Their Very Special Marriage (21 page)

Rachel still didn't look convinced. ‘If she's not in love with you, why did she send you that text?'

He should have guessed that she'd want an explanation. ‘You're not going to like this,' he warned.

‘What? She's changed her mind about her sexuality?'

‘No. I, um, told her we'd been having problems.'

‘What? When you'd had a go at me for talking to my sister, and accused me of telling Ginny and half the village?'

‘You and I were hardly talking, and I was going slowly insane. I'm not good with words, not when it really matters. I wanted you to know that even though things were bad between us, I really did—
do
—love you. And she came up with the words to help me tell you how I felt.'

‘You were going to tell me words that someone else had thought up for you?' Her lip curled in disgust.

He swallowed. ‘They might not be my words, but it's exactly how I feel. I told her about when I first met you. That time I saw you in the library, studying. You were concentrating, bent over the desk with your elbow on the table and one hand stuck through your hair. I couldn't see your eyes but I could see your mouth, and all I wanted to do was kiss it.' Just like he wanted to kiss her now. ‘I sat opposite you and you looked up. And it just hit me. I didn't even know your name, but I'd fallen in love with you. I wanted to be with you. Have kids with you. Grow old with you. It's how I've always felt about you, Rach, right since that very first moment.' He took his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out the photograph. ‘Remember this? I didn't think I'd ever be any happier than this. Well, except on the day you stood next to me to the altar and said, “I do.”'

She took the photograph and stared at it thoughtfully. He still couldn't work out what she was thinking, what she was feeling.

Talk to me, Rachel, he pleaded silently. Tell me you love me as much as I love you. That you want to make a go of our marriage.

She looked at him. ‘What about Caroline?'

‘Cally's my friend. Someone who's known me for years. Someone who's been nagging me even more than you have about the way things are between you and me.' He took a deep breath. ‘I thought you'd found someone else.'

‘That's ridiculous.'

‘Is it? When you did your paediatrics course, I decided to meet you from your course and have lunch with you. Or at least ask you to go out with me that night. Cally said she'd babysit, and I wanted to take you out to dinner. Give us some space to talk. But then I got to the hotel and saw you. You were flirting with a man in the bar.'

‘A man in the...?' She chewed her lip. ‘Oh, Marty.' She shook her head. ‘That didn't mean anything. He was just one of the other delegates. He asked me out. And I admit, I was flattered that a man had paid me some attention—I mean, you didn't even notice that I'd completely changed my hair and I'd started dressing up again instead of being mumsy.'

‘I
did
notice. You looked stunning. I just... The way things were between us, I didn't know how to tell you without you taking it the wrong way and having a fight with me.'

‘I turned him down, Oliver. I told him that I was married. I never even... Oh, perhaps for a second I thought about saying yes. It felt good, knowing that someone found me attractive. Except he wasn't you.' She put the photograph on the table and twisted her fingers together. ‘Is that why you accused me of having an affair?'

‘Yes. I didn't know what to think, Rach. First I see you flirting with a stranger, then people in the village hint that you're seeing someone. You know—new man, new image.'

‘I was trying to show you that I could be as glamorous as your mistress.'

‘I don't have a mistress.'

‘I know that now.' She bit her lip. ‘I'm sorry I doubted you. I should have known... But I thought you'd fallen out of love with me—that you escaped to the practice rather than spend time with me.'

‘No. I thought you'd stopped loving me. You spend all your time with the kids and you never have time for me any more.'

‘Oliver, that's crazy. How can you be jealous of your own children? They're
little
. They need me.' When she saw the flash of hurt in his eyes, she added, ‘They need you, too.'

Then her heart caught up with her brain. Oliver thought she didn't have room for him any more, since the kids. ‘Just because I love them, it doesn't stop me loving you as well,' she said softly. She remembered what his childhood must have been like, trailing in the wake of Nigel and knowing that he was second best, only ever wanted when his elder brother wasn't around. ‘Love isn't something you chop up into little bits and once it's shared out there's nothing left. It grows with you as a couple, expands to encompass your children and then their families.' She reached over to take his hands. ‘I'm sorry if you felt left out. If you thought we didn't need you, didn't have time for you any more, no wonder you turned to the practice.'

‘We've both been stupid,' Oliver said.

‘We should have talked,' Rachel agreed. ‘I wanted to. But I was so scared you were going to say you didn't want us any more, I ducked the issue.'

‘Me, too.' He stroked her face. ‘I don't want to fight any more, Rach. I just want you back. I want things to be how
they were—when we were happy.' He took the photograph from the table and tucked it back into his wallet. ‘You, me and the kids. A proper family.'

‘Me, too,' Rachel said. ‘But I don't want to go back to how things have been these last few months, when you haven't had time for anything except work and I've spent all my time with the kids.'

‘I was trying—'

‘To do the impossible,' Rachel said.

‘I thought I could keep my father happy by running the practice as he'd always run it. But times change. And the Bedingfield Surgery is going to have to change, too, because I can't do it all.'

‘And I'll support you more. Maybe I can get Sophie in for another session at nursery and take some of the burden off you, so we can spend more time together. And maybe we can put aside one evening a week just for us, so we don't lose each other again.'

‘An evening that's not interruptible. Ever.' He leaned over to kiss her. ‘I love you. And I've been thinking. Everything you've been saying to me...you're right. I'm going to use an on-call service to take over the night and weekend calls, and hire a practice manager to handle the admin side of things.'

‘Using an on-call service won't make you any less of a family doctor,' Rachel said. ‘You'll still be Dr Bedingfield.'

‘But I'll also be a husband and father, and put you and the kids first,' Oliver said. ‘I don't want to sit there at their eighteenth birthday parties and realise that they've grown up and I missed every step along the way because I put the practice before my family.'

‘They've been missing you, too,' Rachel told him. ‘And so have I.'

‘It's not going to happen overnight, and we'll still have hiccups,' he warned.

‘But we'll work together. Get through the hiccups together. We'll talk about things.'

‘From now on, I'm going to tell you every day that I love you. And I mean it, from the bottom of my heart.' He held her close. ‘Just tell me you'll forgive me. That we can start again.'

‘I don't want to start again.'

He pulled away from her in horror. ‘You still want me to leave?'

‘I never did want you to leave. But I don't want us to pretend none of this ever happened, Oliver. I want us to remember it. So we never, ever repeat the mistakes again.'

‘No more trying to be perfect, trying so hard not to rock the boat that we don't realise there's an iceberg dead ahead,' Oliver said. ‘We'll talk properly in future. Starting right now.'

‘Sounds good to me.' Rachel curled back into his arms. ‘I love you, Oliver.'

‘And I love you, too.' He kissed her. ‘And tonight I'm not sleeping in the spare room. In fact, we might not be doing that much sleeping.'

‘I hope,' Rachel said softly, ‘that's a promise.'

‘Oh, it is.' His eyes held hers. ‘In fact, I'm going to ring Prunella now and ask her to give me another hour.'

‘No, you're not—you'll feel too guilty. But tonight you're mine—all
mine
.' She kissed him lightly. ‘Go and pick that message up.'

‘Sure?'

‘Sure. But if you're more than ten minutes, I'll bring your coffee in to you. And I might be tempted to distract you from the phone.'

‘Now that's an offer I won't refuse.' He kissed her. ‘I love you, Rachel. More than words can tell.'

‘And I love you, too.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

S
EVEN
minutes later, Oliver stumbled back into the kitchen.

‘That was my mother. My father's had a stroke. A couple of hours ago.' He stared at her in shock. ‘She tried to ring me, but she couldn't get through to the surgery. And when she did get through, I'd left. She couldn't remember my mobile number so she rang here.'

And Oliver hadn't taken the call because he'd been trying to please her, trying to sort out the mess of their marriage.

She could see the guilt in his eyes. The misery. Whatever he did, he lost. If he'd taken the call, it might have been the last thing to push their marriage over the edge. But he'd put his marriage first, and now it might be too late for his father.

‘Did you reach her at the hospital?'

He nodded.

Well, of course he had. Stupid question. It didn't take that long to replay an answering-machine message. Rachel added sugar to her husband's coffee—Oliver didn't take sugar, but it was supposed to be good for shock—and pressed the mug into his hands. ‘So how is he?'

‘Don't know. They're still doing tests. They think it was a cerebral embolism.' An embolism was a clot that formed in one of the blood vessels in the body and travelled up to lodge in the brain—it starved the brain cells of oxygen and led to a stroke.

‘I'll drive you to the hospital.' She could see the protest starting to form in his face.
What about the surgery?
‘I'll take your afternoon list, and I'll call in some favours so Rob
and Sophie can go to a friend's for tea and I'll pick them up after surgery.'

‘I...' He shook his head, clearly too stunned to continue his sentence.

‘Just take a swig of that.'

He did, and grimaced. ‘Yuck. Too sweet.'

‘Good for shock,' she said crisply. ‘Get in the car. I'll lock up. You can tell me more on the way there.'

Numbly, he followed her directions.

‘Did you mother say how severe it was?'

‘Just that his right arm went numb, and then he said he felt a bit funny. Then he started rambling and she couldn't understand what he was saying, but she could see he couldn't swallow properly. She rang the ambulance, and on the way to hospital they told her they thought he'd had a stroke. They're doing tests now.'

She reached over to squeeze Oliver's hand briefly between gear changes. ‘He'll be fine, Oliver. Most stroke patients recover.'

‘Mmm.' But they both knew the figures. If you survived a stroke, you had a fifty per cent chance of a severe disability, and it could take up to eighteen months to recover.

They were silent for the rest of the drive. Rachel pulled up outside the entrance to the hospital. ‘I'll drop you here and go straight to the surgery,' she said. ‘Ring me as soon as you know any more. Rita'll put you through, even if I've got a patient with me.'

‘But—'

‘Your father takes top priority right now,' Rachel cut in gently. ‘Everything else goes on hold until we know what the situation is.'

‘Thank you.'

Then she realised that his eyelashes were wet and spiky. Oliver, who was always so laid back, who never really showed emotion. The last time she could remember him
crying was when Sophie was born, and even then he'd denied that he'd had tears in his eyes.

She reached over and hugged him. ‘I'm here for you, Oliver. I love you. And everything's going to be OK, I promise.'

Though the look on Oliver's face said the opposite. She knew how his mind worked: the minute he'd decided to change his father's way of running the practice, his father had had a stroke. And Oliver wouldn't see that as a coincidence. So was their ‘new beginning' really the end?

Please, God, let Stuart recover. And let Oliver see that he was doing the right thing, for all of their sakes.

* * *

Later that afternoon, the phone on her desk shrilled. ‘Rachel? It's me.'

‘How's your dad?'

‘Holding on. It was a cerebral embolism,' Oliver told her. ‘They did an electrocardiogram and he's got atrial fibrillation.' Atrial fibrillation—an irregular heartbeat—became more common as you got older, and increased the risk of stroke by causing blood clots to form in the heart, which could then break off and travel through the arteries to the brain. ‘The MRI scan confirmed there was a clot. They've done blood tests and they're going to put him on warfarin.' Warfarin made the blood less ‘sticky' and reduced the risk of another blood clot forming in the heart and travelling to the brain. ‘His right arm's still a bit weak, but physiotherapy will help with that.'

Rachel knew that communication problems were very common, too—anything from not being able to think of the right word to use in the middle of a sentence through to a complete inability to speak. And if his right arm was affected, it meant that the stroke was on the left side of the brain, which also controlled language and thought. ‘How's his speech?'

‘A bit slurred. We don't know if his understanding is affected. The speech therapist is coming tomorrow. He's still not swallowing properly.' It was common not to be able to swallow properly for the first week or so after a stroke—that meant there was a risk of food or drink going down the wrong way, into Stuart's lungs, and causing pneumonia. ‘They're considering feeding him by tube, depending on what the speech therapist says. He's on a drip, too.' A drip would help prevent Stuart getting dehydrated. If he had problems swallowing, he wouldn't be able to drink enough, and dehydration could make the stroke worse.