Bride at Bay Hospital Read online

  ‘And the leukaemia?’ Sam asked gently.

  Jenny drew in a deep breath.

  ‘We’re fighting it, Sam. That’s all we can do. Benjie’s a fighter, too. Although I know the chemo is so much easier to take now, it still knocks him around for a day or two, but then he bounces back and is his normal, boisterous self. Although today—’

  ‘It might just have been the asthma attack.’ Sam was quick to assure her, although he was wondering whether Benjie had seen his father collapse with pain—seen the ambulance—and, little though he was, understood some of the significance of it.

  ‘I hope so,’ Jenny said, bending to kiss her son, then turning to Brad, who was the only child still awake in the ward. ‘I’m leaving you in charge,’ she told him. ‘You ring for someone if he wakes.’

  Her instruction made Sam turn towards the desk, wondering if perhaps the hospital was so short-staffed a patient had to keep watch. But the nurse at the desk just smiled at him, leaving Jenny to explain as she accompanied him back to Ben’s room.

  ‘Brad’s been in and out of hospital so often he thinks he owns the place,’ she said. ‘So it’s natural to kid him around.’

  She paused, then added, ‘And he loves Benjie, so he will watch over him.’

  ‘It sounds to me as if everyone loves Benjie,’ Sam said, and saw Jenny’s smile bring a glow to her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, they do,’ she whispered, then she went ahead, entering Ben’s room, eager to tell him his little son had settled down to sleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SAM sat in his office for a while, pretending to read the information in the files on his desk, but his mind wasn’t taking in much, wondering instead what time Meg might get home—and whether it would still be early enough for him to explain.

  In the end he gave up and wandered back to the children’s ward where Jenny was sitting talking to Brad while keeping a watchful eye on her sleeping child.

  ‘Could I see Benjie’s file?’ he asked the nurse, who lifted a bulky package off the desk.

  ‘All of it or just the recent admissions?’ she asked.

  He looked at the full file and realised he wouldn’t have time to read it all tonight. Maybe Jenny could explain.

  She’d kissed Brad goodnight and was back by Benjie’s bed.

  ‘Ben’s fretting and I really need to be with him, but I hate leaving Benjie.’

  ‘He’s sleeping soundly, so I would think keeping Ben’s anxiety levels down would be the main concern,’ Sam said, resting his arm on her shoulder as she watched her sleeping child.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, turning her with a slight pressure of his hand. ‘As we walk back you can tell me about Benjie. How old is he and where’s he up to with his treatment?’

  ‘Don’t they call that diversion therapy?’ Jenny said, smiling at him as they walked into the corridor. ‘He’s two, diagnosed three and a half months ago. Dr Chan, the paediatrician here in the Bay, picked it up straight away and we did go to Brisbane for the initial intensive treatment, then for his catheter to be put in and for the five day block of treatment in the second month. What we’re up to now—the fourth month—is one daily 6-mercaptopurine tablet, weekly tablets of…Is it methotrexate?’

  Sam nodded, remembering the protocols from his stint in paediatrics as an intern.

  ‘He comes in for monthly injections—I forget what that drug is—and later in the month we do five days of steroids. While he’s at the hospital for that day—tomorrow, it’s supposed to be—they do more blood tests and the results of those tests will determine if the tablets need to be changed.’

  ‘The dosage altered,’ Sam confirmed, as they paused outside Ben’s room to finish the conversation.

  The curtains had been drawn across the internal windows so it wasn’t until they entered the room that he noticed Meg sitting by Ben’s bed. Again!

  Sam watched as she stood up and kissed Jenny on the cheek. Watched as she carefully avoided either looking at him or acknowledging him.

  ‘I wondered if you wanted me to stay with Benjie tonight so you can be with Ben,’ she said, and Jenny’s smile and warm hug provided all the answer anyone needed. ‘I was filling Ben in on the SES meeting while I waited for you. He agrees we need a new captain but old Ned’s been there so long, no one has the heart to tell him it’s time to leave.’

  The conversation continued for a few minutes, giving Sam the opportunity to watch the two women. They were obviously close friends—because Benjie was hospitalised so often?

  ‘Jenny was great to me that Christmas,’ Meg said, as he followed her out of the room a little later.

  He knew immediately what Christmas she meant, but what bothered him was Meg’s seeming ability to read his mind. Or was she simply making conversation to get past the tension between them?

  Not such a bad idea.

  ‘You don’t have staff to cover the little boy on a one-on-one basis?’ he asked. The awkwardness between them had increased since he’d mentioned the sister thing. It was like a glass wall—solid and impenetrable—but talking medical matters made pretence at normality easier.

  ‘Not unless the child is desperately ill. I’ve spoken to Kristianne, the doctor on duty, who, with Dr Chan, his paediatrician, admitted Benjie, and he’s OK, though I don’t know what the oncologist will say tomorrow.’

  ‘You have an oncologist come in just for him?’

  Meg’s smile made him realise how incredulous he must have sounded. It also managed to penetrate the glass wall and cause quivers in his chest.

  ‘We have one on-line—a direct link so we can talk to him and he can talk to us. Kristianne took more blood from Benjie when he came in, and we’ll flick those test results through to the oncologist as soon as they’re available. It’ll be up to him whether Benjie has treatment tomorrow or not.’

  It all sounded quite sensible to Meg, so why was Sam frowning at her? Was he thinking about that ridiculous statement he’d made earlier?

  ‘You went to an SES meeting,’ he said, accusation biting into the words. ‘So how come you know all this? Who admitted him—taking blood, all the details?’

  ‘I rode back to the hospital with Bill, who’s also in the SES. I guessed your page meant some kind of crisis and I don’t like to have stuff happening that I don’t know about.’

  Sam smiled at her.

  ‘You never did,’ he reminded her, and though she knew she shouldn’t be feeling anything for Sam, she found herself smiling back.

  They stood by Benjie’s bed, looking down at the sleeping child. Meg leant forward to adjust the blue striped beanie the little boy wore.

  ‘Local football colours, aren’t they?’ Sam asked, feeling strange that he and Meg should be standing beside a small child’s cot.

  Strange, yet somehow right…

  And he didn’t do emotion?

  ‘Bay Dolphins,’ she confirmed. ‘They’ve adopted Benjie as a mascot. They donated all the gate takings from their final game towards the Benjie Fund that helps out with the expenses of the family.’

  ‘Did they win?’

  Meg turned and smiled, then thrust her arm in the air as she said in a loud whisper, ‘You bet they did. Go, Dolphins!’

  ‘For someone who only ever spent holidays in the Bay, you’ve become a local from the look of things,’ Sam said.

  But it was Brad who answered.

  ‘That’s because she cares about stuff apart from just patients in a bed,’ the child informed him.

  ‘Do you?’ Sam asked directly, turning his clear-eyed gaze from Brad to Meg.

  ‘Of course I do, but so does everyone else in the profession. Most of the people in your profession, too, I would have thought.’

  ‘Not entirely,’ Sam argued, pleased that, with the help of two children, they’d managed to find their way back through the glass wall, to some kind of neutral territory. ‘I’m not saying specialists don’t care about the whole person, but they do tend to become quite focussed on their main inte
rest. Look at orthopods who only operate on hands.’

  ‘But they’re doing their best to achieve a positive outcome for the patient, not just his hand.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sam said so dubiously that Meg laughed.

  ‘There always was a touch of the cynic in you,’ she told him. ‘Now, can you help me move this chair?’

  She pointed towards a big reclining lounge chair.

  ‘To over here by Benjie?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No, that I could manage myself. I want to take it through to Ben’s room for Jenny. There’s another one near Brad I can use.’

  ‘Don’t the other wards have facilities for family staying over?’

  Meg studied him.

  ‘Do you really want an answer or was that just a conversational question?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I want an answer?’ Sam had moved towards the chair and was now manoeuvring it towards the door.

  ‘Because you’re acting super—not here permanently. Most people passing through wouldn’t care.’

  He frowned at her.

  ‘Well, I do, OK?’

  Taking up a position on the other side of the chair brought her closer to Sam—this new caring Sam—closer than she liked, so it was good to have something to explain.

  ‘Because serious cases are transferred on to larger hospitals we rarely have patients ill enough to warrant family staying with them. But I believe parents should be able to stay with their sick kids so recently Bill found the funds to buy these chairs.’

  Blue-green eyes met hers across the chair as they pushed it through the door, and she saw the faint mark on his face where her stick had struck him.

  He’d thought she was his sister?

  Disbelief was yelling the question in her head, but if Sam could behave as if he hadn’t delivered that deadly blow only hours earlier, so could she.

  ‘Working on getting them for the other wards, are you?’ he was asking, and though his lips weren’t smiling she could see a teasing gleam in his eyes. A teasing gleam that melted her bones and made her heart do little tap dances in her chest.

  Oh, no, not again! You cannot fall for Sam again!

  But is it again—or still…?

  ‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea,’ she said, stiffly formal as she tried to hide the effect he had on her. ‘But money’s always tight.’

  Together they managed to get the chair to Ben’s room and when Jenny began to question Sam about Ben’s heart attack, Meg slipped away.

  He’s not here for ever, she reminded herself. You can handle it.

  But could she?

  She went through to the children’s ward and shifted another big chair, this time close to Benjie’s cot. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully, and would probably stay that way throughout the night. They had a monitor on the mattress, the device usually used for babies with suspected sudden infant death syndrome. It had an alarm that would sound if Benjie stopped breathing. But for Jenny and Ben’s peace of mind, Meg would stay by his side.

  She drew a fingertip along his arm, marvelling at the super-smooth skin.

  ‘Keep fighting, Benjie,’ she whispered to the little boy, then she sank down into the chair beside him.

  Exhaustion, both physical and emotional, flooded through her as she let her body relax in the soft recliner. The physical she could explain. She’d been doing double shifts for a week now.

  The emotional exhaustion was also explainable but far less easy to set aside. If she felt this way after Sam’s first day in the hospital, how was she going to feel after a week—or a month—or however long he intended working here?

  But it wasn’t so much Sam’s presence causing emotional havoc as the sister thing. Why hadn’t she stayed when he’d told her? Listened to him explain?

  Because she’d been too shocked to think straight!

  How could such an impossible, inconceivable, horribly revolting idea have got into his stupid head?

  She thought back—way back—but even after thirteen years the memories were still vivid. They had spoken on the phone the previous weekend—silly, excited, soon-we’ll-really-be-together talk—lovers’ talk. So what had happened in the intervening week?

  She didn’t know of any major events earlier in that week, but the night before she’d arrived, cool, controlled Sam, who rarely showed any emotion at all, had had a fight.

  He’d put Ben Richards in hospital with a broken jaw. The first move in seven weeks of madness and mayhem when he’d torn through town like a tornado, barely escaping being locked up for drunken behaviour, losing his licence for a multitude of offences, not least of which had been speeding down the Esplanade, and, most hurtful of all to Meg, dating every teenage female in the caravan park.

  Meg pushed the hurtful memories aside, turned in the chair and snuggled down against the cool leather, closing her eyes but unable to close her mind to the memories that swarmed like bees inside her head.

  Was she asleep?

  Sam stood in the doorway of the children’s ward and looked at Meg, curled sideways in the big recliner, her dark red hair falling across her face.

  He wanted to explain the remark he’d made earlier—the statement that had sent her flying across the road to the sanctuary of the cottage. But she was obviously exhausted, and this was hardly the time or the place for explanations.

  So what should he do?

  Walk away?

  He swore viciously to himself, cursing his insensitivity in blurting it out that way, cursing her for not listening earlier—on the beach—when he’d wanted to explain and could have done it rationally.

  Then he looked at the bent head and his anger dissolved into nothingness.

  This was Meg. How could he not know how best to treat her?

  Because the Meg he’d known had been sixteen—a girl. This was a woman—and, to all intents and purposes, a stranger.

  Her eyes opened as he stood there. Had his thoughts woken her?

  He walked into the room, nodding at the nurse who sat in the glow of a nightlamp at the desk.

  Meg straightened in the chair and spoke quietly to the nurse.

  ‘Why don’t you take a break?’ she suggested. ‘With me here, and Dr Agostini prowling around the wards, it’s a good opportunity for you to grab a coffee and something to eat.’

  The young woman stood up immediately, thanking Meg and slipping out the door so swiftly Sam wondered if the tension between himself and Meg was so strong it could be felt by others in their vicinity.

  He came further into the room, checking the beds where the children—even Brad—lay sleeping, then he reached the chair where Meg still sat, and squatted down beside it.

  The hazy look in her eyes told him she’d been sleeping.

  ‘Sam?’

  And having slept, had she forgotten her animosity towards him so his name came out so sweetly from her lips?

  But memory returned all too swiftly—the soft lips thinning and the look in her eyes suddenly wary.

  Then anxious.

  ‘Is Ben all right? He hasn’t had another attack, has he?’

  ‘Ben’s fine,’ he told her.

  ‘Then—?’

  Her eyes took in his position—still squatting beside her chair—silently asking the question she hadn’t finished.

  And though he hadn’t wanted, or expected, this reunion with his old friend, Sam’s heart—it had to be his heart—ached that things should be so awkward between them.

  ‘What I said earlier—I need to explain.’

  Her eyes narrowed as she sat up in the chair and folded her arms defensively across her chest.

  ‘Haven’t you done enough explaining for one night?’

  He touched her arm and felt her reaction as nerves and muscles stiffened.

  ‘You know I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, maybe I’ve done listening,’ she told him. ‘I’m so deep in disbelief that you could think such a thing of my father—let alone of your mother—it’d take a mountain of explanations to g
et past it.’

  ‘Your father paid my school fees for the next year.’

  Sam’s words killed the bees buzzing in Meg’s head, blotting out everything but the deadly implication they held. She shivered under the weight of it, and Sam reached out and grasped her shoulder.

  She certainly didn’t have the strength to move away from his touch, or to object when he gently eased her back against the softness of the chair.

  ‘What was I supposed to think, Meg?’ Sam demanded, taking both her hands in his, though why she was allowing it she didn’t know.

  Perhaps because her thoughts were so out of control right now she needed something—anything—to anchor her to reality.

  ‘I’ve gone about this all the wrong way, Meg,’ he was saying. ‘But we need to clear the air between us. It started the night before—the night before you came. We’d been to the movies, a whole gang of us—and Ben had been drinking.’

  ‘Ben Richards?’ A name she knew—another anchor.

  Sam nodded, and she saw the dark head bend towards her in a silly parody of an on-bended-knee proposal.

  ‘Ben made a stupid remark about…’ He hesitated, looking up into her face, his blue-green eyes pleading with her but asking her what? To listen?

  Or to understand?

  She’d listen—she doubted she had the strength to do otherwise.

  Understanding wasn’t something she could promise.

  ‘He said something stupid to the effect that I shouldn’t kiss any of the girls in the Bay because any one of them might be my sister.’

  The gruff voice, the anguished eyes told Meg how Sam had felt more vividly than words could have managed.

  ‘He made out…’

  He couldn’t go on, getting up and moving away, his back turned as if even after thirteen years the pain was so great he couldn’t let her see it.

  ‘Made out your mother was…’ Meg whispered, unable to finish the sentence as her own throat was choked with emotion.

  ‘A whore, slut, whatever you want to call it!’ Sam finished for her, speaking softly so the children weren’t disturbed, back in control though she could see the effort it cost him in the set of his jaw and the tension in his shoulders.

  ‘No wonder you hit him,’ Meg muttered, unable to believe the pain Sam must have felt. Then common sense reminded her it had been a long time ago, and she tried to consider the subject more rationally.