‘I believe so.’
‘So why are you going to his memorial service if you never met?’
Steele said nothing, just gave Macey a small nod and walked off.
He sat at the desk and tried to write notes, but he ached. He actually ached sitting there.
He missed Candy, more than he had ever missed anyone.
He’d never missed anybody really, apart from his grandmother when she’d died.
It felt like grief. It really did.
It was grief because he missed her. He even missed the bump of her twins, or was he just imagining that?
He pulled up his emails and looked at the image of Gerry and it wasn’t jealousy he was feeling. Steele understood that now.
It was guilt.
Guilt because this young man had died. Guilt that he might be swooping in and raising his babies because he couldn’t have any of his own.
Steele let out a breath and then jumped slightly as a voice startled him.
‘I’m here to see Macey Anderson...’ Steele glanced up and saw a good-looking middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie and carrying a huge bunch of flowers.
He was nervous, he was anxious and he was hers, Steele knew.
‘I’ll take you over.’ He stood and as they walked to the bed he would never forget the small cry of recognition that escaped Macey as she looked down the ward and for the first time saw her son.
He ran to her.
Those last two steps he actually ran and Steele pulled the curtains around them as Macey held her fifty-five-year-old baby for the very first time.
Some things were private but Steele knew he’d just witnessed love.
* * *
Steele checked in on Macey a couple of hours later. She had gone to bed for a lie down, but he found her sitting up, smiling, with a huge bunch of flowers beside her bed and a photo album that her son had brought for her.
‘I’m a grandmother,’ she said, showing Steele a photo. ‘And in two weeks I’ll be a great-grandmother. He was a bit worried about telling me that.’ Macey gave a delighted smile. ‘His daughter, Samantha, is only eighteen. They’re coming to visit me when I’m home.’
‘You’re going to be busy, Macey,’ Steele said.
‘I shall be. I’d say I’m going to have to hang around for a while yet.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you know, I always worried what sort of home he’d gone to, more than I worried about what he thought of me. He was raised beautifully. They loved him from the moment they got him and still do... It’s a huge weight off my mind.’
‘I’m very glad,’ he said, and then he moved to go because she was cutting a bit close to the bone.
‘I wondered if they’d love him as their own,’ Macey said. ‘I wondered if he’d resent them if he found out he wasn’t biologically theirs, but they were just so open about it...’
‘I’m very pleased to hear that,’ Steele responded. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’
As he went to do that Macey’s words stopped him.
‘So she’s in Hawaii...’
‘Sorry?’ he said, and turned.
Macey gave him an odd look. ‘Are we going to pretend that you don’t know who I’m talking about?’
‘I don’t,’ Steele said.
‘Do you think you stop being a matron? I used to know everything that went on in my department. Do you really think I just lie here?’
Steele had never had anyone meddle in his love life, or lack of a love life, and he wasn’t going to start now. ‘I have to go, Macey.’
‘You just interrupted me, Doctor. Why is she in Hawaii and you’re here?’
‘I don’t discuss my private life...’
‘But you’re fine with me discussing mine?’
‘You’re my job,’ Steele said to her, but she just smiled at him.
‘And you’re hard work!’ she said. ‘You’re certainly not so chipper these days.’
‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t bring my problems to work with me.’
‘How are you, Steele?’ she said. ‘And that’s Matron asking.’
Steele remembered Candy sitting here, crying, on this very bed. It had been Macey who had told them both that Candy was pregnant after all. He sat on the bed and this time he was there for himself rather than Macey and he told her how he felt.