Trust? Paige could barely form the word in her mind. She scrutinised the sleeping form, a stranger in the bed, failing to see any resemblance. Staring at her wristwatch, she struggled to make sense of the time, eyes bleary from lack of sleep, brain not up to the simplest of calculations. How long has it been? She had to stay alert. She had to stay strong for her sister.
‘Aurora,’ she whispered, not to wake her, but to hear how the name sounded from her own lips rather than on those of the stream of emergency nurses and doctors who had buzzed in and out all afternoon, exhausting Rory. The eternal beeping of nearby machines had made Paige restless to break free from the claustrophobic walls of curtaining and artificial fluorescent lights. She needed fresh air and sunshine so she could breathe again and Aiden’s well-timed text message came as a convenient excuse.
He reported that Alice had already found Rory’s doctor’s details in the cottage and passed on the information to Coffs Harbour hospital. But the fistula—the vein graft in Rory’s forearm that facilitated her dialysis—was all the triage nurse had needed.
Doctor Carlton Craig, the renal specialist, was a serious, quietly spoken man with two deep furrows permanently etched across his forehead, as if plagued by a permanent sense of foreboding. He’d spotted Paige as she was returning to Aurora’s bedside, intercepting her to speak in soft sentences Paige struggled to comprehend. The whispers, combined with a broad Scottish accent, made terms like ‘tissue typing’, ‘cross matching’, and ‘blood groups’ all the more difficult to take in. When he said something about being worked up, Paige had been tempted to tell him she was indeed that—and more.
‘The nurse will provide paperwork that explains what we mean by ‘work up’. Do you have anything you’d like me to answer before I go?’
‘How long have you got?’ Paige returned a little too flippantly.
‘I understand there’s a lot of information. The staff will help you. No doubt I’ll be seeing you soon.’
The nurse, who hadn’t left the doctor’s side the entire time, pressed her hand against the small of Paige’s back and rubbed. ‘You look exhausted. It’s getting late. Have you got somewhere to stay? There’s a place. Not exactly the Ritz, but it’s cheap and you’ll be close by, in case.’
Paige stiffened against the nurse’s hand, the words in case what? left to dangle, unsaid. And at that very moment, with the frightening reality that she might lose the sister she’d just found, Paige knew. The need to hear what Alice had to say was no longer as important as hearing everything from Rory.
‘Aurora.’ The word caught a little in her throat as she swallowed a sob. She was desperate to touch her sister, to hold her hand, to connect, but she feared she’d awaken her and Rory needed to rest. Paige, on the other hand, needed to find that accommodation; she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d call Alice, chat with the nurse, clarify a few things, and go back to Rory.
‘No!’ Rory’s unencumbered arm swung crazily before she fist-punched the mattress.
‘Being stubborn makes no sense,’ Paige said.
‘Not to you maybe,’ Rory said, pushing up into a seated position in the bed, as if elevation made her stronger.
‘It’s a kidney I don’t need.’
‘And I don’t want it. Today is no different to any other day. I’m on the donor list and if it’s meant to be it will be.’
This was not the response Paige had imagined. When she’d sought out Julia Green, the head of the hospital’s organ and tissue donation program, the woman had listened as Paige explained as best she could—the most succinct version—that Rory had a biological sister—her—with two healthy kidneys, as far as Paige knew. But Paige could tell from Julia’s face that she had oversimplified the donor-matching process.
‘The recipient’s health status is not our only concern,’ the nurse said. ‘Given your family history and your mother’s illness, your work-up will take some time. You both need to be medically and emotionally ready.’
‘I am. I’m totally recovered from my stroke and healthy as a horse. Seriously.’
‘Then we can look forward to a positive outcome where the work-up won’t find anything to prevent you from donating. Still, we will need to check a few things. Let’s start with a full medical history and some bloods.’
Sulking and silent, her fists again clenched by her side, a night of rest had changed very little. Rory was unrelenting in her refusal. ‘It was no yesterday. It’s still no—thanks anyway.’
‘See this?’ Paige held out her arm, the soft inside part of her elbow up. ‘I’ve already started being worked up.’
‘Your sister is offering you a gift, Aurora,’ the doctor said.
‘I don’t want it.’ Rory stared at the spot on her own arm where the last nurse had drawn blood.
‘Please, tell me why? Do you really hate me that much?’
‘I don’t know you. How can I hate you?’
‘Then why?’
‘Because I love you too much. Don’t you get it? You spent the flight down here telling me about your daughter, your miscarriage, your stroke. Our mother died from cancer and if that doesn’t prove to you that our family is jinxed then—’
‘If we were jinxed, do you think I would have found you? Can I blame a family curse for the things that got me to Coolabah Tree Gully in the first place? My husband’s affair? Flooded roads with slap-happy signalmen and dodgy detour signs? I’d rather believe fate brought us together so I can do this for you. I owe it to you.’
The minute Paige said the words she knew they’d been a mistake.
‘You owe me nothing.’
‘Rory, I—’
‘No! Like I said, with our family’s luck, you might be needing both your kidneys.’
‘Ladies, we have people to support you—both of you—through this, but we also have procedures, not to mention a long a way to go before anyone is giving anything away.’
‘I need a few minutes with my sister,’ Paige said, while her tone suggested alone would be appreciated.
The doctor left.
‘You won’t change my mind, so don’t bother trying.’
‘Then make me understand.’
Grabbing one pillow from behind her head, Rory hugged it to her body. A defensive act, putting a barrier between them. For a moment Paige thought Rory was planning to ignore her until she sighed long and hard as if she knew Paige would not stop asking.
‘Look, Paige, I lived in your shadow all my life. I was never good enough. I was second to a memory. Our father turned to everything else for comfort: the bottle, his work, his God—his warped sense of one. But never to me, because I was too crushing a reminder of what he lost. When I got sick I promised myself I would never be one of those horses.’
‘What horses? What are you talking about?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘How do you know if you don’t try me?’
Rory tugged on a loose strand in the hospital blanket, pulling until the thread unravelled and creating a hole she could poke her finger through. ‘That property—Nevaeh—was either heaven or hell for horses, depending on how precious you were and how loved.’
‘Nevaeh is heaven backwards.’
‘Yeah, and a spelling property could be heaven for a horse. I guess it was once. Ours was one of a kind. My grandparents—our grandparents, Ben and Cynthia—started the place as a kind of sanctuary for horses that needed to rest or recuperate, and to support a couple of stud farms. They built a big business, growing their own grain and fodder when the property got bigger, eventually handing over the reins, so to speak, to Dad. We had some really famous horses stay. I even saw a real Melbourne Cup one day. There’s a picture somewhere, in all those boxes. Horses would turn up in massive floats, pulled by fancy cars, the names of studs written on the sides. Sometimes the name of the horse would be emblazoned on the float. I knew those were the special ones. Mostly horses came for weeks, sometimes months, before being collected again the same way they were dro
pped off—in their fancy floats. Gramps was active and did a lot, but when he was too feeble, the running of the place fell to Dad alone. By then he was drinking way too much and business had dropped off with newer, fancier equestrian facilities popping up, and all closer to regional centres. I would’ve liked to see Nevaeh in Grandpa’s day. Mostly all I saw was a place horses came to die when they were no longer useful—or not wanted.’
‘Oh, Rory. Is that why you came back?’
‘That’s why I left. Too many horses came to Nevaeh and were left there to die. Dad said they were the ones people didn’t love enough. I wasn’t going to stay in that place, the rejected daughter, and wait to die. I grew up watching horses grow too old, too weak, or too lame. That’s when Dad would shoot them—at night,’ she added as if it mattered, ‘at feed time, while their noses were down and they couldn’t see what was coming.’
Paige felt sickened. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘Tell me about it. A car back-firing still gives me the creeps.’ She tightened the hold around the pillow to rub her arms. The air conditioning was so low there wasn’t a germ in existence that would want to live in this ward. ‘No wonder Mum ran away. That’s what I wanted to think anyway—that it was about the horses, not me. Until the day Dad told me she ran off with the people she loved and left the ones she didn’t behind.’
‘He told you that?’ Paige grappled with the thought that she was the daughter of someone so cruel.
Rory nodded. ‘Maybe my coming back home now was a way of wishing someone would put me out of my misery. In the city, three times a week, I’d wander into the same dialysis unit, see the same faces and every time I’d think about those horses standing around, waiting to die.’
‘The pinto in the paddock.’
‘What about it this time?’
‘Let me show you something.’ Paige wanted to distract Rory, to give her reasons to believe, and thankfully her iPad was in the handbag. ‘Let me start by saying, my experience with horses is, well, aside from the Easter Show one year, it’s fair to say my experience is non-existent.’
‘But you get the urge to wander into paddocks in the middle of the night looking for something?’
Paige let a smile flick across her mouth as she prepared to repeat Banjo’s statement the day she arrived; the day she’d nearly bundled her family back into the safety of their car and tackled flooded roads rather than the machete-wielding Mr Magoo. ‘We’re all lookin’ for somethin’, girlie,’ she started, ‘but as I always say it’s what we do when we find it that’s most important.’
Rory’s face puckered. ‘You’re smiling, not to mention talking weird.’
‘Yes, I am—smiling that is. I didn’t know I was even looking but I found you. And I think the people in this photo might be us—you, me, Nancy and . . .’
‘Tim.’
‘Tim?’
‘Our father’s name. Now, look, Ebony,’ Rory faltered. ‘Sorry, I mean Paige. I have to get used to that name.’
‘You can call me Ebony. I always liked the name. Guess I know why Mum changed it though. To protect me.’
‘It means dark beauty.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘And Aurora means early light.’
‘Well then, that says it all.’
Rory was confused. ‘I’m not following you.’
‘You can’t have lived in my shadow, because where there is no light there can be no shadow—or so it’s said. You are my light. We’re dependent on each other. Like night and day, the sun and the moon, we need each other to exist.’ Paige slipped her hand in Rory’s. ‘That’s why you have to let me do this for you. I’m offering one kidney and you know a person can live with one. Besides that, I reckon I’ve had all the bad health due to me. They’ll still give me a good going over and if, for some reason, I’m not a match then at least we tried. But we have to try. Okay?’
‘What has your husband said? I know you have one. Aiden told me. And while I’m on the subject . . .’ she said. ‘One of us already screwed up that guy’s heart pretty bad. You need to remember that.’
‘That is not the subject I’m interested in talking about, but since you brought him up let me say this. What I never got to explain to Aiden was that Robert and I haven’t been married, like really married, for a long time.’
‘And what has Robert said about you donating an organ? You have told him.’
‘What I decide to do is my business. This is about me and you.’
‘What about Matilda?’
‘This isn’t about Robert or Matilda.’
‘Yes—it is, Paige.’ She was sounding angry now. ‘Are you prepared to look your daughter in the face one day and say, “Sorry sweetheart, but I don’t have a spare kidney for you because I already gave it to someone else?” Or if not that, can you say goodbye to your daughter because the one kidney you have left fails you in five, ten, twenty years from now? If we do this, will you happily kiss her goodbye before the surgery, knowing something might go wrong and she’ll lose her mother?’ She examined Paige for what seemed like a very long time. ‘If you can’t see yourself doing any of those things, then don’t start this. Don’t take me there.’
‘But—’
‘I’m worn out, Paige.’
‘Oh, okay.’ Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She glanced at it quickly. Aiden was on the highway, ten minutes away from the motel. ‘I’ll go now, but I’ll be back tomorrow.’
40
Rory
‘I’m here to see Aurora Brown. Can I go in? Is she doing okay?’
Rory recognised the voice and wished she could hide, or at the very least brush her hair and her teeth. She felt like crap, like curling up and faking sleep, but first she had to stop him asking the doctor any more questions.
‘Aiden, you wanna get your nosy arse in here and leave the doctor alone?’ she sang out, giving her cheeks a good scrub with the heel of both hands. Rory hadn’t cried so much in ages, but the way she’d left things with Paige last night had been wrong, the misdirected anger hardly justified. None of this was Paige’s doing any more than it was her own. And now, if what the two nurses had been discussing earlier that morning was true, she would have to be strong for Paige.
The curtain finally drew back. ‘Well, well,’ Aiden said. ‘You sound pretty much back to your old self.’
‘Where’s Paige? Have you seen her?’
‘Nice to see you, too, Aiden!’
‘Hope you brought something to eat,’ she said, ignoring his sarcasm. ‘Bloody hospital food is all the same.’
‘I’m sure it’s not that bad, but yes, I brought food. Here, wrap your laughing gear around that.’ Aiden dropped two plastic shopping bags on top of Rory’s outstretched legs. She snatched at them, upturning both.
‘Packaged crap?’ She looked at Aiden. ‘I thought you were a chef.’
‘It’s not all crap. Mostly it’s healthy.’
‘Same diff to me. You couldn’t whip up a small portable feast and buy me pyjamas at the same time, eh?’ Rory dangled a nightdress from the Target shopping bag. ‘Pink?’ she asked. ‘And a nightie?’
‘I figured it went with this.’
Rory snatched the pink wig he’d dragged out of another bag, but Aiden managed to swing it out of her reach. ‘Oh, funny guy.’
‘Just kidding. Only brought the little critter because I thought you’d want it. I prefer the real thing,’ he said, ruffling her hair and bending over to kiss her head. ‘Always did.’
Rory smacked his hand away and ran her arm over what she saw as a thinning matted mop, wanting to cry. ‘This isn’t exactly how I planned things.’
‘Yeah, well, life sucks sometimes. Get over it. Isn’t that the advice you used to give me?’
Rory shrugged and ripped open a packet of Twisties. Chicken. He remembered. ‘Sharni rang me last night. Filled me in on everything. If I ever find that Rene bitch I’ll—’
‘Yeah, I can imagine what my favourite tough chic
k would do. Part of me would like to see it, too. Only you’ve always been full of it.’
‘I might look pathetic, but I’m angry enough to do real damage. Anyway, her loss, I say. So can we talk about something else?’
‘Like?’
‘Like you falling for my sister.’ She smiled. ‘Where is Paige?’ Rory grabbed Aiden’s wrist, bending it awkwardly to check the time. ‘Is she okay?’
‘Shouldn’t she be?’ Aiden quizzed. ‘I haven’t seen her yet. I arrived later than I’d expected. Some sort of accident shut the highway. Figured she was sleeping in her room, so rather than waking her I thought I’d come and say g’day.’
‘Do you think we’re alike? Paige and Me? You like her, don’t you?’
‘I’m not into Paige because I see you in her, if that’s what you’re getting at. Although . . .’
‘Yeah? What?’
‘I admit there was something about her, especially the day we had to cross Drover’s. You’ll never believe what happened on the way back . . .’
Despite the circumstances, Rory managed to laugh herself to tears over Aiden’s story of the cow, the car and the creek. She was smiling when the doctor arrived. Then she saw Paige lurking behind like a wary shadow, with eyes, nose, cheeks, throat—in fact, just about everything, including her ears—red from crying.
‘You got the test results?’ Rory’s voice had lowered an entire octave, the words straining against the rush of anguish pushing against her throat.
‘What test results?’ Aiden looked visibly shaken.
‘I heard some nurses talking early this morning,’ Rory added. The doctor glanced up from his notes, concern etched on his face. ‘Yeah, that’s right, Doc, you need to put a sign in that nurses’ station. These curtains are not exactly the cone of silence, if you know what I mean.’
‘What test results?’ Aiden asked again.
‘I . . . um . . .’ Paige’s pain was pronounced. ‘I need to sit.’
‘What’s wrong?’
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