most of them are in the staffroom at the moment,’ Kate reassured her. ‘Probably being stuffed full of toasted sandwiches and ice cream.’
    ‘And they’re all right?’
    ‘Mostly. There’s a few bumps and bruises. Michael got the worst of it.’
    ‘He wouldn’t stay sitting down. He fell down the aisle as the bus tipped and there was nothing to break his fall. And the seat at the front broke. He was still trapped beneath it when I got out. How’s he doing now—do you know?’
    ‘We haven’t had a progress report from Theatre,’ Rory said. ‘I’ll go and check when we’ve got your head sorted. You don’t have a headache, do you?’
    ‘Not much.’
    ‘On a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain and ten being unbearable, what score would you give it?’
    ‘Oh, a three, I guess.’
    ‘I’ll get Kate to give you some paracetamol in a minute.’
    The mention of that medication took Kate back again to the last time she had worked with Rory. With its action of reducing inflammation and fever, paracetamol had masked the early symptoms of meningitis. And those bright red spots on the lower legs   could have been fleabites. Kate had been there when Rory had quizzed the younger doctor on his management of the case. She had seen the dawning alarm on his face and been as astonished as everyone else when Rory had actually run from the department to try and catch the family. It had been a desperate struggle to save that child, but they’d succeeded. Not that Rory would know how he’d been discharged a week or so later, with remarkably few lingering effects from the deadly disease, because he hadn’t hung around to find out.
    Not that day , he’d said. As though something much worse had happened. What could have been bad enough to have