by Amy Andrews
‘We or you?’ she asked gently.
He gave her a grudging smile. ‘Me, I guess, most of all. I think Annie would have approved, though. She always loved the sunshine state. I know Margo and Keith were over the moon. I think it was best for all of us. I think I made the right decision.’
Hailey heard the edge of doubt infect his confident words. He looked so isolated, so alone. It was something she’d often seen on Paul’s face. The fact that the buck stopped at him, that he alone was responsible, that there was no one else to lean on. She reached forward and gave his knee a pat. ‘Well, for what it’s worth, I think you did. You’re well liked at the hospital and Tom seems to love it here.’
The urge to cover her hand with his was strong but she moved it away before it could happen. Her words did help. ‘Yes, he loves his new home.’ Due in large part to his afternoon visits to Hailey’s.
Tom returned his attention to them and they chatted about lighter things as the Ferris wheel inched closer to the ground until it was their time to get off.
Callum’s pager beeped as they alighted. ‘Sorry, I’ll just get this,’ he said, pulling his mobile phone out of his pocket.
Hailey took Tom over to watch the clown doctors and they were both giggling when Callum joined them. ‘Damn, I have to go to the General. There’s a baby they need me to see.’
‘Oh, Daddy, I don’t want to go yet. I still haven’t had a go on the merry-go-round.’
‘Tom, I’m sorry, we have to go.’
‘Can’t you go and I stay?’
‘You can’t stay here by yourself, Tom.’
‘I’m not by myself,’ he said, sliding his hand into Hailey’s. ‘I’m with Hailey.’
Hailey looked at Tom, who was looking up at her with pleading eyes, and felt herself melt. ‘How long will you be, do you think?’ She’d promised to help clean up afterwards. Not to mention she’d also promised herself not to get involved with the Craig men. A promise she’d already broken when she kept opening her door to Tom.
Callum looked at their joined hands and felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. It looked so right. He shouldn’t encourage this. He looked at her sheepishly. ‘Hopefully only an hour at most.’ After today he really must start to curtail Tom’s time with Hailey.
Hailey capitulated with a light sigh. ‘OK, then.’
Tom jumped up and down and hugged her legs. Callum grinned at her.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Just go.’
Tom didn’t seem concerned by his father’s absence at all as he ran around like a mad thing from stall to stall. Hailey felt exhausted, just watching him. The exuberance of childhood or a lethal mix of preservatives from the many and varied sugar-filled treats he’d consumed?
An hour passed. An hour and a half passed. People started to leave. The picnic was shutting at five and the organisers were looking forward to getting the cleaning up over and done with so they could have a well-deserved rest and a quiet celebration. The day had been a roaring success.
It was nearly five when Tom staggered off the merry-go-round after five turns. He looked dizzy and more pale than usual. He looked at Hailey and said. ‘I don’t feel too good.’
Hailey wasn’t surprised, with all that sugar in his system. She knelt down to give him a sympathetic hug when he suddenly bent over and dry-retched. Hailey picked him up and put him down next to a nearby bin and rubbed his back as he emptied the contents of his stomach. Luckily the park was nearly deserted now and he got to disgrace himself in relative privacy.
She wiped his mouth with a serviette she had stashed in her pocket. She made a note to tell Callum there was indulgence and then sheer gluttony! She pulled Tom close to her. He felt all floppy and his forehead was hot against her neck.
A prickle of alarm skittered down her spine. She pulled him away. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, giving him a little shake as he shut his eyes.
‘Feel really sick,’ Tom whispered, his head flopping back against her shoulder. ‘Where’s orchie?’
Hailey felt a full-on surge of alarm rip through her system as she pressed his ‘security blanket’ into his weak grasp. Oh, God. God, no. It couldn’t be happening again. She picked him up, her legs charging towards the exit, her mind in full catastrophe mode, thinking too quickly to actually form any cohesive plan. All she knew was she had to get him to a hospital.
What if he was relapsing? She stopped. Put him down. Did a quick check for bruises on his limbs and torso. There were a couple on his legs she hadn’t noticed earlier. Her heart slammed in her chest. She picked him up again and continued on her way. His chances if he relapsed were awful. It was imperative she get him to medical help immediately.
She looked from side to side as she went, trying to think straight while the London disaster played over and over in her mind. Eerily similar echoes of that time taunted her. Tom felt like a boneless sack in her arms. She remembered how floppy Eric had been when his father had tried to wake him, how she had dismissed Eric’s tiredness as exhaustion after a big day. She wouldn’t do the same with Tom. She wouldn’t drop the ball with another little boy.
‘I’m going to the hospital,’ she called to one of the committee members, not breaking stride, not even knowing who it was, not caring about the edge of panic in her voice. She should feel guilty, leaving everyone else to clean up, but nothing was more important than getting Tom to hospital. Getting him to a doctor. To Luca. To his father.
Callum. Oh, God, she had to let Callum know. She pulled her mobile out of her pocket and dialled his number, still steaming ahead. It went to his message bank. ‘Damn it!’ she cursed, waiting for the tone. ‘Callum? It’s Hailey. Something’s wrong with Tom. Meet me at Emergency.’ She hit the ‘end’ button and was pleased to see her car was not far away now.
Tom murmured sleepily as she gently placed him in the seat and buckled him up. Her hand shook as she turned the ignition key, her pulse pounding in her head, the thought of Eric’s lifeless little body taunting her, scaring her, sickening her.
She forced herself to drive with care to the General, even though every instinct told her to put her foot down to get around the sudden influx of weekend drivers afflicting the road. To run the orange lights that littered her path. To take right of way from people who didn’t realise the emergency that was unfolding in her car. The trip took ten minutes and each one felt like an age.
She screeched to a halt in the emergency parking bay outside the General’s emergency department, running around the other side and taking Tom out, waking him in the process.
‘Where are we?’ Tom murmured looking around, clutching his torch.
‘At the hospital, baby,’ she whispered, her voice feeling almost strangled by the lump in her throat. She prayed hard to all the deities she’d ever learned about at school. Please, don’t let anything happen to this dear little boy.
She left both car doors open as she strode inside, forgetting about the paint that covered her face, trying to curb her panic, trying to think clearly so she could articulate what she needed.
‘Hails?’
Hailey almost fainted from sheer relief when Rilla called her name.
‘Oh, thank God,’ she half sobbed, passing Tom over to her sister. ‘Is Luca here? It’s Tom. He has a fever and he’s been vomiting and there’s some bruising on his legs. You have to get Luca.’
Rilla looked at an increasingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Tom giving her a very cheeky grin. He looked like he’d been sleeping but apart from that he didn’t look too sick to her. Hailey, on the other hand looked almost beside herself. She may have been covered in thick face paint but it didn’t disguise the agitated fidgeting of her hands or the worried shifting from foot to foot.
‘Rilla! Please. Don’t just stand there. He needs his temp taken. He needs a full blood count. He needs a doctor, damn it!’
Rilla looked at her sister. She knew where this was coming from and she knew it would require delicate treatment. �
��Come on, I’ll go and get Luca,’ she said calmly. ‘What about Callum?’
‘I left him a message.’
Rilla nodded, making a mental note to page Callum after speaking with Luca. Heaven only knew what kind of a panicked message Hailey had left. She ushered her sister into a cubicle and pulled the curtain. ‘Sit up here, Tom,’ she said, plonking him on the narrow examination bed. ‘I’m going to take your temperature, OK?’
‘With an ear one or under my arm?’ Tom asked.
‘An ear one,’ Rilla confirmed with a grin. She placed the tympanic thermometer into Tom’s ear canal, laughing at his funny face, and waited for the beep.
‘What is it?’ Hailey demanded, pacing the small cubicle area.
‘Thirty seven point five,’ Rilla said.
Hailey sat down, feeling physically ill. ‘He does have a fever.’
Rilla gave her sisters shoulder a squeeze. ‘It’s hardly raging, Hails.’
Hailey looked at her sharply. What was the matter with her? Didn’t she realise how quickly children could die? Because she did. Rilla was an experienced emergency nurse, she must know this stuff. ‘Get Luca,’ Hailey ordered.
‘Hails.’
‘I want blood tests.’ Hailey tried really hard not to shout or sound too frantic so she didn’t scare Tom, but she was caught on a déjà vu treadmill and already things in her mind had escalated to tragic proportions.
Rilla left the cubicle and came back with Luca. Hailey was pacing again while Tom was shining his torch at the ceiling and making shadow puppets.
‘Hi, Tom,’ Luca greeted the boy, glancing at Hailey and then at his wife.
‘Hello,’ Tom said, not looking away from his torchlight fun.
‘What’s going on, Hailey?’ Luca asked gently.
‘I think he might be…’ she looked at Tom, not paying any attention to the adults. ‘R. E. L. A. P. S. I. N. G. He needs a full blood work-up.’
Luca looked at Rilla again. ‘I think we’d need Callum’s permission to go ahead and do that.’
The curtain opened abruptly, making a harsh scraping noise. ‘Tom!’
‘Daddy!’ Tom jumped up from his reclining position, running along the length of the gurney and throwing himself into his father’s arms.
A breathless Callum hugged him tight, relieved to see that there didn’t seem to be too much wrong with him at all. Hailey’s message had scared the hell out of him and a dozen worst case scenarios had stormed through his mind as he had run down the fire escape two stairs at a time and bolted to Emergency.
‘Daddy, you’re squeezing me.’ Tom giggled.
Callum relaxed his grip a little and kissed his son’s forehead. ‘What’s going on here?’ Callum demanded. Hailey looked wild-eyed, her hands twisting together, opening her mouth to say something and then stopping again.
Rilla jumped in. ‘Hailey was a bit concerned that Tom was coming down with something.’
‘He has a fever, Callum,’ Hailey said, her voice tense with worry. ‘He vomited. He has a fever. There’s bruising on his legs.’
Callum’s pulse accelerated as her poorly leashed panic started to infect him. He knew what she was saying. He tightened his arms around Tom again, ignoring his protests as he inspected his son’s legs. He sighed. ‘Those bruises are from yesterday, Hailey.’ He hugged Tom some more. ‘What’s his temp?’ he asked Rilla.
‘Thirty-seven five.’
Callum felt relief flood his system, his heart banging so loudly he thought his chest was about to explode. He looked at Hailey and wanted to wring her neck for frightening him so much.
‘Hailey.’ He looked at her over Tom’s head the anxiety creasing her brow obvious. He sighed. ‘You scared the hell out of me.’
Hailey blinked at the anxiety in his voice. She hadn’t meant to. Tom was sick, she’d had to get him to hospital.
Rilla looked from Callum to Hailey. They obviously needed to talk. ‘Tom, why don’t Luca, you and I go and find you a sticker?’ Rilla suggested. ‘We have some around here somewhere.’
‘Yay! I love ’tickers,’ Tom said eagerly, scrambling down from his father’s almost constrictive embrace, blissfully unaware of the tension in the cubicle. He took Rilla’s hand eagerly.
‘Go easy,’ Rilla said quietly to Callum, nailing him with a fierce look before flicking the curtains aside and letting an eager Tom pull her along, chatting happily about stickers and the picnic.
Callum watched them go, encouraged by his son’s bright chatter and his energetic skipping. Rilla’s words turned over in his head.
‘Are you sure Tom…?’
‘He’s fine,’ Callum said gently, turning back to face her.
Hailey felt tears well in her eyes as his quiet insistence ripped through her anxiety. Her panic started to recede, the awful sense of déjà vu, holding her in its clutches, released her. Rilla, Luca and Callum weren’t concerned. No one seemed worried. She could hear Tom’s bright laughter and started to realise what she’d done.
‘I’m sorry, I just thought…He vomited and was really floppy and…’
Callum covered the distance between them and crouched down in front of the chair she was sitting on. ‘He had enough sugar to run a rum distillery,’ he said patiently.
Hailey nodded, the lump in her throat getting bigger by the second. Sugar and merry-go-rounds didn’t mix. The bruises were old. She’d made a terrible mistake. ‘Of course…I…’
He rubbed his neck. She was looking so mortified. So isolated. He put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close. She’d given herself a huge fright too and his instincts told him she needed comfort, not a reprimand.
‘I’m sorry, Callum,’ she said into his neck. ‘You have every right to be angry with me.’
Callum pulled back slightly. ‘I’m not angry with you. You did frighten the life out of me, though,’ Callum said, running his hand over the stubble of his hair. ‘I understand where this is coming from, Hailey, I do, but I get enough of this kind of panic from Annie’s parents.’
Hailey nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms as he spoke, a gesture she found immeasurably comforting.
‘I’m on tenterhooks every day as it is. I have nightmares about him relapsing. I…’ He looked around for the right word and decided the English language didn’t possess one that could do any justice to his overwhelming feelings of impotency. ‘I hate how out of control of all this I am. But I’m trying to give him a normal life. He’s not Eric, Hailey.’
Hailey nodded, feeling her chest constrict as the enormity of the panic she’d created sunk in. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She’d let what had happened with Eric override her clinical judgement. Let it blind her to what had been in front of her all along—a kid with too much sugar and boyhood exuberance on board. She felt foolish. ‘I know,’ she whispered, leaning into the comforting stroke of his hands. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Maybe it’s best if you and Tom don’t see so much of each other.’ He didn’t want to do this to punish her but Tom and Hailey had been spending a lot of time together and he didn’t know if he could survive another of those calls.
Hailey nodded. Tom had wormed his way into her heart. The dread she’d experienced that afternoon when she’d thought he was sick had been almost crippling. Maybe a little distance from him was a good idea.
‘I’m going to take Tom home.’
Hailey looked into the calm grey pools of his eyes and saw his withdrawal. Paul’s had been like that. She averted her gaze, unable to stand the distance she saw in Callum’s. She stared down at her hands, knowing he was right, hoping he wouldn’t see how much it hurt. ‘Of course.’
‘See you next week,’ he said gently. Part of him wanted to linger, to take her back in his arms. The other part wanted to go to Tom and hug him close.
He chose Tom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HAILEY WOKE to pounding at her door on Sunday night. She looked at her bedside clock with bleary eyes.
Nine. She hadn’t slept a wink last night after the incident with Tom and had finally fallen into the black abyss of sleep from sheer weariness about an hour previously.
She sat up, knocking something to the floor, the room in darkness except for the flicker from the television set. She switched the lamp on, trying to orientate herself as she squinted at the insult to her eyes. Her head felt like it was full of cotton wool.
The bed was strewn with several DVDs, the remote, headphones, photo albums and several scrunched-up discarded tissues she’d used to wipe away the flood of tears that she hadn’t seemed able to stop since yesterday. The incident with Tom had bought back memories of Eric’s battle for life and Paul’s betrayal. It had been an emotional time.
The door was pounded on again and she threw the duvet back, covering most of the mess. Who would be calling at nine o’clock on a Sunday night? She padded to the door and looked through the peephole. Callum? Her heart slammed against her rib cage. She looked again. It was definitely Callum—her guilty conscience hadn’t just conjured him up.
She fumbled with the handle as she opened the door. ‘Callum?’
He looked terrible. His jaw was dusted with dark stubble, looking rough and scratchy, almost the exact opposite of the velveteen stubble that covered his scalp. His clothes looked like they’d been hastily thrown on, his creased, collared shirt untucked with the buttons done up wrongly. His grey eyes looked troubled. Stormy.
Callum’s gaze devoured her from her tousled hair and sleepy eyes to the crease on her face obviously from her bedclothes. ‘I woke you up.’
‘It’s OK,’ she dismissed.
Now he was there, he wasn’t sure how to start. He had acted on impulse, not giving a lot of thought to what he was going to say. ‘I dreamt about Annie,’ he said after a moment. ‘I haven’t dreamt about her in years.’
Hailey gazed at him for a few moments and nodded. ‘Where’s Tom?’