by Amy Andrews
She’d been utterly useless.
She dialled Fletch’s number, her hands shaking so hard she had to try three times before she was successful. It went to voice mail. ‘Fletch, it’s Tess. You need to ring me urgently. Urgently!’
If she’d been in her right mind she wouldn’t have left such an alarming message. Or the five more that followed. But she wasn’t.
Another ambulance pulled up and a single paramedic raced into the house. Tess heard them say that Christopher had stopped breathing. That they were going to have to intubate.
A terrible foreboding settled over her. Déjà vu. Ryan all over again.
God! Where was Fletch?
She dialled his number again. ‘Fletch! Damn it, ring me!’
She walked back in the house. Christopher had stopped seizing but they had a mask over his face and were puffing air into his lungs. The female paramedic was inserting an IV. The newcomer paramedic looked up at her standing by the door.
‘He’s stopped breathing. It’s probably the drug we used to stop him fitting. It happens sometimes. We’re going to put a tube into his lungs to help him breathe.’
Tess nodded. She knew all this, had seen it a hundred times. But this was Ryan.
No. No, wait. She blinked. Christopher. It was Christopher.
‘Just hurry,’ she urged, standing by the door her hands curled into fists. ‘Hurry!’
Tess couldn’t look away now. She sank to the floor and watched while they put a tube down Christopher’s throat, exactly like they’d done with Ryan. Her heart was banging so loudly her whole body seemed to bob to its rhythm. She could hear the blip, blip, blip of Christopher’s heart rate on the monitor and almost collapsed on the floor when the intensive care paramedic announced, ‘I’m in. Let’s get this tube secured so we can scoop and go.’
In five minutes they had Christopher on a trolley and were heading out the door. ‘We’re taking him to St Rita’s. Do you want to come with us in the ambulance?’ the female paramedic asked.
Tess wanted to shake her head. Christopher was in safe hands and she wanted to run away. Go straight to the airport and get a ticket back to the UK. Her head felt like it was about to explode. Her heart was being ripped to shreds in her chest.
But she couldn’t leave him. He looked small and pale and fragile dwarfed by all the medical equipment and she couldn’t leave him alone. She nodded and followed them in a daze. She didn’t take her bag or even shut the front door.
Tess sat in the front seat as the ambulance sped away from the kerb, lights and siren on. The intensive care paramedic and the female paramedic—they’d told her their names but she couldn’t remember them—were in the back, tending to Christopher.
Her phone rang and the sudden noise was so startling she stared at it for a moment, trying to remember what it was. Fletch’s name was flashing on the screen as Tess looked at it and suddenly she realised what she was holding and relief washed through her like a raging tsunami. She pushed the answer button in a rush.
‘Fletch?’
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, his voice frantic after eight missed calls from Tess with increasingly alarming messages. ‘Is it Mum?’
It took a moment for Tess to figure out why Fletch would think something was up with Jean. But, of course, he hadn’t known of her plans to look after his nephew. ‘No. It’s Christopher.’
‘Christopher?’
‘It’s a long story,’ she said, suddenly so strung out from an excess of adrenaline she just wanted to curl up in a foetal position somewhere and rock.
‘Is that a siren?’ Fletch demanded.
Tess ignored him. ‘I’ve been looking after him for a couple of hours while Trish went for her scan. He had a…a convulsion. They gave him midaz… He stopped breathing. They… they t-tubed him, Fletch. We’re in an ambulance on our way to St Rita’s.’
She swallowed hard as a lump of emotion bigger than the iceberg that sank the Titanic lodged in her throat. ‘I’m scared, Fletch.’
Fletch gripped the phone, trying to assimilate what Tess was telling him. She sounded close to hysteria and he shut his eyes, knowing that whatever had happened today Tess wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with it.
‘It’s going to be okay, Tess,’ he assured her, even though he had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. ‘I’m coming downstairs,’ he said, already abandoning the computer work he’d been doing and striding out of the unit. ‘I’ll be waiting for you when you pull in.’
Tess could feel the tight control she’d been keeping in place slowly unravel as Fletch’s calm, soothing voice spoke assurances into her ear.
‘Promise?’ she demanded. ‘Promise you’ll be there?’
‘I promise.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Are you okay, Tess?’
Tess shook her head. She was about as far from okay as was physically possible. ‘No. But as long as you’re there, I will be.’ She was surprised to realise just how true that was.
‘I’ll be there.’
Tess had never heard three more beautiful words in her life.
CHAPTER NINE
FLETCH drummed his fingers impatiently against his thigh as he stood in the ambulance bay, listening to the urgent wail of a siren draw closer and closer.
It couldn’t get here soon enough.
His gut churned as worry about Tess’s state of mind warred with his fear for Christopher.
What exactly had happened?
He’d left for work a few hours ago and Tess and Jean had been planning on doing some baking, and now he was standing outside the emergency department, waiting for his intubated nephew to arrive in the back of an ambulance with a frantic Tess in tow.
He should have known things had been going too well lately. His mother was content, the study was running smoothly and things with he and Tess were finally…easy.
It was a subtle difference, probably not noticeable to anyone else especially as, from the outside, he doubted anyone would have even noticed that things hadn’t been easy.
It was just a feeling between them.
Ever since she’d comforted him that night, things had changed between them. The awkwardness that had been there since she’d come back to live with him, which had been exacerbated by the kiss and which they’d ploughed through every day to keep things as normal as possible for Jean, had dissipated.
In all the small ways it felt just like they were married again. Finding mango ice cream in the freezer, putting toothpaste on her toothbrush when he brushed his teeth just like he used to do, a shared memory making them smile.
Even going to bed at night, which had been fraught with anxiety for him, had changed. He didn’t wait now for her to be asleep before he came in or get up before she woke. They just got into bed together and went to sleep. Sometimes they talked a bit about their day or discussed Jean, other times they read companionably or she read while he worked on his laptop, but the apprehension was gone.
Or at least it had been.
The siren almost upon him, a portent of doom if ever he’d heard one, was a sign that the dynamic had shifted again. And whatever ground they’d gained was about to be lost.
Maybe for ever.
The siren was killed as the ambulance screamed into the bay. A paramedic jumped from the vehicle and hurried to the back doors, a doctor and a nurse from Emergency joining him there. Fletch headed straight for the front passenger door and opened it. A pale-faced Tess looked down at him with a dazed expression.
‘Tess!’
Relief stormed his system. He’d been half-crazy, listening to those increasingly desperate messages. He’d expected her to be a hysterical mess, like she’d been that day with Ryan. Seeing her dry-eyed and relatively calm was a miracle.
It shouldn’t be—this was classic Tess after all. Stoic. Controlled. Keeping it all together.
But what she’d just been through would have shaken anyone. Especially someone who’d already been through something this terrible before.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked as he held out his hand to help her down.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ she said, shaking her head at him as her feet touched the ground. ‘He just started fitting.’
Her frightened, confused face grabbed at his gut and an overwhelming urge to protect her coursed through him. He swept her into arms and kissed the top of her head. ‘It’s fine. He’s going to be fine.’
Tess sagged against him, absorbing the heat and the solidity of him. Remembering how good it always felt, how right. ‘I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, Fletch. I was useless.’
Fletch pulled away slightly, grasping her upper arms, and put his face close to hers so he could make sure she understood what he was about to say. ‘You called the ambulance, didn’t you?’ She nodded, and he acknowledged it with a brisk nod of his own. ‘That’s what you were supposed to do.’
Tess bit her lip. She would not cry. She wouldn’t.
‘I was so scared it was like…it was like Ryan. All I could see was Ryan lying there. Ryan’s blond hair. Ryan’s blue lips.’
Fletch pulled her in close again as those images, never far away, rolled through his mind. He’d give anything at this moment to have erased what she’d just been through. No one should have to go through something so shocking twice.
‘I’m sorry you had to go through that, Tess. I’m so sorry. But you did good. Trish couldn’t have left Ryan in safer hands.’
Tess pulled away from him on a gasp. ‘Oh, God, Fletch. Trish! I haven’t… I couldn’t call her. She doesn’t know yet.’
Fletch nodded, already dreading that conversation. ‘It’s okay, I’ll call her. Let’s go inside and find out what’s happening then I’ll call her, okay?’
‘Okay.’
She followed him in on autopilot. Into the resus bay where staff swarmed around Christopher, loading him with anti-epileptic drugs and putting in another IV. It looked like chaos but Tess knew that everyone there had a job and that their teamwork would get Christopher through.
Still, she found it hard to breathe. Resus looked the same as it had ten years ago when they’d brought Ryan here, and she couldn’t stand it. Flashbacks flared in her head as a doctor fired questions at her just like they had with Ryan.
Yes, a virus. No, she didn’t know how long he’d been unwell for. No, she didn’t know if he’d ever had a febrile convulsion before. Fletch thought not. Yes, his temp had spiked. No, she didn’t know how long he’d had the rash for or how many wet nappies he’d had that day.
They went on and on until there was a roaring so loud in her ears she could barely hear them. She turned to Fletch, who was talking to a colleague, and tugged on his sleeve. ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘I can’t…do this. Get me…get me out of here.’
Fletch saw the shadows in her eyes and the tautness around her mouth. ‘Come on,’ he said, putting his arm around her.
He led her outside. ‘Margie, can I use your office?’ he asked a middle-aged matronly woman in a nurse’s uniform striding by.
Margie narrowed her eyes for a moment but Tess could only assume she must have looked close to a nervous breakdown because the woman didn’t hesitate. ‘First on the left at the end of the corridor,’ she said briskly.
Fletch made a beeline for the office and had Tess ensconced in a chair in twenty seconds flat. He crouched in front of her. ‘The consultant thinks it’s just fever related and that Christopher decided not to breathe properly after the midaz dose. They’re going to wait for him to wake up and then pull the tube.’ He placed a hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. ‘He’s going to be fine, Tess.’
She nodded. She’d heard the consultant telling Fletch as much. It was just taking a little while to work through the soup that her brain had become.
Fletch frowned. He’d thought she’d be over the moon at the news. ‘Tess?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I know. That’s great.’ She smiled at him. ‘Really great. It’s just a lot to…absorb, you know?’
Yes, he did know. And she was in shock, which probably made it that much harder. ‘I’m going to call Trish. Will you be all right in here?’
Tess nodded vigorously. ‘Of course. Go, call your sister.’ She consulted her watch. ‘They must be on their way home by now.’
He was back in ten minutes and Tess looked at him expectantly. ‘How is she?’
He shoved his fingers through his hair. ‘Pretty frantic. They’ve just got out of the scan. They’re coming straight here. They’re only five minutes away.’
Five minutes but Tess knew it would feel like an age to Trish. She knew intimately how her sister-in-law would be feeling. The lead in her belly, the tightness in her chest, the rampant fear knotting every muscle.
The if-onlys.
If only I’d been there. If only I’d cancelled the scan today. If only I’d taken him to the hospital for a second opinion.
Fletch sat beside her and Tess looked at him. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I’ll wait with you until they get here,’ he said.
Tess shook her head. ‘No.’ She pushed his arm, urging him to get up. ‘You can’t leave him in there by himself, Fletch.’
‘He’s surrounded by people, Tess.’
Fletch knew his nephew was in good hands but he didn’t have a clue what was going on in Tess’s head. He could do nothing for Christopher now—he was being taken care of by experts.
But he could be here for Tess.
She shook her head vigorously. ‘Not by people who love him. He’s so small, Fletch. He looks so tiny and fragile surrounded by all that…stuff.’ She pushed at his arm again. ‘You have to be there with him. Don’t let him be alone.’
Fletch didn’t dare argue. She was breathing hard and there were two bright red spots high on her spare cheekbones. She hadn’t wanted to leave Ryan alone either. Not even after he’d been declared dead. She’d sat for ages and just held his hand.
‘Okay, Tess,’ he said quietly as he stood. ‘It’s okay, I will. I’ll be with him until Trish arrives. Apparently they have Mum…’ In all the drama Fletch had temporarily forgotten about his mother. ‘So I’ll bring her back here to be with you if you don’t mind?’
Tess nodded. ‘Of course. Just go,’ she urged again.
Tess checked her watch every minute for the next fifteen as the four walls pushed in on her. She read the posters for hand washing and a couple of anti-violence ones designed to warn emergency department patients that violence against staff would not be tolerated.
A wall-mounted bookshelf was crammed with thick, heavy textbooks. Some had fallen over and others were leaning drunkenly against each other. The desk was controlled chaos with a lot of paper and a computer displaying a screensaver.
A cork board behind the door had postcards and work photos tacked to it. Smiling nurses and doctors snapped in the middle of their jobs or temporarily acting the fool for the lens.
It looked like a happy work place. Where people liked each other and got along.
But how anybody could deal with the kind of things that came through those doors, things like Christopher—and Ryan—and stay as normal as the snaps suggested was beyond Tess.
They all deserved medals.
Or to have their heads read.
* * *
Fletch appeared in the doorway with a worried-looking Jean and a red-eyed Trish. ‘Here’s Tess,’ he said to his mother, injecting a light note into his tone.
‘Oh, Tess, there you are.’ Jean’s voice was light with relief. ‘I don’t know why we’re at the hospital, do you?’
Tess smiled reassuringly at her then looked over Fletch’s shoulder to a devastated Trish. She looked like she was close to collapse and it was only Fletch’s arm around her waist that was holding her up.
‘It’s okay, Jean,’ Tess said, focusing back on her mother-in-law. ‘I’m going to take you home. I think Tabby needs to be walked.’
‘Oh, goodness, yes!’
; ‘Just have a seat here for a sec,’ Tess said, helping Jean into the chair, ‘And we’ll be on our way in a jiffy.’
Jean sat down with minimum fuss, which left Tess facing Trish. It was like looking in a mirror. ‘How’s he doing?’ she asked.
‘Oh, Tess,’ Trish wailed, her face crumpling as she pulled Tess into her arms and gave her a fierce squeeze. ‘He looks so small.’
Tess stared over Trish’s shoulder at Fletch as his sister purged her emotions. ‘I’m sorry,’ Tess murmured, hugging her tight. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No,’ Trish said, pulling back and wiping at her tears with the backs of her hands. ‘This is not your fault, Tess. It was a febrile convulsion. I need to thank you. Thank you for being there. I would have been completely useless.’
Tess shook her head. ‘I just called the ambulance.’
Trish nodded. ‘Exactly.’ She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose. ‘I know this can’t have been easy for you today, Tess. Looking after Christopher was a huge step for you and then to have this happen…it must have bought up a lot of stuff with Ryan that I know you don’t like to think about.’
Tess froze at the mention of her son. She’d been trying so hard not to think of him during this whole ordeal but the very essence of him was building inside her, demanding to be let out, and she just couldn’t let it.
‘It’s fine,’ she dismissed quickly.
She didn’t want to get into this. Not now. Not ever.
Trish shook her head. ‘I don’t think I could survive if something happened to Christopher. I don’t know how you’ve managed, Tess.’
Tess looked over Trish’s shoulder at a grim-looking Fletch. ‘Some would say I haven’t managed very well at all.’
‘Then they don’t know what it’s like, do they?’
Tess glanced back at her sister-in-law. ‘No, they don’t.’
Trish sniffled and wiped her nose with the tissue again. ‘I have to go…I have to get back to Christopher. Doug’s not very good in hospitals. They’re transferring Christopher to the PICU where they’re hoping they’ll be able to take the tube out in a couple of hours.’