Читать книгу Dr Right For The Single Mum - Алисон Робертс - Страница 12

THE REST OF that day became a blur.

A desperate attempt for Laura to hang onto something solid enough to not allow herself to get swamped by a terror that was becoming more and more real as the minutes and then hours ticked past.

Blood tests came next for Harry and they were still distressing despite the anaesthetic cream and how brave her little boy was being. Maybe it was so distressing for Laura because of how brave Harry was being. Her love for him was so huge, it was filling her chest to an extent that made it seem very hard to breathe.

There was an ultrasound after that and even though Laura was not trained to interpret the blobby images on the screen, she could see that there was something in Harry’s liver that shouldn’t be there. That was when the real fear kicked in. Fear that had to be hidden from Harry because Laura knew how sensitive he was to how his mother felt. He had been right from when he was a tiny baby and Laura still felt guilty that his fear of strange men had been instilled in that part of his life due to the aftermath of the trauma from the abusive relationship she had escaped.

Thank goodness Tom was there, at least until Harry was admitted for the raft of other tests he was going to need. It was Tom who introduced Laura and Harry to Suzie, a paediatric surgeon who was absolutely lovely, and he was there when the paediatric oncologist was also called in for a consultation. As Laura’s world was being tipped upside down, Tom’s presence felt like an anchor. Something safe when almost nothing else could be trusted any more. That something solid that she could hang onto.

‘Can I call someone for you?’ he asked when an orderly came to wheel Harry’s bed up to the paediatric ward. ‘Have you got family?’

Laura shook her head, stepping far enough away from Harry not to be overheard. ‘No one close. It’s just me and Harry.’

Tom was frowning. ‘What about his father?’

‘Not in the picture. Never has been.’ Laura wanted to shut down this line of conversation. She’d been alone for a very long time, apart from Harry, and she preferred it that way. More than preferred it, actually. Changing it had never even been an option to consider.

‘Friends, then.’ Tom’s frown had deepened. ‘Maggie? I know she wants to know what’s happening. She asked me to tell you to text her when I went up to visit her earlier.’

‘She doesn’t need to know right now. For heaven’s sake, Tom. She’s probably just arrived home with her brand new baby. It’s okay, I can cope.’

She could. She’d coped before. Because, when you had to, you just did. You took things one step at a time and did your absolute best. But...it was kind of nice to have someone who wanted to help and the expression in Tom’s eyes suggested there was something more than purely professional concern for her as a colleague. As she held his gaze for a moment longer, Laura almost had the impression that he was struggling with something. He felt compelled to offer assistance but he wasn’t actually that comfortable about it, was he? Because they’d never stepped out of that “colleague” zone into a “friend” zone?

She needed to let him off the hook.

‘As soon as Harry’s settled, I’ll pop home and get everything we’ll need. And I’m sure it won’t take long for him to feel happy there.’ Laura pasted a smile onto her face. ‘It’ll probably be an adventure for him with all the toys and games they’ve got available and with other kids to play with and we both know how wonderful the staff are up there.’

Tom’s smile only caught one half of his mouth. He knew how hard she was trying to make the best of this situation. He also knew how difficult it was and he wanted to be able to help. More than wanted, in fact. He looked as though he wasn’t about to give up until he could do something. And, suddenly, Laura knew what that could be.

‘I’ve got a day off tomorrow,’ she told him. ‘But, if you really want to help, could you look at my roster for the next few days?’

‘Of course. Take all the time you need. Just let me know how I can make things easier.’

‘Thanks.’ Laura simply nodded. She couldn’t spare any head space to think about how much paid sick leave she might have available. Or how much she had in her savings account to cover unpaid time off work. She did know that it was unlikely to be enough but that was an added level of fear that couldn’t be allowed to matter at this point.

The only thing that mattered was Harry. Finding out exactly what was going on and how they were going to deal with it.

‘I’ll know more in a day or two and I’ll come and have a chat about work then. It could be tomorrow, even. Suzie said something about the possibility of a biopsy straight after the CT scans.’

Even saying the words made the terror of this too real. For an awful moment, Laura felt an urge to throw herself into Tom’s arms and just burst into tears. She didn’t dare catch his gaze again now. He was feeling uncomfortable enough just offering personal assistance. Forcing him to offer comfort would be doing more than crossing interpersonal boundaries—it would probably irreparably damage the trust they had between them.

Those unspoken rules that had never, ever been broken.

No flirting.

No really personal conversation.

Physical proximity and touching only if unavoidable in professional circumstances.

Laura needed those rules to be in place just as much as Tom did because they were the perimeters that created the safe space she had needed for so long. It was a good thing that Harry’s bed was on the move beside her. Even if she hadn’t been able to control that urge to seek comfort from the touch of another human, there was no chance to do so right now.

‘Mummy?’ The anxiety in Harry’s voice was more than enough to ensure that Laura took instant control of any emotional weakness that might be trying to persuade her to beg for comfort.

‘I’m coming, sweetheart. Just wait until you see what they’ve got painted on the walls where we’re going. I think there’s even going to be some dinosaurs somewhere.’

* * *

Three days later, Tom emerged from one of the resuscitation rooms in ED to see Laura at the central desk. Fizz appeared to be hugging her friend fiercely.

He’d been expecting this.

He hadn’t expected to feel a wash of something that felt oddly like relief at seeing her again, mind you. Had he been missing seeing Laura around the department more than he’d realised? Or was he feeling guilty that he hadn’t been up to the paediatric ward to visit them? He’d felt a bit awkward, actually. Caught somewhere in the space between being simply a colleague or someone more like a friend who had good reason to demonstrate the kind of concern he was feeling. He had excused himself by keeping very busy and reassured himself that Laura was getting all the support she needed from her group of very good friends.

It was Fizz that Tom had been relying on for updates about what was happening in the paediatric ward and he always checked to see whether any extra help was needed. He knew that Harry had had all the relevant tests, including a biopsy. He had also been told that Laura was coping amazingly well, all things considered, and that she would be coming to talk to Tom, as head of department, regarding any time off she was going to need.

And here she was.

And, as Tom walked towards her, he wanted nothing more than to do exactly what Fizz was doing. To take Laura into his arms and give her a hug that could convey his empathy and encouragement and offer support all at the same time.

The urge to do so was disturbingly out of character for Tom. So much so that it was probably the reason he found it difficult to find a smile as Laura turned away from her friend. He might have even been frowning, he realised, as he saw the way Laura was collecting under his gaze as he came towards the desk. She was trying to hide any show of emotion that could be considered inappropriate in a work setting, wasn’t she? Straightening her back and brushing both her forefingers beneath her eyes as if erasing any evidence of tears being shed.

She looked pale. So pale that Tom could see freckles on her nose and he’d never noticed them before. He could see stray wisps of hair escaping from the loose plait her long hair was in, as well, which was a far cry from the normally sleek way she tied up her hair, but what struck Tom the most were her eyes. Maybe she’d lost a bit of weight in the last few days, which made them look larger. Or perhaps it was the light she was standing beneath that made him notice the subtle variations in colour that made them a really golden brown.

No...in the moment Tom broke the eye contact before it became long enough to seem far more significant than it actually was, he realised it was neither of those things. It was the pain he could see in them that touched a part of his own heart.

He knew that pain.

He needed to straighten his own back now. To remind himself that just because he recognised how tough things were for Laura, it didn’t mean he had to go back to that part of his own life and relive something he had finally moved on from. His heart sank a little, however. Even a professional chat with Laura was quite likely to be a lot more difficult than he had anticipated.

‘This is good timing,’ he said to her, by way of a greeting. ‘Come into my office, Laura. Fizz? You’ll know where to find me if you need me.’

‘Sure thing.’ Fizz had no trouble finding a smile for Laura. ‘Come and find me again after you’ve had a chat with Tom. With a bit of luck, we can grab a coffee in the staffroom.’

Tom’s office was down a corridor, between the staffroom and the meeting room. It was a small space, lined with crowded bookshelves and a desk piled with paperwork that took up most of the rest of the space. There was a big office chair behind the desk and two smaller chairs on the other side, which were padded but not exactly inviting. He waved a hand towards the smaller chairs.

‘Please, have a seat, Laura.’

Closing the door behind him, Tom hesitated momentarily. Putting the barrier of that large desk between them didn’t feel right but sitting close beside her on the other small chair was going too far in the other direction—as if he was planning to offer a counselling session rather than the kind of professional discussion about rosters and leave that they needed to have. He solved the issue by shoving a pile of journals to one side and hooking his leg over the corner to perch on the edge of his desk. Then he took a deeper breath.

‘So... I heard that the biopsy results were going to be available today?’

Laura nodded. ‘It’s a hepatoblastoma. They thought it might be hepatic cancer because the age range for a hepatoblastoma is usually under three but...but apparently it’s a good thing because the stats are better. The survival rate is...is around eighty-six percent.’

Tom used his nod in response as a cover to close his eyes for a moment. He could actually feel the strength that Laura was hanging onto as she spoke. This was her own child she was talking about, not a patient they had in common. How hard was it to try and focus on the positive side of the equation?

‘And the MRI showed that there’s no sign of metastatic tumours so that’s really good news, too.’ The wobble in Laura’s voice signalled how hard it was for her to keep the lid on her emotions but she clearly wanted to give him all the information she could and Tom could only silently applaud her courage.

‘Have they done the pretext staging?’ The pre-treatment extent of disease was an important part of how the team would decide to tackle Harry’s treatment.

‘It’s Stage two, but only just big enough to be in more than one section of the liver. They want to give him a few cycles of chemo to try and shrink it so that it’s only in a single sector and then they’ll be able to remove it totally with the surgery.’

‘So surgery will be at least a few weeks away, then? Or more depending on how many cycles of chemo are needed?’ Tom reached for a notepad and pulled a pen from the pocket of his scrub suit. ‘Let me make a note of how long you’ll need to be away for.’

But Laura was shaking her head this time. ‘I don’t need to be off work the whole time. They’re going to keep Harry in for a few days to see how he tolerates the first dose of the chemo but the aim after that is to keep life as normal as possible for everyone and they tell me that if Harry tolerates it well enough, there’s no reason he can’t keep going to school at the moment. Apparently most children do tolerate it well and he’s desperate to get back to school and his friends and our normal routine. Hopefully I’ll just need days off to be with him when he comes in for the infusions and I should have a calendar for that later today.’

Tom’s eyebrows rose. ‘You really want to keep working?’

‘I realise that I will need a lot more time off when it’s time for the surgery and that it could be a problem in the next few weeks if I have to cut shifts short or something to collect him from school if he gets too tired or is feeling sick, but it’s not simply a matter of what I would prefer... I have to keep working, Tom. I can’t afford not to.’

For a split second, Tom thought he had found a way to help Laura and still keep a safe distance. How easy would it be to offer to help her financially through this rough patch? Catching her gaze, however, he just as instantly dismissed the idea. He could read the look in her eyes just as easily as the kind of silent communication they could have regarding a patient. She didn’t want financial help. She was fiercely proud of her independence and she intended to cope. Alone, thank you very much.

‘We’ll work around that, then,’ he found himself saying. ‘I know I won’t be the only person in the department who wants to support you as much as possible, Laura. And... I have to say I think your attitude is...commendable.’

More like amazing, Tom thought. He’d always known that Laura was capable. One of the best nurses he’d ever worked with, in fact. He also knew she was totally reliable and trustworthy and, although he never listened to gossip, he’d picked up that she was a single mother. But he’d never put the pieces of the puzzle together, had he? He’d never wondered how she managed her life or how hard it might have been over the years. He knew virtually nothing about her private life and hadn’t wanted to know. Until now...

‘You’re facing this head-on,’ he added. ‘I really admire your determination and how positive you’re being.’

Laura looked down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. ‘It’s not the first time Harry and I have faced a challenge. He was born nearly nine weeks premature and it was a bit touch and go here and there.’ Her breath came out in a sigh. ‘Apparently a low birth weight is one of the risk factors for hepatoblastoma. I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time. I had rather a lot of other stuff to worry about.’

Tom was curious to know what that other stuff had been but stifling any questions was automatic. He hated people asking him personal questions so he’d always made a point of not intruding on the private lives of the people he worked with. Having this conversation with Laura was well out of his comfort zone and it wasn’t just the subject matter. She looked different, being in civvies rather than the scrubs he was used to seeing her in.

She actually sounded different, too. ‘I learned then that you just had to get on with it,’ she said, her voice soft enough to make Tom lift his gaze to catch hers. ‘You get to choose some of the cards you play with in the game of life but others just get dealt out, don’t they? There’s nothing you can do about that except to play the absolute best game you can. And you have to fight for the people you love. For yourself, too.’

It was impossible to look away from those warm, brown eyes. She totally believed in what she was saying. Laura McKenzie was quite prepared to fight to the death for someone she loved. There was real passion there, mixed with that courage and determination. He was seeing a whole new side to the person he was so comfortable to work with and it was more than a little disconcerting because it was making him curious. Apart from being an amazing nurse and clearly a ferociously protective single mother, just who was Laura McKenzie? No... It was none of his business, was it?

The half-smile that tugged at one corner of her mouth made it seem as if she could read his thoughts and sympathised with his small dilemma.

But she was just finishing off her surprisingly passionate little speech. ‘I guess that’s the same thing, isn’t it? If you’re fighting for yourself that means you can’t do anything other than to fight for the people you love.’

Okay... That did it. Tom had to back off fast before he got sucked into a space he had vowed never to enter again. He didn’t want to think about what it was like to live in a space where you could love other people so much they became more important than anything else in life. That space that was too dangerous because, when you lost those people, you were left with what felt like no life at all...

He had to break that eye contact. And he had to move. Making a noise that was somewhere between a sound of agreement and clearing his throat, Tom slid off the corner of his desk.

‘I’d better get back to the department.’ He opened the door and there was an instant sense of relief. Escape was within touching distance. ‘As I said, we’ll work around whatever you need. Send me a copy of the chemotherapy calendar and I’ll make sure Admin’s on board for when you’re rostered.’

Laura nodded as she got out of her chair. ‘Thank you very much.’

Her formality was just what Tom needed to make things seem a little more normal. ‘It’s the least I can do,’ he said. ‘The least we can do. You’re a valued member of this department, Laura. We’ll all do everything we can to support you.’

* * *

Oh...help...

Where had that all come from?

Laura was cringing more than a little as she made her way back to the paediatric ward, where she’d left Harry happily watching a movie with his new friend, Aroha—a little girl with Down’s syndrome who had been admitted to be reassessed and prepared for heart surgery.

Prattling on about playing the best game you could with cards being dealt in the game of life had made her sound like the kind of inspirational quotes that went around on social media.

And what about the way Tom had been looking at her while she’d been saying it all? She’d never seen an expression like that on his face. As if he understood. As if that whole conversation had been very, very personal. That had felt weird.

Okay, Laura was well aware of how attractive Tom Chapman was. She’d heard plenty of women—staff members and even patients—who’d sighed over that combination of height, wavy hair, dark eyes and that killer smile. It wasn’t just his looks, either. He had a way of focusing on people that made it obvious he was really listening. That what you thought or what you had to say was important.

That he cared.

Surely there wasn’t a woman on earth who wouldn’t have her heart touched by feeling that someone really cared. Maybe that was why she had stumbled into saying things that were too personal. Too emotional. For the first time, Laura had been affected by this man’s personality on a level she’d never encountered before. She’d never thought of Tom as anything but one of the best doctors she’d ever had the privilege of working with. And a man she could trust not to come too close.

She took the stairs rather than stand with the group of people waiting for a lift to arrive. It could have been worse, she reminded herself as she began the climb to the third floor. She could have broken even more personal barriers and told him why Harry’s premature birth and the months that had followed had been such a challenge—a fight for her own survival as much as her precious baby’s.

It had been a long time since Laura had allowed herself to remember the horror of what had happened but it was inevitable that being on a staircase right now would set off those flashbacks she’d thought she’d conquered long ago.

The fear of believing that she was about to be hurt. Again. That the baby she was carrying could be in danger from its own father. Stepping back to try and find safety, only to feel that there was nothing beneath her foot, that she was falling and knowing in that same moment that the accusation that would come—that this was all her own fault—would certainly be true this time. Brent’s voice when the paramedics had arrived.

‘She just missed the step somehow... I tried to catch her but I couldn’t... She fell all the way to the bottom of the stairs... Is she bleeding? Is she going to be okay? What about the baby?’

Laura’s breath hitched as she pushed herself up the last flight of stairs. “The baby”—her precious Harry—had survived the emergency Caesarean and those weeks in the paediatric intensive care unit. He would never know about the night, just before he’d been allowed to come home, when Laura had stood up to his father during one of his alcohol-fuelled rages and threatened to call the police, and told him that she would do whatever it took to make sure her baby was safe from him. He had vanished from her life by the time she took her baby home and that was the start of a whole new struggle where Laura had to try and ensure that they both not only survived but thrived.

The early years had been incredibly tough but when she’d chosen to live with flatmates so that she and Harry weren’t cooped up in a tiny flat and so isolated, life had settled into something that was as good as it could get, as far as Laura was concerned. Harry had been so happy at home, especially after he’d started at the nearby school. Laura had found great friends in her flatmates and then their partners, and had two jobs that she loved equally—being a senior nurse in the Royal’s Accident and Emergency department and being Harry’s mum.

Laura pushed open the firestop door in the stairwell and walked towards the brightly decorated entrance to the paediatric ward. Totally out of the blue, she had a new challenge that was every bit as terrifying as when she’d sat beside that incubator in Intensive Care, praying that her baby would make it. And yeah... Tom probably thought she was flaky, talking about playing the best game of life that you could with the cards you had been dealt and how you had no choice but to fight for the people you loved, but...those words of hers had been true, hadn’t they?

At least Laura knew how to fight and that it was possible to win in the end.

She’d never been more determined that she was going to win a battle, either. Previous experience was helpful in reassuring her that she did have the strength. That, even if it felt like an impossible ask and you were on the brink of losing absolutely everything, you just had to keep going somehow—one step at a time—and eventually you’d find yourself on the other side. And it was going to be the winning side. It had to be.

For Harry.

And for herself.