The Honourable Maverick / The Unsung Hero (21 page)

Especially if Sarah came with Josh. There was most definitely a pleasure to be found in watching her. Rick knew he was going to be haunted later by the memory of her sitting in that café, sucking coffee froth off her finger. There was a slight moral dilemma here, in that he knew it wasn’t exactly appropriate to find himself turned on by his newfound son’s guardian, but he’d grapple with that later as well. As long as he didn’t act on it, and kept hold of the new level of respect he had for Sarah, it was probably no problem.

They left soon after eating because Josh was clearly exhausted. Rick followed them out. Sarah got Josh installed in the front passenger seat and his eyes were closing even as she shut the door. Rick touched her shoulder to make her pause before she headed for the driver’s seat.

‘Is he OK?’

‘He’ll be tired out. It’s been quite a day for him.’

Rick could understand that. It had been quite a day for him as well. ‘This stuff you’re going shopping for tomorrow?’

‘Yes?’

‘They’re things Josh will need for his stay in hospital?’

‘Yes.’ Sarah was watching him, her eyebrows raised.

‘I’d…um…like to help pay for it.’

The moment’s silence was heavy. Sarah held his gaze. ‘It’s not necessary,’ she said.

But she didn’t sound convincing. About to argue, Rick was stopped by the continued eye contact. The intensity behind it.

‘What Josh needs from you is something money can’t buy,’ Sarah said softly. ‘He needs something he’s never had. A dad.’

Rick could feel every muscle in his body tense. ‘I can’t just morph into a dad, Sarah. I wouldn’t have a clue where to begin.’

Sarah smiled. ‘There’s no “how to” manual.’ She looked away. ‘You just do your best for as long as you can.’ She captured his gaze again. ‘It might not even be for very long. Couldn’t you at least give it a go?’

Part of Rick wanted to back away. As fast and as far as possible. He thought of Jet and his action to ward off bad voodoo and the idea of doing it himself had momentary appeal before being dismissed as inappropriate, not to mention immature.

There was another part of him that couldn’t turn away from this. Not now. Something had changed today, thanks to both Sarah and the remarkable kid who was his son.

Maybe he’d grown up a little as well.

His nod was slow, but sure. He even managed a smile.

‘I’ll give a shot,’ Rick said. ‘I can’t promise I’ll be any good at it but I’ll do my best.’

‘That’s all you need to do.’ Sarah’s smile lit up her eyes. She stood on tiptoe and put her arms around Rick’s neck to hug him. ‘Thank you.’

It was only a brief hug.

Weird the way he could still feel it, long after she had driven away into the night.

J
OSH
was readmitted to hospital early on a Monday morning.

He received sedation to have the Hickman catheter inserted just under his collarbone and by lunchtime the intensive chemotherapy course to destroy his own bone marrow had begun.

The room in the bone-marrow transplant unit that was to become their world for the next few weeks felt remarkably like a prison to Sarah. It contained a bed for Josh and two armchairs of the kind that had controls to raise a footrest and tip back so they could be slept in comfortably. A small
en suite
bathroom a few steps away from the foot of the bed had a shower, toilet and handbasin.

There were windows on the corridor side of the room, directly opposite an identical room that had yet to pull the curtains on their internal windows. On the outside wall was another window but the view was of another wing of the hospital. Dozens more windows that seemed like blank eyes staring back.

With a determinedly bright smile, Sarah turned away from the less than inspiring outlook. Josh was
propped up on his pillows but still looked sleepy. The leg of a favourite soft toy poked out from under the covers beside him, one of the few personal items that gave this room a little bit of colour. The top buttons of his pyjama jacket were undone to reveal the dressing over the indwelling catheter. Close to that were rather complicated-looking connections that provided several ports. If necessary—and it probably would be—he could be infused with drugs and fluids and blood products all at the same time and there would still be access available to take blood samples.

Currently, Josh had sticky electrodes on his chest and wires that connected them to a cardiac monitor by his bed. A blood-pressure cuff was wrapped around his upper arm and inflated automatically at intervals to make recordings. A clip that measured the oxygen saturation in his blood completely covered the middle finger of his other hand. The steady beeping was a sound Sarah was well used to. It had been a comforting background, more than once, in the lonely hours of so many nights when she had been sitting alone beside a bed that looked just like this one. Wondering if Josh would still be alive in the morning.

Déjà vu
of the worst kind. Pulling her back into something she would have done anything to be able to avoid. A sinking sensation that carried her on waves of heartbreak. Loneliness and frustration and unbearable sorrow.

A soft tap on the door advertised the arrival of a visitor and Sarah looked up to see the green gown and white mask that everyone who entered this room would have to wear from now on, including herself. It made
everyone look the same and added an element that might end up being the worst aspect of this new admission so far. It felt like she and Josh had been sucked into something faceless. Impersonal.

Less caring.

She knew that was totally untrue. If anything, the opposite was the case but the dampening of an important sense in removing most of the features and facial expressions from the staff was hard to get used to. It made a person’s eyes incredibly important as an avenue of communication so it was the first thing her gaze sought. This time, however, she recognised the new arrival even before he’d turned round as he manoeuvred something large and bulky into the room.

‘Rick!’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Is this a bad time to visit?’

‘No…not at all. I just.’ Hadn’t expected the visit, that was all. Yes, he’d said he would get involved. Give being a father figure his best shot. But.

The voices had woken Josh. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Hey, buddy.’ Rick’s swift glance took in the bedside equipment. The monitors, the indwelling catheter and the bags of suspended fluid with their bright stickers to warn of the toxic drugs they contained. ‘How’re you doing?’

‘I’m not being sick yet.’

‘That’s great.’

‘What’s that?’

‘This?’ Rick picked up the large object resting against his leg. ‘It’s a cork board.’

‘You can’t bring things like that in,’ Sarah said.
‘There’s a risk of infection, especially from plant material, and that’s—’

‘Been decontaminated,’ Rick interrupted. ‘Sprayed to within an inch of its life. Like this other stuff.’

She hadn’t noticed the box. Now she was as curious as Josh.

‘That looks like the best spot.’ Rick tilted the board and propped it against the wall beneath the window on the corridor side of the room. ‘Easy viewing level when you’re lying in bed, I reckon. What do you think, Josh?’

‘I can see it all right.’ Sarah could understand why Josh sounded dubious. A cork board? Was he supposed to draw pictures to pin on it like a five-year-old? Or wait for get-well cards from relatives he didn’t have?

‘Cool. Now…’ Rick was opening the box. ‘I’ve got something else in here.’

Josh’s eyelids had started to droop but then he frowned and pushed them open again. ‘What’s that thing?”

‘A camera. I know it looks a bit weird. It’s an old-fashioned kind, not digital. Which is why I managed to acquire it. We used to use them in the old days. It’s Polaroid and it takes instant pictures.’ He aimed the camera at Josh and it clicked. Almost at once, a piece of white card began appearing from its base. ‘This is the picture,’ he told Josh. ‘You have to wait for a minute or two for it to develop. See?’

He was beside the head of the bed now, holding the card for Josh to watch. Sarah watched them, feeling absurdly pleased that Rick had come to visit so early on and that Josh was looking interested. Too distracted
to be thinking about anything else, in fact. She felt the same way. The fear and the loneliness and the sense of confinement was gone. Tucked away in some part of her brain that she had no need to access while Rick was there.

‘Hey…that’s
me
.’ Josh sounded delighted.

‘Sure is.’ Rick glanced at Sarah, including her in the conversation. ‘It’s a picture of your first day in here. Tomorrow we can take another one. I thought you might like a kind of photo album on the wall so you can see all the milestones on the road to getting better.’

Josh turned to Sarah. ‘You can take a picture of me throwing up.’

‘Cool. Not.’

‘There might be some pictures from home you could stick onto the board,’ Rick suggested. ‘To remind Josh of the good stuff he can look forward to when he gets out of here. Maybe even a picture of something extraspecial that could be a reward.’

‘A dog,’ Josh said promptly. ‘That’s what I want. My own puppy.’

‘Oh, Josh…you know we’re not allowed to keep pets in the apartment.’ Sarah could feel the slide of an emotional roller-coaster. A moment ago she’d been blown away by the thought Rick had put into this gift. The promise of his involvement in saying
we
could take another picture tomorrow and every day after that. Now he was making her the bad guy here. Letting Josh reveal a dream that she had no hope of fulfilling even if everything else went perfectly.

Josh was not only looking awake right now, his eyes
were shining and his lips were curved into a dreamy smile. Thinking about the puppy he’d wanted for ever.

A dog would be my friend, he’d told her once. Then it wouldn’t matter if I was too sick to go to school.

‘You might not live in that apartment for ever.’

Rick’s gaze was on Sarah now and there was a question in his eyes that she could read remarkably clearly. Was it really a bad thing to let Josh dream about something that might help him get through the worst of this? Even if it didn’t eventuate? Yes, part of Sarah wanted to respond. She’d always been honest with Josh. False hope wasn’t necessarily better than no hope. Except. except that Josh was looking happier right now than she’d seen him look in ages. He wasn’t counting down the hours until he started throwing up or found himself in unbearable pain. He was thinking about something that might actually make going through everything that was to come worthwhile. And it wasn’t totally dishonest. It was highly likely they wouldn’t have to live in that apartment for ever, especially if she could start working again.

‘We could get a house,’ Josh said happily. ‘With a garden. Couldn’t we, Sarah? One day?’

‘Absolutely we could,’ Sarah found herself saying. ‘We’ll find a picture of one we might like, shall we? And stick it on the board?’

‘Yeah…’ But Josh sounded sleepy again. His eyes drifted shut and he seemed to melt further into his pillows but he still had a smile tilting the corners of his mouth.

Rick pinned the Polaroid snap onto the corkboard. ‘I’ll show you how to use this camera,’ he said to Sarah.
‘Then you can take pictures when I’m not around. I’ll show Josh how to use it tomorrow.’

‘It was a wonderful idea, Rick. Thank you.’

‘No worries.’ Rick shrugged off the praise. It took only a few moments for him to demonstrate the workings of the camera. ‘I’ve got a ton of the blank cards,’ he told her. ‘It all became redundant ages ago and ended up in my office for some reason. It’s nice to have a use for it. And now…’ the corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled beneath the mask ‘…I’ve got to run. I’ve got a mountain of stuff to get through in the next couple of days so I can take some time off.’

‘Oh…of course. When is your procedure scheduled for?’

‘Wednesday, at the moment. Depends on how Josh goes with the prep.’

‘Are you going to get knocked out?’

‘No. I don’t want a general anaesthetic.’

Sarah nodded. She had expected he wouldn’t. ‘What about the IV sedation? I think I’d go for a bucket of that.’

‘They have offered me some jungle juice but I declined.’ A flash of something like embarrassment showed on Rick’s face. He had clearly been attracted by the prospect. ‘It would mean I couldn’t drive for twenty-four hours afterwards and I don’t want to have to spend the night in here.’

‘I could drive you home,’ Sarah offered. ‘And pick you up the next day.’

Rick didn’t meet her eyes. ‘I can cope with the local.’

He’d prefer not to have to, though, wouldn’t he?
Anyone would. ‘Why make it worse for yourself than it has to be?’ she asked carefully. ‘Heaven knows, you’re doing enough as it is. It’s no big deal if I give you a ride home and pick you up the next morning.’

‘You wouldn’t want to leave Josh.’

‘It wouldn’t be for long. He’d be fine. I’d really like to.’ Sarah held Rick’s gaze. ‘What you’ve done…are doing for Josh. It’s really.’

The pleasure he had given. A chance to dream. Hope for a future.

It was beyond price. Beyond anything Sarah could find words to thank him for. She had to blink hard and turned slightly to look at Josh so that Rick wouldn’t see how affected she was. She almost missed the shrugging movement Rick was making for the second time in that visit. She heard the rustle of his gown as he headed for the door.

‘I said I’d give it my best shot,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll let you know…about Wednesday.’

Rick headed for the intensive care unit. He had time to check on how young Simon was doing before he was due in Theatre for what would be a long and probably difficult surgery on a two-year-old girl who had a brain tumour with tentacles surrounding her spinal cord.

He was very pleased with the effect his brain wave about the old Polaroid camera had had. It had obviously distracted Josh from what was happening around him, albeit for only a short time, but, even better, he’d seen how Sarah had reacted. That initial surprise that he had actually come to visit. The quiet respect that he’d thought of a gift that could make a difference to
how difficult this admission would be. There’d been that bristling at what she’d seen as stepping on her toes as a parent when he’d suggested that dreaming of a time when he could have his own dog wasn’t so farfetched but then he’d seen…what?…acceptance?
Relief?

No, that wasn’t quite it but there’d been something. A connection. Maybe she believed now that he was prepared to try being a father figure for Josh and that she now had someone who was stepping up to share the burden. A partner.

Yes. Rick liked that idea. Sarah was more of a parent to Josh than he’d ever been but he had applied for a jobsharing arrangement and, so far, it was going well.

Better than he’d anticipated, in fact. Maybe this being a father thing wouldn’t be so bad.

Josh was a good kid. He had looked pale and sick and had been through a fairly major procedure that morning. He was also confined to a small room where his only visitors had to be shrouded like alien beings and he was going to be in there for what must seem like an eternity to a nine-year-old, but he hadn’t been whinging about any of it. He was a tough little nut. He’d wanted a photograph of him throwing up, for heaven’s sake. Rick found himself grinning as he walked into Intensive Care.

Simon’s parents were beside his bed. They both looked pale and were sitting very still. Their world had caved in on them, hadn’t it? They were used to being in here now. Familiar with the machines and the new kind of care their son needed. Small things had become incredibly important but their focus was entirely on what was happening in here. World War Three could have broken out but they would still be totally focused.
Watching for any signs that their precious child was going to survive and be all right.

Simon still lay like a small, reclining statue. Breathing on his own now but not showing any sign of coming out of the coma. Josh had been this pale but what a difference to be able to see the spark of life in a child’s eyes. To be able to make them smile.

It wasn’t that Rick had ever lacked any sympathy for the parents of his young patients. He would be going from this room to talk to the distraught family of the very sick toddler on his theatre list for this afternoon. He had seen too many parents suffering through this kind of experience. He’d seen the courage with which some of them faced inevitable failure and the agony of dealing with its aftermath. But he’d never felt quite like this. As though he knew the real level of pain it could cause because he could imagine what it would be like if it was Josh, lying here in Intensive Care. Or waiting in the ward to be taken for surgery that might save his life but could, quite possibly, end it.