A Proposal Worth Waiting For

by Lilian Darcy

  He knew what Anna would say. ‘Oh, no, Nick, you didn’t!’

  Inevitably, whatever decision he made, it would be drastically and utterly the wrong one as far as she was concerned. It was a pathological condition in their impossible relationship, and a basic tenet of her maternal faith, that everything he did with, or to, or for their asthma-stricken son, everything he felt, everything he planned and almost every word he said, was and always had been wrong.

  Although this was probably not the major reason for their divorce, it hadn’t helped, and things hadn’t improved since.

  OK, so since he couldn’t win no matter what he did, he’d go with his own convictions and not try to second-guess what she would want. Unless she asked directly, he wouldn’t tell her about what he had and hadn’t brought for Josh. The Lego could stay at home, and if Josh wanted to take photos or try snorkelling, they’d pick up what they needed on the spot.

  Decision made.

  Jaw squared.

  Emotion pushed safely below the surface where it couldn’t get in the way.

  Sorted.

  By the time he’d thrown off the panic and the bitterness, remembered how to act like a surgeon instead of a powerless and frustrated non-custodial parent, and realised he hadn’t yet called for a taxi, a vital fifteen minutes had passed and he was running late.

  He saw Anna’s pale, accusing face as he approached the check-in concourse. She must have been looking for him, scanning for his figure above the heads of the crowd.

  And she wanted him to be late. He knew it. Later than this. Really, unforgivably, flagrantly, uncaringly late, so that she could tell people about it—‘Can you believe he missed the flight? Josh had to go up on his own!’—and it would count as yet another black mark against his name.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked with angry accusation as soon as he came up to her, as if she expected at minimum a six-car pile-up on the freeway.

  ‘Taxi.’ He’d stopped making lengthy excuses long ago. Had stopped arguing, stopped appealing to her common sense and her notion of justice, stopped trying to get her to see how obsessively over-protective she was, and how much she shut him out of their son’s life. Maybe she was right to consider that he didn’t belong there, he sometimes felt.

  Before he could get past her to greet Josh, Anna delivered a stinging, rapid-fire round of instructions about their son’s care and finished, ‘Nick, if you stuff this up, Josh has a miserable time, I will kill you!’

  Ignoring the threat to his life, which his ex-wife found a reason to hit him with almost every time they spoke, he said through a tight jaw, ‘I’m not going to stuff this up. Why do you think I would?’

  ‘Because you never take his health seriously enough. Because you hardly know him, and he hardly knows you. He doesn’t trust you.’

  ‘And that’s my fault, is it?’ he added quickly, almost growling the words, ‘Forget it, forget it.’ They’d been through that one a thousand times. ‘Look, I know you’re not happy about this. But Josh and I will be fine.’ He took a deep breath and prepared himself to say the L-word. ‘I love my son, Anna, and don’t you ever, ever dare to suggest otherwise!’

  ‘Love isn’t enough,’ she muttered, turning away from him so that her face was screened by her well-cut fall of light brown hair. ‘Nowhere near enough.’

  For her, it was a pretty generous concession, so he left the subject alone, said a stilted goodbye, and looked over at Josh, his stomach already sinking at the thought of what he might see in his son’s face.

  Indifference. Dislike. Fear…

  Anna reached their little boy first, of course. While Nick was still three paces away, she bent down and engulfed Josh in a huge, constricting hug as she prepared to say goodbye. She was actually shaking, Nick saw, as she let forth an intense stream of words close to his ear. Nick only caught a few words. ‘Don’t want…terrified…every single minute.’

  Josh nodded. Was he wheezing? What the hell was Anna saying? That she was terrified?

  ‘And you’ll phone if there are any problems,’ she finished, beginning to stand so that Nick could hear her better. ‘Anything that’s making you unhappy.’

  If Dad is making you unhappy, Nick heard in her tone. At least she managed not to say it out loud for once. He stepped forward. ‘Go, Anna,’ he said, more calmly than he felt. ‘Josh and I will be fine, won’t we, little guy?’

  ‘Don’t call him that,’ Anna snarled through the side of her mouth, and tore herself away, disappearing behind a noisy tour group before he could reply.

  Hell.

  He’d meant it as an endearment. If Josh was sensitive about being small for his age, Nick hadn’t known. But, then, how would he? Anna made it so difficult for them to spend any real time together, and she never willingly shared her insights about their son. If Josh was wary and distant, it was her doing, wasn’t it?

  Or was it his own lack of perception that was the problem? His tendency to pull back when emotions grew risky and ran high? His reluctance to show his deepest feelings?

  A wave of self-doubt washed over him and he stepped away, didn’t drop into a Josh-level squat as he’d intended and wanted to, didn’t pick up the colourful backpack with the inhalers and spacer and written asthma action plan inside, even though he could definitely hear that Josh was wheezing. And he didn’t put his arm around his son’s little shoulder in case Josh pushed him away.

  This kind of self-doubt had been such a rare thing in his life until Josh’s birth that he still didn’t know how to handle it. He’d been taught to believe in himself, to act as if he was in the right even when he wasn’t, to keep the façade of strength and ego and self-control in place at all times, no matter what he might be feeling inside. He’d doubted himself at times, of course, but he’d always mastered it, never let it hold him back.

  The slow, horrible breakdown of his marriage to Anna and the gulf in their attitudes to Josh had thrown a new light on everything he’d thought he knew about himself, and it was still doing so. Did he listen to the doubts, ignore them, or shoot them down?

  In a stark moment of anguish, he decided that Anna was right. He and Josh didn’t know each other or trust each other well enough to be doing this—going away together, going to camp, father and son. He blamed her for it, but however it had happened…perhaps he was more at fault than he’d ever admitted…it was a reality. He felt ill-equipped and at sea, daunted at the prospect of fulfilling all Anna’s dire predictions and fears, and messing this up.

  Hurting Josh.

  Scaring him off.

  Saying and doing all the wrong things.

  Sabotaging the holiday’s hopes and promises the way he’d sabotaged his personal life in so many other ways.

  ‘Dr Carlisle?’ Josh’s voice sounded small and scared.

  Dr Carlisle…

  ‘Dr Carlisle, I think I need to use my inhaler.’

  The name jolted Nick out of his negative thoughts. Was Miranda here, then? Was she—hell!—coming on this camp? She must be. Of course there would be medical people accompanying the group. He hadn’t had time to think about it. So this was the day, then, that he…or they…had managed to put off for so long.

  ‘Hey, are you wheezing?’

  And there she was, right in front of him, almost exactly the way Nick remembered her, the way he’d glimpsed her two years ago, before making that very fast and very firm decision to pull back. There she was, stepping into the breach with her cheerful, elfin and slightly mischievous face, her calm, sweet voice, her practical attitude, her slim, almost boyish build and her heart worn carelessly and innocently on her sleeve.

  ‘Hello, Nick,’ she said.

  Ten years. Miranda wasn’t going to count the near-miss from two years ago. Of course he remembered her and knew exactly who she was, exactly where she fitted into his past. She saw it in his face, when he reached out a hand for her to shake. ‘We haven’t…uh…managed to connect since you started treating Josh,’ he said.

  H
e wore the same aura of cool and rather distant confidence that she recognised, and that she’d only once seen truly and seriously slip. He used his body the same way, too. He never paraded his height or the strength in his shoulders, but, then, a man didn’t need to when he was as tall and strong as Nick. He was imposing without even trying.

  ‘No, we haven’t.’

  On the surface, their words took care of the subject, but she strongly suspected it would come up again.

  Physically, he’d barely changed. His lightly tanned skin had done a little more living, and it showed in the fine creases beginning to form around his eyes and mouth. His body had hardened. She could imagine him running several kilometres a day, or going for gym sessions at six in the morning before starting surgery or hospital rounds.

  ‘Anna has a lot of confidence in you,’ he added, ‘which is great.’

  ‘I’m glad you were able to come at such short notice,’ she told him. And meant it, because ten years was a long time, and this man was a patient’s father now, nothing more. She had to remember that. Had to. Hell, what was the alternative? ‘It’ll be great for Josh to have his dad there.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  Didn’t he agree? Was that a cynical drawl, or something else? Anna had been very nervous and wound up about the whole thing, which was typical, but her fears did have some basis in reality—at least as far as Josh’s health was concerned. Maybe the man seriously didn’t want to be in for this assignment, and his reluctance and lack of interest would ruin Josh’s whole camp experience.

  But Miranda couldn’t think about that abstract possibility right now. In fact, she couldn’t think about Nick Devlin at all. She had to deal with the concrete reality that Josh’s asthma attack was getting more severe by the second. With a sinking heart, she saw the Allandales arriving with their thirteen-year-old daughter—verging on late, heavily laden with luggage, instantly wanting and expecting her full attention, as they always did.

  Pretending she hadn’t seen them, she bent down to take Josh’s backpack, wanting to pull out his inhaler and spacer. His breathing was getting worse and he looked increasingly distressed as the seconds passed. He was scrabbling at his backpack now, trying to get it open, but the zip seemed to be stuck and he hadn’t considered his father as a possible source of help.

  ‘Give the backpack to me, sweetheart,’ Miranda urged him. ‘Don’t try to do it yourself. You just keep breathing, OK?’

  ‘Dr Carlisle!’ Rick Allandale reached her, his knees roughly at her eye level.

  Cutting off what would probably be a lengthy list of questions, explanations or complaints, none of which she needed now, she told him, ‘Let me tick Lauren’s name off on my list in a minute, Mr Allandale. We’re waiting until everyone’s here before we check in.’

  ‘Do you know his action plan off the top of your head?’ Nick asked in her ear.

  Miranda felt rather than saw him. He’d squatted down to Josh’s level, just as she had done, and his well-muscled upper arm bumped her shoulder while his backside rested on his heels. She caught the faint waft of some very pleasant male grooming product. Aftershave or shampoo, or maybe just plain old soap.

  He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Because I do. You have other people to take care of. Let me handle this.’

  ‘Everyone else can wait,’ she answered, not sure if he understood the urgency. He must surely realise that the attack was being exacerbated by Josh’s mix of anxiety and over-excitement.

  Too aware that he hadn’t moved further away, Miranda uncapped the Ventolin inhaler and attached it to the spacer, helped Josh get the other end of the spacer ready at his lips. ‘OK, ready to breathe out? Now…’

  But Josh couldn’t concentrate and, even with the spacer, he mistimed the dose and took the spacer from his lips too soon. Miranda saw a puff like smoke as most of the drug escaped into the air.

  Lauren Allandale was watching Josh’s struggle for breath and his clumsiness with the inhaler, as were a couple of other kids and a parent or two. The atmosphere was chaotic and claustrophobic. Another big group of tourists had just arrived, ready to check in for their flight, and the tour leader was yelling instructions to them in a language Miranda couldn’t identify. Korean? More stares arrowed in Josh’s direction.

  ‘Please, let me deal with this,’ Nick repeated, needing to lean close to keep a shred of privacy for his son. Miranda felt the warmth of his body, let herself meet his brown gaze for a moment and found it far too familiar. He wasn’t smiling. His expression was motionless, almost forbidding, and yet it stirred her and filled her with memories. Suddenly, as she’d feared all along, ten years wasn’t very much time at all. ‘You have other things to attend to. And he’s my son.’

  ‘You’re confident that you know what to do?’ She felt their fingers touch briefly as he took the inhaler and spacer out of her hands. Should she grab the equipment back?

  ‘For heck’s sake, I’m a doctor!’

  ‘I mean, the exact dosage. The frequency.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he told her shortly, shoving the equipment into Josh’s backpack. ‘The very first thing I’m going to do is take him somewhere quiet. We can’t get him focused and relaxed here. I saw signs for a parents’ room.’ He spoke to his son, turning a shoulder to shut Miranda out, whether through hostility or because she just wasn’t important at the moment she didn’t know. ‘Josh, come with me and we’ll get you breathing again, shall we?’ His voice sounded stiff and almost formal. ‘We don’t want you having to go to bed as soon as we get there. We want to get out exploring, right?’

  Josh nodded, but his eyes were still wide with effort and fear. Fear of not being able to breathe? Or of something else?

  ‘When’s the latest we can get back here for check-in?’ Nick asked Miranda. ‘Twelve-forty? Don’t hold the group up, will you?’

  ‘Your baggage…’ she recalled. You couldn’t check in someone else’s bags, neither did Security take an innocent view of luggage left unattended.

  ‘I’ll wait with it,’ said Benita Green, the nurse who had come with the cancer kids’ group.

  Miranda and Nick both nodded at the same time. ‘Thanks.’

  Then Nick scooped up Josh and carried him off, the little backpack with its bright colours and cartoon motif swinging incongruously from one big male shoulder as he strode at a rapid pace through the terminal. Josh looked so light and small and vulnerable in his arms, his little body stiff and his shoulders lifting with his effort to breathe.

  Nick found the parents’ room with no difficulty.

  It was like most such places, a small, bland room whose main virtue was its quietness and lack of crowds. Josh’s breathing had continued to worsen as Nick carried him and he had to fight his own sense of growing panic.

  What if he couldn’t get an effective dose? What if Josh’s habitual wariness around him made him unable to relax enough to throw off the attack? What medical equipment did the airport medical centre have? It was close by. They’d just passed it. Should Nick have gone directly there instead of attempting to deal with this attack on his own?

  Was he in some kind of denial, as Anna had so often accused? Or was this trip to the parents’ room a piece of misplaced heroism on his part? Anna had accused him of that in the past, too. What if this whole precious, scary, miraculously out-of-the-blue week or more with his son was derailed at the very start by another hospital stay?

  I want this. I want time with my son.

  Even though it challenged his self-confidence on almost every level.

  I want the two of us to defeat this asthma monster together, in the next ten minutes, to prove to both of us that we can. I want him to love me, and to know that I love him.

  ‘OK, this is better, isn’t it?’ he said to Josh. ‘Nobody watching.’

  He dropped the backpack from his shoulder, grabbed the inhaler and spacer from where he’d flung them inside. ‘Now, show me how you do this. Show me your very bes
t breath out and then a huge breath in, after you press.’

  Josh pressed the inhaler, breathed in and out while Nick counted the breaths and kept a gentle grip on the spacer. His son still hadn’t spoken a word.

  ‘Good. That was great,’ he said, pushing encouragement into his voice. ‘Is that feeling any better?’

  Josh nodded but still didn’t speak. Nick thought he detected a mild improvement but second-guessed the impression at once, as usual. Maybe it was only that the panicky look had softened a bit in a quieter atmosphere.

  He had a powerful, gut-dropping need for Miranda to be there, remembering six years of her common sense and sweetness and warmth and diligence and brains, during lectures and tutorial groups and anatomy lab sessions, followed by that one intense night of her body in bed and hours and hours of talking. Remembering it all as if it were yesterday that they’d finished medicine together. Just those few minutes of talking with her near the check-in desk had brought it all back, as he’d somehow known for the past two years that it would.

  But she wasn’t there, so he and Josh just had to wait, find some patience and some trust on their own.

  And administer a second dose of Ventolin, Nick decided, as the first one wasn’t working the miracle cure he’d hoped for. Time was getting on, but if he pushed Josh to go back to the check-in desk too soon…

  So how did they pass the time until the next dose? There were no toys in here, no windows, nothing. Just him and Josh, on their own together for the first time in how long…probably three months…waiting to see if he could breathe.

  ‘How about a story?’ Nick suggested, and heard his voice come out too hearty.

  With a wheezy effort, not looking at him, Josh answered, ‘We have to…go back and…meet the others…and get on the…plane.’

  His heart sinking, Nick checked his watch so he’d know when to give the next dose. ‘Not yet, little guy,’ he said, then mentally cursed himself for repeating the phrase Anna had frowned at.

  It was a term of endearment, damn it!