He shook his head. ‘Of course I don’t. I spend so many hours flying between hospitals and consulting on cases I couldn’t even tell you how to work the washing machine. Let alone have time to stack everything neatly.’
She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall. ‘Oh, how the other half live.’ She said it in joking terms, but it felt like yet another divide for her. Showing just how far apart they were.
He pulled out a pair of grey joggers and a white T-shirt. ‘What about these?’
‘Perfect,’ she said as she reached out to grab them. The soft feel of the T-shirt made her want to quickly look at the label. But she resisted the temptation.
Harry stopped above another drawer and hesitated. ‘This could be a bad question.’
‘Could it?’ Her brow wrinkled. What was he going to ask? She shook her head. ‘We’ve already done the falling-out part, so just ask away.’
‘Do you want some socks and some underwear?’
She burst out laughing, and once she’d started she couldn’t really stop.
Harry looked a bit panicked. ‘Okay, was it a bad question?’
She shook her head and wiped her eyes. ‘No, but I’m so wishing the shoe was on the other foot right now, and it was me, asking you, if you wanted a loan of underwear.’
He started laughing too. ‘Now that would be interesting. I love to think what you’d offer me.’
‘Don’t get too excited. You might be sadly disappointed.’
There was a twinkle in his eyes. ‘Oh, I doubt it.’
There it was again. The buzz she thought she might have imagined earlier. Nope. She definitely wasn’t imagining this.
His phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket. She leaned against the wall and listened while he rattled out the biggest list of instructions ever for a baby that was in another unit somewhere. Something flashed in her brain and she remembered hearing Harry speak to someone a few days ago about the same baby. His face was serious, almost twisted, while he spoke, and she hated the deep furrows that had formed on his brow. She’d been offended by the way he’d spoken to her previously—even though she might not have made the best impression by sleeping in the canteen. Now, she was realising that this was how he spoke to everyone looking after the babies he termed as ‘his.’ She folded her arms and shook her head as he finished the call and put the phone back in his pocket.
He saw her glance and attempted to change his demeanour. ‘Where were we?’
She shook her head. ‘No, Harry. No, you don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
She licked her lips. ‘You don’t get to brush me off.’
There was a flicker at the edge of his eye. ‘What do you mean?’
She gestured with one hand and sighed. ‘Why? Why do you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Speak to staff like that. Do you even realise that you do it? Micromanaging people. Have you any idea how that makes someone feel? It’s almost like you don’t trust them to do their job.’ She shook her head. ‘Not good for staff morale.’
‘It’s not about staff morale. It’s about competent care for the babies that I’ve operated on.’ The words just seemed to snap out of his mouth.
‘Why, Harry? We all want these babies to do well. We all want them to survive. We all want to give them the best possible start in life. It’s why we do those jobs.’ She stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. ‘But why do you act the way you do?’
Confusion flooded his face for a few seconds. As if it were taking him a few moments to process her words.
He opened his mouth to speak, and then paused. It was like his shoulders deflated, and some of the air seemed to go out of his body.
He looked at her. He really looked at her. And she saw something flicker in his eyes. A decision. It was like he let down a shield—a barrier. The face that he always kept in place for people.
‘Something happened just after my very first neonatal cardiac surgery. Something that meant I had to leave for a few days. I’d left strict instructions for the post-op care.’ He took a deep breath. ‘While I was away. The baby—Joe—became very sick. He threw off a pulmonary embolism. There was nothing anyone could do and by the time I got back he was dead.’ Harry twisted his hands together. ‘I wished I hadn’t gone. It was a family matter. Something no one else could deal with.’ He faltered for a second. ‘I hadn’t even wanted to go in the first place.’ He closed his eyes for a second, ‘And when I realised what had happened to Joe, I was angry. I was beyond angry. I was sure, if I stayed there in the NICU, I might have picked up on things earlier and been able to stop what happened.’
Esther breathed. It was like little pieces of the puzzle slotting into place in her brain. ‘That’s why you’re so pedantic about instructions?’
He nodded. ‘Some people would just call me paranoid. But when you’ve had one neonatal death that you think you could have prevented, you don’t ever want there to be another.’
She pressed her lips together for a moment, reaching across and putting one hand on his. ‘But I’ve been in NICU a long time now, Harry. You must know that with the best will in the world, and even a sixth sense, we can’t predict everything.’
He gave a slow nod. She knew he understood. ‘I know that.’ His voice broke a little and as she looked up into his eyes she could see how affected by this he’d been. ‘But it doesn’t mean that I’ll ever stop trying.’ He closed his other hand over hers. The warmth flooded through her. He’d been nice to her yesterday. He’d reached out. And now she wanted to reach out to him.
‘So that’s why you deal with staff like that? You’re afraid?’
For a moment he said nothing, and then he gave a small, hesitant nod. She kept their hands together. ‘You have a good team at the Queen Victoria. You can trust us, Harry. You can trust us with your babies. You might not know that yet, but you have to give us a chance. You have to let us show you that we can do the job you want us to.’
They were so close right now. All she could feel was the heat emanating between their bodies. He’d finally revealed a tiny part of himself, but it felt like just scratching the surface.
She shouldn’t ask. She knew she shouldn’t. But she couldn’t help herself.
‘Why did you have to leave, Harry?’
His eyes locked on to hers and her breath caught in her throat, wondering if she’d just pushed him too far.
‘My father died,’ he said bluntly. ‘I had to leave to organise the funeral. There was no one else.’ He shook his head, a sheen across his eyes.
‘Oh, Harry,’ she sighed, and naturally reached up one hand to the side of his face.
He squeezed his eyes closed and his jaw tightened. ‘Don’t,’ he breathed. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. We weren’t close. We’d never been close. I didn’t have a traditional happy family life.’ He let out a hollow laugh and stepped back. ‘Part of this is all caught up in my anger. I almost blamed my father for dying and ruining the outcome of my first surgery. How bad is that? What kind of a person does that make me?’
Her stomach twisted. There was real hurt in those wo
rds. She had no idea what had happened between Harry and his father. The animosity was real, but so was the regret—even if he couldn’t see it for himself. Pain practically exuded from his pores.
But now she knew. Now she knew why he acted that way. And she had understood. He had to learn to trust his colleagues, her included.
He looked at her again and she could sense the change in atmosphere from them both. They’d both revealed a tiny part of themselves. Like Harry, she didn’t want him to feel sorry for her, but now at least they understood each other’s reasons—his, for being pedantic about instructions, and hers, for wanting to work so hard.
If she lit a match in here right now she was sure the place would go up in flames.
She licked her lips. His eyes were watching her every move, and she could feel the tiny little hairs on her body standing to attention underneath the thick robe.
If he just took a few steps forward...
She blinked and breathed in. She was being ridiculous. She knew she was. But the prickles on her skin told her differently. And the way that Harry was looking at her...
‘I’d like to take you up on that offer,’ she said, her voice coming out much more throatily than she’d expected.
There was a moment of confusion. ‘What offer?’
She gave him a slow smile. ‘The underwear.’
For a second he didn’t move—as if he were processing her words and seeing all the things that lay underneath them. All the sparks she could feel in the air.
He broke their gaze and pulled open the drawer, grabbing a pair of soft jersey boxer shorts and black socks. He held them out to her and as she reached to take them her hand trembled.
His skin brushed against hers. Fingers to fingers.
And before she knew it, his half-full hand closed around her wrist and pulled her towards him.
It wasn’t so much a pull. As soon as they’d connected she’d been ready to close the space between them. She didn’t wait for him to put his lips on hers. She moved first, going up on tiptoes and letting her hands slide around his neck.