THE summer sun beat down on the pavement, drawing up swirls of steamy heat.
‘We could have called a cab,’ Luca complained as he walked from the apartment to the hospital with his wife of three months.
‘But that wouldn’t have been the same,’ Rachel told him, clinging to his arm and thinking of the other times they’d walked together along this pavement.
Luca had wanted to stay in a hotel in the city for this short trip back to Sydney, but Rachel had begged him to try to get his old apartment back, or another one in the same building.
‘Not to relive the past,’ she’d said, ‘but for the fun of it.’
So here they were, walking the familiar street, Rachel excited at the prospect of seeing her friends again, though Kurt, Alex and Annie, and Phil and Maggie had all flown to Italy to celebrate Luca and Rachel’s wedding.
As they reached the hospital gates, they saw Kurt standing there, while the other two couples were approaching from the opposite direction.
Kurt kissed Rachel on the cheek, shook hands with Luca, then put his arm around Rachel in his usual proprietorial way.
‘That guy treating you OK?’ he asked, and Luca saw colour sweep into Rachel’s cheeks.
So often in this way she showed him her thoughts of love, but this time, he suspected, the colour was due to other thoughts. Thoughts of the baby they had just learned she was carrying.
Maggie, too, was pregnant, and having discovered she had a luteal phase defect, which had caused her previous miscarriages, daily injections during her early pregnancy had ensured she would carry this baby to full term.
Luca wondered if Phil felt the same ridiculously overwhelming pride in Maggie’s pregnancy that he himself was feeling in Rachel’s. His sisters were constantly teasing him about the perpetual smile on his face, but why wouldn’t he be smiling when he had so much to be happy about?
He looked at the woman who’d brought him this happiness. She was talking to Kurt, asking him about his life and his decision to remain in Australia when the rest of the team returned to the US.
Asking him even more personal questions, if the colour now rising in Kurt’s cheeks was any indication.
Luca smiled to himself. Rachel had been certain her friend must finally have found someone he really loved, hence the decision to remain in Sydney as part of the new team at Jimmie’s.
She was also hoping to meet this ‘someone’ during their few days in Sydney, and was no doubt pestering Kurt about where and when this meeting could take place.
Then the others reached them, and after a flurry of kisses, hugs and handshakes they walked as a group into the hospital grounds, where a big marquee had been set up for the official opening ceremony of the St James’s Children’s Hospital Paediatric Cardiac Surgical Unit.
Becky was waiting for them inside, ready to usher them into their places in the front row of seats.
‘And how’s my favourite sexy Italian?’ she whispered to Luca.
‘Very well,’ he told her formally, then nodded to where Ned hovered not far away. ‘And how are you?’ he teased, knowing an engagement between the couple was imminent.
‘So happy I could shout it to the stars,’ Becky said, and Luca knew exactly what she meant.
He put his arm around his wife and guided her to her seat, then, as he had done on the bus many months ago, he held her hand.
She was smiling, but he knew she was sad inside, for this was the real end of the team she, Kurt and Alex had been for many years. And this was the real goodbye to her friends, although Luca was sure they would all see each other whenever possible.
Then she leaned closer to him and whispered in his ear.
‘I loved my work, but not nearly as much as I love you,’ she reminded him, and he wondered when she’d begun to read his thoughts!
A dais had been erected in the front of the marquee, and above it the name of the new unit had been printed on a very long banner.
‘At least no one will be able to make an acronym of it,’ Kurt said. ‘I mean, how would you pronounce SJCHPCSU?’
‘Maybe they could call it Jimmie’s kids’ hearts’ unit,’ Maggie suggested.
‘Or just,’ Annie said quietly, “A Very Special Place”. Wouldn’t that describe it?’
And the people who’d worked to establish the unit, and save the lives of children who’d come through its doors, all nodded their agreement.