‘Oh…right,’ she replied, dismayed that Jolyon had been hurt but surprised that James wanted to speak to her about it when there was Jess and Helen who would be just as upset about the accident as she was.
She rang him straight away and when he answered he said, ‘Can I ask a favour, Lizzie, after being such a pain this morning?’
Yes, of course you can,’ she replied levelly, ‘and I am so sorry to hear about Jolyon being hurt.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said tightly. ‘He’s being checked out at the moment. There’s a large, soft swelling on the side of his head and one always thinks of a haematoma in such circumstances.
‘The favour I’m asking of you is this. They are going to keep Jolly in for observation even if the scan shows no bleeding, as it was some fall he had…and he’s crying for you.’
‘Me?’ she questioned blankly.
‘It’s all about that damned cow. He thinks he’s going to miss seeing it if he’s still in hospital, and won’t be consoled until you are around to reassure him that Daisy will still be there when he comes home…and that so will you, Lizzie. He’s fretting about that too. For some reason you have hit the right note with Jolly. I can tell that he’s taken to you, that he feels secure around you, which, knowing him, is surprising in so short a time. You’ll have to tell me where your magic comes from as sometimes even I don’t understand him.’
‘You are fantastic with both your children, James,’ she told him softly. ‘I’ll come straight away. I’ve just been involved in a delivery for Melanie Dawson and have no one else booked in until morning, so I’ll be with you soon. I take it that you’re still in A and E.’
‘You take it right,’ he said wryly, ‘and don’t drive too fast. I’ll tell him that you’re on your way with a message from Daisy.’
Lizzie didn’t drive too fast, neither did she drive slowly. There was a warm feeling inside her because James and Jolyon needed her, though she would have wished the circumstances of it to be different. Maybe one day the resilient Pollyanna would also need her, but sufficient unto the day was the wonder thereof.
When she drew back the curtains of a cubicle in A and E, Jolyon was lying on the bed, pale and tear-stained with a large swelling on the side of his head. James was holding his hand and talking to him gently, and when he saw her he said, ‘Here’s Lizzie come to see you, Jolly.’
‘Hello, there, wounded soldier,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ve come with a message from Daisy. She says “Moo” and she’ll be waiting for you at my back fence when you come home.’
His face broke into a watery smile and she went to sit at the opposite side of the bed and held his other hand. ‘So how is everything?’ she asked guardedly of James, who was grey-faced with anxiety.
‘We are waiting to go down to Theatre. Need I say more? he said bleakly, and Lizzie’s heart sank.
‘So it’s as you thought it might be?’ she said in a low voice.
‘Yes, that’s the score. I’ve just spoken to Ben and he’s offered to assist during the operation, and needless to say the neurosurgeon was happy to have someone of his calibre on his team. He’s on his way, and with time being of the essence said he’ll go straight to Theatre when he gets here.
‘Ben lost a child in an accident. His little boy was drowned in a fast-flowing river, so no one knows the agony of losing a child better than he does, and that is not forgetting that you’ve been through that vale of tears yourself.’
She didn’t reply, just nodded and thought that, yes, she had, but to lose a child that had lived and breathed and had its own special place in one’s life must be sorrow beyond compare.
‘You aren’t going to lose Jolyon,’ she said, longing to hold him close and soothe away his fears. ‘They will give him back to you safe and sound, you’ll see.’
He didn’t reply to that, just nodded sombrely and said, ‘They’re going to have to manage without me at the surgery for the foreseeable future. Fortunately David and Laurel will be back on the job on Monday.’ His voice broke and he turned away so that Jolyon wouldn’t see his distress.
‘I’ll stay for as long as you need me,’ she told him, still wanting to hold him close, but not knowing what his reaction would be if she did.
He raised his head and their glances met. ‘Thanks, Lizzie. It would be great if we are both there when Jolly comes out of the anaesthetic.’
‘And we will be,’ she assured him.
They walked beside the trolley as the porter wheeled Jolyon down to Theatre, and Lizzie could visualise how much it cost James to step back at the door and hand Jolyon over to those who were waiting there. But he had no choice and as they made their way to a nearby coffee lounge provided for anxious relatives she said, ‘Is Helen looking after Pollyanna?’
He nodded sombrely. ‘Yes.’
‘And what about Jess?’
‘She wasn’t there when it happened. Jess is getting married soon and has taken the afternoon off to go and be fitted for her wedding dress. She won’t know anything about the accident yet.’
‘So are you going to lose her?’
‘Maybe. It all depends if she wants to continue. I imagine she will as they’ll need the money like any young couple starting their married life. Her fiancé is the son at one of the farms in Willowmere, but there was talk of him wanting to emigrate at one time. So we’ll just have to wait and see.’ Now his tone was grim. ‘The same as we’re having to do with Jolyon.’
He sounded so bleak, and before she threw caution to the winds and did take him in her arms Lizzie said, ‘I’ll get us a coffee. Would you like a sandwich with it?’
‘Whatever,’ he said absently. ‘I feel as if it would choke me but I suppose it’s the sensible thing to do.’
A nurse appeared beside them at that moment and said with a reassuring smile, ‘Just to let you know that Dr Allardyce has arrived and the operation is already under way, Dr Bartlett.’
‘Thank you, Nurse,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t suppose you can give us any idea how long it’s going to take?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ she told him, ‘but as I am sure you are aware, the usual procedure for a bleed of this kind is to drain the surplus blood from the skull as quickly as possible before any brain damage or other dangerous conditions arise, and once that has been done the patient usually makes a quick recovery.’
With a sympathetic glance in Lizzie’s direction she said, ‘I’m sure that you’ll soon have your little one back with you safely sorted, Mrs Bartlett.’
Lizzie could feeling her colour rising at the other woman’s mistake and was about to explain, but James was there before her. ‘Lizzie is a colleague at the practice in Willowmere,’ he told the nurse and it was at that moment Lizzie knew for certain that she wanted to be more than that to him, much more. But the speed with which James had explained their situation to the nurse made it very clear that he wanted no such misapprehensions to be made about them.
Jolyon was in the children’s high dependency unit and had just surfaced from the anaesthetic. When he looked up drowsily and saw them standing side by side, looking down at him, he smiled and asked, ‘Am I better now, Daddy?’
‘Nearly,’ James told him. ‘You have to stay here for a little while and then you can go home, Jolly.’
‘There was a bleed,’ Ben had told them after the surgery, ‘but not as severe as we’d expected. It’s been drained. Jolyon will be a bit fragile for a few weeks so keep your eye on him, James, but apart from that he should be fine. He’s come out of it very well and I’m delighted for you.’
‘I owe you for this,’ James told him huskily, and he shook his head.
‘No! Not at all. I wasn’t the only one in there.’
Ben glanced across to his neurosurgical colleague, who was asking Lizzie curiously, ‘So how do you happen to be involved in all this, Lizzie? Have you left us?’
She was sparkling up at him, joyful at the successful result of the operation, and watching her James thought enviously t
hat if she was as relaxed and happy in his company then he might have something to sparkle about.
After those few moments with Jolyon they were asked to let him rest, and as they prepared to go back to where they’d been waiting they saw Jess and Helen, holding Pollyanna tightly by the hand, coming towards them anxiously.
Lizzie stood to one side as James swooped his daughter up into his arms and smothered her with kisses, and then explained the events of the afternoon and evening. As everyone was talking at once she slipped away and once in the corridor moved swiftly towards the car park.
The feeling of being just an onlooker had been strong back there, she was thinking as she set off for home. James and Jolyon would be all right now they had Pollyanna and Jess and Helen with them. The two women had known his children a lot longer than she had and had earned right of place by their sides.
Ben had been getting into his car when she reached the car park and he said with a smile, ‘You can head off for home with an easy mind, Lizzie. Jolyon is going to be all right. There was a time when it hurt like hell, using my skills for a sick or injured child when I’d never got the chance to save my own, but since Arran was born all the bitterness has gone.’
‘I lost a child that I was carrying in an accident,’ she told him, ‘and have the same feeling sometimes when I’ve delivered a mother of her newborn.’
‘Ah! So that’s the reason for the bruised look that you sometimes have. You may not know it yet, but your work has brought you to a place of healing. I’m not referring to the village practice, I mean Willowmere itself. Give it time, Lizzie, and you will see.
‘It has a tranquillity all of its own without being a dead end. It is where Georgina came to heal her broken heart when we lost Jamie and I was impossible to live with, and now that I’m here I’m just as enchanted with it as she is. So don’t despair. One day you’ll know it is where you’re meant to be.’
‘I’ll try and remember that, Ben,’ she said, dredging up a smile.
As they went to their separate cars and followed each other out of the hospital car park Lizzie thought that it all sounded so easy put like that, but Ben was not aware that any healing of her sore heart might be a long time coming and she might wish one day that she’d never moved to Willowmere.
When James realised that she’d gone he was aghast…and hurt. Lizzie had been his rock during what had seemed an endless time of waiting, and she’d kept her promise to be there for Jolly when he woke up. So now had she decided that, having done that, she’d done the favour he’d asked of her?
Jolly needed her, and so did he, but it seemed that now Jess and Helen were on the scene, and she’d glimpsed that Pollyanna was all right, she’d gone home to do her own thing without a word of farewell.
She’d reverted back to her other self, he thought, and the caring compassionate woman who was bringing back to mind the long-forgotten joys and blessings of a good marriage had gone back into her shell.
After Jess and Helen had seen Jolyon, and Pollyanna had observed her brother, wide-eyed and tongue-tied for once, James took her and Helen home, leaving Jess to sit with Jolyon until he returned after putting his bewildered daughter to bed.
‘Is Jolly going to die, Daddy?’ she asked, gazing up at him as he tucked her in.
‘No, Polly,’ he said gently. ‘He’s going to be fine.’
‘But we won’t be able to go to Lizzie’s on Saturday, will we?’
‘No, maybe not, but there’ll always be another time,’ he said soothingly, with grave doubts about the likelihood of it.
Lizzie had given him the message stark and clear and it said, Don’t take me too much for granted.
As he was about to leave the bedroom Pollyanna burst into tears at the sight of Jolyon’s empty bed so he picked her up in his arms and carried her into his own room and tucked her into his bed. Within minutes her eyelids were drooping and as he stood looking down at her he thought about how well the children seemed to respond to gentle, motherly Lizzie.
He’d always been aware that by not remarrying he was denying the children a mother’s love. But had consoled himself with the thought that better no mother than the wrong one, and now unbelievably the right one had come along. He knew it, but Lizzie didn’t.
By the time she arrived back at the cottage Lizzie was dismayed at the way she’d behaved by leaving James without a word, and her mortification increased at the sight of Bryan Timmins and his wife approaching from the peace garden while she was parking her car.
‘Do you know anything about young Jolyon being in hospital?’ the burly farmer asked. ‘It’s on the village grapevine but nobody seems to know much about it.’
He was remembering how the new midwife had called on James to save her from the docile Daisy and had sensed that they might be friendly, even though she hadn’t been in the village five minutes.
‘Yes, I’ve just come from there,’ she told him, longing to get inside and take a long hard look at herself. ‘Jolyon fell and hurt his head in the school playground and his father thought there might be bleeding inside the skull.’
‘And was there?’ the farmer’s wife asked anxiously.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ she told them, ‘but it’s been dealt with and he is now recovering from surgery. He was due to come here on Saturday and was looking forward to seeing Daisy, and is very disappointed.’
‘Young ‘uns set great store by some strange things, don’t they?’ Bryan said laughingly. ‘Who’d have thought that seeing that dozy Daisy of mine would have been such an attractive prospect?’
They were about to move on and Lizzie said hesitantly, ‘I don’t suppose you could…er…’
‘What? Take the mountain to Mohammed? I suppose I could. I’ve transported cows all over the place in me time, but is the young ‘un near a window? An’ they won’t want hoof marks all over the hospital’s lawns and flower beds.’
‘I know St Gabriel’s well,’ she said. ‘I worked there for a long time. All the children’s section is on the perimeter of the building next to a lane that is a public right of way. If you could pull up on there opposite the children’s ward they would all be able to see Daisy.’
‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon all right?’
‘Yes, as it won’t interfere with the milking.’
‘I’ll check in the morning that it is where Jolyon will be, and if you don’t hear anything different that’s the plan,’ she told him.
‘And will you be there?’ his wife asked curiously.
‘I’m afraid not. I have appointments at the clinic to deal with, but Dr Bartlett will be with him. Don’t mention it to him, though, will you? I’d like it to be a surprise.’
She was hoping that it would be more in the form of atonement for the way she’d behaved in the hospital waiting room earlier. Recalling her conversation with Ben in the car park, she wondered just how obvious her uncertainties were to those she met.
James stayed the night at the hospital in a small suite at the end of the children’s ward provided especially for the parents of sick children so that they could be near their little ones night and day if they so wished.
He was still upset at the way Lizzie had left so quickly and as he lay wide awake with Jolyon sleeping peacefully not far away, he was admitting to himself how much he’d needed her by his side on one of the worst days of his life. And she’d been there, until Jess and Helen had turned up. For the life of him he didn’t get the connection.
But was he ready to admit that he wanted Lizzie on the good days in his life as well as the bad in the form of a binding commitment. Most of the time when they were in each other’s company she was on the defensive and he wasn’t sure why. Yet there were moments when they were so in tune he felt on top of the world.
Back at the cottage Lizzie rang Helen to ask if she needed any help with Pollyanna, it being the first time the twins had ever been separated, and when James’s housekeeper answered the phon
e she said thankfully, ‘You must have read my mind, Lizzie.
‘I’m struggling here with Pollyanna. She’s breaking her heart because James and Jolyon aren’t here. She was fretful earlier because Jolly wasn’t there when it was bedtime and eventually he settled her in his room away from the empty bed. But she’s awake again and in real distress. If you could come over for a while, I would be most grateful.’
‘Of course I will,’ she said immediately. ‘I’ll stay the night if you like. Just give me a moment to find a nightdress and my coat and I’ll be right with you.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Helen said. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be for coping with this sort of situation.’
When she arrived at Bracken House, Lizzie found Pollyanna huddled on the bottom step of the stairs in her nightdress, sobbing quietly, with Helen hovering over her anxiously.
‘Hello, Pollyanna,’ she said gently. ‘Are you missing Jolyon and your daddy? They will soon be home, you know. And until they come would you like me to give you a cuddle?’
There was no reply, just a nod and a small hand held out to take hold of hers.
As they walked up the stairs together Pollyanna found her voice and said, ‘I was sleeping in Daddy’s bed.’
‘So why don’t I tuck you up in it again?’
‘You said we were going to have a cuddle,’ was the reply.
‘Yes. I know I did.’ She opened the small bag she’d brought with her. ‘Look, I’ve brought my nightie. I’ll just go and get changed, and we can cuddle up on your daddy’s bed if you want to.’
Still subdued, Pollyanna nodded, and when Lizzie returned and pulled back the covers, lay on the bed and held out her arms, the tearful little girl slid into them and curled up against her with a contented sigh.
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