The Best Man

by Dianne Blacklock

  Aiden came back into the room, carrying his bags. Madeleine stood up and walked over to the door. She turned around to face him, her hand on the doorknob.

  ‘There’s one thing I want to ask you to do.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t stand the thought of any more lies, but if Henry calls you –’

  ‘You want me to lie for you,’ he said flatly. ‘Suddenly not such a bad theory, eh?’

  Madeleine groaned inwardly. ‘I am going to tell him the truth, I just need time, and I don’t want him to hear or suspect anything until I have the chance to talk to him. Please, Aiden, it’s the least you can do for me.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll tell him I’m staying with people I met in Canberra, or that I’m going on a trip or something. I won’t let him know I’ve seen you, if it means that much to you.’

  ‘It does.’ Madeleine opened the door and held it while he walked out. Then she closed it again, leaning back against it. Henry was expecting her home tonight, but she wasn’t ready to face him yet. She didn’t know when she was ever going to be ready. She would have to come up with some excuse to delay it; she was getting so good at lying, but she told herself it wouldn’t be for much longer. The truth would out, and that would put an end to everything.

  She trudged wearily across the room, noticing her handbag on the dining table. She went to it and took out her phone. It was dead, and she had a sick feeling, wondering if Henry had been trying to call. She walked through to the bedroom and dropped onto her hands and knees to find the lead to the charger, then plugged it into the phone. After a moment it came to life. There were no missed calls from Henry, no messages: that was some relief. But he’d expected her to be out shopping, she remembered. She had some time, a little respite. She climbed up onto the bed, and eventually sleep overcame her.

  She was stark naked, spread-eagled across the benchtop of the kitchen at the house. She lay there, listless and passive, as Aiden pumped her to the steady beat of the rumba, his eyes glazed, a manic grin on his face. Then suddenly Henry was leaning over her. It’s your phone, Madeleine, answer your phone.

  She sat bolt upright, her heart nearly thumping out of her chest. Her phone was ringing. She twisted around, fumbling for it on the bedside table.

  ‘Hello,’ she croaked.

  ‘Madeleine,’ Henry said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ She was panting, trying to catch her breath. ‘Henry, sorry, I was asleep.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, the phone, it just startled me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was getting a little worried.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Six thirty. You were going to call when you were on your way, so I thought –’

  ‘Henry, I’m so sorry, I was exhausted . . . I lay down on the bed, and I must have fallen asleep.’

  ‘Seems that way.’

  He didn’t sound cross; his voice was warm, and kind. Oh, Henry. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again, almost choking up.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘No, it’s not, I promised –’

  ‘Sweetheart, it’s okay, really. Don’t worry about it. You rest up.’

  She took a breath. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. I don’t want you driving when you’re so tired,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you call me in the morning when you wake up, whenever that is, okay?’

  She sniffed. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said gently.

  ‘All right . . . Henry?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I love you, I love you so much.’

  ‘I love you too, Madeleine. Sleep now.’

  St George Hospital

  Liv shifted in the chair, trying to get comfortable. Not that she was in any danger of achieving that: her back was aching, and she had the beginnings of a crick in her neck. She realised there was someone moving around in the darkened room, and she sat up straight.

  A nurse was standing at the end of Dylan’s bed, reading his chart by the light of a small torch. She glanced at Liv. ‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’

  Liv could detect a slight accent, maybe Indian? ‘It’s fine,’ she said, stretching out properly. ‘I can’t really sleep in a chair.’

  ‘Well, you were doing a very good impression of it just now,’ the nurse smiled.

  ‘I think I only dropped off a little while ago. What’s the time?’

  ‘It’s eleven forty-three,’ the nurse said, looking at her watch. They were very precise, these medical folk.

  ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t met you yet, have I?’ said Liv.

  ‘No, I just came on night duty,’ she said. ‘My name is Padma. I’ll be watching after Dylan tonight. Everything is looking very good. You were lucky you brought him in when you did.’

  Liv had heard that several times today. She could hardly believe it was the same day. After she’d burst in through the emergency doors, she had grabbed the first person in uniform, as was her plan – the plan of a crazy person without much of a plan. Fortunately, Liv managed to keep the crazy sufficiently locked down, and after she’d explained the situation the woman hurried outside with her to the car. She’d crawled right into the back seat, checking his ‘vitals’ – Liv was fast catching on to all the lingo – and asking Dylan questions that he could only answer with grunts and moans. Then she backed out again and turned to face Liv.

  ‘I’m going inside to get help, and we’ll be back out with a gurney. Stay here, I’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘What do you think it is?’ Liv called after her.

  The woman turned back at the door. ‘I shouldn’t say until we’ve run some tests, but if I had to guess at this stage, I’d say appendicitis. It’s good you brought him in. I’ll be right back.’

  Appendicitis had crossed Liv’s mind, but her medical knowledge was derived solely from Grey’s Anatomy – the TV show, not the textbook – so all she had to go on was severe abdominal pain accompanied by a fever, which, when she thought about it, would turn out to be something much more dramatic if it turned up on Grey’s Anatomy. In Dylan’s case, Liv hoped she was wildly overreacting and that it was nothing more than a tummy bug.

  Moments later a gurney burst through the doors, wheeled out by two men, with the woman Liv had originally accosted following behind. They were all wearing the same blue scrubs, and Liv didn’t know if they were nurses, doctors, orderlies or gardeners, though she supposed gardeners didn’t wear scrubs. The men extricated Dylan from the car and had him strapped onto the gurney in a matter of minutes. As they started to wheel him in, the woman looked over her shoulder. ‘You have to move your car.’

  ‘But can’t I come with you?’

  ‘Just park it over there, see?’ She pointed to a couple of marked spaces on the other side of the drive. ‘They’re for emergencies, for fifteen minutes only, but at least you can come in and see where we are.’

  ‘But how will I find you?’

  The woman glanced at Lachie, standing anxiously beside Liv. ‘This is your son too?’

  ‘Yes, Lachie – Lachlan. He’s Dylan’s twin.’

  ‘Okay, come with us, Lachlan.’ She looked back at Liv and smiled reassuringly. ‘We’ll be right up the far end of the corridor, he can stand outside so you’ll see him. Oh, does Dylan have any allergies you’re aware of?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  Liv jumped into the car and manoeuvred it into one of the spaces, then ran back into the hospital and up the corridor. When she got to him, Lachie was standing outside a door, craning to see inside.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She looked into the room. There was a flurry of activity going on around Dylan, but it was orderly and calm, not all shouty and frenetic like on Grey’s Anatomy. Liv decided that was probably a good sign. The two men and the woman had been joined by another man, and between them they were
inserting tubes and hanging drips and checking monitors and talking to her son like he was a person. It was oddly touching.

  ‘Here’s Mum,’ the woman said to Dylan. She waved Liv in, and Lachie followed.

  ‘Not the boy,’ said the man they hadn’t seen before.

  ‘It’s his twin brother,’ the woman told him.

  He looked up, and then nodded. ‘But keep back, please, both of you.’

  ‘Come in, just stand at the end there,’ said the woman.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Liv asked.

  ‘We’ve started intravenous antibiotics immediately, as a precaution,’ the woman explained. ‘And we’ve given him something for the pain – it’s working already, see? He’s much calmer now.’

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Dylan managed to say in a weak voice.

  ‘We have to get some details,’ said one of the men who had pushed the gurney, materialising beside her with a clipboard. He started to run through a series of standard questions, name, age, allergies . . .

  ‘When did the patient last take any food or liquids?’

  ‘I wasn’t with him last night,’ Liv said. ‘He was at a sleepover.’ She turned to Lachie. He was chewing on his lip, his brow all furrowed like he was worried he’d get the answer wrong. ‘It’s okay, mate, just whatever you can remember.’

  ‘Anything in the last six hours?’ the man prompted him.

  ‘Nah, I don’t reckon. Jared’s parents packed up the food around midnight, when we started playing the Xbox,’ Lachie said. ‘Dylan started chucking up a couple of hours after that, and Jared’s mum just gave him ice to suck.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the man, jotting it down. He continued through the list: previous surgeries, pre-existing conditions, any medication he was on. ‘And your name?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Liv, Liv Walsh.’

  ‘You’re the child’s legal guardian?’

  ‘Yes, I’m his mother. They have their father’s surname.’ Cripes, she had to call Rick as soon as she got the chance. ‘Can you tell me what’s happening?’ she asked.

  ‘Ms Walsh,’ said the man at Dylan’s side. ‘I’m Dr Harding. Your son has suspected appendicitis. As Dr Ennis told you, we’ve started an IV of antibiotics to arrest the infection while we perform a CT scan and a CBC to confirm the diagnosis. The pain has localised in the right lower quadrant, and the abdominal wall is sensitive to palpation. Also, there is rebound tenderness in the lower abdomen but no rigidity, so we believe on initial examination that he is not exhibiting any signs of peritonitis. You were right to bring him straight in.’

  ‘So you’re going to have to take his appendix out?’

  ‘That’s the most likely prognosis. Although antibiotics have proved effective in treating uncomplicated appendicitis, the statistics of recurrence are not encouraging, especially as recurrence brings a higher risk of peritonitis, whereas a laparoscopic appendectomy under general anaesthetic, prior to rupture, carries the smallest risk and is therefore still the preferred course of treatment.’

  A simple yes would have done. But she was soon to learn that nothing that could be said in a few words was said in less than a dozen multisyllabic, incomprehensible ones – or else they spoke in acronyms; there seemed to be nothing in between. Not that Liv was complaining: the staff had been nothing short of spectacular, even the humourless Dr Harding.

  The rest of the day was spent in various periods of waiting. Waiting for the results of Dylan’s tests, then waiting for him to be prepped for surgery, then waiting while he was in surgery, then waiting for him to come out of recovery. Liv wondered why waiting was so exhausting: it wasn’t as if you were doing anything but waiting, yet she was sure she would have felt less tired had she run a marathon.

  Rick arrived just after Dylan had been wheeled into surgery. He was a little frustrated that he hadn’t got to see him, but Liv assured him it wouldn’t have made any difference. ‘He’s been pretty well out of it since they gave him the pain relief when we first got here,’ she told him. ‘Poor kid, I think it was from exhaustion as much as anything – Lachie said he hadn’t slept a wink last night.’

  ‘Well, you still think they could have held on until his father got here,’ Rick said, miffed.

  Liv would have liked to remind Rick that this wasn’t about him, it was about Dylan, and that his son needed to have the surgery as soon as the doctors were ready to perform it. But what was the point? Rick had never coped all that well with the boys being sick; not that he didn’t care, he just seemed irritated by the inconvenience of having to care.

  Throughout it all, Liv had remained in her hyper-calm state. There was a bubbling undercurrent of anxiety, sure, but it stayed well down, out of the way. She had to keep calm for Lachie, who was finding the whole thing pretty overwhelming, not surprisingly. He was restless and fidgety, asking questions nonstop, wanting to know where Dylan was at any given moment, and what they were doing to him. He particularly wanted to know everything about the surgery, and Dr Ennis had been extremely forthcoming, even resorting to sketching a diagram of the laparoscopy, with a blow-by-blow description of the procedure. Liv wasn’t at all sure if this was helpful or necessary, but Lachie seemed to lap it up, so what did she know?

  ‘Hey, Ma,’ he said afterwards, ‘you know, I could give Dyl my appendix.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You hear about it all the time, people donating kidneys and stuff. And we’d be a perfect match, wouldn’t we? Because we’re identical.’

  Liv’s heart swelled. ‘Sweetheart, it’s okay, he can live without it, just like you’d have to if you gave yours to him. We have two kidneys, so people are able to give one and still keep one for themselves, and most other kinds of transplants come from people who’ve died. Anyway, they don’t do appendix transplants, but it’s very sweet of you to offer.’

  ‘So if this happens to me, I’ll be okay too?’

  She nodded. ‘But it’s not going to happen to you.’

  ‘We’re twins, Mum, it’s probably going to happen to me.’

  Poor kid. Liv wondered about everything that must be running through his head right now as he tried to process all of this. No wonder he had so many questions.

  ‘I’m almost certain appendicitis isn’t genetic or hereditary,’ Liv said. ‘But that’s something else you can ask one of the doctors next time they come around.’

  Liv had decided not to inform her parents until Dylan was out of surgery, and even then she knew she’d have a fight keeping her mother away, if only for today. There was nothing Joy didn’t like more than a little drama, and that was the last thing Dylan, or any of them, needed right now.

  It was four in the afternoon before Dylan was finally settled into the post-operative ward, thankfully in a room to himself. Liv had been told she would only be able to stay with him if he was in a private room, so she was insistent that they find him one. She knew Dylan was old enough to stay on his own, but she just didn’t want to leave him tonight. He was still groggy, coming in and out, and if he suddenly found himself wide awake in the middle of the night, she wanted to be here. In truth, she was getting a little anxious to actually see him wide awake, so she wanted to stay for her own reassurance as much as anything.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ Rick said to Lachie, ‘we should make tracks. Dylan needs his rest.’

  In other words, Rick had had enough. Not that she could blame him; it was pretty boring just hanging around. She was amazed Lachie had lasted this long without a game console or his phone, which he’d had to turn off in the hospital. But he hadn’t complained.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Lachie announced. ‘If Mum’s staying, so can I.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s allowed, mate,’ Liv said carefully.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Listen, son,’ said Rick. ‘It’s not up to us, there are rules –’

  ‘I said I don’t care, I’m not going. I’ll hide when they come round, Ma, I’ll go in the bathroom and get in the shower stall,
they won’t know.’ Lachie was furiously blinking back tears, his jaw set grimly, his hands clenched into fists by his side.

  Liv gave his arm a squeeze. ‘I’ll go and talk to someone, see what I can do.’

  She walked out to the nurses’ station, where a young nurse gave a rather automated-sounding response that it wasn’t hospital policy to let siblings stay. But when Liv pushed a bit, pointing out that the boys were twins, she suddenly became animated, and quite eager to help. ‘I’m not senior enough to make that decision, but I’ll find you someone who is.’

  Liv didn’t have to wait long before another nurse arrived to discuss the issue. She was older than the first nurse, but not ancient, and not at all scary like the matrons Liv remembered from a long time ago. Liv realised she must be the team leader, like David. She was quite sympathetic, and with a few provisos – that the boy couldn’t leave the room and wander the corridors, and that if there was any undue noise or disruption he would have to leave immediately – she agreed to let him stay.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Liv. ‘He’ll be so relieved.’

  ‘Twins, what are you going to do?’ said the nurse.

  ‘I’ll go give him the news.’ Liv turned up the hall when she had a thought. ‘Excuse me?’ she said, coming back to the desk. ‘I have a friend who works here, I believe he’s the same rank as you.’

  ‘We’re not in the military,’ she said with a smile. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘David Lessing?’

  ‘Oh yes, I know David.’

  ‘You don’t happen to know if he’s on tonight?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s a big hospital, I haven’t seen him. And you understand we’re not able to give out information about staff rosters to just anyone –’

  ‘No, of course, I wouldn’t expect you to,’ said Liv. ‘I’ll give him a call myself tomorrow. Not a problem.’