Harriet laughed but Sam could almost see her shaking her head. ‘They’re never going to get over it, are they?’
‘No. And I can’t blame them for that.’
She wouldn’t be able to blame them for being appalled at her desire to join a team of people who threw themselves into dangerous situations like floods or earthquakes or a plane crash.
Having parked in a leafy street in one of Sydney’s most exclusive suburbs, Sam killed the engine of her little car and closed her eyes for a moment as she let out a long sigh.
It wasn’t just Blake Cooper who presented an obstacle to what she’d set her heart on but the big difference was that she loved her parents. After so many years of protecting them from further worry, she wasn’t able to become the rebel and just do what she wanted no matter if it hurt them.
This was going to take some careful management but she was confident it was doable. And, as soon as she got home this evening, she was going to go online and see what she could find out about the urban search and rescue training courses.
* * *
Blake clicked on a shortcut link on the iPad he always carried in his satchel, which was now propped up on the windowsill above his mother’s kitchen bench.
He didn’t check in nearly as often these days. And it didn’t seem to instil quite the same level of yearning, either.
The Australian branch of Médecins Sans Frontières was currently helping to deal with a meningitis epidemic in West Africa, an outbreak of cholera in Yemen and providing surgical teams in Iraq amongst a dozen or more projects scattered over the more troubled areas of the globe. Headlines told him that a nurse had been evacuated from Africa with a serious case of dengue fever and a hospital in the Middle East had been bombed. Casualties included several MSF staff, two of whom were doctors.
It could have been him, Blake mused, if his mother hadn’t had that stroke. He would have been out there now, probably having moved from one project to another, with nothing more than a quick visit home once or twice a year. With another click, he went back to the music he was streaming and turned back to the task in hand. He drained the pot of boiled potatoes, added some butter and milk and set about mashing them.
He would have died doing something he was passionate about—helping the least fortunate members of the human population—but that wouldn’t have made it any easier for his mother to have coped with, would it? And how unfair would that have been for a woman who’d devoted her life to doing her utmost under challenging circumstances to give her only child the best chance of happiness and success.
He spooned the mashed potato over the savoury mix of meat and vegetables in the baking dish, sprinkled grated cheese on top and slid the pan into a hot oven. Then he scrolled down the rest of the headlines of the news bulletin he’d opened online.
He hadn’t given up on the ambition to join MSF, of course, and times like this, confined within the four walls of a tiny bungalow in one of Sydney’s sprawling outer suburbs, the sharp teeth of frustration would snap at his heels again. It was the flipside of the coin that represented freedom, wasn’t it?
An ordinary little house in the suburbs. A wife and kids and a mortgage.
Trapped for life.
A nightmare for anyone who’d dreamed of freedom since he was old enough to understand how limited the choices in life could be for those less fortunate than others.
Searching for, and buying this house had made him break out in a cold sweat, more than once, even though he would never be living here. This house had been his mum’s dream. Her own house, with no threat of being evicted or having to put up with the substandard living conditions of something like a blocked toilet because the landlord couldn’t be bothered dealing with it. A real home, with two cats, a small garden and even a picket fence.
He’d bought this house for her as soon as he was out of med school and had a salary that could stretch to mortgage payments on top of the rent for his studio loft apartment, and one of the saddest things about the aftermath of Sharon Cooper’s stroke in her early fifties had been the fear that she was going to lose the dream of living in her perfect home.
At least he’d been able to do something about that. He’d promised that he would do everything he possibly could to make sure she never had to leave this house. He visited several times a week to take care of things like mowing the lawns or changing a lightbulb and he covered the cost of a home help that came daily to do any housework or meal preparation that his mother hadn’t been able to manage.
‘You hungry, Mum?’ he called. ‘I’ve made your favourite. Shepherd’s pie.’
‘Starving,’ Sharon Cooper called back. ‘It smells so good.’
She appeared in the kitchen doorway as she spoke, stopping for a moment to catch the doorframe with her strong hand. Trying hard to disguise her limp. Automatically, Blake reached out to offer her support but she brushed his hand away.
‘I can manage. I’m doing better. The physiotherapist says I’m still making really good progress. I’ll be back to normal one of these days.’
‘You will be. I’m proud of you.’ As he spooned servings of the meal onto plates, Blake kept a corner of his eye on his mother’s movements as she pulled out a chair and sat down at the tiny table by the window. He was proud of her. She’d fought for every inch of her recovery so far and she wasn’t showing any signs of giving up before she reached her goal.
And why would she? She’d had to fight for everything in her life from her early years as a foster kid to being a single mother as a young adult, never earning enough to make life any easier. It was heartbreaking that she had had to face yet another huge challenge in this part of her life.
He set the plates on the table and then sat opposite his mother, putting a smile on his face.
‘I’ve made enough to feed an army. You can freeze it when it cools down.’
‘I might just eat it every night. It’s delicious.’ But Sharon’s glance was stern. ‘You don’t need to do this all the time, you know. You’ve got enough to be doing without fussing about me.’
‘You spent a fair few years looking after me, Mum. It’s the least I can do.’
‘Hmm. I’m sure you’ve got better things to be doing than making shepherd’s pie. When do you get time to do fun stuff?’
‘I do plenty of fun stuff.’
‘Like helping out at that clinic like you did last night? It’s just more work.’
‘I like doing it.’
Not strictly true, he had to admit. It was often difficult to keep up his commitment to working two or three evenings a month and sometimes, it was a challenge that left him drained. The free clinic had its share of people embittered by poverty who could become pretty abusive but he also saw people who were grateful for any help and, along with his SDR work, it was another kind of freedom. You could save lives there, too. Like diagnosing a baby with meningitis when there was still time to treat them and an overwhelmed young mother might have put off seeking help that would have cost too much that week.
‘And I think it’s an important thing to do.’
His mother’s gaze had softened.
‘It is. I wish there’d been one when you were little. I felt so guilty that time that your eardrum burst when I didn’t take you to the doctor in time for your earache just because I was hoping you’d be okay till payday.’
And if his mother had had a free clinic available back then, she might have had her high blood pressure diagnosed and treated before it had caused the damage that had led to her stroke.
‘It didn’t do me any harm.’ He grinned as he reached for his phone as a text message pinged. ‘See? I can hear perfectly well.’
‘Who’s texting you? A girl, I hope.’
‘No. I’m not seeing anyone at the moment.’ He read the message, frowned for a moment and then tapped in a rapid response.
‘Wh
at happened to...oh, no... I’ve forgotten her name. They never last long enough for it to sink in and you never bring them to meet me.’
Blake grinned again. ‘I’ve forgotten too.’ He picked up his fork. Of course he never brought them to meet his mother. That was a step along the road to commitment. To having someone dependent on him and a mortgage on a house in the suburbs somewhere.
‘That was a request for me to take an introductory USAR course up in Brisbane next weekend. The guy who was taking it came off his mountain bike and will be out of action for a while and they don’t have anyone available locally.’
‘Are you going to do it?’
‘No reason not to. They pay for the flights and a hotel.’
Training weekends were a bit of a bonus. Easy extra money that could go straight into the account that covered Sharon’s needs.
‘It’s lucky I’ve got a free weekend for once. And who knows? I might need a favour like this myself one day. Don’t worry, I’ll drop in before I go and make sure you’ve got everything you need.’
‘I’ll be fine. You go and have fun.’ She looked up from her meal a minute later. ‘You haven’t had a callout for a while, have you? Not since that bush fire.’ Sharon shook her head. ‘Terrible business, that was. I don’t know how you do it, love, but I’m very proud that you’re one of the people who can. Where would we be without people like your team in the SD... P?’
‘SDR, Mum. Specialist Disaster Response.’
‘Oh, that’s right. I thought it might be P for People.’
They ate in silence for a minute or two. The acronym echoed in Blake’s head. In Samantha Braithwaite’s voice.
‘I’d really like the opportunity to join the SDR team.’
What did she think it was all about? A bit of excitement to break the confines of working in a nice, controlled environment?
It was so much more than that to Blake. A window into the kind of world he’d hankered after when he’d set his sights on joining MSF. A world where you had to rely on every ounce of courage and skill you had and then some, sometimes.
It was freedom, that’s what it was. The kind of freedom he’d been chasing his whole life.
People like Sam wouldn’t get that. She came from a world full of comforts and the kind of freedom that money could always buy. Full of opportunity to do exactly what she wanted to do and the time and money to do frivolous things that would never have crossed his mother’s mind.
‘Do you ever get manicures, Mum?’
Sharon laughed. ‘That’s an odd question. Why would I pay someone else to do something I can do myself?’ Then her smile faded. ‘Not that I can manage it so well these days. I get Margo to cut my nails when they need it.’
‘Would you like to go to a salon? Get a pretty colour or something? Did you know that you can get things like polka dots on your nails now?’
His mother was smiling again. ‘I’ve seen that in the magazines. Nail art, they call it. Ridiculous.’
‘Mmm.’ About as ridiculous as the idea of having Sam join the SDR team.
‘But a pretty colour isn’t a bad idea. I’ll put some polish on my shopping list and Margo can help me.’
* * *
‘Just clear, thanks.’
‘What, no colour?’ The young manicurist looked shocked.
‘It really isn’t appropriate for where I work,’ Sam said quietly. ‘I really shouldn’t have let you talk me into those dots last time.’
‘She’s a nurse,’ the older woman in the next chair said. ‘In the emergency department, did I tell you that?’
The manicurist smiled. ‘Yes, you did, Mrs Braithwaite. You must be very proud of her.’
‘Oh, I am... Sam, darling, why don’t you get a very pale pink? It will still look perfectly natural. You can always go a bit wild with your toes.’
‘Sure.’ Sam closed her eyes. A muscle in her jaw began to ache as she forced herself to keep her hands very still.
She was so over this spa business but it had become such a thing in her mother’s life.
‘It’s the only way we get to spend some real time together—just you and me, darling. You have to sit still for an hour and there’s nothing to do but talk...’
At least she’d escaped from a weekly ritual, pleading uncooperative shift hours or other commitments. These days, it was more likely to only be once a month but, if anything, it had made the sessions more precious to Sarah Braithwaite and breaking free of the constraints of being the ‘perfect’ daughter was proving to be almost impossible.
And increasingly frustrating.
What had seemed like a huge step forward, in moving into her own apartment a few years ago wasn’t enough.
She loved her job but it wasn’t quite enough, either. Not now that she was within touching distance of something like the SDR team that could offer so much more.
Sam had her hands under the drier now and her mother was having her nails painted. Bored, she let her gaze drift up to the walls of the salon where it snagged on a picture of a peaceful scene with horses grazing in a mountain meadow. Sarah followed her gaze.
‘That grey one looks just like Trinity.’
‘Mmm.’ A wave of something like grief caught Sam’s breath. ‘I still miss her.’
‘Maybe you should have kept her, darling. Just for trekking or something.’
‘She loved eventing, Mum. And she was a champion. It wouldn’t have been fair to keep her when I stopped competing.’
It had seemed a no-brainer at the time, to give up her beloved sport. In the months following her brother’s death, she had lost any interest in what had been a teenage passion. It wasn’t just that she knew how much her parents had always worried about the risk of injury. Sam realised now that part of her lifestyle changes had been due to the notion that she didn’t deserve to be having fun. Not when her family was so utterly miserable and her beloved brother could never have any fun again.
‘But you might be right. I could start riding again. It would be good exercise.’
‘As long as you don’t go back to jumping. That’s so dangerous.’
This time it was a wave of what felt like weariness that washed over Sam. She closed her eyes, mentally hanging onto the bars of an emotional prison. One that she had, albeit, stepped into willingly enough when she was eighteen. When her parents’ precious firstborn and only son had been so tragically killed. The one that enforced the rule that she was responsible for protecting the people she loved. That she had to protect herself in order to protect them. More than once, she had wondered if her failure to commit to any long-term relationship was, at some level, an unwillingness to strengthen the walls of that prison. To add someone else to the group of people she had to protect.
Her breath escaped in a small sigh. ‘Life’s dangerous, Mum. You can get killed crossing a road, you know.’
The silence that followed her comment was long enough to make her open her eyes again. A sideways glance showed that her mother was blinking rapidly.
‘Sorry... I’m not trying to stir up painful memories. I miss Alistair too. Every day.’
Sarah sniffed and pasted a bright smile on her face. ‘You were both such little daredevils. As bad as each other. You with your horses and Al with his mountains.’
Sam reached out to touch her mother’s arm. ‘You let us follow our hearts and our passions and be who we wanted to be. You can’t ask more of a parent than that.’
‘Aww...’ The manicurist looked up from her task. ‘What a lovely thing to say.’
‘But...’ Sarah was biting her lip. ‘You gave up your passion.’
‘It wasn’t fun any more. But...one day, I might want to do something else that has its own risks. I can’t promise that I won’t do that, if it’s something I feel passionate enough about.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to, darli
ng. If there’s one thing that always gives me comfort, it’s that Al died doing the one thing he loved more than anything else. He died instantly in that rock fall so I tell myself he wouldn’t have known anything about it. He would have died happy.’
‘I tell myself the same thing.’ Sam’s vision blurred a little with unshed tears.
‘And that’s all I want for you, too,’ Sarah whispered. ‘To do what makes you happy. I’ll always worry about you but that’s just part of the job description of being a mother. And I know you’re too sensible to do something really dangerous.’
Maybe now wasn’t the best time to tell her mother about the new passion that was too compelling to resist. Or the online bookings she had finalised last night.
One step at a time.
This had been a bit of a breakthrough, though. Sam could almost see a shiny key in the doorway of that self-imposed prison. Another step or two and the iron bars of that door could very well swing open.
‘I almost forgot,’ she said casually. ‘I’m away next weekend at a training course. Friday evening to Sunday.’
‘Oh? Like that resuscitation course you went to last year?’
‘Something like that. A bit more specialised, even.’
Sarah smiled, including the manicurist in the conversation. ‘That’s my girl. Always having to learn something new and get even better at her job.’
‘Good for you.’ The young woman didn’t look up from the attention she was giving Sarah’s final nail. ‘I love getting away for a weekend. Hope it’s somewhere nice.’
‘Should be,’ Sam murmured. ‘It’s in Brisbane.’
CHAPTER FOUR
NOOO...
Sam’s heart sank so hard it took her body along with it. She was actually slithering lower on this hard, plastic chair towards the back of a classroom located at a Brisbane emergency response centre that housed both fire service and ambulance vehicles and personnel.
This couldn’t be happening.
She’d double checked. Harriet’s casual comment that Blake Cooper was involved with USAR training had been a flashing warning sign when she’d booked herself into this introductory course and she’d gone back to check the trainer’s name again before she filled in her registration details. It had been Adam Smith. A reassuringly ordinary name. A complete stranger.
The Shy Nurse's Rebel Doc Page 5